below her chin. The man recognized the girl from the previous night. She’d been wearing a short yellow dress.
“All we heard before we came here was how the city had changed from the old days, how it was good for tourists now. That it was safe for us to come here alone. Now I wish we’d stayed home.”
The clip ended, and the attractive news anchor returned to the screen. “Police are still investigating. We’ll bring you more, right here at W AB C, as the story unfolds.”
The gray-haired male anchor on the left side of the screen used the Indiana girl’s comment about good ol’ safe New York to segue into another crime story, this time a home invasion in Westchester.
The man flipped through the other networks, searching for additional reports about the early morning discovery of the dead body in East River Park. Nothing. Either the other stations were all finished with their coverage, or only the AB C affiliate had broken the story.
Chelsea Hart. A college student from Indiana. He thought about the driver’s license he’d grasped between his fingers only a few hours earlier on his living room floor. Jennifer Green. Date of birth in 1983.
So she had been from Indiana, but the license wasn’t real after all. She was only nineteen years old. Her name was not Jennifer Green. And she’d been a college student from Bloomington.
The realization that he’d been ignorant of these basic details about the girl struck him as bizarre. He was the one who’d slid off her tight black pants and seen the purple birthmark on her right hip, peeking out from beneath those silky bikini panties. He was the one who’d run his fingers through those long blond waves before cutting them off to take home with him. He was the one who’d felt the firmness of her veins beneath the soft pale skin around her throat.
A lizard appeared on the screen to push insurance. As he hit the mute button on the television, the man wished he’d had more time last night. He had rushed with Chelsea, formerly known as Jennifer Green. He would take more time with his next project, once he found her. To his surprise, he was already anticipating it.
He still needed to put in another couple of hours of work, but he was rested from the quick catnap he’d caught after his meeting. He would start looking tonight.
CHAPTER 13
THE PERSPECTIVE OF the camera continually changed, but the images always came to her in black and white. Sometimes Ellie watched the scenes unfold through the eyes of the victims. On other nights, she was a neutral and omnipotent observer floating overhead.
This time, she was pushing open the unlatched heavy oak door of a prairie-style home. She walked through the living room, passing in front of a fireplace, and then turned into a long hallway that led to the bedrooms.
She found the boy’s body first, laid out on his twin bed with a plastic shopping bag over his head, a rope around his throat. His mother was in the master bathroom, blindfolded in the tub with a bandanna. Ellie knew that the woman had been tortured before being drowned—held repeatedly under water to the brink of suffocation, then revived, only to be submerged again.
As she descended the basement stairs, she tried to block the image that she knew would come next. William Summer had saved the twelve-year-old daughter for last.
Just as Ellie caught sight of the soiled rag next to the girl’s body, a rumbling sound pulled her away from the nightmare. She opened hereyes and remembered she was alone in her Murray Hill living room. According to her cable box, it was 9:58. She had dozed off watching a show about Dexter, a wily serial killer who targeted people who truly deserved to die for their own heinous wrongdoings. If only real murderers were so delightfully discriminating.
She grabbed her vibrating cell phone from the coffee table and flipped it open.
“Hatcher.”
“Morse.”
It was Peter. “Hey. I didn’t check the screen first.”
“Guess what I
“All we heard before we came here was how the city had changed from the old days, how it was good for tourists now. That it was safe for us to come here alone. Now I wish we’d stayed home.”
The clip ended, and the attractive news anchor returned to the screen. “Police are still investigating. We’ll bring you more, right here at W AB C, as the story unfolds.”
The gray-haired male anchor on the left side of the screen used the Indiana girl’s comment about good ol’ safe New York to segue into another crime story, this time a home invasion in Westchester.
The man flipped through the other networks, searching for additional reports about the early morning discovery of the dead body in East River Park. Nothing. Either the other stations were all finished with their coverage, or only the AB C affiliate had broken the story.
Chelsea Hart. A college student from Indiana. He thought about the driver’s license he’d grasped between his fingers only a few hours earlier on his living room floor. Jennifer Green. Date of birth in 1983.
So she had been from Indiana, but the license wasn’t real after all. She was only nineteen years old. Her name was not Jennifer Green. And she’d been a college student from Bloomington.
The realization that he’d been ignorant of these basic details about the girl struck him as bizarre. He was the one who’d slid off her tight black pants and seen the purple birthmark on her right hip, peeking out from beneath those silky bikini panties. He was the one who’d run his fingers through those long blond waves before cutting them off to take home with him. He was the one who’d felt the firmness of her veins beneath the soft pale skin around her throat.
A lizard appeared on the screen to push insurance. As he hit the mute button on the television, the man wished he’d had more time last night. He had rushed with Chelsea, formerly known as Jennifer Green. He would take more time with his next project, once he found her. To his surprise, he was already anticipating it.
He still needed to put in another couple of hours of work, but he was rested from the quick catnap he’d caught after his meeting. He would start looking tonight.
CHAPTER 13
THE PERSPECTIVE OF the camera continually changed, but the images always came to her in black and white. Sometimes Ellie watched the scenes unfold through the eyes of the victims. On other nights, she was a neutral and omnipotent observer floating overhead.
This time, she was pushing open the unlatched heavy oak door of a prairie-style home. She walked through the living room, passing in front of a fireplace, and then turned into a long hallway that led to the bedrooms.
She found the boy’s body first, laid out on his twin bed with a plastic shopping bag over his head, a rope around his throat. His mother was in the master bathroom, blindfolded in the tub with a bandanna. Ellie knew that the woman had been tortured before being drowned—held repeatedly under water to the brink of suffocation, then revived, only to be submerged again.
As she descended the basement stairs, she tried to block the image that she knew would come next. William Summer had saved the twelve-year-old daughter for last.
Just as Ellie caught sight of the soiled rag next to the girl’s body, a rumbling sound pulled her away from the nightmare. She opened hereyes and remembered she was alone in her Murray Hill living room. According to her cable box, it was 9:58. She had dozed off watching a show about Dexter, a wily serial killer who targeted people who truly deserved to die for their own heinous wrongdoings. If only real murderers were so delightfully discriminating.
She grabbed her vibrating cell phone from the coffee table and flipped it open.
“Hatcher.”
“Morse.”
It was Peter. “Hey. I didn’t check the screen first.”
“Guess what I
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