Dead Connection

35

FOUR MORNINGS LATER, ELLIE CONFRONTED HER REFLECTION IN the bathroom mirror. She dabbed more concealer under her swollen eyes, but nothing could cover the circles that had grown darker every day since Flann had died in her arms on Ed Becker’s boat. She ran a brush through her hair, knowing that her appearance would do nothing to change what was going to happen at this meeting.

Jess had gotten up early to fetch coffee and breakfast sandwiches from the deli down the street. Ellie tried to wave off the food, but he insisted that she’d feel better if she had a little energy when she went in to work. This would be her first trip back to the Thirteenth Precinct. According to standard protocol for police homicides, she’d been driven that night from City Island to the precinct to meet with an appointed police union representative. With this stranger by her side, she had sat in an interrogation room for three hours with Lieutenant Dan Eckels and two homicide detectives whose names she no longer remembered.

She gave them a detailed timeline of the entire FirstDate investigation, from the moment she met Flann McIlroy to the moment an ambulance carried his body away. She made sure to tell them about Stephanie Hart, and her mother, Miranda. Flann had a daughter. Someone needed to tell her that her father was dead. She would miss him. She should get his benefits. She should get his Siamese cat. Then Lieutenant Eckels sent her home, and the union representative delivered the news that she was officially on administrative leave. Again, it was standard protocol, she was assured.

In the three and a half days since she walked out of the precinct, the New York Police Department had erected a wall between her and the investigation into Flann McIlroy’s murder, Ed Becker’s apparent suicide, and the tying together of the connections between Becker and four dead women. Despite the occasional urge to smash down the wall and continue investigating on her own time, she forced herself to steer clear. She did not want the department to blame any shortcomings in its conclusions on her interference. She’d spent four nights and three full days completely shut off from the case that had been all consuming until those three shots. Pop, pop, pop.

She found other ways to keep busy. She was back to her kickboxing schedule, cheered for Dog Park at an open mic night in the West Village, and finally visited the top of the Empire State Building. She even went to Miranda Hart’s house and told her how much it meant to Flann to see his daughter for dinner. But still, she couldn’t rid herself of the image of Flann, dead on the floor of Becker’s boat. The finality of his death seemed to feed like parasites at her heart.

After three days of silence, Lieutenant Eckels called to say he wanted to see her first thing in the morning. When she asked if she would be going back to work, he informed her they would discuss it in the morning. He reminded her of her right to bring not only union representation but an attorney of her choice. For three days, she had heard nothing – no request to question her again, no appointment with the D.A.’s office, and no estimation for when she would return to work. Now, the department wanted to see her, and the request was accompanied by none of the expected assurances – just a formality, one last interview, you’ll be back on duty tomorrow.

The way Ellie’s union representative explained it, the department’s questions would be about her competence. She could lose her detective designation. She could lose her shield. She was a new enough cop that they could even strip her of her pension. But as the union rep pored over the potential consequences, all Ellie could hear was her own internal voice. I deserve to lose it all. Flann was alone on City Island to protect me, then I forgot to turn off my phone and got him killed.

ELLIE WALKED alone into the Thirteenth Precinct. She felt the eyes of the homicide bureau – the detectives who worked with Flann McIlroy, the ones whom she never had a chance to know – follow her to the office of their lieutenant, Dan Eckels. Eckels was waiting for her. His salt-and-pepper hair was cut close to a large head that perched on a short, squat body – a fire hydrant topped with a Brillo pad. Ellie smiled sadly, remembering Flann’s depiction of him as the gruff boss in a Hollywood cop movie.

To Ellie’s surprise and relief, she recognized another face in Eckels’s office. It belonged to the man who had warned her not so many days earlier about getting too far ahead of herself in a homicide assignment. “Lieutenant Jenkins,” Ellie said with a nod.

“Detective.” Randy Jenkins’s tone was formal, but he returned the nod. Ellie found the gesture from her own Midtown North supervisor comforting under the circumstances.

Eckels directed Ellie to a chair across from his desk, and then moved straight to the business at hand.

“When I spoke to you yesterday, you were adamant about waiving your right to have either a union representative or an attorney here on your behalf. I take it from your arrival here alone this morning that you continue to proceed without representation?”

“Yes, sir. I’m fine on my own.”

“Very well then,” Eckels said. “Two of my detectives have worked around the clock putting together a report of the City Island incident.”

Ellie stifled a wince at his use of the word incident.

“As with all police homicides, a grand jury will hear the facts of the case, probably not for another couple of weeks, but we do not anticipate any problems here. I thought it fair, Detective Hatcher, to share with you what we’ve learned since we spoke last.”

“I appreciate that, sir. Thank you.”

“The evidence very firmly establishes that Ed Becker, a former detective of this department, is the man that you and McIlroy were looking for.”

Ellie had come to that realization herself four nights earlier, but hearing it said aloud as an official determination still sounded surreal. A former homicide detective had killed four women. The man who called himself Enoch had given her a ride home.

“As you learned before going to City Island,” Eckels continued, “Ed Becker kept a boat not far from the cybercafé used two nights earlier by Enoch. He appears to have ignored the Tatiana Chekova investigation that he conveniently headed, and his name was found in Caroline Hunter’s notes. We have learned more in the last three days. We have confirmed that the laptop found on Becker’s boat is the same computer used by Enoch to sign on to the FirstDate account. The Internet usage matches up with Enoch’s, and a copy of the letter left for Peter Morse in the Midtown library was saved to the hard drive. We also found a marked-up copy of The Book of Enoch in Becker’s possession. It looks pretty straightforward. Becker saw McIlroy on his boat and realized it was all over. He fatally shot McIlroy, then shot himself.”

“But why?” Ellie asked. “Why did he do all of this?”

Eckels was clearly put off by the question. “You of all people should know you can’t make sense of the motivations of a serial killer.”

Jenkins offered a suggestion. “Obviously I’m not one of the leads on this, but maybe he had some kind of relationship with Tatiana. She was a prostitute. Some cops have been known to sample the trade. If she was trying to get out of the life, as you said the club manager indicated, maybe she was shaking down Becker, trying to find another way to support herself. He shoots her, then realizes he likes it. He used FirstDate as his outlet.”

“I spent the entire weekend mulling all of this over and came up with the same theory. But what I can’t figure out is why I found him at the Rostovs that day in Brooklyn. He claimed the loose ends he left behind on Tatiana’s murder were bothering him. If he’s the one who killed her, then why was he outside of her sister’s apartment?”

“I’ve got to hand it to you,” Eckels said. “McIlroy would’ve been proud of you, Hatcher, trying to get into the head of a sociopath. We can make up motivations for him all day long. Did you ever think he might’ve gotten off watching her sister? Maybe he sat out there every day for the past two and a half years, like revisiting the scene of the crime. When you ran into him, he provided a convenient cover story.”

“Or maybe there’s more to this. We know the killer somehow got into Amy Davis’s and Megan Quinn’s FirstDate accounts. And he doctored that phony e-mail to get Amy to sign up in the first place. Becker didn’t strike me as someone with that kind of computer sophistication. Becker must have had a partner, and it obviously has something to do with Vitali Rostov. My brother was assaulted just a couple of hours before Flann was killed. He says Rostov did it and included a warning for me to back off. Clearly something I said to his wife touched a nerve. And Becker’s got that expensive boat. If he was dirty, taking money from the Russians, then we don’t know the whole story yet.”

Eckels looked at her like a gnat he wanted to squash. “There’s no corroboration of that account, Detective. Officer Connelly was left with the impression that the assault against your brother was drug related.”

“I’m the corroboration. I know what my brother told me.”

“So you’re saying you permitted your brother to file a false police report?”

“He told the truth to me, and the last time I checked, I was also a cop.”

“A cop who might have a hard time admitting the true nature of her brother’s problems. Have you ever considered that your brother told Officer Connelly the truth about what happened in the parking lot, and told you what you wanted to hear?”

Ellie pictured Jess lying on that hospital cot, pleading with her to stay safe, and fought the urge to tell Eckels precisely what she thought of his theory. She needed to focus on getting the investigation back on track.

“Where did you find The Book of Enoch?” She hadn’t seen it in the yacht’s cabin before she was physically pulled away from the scene.

“On the deck.”

Ellie nodded, picturing the layout of the boat. Doors in the back of the cabin. Another set of doors on the right side of the front bulkhead.

“Was it on the right? The side by the doors?”

“I believe that’s correct. On the starboard.”

