and a gym bag of clothes, very little in this world belonged to Jess Hatcher. The last she heard, though, Jess had a place to crash in Williamsburg.
“My buddy needed to find a roommate who actually paid some rent.”
“Funny how that works. And the job?” Against her better judgment, Ellie had helped Jess with yet another employment placement, this time as a short-order cook at a diner in the Garment District, not too far from the Midtown South precinct, where Ellie once worked a beat. The seventy-year-old Swede who ran the place always had a weakness for Ellie. Apparently not enough to hang on to the likes of Jess.
“The old man had a few too many morning shifts for me. It’s hard to fry up the bacon at six when you’re frying up a little rock and roll till four.” He threw in a little air guitar for comedic flair.
“It wouldn’t be that hard on you if you did your gig, went to work, then slept later.” Ellie fished the spare key from her purse. She always carried it when Jess asked to meet her.
“Chat time now?” Jess tucked the key in the front pocket of his blue jeans. He gave Ellie the same boyish smile she had been looking up to as long as she could remember. It was the grin of a bashful chipmunk, so out of place on Jess’s lined, unshaven face.
“I’ve got a murder case.”
The shy grin faded. “I thought you were ‘quite happy solving your everyday garden variety felonies.’”
It was the line she gave Jess and her mother whenever they worried that she didn’t have the psychological makeup to stick it out as a cop. For completely different reasons, it was also the line she used to give Bill, her ex- boyfriend, to settle his completely separate concerns. Bill wondered how long she was going to work her job. Her family wondered how long it would take before Ellie’s job started working her.
“I was happy. I
“You met her parents?”
Ellie ignored the question. “Another woman died exactly one year earlier. There are some commonalities.”
“You’re working a
“I’ll be fine. This is important, Jess. Some guy is out there right now, picking his next victim.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to be the one to stop him. You really feel like going down that road?”
Ellie knew what road he was talking about. “I won’t be like that. You can be a good cop without cutting yourself off from every other part of life.”
“And exactly what else do you have going in your life right now, El? You dumped Bill a year ago and have no prospects in sight.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You know what I mean.” Jess gave her two months of healing time after she moved out of Bill’s apartment but had since been trying to throw Ellie back into the dating world. They both knew the efforts were ridiculous, since most of Jess’s friends had the kinds of backgrounds that could land her in the middle of an I.A. investigation. And never mind that Jess couldn’t commit to anyone other than his fellow band members.
“Besides, what happens if you actually find the guy? What happens when a man who kills women for sport gets an eyeful of you? Have you thought about that?”
She hadn’t, but she also did not want to. She had imagined her father’s death too many times. She had pictured him, forced at gunpoint behind the wheel of his car for his own staged suicide. Had he known he was about to die? Had he thought of his family in those last seconds? She did not want to imagine herself like that – outmatched, resigned, absolutely finished.
She sipped her drink in silence, and Jess stopped fighting her. Since Ellie had followed her brother up to New York nearly ten years ago, they had learned to simply accept each other.
“So how’s Mom?” Jess finally asked.
“Wondering what you’re up to, as always.”
“And the case against the city?”
“Cluster fuck, as usual. The attorney’s not getting anywhere, and Summer and the WPD are both still saying there were only the eight victims.”
“The Wichita Police are the same bozos who insisted he stopped at six kills all those years ago. Now they say it’s eight because he confessed to two more. They never would have known about those if that arrogant prick hadn’t given them all the information himself. What makes them so sure he isn’t still playing games with them? I’m sure he gets off knowing that he’s got one more kill in his back pocket they don’t know about. A cop, to boot.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, Jess. I’m just telling you what I know.”
After the Wichita police finally arrested William Summer, the man formerly known only as the College Hill Strangler, Ellie had immediately retained yet another attorney to represent her mother in yet another claim against the city for her father’s pension. For a year and a half, the attorney had been fighting the city for access to the evidence collected against Summer. He had also been fighting the state for access to Summer himself. But until they found proof tying Summer to her father’s death, Jerry Hatcher remained a suicide, and the contrary suspicions carried by his family for the past decade and a half remained exactly that. Ellie hated the word
“I’m heading home. Want to come back with me to call Mom?”
“There’s an open mic night at The Charleston in Williamsburg.”
“And a ten-minute phone call to Mom will keep you from playing?”
“No, it’ll put me in a serious funk and screw up the rest of my night. I’ll pass.”
Part of Ellie wanted to do the same. But while Jess did what he wanted, Ellie did what she thought she was supposed to do. It had always been that way in the Hatcher family. Ellie swallowed down the rest of her drink, then left enough money with Josie to cover a few more rounds of her brother’s bourbon.
10
JESS HAD SAID HER LIFE WAS EMPTY EXCEPT FOR HER JOB. THE accusation was unfair. Her job was part of her life. It would be like saying Jess’s life was empty without his music, or that a mother’s life was empty without her children. Remove the things that matter, and any life looks empty.
Jess of all people knew how important her work was. It was precisely because the job was part of her identity that Ellie no longer lived with Bill. Despite what Jess thought, Bill wasn’t a bad guy. She’d met him, ironically enough, at one of Jess’s gigs in the West Village. Bill was immediately smitten and, after five months, persuaded Ellie to leave her rented room behind and move in with him. He was a hard worker, an investment banker who liked to enjoy the little time off that he had. And what he enjoyed the most – flattering enough – was having Ellie at his side, giving him her full attention. Bill assumed she’d happily leave the job once he offered to take care of her. He assumed that was what every woman wanted. He was envious, in fact, that women enjoyed that as a lifestyle option.
But, despite his every assurance that she didn’t need to work, Ellie insisted that she did. After a few months of wrangling, she realized Bill was spending more than a few nights after work having cocktails with a woman in his marketing department. Knowing Bill, Ellie was sure it wasn’t a physical affair. But she could see the end coming, so she made way for Bill to have the kind of future he wanted – one that didn’t involve the NYPD. She told him she was moving out, and he didn’t try hard to stop her. That’s what convinced her it was never the real thing. It had been far too easy, for both of them, to leave.
In a switch of roles, Jess was the one who helped Ellie get settled after the breakup. He had an old girlfriend who was grateful for a watch-cop on her Lower East Side sofa for two weeks, and, before Ellie knew it, Jess had found her this sublet of a friend of a friend of a friend. Ellie suspected the original tenant was lying on a beach somewhere in Fiji, but as long as she had a place of her own, she wasn’t going to shed a tear for her landlord. It was a big step down from Bill’s Upper East Side junior four, but it was all hers, and she could afford it. Barely. It
