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Shadows Still Remain
Peter De Jonge
From Peter de Jonge, who previously joined forces with the New York Times bestselling author James Patterson to write two No.1 bestsellers, comes a murder mystery set in the rotten core of the Big Apple.When a gifted student mysteriously disappears from a New York bar, Detective Darlene O'Hara unravels a chilling story of murder and deception.Running from a troubled past, Francesca Pena's come to New York to reinvent herself, earning a scholarship and the admiration of her more privileged friends. But none of them knows the real Francesca.Following a night of heavy drinking with three friends, she's reported missing. Detective Darlene O'Hara from New York's 7th Precinct and her partner Serge Krekorian set out to find her.A week later, Francesca's body is discovered severely mangled in a toilet by the East River. The case quickly becomes a high-profile hunt that the Homicide Unit are quick to snatch away.Covertly, O'Hara and Krekorian continue their own investigation into the city's seedy underbelly. But they have to move fast before Homicide make a devestating mistake that will leave the real killer free.From Peter de Jonge, who previously joined forces with theNew York Times bestselling author James Patterson to write two No.1 bestsellers, comes a tense and electric thriller set in part of the city the tourist never see.
PETER DE JONGE
SHADOWS
STILL
REMAIN
Copyright (#u0aa81585-1a05-5713-8672-487b82f70195)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in the USA by HarperCollinsPublishers, New York, NY, 2009
Copyright © Peter de Jonge 2009
Peter de Jonge asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9781847560568
Ebook Edition © 2009
Version: 2018-06-25
For my father, with affection and respect
…dusk do sprawl.
—JOHN BERRYMAN
Table of Contents
Title Page (#u29633ade-df84-5a32-a733-1d468e9b0d9c)
Copyright (#u8966e5c4-784a-5d39-a764-48d061b9b195)
Epigraph (#ub940310b-8fc3-599b-bad4-96501bcdbac3)
Chapter 1 (#u45c21906-1556-50a9-b79f-94790597ff1a)
Chapter 2 (#ube10e04f-792a-56bd-8464-375db4a820ae)
Chapter 3 (#u46a5e8ef-9ac2-5d56-8bf4-494730bc9ef4)
Chapter 4 (#u39bfb2b0-cf49-5aa0-8b64-9e94ed14df6c)
Chapter 5 (#u3bb96a76-ca52-51fa-9129-ffdd206b1150)
Chapter 6 (#u73209dca-fa8f-5af0-8b4f-07d255985b95)
Chapter 7 (#uf53f9d35-c41a-519a-9e8f-442d2babca81)
Chapter 8 (#uc9001e49-9d92-5cf7-84a2-662780127caf)
Chapter 9 (#u860c0753-86f3-5489-86c3-1987146488ed)
Chapter 10 (#ud2b2493c-a7e4-550c-a84f-203721ed4662)
Chapter 11 (#u253ed2fe-29d6-5885-ad0e-a4c71bd8902a)
Chapter 12 (#ueceed7ef-99b4-53cb-9304-b11702be25b5)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
1 (#u0aa81585-1a05-5713-8672-487b82f70195)
At 9:37 on Thanksgiving eve, nineteen-year-old Francesca Pena steps from the cramped vestibule of a crappy little apartment building in the East Fifties and hurries north. Model thin and shielded from the cold by only a vintage Adidas warm-up jacket, she leans into the icy wind that seems to hurl cars downtown and squints at the dreary commerce. This stretch of Second has never amounted to much. Tonight, with everyone on the way to families or bracing for their arrival, it’s essentially shut down. The only exceptions are a candy store franchise that just changed hands and an Irish pub with an advertised happy hour that runs from ten in the morning to seven at night.
Pena turns west at Fifty-second and with long athletic strides traverses another cheerless block. She passes six-story walk-ups, a basement dry cleaner, another cheerless pub, and the headquarters for the Salvation Army. As always, she winces at the gap-toothed sign with its missing A’s in S L V TION. An NYU sophomore on a track and cross-country scholarship, she has run through all kinds of neighborhoods, good and bad, but none as unsettling as this shabby bit of midtown fringe, where every endeavor feels dwarfed and mocked by the value of the real estate beneath it. As an antidote to the creepiness as much as the cold, Pena slips a chocolate malt ball into her mouth and picks up her already brisk pace. From Third on, the start of Midtown proper, there are no more random tenements or one-off businesses. There are only franchises and banks and office towers, and as Pena hurries through the emptied-out block, her bloodred jacket and short glistening black hair are the only colors. Thanks to the hotels, Lexington, at least, is well lit, and on the far corner is the glowing entrance to the subway. When the signal turns, Pena bounds across the street and down the greasy steps, and after an expertly timed swipe of her Metrocard, pushes through the turnstile like a finish line. She barely has time to throw away her used-up card before a southbound 6 train fills the station, and when she climbs up onto Bleecker, she’s so glad to be downtown, the air feels ten degrees warmer and for the first time in what seems like hours, she is aware of the night sky. Seeing that she has fifteen minutes to spare, she makes a quick detour to Tower Records, where she grabs the latest No Doubt CD for Moreal and the latest Britney for Consuela, and after enduring a withering eye roll from the pierced cashier, heads south again.