“He left a book on the deck of his boat at night in the winter? The right side is where I heard the noise. The footsteps. If someone dropped that book there for us to find, that explains the footsteps. And the shots. I told the detectives. It was like one pop, then a pause, then two more, closer together. Someone else was on that boat. Someone shot Becker first – one shot – then Flann.”

Eckels gave Jenkins a told you so look.

“That’s one of the things we need to talk about, Ellie.” Jenkins placed a protective hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure you heard something that could have sounded like footsteps from your position. You were in an unknown place, under incredible stress. And the sounds of bullets can be very misleading. You said yourself that things happened quickly.”

Ellie quietly shook her head, disappointed. She hadn’t brought a lawyer or a union rep, because their only role would be to protect her. They wouldn’t care about getting the department to do the right thing. With Jenkins’s unexpected appearance, she’d hoped to have an ally. But here he was, trying to throw her a lifeline, yet willing to cover up the truth.

“So what you’re both saying is that you want me to fall in line and get with the official story. Ed Becker acted alone. The serial killer’s dead now, and the women of New York can feel safe once again.”

“What we’re telling you,” Eckels said, “is that you’re in no position to contradict the very clear evidence in this case. Ed Becker put two bullets from a. 38 into McIlroy, then ate one in the mouth. The ballistics back it up. It’s that simple.”

“You tested for GSR on his hands?”

“As soon as we’re done talking here, the assistant chief will be making a public statement. This case is closed.”

“So you’re just glossing over all the details,” Ellie said. “You’re going to wrap this whole case up with a nice little bow without ever answering the hard questions about why Ed Becker would do these things, how he managed to pull it off, and what it all had to do with the information Tatiana Chekova was giving to the FBI. Call the press, everyone – the NYPD saves the day.”

Eckels pursed his thin lips. “Listen up, young lady. If you think the department comes out of this looking good, you’re a lot stupider than I thought. One of our own did this. A cop murdered four women, then took another cop out with him. And don’t think for a second that the assistant chief won’t face some hard questions about why he let McIlroy pull you in to a case like this.”

Ellie noticed the throbbing vein on Eckels’s neck. Flann’s description of a chew-out session from his lieutenant had been right on the mark. Ellie swallowed, wishing Flann was here with her, realizing how much she missed him. He would not have stood for this. He would have pushed back, no matter the consequences. The thought helped steel her resolve.

“The department should face harder questions than that,” she retorted. “If Becker killed Tatiana because she could implicate him or the men he worked for, then that raises serious doubts about the kind of cover he was giving to Russian organized crime while he was on the job. It should also make you wonder about his partner’s death. Tendall could have been wrapped up in whatever Becker had going on with Rostov, or maybe he had concerns about Becker.”

“You’re dragging Barney Tendall into this conspiracy theory now? You realize how hysterical you sound?”

“I believe that was Freud’s term for ‘female.’ Why don’t you go ahead and make it transparent? Haul out the B-word and the C-word while you’re at it.”

“I think we could all use a break-”

Eckels waved off Jenkins’s attempt to mediate.

“As I said, the case is closed. Experienced detectives have been working it tirelessly. We owe you no further explanation. The decision you have to make, Detective Hatcher, is how you want to be depicted in the formal account of this closed case.”

“And what precisely are my choices?”

Lieutenant Jenkins interrupted again. His voice was gentle but assured. “Can I give you some friendly advice, Ellie? Why don’t you take some credit for the hard work you and Detective McIlroy did. Take some credit, and then take some time off. You’re automatically entitled to paid leave. You’ll return to detective borough in a month or so under my command. We’re eager to have you back where you belong.”

“Listen to your lieutenant,” Eckels continued. “McIlroy comes out a hero this way. You get to stand by the side of the assistant chief as he announces the end of a killing spree that could have become another Son of Sam.”

“And the other way?”

Jenkins worked his jaw as Eckels spelled it out for her. “Both you and McIlroy abandoned protocol. McIlroy went to City Island on his own, not bothering to notify his own partner, let alone call for backup. When you realized what he’d done, you worsened matters by following him, again, totally on your own, without backup. You made the trip, in a department vehicle, despite the fact that you’d been drinking that night-”

Ellie opened her mouth to interrupt, but Eckels only raised his voice.

“And you continued to consume more alcohol once you got to City Island.”

“I told the detectives I took two sips because-”

“You were a rookie detective, in over your head, without backup. You’d been drinking. Your judgment was impaired, and your partner was murdered right in front of you. Not to mention you’ve got some demons in your past that might keep you from accepting the department’s conclusion that your friend Ed Becker committed suicide.”

“That’s a low blow,” Ellie said quietly.

“And it’s precisely what the media will say if you try to derail the closure of this case. There is no one-armed man that we have yet to chase down, Detective. Ed Becker killed those women, and he killed Flann McIlroy.”

“Are we done here?” Ellie asked.

“The assistant chief expects you to stay for the press conference,” Eckels said.

“No thank you.” Ellie stood to leave.

“What exactly are your future plans with respect to this department, Detective?”

“Am I required to answer that in the course of my duties?” Ellie looked to Randy Jenkins.

“No,” her lieutenant said quietly. “You’re entitled to paid leave regardless of what you do. And you cannot be forced to attend a press conference.”

“Well, then. Lieutenant Jenkins, I guess you’ll be hearing from me when my leave is up. Thank you for taking the time to be here for me this morning. I really do appreciate it.”

Jenkins urged Ellie to stay, but Eckels cut him off. “You’re wasting your time, Randy.”

“That, Lieutenant Eckels, was the strongest show of leadership you demonstrated all morning.” Ellie walked out of Eckels’s office and out of the Thirteenth Precinct without looking back. The media vans were already lined up on Twenty-first Street for the assistant chief’s forthcoming announcement. She had a decision to make.

But she had already made the decision six years ago, that night under the Washington Square Arch. She had decided that sitting with blissful ignorance on life’s sidelines was not in her nature. She decided to become a cop. For the last three days, she had been fighting her nature, filling her schedule with back-to-back activities in an attempt to ignore the questions eating away at her like cancer. She had waited for the department’s conclusions. Now that she’d heard them, it was time to follow her instincts. She owed this to Flann and to herself. She was going to find out what really happened.

She pulled up the hood of her coat, swaddled herself in her scarf, and headed away from the cameras while she dialed the number for the FBI field office.

36

“YOU KNOW THIS IS BLACKMAIL, DON’T YOU?” CHARLIE DIXON stood behind his desk with his arms folded, looking out the window at lower Manhattan.

Sitting in a guest chair across from his desk, Ellie Hatcher uncrossed her legs and shook her head in mock disappointment. “Is that how far the FBI has gone astray from its traditional law enforcement concerns? You consider it blackmail now for a local police officer to share information about criminal activity and expect some modicum of cooperation?”

Dixon turned to face her. “When it’s accompanied by threats if I refuse, then yeah, I consider that blackmail.”

“All I said was that if you couldn’t help me, I’d have to find someone who could. And the fact that you were previously seen, multiple times, at Vibrations with Tatiana Chekova – a very attractive federal informant, by the way – might be relevant.”

“You’re blackmailing me.”

“Tomato, tomahto.”

“And how exactly am I supposed to help you find out the truth about Ed Becker if the NYPD’s not interested?”

“I need two things from you. The first is a federal arrest warrant for Vitali Rostov, Tatiana Chekova’s brother-in-law. My brother was assaulted Friday night by two men in the Vibrations parking lot. He can ID Rostov as one of the assailants. Rostov did it so I’d back off the questions I was asking about Lev Grosha.”

Dixon shook his head. “There’s no federal jurisdiction for a garden variety assault. And even if he intended to send a message to you, it’s not a federal offense to interfere with a local investigation.”

“What about the fact that they took his wallet?”

Dixon had seen this before in local cops. Just because the FBI had stepped in on one of their robbery cases in the past, they mistakenly assumed every robbery was a federal concern. “Robbery falls under the Hobb’s Act but only if it affects interstate commerce.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake. My job is so much simpler. See person do bad thing? Haul out the handcuffs. What does that mean, affecting commerce?”

Dixon hardly understood the nuances of federal jurisdiction himself, so he tried to make it simple. “It could mean a lot of things, but we usually only go that route when it’s a commercial robbery. Then we show that the money that was taken from Home Depot or wherever would’ve been spent in commerce.”

“Well, okay then. There you go. Jess spends money in commerce all the time. There’s your jurisdiction.”

Dixon frowned.

“I don’t care if he’s charged or not,” Ellie said. Once a suspect was in the box – even if it was for jaywalking – no limits existed on what a guy just might tell a cop. “I just want him in custody. Can you get an arrest warrant under the Hobb’s Act?”

