City of Fear

by Alafair Burke

‘Then, lo and behold, two days later, Leon Symanski conveniently steps up and confesses to Chelsea Hart’s murder.’

  ‘The baby daddy’s the missing link,’ Rogan said.

  She was picturing the same chain, one leading from Myers to Symanski. The connection between Myers and Nick Warden was clear: between their friendship and the hedge fund, the two men were practically inseparable. Warden was tight with his drug supplier, Jaime Rodriguez. And after last night’s sighting of Symanski’s pregnant daughter at the hospital, the safe bet was that Rodriguez was the father of Symanski’s unborn grandchild. Combined with Myers’s quick, covert, and well-timed disposal of a hundred thousand dollars, it all led to one conclusion: Myers had paid Symanski to take the fall for him.

  Rogan tapped a ballpoint pen against his palm. ‘I guess now we know why Warden wanted a deal for Rodriguez as part of his cooperation agreement to flip on Myers: that was also part of the quid pro quo.’

  ‘It also explains why Symanski was so evasive when we asked about the girl we saw at his house. If we’d gone to her, we might’ve found Rodriguez and started drawing the same connections.’ Ellie shook her head. ‘Jesus. First Rodriguez knocks up Symanski’s daughter, then he asks him to go down for a murder he didn’t commit?’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t ask him. Rodriguez spent a night in jail when we popped him on the drug charge. Symanski’s daughter couldn’t have been happy about that. She shows up back at Daddy’s house, crying about the father of her child heading upstate for six to nine as a repeat drug offender. Daddy sees the chance to be a hero before he powers down in a few months anyway from the melathemiona.’

  ‘Mesothelioma.’

  Rogan rolled his eyes. ‘Plus, you’re going to love this. I was picturing how it must have all gone down, and I kept coming back to Nick Warden’s smoking-hot lawyer.’

  ‘Susan Parker.’

  ‘Exactly. The junior associate at a law firm that doesn’t even handle criminal defense. But she’s the one who told us Warden wanted a deal not just for himself, but also Rodriguez. And she was the one who brought Rodriguez to us at the courthouse, pointing the finger at Symanski.’

  ‘You think she was in on it, too?’

  ‘I went to her law firm’s Web site. Turns out she graduated from Cornell.’

  ‘Jake Myers’s alma mater.’

  ‘Right again. She graduated one year ahead of him. They were both members of some club called the Entrepreneur Society. I still haven’t figured out whose idea this was, but she should have known about it. They all did, every link in the chain.’

  ‘Damn it,’ Ellie said. ‘Symanski was looking good for it all.’

  ‘But now we’re back to Myers – who couldn’t have started killing nearly ten years ago.’

  ‘You certainly had a busy morning while I was wasting my time trying to pull up the lost background of a photograph from the computer vortex. You didn’t happen to cure cancer while you were at it, did you?’

  ‘No. I’m saving that for the afternoon, but I do have a health tip for you.’ He eyed the half-eaten pastry on her desk. ‘Did it ever dawn on you to watch what you eat? You aren’t that young.’

  ‘I watch what I eat every day, right before I pop it into my pie hole.’

  ‘Hatcher.’

  Ellie looked up to see Lieutenant Eckels standing at his office door on the perimeter of the squad room.

  ‘Morning, boss.’

  ‘How’s that hand?’

  ‘A lot better. Thanks.’

  ‘A word with you both?’

  He closed his office door without waiting for confirmation.

  ‘You hear that? He asked about my injury. My lieutenant cares about my well-being.’ She used her good hand to fan away fake tears of emotion. ‘I’m verklempt.’

  ‘You really think Simon Knight saved your ass, don’t you?’

  ‘He said he would last night.’

  ‘You know Eckels could be calling us in there to pull you off this case for good, right? He seems damn chipper about something.’

  ‘Only one way to find out.’

  ‘Where are we on this Symanski clusterfuck?’

  Rogan gave Eckels a rundown on the previous night’s events, carefully avoiding any mention of Ellie’s presence at the hospital. He also walked him through Myers’s hundred-thousand-dollar cash advance and their theory about the agreement between Myers and Symanski, all facilitated by Susan Parker.

