Alafair Burke - Angel's Tip

“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?” she 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.