“Yeah, I could get a warrant. What’s the purpose, though? I’m sure you’re pissed about your brother, but I thought you were interested in finding out more about Becker.”

She seemed to choose her words carefully, as if she knew how much her words would pain him. “I think Vitali Rostov was the person Tatiana was protecting when she was your informant. When I showed Zoya a photograph of Lev Grosha, I think she might have recognized him. Then a couple of hours later, Rostov is beating up my brother in a parking lot, telling me to stop asking questions. And when Tatiana told you that the people she knew had sources in the NYPD, I think she was talking about Ed Becker. Flann told me that he saw Becker take protection money once back in the day. If Becker was in bed with Russian OC, it explains how he managed to own a yacht.”

Dixon fell into his office chair, digesting the information. “It would also explain why he did nothing on Tatiana’s murder case. Damnit, I never even looked into Tatiana’s family. She was always talking about how straight and perfect they were – how her sister was so proud of living the immigrant American dream with her devoted husband.”

“When Tatiana said all those things, she was probably trying to steer you from the truth. Zoya is proud of her life, but she turns a blind eye to the way her husband makes a living. Tatiana held out on you to protect her sister.”

“And you think Rostov and Becker found out that Tatiana was an informant and killed her for it?”

“There’s something else, Charlie.” It was the first time she’d called him by his first name. “Zoya remembers seeing you with Tatiana. It was only once, but she said she saw Tatiana in the passenger seat of your car one day after she went to them for money. You were driving. And her husband saw you with her too.”

Dixon swallowed hard. “I drove Tatiana there once. She wanted to see her nephew.”

“When you visited Tatiana at Vibrations, did you ever check for tails? Someone could have followed you from there and found out who you were.”

He turned his head toward the wall. “This is hard to hear, you know?”

“I was ten feet away when my partner got shot four nights ago. We all do things we wish we could try again.”

“If they killed her because of me-”

“Not because of you, Charlie. Because she flipped and gave information on them.”

“But if they killed her for that, then what about the other women? Where do they fit in?”

“I don’t know. Tatiana told you she overheard someone – probably Vitali, maybe Lev Grosha – mention FirstDate. Let’s say Stern was laundering money for them, or was somehow involved in their criminal enterprise. Maybe he backed out, and they did this to get to him by ruining FirstDate?”

“Murder three innocent women to scare away customers from a company? That’s a pretty sociopathic reason to kill.”

“But maybe that’s precisely what we’re dealing with. All along, this whole Book of Enoch thing has felt wrong to me. Look at the reasons why people kill.”

Dixon ticked off the classics on his fingers. “Greed, jealousy, lust, revenge.”

“Exactly. A sociopath kills innocent people out of those same motivations, but with an underlying logic that makes sense only to them. One of my forensic psychology professors gave us the following problem. A woman goes to her mother’s funeral. While she’s there, a man stops and offers his condolences. Even though she’s never met the man, she falls in love with him on the spot. She’s convinced they’re soul mates. But she never finds out who he is, so there goes her chance at love. A month later, the woman kills her sister. Why?”

Barry Mayfield would know the answer. The guys chosen by Quantico to work serial cases would know. Dixon was left guessing. “Because she found out her sister was dating the mystery man?”

“No. Your mistake is assuming that the dead sister has some rational connection to the killer’s motive. You’re looking for some reason that the sister deserves to die. The answer is that the woman killed her sister hoping the mystery man would come to the funeral. Only a sociopath would think that way. He sees nothing wrong with using totally innocent people as a means to serve his ends. And if that’s what we’re dealing with, then this could be a case that’s all about greed or revenge. That’s why we have to figure out the relationship between Vitali Rostov, Ed Becker, and FirstDate.”

When Hatcher showed up in his office just as he was leaving for lunch, Dixon was inclined to hear her out only in the hope she’d keep quiet about Tatiana. But if Ed Becker didn’t act alone – if Vitali Rostov had something to do with what happened to Tatiana – then Dixon was in this for his own reasons. For two years, since the first night Tatiana slept in his bed, he had managed to convince himself he was an honorable man. But he had been a coward, motivated solely by his desire to hide his relationship with the kindest woman he’d ever known. He was done worrying about himself.

“How else can I help?”

“And I thought I was going to have to blackmail you some more,” Hatcher said with a smile. “Would a proven connection between Rostov and Becker help shore up a federal case against Rostov?”

Dixon nodded. “We could use the fact that the NYPD takes federal funds. Or even if Rostov and Becker used the mail or the phone to deprive the public of Becker’s honest services, we could go with conspiracy to commit mail or wire fraud.”

“Excellent. That’s the second thing I need. Can you get Ed Becker’s laptop from the NYPD? You’ll have to make it sound like your interest is a modest one. You’re just making sure that Tatiana’s murder wasn’t related to her being an informant, and you want to check the laptop to verify there’s no connection between Becker and the criminal conspiracy Tatiana was giving information about. If you make it sound like you’re questioning Becker’s guilt for the FirstDate murders, they’ll fight you tooth and nail about releasing the evidence.”

“No problem.”

“Good. I’m going to try to talk to Zoya one last time before her husband’s in custody and her lucky world comes crashing down around her. Call me when you’ve got the laptop in hand. What I really want to see is whether Becker actually hacked into the victims’ FirstDate accounts. If not, our killer’s still out there.”

“Wait a second. That’s going to be a problem. We’ll need a computer analyst for that, and I don’t trust any of my people to keep their mouths shut on something that big. And like you said, if the NYPD realizes we’re second-guessing their conclusions, I’ll get squelched.”

“That’s why we’re not using your analysts. I know a computer guy who will help us. We’ll take a little sneak on our own, and then bring in your analyst if there’s something there to show federal jurisdiction. I just want the laptop.”

“That’s not exactly kosher, bringing in a private citizen to look at evidence.”

“Do you plan on telling anyone?” Ellie asked.

“Nope. The question is whether I can trust you.”

“Given where we stand right now, I’d say you don’t have much of a choice.”

Tatiana, Caroline, Amy, Megan, and now Flann were dead, and they all had friends, lovers, and family to mourn them and yearn for answers. But only Charlie and Ellie were in a position to do anything about it.

“JASON, IT’S ELLIE Hatcher, your friendly neighborhood detective. You haven’t blocked my number yet?” There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Ellie hoped she hadn’t overestimated Jason Upton’s willingness to help.

“Sorry, it took me a second to realize who this was. How are you, Detective? I was sorry to hear about your partner.”

“Thank you. It’s been a rough few days.”

“I just saw the news a few minutes ago on the net. The whole office is talking about it. I couldn’t believe it when I read the name Ed Becker. I was like, Hey, I know that name.”

Apparently the assistant chief had already held his press conference, but it didn’t change what Ellie wanted to do. “I was wondering if you might be willing to help out again?”

“I’m not sure how I could possibly help.”

Ellie had hoped Upton would be eager to help out of curiosity. Massaging this was harder than she expected.

“If I get Becker’s laptop, will you be able to see if he hacked into any FirstDate accounts?”

“Don’t you have people there who know how to do that?”

“Yeah, we do. But since Becker was also a cop, I’d rather get a first look from someone who’s not part of the department. Would you mind? Obviously I’d have our people take another look officially, but I’d feel better getting an initial lay of the land.”

“Uh, sure. I guess I can at least look. I might not be able to tell anything, though. It depends how good he was at cleaning up his tracks.”

Ellie thanked Upton, then estimated the time it would take for Dixon to get an arrest warrant for Rostov and to negotiate the release of Becker’s laptop from the NYPD. “It probably won’t be until tomorrow. End of today at the earliest.”

“That should be fine. I’ve got a pretty flexible schedule here.”

“Thanks. And we can keep this between the two of us? You can understand how sensitive this is.”

“Sure. Mum’s the word.”

Ellie was taking a risk trusting Jason Upton, but she’d thought it through carefully. If Upton were the kind of person who wanted attention, he would have already sold to the highest bidder everything he knew about FirstDate and the help he’d given McIlroy on Becker’s background check. He hadn’t. This call helped confirm her impression: Upton would not go to the media. She thanked him once again before saying good-bye.

Another call came in just as she flipped her phone shut. “Hatcher.”

“Detective Hatcher, this is Barbara Hunter, Carrie Hunter’s mother? I hope it’s okay to call you. Your partner gave me both of your numbers last week, and, well, I know from experience you’re going through some very difficult times right now, but I didn’t know who else to call. I’m sorry, I’m rambling.”

