jurisdiction.” He left, still grinning.
Suzanne ignored him. There were no jurisdictional issues—after the third similar murder, an FBI–NYPD task force had been formed. Her supervisor was administratively in charge, and she was the FBI point person on the case. Panetta was the senior ranking NYPD detective.
Tired of her hair flying in her face, Suzanne pulled a N.Y. Mets cap from her pocket and stuffed under it as much of her thick, tangled mess as possible. In her small notepad, she finished writing down her observations and the few facts she knew.
This victim, the fourth, was the first found in Brooklyn. Victim number one, a college freshman, had been killed up in Harlem on a street popular with squatters and the party crowd because every building was boarded up. That had been the eve of Halloween. The second victim had been discovered on the south side of the Bronx, ironically overlooking Rikers Island, on January second. The third victim—the one who brought the attention of the FBI to the serial murders—had been killed in Manhattanville, near Columbia University, eighteen days ago. By the time the task force was put together and evidence shared, for all practical purposes Suzanne had been working the case for less than two weeks.
Besides the one missing shoe and the age of the victims—all adult females under twenty-one—two other commonalities stood out: the victims had been suffocated with a plastic bag that the killer took with him, and they’d each been killed near an abandoned building with evidence of a recent party.
Secret or underground parties were nothing new. Some were relatively innocent, with drinking, dance music, and recreational drugs, while others were far more wild. Raves in the U.S. had started in Brooklyn in the abandoned underground railroad tunnels, and while they still existed, they’d peaked in popularity awhile back. The new fad was sex parties with heavy drinking and hard-core drugs. Music and dancing was a precursor to multi-partner anonymous sex. Even before these murders, there had been several drug-related deaths associated with sex parties. If the pattern held true, evidence inside this warehouse would show this Jane Doe had participated in the latter type of party, which Detective Panetta called “extreme raves.”
The press had dubbed the killer “The Cinderella Strangler” when someone in the know had leaked the missing-shoe detail to the press. It may not have been a cop who talked—there were dozens of people working any one crime scene—but most likely it had come from inside NYPD. The press didn’t seem to care that the victims weren’t strangled—they were asphyxiated. “The Cinderella Asphyxiator” just didn’t sound as good on the eleven o’clock news.
Suzanne had sent a memo to all private security companies in the five boroughs asking them to be more proactive in shutting down the rampant parties at abandoned sites, but it was like spitting in the wind. Though only two of the first three victims were college students, she’d contacted local colleges and high schools to warn students that there was a killer targeting women at these parties. Unfortunately, Suzanne suspected getting through the invincible it-won’t-happen-to-me mentality of young adults was next to impossible. She could almost hear their justification. We won’t go out alone. We won’t leave with a stranger. We won’t drink too much . Excuses for every day of the week, but when it was life or death, Suzanne didn’t understand why they couldn’t party in the relatively safe dorms and frat houses. Those venues had their own problems, but they probably didn’t have a serial killer trolling their halls.
“Suzanne!”
She looked up and waved to Vic Panetta as he strode over. She liked the wiry Italian. He was her exact height, five foot nine, and wore a new wool coat, charcoal gray to match his full head of hair. “Hi, Vic,” she said as he approached. “New coat?”
He
Suzanne ignored him. There were no jurisdictional issues—after the third similar murder, an FBI–NYPD task force had been formed. Her supervisor was administratively in charge, and she was the FBI point person on the case. Panetta was the senior ranking NYPD detective.
Tired of her hair flying in her face, Suzanne pulled a N.Y. Mets cap from her pocket and stuffed under it as much of her thick, tangled mess as possible. In her small notepad, she finished writing down her observations and the few facts she knew.
This victim, the fourth, was the first found in Brooklyn. Victim number one, a college freshman, had been killed up in Harlem on a street popular with squatters and the party crowd because every building was boarded up. That had been the eve of Halloween. The second victim had been discovered on the south side of the Bronx, ironically overlooking Rikers Island, on January second. The third victim—the one who brought the attention of the FBI to the serial murders—had been killed in Manhattanville, near Columbia University, eighteen days ago. By the time the task force was put together and evidence shared, for all practical purposes Suzanne had been working the case for less than two weeks.
Besides the one missing shoe and the age of the victims—all adult females under twenty-one—two other commonalities stood out: the victims had been suffocated with a plastic bag that the killer took with him, and they’d each been killed near an abandoned building with evidence of a recent party.
Secret or underground parties were nothing new. Some were relatively innocent, with drinking, dance music, and recreational drugs, while others were far more wild. Raves in the U.S. had started in Brooklyn in the abandoned underground railroad tunnels, and while they still existed, they’d peaked in popularity awhile back. The new fad was sex parties with heavy drinking and hard-core drugs. Music and dancing was a precursor to multi-partner anonymous sex. Even before these murders, there had been several drug-related deaths associated with sex parties. If the pattern held true, evidence inside this warehouse would show this Jane Doe had participated in the latter type of party, which Detective Panetta called “extreme raves.”
The press had dubbed the killer “The Cinderella Strangler” when someone in the know had leaked the missing-shoe detail to the press. It may not have been a cop who talked—there were dozens of people working any one crime scene—but most likely it had come from inside NYPD. The press didn’t seem to care that the victims weren’t strangled—they were asphyxiated. “The Cinderella Asphyxiator” just didn’t sound as good on the eleven o’clock news.
Suzanne had sent a memo to all private security companies in the five boroughs asking them to be more proactive in shutting down the rampant parties at abandoned sites, but it was like spitting in the wind. Though only two of the first three victims were college students, she’d contacted local colleges and high schools to warn students that there was a killer targeting women at these parties. Unfortunately, Suzanne suspected getting through the invincible it-won’t-happen-to-me mentality of young adults was next to impossible. She could almost hear their justification. We won’t go out alone. We won’t leave with a stranger. We won’t drink too much . Excuses for every day of the week, but when it was life or death, Suzanne didn’t understand why they couldn’t party in the relatively safe dorms and frat houses. Those venues had their own problems, but they probably didn’t have a serial killer trolling their halls.
“Suzanne!”
She looked up and waved to Vic Panetta as he strode over. She liked the wiry Italian. He was her exact height, five foot nine, and wore a new wool coat, charcoal gray to match his full head of hair. “Hi, Vic,” she said as he approached. “New coat?”
He
Similar Books
