The Hatchers apparently passed with enough credibility for him to check the list. A frown started to form on his face as he browsed the clipboard. Then he flipped to a second page.
“You’re good,” he said, stamping their hands with a rubber triangle sopped in red ink. When he stepped aside so they could enter, Ellie heard a few exasperated huffs from the dejected souls behind the velvet rope and realized she had never been so appreciative of special treatment. Down with egalitarianism. She was too freezing to care about the masses.
“I called Vanessa while you were changing,” Jess explained. “And, you were right, her last name is indeed Hutchinson.”
Once they were inside the club, Ellie had to concede that Jess had been right about her wardrobe choice. What had been a dimly lit empty warehouse just a few hours ago was now brimming with activity-primarily of the dancing, drinking, and flirting varieties, and almost entirely by young, fashion-forward, beautiful people. Not a single Gap sweater in the house.
Jess led the way, forging a circuitous path around the dance floor, past the runway, and through the three-person-deep huddle encircling the bar. He raised a hand toward a tall, thin waitress with long blond hair, heavy bangs, and a lot of black mascara. In the middle of a vigorous rattling of a silver martini shaker over her shoulder, the woman caught Jess’s eye and flashed him a bright wide smile. Vanessa Hutchinson was beautiful.
She pulled the lid off the shaker and poured something bright blue into a martini glass, then handed the glass and a bottle of beer to a guy across the counter. He handed her forty dollars and told her to keep the change. Ellie wondered if she’d just witnessed a big tip to Vanessa, a big rip-off of the customer, or both.
Vanessa ignored the many patrons who were eagerly competing for her eye contact and instead beelined toward Jess. “Hey, man. How are you?” She couldn’t manage a hug with the bar between them, but she did raise her arm high for some quick hand-squeezing contact.
“Good. Pretty good. Thanks for taking care of us on short notice. This is my sister, Ellie.”
Ellie said hey and thanked Vanessa for setting them up with the doorman.
“Not a problem. Jack Daniels straight up, and what else?” she asked Ellie.
“Johnnie Walker Black.”
“Jack and Johnnie. I guess whisky runs in the family.”
Seconds later, she handed the drinks to Jess and waved off the money Ellie tried to hand her. “I’ve got my hands full here, but you guys have fun, all right?”
Jess thanked Vanessa again and asked her to find them if she got a break. She assured them she would.
“Now what?” Jess asked, handing Ellie her drink.
“Now we watch.”
AT 11:04 P.M., Bill Harrington sat alone in his living room, watching the evening news from his recliner.
A disturbing discovery to tell you about tonight in Manhattan. In the early hours of the morning, joggers found the partially nude body of nineteen-year-old Chelsea Hart at a construction site along the East River. Police tell us that Hart was a freshman at Indiana University and was in New York City for spring break. Police believe she was last seen alive at a club in the Meatpacking District on the west side of Manhattan. Anyone with information related to the case should call NYPD’s tip line at-
Bill Harrington pressed down the footrest of his chair, stood, and made his way to the kitchen for a pen and pad of paper. He did not know anything at all about Chelsea Hart or her trip from Indiana, but he could not help but wonder if her murder had something to do with the dream that had pulled him from his bed so early that same morning, brushing his cheek like the tip of an angel’s wing.
CHAPTER 15
“THIS DETECTIVE WORK’S really hard.” Jess used a gap between two customers seated at the bar to drop off his empty glass.
It had taken them only fifteen minutes to circle the entire club. Now they were back where they began, at the bar.
“So tell me what you noticed,” Ellie said.
Jess shrugged. “Hot girls. Rich guys. A lot of booze and bad dancing.”
“See, here’s what I noticed. That girl over there?” She pointed to a petite brunette in a sleeveless turtleneck and skinny black pants. “She’s wearing the turtleneck to cover up marks on her throat, but when she looked in the mirror she didn’t see the finger-shaped bruises on the backs of both her arms. That explains the scratch on her boyfriend’s face.”
Jess looked at the brunette’s male companion, a tall guy with a prominent forehead, five o’clock shadow, and, sure enough, a couple of claw marks near his right eye.
“My guess is it happened last night or this morning,” Ellie explained over the mind-numbing dance music. “He’s taking her out tonight to make it up to her.”
“Jesus, Ellie. Being you has got to be pretty fuckin’ depressing.”
“That girl over there?” Ellie pointed to a younger-looking woman in a clingy wrap dress and high-heeled boots. “She just handed her ID to a guy who was heading out for a smoking break. He’ll be back any minute with some jailbait girl in tow. Oh, and there he is now,” she said, just as a young couple walked through the entrance.
“Ellie Hatcher. Crime-detecting robot.”
“And, finally, my guess is the bouncer-the one posted over there by the side exit-his name’s Jaime Rodriguez. Also on the list of Pulse employees.”
Ellie was fairly certain she recognized the man from the booking photos she’d pulled up on her computer earlier in the day, when she ran all of the employees for criminal histories.
If the bouncer was in fact Rodriguez, he’d cleaned up considerably in the last two years. In each of his prior booking photos, he’d carried that rough look found on so many kids who were raised more by the streets than by their parents. He’d worn his hair long and unwashed, his face concealed by sideburns and a goatee, his mouth set in a scowl. Now he was clean shaven with close-cropped hair and looked downright friendly. Had Rodriguez changed, or had he simply upgraded his chosen locale for slinging drugs?
Jess ran off for a second round of drinks, and Ellie continued her people-watching. From what she could tell, Rodriguez’s job tonight was to stand near the exit to make sure no patrons used it to sneak their friends in. A false alarm set off by an open door would invoke hysteria, and locking the exit from the inside was the kind of stunt that could get a club’s ticket pulled with the city. So there Rodriguez stood, exchanging a few words here and there with passing patrons.
One male customer must have been a regular. He had moppish blond hair and wore black dress pants, a gray sports coat, and a blue collared shirt that matched his eyes. He emerged from behind the long white curtains that separated the VIP rooms from the rest of the club and headed directly for Rodriguez, checking out the surroundings as he walked. After a brief but close-faced exchange, the two men dapped fists, top to bottom, bottom to top, then straight on.
The mop-haired man walked back to the VIP lounge, and a tall, thin woman emerged, with that had-to-be-a-model look about her. Once past the curtains, the woman scanned the club, spotted Rodriguez, and made her way over to him. Ellie noticed the woman’s hand touch the bouncer’s, then immediately saw Rodriguez’s other hand pass over the top of the model’s handbag.
Only twenty minutes in the club, and she’d already witnessed the staff involved in a hand-to-hand. If she was going to need leverage over Rodriguez or the club’s management, she had some now.