“That’s okay, Mrs. Hunter. Of course you’re welcome to call me whenever you’d like.” Ellie looked at her watch, feeling the minutes slipping away, along with the high of the momentum of ideas and energy she’d felt in Dixon’s office.

“I saw the news about that police officer on CNN. He’s the man who killed Amy?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. Someone should have called you before the press conference to tell you personally.” Apparently Lieutenant Jenkins’s penchant for rudeness extended beyond Ellie and departmental politics.

“I’m calling because I’ve seen that man before. He came to see my daughter at her apartment. I was there for a visit, and I never forget a face. I’m sure it’s the same police officer.”

Ellie pictured the note in Caroline Hunter’s binder – MC Becker. “You can confirm that Becker met your daughter on FirstDate?”

Then, even before Mrs. Hunter corrected her, she realized what she’d been missing.

“No. He went there as a detective. He took a report from her, a report about her credit card.”

Ellie felt the high coming back on. She knew in her gut that this was related to the motive – not religion, not the Book of Enoch, but greed, jealousy, lust, or revenge.

“He didn’t go see her about FirstDate,” Ellie said.

“Well, I guess it was about FirstDate to some extent. She opened a new MasterCard, used it on FirstDate, and then within a month, she got a bill for a refrigerator purchased in Houston, Texas.”

“And she reported the fraudulent charges?”

“Oh, sure she did. The credit card company wiped it right off her bill once she swore she didn’t make the purchase, but Carrie wanted them to look into it. You see, she’d only made one charge with that card, and it was to FirstDate.”

Credit cards. Tatiana’s heroin bust started as an investigation into unauthorized credit card use. Lev Grosha paid a motel clerk to run credit cards through a scanner that stole the numbers. FirstDate had access to thousands of customers’ credit cards. And Ellie was still trying to tie this strand together, but someone named Edmond Bertrand had been arrested for credit card fraud as well.

“Credit card companies rarely launch their own investigations into fraud,” Ellie explained. “They just cover the loss, like you said.”

“That’s what they told her. So she called the police, but they gave her some hooey about the report needing to go to the police down in Houston unless she had evidence of criminal activity in New York.”

“So do you know how Detective Becker came to take her report?” Ellie asked.

“Well, she started complaining to FirstDate. I remember because, in light of her studies, you know, she was so fascinated that she could not for the life of her get on the phone with a real person. All of the company’s business was conducted on the Internet. So she sent a message to them on their Web site, telling them that their – well, I don’t know what it would be called-”

“Their server?”

“Something like that. But she said something wasn’t secure because she’d only used her card one place and was sure she hadn’t lost track of it physically. Then the detective showed up. I don’t know if he came because of the report to FirstDate, or to MasterCard, or to the precinct, but I’m sure the man was Ed Becker.”

“And what happened?”

“Nothing. He took the report, but told her that chances were, nothing would come of it. He told her most of the fraud cases just fall into a black hole.”

It was a true statement, but Ed Becker would have had no legitimate reason for being the one to deliver it. Caroline’s complaint wouldn’t have triggered a home visit, and Becker wasn’t in the fraud unit in any event. And Flann had run Caroline Hunter’s name through the NYPD system, and no credit card complaint appeared. If Becker had gone there to talk to her about her suspicions, it hadn’t been on the NYPD’s behalf.

“Did she continue complaining after the report was taken?” Ellie asked.

“I just don’t know. I left town and she never mentioned it again. This has something to do with her murder, doesn’t it?”

“I honestly don’t know, Mrs. Hunter. But I’m trying to find out.”

“Will you please tell me if you learn something new?”

“I promise.”

If Caroline Hunter was killed because she was jeopardizing a credit card fraud scheme, it explained why she and Tatiana were killed by the same gun. Both women had gotten in the way, so both women were silenced. It also explained why they were the only victims who were shot – two bullets to the back of the head, quick and easy – while Amy Davis and Megan Quinn were asphyxiated. It explained why Amy Davis’s murder had been so brutal, so intimate – it was, in fact, the first of its kind, not the third. And if Amy Davis’s murder had been personal, it might also explain why Peter Morse detected a southern accent in the caller who told him to retrieve Enoch’s letter from the library.

All along, they’d been looking at two patterns, not one. Tatiana Chekova and Caroline Hunter. Amy Davis and Megan Quinn. Four women, two patterns. She needed to go to Brooklyn again.

37

ELLIE PHONED THE ROSTOV APARTMENT FROM THE BUILDING stairwell. “Hello. This is Laura Liemann calling from the American Red Cross. Is Vitali Rostov in?”

Once Zoya confirmed that her husband was unavailable, Ellie made her way upstairs and knocked on the Rostovs’ door. She heard a shuffle behind the peephole, but no one answered.

“Zoya, it’s Detective Hatcher. I know you’re there. Open up.”

She heard locks tumbling, then Zoya’s face appeared in a crack in the doorway.

“Please, go away.”

“We need to talk. I know you’re having some doubts about your husband right now. Denying your suspicions is not going to make them go away.”

“Vitya is not a perfect man, but he would not do the thing that you are suggesting.”

“I never suggested anything, Zoya. If you think he’s connected to your sister’s death, then you came to that on your own. Let me in. If you’re expecting your husband to come home, we can go somewhere else to talk. I can help you with the kids.”

Zoya opened the door. “Vitya is working late tonight, and Anton is napping. If we must talk, then we should do it now.”

The apartment was quiet, a first. The baby, Tanya, sat happily in a bouncy seat, popping bubbles of spit with her lips. Ellie took a seat on a black leather sofa across the room.

“When you said your husband couldn’t have done whatever it was you thought I was suggesting, what were you referring to?”

Zoya shrugged but held Ellie’s gaze. “I do not know. I figure, the police keep coming to our door. They must think Vitya did something wrong.”

“Or it could have something to do with the fact that the two of you saw her with an FBI agent right around the time that two of Vitya’s friends went to federal prison.”

“I told you that I do not know the man in your picture.”

“I know what you told me, Zoya, but I saw your expression when you asked if Lev Grosha went to prison because of Tatiana. You recognized him. My guess is you also know a man named Alex Federov. Did Vitya tell you he was killed in prison?” Zoya said nothing. “When you found out that the man in the car with Tatiana was an FBI agent, it was the first time you realized that your sister was responsible for Vitya’s friends being arrested. And now you’re wondering if she was killed for it.”

“But she was my sister-”

“I know you don’t want to believe it. I wouldn’t want to either. But your husband is in this a lot deeper than you’ve ever admitted to yourself. The man who was here with me when I first met you, Ed Becker? Do you know that he’s dead?”

Zoya’s eyes finally left Ellie’s and dropped to the floor. “Yes. I saw it on the news.”

“Let me guess. Vitya was watching very attentively.” Ellie took Zoya’s silence as confirmation. “You knew him before I ever walked into this apartment with him, didn’t you? I remember, when I came here that first day, you asked, Who are you? But you weren’t looking at Ed Becker. You only looked at me. And when your husband asked who was at the door, you said it was the police: the man from before, plus a woman – me. Becker was here talking to your husband, wasn’t he? He was here alone, and then came back up with me.”

“He was a friend of Vitya.”

Ellie shook her head, wondering how the last week might have unfolded if she’d realized earlier that Becker was not arriving at the Rostovs’ apartment the day she saw him on the street, but leaving.

“Friends? If they were friends, why did the three of you hide the fact that you’d just seen each other five minutes before I knocked on your door? You need to tell me what you know, Zoya, or I’ll go to the FBI, and they’ll ask the U.S. Attorney’s Office to open a grand jury investigation.” Zoya could not be forced to testify about her communications with her husband, but she didn’t know that. “Let me see if this gets you started. Vitya doesn’t work as a security guard. He might work at a warehouse somewhere, but it’s a cover for widespread criminal activity that includes dealing in heroin and stolen credit card numbers. When Becker was on the job, he was on the payroll.”

Zoya pushed a loose strand of hair out of her face and turned toward Ellie. “Vitya is a good provider. He works at the storage warehouse like I told you. They do imports and exports out of there, but I do not know the details.”

“You make a point of not knowing the details. But Tatiana didn’t have any reason to keep her eyes shut, did she?”

“As much as Vitya enjoyed insulting Tatiana’s lifestyle, yes, I always suspected that acquaintances of his might have shared some of her – bad habits.” She was still distancing her husband from the criminal activity, but at least she was talking.

“And it didn’t strike you as odd when your husband’s pal Ed Becker turned out to be the lead detective on your sister’s murder case?”

“Vitya told me that Becker took the case because he is our friend – that he would find out who killed her. I had no idea she was working for police.”

