City of Fear (6 page)

Chapter Eight

The processing of the East River Park crime scene was in full swing. NYPD vans lined the park, backing up traffic on the FDR in both directions as drivers slowed to rubberneck. Yellow police tape, fortified by rows of uniform officers, closed the park from Sixth Street down to Cherry.

They badged an officer standing guard north of the tennis courts, ducked beneath the yellow tape, and made their way to the construction site. Ellie had never been here in full daylight. Torn up and cluttered with piles of dislodged dirt, backhoes, and other heavy equipment she couldn’t name, this area of the park would have been almost as desolate as it had been during her early-morning runs, were it not for the chaos of the ongoing police investigation.

Four officers were working the scene inside the fence. Rogan headed directly for a tall female officer with long red hair pulled into a braid that ran down her back. She was crouched in a squat, using tweezers to place something in a ziplock baggie.

‘Is that Florkoski?’

The woman sealed the evidence collection bag and eased herself back to standing. She had a broad face that broke into a friendly smile at the sight of Rogan.

‘Hey there, Double J. Good to see you.’ She snapped a latex glove off of her right hand and extended it for a shake, first to Rogan and then to Ellie. ‘Mariah Florkoski.’

‘Ellie Hatcher,’ Ellie said, returning both the smile and the handshake.

‘New partner,’ Rogan said.

‘Oh, sure.’ Florkoski nodded. ‘I recognize the name.’

Ellie had no doubt that the recognition was due to her one and only previous homicide case two months earlier, when she had been recruited to help investigate a series of murders tied to an Internet dating company. By the time the case was solved, a serial killer was arrested, a Russian identity-theft ring was busted, and one of the best cops Ellie would ever know was dead. And apparently other cops knew her name as a result.

‘What happened to Casey?’ Mariah asked.

‘Retired. Last month.’

‘Don’t tell me. He’s finally going to Scottsdale.’

‘The movers are coming next week.’ Rogan turned to Ellie and explained. ‘My last partner. Jim Casey. He’d tell anyone who’d listen he was retiring to Arizona.’

‘That his only wish was to die on a Scottsdale golf course,’ Mariah said.

‘With a gin and tonic in hand,’ Rogan added.

‘You getting along all right without him?’

‘Hatcher here’s good peeps.’

Ellie gave a tiny mock bow of gratitude.

‘Well, at least you didn’t wind up with that lazy slug Winslow.’

Ellie struggled to place the name, then remembered Lieutenant Eckels’s remark – that she would have been the one stuck with Winslow if it hadn’t been for Rogan.

‘I take it this case belongs to the two of you?’

‘What have you got so far?’ Rogan asked.

‘Well, I can tell you the vic wasn’t killed here.’

Rogan’s lips set into a line of disappointment. All crime scenes were important. Any could yield evidence. But it was the primary crime scene that was most likely to yield blood, saliva, semen, hair, fibers, and fingerprints – all of the physical evidence that jurors increasingly insisted upon, now that the fictional world of the multiple
CSI
shows had become ingrained in the minds of ordinary people.

Mariah pointed to a male officer who was photographing the dirt in front of him. ‘We’ve got a whole bunch of footprints in the area in front of her body – all with treads, consistent with athletic shoes. But fortunately, our runners didn’t crowd the body. They gave her some space. Closer in to the corpse, we’ve got another set of footprints – smooth bottomed, not likely an athletic shoe – pointing into and then away from the body. One guy. He carried her in, dropped her, then walked out.’

‘Any chance you’re going to tell us the shoe is one of a kind,’ Rogan said, ‘custom-made at the foot of the Swiss Alps?’

Mariah smiled and shook her head. ‘It looks like any footprint you’d see on a Ballroom Dancing 101 instruction chart. Oval toe, square heel. No markings. About as generic as it gets.’

‘How do you know she didn’t walk over here with him, then he walks out alone?’ Rogan asked.

‘Chelsea was wearing high heels,’ Ellie said.

‘Lucky for us.’ Mariah walked a few feet to a blue plastic storage bin resting on the ground just beyond the yellow crime tape. She reached in and pulled out a larger baggie containing a pair of high-heeled sandals. Ellie recognized them as the shoes Chelsea had been wearing that morning.

‘These bad boys would have left behind an imprint like a big exclamation point.’

‘Anything else?’ Rogan asked.

‘We picked up a bunch of garbage lying around – Coke cans, cigarette butts, that kind of crap. We’ll look for prints. Have you guys talked to the ME yet?’

