City of Fear

by Alafair Burke

  ‘Thanks. It’s borrowed.’ Ellie slipped her key into the building’s security lock, and Peter followed her inside and into the elevator. ‘Not to be rude, but what the heck are you doing here?’

  ‘I was hoping to exploit a technicality in your two-nights-alone rule. I figured after midnight, we had achieved formal compliance.’

  ‘It’s nearly three in the morning,’ she said.

  ‘It was only two when I got here.’

  ‘You waited in the cold for an hour?’ As she opened the door, she called out Jess’s name, but the apartment was empty. ‘I suppose it’s romantic, in a stalkerish sort of way. So are you coming in?’

  He paused at the doorway.

  ‘Peter, I don’t have a lot of experience with men showing up at my doorstep at three in the morning, but I sort of figured an invitation to spend the night would have been way up there on the best-case scenarios for you.’

  He followed her inside and gave her a soft kiss on the lips.

  ‘Seriously, where were you?’

  She pulled her head back. ‘Seriously? I was working on a case. Oh, my God, is that why you sat outside my building for an hour? You thought you were going to catch me with someone else?’

  ‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ he said. ‘All I know is that when you didn’t answer your door, I couldn’t bring myself to leave. I just sat there like some lovelorn teenager waiting for my phone to ring.’

  ‘Sad.’

  Peter leaned in for another kiss, but she pulled away again.

  ‘So when do you explain why you just asked me where I was, even though I told you three hours ago I was working?’

  ‘Can we just forget about it? I’m exhausted, and that best-case scenario you mentioned is sounding pretty appealing right now.’

  ‘Did you think I lied to you?’

  ‘No, of course not. I just – I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like we ever said anything about being exclusive. So, yeah, the thought crossed my mind.’

  ‘But I told you I was working.’

  ‘Ellie, people offer all kinds of explanations when they’re dating around. Things are still pretty new with us. You wanted the night off. You were out late. You texted instead of called. All I said was that the thought crossed my mind. Can we please drop the subject?’

  ‘Have I acted like a person who’s still on the market? I thought everything was fine.’

  ‘Everything is fine. I shouldn’t have asked where you were. It was a slip of the tongue. Chalk it up to being tired, or recovering from the emasculation of waiting outside your door.’

  ‘But it wasn’t a slip of the tongue,’ Ellie said. ‘You were very clear about wanting to know where I was, even after I told you. And if everything were really fine, I don’t think a thought like that would cross your mind, as you called it. If something is bothering you about the way things are between us, I wish you’d talk to me about it.’

  Peter gave her a patient smile. ‘Nothing’s bothering me. Let’s go to bed, okay?’

  ‘See? You say that like we’re skipping over something. Like there’s something you want to get off your chest but it’s easier to let it slide.’

  He let out an exasperated groan. ‘How do you do that? How do you know exactly what a person is thinking?’

  ‘If I knew what you were thinking, I wouldn’t be pressing you to tell me.’

  ‘Pressing? More like waterboarding. Trust me, Ellie. You don’t really want to have this discussion with me.’

  ‘Well, you can’t just leave it at that. Is this about your book?’ She thought she had done a good job of keeping her apprehensions to herself.

  ‘No, that’s just pie in the sky. I’m talking about Kansas. About your dad and that case. About you going to Wichita for a month. I shouldn’t have had to learn the details on Dateline like the rest of the country, Ellie. You never even talked to me about it. You’d stay up late talking to Jess – I’d hear you out here in the living room – but never once spoke about any of it with me.’

  ‘You’re jealous? Jess is my brother. My father was his dad, too. And it’s our mother.’

  ‘You don’t need to explain to me that you and your brother share the same parents. I’m not jealous. I wish you would have let me in, just a little. And, yeah, I guess it sort of made me wonder what exactly we were doing.’