“And now what do you think, Zoya?”

A tear fell slowly from the corner of her eye, down the bridge of her nose, and stopped at her lips. She brushed it away. “I do not know what to think. Vitya, he is the father of my children.”

“And Tatiana was your sister. I talked to Charlie Dixon. He’s the FBI agent in the picture I showed you. He knew Tatiana was holding something back. She was protecting Vitya. She was protecting you and your son. She didn’t want you to have to earn a living the way she did, and it got her killed. If she hadn’t cared so much about you, if she had simply told Dixon everything she knew, Vitya would have gone down, and Tatiana would still be alive right now. Are you really going to be able to forgive him for that?”

Zoya took short quick breaths, trying to fight back tears, but then broke into a full sob. Across the room, her baby’s brow furrowed, and the bouncy seat came to a halt. Ellie told herself she should feel no sympathy for this woman. If anyone, anyone, ever hurt Jess, she knew exactly where her loyalties would lie.

“Tatiana told Agent Dixon that FirstDate had something to do with your husband’s friends. What’s the connection? You know now why your sister was murdered, but the families of three other women still don’t have the truth. If you can tell me how FirstDate fits into this, I might be able to give them some answers, and I could leave you out of this.”

Zoya shook her head frantically in her hands. “I told you, I don’t know anything. He doesn’t tell me anything. I am his wife. I am mother to his children. It is not like American marriage, these people on TV who talk to each other and share their secrets. He goes to work, he sees his friends. I do not ask what goes on, and he does not tell me.”

Ellie could no longer stomach being part of a conversation that Zoya was using to cement her misguided feelings of victimization. “I hope you can live with the choices you’ve made, Zoya.”

“I GOT ZOYA to admit her husband knew Becker.” Ellie called Charlie Dixon on her way to the subway station and gave him a quick update. “Barbara Hunter says her daughter used her new MasterCard only one time before an unauthorized charge turned up in Texas. Want to guess where she used it?”

“FirstDate.”

“You got it.”

“Damnit. That’s how FirstDate was involved,” Dixon said. “I assumed all along it was money laundering. Whenever you see white collar guys like Stern wrapped up with the kinds of scumbags Tatiana was involved with, it’s either because they’re using or pushing dope, or they’re washing money. Stern never struck me as a junkie-”

“But he could very well be a thief. You said he lives above his means, right? Well, he’s got access to a steady stream of credit card numbers. He hands those to Rostov and his buddies in exchange for a piece of the pie. Tatiana must have heard Rostov talking about FirstDate, but didn’t want to give him up directly because of her sister.”

“But then Rostov saw her with a guy like me and realized something was wrong.”

“Rostov followed my brother to Vibrations before the assault. He probably found a way to follow you to the federal building.”

In the momentary silence that followed, Ellie sensed that Dixon was forcing himself to hold it together, delaying the complete meltdown that would come if he allowed himself to contemplate his role in Tatiana’s death. “So Rostov killed Tatiana for cooperating, and then killed Caroline Hunter as a precaution? Or do you think Becker pulled the trigger?”

“Becker was on duty when Tatiana was killed,” she said. “I think Rostov’s the shooter; Becker made sure to take the call-out. That would mean Rostov’s probably the shooter on Caroline Hunter as well. Becker saw her death in the paper and figured out it wasn’t just a robbery. He took title to that boat just a month after Caroline’s murder. Want to bet it was the payoff for his silence?”

“I’ll see what I can learn about its previous owner. Maybe it’ll give us another link back to Rostov.”

“Thanks.”

“So if Tatiana and Hunter were killed to cover up a fraud ring, how do the other two FirstDate murders fit in?”

Four women. Two patterns. “I don’t know yet, but I’m about to ask Mark Stern that exact question.”

FOR THE LAST three days, while the media had futilely dug around the NYPD for leaks, Peter Morse was the only reporter in the entire world who knew for certain that the City Island murder-suicide involving two members of the NYPD family was related to McIlroy’s serial killer investigation. To Peter’s surprise, the decision not to report the connection earlier had been an easy one. Even the reporter in him knew that it was simply off-limits to use information he had deciphered from Ellie’s circumstances, at least before the two of them had a chance to agree on some ground rules.

In some ways, the last few days had been a vacation from the real world as he and Ellie got to know each other while agreeing not to talk about the case until the police department made an official statement. Now, that statement had been made.

When the assistant chief announced at this morning’s press conference that Ed Becker was the FirstDate killer, the rest of the reporters in the room were as shocked as if they had just learned the Dalai Lama had a nasty porn habit. Mentally, Peter had a head start wrapping his brain around the facts, but he hadn’t allowed himself to begin writing until now.

He needed help understanding the technological aspects of the case. A critical turn in the police investigation was the tracking of the locations that the killer used to access the Internet. Peter had tried fifteen different ways of glossing over the details but was still not conveying the gist of it well enough.

He tried his usual go-to contact on computer issues, but the lucky jerk was in Cabo. Then he remembered the source Ellie had mentioned during their dinner at Half King. He found the man’s business card in his wallet. Hopefully, Jason Upton had some time to give him an Internet 101 primer. It would be ironic if Ellie wound up helping him report this story after all, despite their agreement not to talk about it since Friday night.

He hadn’t heard from Ellie since her meeting this morning with the brass, and calling her to say he was going to contact her source would be an excuse to touch base. He tried her cell, but the call went directly in to voice mail.

Hey, it’s me. Sorry. Is that too familiar? It is I, Peter Morse of the Daily Post. I just got back from the assistant chief’s press conference. I half expected to see you there, so I hope everything went okay this morning at the precinct. Oh, and thanks for pointing me to Jason Upton. I’m hoping he can walk me through the computer locating stuff. Anyway, I’m going to be workin’ hard, as the president would say, trying to get this story done for deadline, but I’d love to see you later on. Give me a call, okay? ’Bye.

ELLIE ENTERED THE lobby of the FirstDate offices, holding the door for two women leaving with boxes in hand. One of them looked like she’d been crying. The other seemed ready to punch whatever cheerful person might cross her path.

Christine Conboy sat behind the receptionist desk, also appearing glum. She mumbled a “hey” when she spotted Ellie.

“What’s going on around here?” Ellie asked.

“Layoffs. Our server’s been crashing all day from the crush of people logging on to cancel their memberships.” She lowered her voice. “I don’t feel bad for Stern. It’s karma paying him back for the way he stonewalled you guys. I was really sad to hear about your partner.”

Ellie nodded, acknowledging her sympathies. Christine looked toward Stern’s office. “It’s not right. Instead of taking the losses himself, he’s passing them down to the people with no safety net. People here work paycheck to paycheck. They won’t get by without work.”

“It seems a little extreme to fire people,” Ellie said. “I’m sure it’s just a temporary panic.”

“Well, as was explained to us by the boss at an emergency meeting a couple of hours ago, the company is not able to absorb the losses. Men outnumber women on dating sites by more than two to one. Apparently a quarter of our female members pulled their profiles down since the news came out about the letter left in the library. Stern was hoping the damage would blow over when the police announced the case was closed, but instead it’s only gotten worse. Seems women figure that if one nut job could do it, someone else might do the same. Once the men realize there aren’t any women, they’ll quit too. Stern says we don’t have enough in reserves to make payroll, so out walk my former colleagues with nothing but a promise to keep them in mind if the situation turns around. No notice, no severance pay. And they won’t qualify for those valuable stock options we’ve been waiting for because they’re leaving before the public offering.”

“What about you?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t get the axe in the first round, but let’s just say I know enough to get my résumé in shape.”

“I need to see Stern. Is that going to be a problem?”

“Is he going to enjoy talking to you?” Christine asked with a smile.

“Oh, I seriously doubt that.”

Christine extended her arm toward Stern’s office. “Then make yourself at home.”

MARK STERN was in the middle of a hands-free telephone call when Ellie walked into his office without knocking. He looked behind her for the imaginary person who might protect him from unwanted interruption.

“Jan, I’m sorry. I need to call you back… Yeah, I know it’s urgent. I’ll call you right back.” He pulled off his headset and tossed it on his desk. “Well, come on in, Detective Hatcher. What can I do for you?”

“What? No ‘Sorry about your partner’? No ‘I guess he was right. I should have helped the two of you earlier’?”

“Sorry. Obviously I’m very sorry about what happened to Detective McIlroy, but I told that to the other detectives who informed me of his death, and I’ve been cooperating as much as I can with the police department since then. But you’ve got your case all wrapped up, and I’m in the middle of a serious shit storm here.”

