Manual strangulation was in many ways the most dedicated form of murder. It wasn’t an instantaneous decision, like the pulling of a trigger or the slashing of a throat. It wasn’t remote, like poison or a contracted kill.
And there was nothing to physically separate the killer from his victim – no rope, no scarf, no belt to do the strangler’s job for him. Everything about the act guaranteed that if the killer had any kernel of doubt – any second of hesitation – he could stop. Among murderers, stranglers who used their bare hands were the most committed and least repentant.
And they were almost always motivated by sexual desire.
‘Any evidence of sexual assault?’ she asked.
‘Surprisingly, there was no indication of either vaginal or anal trauma. I did a rape kit anyway, obviously. Sometimes we get a hit on the oral swab. It will take a couple of days for the initial results on the swabs – weeks for any DNA profile, if we do in fact have any fluids to examine. Will there be evidence of voluntary sex within the last few days?’
‘Not according to her friends. She has a boyfriend who’s supposedly been in Mexico all week.’
‘Well, at least we’ll know that any DNA we find is for us. That’s all I have for you now,’ Karr said, switching gears abruptly, ‘but I’ll be in touch when we get those labs back.’
As they walked back to the car in the sunshine that was warming the cold morning into day, Ellie thought about the last hour of Chelsea Hart’s life and the fear and pain she must have experienced. Then she pictured Chelsea two hours earlier, smiling, dancing, and telling her best friend that she was having the best night ever.
Chelsea Hart’s favorite movies were
Run Lola Run,
The Notebook
, and
The Princess Bride
. Her favorite books were
Wuthering Heights
and
The Unbearable
Lightness of Being
. Her favorite drink was called an Angel’s Tip, a mix of dark crème de cacao and heavy cream that she swore prevented hangovers. She wanted to meet Ellen DeGeneres and Johnny Depp.
She had ninety-two friends.
Ellie scrolled through Chelsea’s MySpace profile one more time as she snacked on spoonfuls of the Nutella spread she kept in her top desk drawer.
‘You sure you don’t want any?’ she asked, extending the open glass jar in Rogan’s direction.
He glared at her. ‘Are we going to continue this ritual every afternoon? You offer me that funky stuff you call food, so I can say, No, thank you?’
She pulled the jar back and removed a healthy spoonful. ‘Seems rude not to offer.’
‘You can offer it to me today, tomorrow, and every day ’til I retire, and I promise I will always decline. So consider yourself excused from all social obligation when it comes to that stuff.’
That was fine with Ellie. No sharing meant more for her.
Chelsea Hart’s top MySpace friends were Stefanie, Jordan, and a Mark whom Ellie assumed was her boyfriend, Mark Linton. She listed as her heroes ‘my parents, friends, and random-ass people I meet everyday.’
Ellie clicked on the link that read ‘My Pictures.’ The majority of the photographs depicted groups of teenagers clustered together, arms around each other’s shoulders, smiling for the camera. Chelsea was in the middle of most of the clusters. Stefanie was almost always close by.
An entire photo album was devoted to a white-and-brown English bulldog that was apparently named Stacy Keach. Another contained pictures of Chelsea in various high school theater productions –
Godspell, A Chorus
Line, Into the Woods
. Another of Chelsea in a purple-and-gold track uniform. Ellie stared at the intensity in Chelsea’s face – a perfect blend of happiness, pride, and pain – as she pressed through the ribbon across a finishing line, and she wondered how a girl like this had wound up drunk, alone, and on crystal meth in New York City.
‘We need to get hold of Chelsea’s parents,’ Ellie said. ‘All I did was Google the name Chelsea Hart, and her MySpace page popped right up. Once the news hits, every member of the press will be scouring this for all the details about Chelsea’s personal life. They need to pull it down.’
‘They’ve got to be on a plane by now. When I talked to them this morning, they sounded like they were literally going straight to the airport once we hung up.’
‘Knock, knock.’ Jack Chen rapped his knuckles against an imaginary door. ‘Detectives, there’s a couple here to see you. They say they’re Chelsea Hart’s parents?’
‘Talk about
on cue
.’ Ellie gave a mock shudder. ‘Creepy.’
Rogan’s phone rang. He held up an index finger toward her before answering. ‘Rogan … Correct. That’s my case … Yes, I believe they just walked into the precinct a second ago … That goes without saying … Of course … I’ll be sure to tell them you called.’
He returned the handset to its cradle. ‘Amend that to
really fucking creepy
. That was the mayor’s deputy chief of staff. Apparently, they want to be certain that we give the Harts our closest attention.’
They were on their way to the front of the squad room when Dan Eckels popped his head out of his office. ‘A word with you two?’ he said, waving them over.
