“Nice.”
“It was till I saw hotel security huddled in the lobby like they’d just gotten a call from bin Laden himself. Sydney made me check what was going on.”
“Which was what?”
“Take a look for yourself.”
He used a plastic card key to open Room 509. A uniformed officer shook his head silently as he pressed past them on his way out. The gesture didn’t begin to convey the disgust Ellie felt when they walked into the hotel room.
The girl had been left hog-tied on her side, her pale skin gray against the bright white sheets as livor mortis set in. Black nylon rope bound her wrists and feet together at the small of her back. Smears of blood on the sheets and on her body suggested the girl had been cut as well.
On the pillowcase next to the woman’s head were blots of mascara, face powder, rouge, and lipstick the color of blackberries. Like a makeup mask, the smudged colors created the outline of a face with wide, pained eyes and a contorted mouth. It was a mask of terror.
“Jesus,” Ellie said.
“A housekeeper came in for evening turndown service at eight. There was a Do Not Disturb sign on the door when she circled the floor an hour earlier. She probably just missed the guy. She got one look at this and walked right on out and radioed security. I was up here before the first responders.”
Two crime scene unit officers scoured for physical evidence, one in the bathroom, one kneeling at the edge of the bed. The one near the bed looked up in their direction.
“The meat truck’s here. They were waiting for you before moving the body. We all set?”
Rogan shook his head.
“You know I back you up on everything, Rogan, but my last forty-eight hours have been crap. Do you really need me here to wait for Midtown South DTs to show up?”
“This is our case.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ll tell you in a sec, but I want your first impressions. I found a business card in her purse. Her name’s Katie Battle. She was a real estate broker for Corcoran. She put the four-hundred-dollar room on her credit card.”
Ellie was about to press him for an explanation, but could see there was no point. “I don’t know. My first guess would be rough sex gone bad. Bondage, pretty typical. A little too much pressure on the neck, it happens. But cutting? Pretty hard-core for the luxury hotel crowd.”
She moved closer to the body. “You mind?” The CSU officer kneeling on the floor rose and stepped aside. Ellie took his place, crouching to get a better look. She suppressed a gag reflex. “This woman was tortured.”
Rogan stood behind her, and she pointed as she spoke. “Her nipples have been slashed on both sides. And look here, beneath the blood, she’s got at least three cigarette burns on her chest.”
“Holy shit. Look at her hands.”
Ellie rose so she could see the other side of the woman’s body where her hands and feet were bound. Several of the girl’s fingers were bent at various angles.
“I counted at least six broken fingers here,” Rogan said.
“Broken bones. The bondage. Burning. Cutting. This wasn’t just a little light S&M getting out of control. She was tortured to death.”
“Bingo.”
“So now tell me: Why are we here?”
“Because that business card wasn’t the only thing I found in the vic’s purse. I checked out her BlackBerry. You remember those call logs I had from the Megan Gunther callout?”
“Sure.”
“Well, yesterday afternoon, Katie Battle called one of the numbers on that list.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
9:40 P.M.
“Hey, Rain Man. Get around this idiot, will you?”
Rogan swerved his BMW around a minivan with Vermont plates meandering in the right lane.
“How long are you going to keep up this Rain Man shit?”
Ellie looked at her watch. “It’s been about thirty minutes. I’m thinking about sixteen more years and I’ll be done.”
“Really, it’s no big deal.”
“Yeah, okay. Whatever. ‘I’m an excellent driver. Fifteen minutes to Judge Wapner. 82-82-82. 246 total.’”
“Look who’s the Rain Man.”
“I can’t believe, out of all the numbers on Megan Gunther’s call list, you recognized a match to Battle’s BlackBerry.”
“This is coming from the woman who still remembers the date of birth of the first perp she arrested?”
“And I’m pretty sure you called me a freak when I made the mistake of telling you about it.”
“You know how long I stared at those call logs trying to figure out who we needed to talk to first? I remembered a call that went from Megan’s landline to some number in Connecticut. But it was a onetime call, and four months ago at that, so we didn’t get to it yet. But I looked at the lists long enough to recognize those same digits when I saw them again.”
The number belonged to a cell phone owned by a woman named Stacy Schecter. Schecter had a Connecticut area code, but according to AT&T, the bills went to an apartment on the Lower East Side.
“A twenty-year-old-college student and a thirty-one-year-old real estate agent, both making phone calls to the same woman.” Rogan pulled the car to a stop in front of a fire hydrant on Avenue B and 4th Street. “So who’s Stacy Schecter going to turn out to be?”
Ellie pictured the scene back at the Royalton, thought about the room’s four-hundred-dollar price tag, and imagined a possible scenario.
“I’ve got a guess, but there’s only one way to find out.”
The brick building stood out from its other brick neighbors, thanks to layers of bright white paint interrupted by red, yellow, and blue accents on what were probably architecturally significant details on the building’s exterior. The overall effect was Miami Beach meets Sesame Street.
As they crossed the street, they spotted a man balancing an insulated red pack the size of a pizza box against his hip as he pressed the buzzer next to the building’s gated entrance. Rogan stepped up his pace to catch the gate before it closed. The deliveryman was unfazed by the sight of the two of them entering behind him. They followed him up the stairs, breaking off at the second floor.
Ellie recognized the Kate Bush song blasting inside Apartment 2B as a tune she and Jess had enjoyed in high school. She rapped her fist against the door. The music continued, and she tried again, this time harder. “Police. Open up.”
The volume decreased drastically, and Ellie pounded on the door again.
A matter-of-fact voice finally spoke to them from the other side of the door. “You don’t look like cops.”
Ellie held her badge up in front of the peephole, and then listened as three separate locks untumbled. A pair of black-lined eyes peered out to them over a safety chain. “Sorry. He usually waits till ten o’clock before bitching about the noise.”
“Who?”
“The misanthrope in 2C. I assume he’s the one who called you. It’s sort of his thing.”
“Are you Stacy Schecter?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“We’re not here about the music. Can you open up?”
