City of Fear

by Alafair Burke

  The gray-haired male anchor on the left side of the screen used the Indiana girl’s comment about good ol’ safe New York to segue into another crime story, this time a home invasion in Westchester.

  The man flipped through the other networks, searching for additional reports about the early morning discovery of the dead body in East River Park. Nothing. Either the other stations were all finished with their coverage, or only the ABC affiliate had broken the story.

  Chelsea Hart. A college student from Indiana. He thought about the driver’s license he’d grasped between his fingers only a few hours earlier on his living room floor. Jennifer Green. Date of birth in 1983.

  So she had been from Indiana, but the license wasn’t real after all. She was only nineteen years old. Her name was not Jennifer Green. And she’d been a college student from Bloomington.

  The realization that he’d been ignorant of these basic details about the girl struck him as bizarre. He was the one who’d slid off her tight black pants and seen the purple birthmark on her right hip, peeking out from beneath those silky bikini panties. He was the one who’d run his fingers through those long blond waves before cutting them off to take home with him. He was the one who’d felt the firmness of her veins beneath the soft pale skin around her throat.

  A lizard appeared on the screen to push insurance. As he hit the mute button on the television, the man wished he’d had more time last night. He had rushed with Chelsea, formerly known as Jennifer Green. He would take more time with his next project, once he found her. To his surprise, he was already anticipating it.

  He still needed to put in another couple of hours of work, but he was rested from the quick catnap he’d caught after his meeting. He would start looking tonight.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The perspective of the camera continually changed, but the images always came to her in black and white. Sometimes Ellie watched the scenes unfold through the eyes of the victims. On other nights, she was a neutral and omnipotent observer floating overhead.

  This time, she was pushing open the unlatched heavy oak door of a prairie-style home. She walked through the living room, passing in front of a fireplace, and then turned into a long hallway that led to the bedrooms.

  She found the boy’s body first, laid out on his twin bed with a plastic shopping bag over his head, a rope around his throat. His mother was in the master bathroom, blindfolded in the tub with a bandanna. Ellie knew that the woman had been tortured before being drowned – held repeatedly under water to the brink of suffocation, then revived, only to be submerged again.

  As she descended the basement stairs, she tried to block the image that she knew would come next. William Summer had saved the twelve-year-old daughter for last.

  Just as Ellie caught sight of the soiled rag next to the girl’s body, a rumbling sound pulled her away from the nightmare. She opened her eyes and remembered she was alone in her Murray Hill living room. According to her cable box, it was 9:58. She had dozed off watching a show about Dexter, a wily serial killer who targeted people who truly deserved to die for their own heinous wrongdoings. If only real murderers were so delightfully discriminating.

  She grabbed her vibrating cell phone from the coffee table and flipped it open.

  ‘Hatcher.’

  ‘Morse.’

  It was Peter. ‘Hey. I didn’t check the screen first.’

  ‘Guess what I learned today?’

  ‘What?’ She smiled at the sight of the plush green frog heads springing from her toes. She had tried to find a way to leave behind the slippers her mother had purchased for her in Kansas, but she had to admit they were actually pretty cute.

  ‘Writing the news all day straight, and then coming home to write some more, totally sucks.’

  ‘Isn’t that pretty much what your life was like before you met me?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘And while I was in Kansas?’

  ‘And your point would be?’

  ‘Write one more page and then go to sleep.’

  ‘A page? Do you have any idea how long it takes me to write a page?’

  ‘You write fast,’ Ellie said. She had seen him hammer out articles as fast as he could type them.

  ‘That’s when I’m Peter Morse, crime beat reporter for a tabloid that calls itself a newspaper. It’s different with my own stuff.’

  ‘Fine. Write another paragraph and go to sleep.’

  ‘I think I’m fried for the night. It didn’t help that I got stuck at work. WABC beat everyone to the punch on a body this morning at East River Park, so I had to stay and bang something out for tomorrow morning’s paper. Kittrie must think it’s going to be a big story, because he awoke from his deep slumber as an editor and insisted we work on the coverage as a team.’