‘The vic’s parents are up front, sir.’
‘I just got a call from the assistant chief. The Harts have already been in contact with the mayor’s office.’
‘We know, sir. We don’t want to leave them waiting.’
‘Right. You’re taking them to interview three?’
‘Assuming it’s empty,’ Ellie said, still following Rogan.
‘I’ll sit in.’
‘Of course. Whatever you want.’
Paul Hart had thinning brown hair, ruddy skin, and an extra twenty pounds on his large frame. He wore a light blue crewneck sweater over a collared shirt and navy blue dress slacks. His wife Miriam wore a long black jersey dress that could have been selected either for mourning or simply as a wrinkle-free travel outfit. She had chin-length light gray hair that had probably once been blond, and she seemed unconcerned with her red, puffy eyes or makeup-free face.
They were probably just hitting fifty, married more than twenty years, and walked into interview room 3 holding hands. Even on the most difficult day of their lives together, the Harts carried themselves like good people.
Rogan took care of the introductions and gestured for the couple to be seated next to each other. He took the chair on the other side of the table. Ellie and Eckels stood against the window of the interview room, creating the impression of more privacy.
‘Thank you for coming so quickly,’ Rogan said. ‘We weren’t expecting you until later tonight.’
‘We made some calls on the way to the airport,’ Miriam said. ‘A friend is a friend of a friend of the CEO of Centennial Wireless. They had a private jet waiting for us at the Fort Wayne Airport.’
‘The people close to us are doing everything they can.’ Paul gave his wife’s hand a squeeze. ‘We’re at least fortunate in that respect.’
Were Ellie in their position, she did not think she would be able to find anything to be thankful for. She was constantly amazed by the variation in human responses to misfortune.
‘It’s as if we had this entire network of people working the phones for us while we were coming to terms with all this on the plane,’ Miriam continued in businesslike fashion. ‘It turned out that Paul’s brother-in-law was fraternity brothers with someone in your mayor’s office. He made some calls, and now we’re supposed to speak this afternoon with some volunteers with the Polly Klaas Foundation – you know, just to help us navigate the system and figure out what we need to do.’
‘They’re an excellent organization,’ Ellie said, wondering if her words sounded as hollow as they felt.
‘You just let us know how we can assist,’ Eckels said.
‘You can assist,’ Paul said firmly, ‘by finding the person who murdered our daughter.’
Ellie intervened before Eckels unwittingly offended the Harts further. ‘We’re doing everything we can on the investigative front. The crime scene unit and the medical examiner’s office have collected some physical evidence that might prove very important. We obtained detailed statements this morning from your daughter’s friends. They were extremely helpful. Thanks to Stefanie and Jordan, we have a thorough timeline of their activities yesterday and are following up on every lead.’
‘Are the girls here?’ Paul asked.
‘They just left a few minutes ago,’ Rogan said. ‘They worked with a sketch artist for a couple of hours –’
‘You have a suspect?’ Miriam interrupted, sitting up straighter.
Rogan shook his head. ‘It’s too early to say. Just a man Chelsea was talking to at the club last night. But the sketch artist wants to work with the girls again tomorrow, so we had a victim’s advocate take them back to the hotel.’
‘We’re going to need them to stick around in New York for the time being,’ Ellie said. ‘Once we have a suspect, it’s essential that we get a prompt identification.’
Miriam nodded. ‘I’ll call their parents and the university this afternoon and make sure they know it’s important that the girls stay here. We’ll be here, too. However long it takes. Those poor girls,’ Miriam said, her voice breaking. ‘I promised their parents I’d make sure they were holding up.’
‘They’re strong girls,’ Rogan said. ‘They’re hanging in there.’
‘I do think they’re putting some of the blame on themselves,’ Ellie added.
‘They shouldn’t. Do you know how many times I caught Chelsea breaking curfew, just to learn that Stefanie had been there trying to get her to come home?’
‘Our daughter wasn’t perfect, but she was a remarkable girl,’ Paul said.
That single sentence was enough to fully break Miriam’s composure. Her shoulders began to shake, and she choked back a sob. ‘She was unique and wonderful and remarkable in every way. But she did what she wanted, Paul. I was trying to say it wasn’t Stefanie or Jordan’s fault. They didn’t do this.’
‘Shh.’ Paul placed an arm around his wife’s shoulder. ‘What do we need to do next?’ he asked quietly.
‘Unfortunately, I think you need to prepare yourselves for significant media attention. Reporters are going to call you for quotes, for photographs, for old yearbooks. Your daughter’s MySpace profile will have thousands of hits before the end of the day.’
