The Jane Doe of Gramercy Park

On a drizzly Tuesday evening in August at approximately 7:12 p.m. (or so the hotel clerk would later tell authorities), a young woman no one had ever seen or heard of before strode into the Bellemore Hotel and Suites in Gramercy Park, Manhattan, New York City, 10010.

Her clothes were nondescript - a simple linen sheath dress, leather pumps with a ½-inch heel, and a long flowing coat that belled around her like a superhero’s cape, all in black, all purchased from a small shop in Copenhagen, all with their tags meticulously cut out so as to remove any trace of their origin. She had a Glock 19 holstered at her thigh, but nobody needed to know that. And of course, the one accessory she was never without - polarized lens blackout sunglasses that shielded her conspicuously ice-blue eyes from sight. Her hair this week was styled in a dark, spiky pixie cut. Just last week it had been a waist-length blonde and her outfit a crushed velvet pantsuit that was some shade of lavender - pity, really; she’d particularly liked that one, but once it had served its purpose it was dumped into the incinerator with all the others. But the sunglasses remained.

She approached the check-in desk and presented her papers having no idea who she was this week. Call it tradition or superstition; she never knew her identity until someone else announced it for her.

The clerk, a 40-something brunette with greying roots in desperate need of attention and thick flaking concealer under her eyes, smiled up at her. “Welcome to The Bellemore, Mrs. Fairley. You’ll be with us for three nights, correct?”

Her driver’s license was passed back across the counter, and she studied it for the first time. Constance Fairley. So that was the nom du jour. As good as any, she supposed. She stifled a chuckle as she cast a furtive glance over her shoulder at the sour-faced suit carefully watching her from across the lobby.

“That’s right, as will my husband… Shannon.” Another quick peek at the suit revealed a full-on scowl. Constance smirked. She didn’t know the man’s name any more than she did her own. No harm in having a little fun with it.

“Very good, Mrs. Fairley. Here are your keycards as well as a brochure featuring some of our neighborhood attractions and highlights…”

The clerk’s voice faded out as Constance’s tactical instincts kicked in. She scanned the atrium for anyone or anything that looked the slightest bit out of place, mentally mapped out escape routes, and identified potential sniper perches.

“...You’re in Room 3841, so take the elevator on the left to the 38th floor, and make a right down the hallway,” the clerk was saying. “There’s an ice machine a few doors away, and the pool is on the 4th floor. The spa is just off the lobby here and opens at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday–”

Constance snapped back to attention and offered her most genial smile. “Thank you…” she spied the brass nametag on the woman’s lapel. “...Heidi. It’s been a long trip. I think I’ll just go up and lay down for a bit.”

Heidi beamed. Constance lifted her only luggage, a leather satchel and a slim garment bag, and headed to the elevator. She passed her room card over the sensor and pressed the button for the 38th floor. Just as the doors were closing, a gloved hand slid between them. The suit stepped in, the doors closed, and the elevator began its ascent. He stared directly ahead, not bothering with eye contact.

“You understand what you’re here to do.” It was a statement, not a question.

Constance glanced over and studied the suit in profile. He had a receding hairline, a birdlike nose, and crinkles at the corners of his eyes that some might have referred to as laugh lines, although she had serious doubts as to whether the man had experienced a moment of mirth in his life.

“Sure, Shan. But we’ve still got a couple hours until sunset. What say we take advantage of the Bellemore’s amenities, order a bottle of Dom, and get a little freaky on those 1,200 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets? I bet we could keep the laundry busy with the stains we’d–”

The suit’s patience seemed to have reached its limit. “Shut the fuck up, 17. Make sure you’ve got your shit together or you’re out. I have no problem wiping you from the system.”

“Okay, Shannon. Whatever you say.” Constance pressed her lips together and shored up her well-practiced indifference, but the use of her assigned number, as well as the idea of being erased from existence, rattled her.

As far as anyone knew, she’d never existed at all. Her earliest memories were of a large home filled with children like her, each one just off-center enough that the foster homes didn’t want them. The floorboards were cold, the furnishings bare, and the food barely palatable. One by one the other children, the only friends she’d ever known, disappeared until she was the only one left. By the time she was 9, she’d been thrust into an improvised and accelerated education of sorts. She was roused from sleep as soon as the sun disappeared below the horizon and wasn’t allowed to rest until the first traces of fire licked the sky in the morning. In the interim, she was led into pitch-black rooms without a hint of light. At first, they simply left her to sit, no sound, no direction, no sensory input whatsoever, and she spent the hours making a game of trying to adjust her eyes to the gloom, waiting for the smaller details to come into focus. As the days, months, and years passed, she found her eyesight growing sharper and sharper, right up to Night 17.

