Dead Connection

23

THE DELTA GRILL HAS A LOUISIANA THEME, COMPLETE WITH wood-planked floors, New Orleans bar signs, and live zydeco music. Ellie made her way past the band in the bar, searching for a face that matched the picture posted on FirstDate by Unpublished. They spotted each other simultaneously.

Peter stood up from a small table in the back to shake her hand. “I hope you don’t mind sitting here. I figured we could hear better.”

“No, it’s good. So I’ve taken one look at you. Is this the part where most of the girls run away?” Ellie asked.

“Yeah, but that was before someone told me about that whole using-soap-while-you-shower thing. I’m better now, I think.”

Ellie took a seat.

“Does this mean you’re staying?”

“Stop it,” Ellie said. “Yes, of course I’m staying.”

“Admit it. You’re relieved.”

Ellie kept a serious face for all of two seconds before she broke. She was in fact relieved. Peter was even better looking in person: small-framed, but not too small, and he had a cute smile that turned up more on one side than the other.

“I was a little nervous,” she admitted. “I’ve never gone out with someone from FirstDate before.”

“That’s what they all say.”

Ellie insisted she was telling the truth, but Peter waved her off. “I’m just kidding. This is my first time too. I just signed up a few weeks ago and wasn’t real happy with the kinds of responses I was finding out there.”

“Looking for a partner in crime? I just loved The Da Vinci Code \?”

“Exactly. What is up with that? Anyway, you actually got my ridiculous sense of humor, so I figured I had to persuade you to meet me at least once before I canceled my membership.”

A waitress came by and asked what she could get them to drink. She plugged the hurricanes as the house specialty.

“A hurricane it is, then,” Ellie said.

“Make it two.”

The waitress was back in a flash with a dangerously tasty concoction of sugar and alcohol.

“So who’s the Golden?” Ellie asked.

Peter’s expression was momentarily confused, then he smiled. “Ah, the very attractive canine in my online photo. He would belong to my sister, Erica. She’s good people, and her dog Boggle’s the closest thing I have to a nephew.”

“And what about your great American novel? The adventures of a dog named Boggle?”

“No, although I can see the commercial potential there,” he said with a squint of mock concentration. “It’s actually about the trials and tribulations of a thirty-five-year-old reporter who lives in Hell’s Kitchen. He writes his columns. He struggles to publish a book. He tries like hell to find a woman who gets him. Pretty darn original, huh?”

“Don’t knock it. Your female counterparts have spawned several bestsellers writing about being single in the city. You might introduce a whole new genre: Call it dick-lit.”

Ellie usually had a better filter between her brain and her mouth, at least with strangers, but Peter seemed to appreciate the comment.

“Are the two of you ordering dinner?” The waitress was back. Ellie and Peter exchanged looks across the table, and then laughed.

“Nah, that wasn’t awkward at all, was it? Um, just give us a second,” Peter said.

The invitation had been for drinks, but every dater – even Ellie – knew that was just a ruse. If all goes well, drinks evolve into dinner.

“I tell you what.” Ellie took two napkins from the tabletop and grabbed two pens from her purse. “We each write down either dinner or drinks. We’ll stay only if it’s mutual. No pressure.”

They scribbled notes on their respective napkins, then showed their cards. Dinner, Ellie had written. Peter’s napkin read, Dinner! For the love of God, just one dinner! He called the waitress back and asked for two menus.

THREE HURRICANES, ONE crab cake, and an oyster po-boy later, Ellie was stuffed and red in the face from the laughter and the booze. Based on the crooked smile on Peter’s face, she thought he was having a good time too. But it was nearing midnight, and Peter caught her looking at her watch.

“It’s late, huh?”

“Yeah, unfortunately.”

Ellie felt a twinge of regret about the deal she’d struck with herself at the apartment. She’d learned over time that it was better to set boundaries for herself and then stick with them. When she quit smoking, for example, it had been cold turkey. And before she allowed herself to pick up the phone to accept Peter’s drink invitation, she had vowed it would be a one-time occasion.

She was tempted to break her own self-imposed contract, but knew she would not. She hadn’t set this rule for herself arbitrarily. She wasn’t ready for a new relationship, and this one in particular would be off to a bad start from the beginning. She’d lied to him online and then compounded it all night as she rattled on about her work as a paralegal for a real estate attorney. He didn’t even know her name.

Even worse, between all the banter, she’d learned that Peter not only was a reporter, but a crime reporter. He was Peter Morse, the name she’d seen splashed across the byline of crime stories in the Daily Post, a newspaper that sold papers by out-sensationalizing, out-tabloidizing, and out-scandalizing all of the other local rags. She couldn’t even begin to explain why she’d been misleading him all night without tipping him off to the FirstDate investigation.

She told herself not to be disappointed.

“Can I walk you wherever you’re going?” Peter asked.

“No, let’s be unconventional. I’ll walk you home.”

“Oh, you are butch.”

The truth was, Clinton – né Hell’s Kitchen – could still be a sketchy neighborhood. Peter was tipsy himself, and, despite the gender difference, Ellie was pretty confident that she had the better defensive skills. Plus she wanted a few more minutes with him before she said good-bye.

They walked side by side until they reached a storefront on West Forty-fourth. Peter stopped in front of the graffiti-laden metal gate that shielded the store entrance. “This is it.”

Ellie gave him a skeptical look. “Is this like when you told me you’d be wearing a purple velvet jacket?”

“Nope. It’s one of the last places in the hood zoned for mixed use – live and work. I took the top from some guy who sold tourist tchotchkes downstairs. He got busted two months ago for selling counterfeit goods. They’re trying to give me the boot, but I’ve got a lawyer working on it.” He gave her a name, wondering if she knew him from her paralegal work. The question only made her feel bad.

“It’s hard, losing a good place in the city.”

“A home, I wouldn’t have a problem with. But this is like a second office. It’s only a few blocks from the paper, and I can come here and have a beer and write in peace. I can even file copy from my home computer. I think it’s part of the paper’s goal to phase out our desk space entirely so they don’t have to pay the overhead.”

Peter mistook Ellie’s sad expression for boredom.

“Sorry. I’m rambling. And you, madam, probably have to get home. Thank you very much for the walk. You’re quite chivalrous. You sure you’re all right? Let me at least hail you a cab.”

“No, I’ll be fine. I can walk from here.” She said it, but her feet weren’t moving anywhere.

He took a step closer to her and wrapped her sagging scarf around her shoulders. Then he placed the softest, most gentle, perfect kiss on her lips. “Can I see you again?”

“Um – no, you can’t.”

Peter made a face that said, There you go again, until he realized she wasn’t smiling. “I’m sorry. Did I misunderstand -?” He looked back toward the restaurant as if to make sure he hadn’t imagined the entire evening.

“I know this sounds really crazy. But I shouldn’t have gone out with you. I shouldn’t have even e-mailed you. It’s too complicated to explain, but I just can’t ever see you again.”

“Well, if you really mean that, obviously I’ll respect that. Is there anything I can do that might make you reconsider? Anything legal, I mean? Not kidnapping. That would be bad, of course.”

Ellie gave him a sad smile, wishing he’d be less likeable. “Trust me. I’m saving you a lot of trouble.”

“If it makes any difference, I’m incredibly disappointed – pathetically, really. I’m going to go upstairs and wallow. Like seriously wallow. Ice cream, sweatpants, Lifetime television, the works.”

Ellie smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks.”

As she walked away, she heard him entering a combination into the electric keypad near a narrow door adjacent to the graffiti-covered gate. She turned around to face him again.

“So, that whole thing I just said about not being able to see you again?”

“I think I remember that,” Peter said, nodding.

“There’s no reason our one night has to be over yet. I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for Lifetime myself.”

He walked her upstairs to the apartment he called his second office. There was no ice cream, no television, and definitely no sweatpants. Ellie closed her eyes and enjoyed the night for what it was, trying to convince herself that one anonymous night with a stranger was exactly what she needed. And every time he gently whispered Ally, she pretended it was close enough.

24

“EARTH TO HATCHER. WHERE’S YOUR HEAD AT?”

Ellie snapped from her daydream. “I’m sorry. What?”

“Lieutenant Eckels might send you back to where you came from if we don’t come up with something today.”

They’d already brought in Seth Verona, the manager of Vibrations, to look at booking photos and FirstDate profiles, but the clean-cut man who used to visit Tatiana wasn’t among them. They could find no other common connections between Tatiana, Caroline, and Amy. This was supposedly a brainstorming session, but Ellie held her pen against a blank pad of paper. She looked at her watch – eleven o’clock in the morning.

“You using a patch or something?” Flann asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“To quit smoking. You’re not fiddling with your pen today.”

Ellie assured Flann it was a matter of pure willpower, but she knew what was different about today. She had already noticed the newfound steadiness in her hands. She also noticed that she hadn’t craved a cigarette once since her date with Peter. Maybe Jess had been right that she’d been craving something else all this time.

“Nah, it’s something,” Flann pestered. “You’ve got a funny look on your face. Are you sneaking candy bars or something? Maybe an extra little spoonful out of that nasty jar of junk you keep in that box of yours?”

Ellie felt her face begin to flush but was saved by the ring of Flann’s cell.

“McIlroy… You heard correctly. The company’s called FirstDate… Yes, my partner is very pretty.” Flann threw a look to Ellie and smiled. “What’s up, Antoine?…Eighty-sixth and First? All right, we’ll be right there.”

Flann flipped his phone shut. “Grab your coat. We’ve got another body.”

THEY PULLED IN FRONT of the high-rise Yorkville apartment building twenty minutes later. As they made their way to the entrance, Ellie spotted a NY1 van screech to a halt at the curb. She nudged Flann when a man holding a camera climbed from the back.

“How can they know already?”

“A big building like this? Someone tells someone else, and before you know it, they call their friend at the news station. Word spreads. We’ll have a mob up here before long. Quiet time is over. This is about to hit the big leagues.”

Ellie thought she detected a note of excitement in his voice. They waited to speak with the doorman, who was busy helping a well-dressed tenant push a box onto the elevator on the opposite side of the lobby. They could have easily walked right in without notice, but waited anyway.

Ellie used the time to check out three small, black-and-white screens that rested beneath the check-in desk. On the middle screen, she recognized the well-dressed tenant and his package. When the doorman returned, Ellie asked if the security cameras were attached to a recorder, or only used for monitoring.

“We record,” he said. “I don’t know how long but-”

Ellie knew that most apartment buildings, if they sprung at all for recording, only retained a limited duration of footage – twenty-four hours max. “We need whatever you’ve got from the elevator that goes to the thirty-second floor. As soon as you can do it.”

He assured them he’d grab the tape ASAP, then promptly left the lobby unattended and unsecured.

THE BODY in apartment 32M belonged to Megan Quinn. An hour after she should have been at work, writing copy for Travel & Leisure magazine, her housekeeper found her face up on the living room floor, a disheveled bouquet of flowers strewn beside her. Placed neatly on her torso was the piece of paper that had led to the phone call Flann had received about her murder.

It was a printout of an e-mail, sent through FirstDate, to the account of Megan May, from the account of GregUK. You sound terrific. Enough e-mails. I really want to meet you. If you won’t tell me when and where, I might just have to show up at your doorstep one day with a bouquet of roses. It was signed Greg. He left his phone number.

Antoine Williams, the homicide detective from Manhattan North who originally caught the call-out, had heard rumors that Flann was working a case full time that was somehow related to Internet dating. Flann had long ago learned to stop asking how his name and his cases came to be discussed among other detectives. He was grateful Antoine made the connection so quickly.

“I suppose we should call Greg. Nail down his story,” Ellie said. Flann nodded, but they both suspected what they’d find. GregUK would be a decent guy who had nothing to do with any of this, other than unwittingly providing a killer access to a woman he had really hoped to meet.

Flann beelined to a good-looking black man with a short Afro and a groomed goatee, who stood over Megan Quinn’s body. “Antoine Williams, this is Ellie Hatcher. Hatcher, Williams. What have we got?”

Megan wore a gray Lycra tank top and black yoga pants. Tiny red splotches marked her eyes, cheeks, and neck. Bleeding beneath the skin had led to petechial hemorrhaging.

“We’re still waiting on the M.E., but looks like asphyxiation. No bruising or ligature marks on her neck though, so I think we’re talking smothering. We pulled a pillow off the couch with her lipstick and mascara on it. Creepy shit. Looked like a death mask. No doubt we’ll find saliva on it with her DNA.”

“What kind of pillow?” Ellie asked.

“Like the matching one over there.” He pointed to a moss green throw cushion on the upholstered tapestry couch.

Ellie took a closer look at the body. “No scratches. No cuts. No bruises. Only the petechiae. He just covered her face with a pillow and smothered her.”

“I’m sorry,” Williams said, not sounding sorry at all. “I thought that’s what I just said.”

“No, I know that’s what you said. It just strikes me as odd. This is victim number four, but he’s changing his M.O. with each murder. The first woman, Tatiana-”

Williams interrupted, holding his hands up in a capital T. “Mac, I can see you found yourself a suitable partner. If this is about to be a whole big picture kind of conversation, I may as well get on out of your all’s way. All I been doing so far is checking on the crime scene. We good here?”

Flann assured him they were and thanked Williams once again for connecting them so quickly to the case.

Ellie didn’t bother with good-byes. “So Tatiana. She’s an outlier from the other three simply because of the demographics. Shot in the parking lot of Vibrations with a.380 semiautomatic. Two bullets to the back of the head. Caroline Hunter’s a higher-class victim, but same method of killing. Two shots, back of the head, same gun.”

“So far, so good,” Flann said.

“Right. But exactly one year after Caroline, we’ve got Amy Davis. You could say it’s a similar victim profile to Hunter, plus you’ve got the FirstDate connection, but look at the method of killing. No gun. Instead, we had those horrible black bruises all across her neck and face. He strangled her with his bare hands. He crushed her larynx. He literally squeezed the life out of her.”

“So maybe he ditched the gun as a precaution, then decided to try something new when he got the urge to kill.”

Ellie shook off the suggestion. “Uh-uh. This guy plans. He chooses his victim. He stalks. We know he stalks. He gets into their e-mail accounts. And Taylor Gottman says he saw a man watching Amy. He’s not an impulse killer. If shooting is what he likes to do, then he’d get another gun. If we stopped with Amy Davis, I would have said he was seeking a more personal connection with death as he escalated. At first it was enough to pull a trigger and walk away quick, knowing he was powerful, knowing he was the one who ended a life. But then with Davis, he gets closer. He draws it out. It’s more physical. More intimate. He wants to savor the moment and literally feel it pass through his body.”

“But now we’ve got poor Megan here.”

“Exactly. You see my point. He’s past the doorman. He’s in the apartment. He has access. Why so impersonal? Why hide her face beneath a pillow? Why not watch her choke – see her pain? It’s like he’s regressing. He’s taking a step backward, getting more distance after Amy’s murder.”

“Maybe. But this is the first time he’s gone inside a victim’s home, into a big apartment complex. Maybe he was worried about the noise. The pillow covers her mouth. It keeps her from yelling.”

Ellie squinted, trying to picture it, then shook her head. “He’s too meticulous. He watches, he stalks. If it was important for him to touch her, to feel her in his hands, to look into her eyes while she died – he would have figured out a way. But for some reason, with Megan, it didn’t matter.”

Flann didn’t seem to share her concern. “The kill’s quicker this time too. We had exactly a year between Hunter and Davis. Now, not even a week. Maybe he got such a high from Davis, when he did get a hands-on feel for it, that he couldn’t wait this time. He rushed it, realized he had a noise problem, then had to use the pillow.”

“I just don’t see it. He’s a planner. He was careful enough to remember to leave an e-mail behind for us to find. You and I both know we won’t find anything on the building’s security tape. He wouldn’t be so cautious and then deprive himself of the pleasure he wants.”

“So what’s your theory?” Flann asked.

“Well, he could be evolving. Experimenting. Trying to find a comfort level between quick and dirty assassination, and something as personal as Davis.”

“That also might explain the timing. He feels guilty, somehow tainted, by the violence of the Davis killing. So now he’s trying again?”

“There could be another explanation, Flann. Maybe he got more personal with Davis because something about her made it personal.”

“We already checked out the people who knew her. She was squeaky clean.”

“I didn’t say he knew her. Maybe she just reminded him of someone. But some kind of connection could have set off the rage we saw in her murder, something he doesn’t generally need in order to feel satisfied. It could even be someone who knew her in the past – someone you haven’t checked out yet.”

“And he appears all these years later in New York, and takes out a few extra people while he’s at it?”

“We should at least look into it. The D.C. Sniper mastermind was out to kill his ex-wife, remember? All those poor victims were just camouflage.”

“Jesus Christ. This guy stepped up the pace with no notice, and we’ve got nothing. We’ve got mystery men from strip bars, ghosts from the past. No. This stops now. We’re going back to where we should have been all along.”

“Mark Stern.”

“Does the pope work Sundays? Damn straight, Mark Stern.”

ACCORDING TO HIS assistant, Stern was out of the office. When Flann pressed, she said he was out for a meeting with the company’s lawyers. When Flann pressed still harder, mentioning the possibility of the company name being plastered across the front page of tomorrow’s Daily Post, she gave him Stern’s cell phone number and the name of the law firm handling FirstDate’s public offering. At the mention of the Daily Post, Ellie tried not to think about Peter Morse.

Despite more calls, Stern was nowhere to be found. After some legal babble about attorney-client privilege, the law firm revealed that Stern departed twenty minutes earlier. Urgent messages left on his cell phone went unreturned.

Flann finally gave up and clamped his phone shut. “Asshole. Megan Quinn might be alive right now if that guy had a heart half the size of his wallet. And the rest of the city’s about to find that out.”

BY THE TIME they left the building, three other news vans had joined NY1’s, and patrol officers had restricted the entire block from vehicle access. Several reporters lined the wooden barricades, notebooks or microphones in hand depending on the medium. Ellie scanned the line briefly and was relieved not to see Peter.

As soon as the reporters caught sight of McIlroy and Ellie, the questions began, each louder and more inflammatory than the previous. Can you confirm there was a homicide? Is this related to last weekend’s Lower East Side murder? Is it another single woman? Did the victim know Amy Davis? McIlroy waited for the most daunting question: Detectives, is New York City looking at another serial killer?

Flann looked directly into a camera bearing a NY1 logo. “As you know, there’s little I can provide in the way of details at this early stage. There are leads to follow, witnesses to interview, and family members to notify. I will tell you this: We will find the person responsible, and we will not tolerate anyone who gives criminals safe harbor. Members of the media, you are our partners in this. Help spread the word that we need the good people of New York to help us with our investigation. Anyone with information should call the New York City Police Department. They can ask either for me, Flann McIlroy, or this is my partner, Ellie Hatcher. H-A-T-C-H-E-R. That’s all I can say right now. A formal statement will be made later.”

ELLIE STARTED a mental count to ten once they were inside the Crown Vic. She unleashed at five. “Are you going to tell me what that was all about, or are you just waiting to see if I’m smart enough to figure it out?”

He threw her a perplexed sideways glance. “Don’t sweat it. Cops make generic statements like that all the time. I wanted to send a quiet message to Stern with that safe harbor line. We’ve established a relationship with the media early, and we’ll throw him to the wolves if we have to. He will give us our information, or I’ll turn him into this city’s next great corporate villain. Leona Helmsley will look like Mother Teresa. But don’t worry – it was subtle enough that we won’t get any heat.”

“Flann, I’m not talking about departmental policy.” All media inquiries were supposed to go through the NYPD’s Public Information Office. “The reporters? The news vans? The cameras and the microphones and the spotlights? I asked you when we pulled up how they could have heard about the murder already. But then they had all those questions – such knowing questions. I don’t think someone from the building could have tipped them off about a connection to Amy Davis.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“A serial killer, Flann? You expect me to think they came up with that on their own?”