‘The Polly Klaas people mentioned that, too,’ Paul said, ‘right off the bat. They’re going to contact the company on our behalf to remove her profile.’
‘Good,’ Ellie said. ‘They can help you juggle the media requests as well. You’re also free to refer anyone you want to the NYPD’s public information office.’
‘What else?’ Paul asked.
Rogan cleared his throat. ‘When you’re ready, we’re going to need you to make an official identification of your daughter’s body.’
Miriam let out another sob, but Paul nodded stoically. ‘We’re ready. I’ll do it,’ he said to his wife. ‘You won’t need to see.’
‘I can take you to the medical examiner’s office,’ Eckels offered, ‘while Detectives Rogan and Hatcher continue the investigation.’
The Harts muttered their thanks as they rose from their seats. As Miriam Hart passed Ellie, she turned and looked at her directly with puffy, bloodshot, pleading eyes. ‘Chelsea wasn’t just a drunk girl at a club last night. She was my baby.’
‘I know,’ Ellie said, returning the eye contact. ‘She loved
Wuthering Heights
and that bulldog of hers. She lit up a stage and could run like the wind. And she was good to her friends. She was the glue that held them together, and she could make them laugh through anything.’
A tear fell down Miriam’s cheek, and she mouthed a silent ‘Thank you.’
The distance between the Thirteenth Precinct and the Meatpacking District was almost exactly two miles, but culturally, the neighborhoods were a globe apart. The short drive from the east twenty-something blocks of Manhattan to the far west teens unveiled a dramatic transformation from the sterile and generic high rises of Stuyvesant Town to what was currently the city’s hottest neighborhood.
The key to the Meatpacking District’s current popularity rested in its unique blend of glamor and grit. All of the upscale requirements were here – high-end boutiques, trendy clubs with signature cocktails, expensive restaurants with tiny portions piled into aesthetically pleasing towers. But they existed in loftlike, pared-down spaces that still had the feel – if not the actual structure – of rehabbed warehouses. The streets outside were narrow, many still cobblestone, adding to the sense of an old neighborhood uncovered, dusted off, and polished by its latest visitor.
And, of course, there was the name. Not SoHo. Not Tribeca. Not NoLIta. Nothing cutesy, crisp, or clean. This was the Meatpacking District, and, lest you forget it, the distinctly bloody odor emanating from the remaining butchers and beef wholesalers was there to remind you: this was a neighborhood with substance, history, and dirt beneath its blue-collar fingernails. Just ask the Appletini-sipping supermodel taking a load off her Manolo Blahniks on the stool next to yours.
Ellie had called Pulse from the car on their way to the west side. There had been no answer at the club where Chelsea was last seen – just a recording over techno music with the club’s location and hours – but Rogan figured it was worth a pop-in before trying to track down a manager through business licenses and other paperwork.
The entrance to the club was underwhelming, at least before sundown. No velvet rope. No bass thumping onto the street outside. No well-dressed revelers lined up in front, eager to be selected for admission. No stone-faced body builders clothed in black to pass judgment on who was worthy and who must remain waiting. Just a set of double wooden doors – tall, heavy, and closed, like the sealed entrance to a fortress.
A frosted glass banner ran along the top of the threshold, the word
Pulse
etched discreetly across it. The trendiest establishments always had the least conspicuous signage. Some bars had no signs at all. One hot spot around the corner from here didn’t even have a name. If you were cool enough to be welcome, you’d know it was there, and you’d know where it was.
As Ellie pulled open the heavy wooden door on the right, the first thing that struck her about the darkened club was its temperature. In the second week of March, it shouldn’t have been colder inside the building than out. ‘Geez. They’re taking the whole meatpacking concept a bit literally,’ she said.
‘Don’t you get out, Hatcher?’
‘Not to places like this.’ Ellie wondered again about her partner’s off-duty lifestyle. She scanned the lofty space. The club was dark and windowless, but had enough accent lights here and there to provide a general sense of the place. Clean. White. Really white. Swaths of crisp cotton hung from the twenty-foot ceilings to the floor. Ellie’s usual haunts were decorated by dartboards, jukeboxes, and dusty black-and-white photographs of pregentrified New York.
‘A few hours from now, bodies will be crammed into this place like a full pack of cigarettes. And trust me, no one will be complaining that it’s cold.’
‘Hey, numbnuts.’ A tall, muscular man wearing a fitted black T-shirt and dark blue jeans appeared behind the glass bar. ‘We’re closed.’ His announcement delivered, he continued on with his business of unpacking bottles of Grey Goose vodka from a cardboard box.
Ellie looked at her partner with amusement. ‘Which of the numbnuts gets to break the news?’
