Shadows Still Remain
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.
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PETER DE JONGE
SHADOWS
STILL REMAIN
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
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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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
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.
