It was a warm, dry night, and Loretta had decided not to check into one of the shelters, filled as they were with strung-out and angry women. She was not like the others. She just needed a break-a friend to take her in for a few weeks, an employer to take a chance on her-some way to get back on her feet after leaving the man whose beatings had caused her to miscarry the only child she’d ever managed to conceive.
When she reached the bottom of the unlit stairwell, she realized that the blankets were wrapped around something firm. Her hope was that it was a rug-something she could use as padding between her body and the filthy concrete. But when she pulled one of the blankets loose from the bundle, she felt something heavy shift beneath it. She tugged at the blanket with more force to get a better look.
Her screams awakened multiple Fourth Street residents. The 911 calls followed.
It took police three days to identify the body as Robbie Harrington, a twenty-four-year-old artist who paid her bills working at a tattoo parlor on the Lower East Side. She was last seen having a drink alone at a dive bar a few blocks from her job. She had been strangled with a brown leather belt that was left wrapped around her neck.
According to the log notes on the outside of the Harrington file, the active investigation had been put to rest about a year after Robbie’s body had been found, and her murder joined the legions of cold case files that gather dust until a new lead lands unexpectedly in the department’s lap. But three years ago, someone had brushed off the dust from the case. Three years ago, Detective Flann McIlroy had requested this file and read the same reports that Ellie had just finished reviewing for the second time at her desk.
She could see why the media reports of Chelsea Hart’s murder would have caught Bill Harrington’s attention. Like Chelsea, Robbie was a very young, white, blond female murdered after leaving a New York City bar, although her club of choice on the Lower East Side was significantly less glitzy than Pulse.
Ellie picked up the phone and dialed the number that Harrington had left that morning when he contacted the department’s tip line. She took note of the Nassau County area code, a change from the Pittsburgh number listed for the Harringtons at the time of their daughter’s death.
“Hello?” The man had a smoker’s voice.
“This is Detective Ellie Hatcher with the New York Police Department. I’m calling for Bill Harrington.”
“This is him.”
“You called the tip line about a recent case of ours?”
“I did. I’m feeling foolish about it now. I don’t know anything about that poor girl’s murder other than what I heard on the news. The minute I called, I regretted it. Some old man’s imagination could keep you from leads that might actually get you somewhere.”
Ellie realized that the man had probably experienced his share of false leads and crank calls eight years ago. “Why don’t you go ahead and tell me why you called.”
“This is going to sound crazy, but I had a dream the other night, and I think it was a message from Robbie. I wasn’t calling the tip line for myself. I was calling for her.”
IT TOOK THE MAN some effort to get the words out, but Ellie eventually put the picture together. Flann McIlroy had tracked Bill Harrington down out of the blue three years earlier, looking for additional information about Robbie’s murder. By then, Bill had retired, and he and his wife, Penny, were living in Mineola on Long Island. It had been a year since they’d communicated with anyone from the NYPD about their daughter’s case.
“At first, when the trail went cold, we’d call every month or so. Usually it was me, not Penny. Then every month became every season, and then just every August on the anniversary. Ultimately, it was our older daughter Jenna who convinced us that to move on with our lives, we needed to accept the probability that we would never know who took away our girl from us. I think that most of Penny’s reason for wanting to move closer to New York was to show that she hadn’t forgotten about Robbie. Being near to the city that Robbie had insisted on living in was my wife’s way of being close to our daughter after it was too late.”
“I’m sorry if my call has dredged all of this up for you again, Mr. Harrington.” Ellie hoped she had made the right decision contacting this man.
“I told you, it was the dream that did the dredging. I called you, remember?”
“You said in your message that Flann McIlroy told you he thought there were others. What did you mean by that?”
“That’s what he said when he called us three years ago. He had been working a few months before that on a different case and had pulled up a mess of cold cases looking for patterns, I guess. He told us it turned out the case he was working was some kind of a domestic thing. But in the process of looking at all those old cases, he thought he’d noticed some connections between Robbie’s death and a couple of other unsolved murders.”
“Did he tell you anything about the other cases?”
“No names or anything. He said the others were girls around the same age, and they had been out on the town before-well, before someone got to them.”
“Did he have any leads? I’m trying to understand why he would have called to tell you all this if he didn’t have any developments to report.”
“I remember exactly why he called. He said the same thing, in fact-that he was sorry for calling us and wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t think it might be important. It was the strangest thing, though. I couldn’t imagine how an offhand comment could possibly matter.”
An offhand comment. Ellie’s fingers involuntarily clenched the handset of the telephone as she braced herself for what Harrington was about to tell her. She did not want the nagging feeling that had pulled her from the bar tonight to go any further. She wanted Flann to have had another reason for calling.
“He wanted to talk to Penny about something she said when we identified Robbie’s body.”
Ellie knew immediately which single sentence in the voluminous police reports had triggered Flann’s phone call. It was the same line that had caused her to leave the bar earlier than she’d intended. Victim’s mother confirmed ID but said victim’s hair looked odd.
“What exactly did Detective McIlroy want to know?” Ellie asked. “Would it be better for me to speak directly with your wife?”
“Penny’s not in a position to answer any questions. She has early-onset Alzheimer’s. It’s advanced.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It is what it is. She recognizes me on good days but doesn’t understand why I look so old. The only silver lining I’ve been able to find in my wife’s condition is that she seems to have no memory of Robbie’s murder. She either forgets her daughters altogether, or remembers them as they were when they were young and we were still living as a family in Pittsburgh.”