Rogan flashed a bright white smile, pulled his shield from his waist, and held it beside his face. ‘You say you’re closed, but your door out front’s unlocked. Who’s the numbnut?’
The man behind the bar emptied his hands of the two bottles he was holding and brushed his palms off on his jeans pockets. ‘Sorry ’bout that. You guys look more like customers than cops.’
He stepped around the counter and met them halfway, next to an elevated runway extending across the dance floor. A trim of hot pink neon light ran along the runway edge.
‘I’m expecting a couple deliveries,’ he said, nodding toward the entrance. ‘But I’m the only one here right now.’
‘Not a problem if you’re the person who can help us out,’ Rogan said. ‘And who exactly are you?’
‘Oh, sorry.’ Two apologies already. That was good. Rogan was establishing his authority over a guy who was used to lording over the minions who felt blessed to enter this sanctuary. ‘Scott Bell. I’m the assistant club manager. Is there some kind of problem? We’ve been keeping our occupancy down since the last time you guys were out.’
‘We’re not here about fire codes. We’re here because of her.’ Rogan removed a sheet of paper from his suit pocket and unfolded it. It was the photograph of Chelsea and her friends that had been taken with Jordan’s iPhone the previous night at the restaurant before dinner. Ellie had cropped it down to a close-up of Chelsea. They were more likely to find people who recognized her using that picture than one taken today.
Bell the bartender took a two-second glance at the printout. ‘I don’t know what to tell you. We’ve got hundreds of girls just like her coming through here every night.’
‘Well, this particular girl was here last night,’ Rogan said. ‘Late.’
‘So were a lot of people.’
‘Yeah, but my guess is, most of them got home safe and sound and are sleeping it off as we speak.’
‘What’s the problem? She OD’d, and you want to blame it on my club? I don’t know how many times I’ve told you guys that we do everything we can to keep that shit out of here.’
‘You really think two detectives are going to show up in the middle of the day about some drugs going in and out of a Manhattan nightclub? Why don’t we go down to Christopher Street and bust some of the flip-flop boys for having wide stances while we’re at it?’
‘Hey, whatever floats your boat.’
‘Take another look, Scott,’ Rogan said. As he tapped the paper in front of the bar manager another time, Ellie found herself looking at it as well. Now that the picture was cropped to focus only on Chelsea, something about it was bothering her. She scanned the photograph from top to bottom, left to right, but couldn’t place her finger on the problem.
‘She was here last night. She was hanging in one of the VIP rooms.’ Bell locked resentful eyes with Rogan until the detective dropped the bombshell. ‘And she was found strangled a couple hours later.’
Bell’s eyes dropped immediately to the printout. ‘Oh, fuck.’
‘There we go. That’s the most authentic response you’ve given us since we got here. By tomorrow morning, the name of this club is going to be in every newspaper, next to a picture just like this one, while everyone who scans the headline is going to wonder whether this is a safe place to be. So if I were you, I’d drop the attitude and start asking how you can help us.’
Bell swallowed. ‘I – I –’ He ran the fingertips of both hands through his dark brown hair. ‘Fuck. I don’t know what I can do to help. I
don’t
remember her.’
‘You’re sure?’ Ellie asked.
He shook his head. ‘If you’re saying she was here, then she was here. But when you spend enough time in clubs, everyone looks the same.’
Ellie had of course never met Chelsea Hart, but she found herself replaying flashes of the conversations she’d had that morning with Chelsea’s friends.
Chelsea
would never leave us in limbo like this. She was always
the one who’d meet other people for us to hang out with.
Chelsea’s going to freak if she misses the deadline for her
Othello paper; she wants to be an English major. Someone
has to remember seeing her – she’s a really good dancer
. It seemed profoundly sad that Chelsea had spent her last couple of hours in a place where no one was special, where everyone looked the same.
‘Her friends said she was in a VIP room,’ Ellie said. ‘Who were the VIPs?’
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Hey, now, I thought we were done with the attitude,’ Rogan said.
‘Sorry. It’s just, I mean, we call them VIP rooms, and sometimes we get some actual celebs in here, but usually because they’re C-list and we’re paying them. Most nights, it’s just some dumb group of nobodies who called with enough notice and slapped down a fat enough deposit for prepaid liquor to create a guest list.’
‘See, you’re more helpful than you think,’ Ellie said. ‘We’ll take a look at those guest lists.’
Bell’s face momentarily brightened before it fell again. ‘Shit. They’ll be gone by now.’ He made his way over to a stainless steel podium near the entrance and fished out a clipboard from a built-in shelf. He skimmed through the top few pages, then flipped to the back. ‘This one’s for tonight. We got rid of last night’s already.’
