Excerpt: Dead Connection

The following is an excerpt from the book Dead Connection
by Alafair Burke
Published by Henry Holt and Company, LLC; July 2007;$19.95US/$24.95CAN;
978-0-8050-7785-8
Copyright © 2007 Alafair Burke



1

The man's first look at the newspaper item was a casual one, followed
immediately by a more deliberate perusal. But it was the photograph
accompanying the story that had him transfixed.

Caroline Hunter had preoccupied his thoughts in recent weeks, but this was
his first opportunity to reflect on her appearance. To his surprise, she
reminded him of a girl he had worked hard not to think about for a very long
time. So proud. So uppity. Caroline Hunter had the look of a woman convinced
of her own intelligence, a woman who assumed she could do whatever she
wanted -- get whatever she wanted -- without any repercussions.

The man wondered if Caroline Hunter had any regrets as those two bullets
tore through her body. Maybe for some women it took dying in the street like
a dog to reflect upon one's decisions and the effects they have on others.
He felt his muscles tense, crumpling the pages of newsprint in his hands.

Then he placed the paper neatly onto the breakfast table, took another sip
of tea, and looked down at the muted traffic in the street below the window.
He smiled. Fate was presenting him an even more promising opportunity than
he had understood when he first spotted the article. Details remained to be
worked out, but he was certain of one thing: Caroline Hunter was only the
beginning. There would be more stories, just like this one, about women just
like her.




Three hundred and sixty-four days later, Amy Davis finished a second glass
of red wine, pondering which excuse she should exploit to call it a night.
She should have known better than to agree to a first date that started at
eleven o'clock. Even by New York City standards, such a late invitation was
an unequivocal sign that the guy wanted to avoid the cost of dinner but
leave open the possibility of a spontaneous one-nighter.

But then the guy -- he claimed his name was Brad -- had suggested meeting at
Angel's Share, not one of the usual meat markets. Amy still thought of the
cozy lounge as her secret oasis, tucked so discreetly inside a second-floor
dive Japanese restaurant on Stuyvesant Street. She decided to take Brad's
awareness of the place as a sign. Then she looked out her apartment window
and saw the snow, the first of the season. To Amy, the first flakes of
winter were magical, almost spiritual. Watching them fall to the quiet
square of grass beneath the oversized bay windows at Angel's Share would be
fantastic, much more satisfying than observing them from the fire escape of
her fifth-floor Avenue C walk-up.

And so Amy had taken a risk. None of the previous risks had panned out, but
that didn't mean that Brad wouldn't. Besides, all she had to lose was
another night at home with Chowhound the persian cat, falling asleep to the
muted glow of her television. Three weeks earlier, she had committed herself
to this process, and nights like this were the price she would have to pay
if she were ever going to find The One.

She knew the date was a mistake precisely one second after she heard the
voice behind her at the bar's entrance. "Are you Amy?" It was a nice voice.
Deep, but not brusque. Friendly, but calm. For exactly one second, she was
optimistic. For that one second, she believed that Brad with the good voice,
who was familiar with Angel's Share, whose first date with her fell with the
first snow, might just make a good companion for the evening, if not more.

Then the second passed, and she turned to meet the man who went with the
voice. The truth was, Amy did not care about looks. People said that all the
time, but Amy actually meant it. Her ex-boyfriend -- perhaps he had never
become a boyfriend, but the man she'd most recently dated -- had been
handsome as hell, but by the time they were through, she found him
repulsive. This time, she was putting looks aside to focus on the qualities
that counted.

Brad's face was not unattractive, but neither was it familiar -- a surprise
to Amy since they had exchanged multiple pictures over the last week.
Internet daters posted photographs, so, even though Amy did not particularly
care, she looked. It was nice, after all, to have a visual image to go with
the instant messages and e-mails. This face in front of her, however, did
not match the image she'd carried.

As Brad squeezed through a small group of people to ask the host for a
table, she mentally shuffled through the pictures he'd sent and realized
that in most, his face had been obscured -- sunglasses on both the fishing
boat and the ski slopes, a hat on the golf course, a darkened dinner table
at some black tie event. One head shot had been pretty clear, but even a
toad could eke out one good picture. In retrospect, she realized she had
used that one good picture to fill in the blanks on the rest.

Once they were seated, Amy tried to put her finger on precisely what was
different. The face was puffier. Older, too. In fact, Brad looked much older
than the thirty-eight years he claimed in his profile. Sure, she might have
shaved off a couple of years herself, but she was talking much older in his
case. She realized there was no point in getting bogged down in the
differences. He looked completely different than she had envisioned, and
that was that.