“Mass membership cancellations probably screw up a company’s plans to go public, huh?”

“That, Detective, is the understatement of the fucking century. That was my lawyer,” he said, pointing to the headset. “He says the deal can’t happen. To avoid fraud, I’d have to disclose the membership cancellations, and that’s going to destroy the stock price. Fuck.” He sent a stack of documents flying from his desk.

“The company can’t just ride this out?”

Stern took a deep breath and collapsed into his chair, trying to regain his composure. “No. I definitely do not see a good riding-it-out scenario in front of me. My next phone call is to my wife to talk to her about taking another mortgage out on our apartment. That should go well.”

“I have to ask you a question, Mr. Stern, and I want you to control your temper when I do. I’m willing to keep an open mind about whatever you tell me, but after what has happened the last few days, I just don’t have the energy to get into a fight with you.”

“I don’t have a lot of fight left in me either. Go ahead and ask your questions, Detective Hatcher.”

“Do you know that your customers’ credit card numbers are being stolen off your server?”

Stern’s obvious surprise confirmed Ellie’s suspicions.

“That’s what I thought. I’ll be honest. I walked into the building just now assuming you were involved. But seeing you try to save your company in the middle of all this chaos reminded me that every person I’ve spoken to who’s had any encounter with you has mentioned your ferocious dedication to FirstDate. You frustrated the hell out of me, in fact, with your single-mindedness.”

Stern nodded gently. “I tell people that this company is my baby. I created it.”

“Exactly. Your baby. And stealing credit card numbers from your customers could jeopardize that baby, and you wouldn’t do something like that unless the payoffs were substantial.”

“I wouldn’t do it at all, Detective.”

“I’m not judging you. I’m pointing out that you don’t appear to be enjoying those kinds of financial windfalls. And if you were reaping side profits from fraud, you never would have called attention to it by taking your company public. That would only open you up to the scrutiny of shareholders and financial analysts.”

Charlie Dixon had assumed that Stern was sitting on a pile of untraceable money, but the truth was, the man was broke. He was living above his means, and now the public offering that was going to save him was nothing but a fantasy.

“So you’re telling me that on top of all my other problems, I’ve got a hole in my server that someone’s hacking into? What does this have to do with Ed Becker?”

“I don’t think he killed those women. I think he had something to do with two of them – it’s a long story. My point is that I think someone else murdered Amy Davis and Megan Quinn, and they did it to ruin you. When Caroline Hunter was killed, all the news coverage mentioned her research into online dating. Someone with a grudge against you saw the opportunity to destroy your baby – and you along with it. And whoever it was also had a grudge against Amy Davis. They sent her that bogus solicitation for a free membership, then used Richard Hamline’s credit card to pay for it. They killed Amy exactly one year after Hunter was killed, placing a FirstDate e-mail in her coat pocket to make sure the police connected the two cases. Then, when the media still didn’t name your company or you, he added another victim – Megan Quinn.”

“This is nuts. This is absolutely sick. I don’t know anyone who would do something like that. I can’t even imagine knowing someone who could concoct such a demented plan, let alone someone who’d carry it out.”

“You can’t think that way,” Ellie argued. “A man like this can be a father, a husband, a church leader, a man of the community. No matter how absurd you think this is, I need to know who might have a grudge against you, particularly with respect to FirstDate.”

Stern was shaking his head.

“It’s possible it’s someone who knows about computers or even has access to your server. Maybe an employee? Someone you fired?”

As Ellie listened to her own thoughts leave her mouth, she heard discordant lines of recent conversations clashing in her head. Mark Stern: This company is my baby. I created it. Another voice saying, I wouldn’t have worked to start the company if I didn’t think it could serve a good purpose… Mark and I really believed… We did our best…

She saw a pause in Mark Stern, a momentary hesitation.

“Tell me about Jason Upton,” she said.

“But how did you-”

“Because I know what happened.”

38

ELLIE GAVE STERN A CONDENSED VERSION OF THE STORY THAT Upton had told her: Upton and Stern had started the company together, went their separate ways with no hard feelings, and Upton had lived happily ever after on his severance package and his trust fund. Stern offered a slightly different account.

“He was pissed. When we incorporated, he demanded equal footing in the company, and I refused to give it to him. He claimed to be a founder, and he was only a programmer. It was my idea. I found the capital. I created the structure. All he did was program.”

Ellie remembered the nostalgic way that Upton conveyed his memories of starting FirstDate with Stern, and wondered if perhaps Upton’s claims had more merit than Stern was letting on.

“But he walked away from the company despite all of that?”

“He continued working as a programmer at first. Occasionally he’d make snarky, pissy remarks, but for the most part, I thought he was over it. Then he threatened to sue. Shit, in retrospect, he threatened to do a lot more than that. I assumed it was hothead stuff – blowing off steam. I’d known the guy for five years, and he never struck me as violent. In the end, I had my lawyer bring him in and offer a settlement. I swore I’d fight a penny more, and he backed down. Or so I thought. You don’t really think-”

“I don’t know. I’m still trying to make sense of it myself. He’s got plenty of money, so why would he do all of this? Just out of pride? Because you didn’t give him the recognition he wanted?”

“Don’t look at me. I think this entire conversation is absurd. But I can tell you that if Jason Upton has money these days, it’s not from his family, and it’s certainly not from his settlement with me.”

“I know for certain he said he had a trust fund. In fact, he suggested it was the reason he didn’t share your ambitions. And I remember thinking he seemed like the kind of person who’d have family money. He’s got that whole preppy thing going on like he was born on the Princeton campus.”

“That’s all an act. Jason went to Tufts, but it was on scholarship. His dad sold shoes, and his mom was a teacher. He grew up in Oklahoma. He developed that Waspy affectation over time because it helped him land chicks. I met him about six months after he got to New York, and he was living in some ratty old studio on the Lower East Side.”

“Tufts. That’s in Boston, right?”

Stern nodded.

“And Upton would’ve still been in Boston six years ago?”

Stern thought for a moment, then nodded again. “Yeah. I think he hung out there for about a year after he graduated, then I met him shortly after he moved here. That was almost exactly six years ago.”

Stern had met Upton when he first moved to New York, not long after a man using the name Edmond Bertrand had an arrest warrant issued in Boston for his failure to appear on charges of using a stolen credit card.

Accents are easy to fake. Flann had made the observation when he first suggested that Becker could be their man. But they had been assuming that the person who called Peter about the letter in the library was faking a southern accent, not concealing it from everyone else.

“Did you ever verify that Upton even went to Tufts?”

Stern’s facial expression was answer enough. “You don’t think-”

“You’re not the first employer who didn’t check on a friend’s references. Do you think you might have a record of Upton’s date of birth?” Ellie suspected that most of what Upton had told Stern about himself was a lie, but, like many people who used aliases, he might have been truthful about his birth date. Juggling multiple names was enough work without keeping track of corresponding birth dates.

“Human resources probably has it. I can ask.”

While Stern picked up his phone to make the call, Ellie took out her cell phone to call Charlie Dixon with an update. A red flashing light indicated she had a new message that must have come in while she was on the subway. She checked her voice mail and smiled when she heard Peter’s voice. Then she got to the end of the message and dropped the phone.

ENOCH. The killer called himself Enoch. Reading something into that moniker had thrown Ellie onto the wrong track. She had glommed onto the Book of Enoch, just because the name Richard Hamline had been used to open Enoch’s FirstDate account. R. H., like The Book of Enoch translated by R. H. Charles.

She had made the same mistake the D.C. Sniper investigators made when they attributed meaning to reports of a white truck near all the shootings. It was the same mistake shared by Wichitans who’d found a seeming pattern in the number three, found in the addresses of many of the College Hill Strangler’s victims. But white trucks and number threes are so common that they can always be found, as long as you’re looking for them. She had found a connection to the Book of Enoch because she had searched for it.

What she had overlooked was the other Enoch – the son of Cain, who betrayed and killed his brother, Abel. All along, the name Enoch had been Jason Upton’s private joke, referring to FirstDate itself, the offspring of the traitorous Mark Stern.

She realized now the truth that lay beneath all of the illusions created by Jason Upton. Disgruntled with Stern’s refusal to recognize him as a cofounder of the company, Upton started stealing credit card numbers off the FirstDate server and selling them in the vast black market that exists for such information. He could steal here and there and never get caught because credit card companies tended to eat the losses without investigating how the numbers were lost. But Caroline Hunter was different. He rigged the FirstDate server to get a preview of any online complaints, and Caroline’s complaint would have jumped out at him. He’d made the mistake of stealing the credit card number of a customer who’d used her card for only one purchase – a FirstDate membership.