  ‘Now this, I like. Both guilty. Myers of the murder. Symanski of obstruction. We can get everyone in between as accomplices to the obstruction. Prove it, and we might actually come out of this OK.’

  No department ever wanted to admit that they’d arrested an innocent man, but having to make such an admission about a rich kid like Myers would be even more costly – both in reputation and money.

  ‘You’re on board with all this, Hatcher?’

  ‘I’m not working the case for now, but, yeah, Rogan’s obviously on to something.’

  ‘What do you mean, you’re not working the case?’

  ‘I was told last night that you wanted me off –’

  ‘I sent you home because any cop needs a night off after being torpedoed in an alley by a cutter. Are you saying you want off the case?’

  ‘No. Not at all.’

  ‘Good, because it’s yours. Yours and Rogan’s. Always has been. I’m sorry if you misunderstood that. Now, does this mean you’re off that nonsense about McIlroy’s cold cases?’

  ‘We’re working the Chelsea Hart case. I get that.’

  Of course, if other files turned out to be relevant to the Hart investigation, she’d chase the evidence wherever it led. But she was beginning to wonder herself if the similarities she’d seen among the four murders had in fact been, in Eckels’s words, nonsense.

  ‘One more thing, guys. I spoke to Simon Knight earlier this morning.’

  Ellie resisted the temptation to throw a smile in Rogan’s direction.

  ‘Since both Myers and Symanski are in custody, we’ve got to work this thing closely with the DA’s office as they make their charging decisions. From now on, you’ll be working directly with Knight and his assistant through the DA’s Homicide Investigation Unit.’

  ‘What does that mean exactly?’ Rogan asked.

  ‘I want you to treat them like your chain of command. Is that a problem?’

  They both shook their heads, but Rogan didn’t look happy about it.

  ‘Very well, then. Don’t be surprised when I’m still on your ass. I want updates.’

  ‘Not a problem, sir,’ Ellie said, before they both left the office.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Rogan said once they were at a safe distance. ‘Everything last night was a so-called misunderstanding? You weren’t kidding about Knight being smooth.’

  ‘Downright silky.’

  ‘Don’t get too excited. What’s that saying about out of the frying pan and into the fire?’

  ‘All I know is that we need to call the rest of the dream team and tell them we want to have a word with Susan Parker.’

  Ellie’s phone buzzed. She checked the screen, worried it would be Peter again, but it was Jess.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I just got a call from Candy at Vibrations.’

  ‘Oh, and I’m sure that’s her real name.’

  ‘They found a body in the parking lot last night.’

  Her smile faded. ‘One of the girls?’

  ‘No, it’s not that. It’s – it’s those files you were reading on the couch the other night. I thought you ought to know.’

  ‘What is it, Jess?’

  ‘When Candy called, she said the girl was all cut up and that her hair looked like part of a costume.’

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  ‘Hank Dodge.’ The detective waiting for Ellie in the medical examiner’s office was probably in his late fifties. Tall. Bulky. Scruffy gray hair and a five-day beard. When she had called him to track down the details of the body discovered the pr
evious night at Vibrations, he had insisted on being present if she were going to view the victim. ‘Dr. Karr was just telling me he’d already met you.

  Ellie recognized the bearded pathologist who had conducted the autopsy on Chelsea Hart. She shook hands with both men.

  ‘You were cutting it close on timing, Detective Hatcher. I was just about to start the autopsy when you phoned Detective Dodge.’

  ‘I think that’s the doc’s polite way of saying he hopes you had a good reason for asking us to wait.’

  ‘My brother works at the club where your victim was found. It sounded like there were similarities between this case and the Hart murder.’

  ‘Your brother works at a titty bar?’ Dodge asked.

  ‘Long story.’ It wasn’t, really. The job at Vibrations was the first Ellie could remember Jess holding down for two months straight. ‘My impression is that any similarities had to do with the appearance of their bodies. That’s why I was hoping to see the vic before the postmortem.’

  ‘You want the basics first, or should we just head to the body?’

  ‘The basics would be great.’