“So I might have made a call or two before we came up here.”

“And once again, you didn’t think to tell me about it,” she said.

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you in the crapper with me. Stern’ll be pissed. The department might-”

“Knock it off. I’m not as naive as you’ve been playing me. And I’m pretty sure I care a lot less about department rules than you do.”

“I know what I’m doing. You need to trust me,” Flann said.

“Hey pot, have you met my buddy, kettle? When are you going to get around to the rest of it?”

“Really, Ellie. We have other priorities right now.”

“I know. That’s why I’m in the car with you, letting you drive, and trying to get this over with as quickly as possible. So just go ahead and admit that this is what you had in mind all along. This is why you put me on the case. Ask for me or Ellie Hatcher? You just had to get my name in there.”

She had been stupid enough to believe that she had earned an early career as a big-time homicide detective. Now it turned out that she was just bait after all. She was here not because of any talent she had as a detective, but because the media would salivate at the idea of the little girl obsessed with the College Hill Strangler growing up to hunt a serial murderer of her own. She was here to get Flann McIlroy just a little more press.

Flann merged onto FDR Drive, the siren howling above, and then finally spoke.

“When I came up with this idea about FirstDate, it got me thinking about the mind of a serial killer. For some reason, I started making connections to the College Hill Strangler case, and then I started thinking more about your story. I told you the truth when I said I was touched by it.”

“So touched you decided to use me as bait – just not in the way I thought.”

“I figured that if this guy was into the Internet, it wouldn’t take long for him to pull up the stories about you and your dad’s history. Maybe he’d get inspired by all those letters Summer wrote, the way he kept police after him for all those years. It was the contact from the killer that finally worked in Wichita. It’s also how they caught the D.C. Sniper – a line of communication between us and him.”

“I’m not asking you to defend the plan, because here’s what’s really ironic. I would’ve done it if you’d asked, Flann. If you had a valid reason for wanting to titillate the press, I would’ve said, Go for it. Do what you need to do. But I had a right to know I was being used this way.”

“I couldn’t have known that then.”

“You should’ve known it by now. That’s your problem. Maybe it’s why the other guys have nicknames for you, why you’re an outsider. You don’t trust other cops. You think you’re better than the rest of us.”

“I’m not better,” he said.

“I know. You’re not.”

“Ouch.”

“Obviously you’re a good cop. You’ve got better instincts than anyone I’ve ever seen. But you can’t be an independent contractor. You can’t act like you’re all by yourself on a little island. Drawing the killer out to communicate with you – that’s a great idea. But you needed someone else to help you.”

“That’s right. I needed you.”

“And if you need other people, you’ve also got to trust them. You can’t just use them for your own purposes. This job we have – it only works if it means something to you other than a job. It’s got to be your life. Your second family.”

“Why do I have a feeling you’ve heard those words in a more positive light than I have?”

Ellie didn’t respond.

“Well, when I’ve heard talk like that at the NYPD, it always comes from some cop who’s the poster child for not trusting other cops too much. You’ve asked me about the problems between me and Ed Becker? Let’s just say that back in the day he was one of the poster children.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was a long time ago. What was I going to say? Fifteen years ago when I was a rookie, I saw him take some protection money from a video arcade in Brooklyn? Maybe people change. If we’re talking about trust, maybe I decided to trust your instincts on that one instead of mine.”

“More like trust, but verify,” Ellie said.

“I guess so. I’m sorry I didn’t fill you in on the background check. Or on the news leak. It took me a few days to realize I finally found a partner with a little faith in me – someone to share my little island with.”

Ellie saw no use in pursuing the issue any further. She’d been brought to Flann to serve one purpose, and now that purpose had been served. After this case, she’d go back to her precinct and remain, as she always said, quite happy with her everyday garden variety felonies. But until that happened, only one thing mattered: Finding the asshole who killed Megan Quinn on her watch.

“This better fucking work.”

25

MEGAN QUINN’S MURDER WAS THE LEAD STORY ON EVERY LOCAL network. Ellie flipped from channel to channel on a small TV set in the precinct lunchroom, finally settling on Fox 5 News. The white-haired male anchor introduced the story.

“We lead tonight with the murder last night of a young woman, killed inside the safety of her apartment, located in a usually quiet section of the Upper East Side. Police say it’s too early to speculate, but in light of another killing last weekend on the Lower East Side, some New Yorkers are already asking, Is the city looking at the activity of another serial killer? We go to Anne Vasquez for more.”

“Thank you, Roger.” The reporter was attractive, with thick layers of black hair, dark eye makeup, and deep mauve lipstick. Ellie guessed the hushed voice was meant to connote the seriousness of the story at hand. “I’m standing in front of an apartment building in the Yorkville section of the Upper East Side. Normally, this neighborhood is a quiet haven for the largely professional population that resides here. But this morning, Roger, that sense of solitude – and safety – was shattered by a startling murder.

“Sources tell me that the victim is a thirty-three-year-old single woman who resided alone in this doorman building. The woman was found smothered to death in her apartment. Police believe the murder occurred last night. We are withholding the victim’s name pursuant to a request from the NYPD, but according to both the neighbors and the police, the woman was unlikely to have been killed by anyone who knew her.

“Her death follows the strangling murder last weekend of Amy Davis, another single woman of approximately the same age, who also lived alone, killed on the Lower East Side outside of her residence. Police believe she was killed by a stranger as well.

“Although we have not received official confirmation from the police department, we are able to report to you now that the police are investigating a possible connection between the Davis murder and the murder inside this building last night.”

“Anne, if both women were killed by the same stranger, are you saying that these murders are the work of a serial killer?”

“Our sources have been careful not to use those words” – even though Channel Five wasn’t – “but we do know that one theory the police are looking into is that both women were customers of the same company. We have not confirmed the identity of that company, but apparently it is a common link between the two women. Obviously, we here at Fox 5 News will bring it to you as soon as we know.

“On another note, Roger, there’s an intriguing connection between this case and one of the investigating detectives, New York City Detective Ellie Hatcher. Now, according to our sources, Hatcher has been a detective for only one year and was brought into the homicide unit specifically for this case.”

“Have you been able to determine the reason for that, Anne?”

“The police don’t usually share such information with us, but it’s certainly raising questions. We do know that Detective Hatcher is herself a thirty-year-old woman, not dissimilar from these two victims, so perhaps she can offer some insight from that perspective. But a more intriguing explanation is Detective Hatcher’s connection to a serial killer in her own personal background. You might remember a couple of years ago, Roger, when police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested William Summer, the College Hill Strangler.”

“That was an awful story, wasn’t it?”

“Well, Ellie Hatcher’s father was one of the lead detectives on that College Hill Strangler investigation. Maybe the NYPD is hoping tonight that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”

“Interesting and scary stuff there, Anne. Thanks for the report, and keep us updated.”

“I will, Roger.”

“Also tonight, fire marshals investigate a blaze in Queens that-”

Ellie hit the power button on the television. An awkward silence filled the room as a civilian aide who had just removed a Snickers bar from the vending machine stared at Ellie, as if obligated to say something.

The young woman finally settled on, “Who knows? Maybe the killer will be jealous of all the attention you’re getting. Come out of the woodwork.”

Ellie threw a look at Flann. “Huh…we hadn’t thought of that. That would be interesting, wouldn’t it?”

“You never know,” the woman said, unwrapping her candy bar and fleeing while she had the chance.

“You all right?” Flann asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just give me a second.”

“No problem. I’m going across the street for some decent coffee. You want anything?”

She shook her head. “But thanks,” she added as he walked out.

She wanted the time to mull over her thoughts. To her surprise, they were filled not with concerns about her renewed status as a media target, but instead by the nagging feeling that they were missing something important. It had to be related to Amy. All of the other murders had been quick – relatively painless as far as murders go. But with Amy, he’d been brutal. She remembered the deep bruises and contusions in the morgue photograph, reconstructing the struggle that must have taken place to leave those injuries. She mentally compared those images to what she’d just seen at Megan Quinn’s apartment. Something about Amy had been special.

Before bringing in Ellie, Flann had eliminated from consideration anyone in Amy’s current life, and she trusted Flann not to miss an obvious suspect. That left Amy’s past.

The fact that Amy had a restraining order against a boy from her hometown kept jumping out at her. Lots of women had problems with ex-boyfriends, but how many required a court’s intervention? And then there was the fact that the boy in question had been so computer savvy. An obsessive person with techie skills was precisely whom they were looking for. She pictured a personality like Taylor Gottman’s. Was it so far-fetched that something could reignite an obsession a decade later?

She looked at the notes she’d made – and then crossed out – from her conversation with Suzanne Mouton. Edmond Bertrand had been looking like a prime suspect until Suzanne said that he had died. He overdosed on heroin. I heard about it at LSU.

Ellie realized then that she may have been too quick to write Bertrand off. Suzanne hadn’t lived in New Iberia when he supposedly overdosed. She heard about it, undoubtedly from someone who repeated a secondhand story. And people embellish when they repeat, and then other people embellish further. Like in a slumber party game of Operator, news of a bad drug trip one night in New Iberia might have turned into a fatal overdose by the time it hit Suzanne Mouton’s dorm on LSU’s Lafayette campus.

Ellie left the solitude of the break room and pulled up the New York DMV database on Flann’s computer. No New York driver’s license or identification card. She tried crime reports. No New York arrests or convictions. She went next to the NCIC database, a national clearinghouse of records like fugitive warrants, missing person alerts, and sex offender registrations. She ran Bertrand’s name and got a hit.

Edmond Bertrand, date of birth, October 16, 1974. Arrested in Boston six years earlier for forgery. Bertrand no-showed for his arraignment, and was never picked up on the warrant.

According to Suzanne Mouton, the Edmond Bertrand who’d stalked Amy Davis had overdosed ten years ago. She found Suzanne’s phone number and called.

After apologizing in advance for the bizarre nature of her question, she asked Suzanne if she were certain that Edmond Bertrand’s drug overdose was fatal.

“Um, you warned me to expect the bizarre. It’s not like I saw the body or anything, but, yeah, that’s what everyone said.”

Ellie took another look at the six-year-old Massachusetts arrest warrant on the computer screen in front of her. “And you’re sure about the timing? It couldn’t have been in the last six years?”

“No. I was definitely at LSU. I’m pretty sure I was a junior; maybe even a sophomore.”

“Did you actually see an obituary? Or do you know anyone who went to the funeral?”

“What’s this all about?”

“It registered after we hung up last time that you had heard about Bertrand’s death secondhand while you were in school. I thought I’d verify it wasn’t just a rumor – just to make sure we didn’t jump the gun counting him out. That’s all.”

“I guess I never questioned what I heard. I know that Amy and her parents heard the same thing.”

“That’s fine. I’ll call around down there and have someone check the death records, just to be sure.”

“I’ll tell you what. I’ve got a neighbor down the road who works for the sheriff’s office. He can get you all the details. Do you have a phone number or e-mail or something?”

Ellie rattled off her number and e-mail address. “And can you also ask him to look up Edmond Bertrand’s date of birth? It’s important.”

THE WOMAN AT the records division of the Boston Police Department was able to pull up the information Ellie requested in less than a minute.

“The only entry in our database for an Edmond Bertrand is that one arrest. And, unfortunately, there’s no booking photo coming up on that. But a picture from a six-year-old forgery might not have made it into the computer anyway.”

“So is there somewhere else I could get a photograph?” Ellie spotted Flann heading her way, coat still on and coffee in hand. He looked excited and gestured at her to cut the call short.

“My guess is on a charge like that, the officer probably cited and released him, in which case we wouldn’t have either a picture or prints. The only way to know for sure is from the police report. Want me to put in a request for you?”

“I’d appreciate it.” Ellie gave her the fax number at the precinct and hung up.

“What was that?” Flann asked.

“A favor for a friend.” Ellie wasn’t sure whether she fibbed to gloss over the long-shot phone call to Boston, or because of lingering resentment toward Flann for his own secrecy. Either way, it didn’t seem to warrant discussion in light of Flann’s eagerness. “What’s up?”

“I told you media attention would be our friend. I just got a call from a very apologetic Mark Stern, who assured me he called the moment he got our messages.”

“He’s finally willing to help?”

“GregUK’s real name is Greg London.”

“And we both know he’s not going to be our guy, just like Amy Davis’s date wasn’t our guy.”

“That’s why he’s going to pull up all the names of the men who contacted Caroline Hunter, Amy Davis, and Megan Quinn while we have a little chat with Mr. London.”

GREG LONDON had absolutely no criminal history, was fully employed as a lighting technician for Broadway shows, and insisted that on the night Megan Quinn was murdered he was at home reading a Truman biography. Although no one could vouch for his whereabouts, they were nevertheless able to exclude London from suspicion: The man in the security video from Megan’s apartment building was six feet tall. Greg London was five foot eight.

Ellie wasn’t particularly disappointed, and she certainly wasn’t surprised. The killer would never make it that easy.

LIKE A LOSING politician who gives verbal hugs to the candidate he spent fourteen months trashing, Stern welcomed them into his office as if he had never been their adversary. “I’ve got the names of every account holder who ever contacted Caroline Hunter, Amy Davis, or Megan Quinn – just like you asked. But there’s one guy you’re going to want to check out first. His name’s Richard Hamline.”

“What puts him at the top of the list?” Flann asked.

“Because I cross-referenced the lists. He’s the only user who’s been in contact with two of the women: Amy Davis and Megan Quinn.” Stern directed their attention to the flat-screen monitor on his desk. “I pulled up a dummy of his account. We’re basically seeing what Hamline would see if he pulled up his own account, but I’m able to go through the back door without actually logging in. That way, he won’t be able to tell someone else is in his account.”

The screen displayed Hamline’s FirstDate connections. Stern clicked first on Megan Quinn, opening up a series of e-mails, then on Amy Davis. Ellie shook her head in disbelief.

“We had him in front of us the whole time, Flann. The user name. Check out the user name.”

Richard Hamline was the real name behind the pseudonym Enoch, the one with the generic profile and very specific questions about Amy Davis. The one who never did return the flirt from Ellie. The one using the biblical name she was going to ask about if he ever contacted her. The killer had contacted the two most recent victims through the same FirstDate account. He had to know they would make the connection. He was engaging them. Ellie took a hard look at the dark-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned man smiling at her from the screen and wondered if Hamline was bold enough to use a real photograph.

“What else can you tell us about him?” Ellie asked.

Stern handed her a sheet of paper. “That’s his name, billing information, and e-mail address from the account. I called one of our I.T. people to pull up his I.S.P. information.”

“You called in a what for a who?” Flann asked.

“I called an information technology staffer to locate the Internet service provider. Like most commercial Internet sites, we automatically collect every user’s Internet service provider each time they visit the site. We also get their I.P. address.”

“And an I.P. is-”

“An Internet protocol address,” Stern explained. “Like most of our customers, Hamline used an easy-to-get, free e-mail address to open his account with us. You don’t have to provide any kind of verifiable identifying information to open that kind of an e-mail account. But that’s where the I.P. address is helpful. Every device that links to the Internet – whether it be a computer, or a printer, or a router – has a unique number. It’s used to identify the device and to communicate with other devices. I’ll get someone to track that down for Hamline.”

“And how is that useful?” Flann asked.

“We can use the number to geolocate the device. Just think of the I.P. address as a computer’s street address or a phone number. It identifies a unique, specific computer. In most cases, we can actually use the I.P. address to match the computer to a physical location.”

“And every Web site keeps track of them? So much for privacy,” Ellie said.

“Not only do we do it. We have to do it under the Patriot Act. I’m sure the ACLU is overjoyed.”

“Well, I say thank God for Big Brother,” Flann said. “How soon can we get that information?”

“My I.T. guy’s on his way from Jersey City. Should be forty minutes or so.”

Flann didn’t waste any time asking questions. “Let’s go ahead and work it like the twentieth century. We’ve got a good old-fashioned name and date of birth.”

RICHARD HAMLINE’S name and date of birth appeared only once in the NYPD’s records – in a police report he’d filed two years earlier after a man who was never identified grabbed his gym bag from his shoulder as he left work shortly after midnight. According to the report, Hamline worked as a corporate lawyer at a Wall Street law firm and lived in a seventeenth-floor apartment adjacent to Battery Park.

Ellie held the police report in one hand and a copy of Hamline’s driver’s license photo in another. The picture was nearly eight years old. Although it bore a slight resemblance to the photo accompanying Enoch’s profile, Ellie suspected the better-looking photo on FirstDate was bogus.

“This doesn’t feel right,” Ellie said. “He gives his real name on an account he uses to contact two of the victims? It’s too easy. This is just going to be another cycle in the game.”

“Do you have any other suggestions?” Flann asked. A judge had already issued a telephonic warrant to arrest Hamline. The spreading media hysteria about a possible serial killer no doubt gave them an edge in the probable cause balance.

“Nope. Just making sure we’re on the same page.” It was not yet eight o’clock at night – early by a corporate lawyer’s standards. “We should try his office first.”

26

“I WAS WONDERING IF YOU MIGHT CALL ME IN, BOSS.” CHARLIE Dixon’s tone was friendly but resigned. He settled himself into one of the hunter green leather guest chairs across from Barry Mayfield’s enormous mahogany desk. The windows behind his boss were flanked on either side by the flags of the United States and the Department of Justice. He looked out toward the old World Trade Center site.

“You ever worked a serial case, Charlie?”

“I’ll treat that as a rhetorical question.” Most agents who were merely adequate – agents like Charlie – worked bank robberies and gun cases their entire careers. With a decent amount of ass-kissing and a touch of good luck, Charlie carried a semirespectable fraud caseload, but Quantico reserved its serial cases for the superstars.

“I worked one about fifteen years ago,” Mayfield said. “You want to talk about ulcer-inducing, get involved in one of those bad boys. You literally have a clock ticking over your head, with an unknown number of minutes on the timer. Miss one angle, act a few hours late – bam, you got another body.”

Charlie sat silently, staring at a crystal golf ball clock on the desk, knowing that Mayfield would get to the point in his own time and in his own way.

“I don’t think we can write this off as one cop’s lunatic theory anymore, Charlie. It’s all over the news: The NYPD officially has a serial case on its hands now. When that female cop called the other day, she had three victims including your girl Tatiana. This new one makes four. Apparently they’re convinced that FirstDate’s got something to do with it all. Without knowing more, I suspect most of their work right now is about finding commonalities among their victims. What do you think?”

“Like I said, I never worked a case like that before, but that sounds reasonable.”

“Not knowing everything you can about a victim can really throw things off. If you treat her as just another part of the series when she’s actually the most important…or you throw her in the mix when she really doesn’t belong in the pattern. See how something like that could muck up the picture?”

Dixon was growing impatient but did his best to conceal it. “I can see the problem.”

“So how does Tatiana figure into NYPD’s case?”

“Don’t I wish I knew.”

“It’s pretty fucking weird that she said something was screwy with FirstDate, and now they got three other dead women somehow related to that company. You’ve had your bee all up in a bonnet over Mark Stern. Could it be him?”

Charlie didn’t miss a beat. “No. He’s a crook, but he’s not that kind of wrong. You know, one way to find out would be to take the case, Barry.” Charlie leaned in to make the argument he’d been rehearsing at his desk. “A case like this would be good for the bureau – show we’ve still got room for our meat and potatoes even with all the terrorism investigations.”

“Except that ain’t exactly true now, is it? You know as well as I do where the priorities are these days. And I’ve thought about it. It’s better this way. It’s like a Chinese wall between them and us. If anyone finds out about you and that girl, no one can say the relationship tainted the investigation – not if we’re not the ones conducting it.”

“You assume they can solve it.”