‘Next stop,’ Rogan said.

‘Well, I’ve got one piece of good news for you. I took the shoes, but the ME took the clothes. But before they carried the vic away to the bus, I dusted her shirt. I pulled one latent off the underside of the top button of her blouse.’

‘Chances are, she was the one to leave it behind.’

Mariah nodded. ‘Probably, but that’s not the best part.’ She paused to make sure she had their full attention. ‘When I was working on her blouse, I saw a stain that may or may not have been seminal fluid.’

Rogan rubbed his palms together. ‘Now that’s what I’m talking about.’

‘Don’t go getting too excited. The girl could’ve dripped a smoothie on herself, for all I know. I can run the print in a couple of hours, see if there’s a match in the database. The stain – I can tell you within a day or so whether it’s bodily fluid or Tasti-Delite. But if it’s the former, it’ll take a good couple of weeks before we get DNA back.’

‘But the fingerprint in a couple of hours?’

‘End of the day at the latest.’

‘Call my cell, all right?’ Rogan gave her his card.

‘No problem. And congrats on landing Jeffrey James here, Hatcher. He’s a good egg.’

More than five miles north, a man exited the 6 train at 103rd Street and Lexington. He kept his head down and his hands in his pockets, focusing on each step as he tried to ignore the steady push of harried subway riders hoping to catch a waiting train.

He hated the proximity to other people that was required by mass transportation. The eye contact. The bumps. The pressing of sweaty bodies against one another in the rush of squeezing onto the train before the doors closed. The name – mass transportation – said it all. The transport of the masses. Moving through narrow turnstiles like cattle moving through the sorting gates. Moo, cow, moo.

His hatred of the subway was part of the reason he paid for a car and two garage parking spots, one near home, one near work. But today his car was on West Eleventh Street for complete interior detailing – rugs vacuumed, mats shampooed, every surface hand-polished. He had worked quickly last night on that desolate Tribeca corner outside the Holland Tunnel, but he’d nevertheless been careful, strangling the girl in the front seat, then moving the body to the carefully draped plastic tarp in his trunk for the cutting. Now, for a mere hundred bucks, any trace of the girl would be gone from his Taurus.

He walked briskly up Lexington Avenue to the familiar brick building at 105th Street. He used his security key to open the front door. No doorman. No elevators, which meant no cameras. No electronic entry system that tracked the residents’ comings and goings. Those were the kinds of luxuries that could cost you big-time down the road.

He climbed the stairs to his third-floor apartment. Used one key on the auxiliary mortise dead latch. Heard the metal tumble from the block cylinder. Used another key on the dead bolt. Inserted the same key into the doorknob. Then he was home.

He did a quick protective sweep of the apartment. Living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, two closets. Everything was in place. He checked the light on his answering machine. No calls.

He rolled the brown leather ottoman away from its matching chair and pushed it against the living room wall. Then he took a seat on the floor – back against the ottoman, legs crossed in front of him – and carefully pulled up six wood parquet tiles, stacking them neatly to his left as he went, one through six. He worked his index finger into a crevice in the subfloor. It took three tries before he popped up the rectangular piece of removable particleboard. That was how perfectly he had cut it to fit – like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle, disappearing into the rest of the world around it.

He propped the particleboard carefully against the sofa, then took a deep breath. He reached in and removed two ziplock bags. He placed both on the floor in front of him. He didn’t dare remove the contents of the one on the right – too much of a danger that it wouldn’t all make it back in. He allowed himself to open the one on the left and remove a single earring and a small plastic card.

The earring was a chandelier of crystal and red beads dangling from a simple gold hook. The plastic rectangle was an Indiana driver’s license. It had been in the girl’s teeny-tiny purse, along with a lipstick, a cell phone, a hotel key, and a credit card. Name: Jennifer Green. According to the date of birth, she was twenty-four years old.

The license probably wasn’t real. She hadn’t said she was from Indiana, and girls like that often had reasons for using fake names and IDs. Not to mention, he realized now, that the photograph was too good – too posed, too pretty – to have originated with any Department of Motor Vehicles.

The girl’s credit card had been in yet another name, and the thought had crossed his mind it might have been stolen. He’d tossed it in a garbage can along the FDR, along with the tarp and the girl’s pants.

