A margarita sounded good.
He’d waited until the seat next to the couple was empty before he ordered. House margarita, rocks and salt. Good, generic, forgettable order. As he sipped his drink, he’d learned more about the bartender, eavesdropping on her conversation with the couple. She was an aspiring writer. Two published short stories, a few magazine essays, and one unpublished novella. Now she was working on her first thriller, an attempt to go commercial at the suggestion of her agent. The setup featured a small-town female cop who realized her son was a serial killer.
He also overheard the bartender swap shifts with her bald male colleague for Tuesday and Thursday. She’d be covering his 11:00 to 5:30 shift; he’d take her usual 5:30 to midnight. “Thanks a lot for doing that,” the bald guy had said. “Not a problem,” she’d replied. “It’ll be nice to actually have a night to go out like a regular person.”
Only one pop-in, and he’d already nailed down a big piece of her schedule.
After he’d signaled for the check, he noticed that the top of the computerized slip of paper listed the name Rachel next to the date and time. He owed her twelve dollars. He opened his wallet and fingered a hundred-dollar bill inside, smiling as he remembered finding it in Chelsea’s purse. He removed a ten and a five instead and left both bills on the bar. Not too cheap, not too generous.
Now it was Tuesday evening, and the bartender should have just wrapped up the first of her two day-shifts this week. He watched from the bakery window, coffee in hand, as the girl he presumed was called Rachel buttoned up her beige peacoat and dashed across three lanes of traffic on Fifth Avenue.
Taking the corner onto Fifteenth Street, she passed directly in front of him. He lowered his gaze and then made his way to the exit, also turning at Fifteenth.
He was thirty feet behind her. He caught a whiff of musky perfume. He figured she probably spritzed herself on the way out of the restaurant to mask the smell of southwestern food.
He noticed she wore flat black loafers. Hopefully she would turn to something less practical when she wasn’t working. A healthy girl like her could run in loafers.
She reached her right hand to the nape of her neck, slipped off her ponytail elastic, and shook her blond waves loose. He stole a glimpse of her profile reflected in the window of a sushi restaurant as she passed. She looked good with her hair down.
Before she reached Union Square Park, she turned and disappeared into a storefront.
He crossed Fifteenth Street and kept his head down as he walked directly toward the park. He glanced in his periphery as he passed the spot where she had disappeared. “Park Bar.”
When he reached Union Square West, he found a seat at an unoccupied picnic table near the curb. He would sit here, and he would wait. And watch.
Patience. Diligence. Dedication. Timing.
He had found his project. Now he had to nail down the routine, learn the habits. Chelsea had caught him off guard. This time, nothing should be unexpected.
As he sat at the picnic table, watching subway riders dash to their trains at Union Square, he found himself smiling and remembering a line from Jack Finney’s classic novel Time and Again: “Suddenly I had to close my eyes because actual tears were smarting at the very nearly uncontainable thrill of being here. The Ladies’ Mile was great, the sidewalks and entrances of the block after block of big glittering ladies’ stores…”
He too had a very nearly uncontainable thrill of being in the Ladies’ Mile.
CHAPTER 20
“WHAT CAN I GET YOU, HATCHER?”
“Johnnie Walker Black. Rocks.”
“A week on the job together, and I still don’t know your drink,” Rogan said. “That ain’t right.”
As much as Ellie wanted to go home, flip on the tube, and crash on the couch, this had been her first invitation for a group drink out of the Thirteenth Precinct, and she was not about to blow the opportunity. They were celebrating Jake Myers’s arrest at Plug Uglies, a cop bar on Third Ave. between Twentieth and Twenty-first.
Even though this wood-paneled pub-originally named for one of the city’s old Irish gangs, now accessorized with the shoulder patches of hundreds of police and firemen-was the official hangout of the Thirteenth Precinct, this was Ellie’s first visit with other cops. Her only previous invitation had come from Jess after her first day in the homicide squad-not his sort of place, but it was close to work, and with a $2 happy hour, it was one of the few spots in Manhattan where her brother could afford to pick up a tab.
Tonight, drinks were on Rogan, and that meant that half the squad tagged along, even though they had nothing to do with the Chelsea Hart case. When it came time to celebrate, a case clearance for one was a win for all.
She spotted a familiar face at the end of the bar and indicated to Rogan she’d be right back.
“Hey, stranger.”
Peter Morse greeted her with a peck on the cheek. Ellie automatically looked around to confirm that the other cops were preoccupied.
“How’d you know I’d be here?” she asked.
“I didn’t. I’m meeting Kittrie.” Peter glanced at his watch. “His idea to be here, and now he’s fifteen minutes late. Typical.”
“He made you stay late last night, took top billing on this morning’s story, and now you’re having a drink with him? I thought you hated that guy.”
“Doesn’t matter-he’s the boss. Everyone’s tiptoeing around him anyway these days, ever since Justine accidentally connected to his line and heard some doctor saying something about a tumor. I’m convinced she made up the whole thing to fuck with me, but I’m not going to risk being an a-hole to the guy. He wanted to work together on the Hart story, we worked together. He wants to have a drink, I’m having a drink.”
“And he just happened to pick Plug Uglies out of all the bars in Manhattan?”
“Of course not. He’s convinced you pick up the best dirt at cop bars. Little does he know I have found a much more pleasurable method of cultivating inside sources.”
Peter placed his palm on the small of her back, and she pulled away. Enough PDA for one night.
“Ah, except I don’t actually give you any inside information. I just use you for the sex.”
Peter snapped his fingers. “I knew there was a problem with my plan. That probably explains why I’m in the doghouse with Kittrie. He’s pissed we didn’t get a better picture of your victim.”
“You had the same one as the Times.”
“Exactly. But the Sun didn’t. Now he says I shouldn’t have just taken whatever the family handed us. He says the graduation shot was too controlled.”
“What did he expect you to do? Go to her MySpace page and steal pictures off the Web?”
“That’s actually not a bad idea.”
“Too late. We already told the family to pull down the profile. But it would still be less tacky than nagging Chelsea’s friends. That’s how the Sun got their picture.”
“You’re tracking journalists’ practices now?”
Ellie got the impression he didn’t agree with her assessment about the tastelessness of chasing down a murder victim’s loved ones to help a story. “No, but it’s the only way they could’ve gotten it. One of Chelsea’s friends snapped it with her cell phone the night before the murder.” She was still annoyed that the photograph had run on the front page of tens of thousands of newspapers, with Chelsea’s missing earrings on full display.
She felt a hand on her right shoulder and turned to find herself in the middle of an enthusiastic handshake. The man pumping her arm was about forty years old, medium height and build, with wire-rimmed glasses and not much remaining hair.