A topless Kate Moss, still freezing her tits off at thirty-one, presides over the intersection of Houston and Lafayette. Pena, very nearly as alluring, crosses under her, setting off flashbulb smiles from the cabbies lined up at the BP station. Safely across, she turns east on Prince. She passes the side of a building plastered with posters for sports drinks, bands, and video games, then hugs the high brick wall that borders the cemetery from Mulberry to Mott.
Compared with midtown, Nolita is barely reduced by the holiday exodus. Cars and pedestrians snake through the clogged streets, smokers huddle outside the bars, and as always there’s a crowd waiting to get into Café Habana. East of Elizabeth, however, the street goes black. On Bowery, the restaurant wholesalers are battened down as if for a storm. Cold, and anxious for her walk to be over, Pena turns east onto Rivington. Half a block later, at the end of a short tight alley, she spots her destination: the four-month-old restaurant/bar called Freemans.
2 (#u0aa81585-1a05-5713-8672-487b82f70195)
Freemans, styled like a ramshackle hunting lodge, is packed to the fake rafters, but Pena’s friends have staked out prime real estate at the corner of the bar. Like Pena, Uma Chestnut, Mehta Singh and Erin Case are NYU undergrads. Standing side by side, they are so photogenic and multihued, that if you cropped out the three-thousand-dollar designer bags and serious jewelry, they could be showcasing their racial diversity for a college catalog. In a sense they are.
Pena’s arrival sets off a high-pitched eruption of girly glee. When it subsides, Chestnut, who believes with some justification that she reigns over everything below Fourteenth Street, sets off a second by announcing “Cocktails!” Singh, who is taller, curvier and darker than Pena and possesses an equally electric smile, asks for a Sidecar, and the porcelain-skinned Case, whose pink cable-knit sweater is somewhat misleading, a Beefeater Martini—dirty. “Dirty indeed,” says Chestnut, whisking an intentionally greasy bang off her forehead. “And how about you, Francesca?”
“A Malibu and Seven,” says Pena. “You can take the girl out of the barrio, but you can’t take the barrio out of the girl.”
“Why would anyone want to,” says Singh.
The girls present their fake IDs, and Chestnut places the orders, including her own signature Lower Manhattan. When all the cocktails have been mixed, signed for and delivered, Case carefully raises her tiny infinity pool of gin and vermouth. “To Thanksgiving,” she says. “Everyone’s favorite excuse for a five-day bender.”
“And to all your relatives who got seasick on the Mayflower,” adds Pena. This sets off enough laughter that cocktails have to be steadied before they can be sipped again.
Time flies. Particularly when you’re young and beautiful and getting wasted. For four hours, the four pals don’t stop cracking each other up, and while occasionally a brave boy dares to breach the perimeter, they mostly flirt with each other. And although Chestnut’s father just had a retrospective at MOMA and Singh’s is the largest commercial landlord in New Delhi and Case was raised like a hothouse flower in eighteen rooms on Park Avenue, it’s Pena, the scholarship girl from western Massachusetts, who is the undisputed star of the group. It is her approval and messy snorts of laughter the others vie for.
Chestnut, Singh and Case have elaborate Thanksgiving dinners to wake up for the next morning. By 2:30 a.m., they’re inclined to call it a night. But not the long-distance runner Pena, who by way of explanation nods discreetly toward an older guy at the end of the bar.
“Tell me you’re joking,” says Singh. “He looks like rough trade.”
“Doesn’t he, though?”
“You’re coming with us if we have to drag you out,” says Case.
But Pena crosses her arms and shakes her head like a stubborn toddler, and after a final flurry of hugs and kisses, Chestnut, Singh, and Case have no choice but to abandon her. As soon as they’re out the door, Pena’s posture stiffens. In the tiny bathroom near the kitchen, she splashes her face with cold water, and when she returns to the bar, so-called rough trade has strategically relocated to the neighboring stool.
“I’ve been watching you all night,” he says. “Am I finally going to get a chance to talk to you?”