The Crew didn’t have any sort of calendar - at least not one they’d shared with her - so Constance had developed a sort of internal clock that she did her best to track her days with. She was thrown into the room one day when she was, by her best estimation, 15 years old. She had no idea what time it was, but given the past weeks’ routine she imagined that it was about an hour before she’d be released. It was as natural as breathing by now; her eyes sought out the pinpricks of irregularity, and she found the seams in the sheet metal comprising the walls, the rivets binding the panels together, and a fuzzy anomaly she’d never quite been able to bring to the forefront that had always driven her within an inch of her already fragile sanity. But on this night, Night 17, she saw something different.

She stared at the blip in the darkness, her eyes stinging with the strain as she focused on something she wasn’t even sure was there. But then it grew. It pulsed in the void like a heartbeat, and as she trained her vision on it, it somehow blossomed into a beacon, blinking red. She watched, mesmerized, as the blip came into sharp relief, its borders well-defined. It was a button. She stood, crossed the room, and pressed it. The doors snapped open, light flooded the room, and the Crew knew she was ready. After that, the darkness didn’t seem to matter so much to them anymore.

Over the next several years, they woke her daily at dawn, sometimes earlier, and put her on a schedule. The early morning light was unbearable, so they’d crafted her custom sunglasses to combat the effects of the sun, and she was able to train with the most advanced martial arts instructors the world had never known, which was a deliberate distinction. She learned to operate high-powered rifles as though they were an extension of her own arm, and she developed hawklike instincts when it came to sights, sounds, or any other irregularity that might spell danger.

The elevator gave a soft, genial bing as it arrived on the 38th floor, and the doors slid open.

“After you, schnookums,” Constance smirked as she dipped an exaggerated bow before Shannon, who sneered at her and stormed up the hallway to jab his keycard in the electronic lock. Once inside, he wasted no time in unpacking and staging the required equipment: the tripod attachment, the scope, the flashlight, and of course the gun itself - a Barrett M82A1 with a full mag, although Constance knew she’d only need one shot. She

The suite was spacious and lined with floor-to-ceiling windows boasting views of Roosevelt Island to the east and Union Square to the west. The most critical viewpoint, however, was situated about a mile due north-northeast, and her quarry was at this very moment checking into Suite 3105 at the Park Avenue Elite Hotel, where Shannon was currently aiming the crosshairs.

The target was a mystery to her. She had no idea who he was or what he’d done, only that the Crew wanted him gone. He stood between them and whatever it was they were after, and that was all Constance knew or needed to know. She dug into her backpack and retrieved a set of binoculars, peering into the room. The rain had by now sputtered into a delicate mist. It was almost too easy - there was a dining table set up against the windows facing toward here, which was where the target would meet the Crew’s contact. The mission: take out the target, at any and all costs.

“We’re set,” said Shannon, backing away from the strategically placed rifle as though it were made of glass and bagging up the extraneous accessories. “Get it done before dawn. And don’t miss, 17.”

“Piss off, Shan,” Constance shot back, never lifting her gaze from the binoculars. “You can get on back to the playpen now. Mama’s got a job to do.”

She couldn’t deny the petty thrill it gave her to hear Shannon’s muttered “bitch” as he gathered his things and slammed the door behind him.

Finally alone in the room. Constance was able to settle in and breathe a sigh of relief. The suite across the way remained dark. A quick glance at her watch told her that it was now 7:54. The meeting was set for 8:30 p.m, well after the last remnants of twilight had slipped away. Snippets of a song Constance had heard years before crept unbidden into her mind.

Heavenly shades of night are falling

It's twilight time

Out of the mist your voice is calling

'Tis twilight time

Constance screwed her eyes shut and inwardly cursed the earworm that was sure to stay with her for the rest of the night before shimmying across the floor and getting into position behind the rifle as the shadows set in. She peered through the scope and settled in for the wait.

This part was easy. She knew how to sit in the dark and wait. She’d trained her whole life for this. She didn’t know how her life would change after tonight, but the one thing she could be certain of was that it would change, and that was, at the end of the day, the thing she wanted most.

At 8:02 p.m., the lights in the suite switched on, and a man entered. He was short, portly, dark-haired, dressed in an ill-fitting beige suit and dragging a small wheeled suitcase behind him. He mopped his brow with a handkerchief, casting furtive glances around every corner.

The next thing that happened was something she hadn’t expected.