The picture on the license was definitely his Jennifer, though. Those were undeniably the same girl’s bright blue eyes, round cheeks, and square jaw. That sexy smile, turned up on one side like she had a secret she might just be willing to share under the right circumstances. And, whether it was real or not, the card had belonged to her. She had carried it, touched it, used it. Those were the things that mattered – not the name or address.

He looked at his watch. He was running on empty but had a meeting at three. He held the ID carefully between his left index finger and thumb. He unbuttoned his pants with his right hand. For the next three minutes, his eyes remained fixed on the other plastic bag – still sealed, its contents still safe and contained. All of that beautiful wavy blond hair worn by Jennifer Green in her fake Indiana driver’s license belonged to him now.

Chapter Nine

By Ellie’s estimate, the drive from East River Park to the medical examiner’s office up by Bellevue would take at least eight minutes, even with the help of police lights on the FDR. Eight minutes wasn’t a lot, but it was too long to ride in total silence, and just about the right amount of time to ask Rogan the question that was on her mind.

‘So I noticed Mariah Florkoski said you were lucky not to get paired up with Larry Winslow.’ She had seen Winslow around the squad room. As far as she could tell, he worked on his own, and only on desk jobs.

‘You got Florkoski’s name after just one meet? I thought I was good with names.’

‘I think the name I was more interested in was Larry Winslow.’

‘The guy’s the next to retire. And he’s lazy. Now Casey, my old partner, he did it right. Everyone knew he wanted to ride out the end in Arizona, but he worked the job a hundred percent every day. Everyone was surprised when he took off right at twenty years. But Winslow’s just counting down the hours. No one in the house wants to work with that. Lucky for me you came along.’

‘But you never would have gotten partnered with him after you’d just had one partner retire on you. Eckels made it sound like I was the one who was supposed to inherit Winslow. In fact, he said I had you to thank for sparing me.’

Rogan reached for the radio, hit the power button, and began scanning for a song that met his approval. He settled on Hot 97, a mainstream hip-hop station. He turned up the volume on a Kanye West tune, and Ellie reached over and turned it down a notch.

‘Sorry, but if we’re going to be partners, you need to know now I like dealing with things head-on. If I’m out of line, bringing up something I shouldn’t, just tell me. I’ll back off. But drowning me out with the radio?’

‘Don’t read into it. It’s just, this is my joint, y’know?’ Rogan moved his head back and forth with the beat.

‘Yeah, I know. And I also know there’s some story behind how you and I became partners. And if everyone else in the house knows about it, I thought maybe I should, too.’

‘See? This right here? That’s what the issue was.’ Rogan turned the radio off.

‘What do you mean, “This right here”?’

‘This whole dialogue.’ Rogan moved his right hand back and forth between them. ‘It’s like fighting with your girl or something. Like, “C’mon baby, we just need to talk.”’

‘Uh, except I’m not your girl, and I didn’t call you “baby.”’

‘That’s not what I meant. It’s just, partners need to
get
each other, you know? And, well, some of the guys weren’t so sure you’d ever be able to get them, and vice versa.’

‘Because of the whole not-having-boy-parts thing? Because that’s not really something I can get past.’

‘Honestly? Yeah, that’s probably part of it. But it’s got a lot more to do with how you got into the unit. It doesn’t help that McIlroy brought you over – my moms taught me not to talk smack about the dead, but no one liked that guy. He was a show-off. He had a picture of him and Rudy and Bill Bratton on his desk. Who does that? And then that First Date case exploded all over the place, and suddenly it’s your face in all the papers instead of his. Then your cute little self makes second grade in record time, and you’re in the squad? You have to see that’s a hard pill to swallow. The guys in the squad are all asking who’s your rabbi.’

The old Tammany Hall phrase was now standard code for questioning a fellow officer’s connections. She had wondered how long it would take for another detective to call her out on the genesis of her new assignment. After four years on patrol, she had spent only one year as a detective before the First Date case had come along. In the aftermath, she found herself holding newfound leverage with the department brass. A gig in the homicide squad was unusual for her level of experience, but not prohibited, and Ellie had cashed in all her chips to get it. She supposed she was her own rabbi.

‘Look, I know I got here faster than most, and I know I have to put in my dues, but I made sure to stay out of the papers on the First Date case.’

‘That trip to Kansas wasn’t exactly secret.’

‘That was on my own time. For my family. Anyone who would even
begin
to suggest that I get off talking to the press about my father has no idea what we’ve been through.’