  Much of what Ellie had learned about the College Hill Strangler during her trip to Wichita was now part of the public record, easily attainable with a few Google searches. After believing for nearly two decades that the killer who’d haunted her father for his entire career had been responsible for his death, Ellie finally received concrete proof from the Wichita Police Department: on the night of Jerry Hatcher’s death, William Summer had been the best man at his sister’s wedding in Olathe, more than 175 miles from the country road where Ellie’s father died in his Mercury Sable after a single bullet was discharged from his service weapon into the roof of his mouth.

  The implication was clear. If Summer hadn’t pulled the trigger, then her father had. He had chosen to end his life, leaving behind two children and a mother who was incapable of caring either for herself or them on her own. Ellie was still learning how to accept a version of history she had always rejected.

  She poured herself a glass of water from the Brita pitcher in her refrigerator and carried it to the coffee table. And then Ellie did something she rarely did. She apologized. ‘I’m so sorry. You should have heard it all from me, in my words – not in sound bites from a television show.’

  Peter pushed her hair from her eyes and kissed her forehead, then her lips. ‘Let’s get some sleep.’

  For the first night since she returned to New York from Kansas, Ellie Hatcher did not dream about William Summer.

  Three hours later, a man closed the door of his Upper East Side apartment behind him and used two different keys to secure two separate locks. He walked the two flights of stairs down to 105th Street.

  It was still dark, the streets relatively deserted, but the man could see when he turned the corner that the Chinese man who operated the newsstand at 103rd and Lex had just unlatched his makeshift storefront and was using a pocketknife to free stacks of newspapers from the constraints of cotton twine.

  The man slowed his pace. He did not want to be in a position where he either had to wait for the news man or help him. Then he might be remembered as the impatient man who was waiting for the morning’s papers, or the friendly man who had assisted with the twine. He preferred not to have any adjectives associated with him.

  Once the papers were stacked and the Asian was back in his booth, the man allowed himself to approach. He selected three local papers – the Daily Post, the Sun, and the Times. Extended three dollars across the row of candy bars – exact change.

  He folded all three newspapers together, tucked them under his arm, and made his way back to 105th Street. Turned the corner. Into the building. Up two flights of stairs. Past the locks.

  Inside his apartment, he unfolded the papers and placed them side by side on the small dining table in the corner of his living room. Chelsea Hart’s murder was splashed across the front page of both the Sun and the Daily Post. Front page of the New York Times Metro section. This would not have happened if she were not a college student from Indiana.

  He recognized the photograph used by both the Post and the Times. It was the same picture Chelsea had used to make her fake ID card. The photograph in the Sun was different – candid, casual, less professional.

  The man began to read the text of the Sun article but then looked again at the image of Chelsea Hart. Even with the cropping, he understood the photo’s significance. The red shirt. Collar necklace. Beaded earrings that matched the one buried beneath his floorboards.

  He knew precisely when and where that photograph had been taken. He even remembered the limoncello-shooting tomcat who’d snapped it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The coverage of Chelsea Hart’s murder had hit fu
ll throttle by Tuesday morning. It was the lead story on NY1’s morning show, and Chelsea’s photograph dominated the front page of both the New York Sun and the Daily Post. The case even warranted a story in the Metro section of the New York Times.

  Ellie noticed that the Sun had run the photograph with which she was now long familiar – cropped around Chelsea’s smiling, happy face while she waited for a table at Luna, the last restaurant she’d ever frequent. She wondered whether the Sun had paid Chelsea’s friend Jordan for the picture or simply given her the standard line about how important it was for the public to see Chelsea as she had actually lived.

  In contrast, both the Daily Post and the New York Times ran the same formal, posed headshot – Chelsea’s senior high school portrait, provided directly by the Hart family. After their talk the previous day with a caseworker from the Polly Klaas Foundation, Paul and Miriam Hart had apparently taken a page from the parents of Elizabeth Smart and Natalee Holloway, marshaling all of their resources to launch an orchestrated public relations campaign to ensure that their daughter’s case was at the top of every news cycle until they found something resembling justice. Press releases. Photographs. Tearful public statements from designated family representatives.