A smiling woman followed behind him. She was tall and beautiful, wearing a chic pantsuit in deep burgundy. Her dark hair fell in soft waves just past her shoulders, and her makeup looked as though a Hollywood artist had prepared her for a talk show interview. But this wasn’t the most disturbing part.

Wrapped around the woman’s right hand was that of a little girl. She was about 6 or 7, as best Constance could guess. She wore pajamas emblazoned with unicorns, and the hand not holding onto her mother clutched a small, careworn teddy bear. Through the scope, Constance could see that the child was irritable, yawning and rubbing at her eyes with a fisted hand. The woman gently ushered the little girl into the bedroom to the left and tucked her into bed, then returned to speak with her husband, exchanging what Constance could judge through their postures were tense words. He removed his suit jacket, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and stabbed a decisive finger toward the bedroom door. The woman appeared to plead with him, and he immediately squared up to her. She dwarfed him in height, but she flinched as though she were afraid. When she appealed to him again, he reared back and slapped her across the face.

Bastard.

The woman crumpled to the floor, holding her hand to her cheek, and scrambled to her feet, dashing into the bedroom and slamming the door shut, locking it behind her.

The man turned and slammed his fist on the table, then sank into a nearby chair and buried his head in his hands, shoulders shuddering. After a moment, he stood and crossed to the minibar, loosening his tie and pouring himself a shot of what appeared to be whiskey with shaking hands, spilling half the liquid onto the Berber carpet. He tossed it back and immediately refilled it, more carefully this time, then returned to the dining table to await his fate. A glance at the bedroom showed Constance that the woman had laid down on the bed beside her daughter, and both had fallen asleep.

The man himself had laid his head down and appeared to doze off when a polite knock sounded at the door.

Constance checked her watch. 8:29 p.m.

She pulled herself taut, muscles tensed in anticipation. Her finger hovered near the trigger just shy of gripping it - she had no intention of letting a muscle cramp foil her mission.

The man stood and hurriedly went to the door. The guest he admitted was tall with a shock of unruly blonde hair. His posture was stiff, his manner threatening. The men sat at the table and engaged in what would appear to the casual viewer to be small talk, but to Constance’s trained eye there was an obvious undercurrent of aggression.

She checked her watch again. 8:30 p.m.

She remembered Shannon’s instructions. She centered herself, aimed at the flustered man, stared through the crosshairs, and rested her finger on the trigger.

Then the bedroom door opened.

The little girl wandered into the dining room, still clutching her teddy bear, and crying. She nuzzled into her father’s embrace to relieve the nightmare she’d obviously suffered. He turned to her, and the man across the table stood up, reached into his jacket pocket, and withdrew a Beretta Constance had failed to notice.

Stupid.

The man raised the gun and pointed it at the little girl. She screamed, and her father wrapped a protective arm around her, holding a staying hand up to his companion.

Constance’s stomach twisted. Mama’s got a job to do.

She took a deep inhale, set her sight, curled her finger around the trigger, and fired.

The glass in the dining room window shattered and the little girl screamed again. Her father reflexively coiled around her. The balding man’s arm shook, then dropped to his side. His body folded from beneath him and he collapsed to the floor, dead.

The woman shot out of the bed and ran into the dining room, hugging her husband and daughter to her for all she was worth once she realized they were unhurt. She then hurried back to the bedroom phone and dialed, which resulted in an EMS response some 6 minutes later, by Constance’s watch.

8:42 p.m

Constance stood on shaky legs and wobbled to the bed. She collapsed onto the mattress, vaguely aware that she was still dressed in her sheath dress and pumps. The thought made her chuckle, although she knew the hell that was going to rain down on her at any moment. Smiling to herself, she jotted a note on the hotel stationery and laid back to await her fate.

12:22 a.m.

Guests on the 38th floor of the Bellemore Hotel and Suites in Gramercy Park reported hearing a gunshot, then another just a few seconds later.

6:37 a.m.

The maintenance supervisor, along with a front desk clerk named Heidi, rushed to Room 3841 and used the master keycard to open the door. Nothing could have prepared them for what they saw inside.

A middle-aged man in a suit with a receding hairline and a birdlike nose lay on the floor, dead from what the coroner would ultimately determine was a gunshot wound to the chest from a Barrett M82A1 rifle. Additionally, a young woman no one had ever seen or heard of before dressed in a simple linen sheath dress, leather pumps with a ½-inch heel, and a long flowing coat that belled around her like a superhero’s cape, all in black, lay dead on the bed due to a single gunshot wound to her forehead from the Glock 22 still clutched in her right hand. In her left was a note, hastily scribbled on hotel stationery.

Sorry, Shan. I only work nights.