Alafair Burke: Angel's Tip

And, although she didn’t realize it at the time, she’d learned from those stories. On that particular day, she’d learned never to use the past tense. Even after delivering the news to the family. Even after the official ID. Even after the body’s in the ground. Until the family starts using the past tense, everyone else must remain in the present.

Of course Chelsea’s friends still spoke of her in the present. They didn’t know her body was on a stainless steel table at the medical examiner’s office.

ROGAN LED THE WAY through the Thirteenth Precinct, past the front desk officers, the precinct briefing room, and two wire holding cages, up the narrow staircase to the third-floor homicide squad. Their head start on the day was over. Detectives bustled throughout the squad room, crowded to capacity with desks, chairs, file cabinets, and random boxes of evidence waiting to be cataloged. Jack Chen, one of the younger civilian aides, sat perched at the front desk.

Rogan asked Chen to get two coffees and Danishes, then handed him a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet. Ellie flashed three fingers over Rogan’s shoulder and threw Chen a wink.

Detouring around their desks, Rogan headed for the back corner of the squad room, then down a hallway leading to three interrogation rooms. He skipped the first two doors and held the final one open for Stefanie, Jordan, and Ellie. Because it was at the end of the hall, interview room 3 was the least used, and therefore the most presentable, of their interrogation rooms.

There were only three chairs surrounding the small laminate table in the center of the room. Two on the left. A single on the right. Two detectives. One suspect. That’s how the room was arranged.

The girls stood awkwardly until Ellie gestured toward the chairs. Jordan and Stefanie sat together, side by side.

They started with names and dates of birth. Stefanie Hyder was the worried brunette with the ponytail and headband. Jordan McLaughlin was the girl with the dark pixie hair and a tattoo on her lower back. And Chelsea Hart was their missing friend.

Ellie jotted down all three names, in that order, in a spiral reporter’s notebook. She circled the last one. All the girls were nineteen years old.

Rogan let her take the lead on questioning. “I heard you mention at the hotel that you’re here in New York on spring break?”

“Right,” Stefanie said. “We got here Tuesday. We were supposed to fly out this morning. Chelsea didn’t come back to the hotel last night, and she wasn’t there when we were ready to leave for the airport.”

Jordan shifted in her seat. She was clearly still fixated on that flight home.

“When was the last time you saw Chelsea?” Ellie asked.

“Last night. Or I guess this morning. We were out late.”

“Doing what?”

The girls stared at the table. Stefanie studied her pearly red fingernails. Jordan chewed her lower lip.

“You can’t find your friend. I think we can look past a little barhopping.”

“We went clubbing. We left around two thirty.” Stefanie paused and dropped her head. “Chelsea stayed.”

Ellie scribbled “2:30 a.m.” in her notebook.

“Stayed where? Was she at a specific club?”

“Yeah. It’s called Pulse.”

Ellie was pretty sure she’d heard of the place, one of the newest, hippest Manhattan hot spots among the many new, hip Manhattan hot spots that were several notches too cool for her to frequent. “In the Meatpacking District, right?”

The girls nodded.

“What other clubs did you hit?”

“None.” Stefanie shook her head. “That’s it.”

“You sure? No quick pop-ins somewhere you might have forgotten about?”

The girls shook their heads. It was just the one club.

“You went straight from your hotel to the club?” she asked.

The girls started to speak at once, then Jordan deferred again to Stefanie.

“No, we went to dinner first. Some place in Little Italy. Wait. I’ve got the name.” Stefanie slipped her fingers inside a small black purse and pulled out a wrinkled piece of yellow carbon paper. She smoothed it out. “Luna.”

Ellie wanted to nail down a basic timeline while the girls were still relatively calm, before she had to deliver the news. She walked them through the activities of the previous day. Brunch at Norma’s at 10:30 a.m. At the Museum of Modern Art by twelve thirty. One drink at the hotel bar at five o’clock. Back to their rooms at six to get ready. Taxi to SoHo at seven fifteen. At the Luna bar by eight. Seated at eight thirty. Ate between nine and ten. Left around eleven and walked to Pulse. Two of the girls left at 2:30 a.m. Chelsea stayed.

Into the notebook it all went. Somewhere in that timeline Chelsea’s killer had found her.

“And it was just the three of you the entire day?”

Two nods for yes.

“No guys?”

Two shaking heads said no. Ellie didn’t buy it.

“So tell me about the restaurant. Luna. You didn’t speak to anyone while you were there?”

“No,” Stefanie said. “We ate by ourselves. Well, we had a couple shots with these lawyers at the bar, but we didn’t see them again once we were seated.”

“No chance Chelsea gave one of them her number and hooked up with him later in the night?”

Stefanie shook her head. “No way. Those guys were probably, like, thirty. Way too old for us.”

“You sure about that?” Rogan asked. “You said you had two drinks with them.”

“It’s not like we were bonding or anything. Chelsea gave them fake names and told them we were models in town for a car show. They knew we were messing with them.”

Ellie had always assumed that the New York City dating scene was kinder to men than women, but these girls were painting a different picture.

“What about the club? Did you meet any guys there?”

Two sets of shrugged shoulders and nervous eyes until Stefanie spoke up. “She started talking to some guys in one of the VIP rooms. We were all hanging out in there.”

“Did you get any names?” Ellie asked.

“No.”

She looked to Jordan, who shook her head.

“Nothing? First names? A nickname?”

“It’s really loud in those places. You just say things like, ‘Hey, cool place, have you been here before?’ that kind of thing, unless you take it outside to actually talk.”

“And you didn’t see Chelsea go outside?”

Two shaking heads.

“Okay, well, was Chelsea with anyone in particular in the VIP room? Or just a big group?”

“Mostly just the whole group,” Stefanie said. “But she was talking to this one guy when we first got there, and he was the one who brought us all into the VIP room.”

“Can you describe him?”

“He was tall, probably a little over six feet. Sort of shaggy, sandy blond hair. Cute.”

“Oh, I remember him,” Jordan said. “Chelsea was with him for, like, a couple of hours, I think. They were dancing. Looked pretty hot and heavy.”

“It was flirting,” Stefanie admonished.

“I know. I’m just saying, I noticed.”

“So you got a good look at him, too?” Ellie asked.

Jordan nodded. “He kind of looked like an older Zac Efron. You know, cute more than good looking.”

“And I would know him from where?”

“High School Musical? Hairspray? Like, every single tabloid magazine known to man?”

Feeling slightly older than she had a minute earlier, Ellie tried not to think about how much easier this would be if the people who met at Manhattan clubs bothered to exchange names like normal people. She was going to have to sit these girls down with a sketch artist in the small hope of finding someone who apparently looked like an overage teen hunk and probably had absolutely nothing to do with Chelsea’s death.