  Ellie didn’t blame them. Given the symbiotic relationship between the media and law enforcement, nothing put the screws to the criminal justice system like a watchful public. She had taken advantage of that reality in her own life to call attention to her father’s death. She could not imagine the lengths she would go to as a parent who had lost a child.

  The publicity surrounding the case had no doubt influenced Lieutenant Dan Eckels’s decision to summon them once again into his office. He sat. They stood.

  ‘We’re more than twenty-four hours out,’ Eckels said, steepling his fingers. ‘Tell me what we’ve got.’

  Rogan spoke up first, giving the lieutenant a rundown of the investigation, ending with the events of the previous night.

  ‘Good call arresting the friend instead of Myers,’ he said, clearly directing the comment to Rogan. ‘If you’d hooked up Myers and he broke on what you had, the DA wouldn’t have run with it.’

  ‘Thanks, Lou, but it was Hatcher’s idea.’

  The idea earned Ellie a nod of acknowledgment. To the untrained eye, it was just a tilt of Eckels’s chin, but to Ellie it was the Thirteenth Precinct equivalent of Armstrong’s one small step from the Apollo 11.

  ‘That explains the call from Kluger in the mayor’s office this morning. Apparently he got wind of some kind of arrest last night from the parents. What the hell kind of luck do we have that our vic’s somehow related to the deputy chief of staff?’

  ‘Actually,’ Ellie said, ‘I think he’s a frat brother of the father’s brother-in-law.’

  Eckels gave her an annoyed look, and she decided it was best to move on.

  ‘I just got a call from the city’s taxi commission,’ she reported. ‘They circulated the picture I sent them yesterday of the victim. One of the drivers thinks he may have seen her that night outside Pulse. We’ll follow up.’

  ‘Good, because we’ve been popular this morning. I also heard from the DA’s office. They want to get in early, so I’d start by having them set up a face-to-face with your Nick Warden before his arraignment. A night in jail might have given your hedge fund boy some different priorities.’

  Eckels peeled off the top sheet of a Post-it pad next to his phone. He started to reach toward Rogan, but then handed the yellow square to Ellie. ADA Max Donovan for Knight, followed by a phone number. ‘Some kid called Donovan was the one to reach out, but it’ll be Knight’s case.’

  Ellie had no idea who Max Donovan was, but anyone who followed New York City criminal trials knew about Simon Knight, the chief prosecutor of the trial unit at the district attorney’s office. His day-to-day job was to run the busiest trial unit in one of the nation’s largest prosecutor’s offices, break in the newbies, and ensure that the other assistants didn’t wuss out. His personal and early attention to the Chelsea Hart case was yet another indication that this one was big.

  ‘We’ll call this Max Donovan straight away, sir.’

  ‘Very good.’

  Ellie and Rogan meted out tasks on the short walk back to their desks. She’d track down the cabdriver while he checked in with ADA Donovan, the medical examiner, and the crime scene unit.

  She’d just plopped down into her chair when Eckels called out after them. ‘And, in case this wasn’t clear, don’t screw up.’

  Nothing like a pep talk to kick-start the day.

  According to the taxi commission, the driver who last saw Chelsea Hart alive was one Tahir Kadhim. Ellie dialed his number, then flipped open the Daily Post and checked out the byline: reporting by George Kittrie and Peter Morse.

  Last night Peter had mentioned staying late at the paper to write something up with his editor. Now she saw that Kittrie had taken first billing for himself. Given the history there, she could only imagine Peter’s aggravation. A few years earlier, Kittrie had made the leap from career crime-beat reporter to author, and then editor, when he published a book about all of the opportunistic crimes that had been perpetrated in the chaos following September 11. From what Ellie understood, the book had put enough extra cash in Kittrie’s pocket to pay for a cottage in East Hampton. In the back of Ellie’s mind, she wondered whether George Kittrie was in part responsible for Peter’s excitement about writing a true-crime book. She also wondered if Kittrie’s success as an author might explain why Peter harbored such resentment toward his boss.