I don’t suppose you still have some magic password you can use to log on to the system? Ellie had asked the question jokingly six days earlier in Upton’s office. Sorry. I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that.

But that was precisely how it worked.

When he read the complaint Caroline Hunter filed with FirstDate, he would have told Vitali Rostov, his contact for the buyers of the stolen card numbers. Rostov sent Becker to quell Hunter’s concerns, but Becker must have left with doubts that Hunter would let the matter drop. To play it safe, Rostov killed her. After all, he’d done it once before: Tatiana.

When Upton read the news of Caroline Hunter’s murder, and learned about her online dating research, he saw his opportunity. He tracked down Amy Davis to use as the “next” victim of a serial killer using FirstDate to murder. Ellie wasn’t certain yet why Upton wanted revenge against Amy, but she knew it had something to do with Edmond Bertrand.

Then, as luck would have it, the detectives searching for Enoch had shown up in Jason Upton’s office looking for help. He hadn’t given Becker’s boat registration to Flann initially because he realized it might tip the detectives off to Becker’s connection to Vitali Rostov. To misdirect the investigation, he left a letter for a Daily Post reporter quoting from the Book of Enoch.

But when Ellie began asking too many questions about Chekova and Rostov anyway, Upton realized that his personal vendetta against Stern could jeopardize the money train. When Flann had asked for a background check on Becker, Upton saw an opportunity to pin all of the murders on him.

And because Ellie had fallen for all of these tricks, she had sent Peter Morse directly into the hands of a man who would sacrifice two innocent women as pawns in a one-sided war.

There was no answer at Peter’s desk. She tried his cell. No answer. She called the general number for the Daily Post newsroom. A woman picked up.

“Hi, is this, um-” Ellie blanked out on the name of the intern Peter had mentioned.

“Justine Navarro. For whom are you calling?”

“Peter Morse. This is Detective Ellie Hatcher-”

“Oh, I know all about you.”

Ellie didn’t have time to pursue that one. “I really need to find Peter. Is he there?”

“No, he left about a half hour ago. He was meeting someone at his apartment.”

Ellie thanked Justine and hung up, wondering what to do next. A taxi ride to Peter’s apartment would take at least half an hour.

She called Peter’s cell phone again. “Listen very closely to me, Peter. Act like I’m not telling you anything special. Keep your gaze straight ahead and your expression neutral. Jason Upton is very dangerous. Don’t take any chances with him. Call me as soon as he leaves your apartment.”

She dialed another number and reached yet another voice-mail recording. “Jason, hi. This is Ellie Hatcher. I’ve got that laptop ready.” She worked to steady her voice. Cool and calm. “I’m not going to be able to keep it long, so whenever you can check it out, that’d be great. Talk to you soon.”

“I take it you couldn’t reach either of them?” Stern asked.

Ellie shook her head and dialed Peter’s cell number again. The call went directly to his outgoing message.

“I need to ask you one more question, Mark, and I need you to give me an honest answer. How flexible are you willing to be on the details of how we figured out what we think we know about Jason Upton?”

She watched as Stern’s mouth turned up slightly at one corner. “If flexibility means getting back at the motherfucker who did all of this, then consider me extremely flexible.”

Ellie had only one way to play this.

ELLIE KNEW the layout of Peter’s apartment. She knew he was there with Jason Upton. She was fairly confident that Upton would be unarmed. She had a good cover story for showing up – she needed Jason to check out Becker’s laptop and was told by Peter’s intern that the two of them were holed up here. The plan was to play it cool and walk Jason out of the apartment, leaving Peter safely behind.

Of course, she knew there was a chance Jason would be waiting for her. He could have realized something was up when she called. And it was at least conceivable he had a gun. But it was precisely in those circumstances that Peter would need her intervention most.

She had done everything she could to stack the deck in her favor, but now she had no choice but to accept the odds and go upstairs on her own. She punched in the electronic security code she’d seen Peter use the past few days.

Ellie never even checked her blind spot when she stepped inside the building and considered the dark, narrow staircase in front of her. By the time she heard a sound behind her and reached for her gun, it was too late. She felt cold, circular metal against the base of her skull and immediately realized her mistake. Zoya had claimed that Vitali Rostov was at work, but stopping Ellie was Rostov’s work. He’d been standing behind the door – not inside the apartment, but on the ground floor at the entrance.

“Uh, uh, uh. I’ll take that.” She felt a hand move across the back of her waistband to her holster, then felt the weight of her Glock leave her body. “Upstairs, Detective.”

As she climbed the stairs, Ellie considered her options. She could hear Rostov close behind her. She smelled his sweat and stale deodorant. She could almost feel the warmth of his body against hers. He was only one step behind her. A heavy rear push kick might send him falling. It might also get her shot, leaving Peter helpless. And even if she made it upstairs, it would still leave her unarmed, trapped above the bottleneck of a staircase, with an injured Rostov waiting for them below. She had to wait it out.

When she stopped at Peter’s closed apartment door, Rostov ordered her to open it. He nudged her with the gun to emphasize the point.

Ellie opened the door to find Jason Upton sitting at Peter’s dining room table. He slowly bobbed a tea bag up and down in a mug Ellie had drunk from the previous morning. Rostov pushed her through the apartment door.

“Good afternoon, Detective. Where’s that laptop you called me about? Funny, you don’t seem to have it with you.” Rostov shoved Ellie to the back corner of the room and stood next to Upton. She watched as he placed her service pistol on the table in front of him while he kept his own weapon fixed on her. “That was a stupid thing you did, calling me like that. I was planning to deal with you later, once you got that laptop. I’d tell you what you needed to hear to go away and, well, if that didn’t work, I’d find some other way.”

“Where’s Peter?” Ellie asked.

“You’re the one who dragged your boyfriend into this. He was in the bathroom the first time you called. I saw your name on the screen of his phone. Then you called him again. Then you left a message for me, and that’s when I turned his phone off. See, if you were so hot to have me examine that laptop of yours, why would you call Peter first?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t insult me.” In his anger, the cultured affectation left his raised voice, and she picked up the hint of a husky southern drawl. “You told me this morning that getting that laptop would take a while, then you call me two hours later saying you’ve got it already? I’m not stupid. In fact, some would say you were the one who was stupid by making this all so easy for me. I took my time tutoring your boyfriend until Vitya arrived. I knew you’d be close behind. That’s what you do when your partners go missing, isn’t it? Go out and look for them?”

She pictured McIlroy again, sitting on the floor of Becker’s boat. Two bullet holes. So much blood.

“So you were on the boat. You got a new gun since you planted the. 38 on Becker.” She looked at the double-action pepper shot Derringer that Rostov pointed at her. It held only four shots, required a manual repeat between each one, and didn’t pack a ton of power. It could do some damage at close range, but still, she had caught a break when he’d opted for his own weapon over hers. “What did you do with Peter, you son of a bitch?”

“How sweet,” Upton mocked. “He’s tied up in the bathtub. Are you into that kind of thing?”

Ellie ignored his question. She knew he was trying to break her. “There’s no reason to bring him into this. He doesn’t know anything.”

“Oh, I know. We checked on that ourselves.” Ellie did not like the smile Upton gave Rostov.

“You’re very good at that, Ellie,” Upton continued. “Secrets. You’ve spent quite a bit of time with this man, and yet he knew nothing of the case that consumes you. Your own partner was murdered in front of you, and you hadn’t even told your lover why he was killed. The problem with having secrets, Ellie, is that they make you a very easy target. If you die, so do your secrets.”

Upton gave Rostov another look, and Rostov tensed his gun arm. Things were moving faster than she’d expected.

“Wait!” Ellie called out. “What about Peter? Use your head, Jason. You’re a smart man. So far a good defense attorney could get you out of this. But you can’t kill a news reporter for the Daily Post. The paper will put you on its front page every day to make sure a jury gives you the needle.”

“But if I spare your little friend, who’s going to take the blame for shooting you?” Upton said. “He’s the easiest target, especially since you sent him an e-mail about fifteen minutes ago telling him you didn’t want to see him again. He sent you one back saying he was going to kill himself if you didn’t come here right away.”

Ellie opened and closed her mouth like a marionette.

“You hadn’t figured that part out yet? You really shouldn’t mooch off your neighbors’ wireless Internet connections. It makes it very easy for people like me to spy on you.”

“That’s why you called Peter to plant the letter. You knew we’d met on FirstDate.”

“I can get whatever I want off of FirstDate at any time. I built my own personal gateway into the server before I left the company. But I know all sorts of things about you,” Upton taunted. “The Web sites you visit. Your passwords.”