  George Kittrie was Peter’s editor, and, at least according to the stories Peter had a tendency to tell, he was about as fond of Peter as Lieutenant Eckels was of Ellie.

  ‘You probably don’t want to know, but that’s actually my case.’

  ‘So instead of scrambling for two hours at the paper trying to satisfy Kittrie, I could have just called you?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Oh, come on. I could have at least weaseled my way into a little hint.’

  ‘Nothing. Nada. I’m Fort Knox.’

  ‘I know. You sure you don’t want company?’

  ‘Two nights on our own. I told you.’

  ‘You are such a cop.’

  ‘Good night.’

  ‘’Night, Detective.’

  She rose from the sofa and cleared away the debris from her dinner, lamb rogan josh and samosas delivered from a neighborhood Indian joint. Her stomach still felt hot from the spicy brown sauce on the lamb dish, and it dawned on Ellie how acclimated she had become during her decade in New York to the consumption of foods whose ingredients were a complete mystery to her.

  She flipped to the early round of the late-night news. The local ABC affiliate may have been the first to break the story of Chelsea Hart’s murder, but now the department’s Public Information Office had released an official statement, and the case was finding its place in every stratum of the media.

  Watching a case transform from real-life incident to ubiquitous cultural phenomenon reminded Ellie of the sprouting process in Gremlins, a movie she still watched every year on Christmas Day. It all started with a single, manageable creature. But add a little water, and suddenly several new balls of mischief were spawned, brewing until they transformed into separate and independent troublemakers that had to be watched over and cared for, each with the potential to hatch its own havoc-wreaking offspring.

  And so it was with crime reporting. It started with a single case, followed by the first story. But that initial media coverage provided the germinating water, and from there, the sprouting began. By the end of the week, she would have a precinct full of Gremlins.

  Ellie flipped between the two ten o’clock news programs. Both covered all the bases: Chelsea’s name and age; the fact that she was on spring break, alone at night in the Meatpacking District; the discovery of her strangled corpse early this morning by joggers along the East River. No mention of the mutilation of her body or the violent removal of her beautiful hair. Give them time, she thought. Peter had scrambled quickly for the basics, but by tomorrow, reporters would be contacting everyone Chelsea Hart had ever met – at the hotel, at the club, back home in Indiana. Whether they wanted to or not, the public would eventually gain access to all of the ugly and salacious details that boosted ratings and swelled circulation numbers.

  And Ellie’s job would get that much harder.

  She changed the channel to a Seinfeld repeat to keep her company while she got ready for bed. She had removed her contact lenses and started to brush her teeth when she heard keys in the front door.

  She heard a soft clank, followed by her brother’s voice. ‘Chain!’

  Ellie called out an apology through sudsy toothpaste foam, made her way
to the front door (it didn’t take long in her small one-bedroom), and released the safety chain.

  ‘You’ve been doing that a lot lately.’ Jess set his hard-shell Fender guitar case by the door, shook off his black thrift-store jacket, and tossed it on the nearest piece of furniture, an off-white armchair in the corner. ‘Should I take that as a hint that it’s time for me to find another couch? I could swing it now that the job’s working out all right.’

  For two months, Jess had been working as a doorman at Vibrations, an establishment on the Westside Highway that euphemistically billed itself as a ‘gentlemen’s club’. Jess and Ellie preferred to call it the Shake Shack. The Shimmy Shed. Booty Barn. The Rubby Cubby. Titty Towers. The T and A Getaway. Even though Ellie hoped a better job was waiting for her brother somewhere down the road, a part of her wanted him to stay at Vibrations forever just so they could continue conjuring up alternative names for his employer.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘What would I have done this morning without a roommate to put together my backpack?’

  ‘Did I get everything? I was a little creeped out going through your underwear drawer.’