By the end of the first glass of wine, she knew it wasn't just Brad's face
that didn't match up to his online counterpart. According to Brad's profile,
he was a gourmand and a red wine junkie. She allowed him to order first,
afraid she might embarrass herself with a passé selection. After he
requested a cheap Merlot mass-produced in California, she proceeded to ask
for a Barbera d'Asti. If Brad was going to lie, then she was going to rack
up Piedmont prices on his tab.

He talked about work while he drank, pausing only to take big gulps from his
glass. Commercial litigation. A motion for summary judgment. Something about
jurisdiction and somebody who lacked it. An appeal. His monologue would have
been boring at eleven thirty in the morning, but Amy found it sleep-inducing
at this late hour.

She tried shifting the conversation, resorting to all of the subjects he'd
gone on about in his e-mails -- independent films, running, his photography
hobby. Each topic was a bust, sparking nothing other than a brief expression
of surprise on Brad's unfamiliar face. Reaching for her coat, Amy did not
see Brad order the second round until it was too late.

Nearly an hour into the date, Brad finally took a break from his running
legal commentary. "I'm sorry. I've been working so hard it's tricky to turn
it off sometimes. I should ask you about yourself."

The brief glimmer of hope Amy allowed herself was dashed when he proceeded
to make good on his perceived obligation. "So which publishing house do you
work for?" he asked.

"Pardon me?"

"You're an editor, right? Which house?" Her confusion must have been
apparent. "Oh, right. No, you're a . . . a fund-raiser. For the Museum of
Modern Art, right? So how's that going for you?"

It was going, she thought, much better than this date. The jerk had actually
mixed her up with some other stupid woman he was duping online. The wine was
good, and the view of the snow was wondrous, but nothing was worth this
humiliation.

She selected her excuse and went with it. "I know I said I was up for a late
night, but I took a painkiller earlier for this problem I'm having with my
rotator cuff." She rubbed her right shoulder for effect. "With the wine on
top of it, I'm feeling a little loopy."

"Let me walk you home," Brad suggested brightly, clearly spotting an
opportunity in her feigned high.

"No, really, I'm fine. I'm just around the corner," she lied. She might be
an idiot for signing on to this endeavor, but she knew better than to tell
any of them where she lived.

Amy didn't bother waiting once he signaled for the check. She yawned
conspicuously and began to maneuver out of the booth as she pulled on her
coat. Before Brad could rise for the awkward good-night peck, she shook his
hand abruptly and thanked him for the wine he had yet to pay for.

Then, after a quick scramble down the narrow staircase, through the exit of
the Japanese restaurant, she was out of there. She was alone, free of that
lame excuse for a date. It struck her then that two or three times a week,
for the last three weeks, she had reached the end of the evening with this
same feeling. She had made a ridiculous pact with herself to "get out
there," to finally meet a man she could see for more than a month, to
finally meet a man she could trust and even love. But, at the end of a night
like this, she was always happier once she was able to get out of there.
After an hour with Brad, the idea of watching snow from her fire escape didn't
sound half bad.

Amy walked through the East Village, smoking a Marlboro Light, with a new
appreciation of her solitude. She was a thirty-one-year-old woman living in
Manhattan. She had a painless enough job in a kick-ass museum. She got to
see mind-blowing art every day. She had fifty-one different delivery menus
in her kitchen drawer and really good hair. She had a big fat persian cat
named Chowhound. Tomorrow she would treat herself to some street shopping,
where only in this city could twenty bucks buy you a seemingly authentic
designer handbag. There were worse things in life than being on her own.

The snow was starting to stick by the time she reached the alphabet blocks
on the Lower East Side. Amy's father still didn't approve of her choice of
neighborhoods, but her parents had been overprotective ever since that
problem back home. She kept telling him that times had changed since he
formed his impressions of the city. Every location in Manhattan was safe
now, and the Lower East Side was all she could afford.

She had her key ring in her hand and was already unzipping her coat when she
heard the noise from the alley. Mew.

"Chowhound?" she called out, peering into the dark void between two
buildings. She looked up at her fifth-floor window above, left open during
the last cigarette before she walked out for the night.

Copyright © 2007 Alafair Burke

Author
A former deputy district attorney in Portland, Oregon, Alafair Burke now
teaches criminal law at Hofstra Law School and lives in New York City. She
is the daughter of the acclaimed crime writer James Lee Burke. Her three
novels in the Samantha Kincaid series, Judgment Calls, Missing Justice, and
Close Case, are available in paperback from St. Martin's Press. Dead
Connection is her first thriller featuring Ellie Hatcher.

For more information, please visit www.alafairburke.com.