For more than twenty-five years, the Wichita police had insisted that Jerry Hatcher killed himself. For more than a quarter of a century, Ellie’s mother had to live with the consequences of that decision: no insurance money, no pension, no answers. The trip to Wichita had offered a chance to prove that her father had not voluntarily widowed his wife and left his children fatherless. Of course she had to go. And when
Dateline
called her for an interview, she had to give it.

‘I’m not saying any of this is fair,’ Rogan said. ‘I’m just saying how it is. You worked with McIlroy. You’re in the news just like McIlroy. That means you’ve essentially inherited his shit. Plus you’re a woman, plus you’re all blond and pretty and wholesome looking, and people think you got a leg up from that.’

‘And so how did that translate into me almost getting partnered with Winslow?’

Rogan paused before answering. ‘Because Lieutenant Eckels told everyone that’s what he was planning to do unless someone else volunteered. It was Eckels’s way of leading from the top down, making sure we all knew it was all right with him if we gave you the cold shoulder. You should’ve seen Winslow’s face. Ironically, I don’t think it had anything to do with you personally. That man just doesn’t want to be out in the street anymore.’

‘So why aren’t I with Winslow? Why am I with you?’

Given the strings she’d pulled, she knew why Eckels never said good morning when he passed her on the way to the locker room. She got why he’d given her nothing but grunt work last week. She would even have understood if Eckels had partnered her up with a loser like Winslow. What she didn’t understand is why Rogan would have gone out on a limb for her. Cops who were skeptical of her, she could handle. Old news. She’d eventually win them over. A man who gave her a pass for no obvious reason was another problem altogether.

Rogan kept his eyes on the road.

‘Because, you know, I’m not looking to get personal with anyone I work with.’

Rogan’s stoic expression changed to a stifled smile, then he broke out into a full laugh. ‘In your dreams, woman. I’m very much spoken for. Oh, my lord, look who thinks she’s all irresistible and shit.’

‘That’s not what I meant. It’s just – I didn’t know why – really, that is
not
what I meant.’

‘That’s exactly what you meant. Stupid-ass Eckels goes and tells you I stepped up to the plate, and you assume the only reason a man would help you out is if he’s looking to hit that. Well, don’t think I didn’t get the same flack around the house. That, or they figured I was somehow sympatico with you because of the number of times I’ve heard bullshit behind my back.
Affirmative-action hire. Diversity detective
.’

‘And that’s not it either?’

‘Nope.’

‘So this is just going to remain a lifelong mystery? D.B. Cooper, Jimmy Hoffa, and why J. J. Rogan rescued Ellie Hatcher?’

His smile faded as he turned onto First Avenue. ‘I trust my instincts about people. I thought Eckels sticking you with Winslow sucked, and I thought it was going to cost the squad a good cop. And let’s just say I haven’t always had the easiest time with partners myself.’

It was the closest she was going to get to an answer, at least for now. ‘So you saved me,’ she said in a fairy-tale voice.

‘If you want to think of it that way.’

‘I do.’

‘All right, then. Can I listen to my radio now?’

‘You may.’

He turned up the volume and began moving with the beat again. ‘And I’m sorry to break this to you, Hatcher, but I really am spoken for. I was just telling my girl last night you and I were getting on good.’

Ellie looked out the window and bopped her head a little, too.

The Manhattan office of the chief medical examiner was located on First Avenue and Thirtieth Street, just north of the Bellevue Hospital Center. As they rolled past the canopied glass entrance of the hospital’s new addition, they caught a glimpse of the original building’s historic facade, still standing behind the modern entrance.

Bellevue Hospital is the site of the nation’s first ambulance service and maternity ward and the oldest public hospital in the state. But outside of New York, it’s known for one thing and one thing only: its crazies. Ellie had lived in the city for ten years now, but it was still hard for her to hear the word
Bellevue
without envisioning a stringy-haired man in a straitjacket screaming like a hyena.

Rogan found a spot on the street in front of the ME’s office. When they stepped out of the car, the sun was peeking out through a break in the clouds above them, and the air was still.

They made their way through the building’s glass doors and up to the fourth floor. A clerk at the front window checked their shields, buzzed them through to the back, and pointed them in the direction of a stocky man standing at a nearby desk, dictating into a digital voice recorder. He had brown curly hair and a graying beard, and wore a white lab coat over khakis and blue sweater. He held up one finger while he completed his thought, then flipped a button to turn off the recorder.