  ‘Perfect.’ In truth, he had forgotten about the Kahr K9 that she now carried as a backup gun and the corresponding ankle holster, but she saw no reason to nitpick. ‘Seriously, Jess, it’s been nice having you here through all this.’

  In reality, the stressful events of the last two months had little to do with Jess’s presence as her couch-inhabiting roommate. Jess tended to move several times a year, depending on his employment status, dating status, and the tolerance of his friends. In between the various moves, he frequently spent days or weeks in her living room. Given that it was Jess who’d helped Ellie find this rent-stabilized apartment in the first place, it only seemed right. Karma and all.

  ‘You sure?’ he asked.

  ‘Mos def.’

  ‘In that case, what the fuck is that shitastic smell?’

  ‘Dinner. Indian.’ She patted her full belly. ‘You missed out.’

  ‘Jesus, why don’t you bury a piece of cheese beneath the sofa cushions while you’re at it? This room’ll stink for a week. Not to mention the increased risk of another upchuck incident after this morning’s festivities.’

  Ellie jumped onto the sofa and pulled the window up a few inches.

  ‘Thanks,’ Jess said, plopping down next to her. ‘So what’d you do tonight? No, wait, let me guess.’ He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to his temples like a mind reader. ‘You worked late on your case, came home and called Mom, then ate takeout and watched TV. How did I do?’ he asked, opening his eyes.

  ‘You’ve got the Ellie Hatcher schedule down to a T.’

  ‘How’s Mom?’ Jess asked.

  Ellie shrugged. ‘You know.’

  Jess knew precisely. That’s why he had a tendency not to be around when Ellie made her nightly phone calls to their mother in Wichita. Same reminiscing. Same self-pity about her present life as a bookkeeper and widow whose children didn’t visit enough. Same vodka-glazed voice. Somehow Jess managed to distance himself from all of it, but Ellie still felt the need to look after her mother despite the fourteen hundred miles lying between them.

  ‘You’re not working tonight?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘Nah. I got the guys together for a couple hours of practice instead. I figured finding a dead body with my sister this morning was a pretty good excuse to play hooky.’

  ‘You didn’t give them any details, did you?’

  ‘Dead chick in the park was about all they needed to hear. Don’t worry. I’m not divulging any secrets of your case. Unless someone offers to pay. Now that would be different.’

  She knew for a fact that her brother was only kidding. After the Wichita police charged William Summer with the College Hill Strangler murders, both Jess and Ellie had been hounded by the media for their stories. How would your father have felt about the arrest? What is it like to know he died without the answers you now have? Why are you so convinced that William Summer killed your father, despite the city’s insistence it was a suicide?

  Ellie had played along with the game, hoping the media attention would put pressure on the city. Lord knew her mother could use the pension. But Jess’s position had been firm: Not even if they paid me a million dollars. And Ellie had known from the tone of his voice that he meant it. If Jess was going to be in the public spotlight, it was going to be as a rock god, not for anything having to do with policing or dead bodies.

  ‘No Peter tonight?’ Jess asked. Ellie arched an eyebrow in his direction. ‘Okay, for once, I wasn’t trying to be dirty. No Mr. Morse this evening?’

  ‘No. There’s no Mr. Morse.’

  ‘Problems in paradise?’

  ‘I just sleep better alone, in my own apartment.’

  ‘Yeah, right, because your bed’s so comfortable. I slept on that mattress while you were in Kansas, and it’s like lying in a giant taco shell.’

  Ellie had never been particularly at ease discussing romantic relationships with her older brother. Jess, of course, seemed to have no problems whatsoever opening up about his various encounters, sometimes going so far as to describe the bizarre things his freakier girlfriends had suggested. Ellie usually tuned out and escaped to a mental happy place to avoid the images.

  ‘We took a couple nights off so he can write,’ she said.

  ‘His novel?’

  ‘I didn’t ask him for specifics, but I don’t think so.’

  Peter had told her on their first date that he’d been struggling for years on the same manuscript – a novel about a Manhattan-based journalist living, like Peter, in Hell’s Kitchen. Now his writing had been rejuvenated by his idea for a true-crime book based on the First Date case.

