Including Chelsea Hart, Ellie was looking at four victims. All were young and blond, killed after late nights in Manhattan bars. But she knew that wasn’t enough for a pattern. Thanks to the inherently dangerous mix of sex, drugs, and alcohol at four in the morning, the sad reality was that several women were killed in the city each year under similar circumstances. Based solely on their demographics, Lucy Feeney, Robbie Harrington, Alice Butler, and now Chelsea Hart were just four of many.
But she could not get past the hair.
Lucy Feeney and Chelsea Hart both had had their hair hacked off, leaving portions of their scalps exposed. Robbie Harrington, in contrast, had been wearing new and unexpected bangs.
Snipping off a few fringes of hair around the victim’s face was a far cry from the kind of angry chop job she’d witnessed on Chelsea.
Since her first skim through the files that morning, Ellie had known there was only one way to determine whether there was a pattern, but she’d forced herself to hold off. She told herself she should sit on it for the day before digging up the past for a murder victim’s family. Flann had been known for his far-fetched theories. This could all be yet another McIlMulder wild goose chase.
She looked at her watch. It was seven twenty. Eleven hours since she’d left One Police Plaza with the cold case files. Eleven hours since she’d taken her first browse of them in the elevator. Eleven hours since she’d opened her cell phone and entered a New Jersey telephone number. Eleven hours since she’d flipped the phone shut without hitting the call button.
Eleven hours, and there was still only one option. She picked up the phone and dialed before she changed her mind.
CHAPTER 23
THE WOMAN WHO picked up on the fourth ring seemed put out. Ellie could detect a television playing in the background, along with the sounds of children’s voices. Someone was accusing someone else of hogging something or other.
“Hi. I’m looking for Michelle Butler?”
Ellie realized she should have run Alice’s sister through the system. After six years, she could be anywhere, and this phone number could belong to anyone.
“It’s Trent now. Has been for a while. I’ve really got my hands full-”
“My name’s Ellie Hatcher. I’m a detective with the NYPD. I’m calling about Alice.”
Five full seconds of background noise, then the woman said, “Kids, in the family room.” The kids protested, but apparently realized that Mom meant business when she followed up with, “Now. I mean it.”
“Have you found someone?”
Ellie swallowed, hearing the hope in the woman’s voice, picturing the tears that were probably already welling in Michelle Trent’s eyes as she braced herself for words that were long overdue.
“No. And I’m very sorry to call under those circumstances, Mrs. Trent. But your sister’s case came to my attention in the course of another investigation.”
“Is this going to happen every time some other girl gets killed after drinking too much? Another detective called me-it must have been three years ago.”
“Flann McIlroy?”
“Something like that. Yeah.”
“Why did he call you?”
“Jesus Christ. Don’t you people talk to each other?”
Ellie silently cursed McIlroy for not making any notes in the case files. “I’m very sorry,” she said once again. “I would speak to Detective McIlroy directly, but he’s passed on.”
Michelle either hadn’t seen the stories about Flann’s murder in the papers, or hadn’t made the connection to the detective who’d phoned her three years earlier.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. When he called me, he was asking questions about Alice’s hair. He wanted to know whether whoever killed her might have cut her hair.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“I told him, How could I know? I took one quick look to identify her, and then they had my sister on ice for days. We couldn’t get the body. We couldn’t have the funeral. They had to cut her open for an autopsy so they could explore every little part of her insides, and for what? No evidence. No arrests. Nothing. With all that poking and prodding, if whoever killed her cut off her hair, shouldn’t you people have noticed that?”
“I know this is very upsetting for you, Mrs. Trent.”
“Damn right it’s upsetting. I’m married now. I’ve got kids. My sons sleep in the room that was Alice’s when she was here. My own children don’t even know their mom used to have a sister. They think Mommy was an only child. I’ve moved on. And now I’m going to keep getting these phone calls when you’ve got nothing?”
“If I thought it was nothing, I wouldn’t have called you. I assumed you would want us to do whatever we could.”
“Okay, fine. So if you have something, it’s going to be news that whoever killed my sister has been out there for the last six years, breathing, eating, sleeping, and now killing other women. I’ve been able to get on with my life by convincing myself karma caught up to this guy. He stepped into the wrong fight, or was burned to ashes in some terrible car accident. Maybe in prison for something else. And now I have to go to sleep tonight wondering if he’s still out there and what he’s thinking and whether he even remembers anything special about Alice.”
Ellie noticed that Michelle had calculated the number of years since her sister died without missing a beat. She’d heard other family members of murder victims say the same thing-that the worst part of it in the long run is realizing that the killer lives in real time with the rest of us. That for every happy moment you have, he might have two. That he might be watching the same television program, or admiring the same sunset, or boasting to his friends about your loved one’s murder while you are putting the kids down for the night.
“If he’s out there, Michelle, I’m going to do everything I can to find him. And that’s the only reason I would make this phone call. The chance-however small-that I might be able to call you six months down the road with some answers is the only possible reason I would ever ask you to revisit these kinds of questions.”
The line fell silent, and Ellie wondered whether she had missed the click of a hang-up. Then she heard a quiet sniffle.
“So what do you need to know about Alice’s hair?”
Ellie felt the tension leave her fingers, wrapped so tightly on the handset. “In the file, it says you were the one to identify your sister’s body.”
“That’s right. Our mom died a few years before Alice, and our dad-he wasn’t around.”
“When you saw her, did you notice anything unusual about her hair?”
“I wasn’t paying attention to her hair. It’s really hard to see your kid sister like that. I made myself look at her face, saw it was her, and made a point not to turn away. But, like I told the other detective, I think I would have noticed if someone had chopped off all Alice’s hair. I assume you have pictures of her like that. Can’t you check?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t have anything to compare the medical examiner’s photos against.”
“I’m sorry I sound so angry. It’s just that I don’t understand how this can possibly matter. Back when it all happened, I told the detectives that Alice had thought something was wrong. She told me she was being followed. Why couldn’t they find the guy?”