  ‘Victim’s name was Rachel Peck. Twenty-six-year-old white female. Works as a bartender. On-and-off party girl. Her girlfriend called police last night at one a.m. after Peck went out for a smoke and never came back.’

  ‘Went out from where?’

  ‘Some club.’

  ‘It wasn’t a place called Pulse, was it?’ she asked.

  The fact that Chelsea Hart had met Jake Myers at Pulse had been widely reported in the press, and Dodge could see where Ellie was headed.

  ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Some joint called Tenjune.’

  Ellie was familiar with it. ‘In the Meatpacking District. Three blocks from Pulse.’

  ‘You know how many kids are partying within a three-block radius in that neighborhood? This par ticular kid told her friend she was going for a smoke and never came back. As you can imagine, the friend’s call – along with a hundred others just like it – got the blow-off at dispatch. Peck’s body got called in at four a.m. from your brother’s fine establishment.’

  ‘Any witnesses?’

  ‘Nope. She was behind a Dumpster at the back of the lot. The way the lot’s situated, a car could pull in behind the Dumpster, ditch a body, and spin right back onto the West Side Highway. As long as they were fast enough, it would look like a car pulling in just to turn around. We do, however, have a suspect.’

  Ellie’s surprise must have registered on her face.

  ‘I tried telling you on the phone,’ Dodge said. ‘But you were in such a hurry to get down here, I figured, what the hell. As we speak, my partner’s holding one Hayden Holden Hammond, the victim’s ex-boyfriend.’

  ‘Hayden … Holden … Hammond?’

  ‘Yeah, we’ll see how cute the parents find the alliteration when their kid becomes known as the new Preppy Murderer. Not to mention the instant hit he’ll be in prison.’

  ‘You’re sure it’s him?’

  Dodge nodded. ‘The girlfriend who reported Peck missing says the two had a messy breakup earlier this week. She finally clued in that he was a cheater and a cokehead, and he got a little rough with her when she broke it off. When we found him this morning, he was coked through the ceiling and his apartment looked like he’d been on a three-day bender. I wouldn’t be surprised if we had a confession within the hour.’

  ‘Are you ready to meet Miss Peck?’ Karr asked. Ellie nodded, and Karr led the way through the large, sterile room. As they passed two other covered bodies on stainless steel tables, she tried to rein in her curiosity. She had enough corpses to think about as things stood.

  When they arrived at the third table, Karr stopped and folded down the white sheet.

  ‘Dr. Karr was telling me a little bit about your case before you got here. Based on what he told me, I think your brother might’ve missed the mark when he called you. About the only commonality is that they were both strangled. And, as you can see, my vic’s still got all her hair. Our biggest problem with her body’s going to be getting rid of it. When we called her father out in Idaho, he made it clear he wouldn’t be coming to claim her.’

  Ellie was listening to Dodge’s words, but she could not take her eyes from Rachel Peck. She didn’t need the medical examiner to explain the obvious signs of manual strangulation – the bruises around the woman’s neck, the bloating in her face and eyes. But she did not agree that the similarities between Rachel Peck and Chelsea Hart ended there.

  Rachel had been spared the repetitive cuts that had been etched into Chelsea Hart’s entire body, but her face had been the target of the same kind of short, deep stab wounds – one hatched across each of her cheekbones, along with a series of vertical and horizontal marks on her forehead.

  But it was the hair that disturbed her most. Rachel’s long, dark blond hair had been pulled into two girlish pigtails on either side of her face. Her bangs were thick and choppy – nothing like the soft, fashionable fringe that so many women were wearing these days.

  Something about the look tugged at the back of Ellie’s brain, but she couldn’t quite pull from her memory whatever past image was troubling her. She did, however, know that something was very wrong.

  ‘She may have all her hair, but look at it.’

  ‘What about it?’ Dodge asked.

  ‘The stripper who called my brother said it looked like part of a costume. You can’t see that?’

  ‘I don’t understand half the silly things women do in the name of fashion. Aren’t bell bottoms back in?’

  Ellie looked at Dr. Karr for support, but got nothing in return but a blank stare.