  ‘That little bitch would be dead if you hadn’t saved his scrawny ass.’

  ‘Well, as he sees it, his ass wouldn’t have been thrust into the middle of the case in the first place if it hadn’t been for me.’

  ‘So you’re supposed to be understanding while he uses this case to become a celebrity journalist?’

  She shrugged. ‘I get where he’s coming from. He lived through it all too, and if he wants to write about it, that’s his prerogative. As long as I don’t get dragged into it.’

  Ellie’d had enough of the spotlight for a lifetime. First it was the flurry of stories a year ago about the College Hill Strangler arrest. Then it was the First Date case. A month ago, when she sat down with Dateline for an exclusive interview about the crimes of William Summer, she had sworn she was done being a story.

  ‘Maybe if you’re really lucky, the jacket of his book will be that class picture you love so much.’

  ‘Fuck you twice,’ Ellie said, flipping him the bird for good measure.

  For some reason, the media covering the College Hill Strangler arrest had all seemed to glom on to the same goofy school photograph of Ellie in fifth grade, with bright shiny eyes and an enormous toothy grin, completely oblivious to her ridiculous bangs and the asymmetrical pigtails jutting from the sides of her head. To the best of Ellie’s recollection, she had cut her own bangs the night before, desperate to emulate the look of her most recent pop hero, Debbie Gibson.

  After the media had unearthed the photograph, Jess had terrorized her for weeks, e-mailing her links to every online story he could find containing the image and taping copies of the picture in the most innocuous places – the inside of her medicine cabinet, the side of a milk carton, even a wallet-sized version around the grip of her service weapon. The reign of horror had finally ended after Ellie dug out an old picture of Jess in his Wham days. A white tank top emblazoned ‘Go Go’ in pink neon letters would do nothing for Dog Park’s street cred.

  ‘You know what we should do?’ Jess said. ‘Let’s go out.’

  ‘It’s already past ten o’clock.’

  ‘No place worth going any earlier. Come on. You’re home. I’m home. I’m still totally torqued by what I saw this morni
ng. When was the last time we went out – like really went out?’

  Ellie hadn’t outgrown the stage of occasional late nights, but she was ready to hit the sack. She started to make her excuses, but then realized there was one place she wouldn’t mind checking out.

  ‘Ever heard of a club called Pulse?’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Not only had Jess heard of Pulse, he was pretty sure he knew someone who worked there. He scrolled through his cell phone directory until he came to the name he was looking for.

  ‘Here she is. Vanessa.’

  ‘Vanessa Hutchinson?’ Ellie asked.

  ‘I don’t do last names. I met her a few weeks ago at a bar in Williamsburg. She’s a friend of Kate. You met her once. She came with me to Johnny’s about a year ago.’

  ‘The lawyer?’

  ‘No, that was Rose. Kate’s in marketing or something. Short brown hair? Really tiny?’

  Jess was proving once again the vast reach of his impressive social network, yet another difference between them. Ellie would love to be one of those women with a tight circle of best friends, but a good portion of her life was dominated by a job that made her an outsider to most women, and those same women certainly didn’t want her cozying up to their husbands and boyfriends. Between work, serial monogamy, and part-time caregiving to the rest of the Hatcher family, she had enough on her plate anyway.

  Her brother, in contrast, had a way of meeting people once and forging lasting friendships with them, even if he didn’t run into them again for a year. And, more curiously, many of his social supporters were former girlfriends and past hookups who never seemed to begrudge Jess his refusal to commit to one woman (or one job, for that matter, or one mailing address) for more than a month at a time. Ellie’s best guess was that he had a way of attracting women who at least appreciated that, with Jess, what you saw was what you got: a fun guy and a good man who chose to remain in a perpetual state of adolescence.

  ‘Who’s the Vanessa Hutchinson you know?’ Jess asked.

  ‘A bartender at Pulse. Mid-twenties, as I recall. No priors.’