‘It’s not in a computer?’ Ellie asked.
‘All in pencil. Too many last-minute changes to run back and forth to the office.’
‘Garbage?’
‘Gone,’ Bell said, shaking his head. ‘We’ve got to get the place clean right after closing so it doesn’t stink like all the spilled booze.’
‘We’ll take credit card numbers instead,’ Ellie said. ‘Easy enough for us to get names from there.’
‘What credit card numbers?’
‘You said people have to leave a deposit for the VIP rooms? I assume that involves credit cards.’
‘Yeah, right. Okay, yeah. I can get that for you. Definitely.’ It was clear from Bell’s eagerly nodding head that he was happy to have finally found a way to be useful.
‘A list of employees would be nice, too,’ she added.
The nodding continued for a few rounds, but then slowed to a pensive halt. ‘Employees. From here?’ Bell asked, pointing to the ground in front of him.
‘Unless you know of some other club this girl went to before someone tossed her body by the East River.’
‘But – but what does that have to do with –’
‘Um, hello? Does the name Darryl Littlejohn ring a bell?’
A couple of years earlier, a student from Ellie’s alma mater, John Jay College, disappeared after having a final drink at a SoHo bar just before closing time. Her barely recognizable naked body was found the next day on a road outside Spring Creek Park in Brooklyn. It took police a week to conclude that the helpful bouncer who told them he’d seen the victim leave alone was in fact the same man who’d stuffed a sock in the girl’s mouth, wrapped her entire head with transparent packing tape, and then brutally raped and strangled her. When she saw the victim’s photograph in the newspaper, Ellie thought that she might have met the criminology graduate student during an alumni event at John Jay’s Women’s Center.
‘That’s my point,’ Bell said. ‘That guy had, like, five felony convictions.’
Seven, actually, Ellie thought. And he was on parole. His mere presence in that bar past nine o’clock at night would have been enough to violate him if his PO had known.
‘We don’t run that kind of club. I do background checks. We do drug testing. We have biannual employment reviews.’ Bell ticked off each of his good deeds on his fingers.
‘Scott, calm down.’ Rogan put his hand on Bell’s shoulder and gave it a small squeeze. It was one of the standard moves that Ellie rarely got to use. For Rogan, and about ninety percent of cops, a small touch like that was a sign of brotherhood, a soothing indication that the touch’s recipient was viewed as one of the good guys. From thirty-year-old Ellie, with her wavy blond hair and a body that men always seemed to notice no matter how modestly she dressed, that kind of contact was viewed – depending on the confidence of the recipient – as either provocative or emasculating.
‘When are you gonna clue in?’ Rogan continued. ‘We are not code enforcement. We’re not vice. We want to find out who murdered this sweet college girl who was visiting New York from Indiana. That’s all we’re trying to do. There’s no problem here.’ Rogan moved his hand across the gap between the two men’s chests. They were copacetic.
‘Yeah, all right. I got it on the computer in back. With the credit cards.’
‘Good man, Scott.’
‘I gotta call my boss, though, okay? The manager.’
‘You wouldn’t be doing your job if you didn’t. But you’ll tell him we’re cool, right?’
‘Yeah, no problem.’
‘Do we need to worry about him back there alone?’ Ellie asked, watching Bell walk through an office door at the rear of the club.
‘I don’t get that feeling,’ Rogan said, helping himself to a spot behind the counter to check out the labels on the various liquor bottles. ‘Do you?’
‘Nope.’
‘Just checking?’
‘Yep.’
Ellie was grateful to have a few minutes away from Scott Bell so she could refocus her attention on the photograph of Chelsea Hart that had been bothering her.
‘Take a look again at this,’ she said, laying the now-familiar image before Rogan on the bar. ‘Notice anything significant?’
‘No, but apparently I’m supposed to. What’s up?’
‘Earrings. She was wearing earrings last night at dinner, but not this morning when we found her at the park.’
He squinted, mentally pulling up an image of the body he’d seen at the crime scene. ‘You’re sure?’
‘Positive.’
He was silent for a few seconds, and Ellie assumed he was having the same thoughts that ran through her mind when she’d first made the observation. No pawnshop would buy what was obviously costume jewelry, so there was no point following that avenue. The earrings could have fallen out in a struggle. Or, more interestingly, they could have been removed as a souvenir.
‘Any ideas about how we use that information?’ Rogan asked.
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, at least we know what to look for.’
‘If only we knew where to look.’
Bell returned from the back office carrying a thin stack of paper just as Rogan’s cell phone rang. Rogan flipped open the phone, read the screen, and excused himself to the corner of the bar.