  ‘No sane woman in Manhattan went to Tenjune looking like that. And if she did, she certainly didn’t get in. Did you ask Rachel’s friend whether she wore her hair this way when they went out?’

  ‘She hasn’t come in for the official ID yet. We found Peck’s credit card in her front pocket. Got her DMV photo from there.’

  ‘You need to get the friend down here.’

  ‘Look, I let you come here because I figured if you wanted to waste your time, it was up to you. But don’t barge in here accusing me of missing the boat because I didn’t chat up the victim’s friends about whether she was having a bad hair day. This is the real world, sweetheart, not a scene out of Legally Blonde.’

  Sweetheart. The same term of endearment that she’d actually appreciated this morning from Manny the coffee guy lost all appeal in this context. Ellie forced herself to maintain a level tone. ‘I apologize that it came across that way. There are other aspects to the Hart case that you would have no reason to know about. One of the angles we’re looking into is the possibility our killer’s a hair fetishist.’

  ‘Isn’t your killer already in custody?’

  ‘Yes, we have a suspect. But we’re also looking at some older cases. It’s just an angle. But, I’m telling you, as a woman, you’re going to find out that your victim’s hair did not look like that when she left the house with her friend.’

  ‘Fine,’ Dodge said, apparently mollified for the time being. ‘We’ll look into it. My guess is maybe she put it that way for some kinky schoolgirl fantasy that she and Hammond were acting out before the reunion went bad. Or maybe Hammond did it to her while he was coked up. What I do know is that we’ve got the right guy, and that he was high enough to have done just about anything. Take a look at these marks.’

  He waved her over so they were standing by the victim’s head, looking at her body upside down. ‘See those cuts on her forehead? H-three. Hayden Holden Hammond. That cocksucker left us a calling card.’

  Ellie could see the pattern now among what had originally looked like random lines. Three vertical marks. Four horizontal ones.

  ‘One thing I will say,’ Dr. Karr said, ‘is that these cuts to Rachel Peck could have been made – and I emphasize the words could have been – by the same knife used on Chelsea Hart. They’re of the same approximate
width. My guess is a blade of about one and a half to two inches in both instances. Sharp, of course. We don’t know how long, since the cuts were inflicted by slicing into the skin rather than deep plunges.’

  ‘Sounds like eighty percent of the knives you’d find in any kitchen,’ Dodge said.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Karr said with a nod. ‘But I thought it was something I should share with you both. The other similarity, of course, is the manual strangulation, but you already knew that. As for anything else, that remains for the autopsy I am still waiting to begin.’

  Ellie took the hint for what it was. ‘Thank you for holding off on my account. You’ve got photographs of her in the event I need them later?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She had begun to make her way to the exit when she heard Dr. Karr behind her.

  ‘You and your brother might want to be careful in the coming days,’ he said.

  ‘How so?’ she said, turning around.

  ‘No black cats or walking under ladders.’

  Ellie still didn’t understand.

  ‘I’m sorry. That was in poor taste. It’s just that this young woman was found in the parking lot of the business where your brother works, and I seem to recall that the two of you found Chelsea Hart while you were out jogging. I guess your family is another thing the victims have in common.’

  And, with that, Ellie looked down at Rachel Peck’s body and saw the marks on her forehead from a different angle and in a whole new light.

  Dodge had seen H 3. Hayden Holden Hammond. But, right side up, the marks made an even clearer pattern: EH. Ellie Hatcher.

  This woman had been dumped behind Vibrations, where Jess worked. Jess lived with her. He was sure to tell her about it. Chelsea Hart’s body was left at the turnaround point on her regular running route – the route she and Jess took every day, at least five days a week, and never missed two days in a row. She’d been killed the morning after they had skipped a day. Chelsea’s cell phone alarm had been set for 5:32 in the morning. It had been set to ensure they’d find the body.

  As her own initials stared at her from the forehead of poor Rachel Peck, Ellie realized where she had seen the woman’s awkward hairstyle before: that stupid fifth-grade class photograph that Jess had plastered throughout her apartment last year. The one for which she’d attempted to cut her own hair. The one that had been published in so many of the reports about her childhood.