“The NYPD’s good at these cases. They’ll find the guy, and they’ll do it without us.”

“But maybe we’d have a better chance, knowing what we know.”

“And therein lies the rub,” Mayfield said. “I thought about this awhile, and it always comes back to the fact that we know something they don’t. And that’s why one of us needs to change that situation.”

“You want to tell them?”

“Actually, I thought it was more fair to have you do it.”

“Tell them what?”

“You really don’t see an opportunity when it’s handed to you, do you, Charlie?” He smiled at his old friend when he said it, but it still pissed Charlie off. “You go to them, you talk to them, you find out what the fuck’s going on. And then you tell them anything you know that might be relevant. Is the fact that you were nailing that dead girl going to be relevant?”

“No.” It was all Charlie could bring himself to say at that moment. He’d been in love with that dead girl. He hadn’t made love to another woman since.

“All right then. That’s what I meant by an opportunity. You get to control the message. But you better make sure the message gets across.”

As Charlie turned to leave the office, he heard Mayfield call out behind him, “You’re welcome, man.”

Screw you, man, Charlie thought. He knew damn well why Barry Mayfield was sending him to the NYPD alone. If the shit hit the fan, he’d deny all knowledge. Charlie would be a rogue agent with a hard-on for that dead girl.

RICHARD HAMLINE’S law firm occupied nine floors of One Liberty Plaza in the financial district. The receptionist insisted that Mr. Hamline was unavailable. He was overseeing a major closing.

Through a long wall of glass windows adjacent to the lobby, Ellie spotted a thin, dark-haired, blue-eyed man at the head of a large, rectangular conference table lined with men in suits, with a few women scattered in between. Ellie recognized the speaker from Hamline’s driver’s license.

Yes, the receptionist confirmed, that is Mr. Hamline. And, no, they could not interrupt.

The arrest warrant signed by Judge Bernie Jacob shortened the rest of the conversation considerably. Ignoring the receptionist’s protestations, Ellie and Flann breezed into the conference room. Hamline held a laser pointer in one hand, and a binder of notes in the other. He gestured with the laser to a series of numerical figures projected onto a screen behind him, while the rest of the table followed along from matching notebooks. Taking a closer look at the man, the doubt in Ellie’s stomach burrowed further. The photograph posted on FirstDate was definitely not his.

“Wrong room, guys.” Hamline was momentarily startled by the open door and two strangers, but then turned his attention back to the screen. “Now if you look at the aggregate values of the two stock classes on page seventeen-”

“New York police, Mr. Hamline.” Ellie held up the shield she’d hung from her neck to keep her hands free. She felt the comfort of the 9-mm Glock against her hip. Better safe than sorry. Muscle memory kicked in as she visualized the twist-then-up motion that would unholster the pistol from the leather. “Something’s come up, sir. We need to talk to you in the lobby.”

A look of concern flickered across Hamline’s face, but then he smiled at his table of listeners. “I appreciate the good service, officers, but we’re putting a deal together here.” A few members of his audience laughed, appreciating an inside joke that two civil service employees would never understand.

“It’s urgent, sir. Please don’t make me ask you again,” Ellie said.

“Now wait a second, officer-”

“Hands,” Flann cried out, responding to Hamline’s quick movement as he dropped his notes to the table. “Keep your hands where they were.”

Flann had his gun in his right hand now, but kept it pointed at the floor. Several of the people in the room huddled closer to the table, as if that subtle movement could shield them from whatever confrontation was about to take place. A couple of others gasped. Someone said something about calling building security. No one stood up.

Hamline hunched his shoulders, palms toward them. “Okay, um, okay. There’s apparently some misunderstanding. I’m, I’ll – what did you say? The lobby, right? Okay, I’m coming out.” He edged his way around the table, keeping his hands by his face. “Um, I’ll be back as soon as I can. Tim, go ahead and cover the stock values.”

Flann placed his left hand on Hamline’s back and guided him toward the door. “The rest of you all might want to plan on finishing your work without him,” Ellie said politely, closing the door behind her.

“Richard Hamline, we have a warrant for your arrest.”

Flann continued with Miranda warnings while Hamline insisted this was all a colossal misunderstanding. By the time he’d been marched through the lobby to the elevator bank, Hamline realized this wasn’t going to get taken care of on his home turf.

“Libby,” he barked back to the receptionist, “call Michele Campbell. Call her now.”

Ellie left the building knowing in her gut that she and Flann had just arrested an innocent man.

THE MOST SEASONED criminal lawyer at Hamline’s firm was not happy to find her colleague in an interrogation room at the Thirteenth Precinct speaking with two homicide detectives.

“What is going on in here? I’m sure you’re not questioning my client, because, unless I’m mistaken, a witness to his arrest heard his express request for counsel. That is, after all, how I came to be here – eventually. Sorry, Rick. Detectives, Michele Campbell.”

Michele Campbell wasn’t like any of the criminal defense attorneys Ellie had ever encountered. Her dark shiny hair fell perfectly into a broom-straight bob. A black suit fit impeccably over a hot pink sweater and what appeared to be a terrific set of legs. Her reprimand of their interrogation was firm but surprisingly friendly. She made a damn good first impression. Unfortunately, her client, despite his profession, had made the same rookie mistake all defendants made.

“Sorry, counselor. Your client invoked his rights, then promptly initiated contact with us.”

Campbell threw a frustrated look at her client for verification.

“Chele, they arrested me for murder. Some serial killer or something. On an Internet dating site.”

“You started talking to them?”

“The silence was killing me. All I asked was what they were arresting me for. Then they said murder. You weren’t here. I wanted to know what the fuck was going on.”

Campbell exhaled loudly. “I guess corporate lawyers read the stock page during crim pro. Sorry to ruin your fun, Detectives, but this stops now. You tell me what’s going on, and he doesn’t say another word until I okay it.”

“Two women have been murdered in one week,” Flann explained. “Evidence left near the bodies linked both to an Internet dating site. Your client is the one and only person, out of tens of thousands of users, who managed to have recent contact with both victims. As you can imagine, we’re looking for an explanation.”

“It’s not me,” Hamline interjected. “I told you. It’s not even my picture.”

Campbell shushed her client.

“What evidence do you have that it’s his account?”

“The account is in his name,” Flann said. “It lists all of the correct identifying information, including his precise height and date of birth. And he paid for the account a month ago using his own credit card. If he’s not our guy, he should be willing to clear up the misunderstanding. We were just starting to cover the details before you got here.”

“Give us a second?”

Through a one-way mirror, they watched the two attorneys huddled close at the table. Campbell placed her arm around Hamline’s shoulder and gave him a squeeze, then she turned and pulled the blinds closed.

“Think he’s our guy?” Flann asked.

“Nope.”

“Too normal?”

“No such thing as too normal. I just don’t think our guy would have made it this easy.”

Michele Campbell knocked on the window of the interrogation room, and they reentered.

“Although I never thought I’d let a client talk to law enforcement, I think the quicker we can get this cleared up, the better for all of us. What do we need to tell you for Rick to go home?”

“Tell us about this Internet profile.” Ellie laid a printout of the profile’s home page on the table in front of Hamline.

“I don’t know anything about it. I’ve never seen it, and that’s obviously not my picture.”

“Have you ever used FirstDate?”

“No. I know what it is – their ads are everywhere. But I got divorced about a year ago, and I’ve been happily seeing someone ever since.”

“Can we get a name?” Ellie looked at Michele Campbell as she asked the question.

“Dating a colleague would be against the internal policies of my client’s law firm,” Campbell said. “Our law firm. Let’s just say that should you need to talk to his girlfriend, I can definitely tell you anything you need to know.”

“The credit card that was used to open the account was an American Express.” Ellie read the numbers off quickly from her notes. “Is that yours?”

“I don’t know. I’d have to check. Are you going to shoot me if I reach for my wallet?” His tone was bitter, but Campbell lightened the mood with a quiet laugh.

“No bullets. We promise,” Ellie assured him.

Hamline opened a thin black leather billfold, removed a platinum card, and slid it across the table. “That’s my only Am Ex.”

“Not according to the credit card company.”

“Well, check and see when it was opened, because that card in your hand is the only Am Ex that I ever applied for.”

According to FirstDate’s records, the Enoch profile was created not quite a month earlier. Ellie had a feeling they were going to find out that the credit card in question hadn’t been around much longer.

“Do you have any idea how someone could’ve gotten the information they’d need to open both a FirstDate account and a credit card in your name? Or why they’d pick you? They’d need your name, height, hair color. For a credit card, they’d need your Social Security number.”

Hamline shook his head. “Who the fuck knows.” Michele placed her arm around the back of his chair, and he appeared to calm down. “I don’t know. This is one of those identity theft things, isn’t it? I can’t frickin’ believe this. The only thing I can think of is that I got my wallet stolen two years ago – right after Christmas. People weren’t as cautious then. Like an idiot, I had my Social Security card in there. As time passed, I assumed whoever stole it grabbed the cash and tossed the rest. I guess not.”

It was total speculation, and unhelpful in any event. Grab and runs were impossible to solve two days after the fact, let alone two years.

“Let me ask my question again,” Campbell said, again firmly but in a friendly way. “What do we need to tell you for Rick to go home?”

Usually a defense attorney’s attempt to steer the direction of a conversation in the interrogation room would have provoked threats of high sentences, cherry-popping cell mates, and death row. But under these circumstances, Ellie shared Campbell’s desire to clear Hamline as quickly as possible.

She looked at her watch. It had been more than an hour since Mark Stern had called in the employee from Jersey City to track Enoch’s computer usage by location.

“You bill your hours at the law firm, right?” Ellie asked.

“Unfortunately,” Hamline said.

Ellie knew from her ex-boyfriend that corporate lawyers were obligated to keep detailed records to account for their professional time in six-minute increments. At five hundred bucks an hour, clients tended to complain about rounding up. Ellie had a feeling that a comparison of Hamline’s billing records against Enoch’s log-ons would exonerate him.

“Give us a second, and we’ll see if we can’t clear this up.”

ELLIE REACHED the credit card company while Flann called Mark Stern to ask for a report of Enoch’s log-ons to FirstDate. The card had been opened only a month earlier. Whoever opened the account used Hamline’s home address as his residence, but asked that the credit card and all bills be sent to a post office box at a Mailboxes Etc. No doubt they’d find out that the box had been rented with Hamline’s stolen ID.

“Were there any charges on the account other than to FirstDate?” Ellie asked the woman at the other end of the line. By tracking down purchases, they might locate the purchaser.

“No, ma’am. Just the two charges to FirstDate, each for thirty dollars.”

“I’m sorry. You said there are two charges?” Thirty dollars covered a one-month membership, and Enoch had not yet been a member for a full month.

“That’s right.” She provided two dates to Ellie. One corresponded with the day Enoch enrolled with FirstDate. The other payment was made three days later. Ellie thanked the woman for her time and flipped her phone shut.

She found Flann at his desk, reviewing a fax from Mark Stern. It was the computer-locating information for Enoch.

“Thanks to this,” Flann said, “we’ve got a timeline of Enoch’s online activities, matched with physical locations. We need to cut this Hamline guy loose. Almost all of Enoch’s connections to FirstDate were made from three different cybercafés throughout Manhattan: one downtown, one in Murray Hill, and one in Midtown. The one exception was when he logged on last night from a café on City Island.” Ellie recognized the name of the town, a seaport community off the western edge of the Long Island Sound. “I’m still waiting on the billing records, but that firecracker in there already vouches that Hamline was taking a dinner break downtown last night, not frolicking on City Island.”

Ellie told Flann what she’d learned from American Express. “If Enoch made two payments to FirstDate in the last month, he must have another profile, using another name to contact who knows how many other women. We need to call Stern.”

“Good. You do that while I wrap up Hamline’s alibi.”

TO ELLIE’S SURPRISE, Stern sounded downright gleeful to hear from her. “Did you get the I.P. data I sent?” Mark Stern, citizen extraordinaire, fighting crime wherever it was found.

“Yes, thank you. It’s proving very helpful. Look, I’m calling because we need one more thing. It turns out Richard Hamline’s credit card paid for two different memberships this month. Can you check on that?”

“No problem.” She heard fingers tapping on a keyboard. “Huh. That’s odd.”

“What?”

“The other membership. Wow, that’s really weird.”

“What’s weird?”

“The charge was for Amy Davis. Richard Hamline paid for Amy Davis’s membership.”

Ellie paused, trying to process the information Stern was giving her. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. I’m looking at it right here.”

“But Amy had a free membership.”

Stern laughed. “Sorry. Free membership’s an oxymoron at FirstDate.”

“But I saw the offer on her computer. It was a thirty-day trial membership.”

“Not for FirstDate, it wasn’t. The marketing types have proposed it, and I’ve held firm. If people think they can subscribe for free, they’ll stop paying me.”

Ellie was certain of what she’d seen in Amy’s e-mail account. She described it in detail to Stern, who didn’t seem to be surprised.

“It’s fishing,” he said.

“Fishing for what?”

“No, phishing. With a ph. It’s a doctored e-mail, so it looks like it came from a legitimate company. It probably contained a link to a Web site that looks like FirstDate’s site, and then asks the recipient of the e-mail for information about themselves. I can tell you one thing, though – if it offered a free account, it didn’t come from us.”

Ellie thanked Stern for his time and hung up in a daze. Flann was walking toward her, a piece of paper in his hand.

“Hope you don’t mind, but I went ahead and sprang Hamline. His billing records all checked out. The guy’s barely got time to take a leak, let alone hang out in cybercafés all day long. You okay?” Before Ellie had a chance to answer, he offered her the paper in his hand. “This fax came for you. An old police report on an Edmond Bertrand?”

According to the Boston Police Department, Edmond Bertrand, date of birth, October 16, 1974, had been arrested for forgery six years earlier. Cited and released. No booking photo and no fingerprints. He had been arrested after trying to use a stolen credit card number to pay for a suit at Brooks Brothers.

Ellie needed to call Suzanne Mouton again.

27

“I’M SORRY TO BOTHER YOU AT HOME, DETECTIVE ROBI-” ELLIE stumbled over a seemingly unpronounceable Cajun last name.

“Just call me Dave.”

“Sorry. Your neighbor Suzanne Mouton gave me your number. I believe she might have told you that I was interested in Edmond Bertrand?”

“I was just fixing to give you a ring.”

“Do you know the details of his drug overdose? He had some problems years ago with a homicide victim we’ve got up here.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure this fellow can’t be up your way. He’s dead.”

“You’re sure?”

“Suzanne told me you’d probably be asking that, so I checked the death records. It was no rumor. Edmond Bertrand died of a fatal drug overdose. Says here his body was found on Avery Island.”

“I’m just being thorough.”

“Don’t apologize. I had a partner who was just as tenacious, and now she’s the sheriff.”

“Did you happen to get a date of birth for me?”

“Five, twenty, seventy-seven.”

The man arrested in Boston had given his birth date as October 16, 1974. The easiest explanation was that the man arrested in Boston had no connection to the Edmond Bertrand who had died in Louisiana nine years ago. But the name was so unusual, and Ellie couldn’t ignore the fact that the Boston Bertrand had been arrested for unauthorized credit card activity. Tatiana’s initial arrest involved the same crime, and Enoch’s FirstDate membership was paid for through credit card fraud.

“Do you know anything else about Bertrand?”

“I asked around after Suzanne called. You sure you want to hear this? It’s the kind of story that’ll put snakes in your brain.”

“Trust me. They’ll find plenty of company.”

“You know the Davis family had a problem with him?”

Ellie reeled off what she knew about Edmond’s unwanted attentions toward Amy and the restraining order issued against him.

“Well, the warning didn’t take. He followed her at the shopping mall when she was home from college, and he went down for a ninety-day stint. Bertrand had been known as a neighborhood character, mentally challenged but fairly harmless. From what I’ve learned, two recidivists got hold of Bertrand in his cell and violated him. By the time he got out of jail, he was using heroin to self-medicate. Within a year of his release, he OD’d on the full-tilt boogie.”

Ellie sucked in her breath. She had more than snakes in the brain. She had a lump in her throat and an intense feeling of anger at Evelyn and Hampton Davis – even at Amy. She used a boy to get a grade she hadn’t earned, and his punishment was a sexual assault and a deadly heroin addiction. In the wrong person, she could imagine that kind of treatment developing into a dangerous and obsessive hatred.

“Is there any chance the body wasn’t Bertrand’s?”

“Pardon?”

“Well, does the death certificate indicate how the ID was made, or what shape the body was in?”

“It doesn’t include that level of detail, but I know the coroner who signed off on it. He’s a good man. Conscientious too. And Bertrand’s prints would’ve been on file. You can bet the ranch on this one.”

Ellie realized her questions must’ve sounded crazy, but she wasn’t ready to let the subject drop. “Do you have a number for the coroner?”

“You weren’t kidding when you said you were thorough.” He paused, then read off a Louisiana telephone number.

“Did Bertrand have family? Anyone close to him who might’ve identified the body?”

“He was raised by a widow named Helen Benoit. She never had children herself, but she brought in the damaged ones like stray animals. She may be able to tell you more.” He gave her another phone number.

“Thank you for your time, Dave. I appreciate it.”

“No problem. You need anything else, you can always call your podjo down in old New Iberia.”

ELLIE DIALED the number for Dr. Ballentine Clarke, the coroner who had certified Edmond Bertrand’s death certificate. She was greeted by an answering machine for the county coroner’s office and left a message asking Dr. Clarke to call her back as soon as possible. She noticed Flann pulling on his coat and she hung up the phone.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I need a break. We’ve done everything we can do tonight. We’ll take a fresh look tomorrow.”

“But what about this?” She held up the fax from the Boston PD, and Flann laughed.

“That was your thing, remember? I seem to recall being told that you were requesting that report as a personal favor for a friend?”

“Sorry about that. It was just such a long shot.”

“Exactly, and now all you’ve got are two unfortunate people who share the same cracker name.”

“But the so-called free membership from FirstDate changes everything. Enoch obviously had something against Amy Davis. He sent her that fake e-mail to lure her onto the Internet.”

“I agree. But Amy’s beef with Bertrand was ten years ago-”

“But-”

“Grudges can last decades. I know. And that’s why you had good instincts thinking it could be him. But you’ve checked now, and the guy’s dead. Even in Louisiana, coroners know how to identify a body. Tomorrow we take another look at everyone who knew her.”

“Coroners make mistakes. Maybe he didn’t bother with fingerprints or dental records. Visual ID’s can go wrong. Remember that car accident last year where the girl’s family ID’d the wrong body? Turned out their daughter was alive and well.”

“Until the error was discovered a week later. Edmond Bertrand has been sleeping with the fishes for ten years. I think someone would’ve realized by now if there’d been a problem. Besides, the birthdays don’t even match.”

“If Bertrand doesn’t want to be found, he could have given Boston PD a fake date of birth.” People who use aliases often juggle multiple names but use their own dates of birth. Edmond Bertrand could be doing the reverse.

“Go home, Ellie. There’s nothing else to do tonight.”

She watched Flann’s back move toward the exit. “I’m calling Helen Benoit.”

He threw her a departing wave. “You’re waking up an old lady for nothing, Hatcher.”

Ellie looked at her watch. It was an hour earlier in Louisiana, but still late for a call to a stranger. On the other hand, sometimes being a member of law enforcement called for poor manners. She punched in the telephone number for Helen Benoit.

“Hello?” The woman’s voice was quiet. Her accent was similar to Evelyn Davis’s, but she sounded older and less genteel.

Ellie explained who she was, then said she was calling about Edmond Bertrand. Silence fell on the line.

“Mrs. Benoit?” Ellie prompted.

“Edmond?”

“Yes. Edmond Bertrand. I was told you brought him up?”