‘J. J. Rogan, right?’

Rogan accepted his handshake. ‘You’ve got a good memory, Doc. This is my partner, Ellie Hatcher.’

‘Richard Karr,’ the man said, extending his hand. ‘We spoke on the phone. First murder case?’

‘Second,’ Ellie said, ‘but close enough.’

‘All right, well, our first one all together, then. Let’s hope I can help you out. Now when you called, Detective, you said our young Miss Hart was nineteen years old and was last seen alive at a nightclub last night at two thirty a.m., correct?’

‘That’s right.’

‘That’s consistent with my best estimation of her time of death. Rigor mortis hadn’t set in yet.’ Corpses began to stiffen about three hours after death, due to changes in the muscles’ biochemistry. ‘I found undigested pasta. You said she last ate at ten o’clock?’

‘That’s when her friends say they finished eating.’

‘Again, it’s consistent. Digestion was well past the gastric phase, and into the duodenum –’

‘She was killed sometime between three and five this morning?’ Ellie asked, cutting to the chase. Chelsea’s friends last saw her dancing at two thirty; her pallor was gray by the time Ellie saw her at five thirty. It only stood to reason.

‘Sorry, some of the detectives are more dazzled by the science than others,’ Dr. Karr said. ‘Okay, so, on to some other findings, then. You probably already know this too, but Miss Hart appears to have taken full advantage of the libations at said club. She had a blood alcohol content of point-two-six.’

‘Drunk times three,’ Ellie said.

‘Three and a quarter, to be precise. Now, it takes the liver sixty to ninety minutes to metabolize the alcohol in a single serving of liquor, so the body’s BAC actually continues to rise during that time before it starts to dissipate. Depending on how long she was drinking –’

‘Her friends say she had an early drink before dinner,’ Ellie cut in, ‘but then the real partying started around ten. She was definitely still drinking at ten thirty, and the club closed at four.’

Karr nodded, looking up to the ceiling as he ran the numbers. ‘Very well, then. Assuming she continued her consumption, I’m probably correct that she was still on the upswing at the time of death. With a body weight of only a hundred and twenty-two pounds, my best guess is she must have consumed nine or ten drinks over the course of the night.’

Ellie shook her head at the stupidity of it all. Attractive girl, scantily clad, underage. Blasted out of her mind. Wandering the streets of Manhattan alone in the middle of the night. A few times a year, a handful of girls were killed after making the identical mistake. And no one seemed to learn.

‘Plus we’ve got the tox screen. Positive for crystal meth.’

That one caught Ellie by surprise. She liked to think she could spot a liar, and none of the usual red flags went up with Chelsea’s friends. They’d been clear: no sex, no drugs.

‘Can you tell how recent?’

‘She used within four hours of her death.’

Add methed up to attractive, scantily clad, underage, and drunk. Ellie couldn’t think of a more dangerous combination.

Rogan cut in with a question of his own. ‘CSU thought the vic was killed off-site and then moved to the East River scene.’

‘Oh, yes. Certainly. As you might know, it’s the power of the beating heart that keeps our blood cells and platelets all mixed together in our vessels.’ He pantomimed a mixing gesture with his hands. ‘So once the heart stops beating, and the mixer loses its power, the red blood cells begin to settle with gravity. That’s what causes the telltale discoloration of lividity – that look of a layer of grape jelly beneath the skin.’

‘And the discoloration on Chelsea?’ Ellie asked.

‘Her body may have been found propped up in a seated position, but the grape jelly was on her back.’

It meant that Chelsea Hart’s body was lying faceup after her death and was then moved into the position in which she was found.

‘The movement of the body was not the only postmortem activity. Based on the minimal amount of blood on the wounds’ edges, my best estimation is that the cuts you saw on her arms, legs, and face were inflicted after death. If you told me she’d been immersed in water – a hot tub or a bath, for example – I might revise my opinion to antemortem cuts, but there’s no evidence of that, especially in light of the speed with which the body was discovered.’

‘So cause of death is strangulation?’

‘I still need to complete the entire autopsy, but yes, I’m confident that’s what I will ultimately conclude. Looking at the pattern of bruising on her neck, you can see she was strangled manually, from the front.’ He held his hands out, fingers strong and splayed. ‘Thumbs at the larynx, palms on the carotid arteries, fingers wrapped all the way around the back of her neck. With her on her back, and him on top of her, it creates a tremendous amount of pressure.’