  ‘Balay!’

  Ellie held the phone away from her ear. The man on the other end of the line was yelling over some kind of Persian music in the background.

  ‘This is Detective Hatcher. NYPD. Is this Tahir Kadhim?’

  The music immediately quieted. ‘Yes, this is Tahir. This is about the picture, yes?’

  Ellie was relieved she wouldn’t need a translator. The city’s taxi drivers sometimes appeared to have problems with the English language when you told them to turn on the air conditioning or turn down the radio, but their difficulties often faded away under less convenient circumstances.

  ‘That’s right. The taxi commission told me you recognized the girl in the photograph?’

  ‘I was not certain last night when I first saw it because of how it was printed from the fax, but I sent in a message nonetheless because I did think it was the same girl. But now that girl is the one in the newspapers. It is most definitely the same girl I saw yesterday morning.’

  ‘We’re going to need to talk to you in person, Mr. Kadhim. Where should we meet you?’

  ‘Where are you located?’

  ‘Thirteenth Precinct. Twenty-first and Second Avenue.’

  ‘I am ten blocks away. You will help me with parking?’

  ‘I think that can be arranged.’

  Rogan was still on the phone when Ellie hung up. He covered the mouthpiece with his palm. ‘Asshole put me on hold and never came back.’

  Ellie scanned the DD5 containing the information that had come in about the case on the department’s tip line. The vast majority of calls were complaints about the city’s 4:00 a.m. closing time for bars – thirteen separate calls, by her count. Every time some crime was even tangentially associated with the late-night bar scene, the same people who complained on a weekly basis about the noise at the clubs in their neighborhood used the case as an opportunity to lobby against their favorite pet peeve.

  Then there were the usual crackpots: three – count them, three – psychics offering their abilities to communicate with the dead; a woman whose schnauzer got sick early the previous morning, certainly a sign that he shared a karmic connection with Chelsea Hart; and some crank call from a guy who wanted to know if the girl had any cute midwestern friends heading to the city for the funeral.

  No false confessions yet, but there was still time.

  One entry tucked in among the rest caught her attention. ‘Bi
ll Harrington. Daughter (Roberta, aka Robbie) murdered 8 years ago. Similar. Flann McIlroy thought there were others.’ At the end of the notation was a ten-digit phone number. Ellie recognized the Long Island area code.

  She found herself staring at two words: Flann McIlroy.

  Detective Flann McIlroy had been famous – infamous, many would say – for his creative theories about investigations, creative enough to earn him the nickname ‘McIlMulder’ within the department, an allusion to the agent who chased space aliens on the television show The X-Files. Ellie’s own experience with him had been far too brief, but she had come to trust him as both a man and a cop. If Flann had spoken to a murder victim’s father about his suspicions of a broader pattern, then Bill Harrington at least deserved a return phone call.

  She wrote down the name ‘Roberta Harrington’ and walked the slip of paper down to the records department. She was still trying to learn the names of the Thirteenth Precinct staff, something that had paid off in her previous assignments. A clerk who introduced herself as Shawnda promised she would order the old police reports from the Central Records Division immediately. Ellie thanked her for her time and made a point of repeating her first name.

  Rogan was just hanging up his telephone when Ellie returned to her desk. ‘Something better shake soon, because the lawyers want us at the courthouse in two hours.’

  Tahir Kadhim was dark, slight, and reluctant to leave his taxicab in front of a fire hydrant on East Twenty-first Street.

  ʻIt’s the only spot on the street, Mr. Kadhim,’ Ellie said. ‘I’ll leave a permit on the dash.’

  ‘Some meter maid will not believe that a taxicab is with the police. If the city tows my car, that is my entire day, not to mention the record I get on my medallion number.’

  ‘We really need to speak with you.’

  ‘Must I go inside? Why can we not speak out here?’