More silence. Then, “I haven’t thought about Edmond for a very long time. I was his foster mother.”

“I’m sorry to bring it up, but his name has come up in a matter related to Amy Davis.”

“That horrible girl.”

“That horrible girl is dead. She was murdered this week in New York.”

Ellie heard the old woman gasp, as if she might literally suck the words back into her mouth. “Well, I hadn’t heard that. I’m surprised I wasn’t told. At least, I don’t think I was.”

“I know that this sounds peculiar, but we’re trying to make sure this doesn’t have anything to do with all the trouble that happened down there between her and Edmond.” Ellie hoped that New Iberia social custom wasn’t so different from Kansas, where every piece of nastiness could be alluded to politely as all the trouble. “We have to check out every possible avenue.”

“Edmond was blamed for a lot of bad things, but this one I’m sure he had nothing to do with. Edmond passed on some time ago, right?”

“I’m aware. Losing him that way must have been very hard on you.”

“Well, I tried not to get too attached to any of them. I was not their real mother, you know, just a temporary caregiver.”

Ellie could tell by the tone of the woman’s voice, nearly a decade after Edmond’s death, that, as hard as she might have tried, professional detachment had eluded Helen Benoit.

“I was wondering whether you might know how Edmond’s body was identified when he passed on. Did you see him?”

“Oh no. The state took care of all that. I think he was cremated. There were no services.”

She did not appear to understand what Ellie was asking. “I was wondering if perhaps the coroner had you come in to identify the body before he was cremated.”

“He was an adult by then.” As a foster mother, Helen’s legal guardianship over Edmond would have terminated when he turned eighteen.

“Did he have another family member who might’ve handled the identification process?”

“Children wind up with me when they don’t have any other family.”

“I see. So you’re not sure how they knew it was Edmond.”

“I never thought to ask. Why does any of this matter now?”

“I’m just trying to nail down a few things about what happened with him and Amy. Do you happen to know if Edmond was good with computers?”

“Edmond? I don’t think so. He was slow, wasn’t he?”

Ellie noticed this was the third time that Helen seemed to be asking questions of Ellie instead of the other way around.

“I don’t know, Mrs. Benoit. That’s why I was calling you – to ask you about Edmond.”

“Well, then, he was slow. I guess that’s what they’d call it. He wasn’t good at many things, other than looking for people to care about him. And the children who came and went through here had all kinds of hobbies – I couldn’t always keep track – but Edmond and the computers? I don’t think so.”

“What about someone close to him? Did he have a friend, or maybe another child in the house, who knew about computers?”

“There was another boy – maybe Jasper, or was it Tommy or Dean? But the one I’m thinking of didn’t live here when Edmond was around. Or at least I don’t think so. Oh, darling, I just don’t know. It’s been so long, and I’m on in years myself. I cared for more than thirty children, and I can’t remember what all of them were interested in.”

“What about religion? Were any of them particularly religious?” Ellie rattled the cages of her memory searching for the information she’d read on the Internet about the name Enoch. Two biblical meanings. One, the son of Cain. The other, the son of someone else, and the source of something called the Book of Enoch.

“I took them all to church with me every Sunday. Can’t say whether it stuck with any of them, to tell the truth.”

“I don’t suppose the Book of Enoch sounds familiar to you?” It was a shot in the dark. Religious fascination often morphs over time as people move from church to church, sect to sect, and text to text, seeking the satisfaction that continually eludes them.

“The Book of what?”

“Enoch.”

“Now that one I haven’t heard of. That’s not in the Bible. This is a Christian household.”

“Does the name Enoch sound familiar at all? Maybe even a pet or something?”

“Oh no. I never let the children have pets. I had enough of a time watching the kids.”

“Would you mind if I spoke to some of the other kids who were in your care with Edmond?”

“I’m afraid they don’t stay in touch with me. That’s one of the hard parts of being a foster parent.”

“Can you give me their names? I can track them down from there.”

“Well, I’d have to go back into my picture albums to see who was here, when. Would pictures be helpful? I could mail you some pictures, and you could look at those.”

Helen Benoit sounded excited and Ellie realized that the woman was reaching an age where she was losing her memories and was offering the one form of assistance she could provide. Ellie hated the fact that her questions were forcing this woman to confront her inability to remember the children she had reared in her own home.

“Maybe someone who went to school with the kids could help-”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll see if I can’t track someone down.”

Ellie added that pictures would be nice, then spelled out her home address to avoid the black hole that was the police department’s interoffice mail system. “And I’ll make sure the photographs get back to you safe and sound.”

Ellie hung up the phone picturing Flann as he waved good-bye. He was right. She had bothered Helen Benoit for nothing.

JESS WAS WATCHING the late night news when Ellie finally got home. The look on his face told Ellie he wasn’t happy.

“You didn’t return any of my calls, so I’m watching TV trying to figure out what the hell my sister’s gotten herself into.”

“Sorry. I’ve been moving nonstop since I woke up.” She went directly to her laptop.

“Where were you last night?”

“Working. I slept at the precinct.”

She felt bad lying to Jess, but she didn’t have the energy to get into her love life when he was clearly upset by what he must have seen on the news.

“Why are they dusting off old stories about William Summer and our family? What does any of that have to do with your case, Ellie?”

“Obviously it has nothing to do with it. But we haven’t released any details. We had a suspect for about five minutes, but then we had to let him go – without anyone knowing about it, thank god – because this asshole keeps sending us on wild-goose chases. The reporters have nothing to say, because we’ve got nothing to tell them. But they know they’ve got a good story, so instead they talk about little old me and our family’s interesting background.”

She stared at the computer screen, willing it to power up faster, then gave up to grab a beer from the refrigerator.

“Please tell me you didn’t do this just to get Dad back in the news again. You tried that before. You gave yourself high blood pressure, got way too skinny, and Mom’s still broke and half crazy.”

She took a few big gulps from the bottle of Rolling Rock, then gave Jess a long stare. “No, Jess, that’s not what happened.”

“So why would you put yourself out there? How’d your name even get out? Why would you let that happen?”

“Stop talking to me that way. If it’s good for the case, I really don’t mind if a bunch of mindless talking heads want to haul out old news.”

“If it’s good for the case? What are you talking about?”

She sighed. “This guy might not be too happy if they start comparing him to someone better known, who’s gotten more victims, who’s more notorious. Maybe it’ll draw him out. We want him to talk to us.”

“Jesus, Ellie. Talk about psychological suicide. Every once in a while, you really should think about yourself.”

Ellie refrained from telling him that the idea was Flann’s, self-executed without her prior permission.

“I don’t need this right now, Jess. I need to figure out what we’ve been missing. This guy finds these women, he knows who they’re talking to online, he knows when they’re meeting them.”

“And that’s another reason why you don’t want him knowing who you are. I’m not just worried about your psyche here. This guy sounds like he’s one hallucination away from Charlie Manson, and, from what I hear on the news, he takes a liking to pretty women in their early thirties. Sound like anyone you know? And you’re trying to draw him out? What’s going to get him more attention than going after the sweet, attractive cop whose daddy was killed by the College Hill Strangler?”

Ellie blocked out his words with her own. Ellie knew it was natural to worry about her own safety at some level, but she could never let those concerns come first. The minute she let fear control her, she’d never be the same kind of cop. “He uses bogus names, untrackable Internet connections, stolen credit cards. He’s a ghost, and we’ve got nothing.”

Jess had learned early on not to try to engage her in anything else once she hit this mind-set. He went silent as she furiously tapped away at the keys of her computer.

“You look absolutely, diagnosably OCD right now.”

“You’re not going to believe this, Jess. He was one of the three. He was one of the guys I picked from the very beginning. Enoch. I should have kept pushing. When he didn’t write back, I should have pressed him.”

“So he’d send you some trite bullshit on his e-mail? Then what would you have done? Kept exchanging messages with him until he decided you should be his next victim? Until that schmuck at FirstDate was willing to give you the names behind the accounts, you couldn’t do anything.”

“Well, now the schmuck is cooperating, and we still don’t have anything. I’m tracking down that stupid user name. It was something biblical, remember?”

“This is terrific, Ellie. The fringy religious crazies are the craziest of them all.”

“This guy really does like the head games. There are two Enochs in the Bible, both in the bloodline of Adam. One’s the son of Cain, and then there’s another one who’s the basis of something called the Book of Enoch. The Bible says Enoch lived for sixty-five years, and then for another three hundred with God. I guess in the lineage, he was Noah’s grandfather, like from Noah’s Ark.”

“Him, I’ve heard of.”

“I can’t believe this. The most accepted translation of the Book of Enoch is by R. H. Charles. The fucker used the fake ID for a guy named Richard Hamline to open his FirstDate account – R. H.”

“There’s no way you could have figured that out,” Jess said.

“No, but it’s yet another thing he did to piss us off once we were on his trail.” She shook her head in disbelief as she continued to read the material on her screen. “The Book of Enoch is all about these fallen angels called the Watchers, who mated with mortal women.”

“Sounds like my kind of scene.”

“This is truly bizarre stuff. I guess most of the established religions say that the book was wrongly attributed to Enoch, but I don’t know – a couple of these sites make it sound like the book is inspired by God. Apparently these people think it’s apocalyptic.”

As Ellie moved from Web site to Web site – each quite amateur, and each devoted to analyzing the supposedly lost biblical text – she grew increasingly angry at herself for not looking into this earlier. If she’d read any of this sooner, she would have known to pay more attention to Enoch.

“Promise me you won’t stay at this all night.” Jess began pulling his coat on over a sweater.

“Where are you going?” Ellie asked.

“Work.”

“Where are you playing tonight?”

“I’m not. Or at least it’s not that kind of playing. I got that job at Vibrations.” Jess delivered the news with a grin.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

“You’re the one who’s always after me to get a real job. This has the kind of hours I can deal with. Decent pay too. The views aren’t bad either. I’ll be pulling my first full shift tonight.”

“Oh, shit, it’s late. I forgot to call Mom again.”

“I figured,” Jess said. “Don’t worry – I called her. I knew you had your hands full and would worry about it later. And, no, I didn’t mention anything about your case. I told her you had a date.”

“Why, Jess Hatcher. You called our mother. And you did it all on your own.” For me, she thought. Ellie was surprised at how touched she was.

“Hey, I gotta run. My dream job awaits. Oh, and Ellie, bolt the door behind me. Don’t open it. Don’t talk to strangers. Keep the blinds drawn. Gun near the bed. Polo mallet as a backup.”

She threw a pillow his way. “Because I have so many mallets at the ready. I’ll be fine, you. Get out of here.”

He continued mumbling safety advice as the door closed behind him. An hour later, Ellie was still surfing the net, reading about the Book of Enoch, when her eyes began to close involuntarily. She took a last look at Enoch’s FirstDate profile. Active within 48 hours! the screen announced. He hadn’t logged on today. Mark Stern had promised they’d be paged the minute Enoch accessed his account, but Ellie knew that he was too smart to log on again – at least, not as Enoch.

She could not resist the temptation to sneak a peak at Peter Morse’s profile while she was at it. Active within 48 hours! He hadn’t signed on today either. She wondered if that meant anything about the night they’d spent together. She looked at Peter’s picture, wondering if some other woman out there would snatch him off FirstDate. Some other woman who didn’t follow her self-imposed rules was going to end up with the man who could have been her next boyfriend.

She exited the FirstDate Web site and went to Barnes and Noble’s site, which promised twenty-four-hour delivery in Manhattan. She had a copy of The Book of Enoch, translated by R. H. Charles, sent to her attention at the police precinct.

AN HOUR LATER, the man who called himself Enoch was sitting at his special laptop, composing a letter. He could tell from the media coverage what the police were trying to do, but he was going to kick it up a notch. That’s what that fat, hairy TV chef liked to say. One of the ladies down the street – the one who always harped on him about smoking in the alley – used to have his cooking show on at all hours. Kick it up a notch. Bam! He’d kicked it up scads of notches when he’d bammed the old bag’s spoiled cat in the alley with his boots. Car accident, my ass.

He reread the words on his screen. This was the perfect way to rattle that blond detective’s cage. He’d been tempted a few times to respond to that ridiculous little flirt she’d sent his way. He’d even thought about making her the last victim instead of Megan. But this letter was better. For now.

He was careful to save the letter to his hard drive before pressing the print command on his keyboard. Then he pulled on a pair of latex gloves, removed the piece of paper from the printer, and folded it into an envelope. He used some water from the tap to moisten the seal with his knuckle, and found a phone number for the New York Daily Post.

28

“YOU’RE NOT REALLY GOING TO READ THAT ENTIRE THING, ARE you?”

Ellie was sucking on a spoonful of Nutella, using her free hand to hold open the paperback edition of The Book of Enoch, which Flann eyed suspiciously.

“Nonsense goes surprisingly quickly,” Ellie said. “I’m just trying to get a feel for what we’re dealing with.”

“And do you have a full-blown criminal profile ready for us to distribute to the fine citizens of New York City?”

She shot him a mock glare. “My inclination is that he’s not actually a religious zealot. He’s been too clever, too meticulous, and too techsavvy to be some homeless schizo inspired by the Book of Enoch.”

“Agreed.”

“Okay, so then why does he use the name Enoch? Because he’s a game player. He wants a cat-and-mouse chase with us. He waits a full calendar year between Hunter and Davis, to create a pattern. He even puts a copy of Davis’s FirstDate e-mail in her coat pocket, to give us another hint. By the time he kills Megan, all subtlety is gone. He places the FirstDate note right on top of her body, but then never signs on again. He knew that once we found Megan, we’d know that Enoch had contacted both her and Davis. He knew signing on under that account would be too risky. But the user name itself is another layer in the game. He had to have picked it intentionally.”

“I was skeptical at first, but you’re on to something. The name’s peculiar, but you noticed him in the first place because the profile itself was so generic.”

“Right. Absolutely vanilla. No personality. But instead of the standard lame handles – Looking for Love, Sleepless in SoHo – he picks an oddball name like Enoch. And using Rick Hamline’s credit card to pay for the FirstDate account?” Ellie flashed the book cover toward Flann. “This is the established, accepted translation. It’s been around nearly a century. Notice the name of the translator.”

“R. H. Charles. You think that was intentional?”

“It’s enough to make me wonder. And that’s exactly what this guy wants us to do – to sit around wondering what makes him tick. He’s screwing with us.”

“So aren’t you falling for it by reading that ridiculous book?”

“Do you have any other suggestions? He won’t log in as Enoch again, so we’ll never get a hit from the computer tracking. The mailbox rented to open Hamline’s credit card account was a dead end. And we got nowhere with the Internet cafés.”

Flann and Ellie had spent the entire morning interviewing the employees at the various locations Enoch used to access FirstDate. Each of the employees regularly noticed customers logged on to FirstDate, but that kind of computer activity was so commonplace, they didn’t bother to note who the people were, let alone remember them. So, until they came up with a better plan, Ellie was reading The Book of Enoch, and Flann was reviewing all of Caroline Hunter’s notes again looking for a link to Enoch.

“My current theory is that there’s something ‘cute’ about the book from his perspective. The most famous part of the book is the legend of the Watchers, who came from the highest level of angels. But when they descended to Earth – supposedly for the purpose of watching over the mortals – they lusted for human women and ended up mating with them. Enoch tried to intercede with God, but to no avail. God sent the Great Flood to punish the Watchers – to force them to witness the slaughter of their offspring with mortals.”

“Yeah, I see what you mean about ‘cute.’”

“Like I said, from his perspective. Something clever. One possibility is that he’s trying to say something about the process of judgment, or the risks of lust. He’s the fallen angel lusting for these women on FirstDate.”

“And how does knowing that help us?”

“It doesn’t. The other possibility, though, is that he sent us to the Book of Enoch not just as a clever reference to his motivations but because that’s where we’re really going to find the game. Another section of the book has Enoch learning all of these mysteries embedded in astronomy and the calendar, then he has these dream visions that supposedly prophesied some of the most significant events in the Bible. Some people believe it’s all a puzzle – that you can align the calendar to Enoch’s lunar calendar and track significant dates in Christ’s life.”

“So maybe the year-long gap between Hunter and Davis is an allusion to that?”

“I thought you said I was crazy to read this book.”

“You forget you’re talking to McIl-Mulder. I don’t think anything’s crazy.”

“I keep going back to something my father always said: Find the motive, and the motive will lead you to the man.”

“Not a bad maxim.”

“The problem I’m having is making the leap from motive to the man. On my dad’s case, he thought the motive was sexual, so he spent a lot of time in the red light district and responding to calls of peeping toms. And on your psychiatrist case last year-”

“The key was figuring out that the killer was obsessed with the number eight.”

“And from there you went to the homeless shelters to find the neighborhood crazies. But if our guy thinks he’s following a pattern that’s related to the Book of Enoch, I have no idea how that leads us to the man. There’s talk in here about twelve winds, the four quarters of the world, seven rivers, the moon, the sun – there’s no way to know how someone might twist that around to pick the date of the next murder, or the next victim, or whatever it is he might be using the book for.”

“So stop trying to predict what the killer’s going to do next. You forget that on the number eight case, I did the most obvious thing. Once you think you know what makes the killer tick, you use that information to resolve the clues you already have – the clues on the crimes he already committed.”

“So if the Book of Enoch is a clue about his motives, then he must have a copy of the book. I ordered mine off the Internet. I wonder where he bought his.”

“Now that sounds like something you can work with.”

PETER MORSE SLURPED his coffee – it was a little too hot – while he admired the morning’s Daily Post. Side-by-side photographs of Amy Davis and Megan Quinn graced the front page. Davis had shoulder-length brown wavy hair, pale skin, and dark lips. Megan had shorter, curlier hair. She was chubby but cute, with freckles and bright eyes. He had had to persist with the families in that unctuous way he always found uncomfortable but had come up with great pictures of both women by deadline. He took another look at the banner headline running across the top of the page: Two Beauties Slain: More to Come?

Peter had reported some bombshell stories before, but this one had the potential to be legendary. Murdered girls came and went from the front pages of newspapers, but another serial killer at work in New York City? Jimmy Breslin had worked the Son of Sam case, and he was a journalistic god. Granted, his iconic status came from something other than receiving that renowned letter from Berkowitz, but still, you couldn’t talk about Breslin without mention of the summer of 1977.

That’s because the story about Son of Sam was about more than just Berkowitz or the lives he claimed. It was a story about an era. It was a story about an entire city – a great city – made vulnerable by one man, a man who could be any of us and could choose any of us as his next victims.

Peter opened the paper to the article he wrote yesterday afternoon when he first got the tip that the two murders were related. This one had potential. This one would have legs. Flann McIlroy called in the tip himself. That was unusual. It meant he wanted the story out there, which could only mean that he didn’t have any leads. If he had a suspect – a landlord, a mutual boyfriend, the bartender who closed a watering hole shared by the two women – the cops would be worried about scaring a suspect off. But McIlroy also must have had a feeling in his gut about this one. And from what Peter knew about the detective, that was saying something.

He flipped through the pages of notes he had put together for tomorrow’s article. Hopefully it would be the next entry in a long and meaningful series, the beginning of what would ultimately become a book. He sorted his material into two piles.

One pile related to Detective Ellie Hatcher. The Daily Post had run a story about her in a sidebar a year ago, presenting the local angle to the College Hill Strangler case. She might make a good front-page story for tomorrow – assuming that another victim didn’t turn up in the meantime. Haunted by the death of her father, raised under the fearful influences of a killer and the hunting instincts of his pursuer, not too dissimilar in her demographics from the victims themselves. Peter could picture the story and he liked what he saw.

The other pile related to the murder of a woman named Caroline Hunter. She was about the same age as the other victims. Her murder also remained unsolved. He’d written a couple of stories about her case last year, before the city’s attention – and his – moved on to other things. The date of her murder was precisely one year earlier than Amy Davis’s.

