For two months, Jess had been working as a doorman at Vibrations, an establishment on the Westside Highway that euphemistically billed itself as a “gentlemen’s club.” Jess and Ellie preferred to call it the Shake Shack. The Shimmy Shed. Booty Barn. The Rubby Cubby. Titty Towers. The T and A Getaway. Even though Ellie hoped a better job was waiting for her brother somewhere down the road, a part of her wanted him to stay at Vibrations forever just so they could continue conjuring up alternative names for his employer.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “What would I have done this morning without a roommate to put together my backpack?”

“Did I get everything? I was a little creeped out going through your underwear drawer.”

“Perfect.” In truth, he had forgotten about the Kahr K9 that she now carried as a backup gun and the corresponding ankle holster, but she saw no reason to nitpick. “Seriously, Jess, it’s been nice having you here through all this.”

In reality, the stressful events of the last two months had little to do with Jess’s presence as her couch-inhabiting roommate. Jess tended to move several times a year, depending on his employment status, dating status, and the tolerance of his friends. In between the various moves, he frequently spent days or weeks in her living room. Given that it was Jess who’d helped Ellie find this rent-stabilized apartment in the first place, it only seemed right. Karma and all.

“You sure?” he asked.

“Mos def.”

“In that case, what the fuck is that shitastic smell?”

“Dinner. Indian.” She patted her full belly. “You missed out.”

“Jesus, why don’t you bury a piece of cheese beneath the sofa cushions while you’re at it? This room’ll stink for a week. Not to mention the increased risk of another upchuck incident after this morning’s festivities.”

Ellie jumped onto the sofa and pulled the window up a few inches.

“Thanks,” Jess said, plopping down next to her. “So what’d you do tonight? No, wait, let me guess.” He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to his temples like a mind reader. “You worked late on your case, came home and called Mom, then ate takeout and watched TV. How did I do?” he asked, opening his eyes.

“You’ve got the Ellie Hatcher schedule down to a T.”

“How’s Mom?” Jess asked.

Ellie shrugged. “You know.”

Jess knew precisely. That’s why he had a tendency not to be around when Ellie made her nightly phone calls to their mother in Wichita. Same reminiscing. Same self-pity about her present life as a bookkeeper and widow whose children didn’t visit enough. Same vodka-glazed voice. Somehow Jess managed to distance himself from all of it, but Ellie still felt the need to look after her mother despite the fourteen hundred miles lying between them.

“You’re not working tonight?” Ellie asked.

“Nah. I got the guys together for a couple hours of practice instead. I figured finding a dead body with my sister this morning was a pretty good excuse to play hooky.”

“You didn’t give them any details, did you?”

“Dead chick in the park was about all they needed to hear. Don’t worry. I’m not divulging any secrets of your case. Unless someone offers to pay. Now that would be different.”

She knew for a fact that her brother was only kidding. After the Wichita police charged William Summer with the College Hill Strangler murders, both Jess and Ellie had been hounded by the media for their stories. How would your father have felt about the arrest? What is it like to know he died without the answers you now have? Why are you so convinced that William Summer killed your father, despite the city’s insistence it was a suicide?

Ellie had played along with the game, hoping the media attention would put pressure on the city. Lord knew her mother could use the pension. But Jess’s position had been firm: Not even if they paid me a million dollars. And Ellie had known from the tone of his voice that he meant it. If Jess was going to be in the public spotlight, it was going to be as a rock god, not for anything having to do with policing or dead bodies.

“No Peter tonight?” Jess asked. Ellie arched an eyebrow in his direction. “Okay, for once, I wasn’t trying to be dirty. No Mr. Morse this evening?”

“No. There’s no Mr. Morse.”

“Problems in paradise?”

“I just sleep better alone, in my own apartment.”

“Yeah, right, because your bed’s so comfortable. I slept on that mattress while you were in Kansas, and it’s like lying in a giant taco shell.”

Ellie had never been particularly at ease discussing romantic relationships with her older brother. Jess, of course, seemed to have no problems whatsoever opening up about his various encounters, sometimes going so far as to describe the bizarre things his freakier girlfriends had suggested. Ellie usually tuned out and escaped to a mental happy place to avoid the images.

“We took a couple nights off so he can write,” she said.

“His novel?”

“I didn’t ask him for specifics, but I don’t think so.”

Peter had told her on their first date that he’d been struggling for years on the same manuscript-a novel about a Manhattan-based journalist living, like Peter, in Hell’s Kitchen. Now his writing had been rejuvenated by his idea for a true-crime book based on the First Date case.

“That little bitch would be dead if you hadn’t saved his scrawny ass.”

“Well, as he sees it, his ass wouldn’t have been thrust into the middle of the case in the first place if it hadn’t been for me.”

“So you’re supposed to be understanding while he uses this case to become a celebrity journalist?”

She shrugged. “I get where he’s coming from. He lived through it all too, and if he wants to write about it, that’s his prerogative. As long as I don’t get dragged into it.”

Ellie’d had enough of the spotlight for a lifetime. First it was the flurry of stories a year ago about the College Hill Strangler arrest. Then it was the First Date case. A month ago, when she sat down with Dateline for an exclusive interview about the crimes of William Summer, she had sworn she was done being a story.

“Maybe if you’re really lucky, the jacket of his book will be that class picture you love so much.”

“Fuck you twice,” Ellie said, flipping him the bird for good measure.

For some reason, the media covering the College Hill Strangler arrest had all seemed to glom on to the same goofy school photograph of Ellie in fifth grade, with bright shiny eyes and an enormous toothy grin, completely oblivious to her ridiculous bangs and the asymmetrical pigtails jutting from the sides of her head. To the best of Ellie’s recollection, she had cut her own bangs the night before, desperate to emulate the look of her most recent pop hero, Debbie Gibson.

After the media had unearthed the photograph, Jess had terrorized her for weeks, e-mailing her links to every online story he could find containing the image and taping copies of the picture in the most innocuous places-the inside of her medicine cabinet, the side of a milk carton, even a wallet-sized version around the grip of her service weapon. The reign of horror had finally ended after Ellie dug out an old picture of Jess in his Wham days. A white tank top emblazoned “Go Go” in pink neon letters would do nothing for Dog Park’s street cred.

“You know what we should do?” Jess said. “Let’s go out.”

“It’s already past ten o’clock.”

“No place worth going any earlier. Come on. You’re home. I’m home. I’m still totally torqued by what I saw this morning. When was the last time we went out-like really went out?”

Ellie hadn’t outgrown the stage of occasional late nights, but she was ready to hit the sack. She started to make her excuses, but then realized there was one place she wouldn’t mind checking out.

“Ever heard of a club called Pulse?”