He had a strategic decision to make about whether to focus on one story or both. If the public’s interest stayed hot, it was better to dole out a new angle each morning – keep the papers moving from the stands. But if the police were going to announce an arrest tomorrow night, he was better off shooting his wad at once, before the focus turned to a suspect.

He stuck with the feeling in his gut and decided to use just one story for now and save the other for the following day. The Caroline Hunter angle was risky. His speculation could be totally off-base, and there was no guarantee he could come up with sufficient corroboration by deadline. On the other hand, with risks came rewards. He might be the only reporter to make the connection, while the TV news had already tapped into Ellie Hatcher’s backstory.

Maybe he’d let photogenics break the tie. His editor always said that pictures sold papers. He studied the head shot of Caroline Hunter that had run the morning after her murder. Even prettier than Davis and Quinn, she’d be awfully hard to compete with, especially by some cop. He pulled up Google on his computer and ran a search for images under the name Ellie Hatcher.

The screen changed to a display of twelve thumbnail photographs, most of them of the same award-winning quilt apparently designed by a woman named Ellie Hatcher. Toward the bottom of the screen was a small photograph of a blond woman in a white blouse and dark jacket. The text beneath it read Family of College Hill Strangler Detective Cries Cover-Up, followed by a link to People magazine’s Web site. He double clicked on the link.

He’d followed the College Hill Strangler story at the time, but not closely enough to remember the accompanying photograph two years later. Gazing at him from the screen with big blue eyes, full pink lips, and a heart-shaped face was the woman he’d been thinking about every twelve minutes for the last twenty-seven hours: Ally, last name unknown, whom he promised never to contact again.

“Who’s the hottie?” Peter looked up to find the smiling face and dark eyes of Justine Navarro, the intern from NYU with a pierced tongue and an uncomfortably revealing wardrobe. Today’s ensemble was the usual hip-hugger pants and a clingy off-white sweater with a plunging neckline.

“Believe it or not, she’s apparently an NYPD detective.”

“I wouldn’t kick her out of bed.”

Peter had no idea whether Justine was a lesbian, bisexual, or simply the free-spoken product of a generation that had no qualms about checking out members of the same sex. He knew better than to spend too much time thinking about it. She had good taste though. He hadn’t kicked Ellie Hatcher out of bed either, even if her presence there came with the horrible condition that it was a one-night deal. Man, he could not stop thinking about this woman.

“Hey, I’m sending a call back in about sixty seconds,” Justine said. “You better pick it up.”

One of the interns’ jobs was to answer the general public’s crime beat calls. The reporters had lobbied for the change, fed up with constant and absolutely unnewsworthy bitching about abandoned cars, noisy dance clubs, street-level drug dealing, and the occasional illegal exotic pet. Granted, sometimes an apartment-reared lion made good copy, but the interns were perfectly capable of passing along a worthy tip.

“I always take my calls,” Peter said.

“No you don’t. You say you do, but I catch you cheating all the time.”

Peter was only in his midthirties, but increasingly he found himself thinking that youth was a pain in the ass. “Well, it never seems to matter, does it?”

“On this one, it might. The guy says he’s got something on that serial killer case. An exclusive tip only for you.”

Peter didn’t bother to get his hopes up. This call would be just one of many he and other reporters around the city would receive from various whack jobs. He kept his eyes on Ellie Hatcher, wondering if she was getting the same kind of phone calls. “So transfer him already.”

“I tried. I pretended to look for your number while I tried getting your attention. He said he’d call back in exactly ninety seconds and expected to be transferred immediately.” She rushed back to her desk, yelling, “We’ve got about five seconds left.”

This could be interesting. Peter watched the digital clock tick away on the LED readout of his phone. He kept an eye on Justine, who was at her desk now, with one hand on the phone. Five, four, three, two, one. A millisecond of a phone ringing, then Justine’s voice. “Daily Post… Right away.”

She gave Peter an urgent look and pushed a few buttons on her phone, then Peter’s phone rang.

“Peter Morse.”

“Did that young thing with the pretty voice tell you why I was calling?” The voice had a southern accent. Not a twang, but something southern. Raised in the northeast, Peter couldn’t place it any more particularly.

“She said it was about this week’s murders.”

“That’s right. Amy and Megan.” The names oozed like warm caramel. “There’s more you need to know about what got them killed. Something the police are hiding. You got a pen? Write this down. 455 Fifth Avenue. Third floor.” He read off a series of numbers followed by letters.

“Is that some kind of code?”

“You mean to tell me that an accomplished journalist like yourself is unfamiliar with the Dewey Decimal system? I promise, it’ll make good reading.”

“Wait. Who are you? How can I get a hold of you?”

Peter heard a click in his ear, then hung up as well. He rolled out his keyboard drawer and Googled the address the man had recited. The mid-Manhattan public library. He reached for the pile of notes on Ellie Hatcher and flipped to a summary of the College Hill Strangler case that he’d printed from a Web site called Crime Library. He found what he was looking for on the third page:

The first of several communications by the College Hill Strangler to Wichita authorities was in October of 1974. A reporter at the Wichita Eagle-Beacon newspaper received an anonymous telephone call from a man who claimed to have killed Rhonda Cook and her two children. The caller said the reporter would find a letter detailing the crime inside a copy of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. The reporter discovered the letter, as promised, tucked inside the pages of Foucault’s graphic description of a public execution.

Peter was already pulling on his coat as he finished reading. If his caller was a whack job, he certainly was a creative one.

29

LOCATING COPIES OF THE BOOK OF ENOCH WAS NO EASY TASK. With a recently published title, they could have tracked shipments from the wholesale distributors, then looked for sales with the city’s major book retailers. But the ancient text of the Book of Enoch, unprotected by copyright, could be found reprinted in a dozen different books. Used copies could be purchased in myriads of untraceable ways.

Ellie was on hold with a clerk from the Strand bookstore when her cell phone rang. The screen read, Caller Unknown.

“Ellie Hatcher.”

“Detective Hatcher, this is Agent Charlie Dixon of the FBI. I understand that you’re working on this murder case involving Megan Quinn and Amy Davis.”

She cradled the handset of the desk phone against her shoulder and tossed a pencil toward Flann to break him away from Caroline Hunter’s notes. “That’s right, I’m working on both of those cases. How can I help you, Agent Dixon?”

She had Flann’s attention.

“It’s more a question of whether I can help you. Can we meet somewhere?”

“You’re more than welcome to come on in. We’re doing some desk work now.”

“Sorry, I’m not a big fan of local police stations. It’s turning into a nice, bright day outside. You feel like taking a little walk? Somewhere near your station – I don’t want to put you out.”

It was a typical federal ploy for power, but Ellie figured she’d find plenty to argue about with Dixon later. “Sure. There’s an Italian place just around the corner. Lamarca on Twenty-second and Third. How long do you need?”

“I can see it from my car. I’ll be waiting for you.”

IT WASN’T HARD to miss the tall man in a suit, trench coat, and wool cap, settling into a corner table at Lamarca. He had thinning dark hair, small brown eyes, and a puffy, unshaven face. He also had a tray with three coffees and several pastries. They exchanged introductions and handshakes as they unbundled from their coats.

“No partner?”

“Like I said, we’re tied to our desks right now.” The truth was that Flann had so many choice words about the FBI and their penchant for poaching good cases that Ellie had ultimately insisted on meeting Dixon alone.

“I won’t waste your time then. It’s my understanding you’re looking into the murder of Tatiana Chekova as part of this suspected serial killer case. Here, take one of these coffees. And dig into these bad boys too. I didn’t know what you’d want so I-”

“It’s your understanding, huh?” Ellie helped herself to a hazelnut roll. “And how exactly did you come to have this understanding about one of our cases?”

“I know you’re new to this, Detective, but you do realize, don’t you, that if we don’t like the kind of cooperation we get from you, the FBI can always take this case away. Patternistic multiple homicides are a Quantico specialty.”

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s really going to happen though. I already spoke to your Special Agent in Charge. What’s his name – Barry Mayfield? Anyway, he knows we’re working this case. I asked about Tatiana – and a company called FirstDate too, by the way – and he has to have gotten wind of yesterday’s news by now. If he wanted jurisdiction, he’d take the case. He’d at least come talk to us. You wouldn’t be here. So let’s make this a two-way street: Why are you so interested in Tatiana Chekova?”

Dixon smiled. “Honestly, I don’t want to get into a jurisdictional pissing match with you. Let’s start fresh. I got coffees, I got treats, I’m trying to play nice with you in our little law enforcement sandbox. So why don’t we get past the part where you pretend to be surprised that the FBI – and the NYPD – find ways outside of official channels to know what other agencies are working on. I know you guys pulled Chekova’s cold case file. I just want to know why so I can figure out if I have any information that might be helpful to you.”

“That’s one way to proceed. Or you could start by sharing whatever information you have, and I can decide whether or not it’s helpful.”

“So much for avoiding the classic pissing match.”

“At least we’ve got tasty snacks to mitigate the unpleasantness.” Ellie took another nibble from the hazelnut roll, and then reached for a chocolate something-or-other. “I’m not trying to be a bitch. If you’ve got information, we want it. But I might have been a little more forthcoming before Megan Quinn was murdered. I called your boss trying to find out why you guys were keeping us away from FirstDate.”

“At the time, it seemed like you were fishing. I hope you don’t mind me saying, but your partner’s reputation didn’t help much in that regard. We didn’t want you guys screwing up a long-term investigation because of some misguided tangent.”

“And you no longer think it’s a misguided tangent?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. The fact that you’ve got another body suggests you might have a pattern. I’m trying to figure out how Tatiana Chekova fits into it, and whether we might have information relevant to your investigation.”

“Fair enough. I’ll go first. Counting Megan Quinn, we now have three women killed in the last year, all of whom were enrolled on FirstDate. The most recent two had notes at the crime scenes referring to FirstDate, and the same two had been in contact with the same man using the service. We’re doing our best right now to ID the person behind the online persona, but he’s done some work to cover his trail.”

“And what made you look into Tatiana Chekova’s murder?”

Ellie realized then that Dixon didn’t know about the gun that linked Chekova and Hunter. He was arrogant enough to assume she and Flann had their heads up their asses, but whatever source he had in the NYPD wasn’t thorough enough to tell him about the gun match. When she dropped the bomb about the common weapon used to kill both women, his frustration was obvious.

“You never thought the connection would be that concrete, did you?” Ellie asked.

“I didn’t know what you had. Like I said, it’s why I’m here.” He was playing it cool, but Ellie detected a discomfort in his expression that was more than just frustration. It was pain, almost betrayal. She resisted the urge to remind him that he could have obtained the information sooner if Mayfield had been more forthcoming when she called.

“So now I’ve shared,” she said. “Maybe you should start by explaining why you got the D.A.’s office to back off from a subpoena against FirstDate.”

“I’ve been watching that company for two years. I had a confidential informant who said something was shady there – some connection they’d heard about between Russian criminals and the company.” Ellie noticed his ungrammatical use of the gender-ambiguous pronoun they to describe a single informant. “It wasn’t a good enough tip to get a search warrant or a wiretap – but I believed it. Still do.”

“What kind of something shady?”

“Like I said, no details – just some nefarious connection between the corporation and a criminal element. My theory is that it has to be money laundering – buy and sell stock to outsiders, and structure the deals in a way that hides the source of the cash. The company’s going public in less than two weeks. There’s extraordinary opportunity there to wash money through stock options and the I.P.O.”

“So why isn’t the S.E.C. involved?”

“We don’t have enough for them to launch an official securities proceeding.”

And yet, Ellie thought, you have enough to keep an eye out on the company for two years, and to justify keeping the NYPD away from your turf.

“And how does Tatiana Chekova fit in?”

Dixon took another sip of coffee, taking time to blow on the hot liquid that he’d drunk comfortably just a minute earlier.

“She was your informant?” Ellie prompted.

Dixon nodded. “We never even put her through the system officially – for her protection, obviously. She gave us some minor players here and there, but no one who could dime up FirstDate. We always assumed that she was too afraid to give us whoever knew about that connection directly.”

“Did her cooperation with you have something to do with her arrest in Brooklyn a few months before she was killed?” It would explain how a perfectly decent bust got dumped from the system, a fact that had been troubling Ellie all along.

Dixon nodded again. “She told the arresting officer she had major info to trade on, but would only work with the feds. No NYPD.”

“Did you ever figure out why?”

“She told me later that the people she knew had cops in their pockets.”

“But she didn’t give you the cops, just like she didn’t give you whoever could flip on FirstDate. Did it ever dawn on you that she was lying? Suspects with no information to trade have been known to fabricate when necessary.”

“Fine, if you think she was lying, then I guess nothing I have to say is relevant to your investigation. Sorry I’ve wasted your time.” He moved to put on his hat, but Ellie stopped him.

“Come on, that’s not what I meant,” she said. “Obviously it’s got something to do with the bigger picture. I’m just trying to understand why you would have believed her back then.”

DIXON WAS STARTING to wish he’d called McIlroy. This probing into his personal motivations seemed uniquely female. McIlroy would have looked for conspiracy theories involving Tatiana and FirstDate, but Hatcher’s questions were taking him into the very territory that he was trying to avoid.

“To tell you the truth, I doubted it at times. And, even when I believed it, I still knew I’d blown a lot of time on the case without getting anywhere. The bureau can’t abide that these days. That’s why I went to Mark Stern and told him I knew something was up and that he needed to consider coming forward with a complete confession implicating any other members of a criminal enterprise he might be involved in.”

“I’m sorry. You did what?”

Dixon had figured this would look bad if it ever came out, but saying it aloud now he realized just how ridiculous it sounded – how desperate he had been back then to close the door on the investigation. He reminded himself of Mayfield’s warning: Control the message.

“We’ve got a full plate these days, trying to stay ahead on terror cases. That takes time away from solving crimes after the fact. Our entire case stats – white collar, fraud, even drugs – are down. I wasn’t going to work this FirstDate thing much longer, so I rolled the dice. I tried to bluff him.”

“And it didn’t work.”

“Three days later, Tatiana was killed.”

Finally, he used his informant’s name. Not Chekova, not the girl, not the C.I. acronym for a confidential informant. Tatiana. Tatiana was killed. Just as Dixon tried to read Hatcher’s face to see if she’d noticed, Hatcher reached for the cell phone on her belt and flipped it open.

“Sorry,” she said, pushing a couple of buttons on it. “It’s set to vibrate-”

“You can take it if you need to.”

She returned the phone to her waistband, shrugging it off. “If you thought a federal informant was murdered for her cooperation, why didn’t the FBI take over the homicide investigation?”

Again, Dixon thought, more questions about his motivations.

“If we couldn’t put together probable cause for a conspiracy involving FirstDate, how could we show that she got killed as part of it? We decided it was best to leave the investigation to the NYPD.”

“And now two years later, McIlroy and I are working on it.”

“You’re clearly better than those other lazy sacks. How didn’t anyone make a gun match earlier?”

“The case fell through the cracks. One of the detectives, Barney Tendall, was shot off-duty. His partner sort of fell apart after that.”

“Huh-uh. I know you guys like to defend your own, but I don’t think so. We might not have taken over the investigation, but I kept an eye on it. That Ed Becker was the worst cop I ever saw – his partner too. They didn’t do shit. They worked their other cases just fine, but Tatiana – Chekova,” he said, catching himself, “she was just a dead cossack stripper to them. They never even worked the case.”

Hatcher clearly was not inclined to follow this line of conversation. “So here’s the big question now: If Tatiana was killed for cooperating with you, how does that fit with our other three murders?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you.”

“Come on now. If you knew, the FBI really would take the case.” She gave him a friendly smile, which he found himself returning. “So what else can you tell me about the people who might have had a grudge against Tatiana?”

“Two men were prosecuted based on the information Tatiana provided.” Dixon handed the detective a manila folder containing a Form 302, used by federal agents to summarize interviews. Clipped to the 302 was a booking photo. “I made two busts based on tips from Tatiana. One of them was a controlled buy for heroin out of a club she used to work. The guy’s name was Alex Federov. You don’t need to write that down, because Federov was killed in prison two months into his sentence.”

Hatcher’s curiosity was clearly piqued. “Any chance that was related to Tatiana’s murder?”

Dixon shook his head. “No. I checked on that. Turns out Federov took a shiv to the stomach in the yard – get this – for preempting an inmate who was ahead of him on the library waiting list for a Harry Potter book.”

“And so that leaves the second guy.” Hatcher unclipped the photograph from the 302 to take a closer look. “This is him?”

“Lev Grosha. He was sneaking credit card numbers out of a Brooklyn motel. He paid the clerk at the front desk to run the cards through a scanner. Massive fraud potential. With the U.S. Attorney’s Office leaning hard on him, we assumed he’d cooperate. It’s pretty much the only way to get a sentencing break these days.”

“And instead?”

“Grosha pled to all charges and took the full guideline term.”

“Where’s he serving his time?”

“MDC Brooklyn. He’s got a sick mom or something, so the Bureau of Prisons kept him local.” The Metropolitan Detention Center was just off the Gowanus Expressway near the bay.

“Can you put me on his visitor’s list?” Hatcher asked.

“No problem,” he said, making a note of it. “Do me a favor? If you find anything that leads straight to Stern, will you let me know? I don’t think he’s your doer, but something doesn’t add up with that one. My impression is he’s got way too much money based on what he’s bringing in.”

Given the illegal investigation tactics he’d used to keep an eye on Stern, Dixon was relieved when Hatcher didn’t press the question of how he’d formed his “impression.”

“Sure,” she promised. “And, hey, thanks for calling me. And for the sweets.”

Dixon rose from the table and pulled his coat on. He left the café satisfied with the way he’d controlled the message. He’d given the NYPD the information they needed, and his hands were clean. Hatcher seemed like a decent cop. Maybe she could carry the burden now, and he could finally put all of this behind him.

ELLIE WATCHED CHARLIE Dixon walk to a blue Impala down the street, then she pulled her cell phone from her waist, flipped it open, and pressed the camera button. Charlie Dixon popped up on the small screen, in color, his coffee cup held just below his chin. It wasn’t a bad photograph.

She left Lamarca with a small box of tiramisu wrapped in string, a surprise for Flann. Unfortunately, a very different kind of surprise awaited her. Just outside the precinct entrance, a mere eighty feet away, stood Peter Morse. She could not believe her luck. Millions of people had reckless evenings of casual sex with strangers. She did it one time – only once – and the guy wound up literally at her doorstep.

She ducked down a metal staircase leading to a basement laundry shop and stifled a scream when a rat scurried across her foot. She watched as Peter pulled open one of the precinct’s glass double doors. How long was she willing to stand here in the cold, with this stench, to avoid him? Until she saw him leave, she decided – no matter how long it took.

Her cell phone jingled at her waist. She flipped it open and recognized Flann’s number.

“Hello?” She whispered as if Peter could hear her from inside the walls of the precinct across the street.

“Are you almost done with the elusive G-man?”

“Yeah, I’m done. I’m just, um, yeah, I’m on my way back. What’s up?”

“Just get back here.”

“It might be a sec-”

“If this is about the apparently prescient reporter named Peter Morse, he’s standing right here and warned me you’d try to avoid him. Get back here please. The sooner you talk to him, the sooner he’ll leave.”

30

PETER MORSE FOLLOWED ELLIE’S SHEEPISH ENTRANCE WITH A pleased expression. Flann shot her eye daggers.

“I brought tiramisu,” she said, offering Flann the dainty bakery package. She offered Peter her hand, playing it cool. “Hi. I’m Ellie Hatcher. But it sounds like you already know that.”

“I know now.” Ellie couldn’t tell if he was angry, amused, or both. “I hope you don’t mind, but I told your partner that I really needed to talk to the two of you together.”

“I tried pushing him off on the Public Information Office,” Flann said, “but he insisted you’d want to hear this. The two of you know each other?”

“Oh yeah, we go way back,” Peter said. “Good times. Good times. So anyhoo, I got a phone call this morning from your killer.”

Ellie and Flann exchanged skeptical looks. Reporters contacted cops to suck up information, not to dole it out.

“It was probably just a prank,” Flann said. “Routine on high-profile cases.”

“That’s what I assumed too. It was at least a clever crank. He told me to go to the public library to find a letter he left there for me. Sound familiar?”

“That’s how William Summer delivered the first of the College Hill Strangler letters,” Ellie explained to Flann. “He hid a letter inside a book at the library, then gave a tip to a reporter.”

“I guess I play the role of the reporter.” Peter handed them a piece of paper sealed inside a plastic bag. “I watch CSI.”

Dear Mr. Morse, Congratulations. You found this letter. Now here is your reward. The letter continued with a detailed description of the killings, down to the shrill mews of Amy Davis’s cat while he strangled her and the tapestry pattern on the sofa where he found the pillow used to smother Megan Quinn. They were sinners and fornicators and temptresses, but that is not why I killed them. The police are covering up the real reason. They were liars, using deception to trigger lust in honest men. They used FirstDate, then took their Last Breath. “And behold! He cometh to execute judgement upon all, and to destroy the ungodly, and to convict all flesh of all the works which they have ungodly committed.” Three down and many more to go. Enoch.

“You probably recognize that last line about how many more,” Peter said, looking at Ellie.

Of course she recognized the reference. In 1982, the College Hill Strangler wrote a letter to police asking how many people he had to murder before he would get some media attention. In his postscript, he wrote, “five down and many more to go.”

“He’s fucking with me,” Ellie said. “He saw the news coverage mentioning my connection to William Summer, and now he’s intentionally fucking with me.”

“I’m sorry.” Peter Morse sounded like he actually meant it.

“You can’t run the story,” Flann said.

“What?” Peter exclaimed. “That’s not your call to make. I only came here to give you evidence and to see if you have any comment.”

“He’s escalating,” Flann explained. “It’s all about his ego. He wants notoriety. If you give it to him, it’ll only up the ante. He’ll kill again to prove that he can live up to the reputation.”

“That’s not enough to justify holding the story. If publication presented an imminent threat-”

“Don’t hold the story,” Ellie said. “Get it out there as soon as you can.”

“Ellie, this is not your decision.”

“I’m sorry if I’m being insubordinate, Flann, but I will not be part of hiding this from the public. I grew up in a town where every couple of years a woman would be tied up in her home and slowly tortured to death. The police knew about it and kept us in the dark. Then they said he was gone, when they should have known he wasn’t. Some of his victims might have lived if they’d known to be more careful. Peter’s right. You’re just speculating about what Enoch will do. He might be more likely to kill again if he doesn’t get the press he wants. The only thing we know for sure is that women might be more careful if they know what they’re dealing with. He should go with the story.”

“He signed the letter Enoch,” Peter said. “Is that a name that means something to you?”

It was clear the train was leaving the station. Flann had no way of stopping Peter from running the story – he of all people was not going to report Ellie to the department for cooperating with the press – but that wasn’t going to stop him from salvaging some secrecy. “Any way we can persuade you to at least hold back the name?” he asked.

“I already know it’s from the Book of Enoch. The reference librarian tracked down the quote in the letter for me.”

“Off the record for a second?” Ellie asked.

“Sure.”

Ellie told him about the FirstDate user who called himself Enoch. “His profile is still online. It’s a real long shot, but we’ve got it monitored so we can locate him in the event that he logs back on to his account.”

“Okay. That’s good enough reason for me. The name won’t go in. Neither will the quote.”

“Really?” Ellie tilted her head.

“Even reporters can be reasonable, Detective. I need to do more work on the Book of Enoch angle in any event. Just one more question, back on the record. What do you want me to say about you? About the fact that he’s apparently trying to push some buttons in your background?”

“I think that letter gives you enough for a day’s newsprint. You can say we believe that one man has used FirstDate to kill at least three women and that we believe the letter is authentic.” She chose her words carefully when she described at least three victims. The letter detailed the Hunter, Davis, and Quinn murders, but didn’t mention Tatiana Chekova, and Peter apparently didn’t know about her. She wanted to be truthful, but no more forthcoming than necessary to protect the public. Flann nodded his approval. “We have no further comment about any other details.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ve got enough to run with for now. You’ll give me a break in the future, I hope. For holding back the Enoch thing?”

“No problem,” Flann said, already turning his attention back to his desk.

Ellie offered to walk Peter out. She finally spoke once they reached the sidewalk. “You probably hate me. I’m so sorry-”

“I don’t hate you. I’m intrigued. And, with tremendous guilt given the circumstances, I’m actually happy to have an excuse to break my promise never to call you again.”

“I’m not the kind of person who lies, who tells stories-”

“Hey, if you want to make it up to me, promise me you’ll stop apologizing. It’s not like I regret anything that happened. And if you really, really want to make it up to me, rethink that whole never-seeing-each-other-again agreement. We’ve both got a ton of work to do – yours more important than mine, obviously – but if you get a chance, even just for a drink, call me tonight.” He scribbled a number down on a business card and handed it to her. “Hopefully I’ll talk to you soon.”

ON THE WAY back to the detectives’ room, Ellie checked her reflection in the glass door to make sure it didn’t reveal the few seconds of giddiness she allowed herself. Nope, plain old normal Ellie, even though Peter Morse knew who she was and what she did for a living. He didn’t hate her. He wanted to see her again. He agreed to hold back the name, without even a fight.

Flann wasted no time getting back to the task at hand. “I sent the original of the letter down to the crime lab, but it’ll be a while before we hear anything.”

“They won’t find anything anyway.” Enoch hadn’t left prints behind on anything yet. “I think I’ve got a better lead from our friendly neighborhood FBI agent.”

Flann ate tiramisu, nodding occasionally as she walked him through her chat with Charlie Dixon.

“So Chekova was killed for flipping for the FBI, but then the same gun used on her is used to kill our first victim? That doesn’t add up.”

“It does if Enoch is somehow tied to whatever criminal enterprise Tatiana had knowledge of.”

“So we’re looking for Russian heroin dealers, or, more interestingly, we’re looking at Mark Stern. You think Stern’s got it in him?”

“Anyone can be evil. But I don’t think it’s Stern. I remember the momentary look of panic on his face when we first told him that someone was using his company to pluck off young single women. He wasn’t panicked because he was our guy; he was freaking out because that piece of information, made public, would ruin his company. If he wanted to go on a killing spree, why drag his livelihood down with it?”

“So that leaves somebody connected to whoever wanted to silence Tatiana. Maybe he kills her to shut her up, gets off on it, and then continues to use FirstDate to find more victims and to develop his Enoch persona?” Flann immediately saw the flaw in his own theory. “But if he’s on a learning curve and using FirstDate to play, how do we explain him luring Amy Davis onto the site?”

“I know,” Ellie said. “None of it adds up. But we’ve got to track down this Tatiana angle. We don’t have any other leads.”

“The doorman at Megan Quinn’s building said the man who delivered the flowers didn’t have an accent of any kind, so my guess is he’s not a Russian.”

“And Peter Morse said the guy who called him had a southern accent. Maybe the Latino doorman couldn’t tell the difference between a southern accent and a plain old generic white boy? We’re looking for a man with a southern accent, connections to Russian criminals, and a fixation on an obscure religious text? Piece of cake.”

Ellie reached across Flann’s desk for the bakery box and caught a glance at Caroline Hunter’s open notebook. Flann had marked a single page with a neon orange Post-it note.

“What’s this?” she asked, turning the notebook toward her.

“See for yourself.” In the margin next to the orange sticky was a handwritten notation: MC Becker.

Ellie recognized the scrawl. When she’d first read the police reports on Tatiana Chekova’s murder, she knew she’d recently come across the name Becker. What she hadn’t realized at the time was that she’d seen the name among the miscellaneous doodles of Caroline Hunter’s research notes.

“It’s my old buddy from Scarsdale,” Flann said.

Ellie wasn’t surprised that Flann would jump to conclusions when it came to Ed Becker. “You don’t know that, Flann.”

“He’s been in front of us the entire time. He caught Tatiana’s murder. Now his name’s in Caroline Hunter’s notebook. And accents are easy to fake.”

“It’s a common last name.” Ellie took another look at the note. “And the way it’s written there, it might even say McBecker. It’s hard to tell.”

“Looks more like MC Becker to me. According to Dixon, Tatiana said the men she knew had NYPD cops on the take, and I know first-hand that Becker’s got that kind of thing in his background. MC could’ve been shorthand for a meeting place.”

“Or maybe it’s his son’s initials? Becker said his son met his fiancée online. Or it may be totally unrelated. I could call him. Ask him about it.”

“He’ll say it’s a coincidence, and then what? No, we’ve got to look into Becker without him knowing.”

Ellie hated the idea that the man who wrote that letter, the man who killed these women, could have given her a ride home. She didn’t want to believe that her instincts could be so wrong. But no matter how she shaped the ideas in her mind, she couldn’t shake Flann’s reasoning. Flann might be jumping to conclusions, but the possibility had to be pursued, especially when she considered Charlie Dixon’s other troubling comment. “Dixon said that Becker was slacking on Tatiana’s murder case from the very beginning, before his partner was killed. Apparently they were working their other cases just fine.”

“That doesn’t jibe with what Becker told us.”

“I know, and it does a lot to explain that train wreck of a murder notebook he left behind. It bothers me.”

“One of us needs to look at Becker’s old files for comparison. See if he really did bury Tatiana’s case.”

“I’ll do it,” Ellie offered.

Flann shook his head. “You won’t know what to look for. This is your first homicide case.”

“Fine. You do it. But promise me you’ll run anything by me before you whisk off and arrest him or something, okay?”

“Aye, aye.”

“I’ll go out to Brooklyn to talk to Tatiana’s sister again. See if she knows anything about the deal with the FBI. If there’s time on the way back, I might stop by MDC to see Lev Grosha.”

On the way out of the precinct, Ellie used her telephone to send the digital photograph of Charlie Dixon to Jess’s e-mail account. She followed up with a text message: “See if anyone at Vibrations knows him. Start with the manager. C U 2nite.”

31

IN THE NARROW, WHITE-TILE HALLWAY THAT LED TO ZOYA Rostov’s apartment, Ellie recognized the familiar baby’s cry and toddlerlike squeals of happiness she’d heard on her first visit to Tatiana’s sister. She wondered if perhaps children were born with fixed temperaments, one sibling content and playful while the other fussed stoically. But when Zoya opened the apartment door and Ellie glimpsed the young faces of the baby and the boy, she realized how inchoate their identities were; their current emotional states fleeting – just momentary phases in a child’s development of days, weeks, and years. These two little lives had so much more to experience before anyone could guess what their future adult selves might become.

Zoya invited Ellie in, then locked the door behind her, securing the chain in place.

“Your husband isn’t here?” Ellie asked.

“Vitya is working.”

“What does your husband do for a living?”

“He is a security guard at a storage warehouse. He usually is on night shift, but lately he has overtime to work.”

“Staying home with both of the kids all those hours has to be hard,” Ellie offered.

“I never see my children as work. Other people’s children – that was work. In Russia, I was a schoolteacher. The children, they were good, nice children. But every day, I thought, how much work it is to take care of all of these children in one little room. Keeping them from hurting themselves, getting them to behave – that was all work, let alone trying to teach them anything. Now that I have my own? I cannot imagine anyone else thinking of them as work.”

“Did you ever think of being a teacher here in the United States?”

Zoya nodded. “Of course. At first. But I found nothing. Not even teaching Russian. Too many licenses and requirements. I looked for other work. Some girls, they learn how to style hair or become house servants. I was offered a job at a massage parlor, but I could see from one visit what went on there. I made the mistake of telling Tatiana about it. And now here we are.”

“What do you mean by that? Here we are.”

“I got lucky. I marry a good man, a good father. I have children and am happy. Tatiana, she worked at massages and never got lucky like I was. Now she is dead. She never even got to meet her little niece. Her name is Tanya,” she said, jiggling the calmed baby toward Ellie. “It is like a nickname of Tatiana in Russian.”

“That’s really nice, both the name and the sentiment.”

“Vitya, he fought me on it. He made jokes that he did not want our daughter to turn out like Tatiana. But I told him this is what I wanted, and that was the end of it.”

Ellie noted the sound of pride in Zoya’s voice and decided it was well deserved as she pictured this tiny waif of a woman standing up on behalf of her sister’s good name.

“You probably figured out by now that I came back to talk to you about Tatiana.”

Zoya nodded.

“Did you know that she was an informant for the FBI?” Zoya’s eyes widened, and Ellie pulled out the booking photograph of Lev Grosha that she’d received from Charlie Dixon. “Do you recognize this man? His name is Lev Grosha. He’s in prison based in part on information that Tatiana gave to the FBI.”

Zoya held the picture and stared at it blankly.

“I take it you had no idea how serious her legal problems had gotten.”

“This man is in prison because of Tatiana?”

“That’s my understanding. We just heard about it ourselves.” Ellie pulled her phone from her waist, flipped it open, and showed Zoya the picture she’d taken of Charlie Dixon. “This was the FBI agent she was working with.”

Ellie could not read Zoya’s silence, but it seemed more troubled than surprised.

“This man,” she said, jutting her chin toward Ellie’s phone, “he is an agent for the police?”

“Well, not for the police, but for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They’re-”

“Yes, I know what is the FBI. I just say police. But he works for FBI?”

Ellie nodded, and Zoya worked her lips nervously between her teeth. Her eyes moved between the grainy digital photo of Dixon and the booking photo of Lev Grosha.

“Have you seen the FBI agent before? With your sister?”

“Yes, I think so. She came here, not long before – she came and asked for some money, just a little bit, like always. I have to ask Vitya, you know. But we give her some money, and then she leaves. Vitya and I, we go out a few minutes later to take Anton to the park, back when we had just the one child. A car passed us and Tatiana was inside. Vitya, you know, he was bothered, like she had come asking for money but was running off with some strange man anyway. He made a big fuss over it is why I remember. This man on your phone, I think he was the man who was driving.”

“I can imagine what your husband must have thought when he saw her in a new car with a man who was probably wearing a suit and tie. But he wasn’t a client. She was providing information to law enforcement.” Ellie kept her suspicions about the nature of Charlie’s relationship with Tatiana to herself.

“Did your partner know that?”

“Excuse me? My partner?”

“The man you came here with before. Mr. Becker, right? Did he know my sister was working with the FBI?”

“No. He’s retired now. He couldn’t have known she was an informant for the FBI. They’re totally separate from the city police. What about the man in the other photograph? Do you recognize him? Lev Grosha?”

Zoya shook her head but still looked rattled.

“Can you think of how your sister might have known Lev Grosha? She told the agent that he was part of a larger criminal conspiracy. Grosha was arrested for credit card fraud, but there was also heroin dealing involved, maybe money laundering.”

They both jumped at the sound of a key in the lock. Zoya pushed Grosha’s photograph back into Ellie’s hands. “You must go.”

“What’s wrong, Zoya?”

“Nothing. I told you, I saw my sister with that man on your phone, but I did not know who he was. Now, please. Do not cause problems.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Ellie heard the door slam against the closed chain and the sound of a friendly holler in Russian. Zoya released the chain for her husband. Vitali – whom his wife called Vitya – fell silent when he walked into the room and saw Ellie. “Detective. I did not realize we had company.”

“Not for long. I was just stopping by to apologize for upsetting your wife the other day. In light of some developments on the case, we don’t think the killings are related to Tatiana’s death after all. It’s probably as you said: Guns change hands. I’m just sorry to have brought up bad memories.”

Vitali nodded and thanked her for the information. Behind him, Zoya stood silently. Ellie apologized once again before leaving.

Just as she had on her first visit to the apartment, Ellie paused outside the door. She heard Vitali wrestle with their son, Anton. She heard Zoya speak in Russian, then an abrupt response from Vitali. Zoya spoke again, more urgently, then Vitali, sounding angry. By the time Ellie headed for the stairs, the pitch had reached full-scale verbal combat.

Ellie wondered if the Rostovs were one of those couples who fought around the clock, despite all that talk from Zoya about how lucky she was to have found a loving caretaker. If not, then something about Ellie had that effect on them, and that made Ellie wonder what kinds of secrets Zoya and Vitali Rostov had hidden beneath their happy veneer.

ELLIE ARRIVED at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center just after five o’clock. Evening visitors’ hours had just begun, and a line wrapped around the concrete bunker of a building. As Ellie made a beeline for the security checkpoint, she felt the resentful eyes of wives, girlfriends, mothers, and children fall on the light-haired, light-skinned woman of authority cutting ahead of them in the dark cold.

The corrections officer at the entrance was a young man with a skin-close haircut, probably just out of an enlisted military stint. “I’m here to see Lev Grosha. Special Agent Charlie Dixon should have added me to his visitors’ list.”

The guard checked the computer in front of him and nodded. “You need some privacy?”

“If that’s possible.”

“I’ll put you in one of the attorney visiting areas. Just be advised. The conversations are monitored by the Bureau of Corrections.”

“The defense attorneys don’t have a problem with that?”

“You think John Ashcroft was thinking about them when he changed our regs? Take a seat at one of the tables in the back. Grosha will be right out.”

The man brought out moments later resembled the man in Lev Grosha’s booking photo but had a roughness to him that she had not anticipated. He was thinner, harder, and more wiry than the pale-skinned, pink-cheeked blond who’d entered MDC eighteen months earlier. As he settled into the seat across from her, she noticed the bottom half of a dark green swastika peeking from a rolled-up shirt sleeve. She waited for the guard to leave.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Grosha. I’m Ellie Hatcher. I’m a detective with the New York Police Department.”

“And you are sure you are here to see me?” His accent was Brooklyn, still tinged with a hint of the old Russian. “The statute of limitations must have run out on anything I might have done before my arrest. Two years, right?”

“Sorry. It’s at least five on most felonies.”

“This is what happens when you listen to jailhouse lawyers.” Behind Grosha’s faint smile, Ellie saw a closer resemblance to the photograph she carried in her purse.

“Not to worry in any case, because I’m not here about anything you might have done. I’m here regarding some murders that have taken place during your incarceration.”

“I’d say I have an ironclad alibi.”

“Yes, you do. We’ve had three women killed in the last year, all of whom were using an Internet dating service called FirstDate. Does that company mean anything to you?”

“No. I mean, yes, I think I have heard of it. You know, people saying that’s how they met. Some even in here, so maybe that’s not the best advertising. But it does not mean anything special to me in particular.”

“We have reason to believe that one man killed all three of these women, and we think it might be someone who – well, let’s just say he might be within your circle of professional acquaintances.”

“And what makes you think I would know this man?”

She had to be cautious here not to reveal too much about Tatiana’s connection to his prosecution, or her murder’s connection to the recent serial killings. “A piece of evidence that has come up in our investigation bears some relation to you.”

“What do you mean, a piece of evidence?”

“The details really don’t matter, do they? What matters is whether you can help me find the guy who’s doing this. A multiple murderer compared to the handful of stolen credit card numbers you swiped? I can get you substantial consideration with the government if you point us in the right direction.”

Ellie hadn’t actually run this part of her pitch past Charlie Dixon, let alone the federal prosecutors who would need to make the deal, but she was pretty sure they’d be able to swing it if Grosha proved helpful. She also knew she had Lev Grosha’s attention. He did not look like a man who enjoyed prison.

“All you’ve told me is that some man is killing women, and that a mysterious link ties the two of us together. That does give me a fair basis for helping you.”

“The man we’re looking for hates women. He judges them. He would be uncomfortable with promiscuity, most likely with women generally. He may also think of himself as religious. He is fascinated with something called the Book of Enoch. You might have seen him reading religious text, or quoting spiritual verse. He may do this either because he truly believes it or is a cynic who uses religion to justify the things that he does. We also know that he has an acumen for computers. He uses public Internet connections so he is not traceable. And – this is right up your alley – he used a stolen credit card to create an account with the company I mentioned, FirstDate. Does any of this remind you of anyone?”

Grosha was staring at her with an amused expression.

“I can keep your name out of it. We just need a lead. He’s murdering innocent women.” She placed pictures of Caroline Hunter, Amy Davis, and Megan Quinn on the table in front of him.

“The only thing that sounded vaguely familiar from anything you mentioned was the use of another person’s credit card. That, as you know, is something I am familiar with. But the people I run with? We are what you might call believers in the capitalist system. We break rules to make our way, to make money. These three women, you said they were innocent. They did not buy drugs or steal or con?”

“No.”

“In that case, the men I know? If they saw these women, they might try to fuck them, but hurting them – what would be the point of that, you know? And religion” – he waved a hand dismissively – “I do not know anyone who gives a fuck about that.”

“How about Vitali Rostov? Do you know anyone by that name? Or he might go by Vitya Rostov.”

His eyes were calm, but she noticed a slight left-leaning head tilt. “Vitya is what you’d call a nickname for Vitali,” he explained. “But no, I do not know a man by that name. He is the man you think is hurting these women?”

“No, probably not. Just a name that’s come up. You’re curious for someone who doesn’t even know him.”

“You have me intrigued. A serial killer. Like Hannibal Lecter, no?”

“Without the cannibalism or the bad face mask.”

Grosha laughed, caught off guard by the humor. “Like I said, I do not know anyone like the man you described, nor do I know any Vitya – what name did you say?”

“Rostov. Vitali or Vitya Rostov,” Ellie clarified.

Grosha shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry. I cannot help you. But it has been nice to meet you, Ellie Hatcher. You are the kind of visitor that a man in prison does not mind seeing, even under these circumstances.”

“Well, since you don’t mind the company, and since you asked a question out of mere curiosity, maybe you won’t mind if I do the same.” He gave her a slight nod of consent. “When did you get the ink?” She glanced at the green bars of the swastika on his forearm.

“Three months after the United States government put me here.”

“Looks like pretty decent work for a prison tat. Your jacket didn’t say anything about having white ethnic pride.” She used the white supremacists’ preferred euphemism for racism.

Grosha double-checked the empty area around them before speaking. “I don’t give a fuck what color people are. Even the men you Americans call white look brown compared to me. But inside this place, you cannot be alone. I learned that quickly. The brothers, they do not want to take care of a man who looks like me. This?” He pulled his sleeve to cover the ink. “This was the easy way. I have it removed later. Big deal.”

“You do what you have to in order to survive.”

“Exactly.”

“Not unlike the way you refused to tell the U.S. Attorney’s Office who you were feeding the credit card numbers to after you got them from the motel clerk. That was about survival too?”

“Like I said, the tattoo was easy. You know that I cannot say any more than I have. But I promise you this. I am telling the truth when I say I do not know any man like the one you are looking for. If I did, you would not need to give me – what did you call it – substantial consideration. I would help you, or I would kill the man myself. Men like that in Russia, they do not get away with hurting women, not like in this country.”

On the way out of the prison, Ellie stopped to see the young, shorthaired guard at the entrance.

“Did you get what you needed from your Russian?” he asked.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t, but I was wondering if maybe you could help me with something. In order to see anyone in here, you’ve got to have your name on the inmate’s visiting list, right?”

“Yep. It’s got to all be done in advance. No such thing as a pop-in at a corrections facility.”

“Can I get a list of Lev Grosha’s visitors?”

“No problem.” He hit a few keys. “It’s a short one.” The printer churned out only five names, including hers. The other four were Russian, two females and two males. One of the women, probably his mother, shared the Grosha surname. The two men were named Ivan Ovinko and Mark Jakov. Neither name was familiar to Ellie, and neither Zoya nor Vitali Rostov was on the list.

STUCK IN STOP-and-start traffic for over forty minutes on the Gowanus Expressway, Ellie felt too antsy to return to Murray Hill for a quiet night alone in her apartment. She was close to a breakthrough, she could tell, but she couldn’t piece the tangents of her wandering mind into a coherent thought. Tatiana’s sister knew something. Ellie had seen the unspoken concern on Zoya’s face, and knew that it had something to do with her husband. The woman also seemed a little too interested in Ed Becker, betraying more than just idle curiosity when she asked if he’d known about Tatiana’s cooperation with the FBI. And all those connections that Flann had pointed out between Becker and their case – how did they fit in? And how did they relate to FirstDate and all of the women who’d been killed?

She dialed Flann’s number on her cell. “Hey there, it’s me.”

“You’re all done seeing the sister?”

“I talked to her, and I also went to see Lev Grosha at MDC. I think there’s something more to what Zoya knows. She might not know how it fits into her sister’s death, but I said something to her that – I don’t know, confused her or something.”

“No idea what it was?”

“She’s hard to read. She said she didn’t recognize Grosha, but it’s possible she’s lying. She remembered seeing Tatiana with Dixon, but I don’t see why that would be so upsetting. The one thing I did find curious was that she asked if Becker knew Tatiana was an informant. At first I thought she was upset because Becker should have told her, or should have connected it to her murder. But I don’t know, she still seemed troubled even when I told her we didn’t know until today. Then Vitya came home, and she basically made me leave on the spot. I’m wondering if maybe Vitya’s involved in whatever criminal activity Tatiana was pointing the FBI to. She gave up a couple of people, but not her own brother-in-law.”

“And what did Lev Grosha say?”

“That he’d never heard of Vitali or Vitya Rostov. But, again, I think he was probably lying. He did this weird head tilt.”

“Ellie Hatcher, human lie detector.”

“Did you find anything more about Becker’s old cases?”

“Charlie Dixon was right. Becker and Tendall carried a pretty high clearance rate, and Becker’s remained above average even after Tendall died.”

“So if he was slacking on Tatiana’s case, it’s not because he’d lost it altogether, like he told us.”

“Exactly. But, again, as with everything, we still don’t know how it ties into our case. My spidey senses are going off though. That note in Hunter’s binder is about Ed Becker.”

“Well, I hope you’re wrong. A cop involved in something like this?”

McIlroy said nothing in response.

“I’m on my way back from Brooklyn. Do you have time for a drink or something? We can throw all of this around, see if something comes out.”

“Sorry, I can’t tonight. I want to wrap some things up here at the desk, then I need to go.”

“Hot date?”

“No,” he said, then after a pause, “I’m seeing my daughter again.”

“Oh, Flann, that’s great.” Ellie kept her tone upbeat but the silence on the other end of the line had her wondering. “Well, I guess tomorrow morning it is, then.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow.” He sounded distant.

“Is everything okay, Flann?”

“Yeah. Just end-of-the-day fatigue is all. Enjoy your youth while you’ve got it, Hatcher.”

Ellie flipped her phone shut and spent the next twenty minutes of the drive pulling at the threads of information they had. Tatiana was plugged into a ring of Russian criminals who had some connection to FirstDate. Ed Becker – who dropped the ball on Tatiana’s murder, who’d been so eager to give Ellie a hand, whose surname was in Caroline Hunter’s notes. Stolen credit cards – used by Lev Grosha, by Enoch, by Edmond Bertrand six years ago in Boston. Zoya and Vitya Rostov, who saw Tatiana with Charlie Dixon.

She called Jess’s cell number.

“Yo, sis. What up?”

Ellie heard the thumping of Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” in the background. “Please tell me you’re at Vibrations.”

“You don’t think Dog Park should try playing a little Def? I could wear my hair all big, slip into some leather, and ride the eighties revival.”

“Did you get the picture I e-mailed you?” She wanted to know if the club manager, Seth Verona, recognized Charlie.

“Hello? Why do you think I’m here? I don’t start my shift for three hours, but I’m trying to catch Seth before he leaves. Who’s the stud muffin?”

“An FBI agent named Charlie Dixon. Remember when we talked to Seth, he said he remembered a straightlaced guy who would come in and talk to Tatiana? I want to know if that’s him.”

“All right. I just got here, so give me a while.”

By the time Ellie reached the precinct and returned the fleet car, she still wasn’t ready to go home. She needed to think about something other than the case. She needed to clear her head and come back to it later. She could think of only one person to call. She found his business card in her jacket pocket, took a deep breath, and dialed his number.

THIRTY MINUTES LATER, the man who called himself Enoch hung up his phone, disappointed. The game was going to have to end earlier than intended. He had planned to wait, at least for a few days of headlines about the FirstDate murders. But now there was a problem.

He had only now learned that police were asking questions about Tatiana Chekova, not just Caroline Hunter, Amy Davis, and Megan Quinn. They were asking questions about information Tatiana had given to the FBI. They were trying to figure out how Tatiana fit into the pattern.

He should have realized they would make the connection. It was the one mistake he’d made during an entire year of planning. He needed to put an end to those inquiries.

Fortunately, there was no harm done if the game had to end early. The letter left in the library would ensure a front-page story the following morning about the FirstDate murders. And he knew precisely how to halt the investigation. He closed the laptop on his kitchen table and thought about what else he needed to bring with him. He was expected on City Island in two hours.

32

ELLIE MET PETER MORSE AT HALF KING, A PUB HE CHOSE IN Chelsea. He wore faded jeans, a long-sleeve black T-shirt, and a crumpled charcoal gray blazer that would have looked formal on another man, but worked just fine on Peter. He greeted her with a friendly kiss on the cheek, and Ellie caught a group of women two tables over taking notice. Peter had those kind of looks.

“Great place,” she offered.

“A writer friend of mine owns it. They’ve got a regular reading series, and, as you can probably tell, it’s a favorite place for writers to gather and look for inspiration.” Ellie noticed a few customers scribbling in open notebooks. “Me, I can only write in total silence. I come here to eat and to drink.”

“That makes it my kind of place.”

“I’m really glad you called, Ellie.” He emphasized the first syllable of her name.

“Me too,” she said, meaning it. It felt good to hear him use her real name.

“And with perfect timing. I just finished filing the article with my editor right before you called. I put the focus on the letter from the library. It’s the first time I’ve become a part of my own story, so it was tricky, but I think I got the tone right.”

“That’s good.”

“Of course, I couldn’t write the story without including a little bit of your own background. The parallels to the College Hill Strangler case were so obvious that the connection had to be explained. I hope it’s something you can live with.”

“I guess we’ll find out in the morning.”

“I thought about running it by you, but-”

“I wouldn’t even think of it,” Ellie said. “You’ve got your job, and getting prior permission from me isn’t part of it.”

“Thanks for understanding. I guess the same has to be true for you too – keeping your work life separate from the personal.”

“That’s right, so you better hope I don’t find that meth lab you’ve got stashed away in your bedroom closet.” His comment had been a clear invitation to discuss her reasons for trying to preempt a relationship between them, but she wasn’t ready for that conversation. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to talk about, in fact, and was second-guessing her decision to call him. She wanted to see him in part because she needed to be with someone with whom she would not – could not – discuss the case.

“If it helps any, I turned it in with a blurred photograph of Enoch’s letter, instead of a picture of you. Hopefully the editor won’t make any changes.”

“I hope you didn’t make that decision just because of me.”

“Nah, a threatening letter from a sex-phobic religious zealot is much more ominous than a beautiful police officer. Macabre sells. I was thinking about following up with a story fleshing out the computer angle. Maybe interview some experts about how the killer might have been able to access the e-mail accounts of his victims.”

Ellie liked that angle. It wouldn’t involve any details of the actual case, and it had absolutely nothing to do with her. “I know just the guy for you. He used to work at FirstDate and knows a lot of stuff. Very helpful.” She fished around in her purse and found Jason Upton’s business card.

Peter fingered the edges of the card. “A guy who knows a lot of stuff, huh? Should I be worried about the competition?”

“Nope. He’s a little too Waspy for my taste.” The truth was that until she met Peter, she thought she went for preppy men.

“An upper-crust computer nerd?” Peter feigned skepticism.

“A rich kid with a hobby as a day job. And he likes Pulp Fiction. You’ll like him.”

Peter thanked her and placed the card in his wallet, and Ellie took the opportunity to change the subject. “So what’s good here?” she asked, opening a menu.

“Ah, nice transition. So either you’re starving, or that’s a sign that we should declare your current case and my current story a conversational no-no.”

“Both actually, if that’s okay with you.”

“More than okay. And you can’t go wrong with the menu, but your first time here, I’d go with either the shepherd’s pie or the fish-and-chips.”

When the waiter came, Ellie ordered a Johnny Walker Black and shepherd’s pie. Peter opted for a pint of Guinness and fish-and-chips.

“So can I ask you how you wound up in New York from Wichita, Kansas, or will that inevitably lead to verboten subject matter?” he asked.

“That’s well within limits. I came here because I have a very funny and crazy and irresponsible big brother who dropped out of college so he could hit it big as a rock star. He’d call Mom and tell her he was opening up for big names at CBGB’s – as if she even knew what that was. But I knew my brother, you know? When it came time for me to decide what I wanted to do, my high school teachers laid it out for me: What’s it gonna be – KU, K. State, or WSU? I stuck it out at Wichita State for a couple of years but eventually it hit me: I’d only lived one place my entire life, and there was absolutely no reason for me to stay. My mom needed me, but most of what she worried about was my brother. So I finished the semester, then came up here.”

“And your mom’s still in Kansas?”

“Yep. I call her every night. Just spoke to her before coming here in fact.” Ellie had tried not to let her mother’s continued attempts to pull Ellie into a visit to Wichita get to her.

“She’s got a good daughter. You went to John Jay right away?”

The rhythm of the conversation should have been awkward. Here they were, having what was essentially a first date – at least for him to get to know the real her – but he already knew so much about her past, and they’d already been together physically. In a strange way that she didn’t understand, she felt completely at ease with him.

“No. I figured I’d get here, settle in, and apply to CUNY or something. I wanted to be a lawyer.”

“But then you realized you were carbon-based. Buh-dump-bum. Sorry, obligatory lawyer joke.”

“Thank you for that. So, yeah, I realized I was carbon-based, and I also realized I couldn’t afford to live here and pay for school. So I was waiting tables and hanging around with Jess’s crowd, and keeping his kind of hours, and I guess I realized I was a little more of a cop at heart than I realized. Like a hand-to-hand drug exchange would be going down in a club bathroom, and I’d notice in a way that most people wouldn’t. And I’d see all of these disturbing things every day on the street that would really eat at me. Then one night I saw a girl, way too young even to be out at that hour, wander off from Washington Square Park with some Wall Street cokehead after the bars closed, and I just wanted to stop him from even being near her.”

“Sure.”

“I even confronted the guy – like an idiot, you know? Like, ‘Hey, isn’t she a little young for you, buddy?’ He told me to mind my own business, and she swore she was eighteen. I couldn’t do anything about it. I just watched them walk away, knowing full well what was going on, knowing the kind of life that girl was going to have. That was the moment it all clicked for me. I knew what I wanted to do, and I knew I’d be good at it. I enrolled at John Jay the next morning.”

“It sounds more like you needed to do it.”

“I guess. In training, one of the sergeants told us that being a cop should be a calling. That if you see it as just a job, you may as well go sell RV’s or tennis rackets. Anyway, I’ve never regretted it.”

“Not even after days like today?”

“Never. How about reporting? Is that your calling?” she asked dramatically.

He thought about it for a second. “No. Writing might be, but the reporting is just a part of it. I’d like to do more. I’ve been working on that novel for a few years now, but I’m never quite willing to call it done. It’s probably some deep-seated fear of failure, undoubtedly traceable to my parents. Someday, when I’m over it, I’d like to be able to say I’m an author, not just a reporter, but I certainly don’t regret the journalism. I just wouldn’t want it to get in the way of my friendships with anyone I might come to care about.”

Ellie knew he was trying to ease her fears, but she wound up laughing. Some whiskey trickled down her chin. “Sorry,” she said, wiping the dribble with a napkin. “Very attractive, I’m sure.”

“Delightful, actually, but I should be the one to apologize. A little over the top?”

“No, I’m sorry. It was incredibly sweet.”

“And sweet makes you spit whiskey?”

“No, it was just really funny to me.”

“Oh good. Funny’s what I was going for.”

“It’s just that, here we are, saying that maybe we’ll wind up being friends, and we’ve already slept together. I’m sure it’s perfectly normal, but if you had any idea what a nun I’ve been. My stupid idea about having one anonymous night of passion – I just realized how funny it is.”

Ellie found herself laughing uncontrollably. The stress of the case, her nervousness about seeing Peter again, and the surreal quality of this second first date all culminated at once. To her inestimable relief, Peter joined her.

Two hours later, lying next to each other in Ellie’s bed, they were both still smiling when Ellie’s cell phone rang.

“Ignore it.” Peter pushed a strand of sweat-dampened hair from her forehead and kissed the newly revealed spot on her face. For a second, Ellie was tempted. She could let it ring. She could pretend she was Ally the paralegal, who wasn’t in the middle of a murder investigation. But the thought lasted only a second. She flipped her phone open on the third ring.

“Hatcher.”

“Detective Hatcher, this is Officer Griffin Connelly, Tenth Precinct. I’m sorry to bother you after hours.”

“Not a problem.” Ellie sat up and pulled a sheet over her naked body. Peter smiled and pulled it off of her with one finger.

“They can’t see you over the phone,” he whispered.

Ellie was so distracted by the thing Peter was doing to her stomach that she almost missed what the officer said next.

“I’m at St. Vincent’s Hospital with a Jess Hatcher. He says he’s your brother?”

OFFICER CONNELLY WAS a thin man with fair skin and light brown hair. He waited for Ellie outside of a treatment room in St. Vincent’s emergency care center. Peter had initially insisted on coming with her, and to her surprise, she actually wanted him to. But she ultimately persuaded him to go back to his apartment. If whatever happened to Jess had anything to do with the case, she didn’t want to find it on the front page of the Daily Post, and she didn’t want Peter to be in the position of keeping it quiet before they’d reached an agreement about how to balance his job with hers.

“Thanks for waiting for me, Officer. I just wanted to make sure someone was with him until I got here.”

“I had a hard time explaining it to my sergeant. Is there something more to this than meets the eye?”

“Nothing but a protective little sister. Please thank your sergeant for me.”

According to the statement Jess had given to Officer Connelly, two men had jumped him outside of Vibrations before his shift. He didn’t recognize either of the men and was too busy getting his ass kicked to give a helpful description – two white men, average height and weight and, in Jess’s words, “apparently royally pissed off at me for reasons unknown.” She felt a knot in her stomach as Connelly related the story.

“Lucky for your brother you’re on the job. Bouncer at a strip club, random assault in the parking lot? We were searching him for drugs when he told us to call you.”

“You can finish up if you think it’s appropriate, Officer.”

“Not necessary. Just get your brother whatever help he needs.”

Ellie found Jess reclining on a narrow hospital bed. He tried to sit up when she walked in, but winced from the movement. The smile he forced onto his face seemed to pain him as well.

“Note to self: Cracked ribs hurt.” He eased himself back down into the bed.

“What happened, Jess?”

“It looks like I finally found a beating I couldn’t talk my way out of.”

Ellie always saw Jess as younger than his true years – always happy, never worried, almost invincible. But she hated the way he looked right now – tired, too old to be in this position, and extremely vulnerable.

“They just attacked you in the parking lot for no reason?”

“I went outside to call you, and there they were. Could this have something to do with the picture I showed the Vibrations manager? Seth thinks it was the same guy he saw with Tatiana, by the way.”

Ellie wondered how she’d managed to endanger Jess by verifying the relationship she suspected between Charlie Dixon and Tatiana Chekova. Had she read Dixon entirely wrong? Then Jess asked her if the man in the picture was Russian.

“Why? The men who did this to you were Russian?”

“Russian, Czech, Romanian, Ukrainian. Slavic, whatever. One of those. When I left the apartment, I noticed a couple of guys standing across the street. I didn’t think much of it, but I’m pretty sure they were the same ones who did this to me.”

“Why didn’t you say something to the officer?”

“Because my beat down came with a warning, Ellie. And if it was only for me, I would have told them to fuck themselves. But it was about you. I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, but they said to back off. Next time we’re both dead. And they know where you live. Ellie, please, you’ve got to get off this case.”

33

ELLIE’S CALLS WERE ALL PUT THROUGH TO FLANN’S VOICE MAIL. When he didn’t return three back-to-back messages, she tried to tell herself that the policing could wait until tomorrow. She tried to sit and comfort her brother like any other family member of an assault victim. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the Slavic accents of the men who had beaten Jess.

She wanted mug shots. She wanted a positive ID from Jess. She wanted to track them down and, in an ideal world, find them resisting arrest. She wanted an excuse to act on her rage.

But while she worried about protecting her brother, he was still trying to shield her from the threat that had been delivered through him. He refused to let her pass the information on to Officer Connelly, promising that if she did, he would stick to his bogus cover story. So she kept coming back to the same dilemma: Either she needed to leave Jess’s side to print some pictures of suspects for him to ID, or she needed to find Flann.

She tried Flann’s cell phone one last time, then dialed directory assistance and requested a listing for Miranda Hart. She’d apologize to Flann later for bothering the mother of his child but, at that moment, all she could think about was her own need to get some help. The operator connected her directly.

“Hello?” The woman sounded distracted. Ellie heard water running in the background and the faint sounds of a television.

“Ms. Hart?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Ellie Hatcher. I’m Flann McIlroy’s partner at the NYPD. I really need to find him, and he’s not answering his phone.”

The running water stopped. “I’m not sure why you have this number. He doesn’t live here. He never has.”

“I thought maybe he was there with your daughter. Or maybe you could tell me where he took her for dinner?”

“I’m sorry. There’s some misunderstanding. He saw her earlier in the week.”

“He told me he was having dinner with her again tonight.”

“No. We agreed to take things slow. I want to ease him into Stephanie’s life.”

“But I just talked to him a few hours ago. Wasn’t he supposed to see her?”

“He told you that? No. We talked a long time after he brought Stephanie home the other night. He’s supposed to call to schedule something next week. I haven’t talked to him since.”

Ellie thanked Miranda for her time, cut the call short, and began redialing Flann’s number. Once, twice, three more times. Straight to voice mail. His phone was turned off, and she was beginning to worry. Her brother was in the hospital. Her partner had lied to her and was missing. If they had gotten to Jess, could they have gotten to Flann too?

She sat at the edge of Jess’s bed. He looked at her like he didn’t know whether to laugh or scream at her. “Just go, Ellie. Seriously, do what you need to do, but you’ve got to promise me to be careful. I got a good thing going with the Vicodin here, and all your stress is seriously harshing my mellow.”

After a few minutes of repeated “are you sure’s?” Jess threatened to have the attending nurse call security if Ellie did not leave him to rest.

“If I arrange to fax some pictures here, do you think you can find the energy to take a look at them and maybe give me a text message?”

“Now that’s my baby sister. Yeah, I think I can handle it. I didn’t get enough punches in to hurt these babies,” he said, wiggling his fingers.

ELLIE SPLURGED for a cab to the precinct, not wanting to lose her cell phone signal on the subway in case Flann called. As she checked her phone for incoming calls one last time before she paid the driver, a thought suddenly hit her, and she felt stupid for not realizing it earlier: Flann’s phone might be going directly to voice mail simply because he was somewhere without a signal. It still left her questioning why he lied to her about seeing his daughter, but at least it shifted her thoughts from the more unnerving possibilities she’d conjured.

She settled herself in front of a records terminal and began printing out copies of the photographs she wanted Jess to see. Vitali Rostov was first. He had no criminal record, so she pulled his New York driver’s license photograph. Next, she ran off the photographs of the two men who were on Lev Grosha’s list of approved inmate visitors: Ivan Ovinko and Mark Jakov. She numbered the photographs with a pen – one through three – then faxed them to the hospital along with a note for the security guard who had promised to shepherd the fax to Jess’s room.

As she watched the pages feed through the fax machine, she took a deep breath. Now came the hard part. Waiting. She checked her phone. No new calls. She tried Flann again. Still straight to voice mail. Where was he?

A folder rested on Flann’s desk, its contents spilling out slightly. She recognized it as the folder Jason Upton had sent to the precinct after running a background check on Ed Becker. She opened it and found three documents that had not been there originally.

One was a copy of a New York DMV boat registration for a 1995 Gibson 5900 Cabin Yacht, registered to Ed Becker. The second was a copy of title information on the same boat, documenting ownership transferring from a man named Luke Steiner to Ed Becker the previous March. The third document was a fax addressed to Detective Flann McIlroy, dated that afternoon, from the law firm of Larkin, Baker & Howry, where Jason Upton worked.

On the cover sheet was a handwritten note: Got your message. Sorry I missed you, and sorry I missed the boat. Goes to show there’s always somewhere else to look. Here’s the registration if you don’t already have it. Call me if you need anything else. He had left a telephone number with a cellular phone area code, followed by the initials J. U. Attached was a copy of the same DMV boat registration that Becker had apparently printed out on his own before receiving Upton’s fax.

Ellie tried to call Flann again. Still straight to voice mail. She stared at the registration for Ed Becker’s 1995 Gibson 5900 Cabin Yacht, then Googled “Gibson 5900” on Flann’s computer. She double clicked on the first result and pulled up a listing of a 2002 yacht. Asking price: a quarter of a mil. She let out a whistle, then checked a few more listings. The cheapest 1995 she could find was still $160,000. How did a retired cop afford a boat like that? It certainly explained why Flann had been curious, but what led him to ask Jason Upton about the boat in the first place?

She remembered Upton’s computer tutorial about cookies. She used the computer’s mouse to click on the history of Flann’s Internet Explorer, then clicked on a folder marked today. Beneath an entry for “images.google,” a name popped out at her: Ed Becker. She clicked on it.

The screen changed to a collection of small photographs. A number in the top right-hand corner of the screen indicated that she had pulled up more than five hundred matches. She searched Google Images again, this time for “Ed Becker New York.” That narrowed it to a manageable thirty-two matches. She browsed the photos. A kid graduating from high school. A paleontologist reconstructing the skeleton of a T. rex. Some guy with a smile and a rifle next to a really dead Bambi.

She clicked over to the next page of photographs. Between a head shot of a bankruptcy lawyer and a poster for the movie City Hall was a group photograph that caught her eye. It was too small to make out faces, but the text beneath the picture read, Bronx Yacht Club Activities. She clicked on the photograph to enlarge it.

Retired NYPD Detective Ed Becker stood third from the left, beer in hand, on the deck of a sailboat. A description beneath the picture read, Blue Cup Regatta.

Ellie returned to Flann’s history and saw a listing for the Bronx Yacht Club. She clicked on the link to pull up the club’s Web site. The home page announced, “Welcome to the site of the Bronx Yacht Club, located in the nautical community of City Island, New York.” A separate entry in Flann’s browser history showed that he also visited a Web site about City Island itself.

City Island. City Island. Where had she just seen something about City Island? She rummaged through the clutter scattered across Flann’s desk until she found what she was looking for: the list of Internet café locations that Enoch used to access the FirstDate server. Every spot was in Manhattan, except one – an Internet café called JavaNet on City Island, New York.

She opened Mapquest, then entered the address of the Bronx Yacht Club and requested directions to JavaNet. Only a quarter of a mile separated the two.

She continued scouring the papers on Flann’s desk, hoping to find something to confirm her suspicions about where her partner had gone. Resting inside his top desk drawer was a sealed envelope marked “Ellie.” She ripped it open and read the note inside:

Ellie – Tomorrow morning I will tell you whatever I learn tonight about Ed Becker, and you will undoubtedly be angry that I did not invite you on my snooping adventure. I will explain my reasons, and you will accuse me of holding out on you once again. Then I will show you this note to prove that, unlike some moments in the past few days, I am sharing my island with you. I have every intention of sharing any and all information with you, but I have good reasons for acquiring it on my own. I know you hope I’m wrong – I do too – but I need to check on Becker. As you know, the NYPD can be a harsh place for cops who check on other cops. There’s no need for you to be associated with my snooping. But I promise, I will tell you everything I know tomorrow. Now that you’ve read this, do you forgive me, or shall we go another round? Your partner, Flann.

She read the letter again, so frustrated she wanted to tear it to pieces. I hope you’re wrong. That’s what she’d said to him when she called him from the car and he voiced his concerns about Becker. He’d written this note after that phone call.

She dialed Flann’s number again, but this time it did not go into voice mail. It rang. Then an answer. A loud humming sound in the background, then Flann’s voice: “Can’t talk,” followed by a click. She hit redial immediately, but the call went directly into voice mail this time. She tried twice more, but no luck. Flann must have turned off his cell after Ellie had finally made it through.

The noise in the background had been familiar. And loud. She pulled up a map of City Island on the computer screen. The Bronx Yacht Club was near Pelham Bay Park, not far from LaGuardia Airport. It was also not far from Westchester, where Ed Becker lived.

She pulled up the yacht club’s Web site again and clicked on the link for directions. The #6 subway line ended at the Pelham Bay Park station. Ellie tried Flann’s phone again. It was still off.

She walked downstairs to the car checkout desk. Behind the counter, a gray-haired woman with black-framed glasses and very red lipstick read a paperback called To the Power of Three.

“Hi, I’m Ellie Hatcher. I’m here this week working with-”

“I know who you are, sweetie.” The woman looked up at her over the tops of her reading glasses.

“Would you mind checking to see if McIlroy has a car out?”

“I can tell you for a fact that he does not. I saw him walk out of here – what, it must have been an hour and a half ago.”

Ninety minutes. It was about the length of the ride on the #6 train to Pelham Bay Park. Flann was out there alone, with a significant head start and without a partner.

“I need to check out a car.”

34

WITH THE OCCASIONAL HELP OF A SIREN, ELLIE MADE GOOD time, crossing the small, green City Island Bridge only forty minutes after leaving the precinct. But she was still at least forty minutes behind Flann, and his phone was still turned off.

She started at the Pelham Bay Park train station and drove from there to the Bronx Yacht Club. The roads were dark, empty, and still. Ellie felt like she had driven hours away, to the eastern seaboard, but she was only twenty miles from Manhattan. She drove slowly, checking both sides of the street for signs of Flann.

It was her fault they were separated. I hope you’re wrong. She should have said more when he voiced his concerns about Becker. She should have at least made it clear that she’d back him up no matter where the leads took them, even if it was to the boat of a former cop, docked off City Island, just a quarter mile from the Internet café used by a man who called himself Enoch. Maybe if she had said all that, he would not be out there alone. The only way to make it right was to find him.

When she reached the yacht club, she parked along Hunter Avenue and walked toward a stately white-columned building with a wraparound porch. On her way to the large double-doored entrance, she passed two silver-haired men resting against the nearby deck railing, smoking cigars and drinking from lead crystal highball glasses.

The interior of the clubhouse was ensconced in high-gloss dark wood and white leather, as if the building itself were on water. In a large ballroom toward the back, a crowd danced and mingled to big-band music. Ellie made her way to a mustached man behind a discreet reception desk on the left side of the lobby.

“The Meyer wedding?” His tone was friendly even as he eyed her cable knit sweater, black pants, and bulky parka skeptically.

“No, sir.” She showed him her shield and a picture of a Gibson cabin yacht that she’d printed from the Internet. “I’m looking for a potential crime witness. Can you tell me if you’ve seen this boat?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. If you need information about one of our members, you’ll have to talk to our director in the morning.”

“Pretend you’re down the street on your coffee break, and I’m just asking you as a private citizen who works on City Island if you’ve ever seen this boat. Please. I’ll keep your name out of it.”

He checked out the lobby for interlopers, then leaned in close to whisper. “The truth is, hon, I don’t know a damn thing about boats. They’re all the same old hunk of wood and rope to me.”

Ellie zipped her coat as she left the clubhouse, prepared to walk every pier of the island to find Ed Becker’s boat and her partner. The thinner of the gray-haired duo with the highballs stopped her on the way out.

“Snoozeville with the septuagenarians in there, right?”

His heavier friend placed a hand over his heart. “Please make my day and tell me you’re a whiskey drinker.”

“On another day, I would be. I’m looking for this boat and was hoping someone at the clubhouse could help me.” She unfolded her picture of the cruiser.

“If you’re asking about boats, you’ve come to the right place. I’m Bud, and this is Jim.” The heavy man pointed to himself with his cigar-holding hand, then pointed to his friend.

“Ellie.”

“Tell you what, Ellie. I’ll answer your questions about that boat if you have a little sip of whiskey with us. Our goal is to finish this bottle, and we could use the help.” Bud offered her the bottle, no glass.

Johnny Walker Blue. Very expensive. Very tempting. And arguing with these guys would take far longer than swallowing a quick drink. She grabbed the bottle and took a sip.

“Come on now,” Bud said. “Take a real drink, then we’ll talk.”

She took a long draw this time, and she felt the warmth of the liquid fill her stomach.

“Now that’s a whiskey drinker,” Bud said with approval. “So, here’s the thing about your boat. That’s a Gibson Cabin Yacht, one of the big ones.”

“A 5900 series, I think,” Jim added.

“It’s a hell of boat.” Both men nodded, sure that they were in agreement that it was a damn fine boat.

“I know what kind of boat it is.” Ellie tried not to sound too testy. “I really need to find it.”

“You got a scavenger hunt going with that other guy or something?” Bud asked.

“What other guy?”

“I got a confession for you,” Bud said. “Me and Jim don’t know squat about cabin cruisers. We’re sailboat men ourselves. But we were down by the marina about half an hour ago. A guy asked us about Gibson Cabin Yachts and showed us a picture a lot like that one and said it was a 5900.”

“Red hair, not too tall?” Ellie asked.

“Yeah, sort of a funny-looking fellow if you ask me,” Bud said.

“He’s a friend of mine. We’re both looking for the same boat. Like I said, it’s urgent.”

“I don’t suppose you want to tell us your friend’s name?” Jim asked. “The one who owns the boat?”

“It’s not like any guy’s going to be embarrassed about having a visit from a woman like you,” Bud added.

“Ed Becker. Do you know him?”

“Now why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Bud said. “Walk past the yacht club’s slips, then you’ll get to the marina. Ed’s on the fourth row – is that right, Jim?”

Ellie thanked them and was already heading toward the water when Jim called out behind her, “The fourth row of slips to the east. Then take a left. He’s about halfways down, on the right. Drag your buddies on back here. We’ll get another bottle.”

ELLIE FOLLOWED THEIR directions along the shoreline, walking at first, and then breaking into a fast jog along the boardwalk. Cold air burned her lungs, and a damp heat began to build inside her zipped coat. When she reached the boat slips at the marina, she slowed her pace, mindful of the sound of her heavy breaths and footsteps on the concrete beneath her.

She counted as she walked, four rows. Scanning the marina, she wondered if she had a good enough eye for boats to recognize Ed’s, even with a picture. As her eyes ran across the boats moored to the right side of the pier, she compared each to the features that stood out to her from the picture. Big. Windows. Raised cabin. They all looked the same.

As she neared the middle of the pier, the job of identifying Ed Becker’s boat became considerably easier. Her eyes were still adjusting to the absence of streetlight, but a man’s dark figure stood out against the white back of one of the boats. He was leaning against the outside of the boat’s cabin, peering through the edge of a set of double doors that led inside. Even with the moonlight as her only illumination, Ellie recognized that profile. It was Flann McIlroy.

She exhaled the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Flann. It was Flann. She’d found him, and no one with a Slavic accent had put him in an emergency room.

Ellie waved, trying to get his attention, but Flann was fixated on whatever he was watching in the cabin. She walked slowly toward him, each gentle step sounding louder than the last among the unoccupied, darkened boats. With four boats between her and Flann, she was reluctant to move any closer. Presumably Ed Becker was inside his boat, and Flann did not want him to know he was being watched. Walking along the pier, Ellie felt as if she glowed in the dark.

She lowered her body to the ground and began to crawl along the right edge of the pier so any view Becker might have of her would be blocked by other boats. She also got a better look at Flann. He held his weapon at his chest, hands set to fire if necessary. She crawled faster.

As she quickened her pace, her leg caught a loose nail head protruding from a plank in the pier. She sucked in her air to suppress the cry in her throat, then continued her crawl. Just two boats away now, but Flann was too focused on whatever he was watching to feel her eyes on him.

She was still watching Flann when a high-pitched chirp penetrated the silence. It was coming from her hip. She smacked the side of her cell phone and saw the incoming text message through the small window. #1 Jess. Jess had identified as one of his assailants the first of the photographs she faxed to him. Number one was Vitali Rostov.

Just as Ellie slapped her phone, she heard Flann move on the boat in front of her. He’d made a sound, on Becker’s boat, just feet away from Becker. She watched Flann pull his body back from the glass doors of the boat. She didn’t dare move as she watched him freeze too. He waited three beats, then leaned to look inside the cabin again. She held her breath and convinced herself that Flann could talk his way out of the situation if Becker saw him.

It happened so fast that she had a hard time later remembering what Flann had said. Flann swung his entire body to the right, stepping directly in front of the boat’s cabin entrance. Then he cried out. She would replay the video in her head over and over again on an endless loop, but the sound was lost. It was loud though. Urgent. Panicked. Abrupt. Maybe he had yelled, “No.”

By the time Flann rushed through the double doors, Ellie was moving too, out of her crawl stance and into a full sprint. She pulled her gun from her holster. Twist, then up, the Glock was at the ready. She chose speed over silence now. She jumped from the pier onto the boat’s stern, but as the weight of her body landed, she heard a louder noise than she’d prepared herself for. It wasn’t the sound of her boots on the boat. It was a pop, followed by two more. Three shots. Three gunshots.

Moving quickly through the cabin entrance, Ellie found herself alone in a sleeping cabin. She walked more cautiously to a doorway at the end of the bulkhead, then held her breath as she slowly pushed the door open from the side. To her left, Ed Becker had collapsed on a small couch. The bottom of his face was gone, replaced by a hollow red cavity of bone and skin. To her right, Flann sat with his back against the wall, his legs splayed in front of him. One dark red hole pierced his neck above his left shirt collar. A flower of red blossomed across the right side of his shirt.

There had been one, two, three gunshots. Her senses competed for her complete attention. As she tried to comprehend the visual, she heard different noises. In front of her, then behind her. A scurry along the right side of the deck, past the cabin, and then gone. The department would try to convince her later that she should have looked – that if she’d really heard the noises she described, her instincts would have carried her out of the cabin, down the pier, after whoever it was who was responsible for making those sounds. But in that moment, all she could think about was the hole in Flann’s throat, the wound in his stomach, the amount of blood that indicated massive internal damage.

Her instinct was not to chase the noises. All she could do was fall to her knees beside Flann. She pulled off her coat and pressed it against his belly, then held him tight while she punched 911 into her cell phone. She screamed at the dispatcher, “10-13, Officer shot, City Island marina, fourth row of slips on the east. 10-13. He’s shot. Hurry. Please.” And she screamed at Flann. She held him and rocked him and pleaded with him not to die.