“And that’s why you wrote that stupid letter about the Book of Enoch. You knew that I was researching that angle. I was visiting Web sites about the book.”

“I’m tired of this,” Upton said abruptly. “Shoot her.”

Ellie closed her eyes and found herself praying to a god she hadn’t thought of for years. She prayed that Rostov would miss, or that he’d aim for someplace other than her head. She prayed that if she had to leave this world, that Jess and her mother would be all right. She prayed for another world that followed, a place where she might even be with her father. But to her surprise, the bullet didn’t come.

She opened her eyes at the sound of Rostov’s voice. “Jason wrote the letter in the library?”

“Will you fucking shoot her already? We need to do her, do the reporter, and get the fuck out of here.” All pretenses were gone now. Jason Upton sounded like he should be pumping gas and snacking on dirty rice and boudin.

With Rostov’s question, Ellie realized that Upton and Rostov were not the full partners she’d imagined. Four victims. Two patterns. Two separate killers. “You didn’t know, did you, Vitya? Jason let you think there really was another killer out there who got to Amy Davis and Megan Quinn. He probably told you the only way to keep us from finding out you killed Tatiana and Caroline Hunter was to dump all four of the murders on Becker. He didn’t tell you that the other women were his own personal projects?”

“She’s full of shit!” Upton yelled. “I wrote the letter so we’d have a way to set up Becker. That’s why we left that retarded book on his boat. Give me the gun. I’ll shoot her myself.”

Upton moved toward Rostov to take the gun, but Rostov did not turn over the weapon. Instead, he jerked his firing hand toward Upton – only slightly, and only for a second. It was not enough to create an opportunity for Ellie, but it gave her hope, and it put Jason Upton back into his seat and out of reach of her Glock, still resting on the table near Rostov.

“Think about it, Vitya,” Ellie said. “If someone else out there killed Amy Davis and Maggie Quinn, then Jason’s plan to frame Becker doesn’t add up. What happens when the killer plucks off another woman from FirstDate? There’s only one way he could know that wouldn’t happen.” Upton was still encouraging Rostov to fire off a shot, but Ellie could tell she had Rostov’s ear. “And here’s the interesting thing about that name – Enoch. It has two meanings. Enoch was the son of Cain, the one who betrayed his brother in the Bible.”

“I know the story of Cain and Abel.” Rostov spoke quietly, eyeing his friend Upton. “I know it because you told it to me, Jason. You said you felt like Abel, slain by your own brother.”

“So you knew how much Jason hated Mark Stern. Jason did all this – he jeopardized everything, including you – just to get back at Stern. You think killing me and Peter is going to make this go away? It’s too late, at least for you, Vitya. You haven’t spoken to Zoya?”

“Why are you talking about Zoya?”

“I saw her again today. She tried to protect you, but I know you saw Tatiana with that FBI agent. Tatiana wasn’t just an informant, Vitya. That agent was in love with her. He’s not going to drop this. And he knows where Becker got his boat. He’s probably talking to Luke Steiner right now to find out how his boat wound up in Becker’s name shortly after Caroline Hunter’s murder.”

Rostov threw Upton a nervous look that confirmed Ellie’s suspicion that the previous owner of Becker’s boat was somehow connected to Rostov’s network.

“The FBI is getting an arrest warrant for you. You’re going down, and killing me won’t change any of that.”

Ellie could see the veins in Upton’s neck as he screamed at Rostov to put her down. Only Ellie was alert enough to see the knob turn on the apartment’s front door. She gauged the distance to the Glock.

“Zoya will take the kids. You’ll never see them again.” She raised her voice, hoping to cover any sounds of the door she willed to open. “She’ll probably tell them you’re dead rather than take them to see their father in prison. That’s all on Jason. Everything the FBI has points to you, not him. If you’re going to take me out, you at least should send him with me.”

Ellie could feel the momentum changing. She was the aggressor now. In her mind’s eye, she saw Rostov turning the gun on Upton. She pictured the bullet firing into Upton’s body. She imagined herself diving for her weapon in the time it would take Rostov to fire another round. She visualized Peter’s front door opening. And as she pictured it all, she kept on talking.

The problem was, Rostov’s first shot wasn’t intended for Upton. It was meant for Ellie.

The force of the bullet felt like a battering ram against Ellie’s torso. She fell to the floor, landing hard against bare wood. Rostov got off a fast second shot, nailing Jason Upton squarely in the left cheek. Upton pressed both hands against the wound and swayed backward. Then like a pendulum, he swung forward again, collapsing onto the dining room table.

Just as Upton crashed headfirst into his mug of tea, Charlie Dixon pushed his way through the apartment door.

“Drop it, drop it. Drop your weapons. FBI.”

Rostov swung away from Ellie to face Dixon. Dixon reacted immediately. Pop. Pop. Two quick blasts from Dixon’s semiautomatic. Rostov stumbled backward and tumbled to the floor, coming to rest beside Ellie.

Dixon ran toward Ellie and kicked the Derringer from Rostov’s reach. Ellie strained to lift her head. As Dixon pressed two fingers to her carotid artery, she asked him for one more thing. “Make sure the guy in the bathroom’s all right.” Then she closed her eyes and everything turned black.

39

ELLIE WAS KNEELING BESIDE FLANN MCILROY, PRESSING HER coat against his belly, while she waited for an ambulance that might save him. She heard the high-pitched squeals of a siren in the distance and pushed harder against Flann’s abdomen but could still see the blood spreading beneath her parka. Her mouth was dry, her tongue was swollen, and she smelled the antiseptic odors of Jess’s hospital room. She imagined her father’s body slumped over his steering wheel. Pictured the damage done by the bullet fired into his mouth. Greeted by an intense beam of bright white light in front of her, she tried walking toward it. When her legs wouldn’t move, she tried to run, but got no closer. She was paralyzed.

Her eyes shot open. Four round lights were mounted in metal on a vibrating wall in front of her. Then she realized that the bulbs were above her. She was horizontal, and the room was shaking. She was in an ambulance.

“You fainted,” an EMT explained. “Your vest caught the bullet, but you’re going to have a nasty bruise on your gut for about a week.”

“Hey you.” The familiar voice came from an adjacent gurney. Peter Morse looked at her through puffy, blackened eyes. A gash ran along his right cheekbone. A paramedic had wiped blood away, leaving behind a deep pink smear on Peter’s pale skin.

“Hey yourself.”

“I heard the shots from the bathroom. And then the sound of your voice stopped. I thought I’d lost you.”

“A nice girl never goes to a man’s house without her Kevlar.” After a quick phone call to Charlie Dixon from the cab, she’d asked the driver to make a pit stop at her apartment on the way to Peter’s for the vest she kept at home.

“Good girl.”

“Hey, Peter?”

“Yeah?”

“So what exactly did you tell the intern at the paper about me?”

Peter closed his eyes as he drifted off, but he was smiling. As far as post-blackout first memories went, Ellie considered this a good one.

ONE WEEK LATER, Ellie stood next to Charlie Dixon outside a conference room in the federal building, thinking how much easier this all would be if Vitali Rostov had carried a larger gun. The power of a gun made a difference, even at close distances. Vitali Rostov took two shots from Dixon’s semiautomatic and was pronounced dead on arrival. Jason Upton, however, survived the shot from Rostov’s compact Derringer – which is why Ellie stood in the hallway of the federal building wishing Rostov had used a bigger gun.

Ellie knew her thoughts were morally wrong at some level, but she couldn’t control them. She wished Upton had died that day in Peter’s apartment. She wanted Upton to pay the ultimate price, and inconvenient details were more easily swept away when the interested parties were dead. The NYPD didn’t worry about details when it declared Ed Becker solely responsible for the four FirstDate murders. The Wichita police didn’t worry about details when it labeled her father’s death a suicide. But Jason Upton would not be punished until a prosecutor, judge, jury, and defense lawyer pored over the messy details created by his secrets and his lies.

In the week since the shootings, Ellie had left the job of collecting those details to Charlie Dixon. Then they had met the previous night to lock down the official version that Dixon would file in his reports and eventually repeat to a federal grand jury. And now that official version was about to get its first preview in a joint meeting called by FBI Special Agent in Charge Barry Mayfield and NYPD Lieutenant Dan Eckels.

“You sure about this?” Dixon asked one last time. A man she’d known for less than two weeks was trusting his career to her.

Ellie smiled. “Does Britney Spears like Cheetos?”

Mayfield and Eckels were already seated on one side of the long table in the conference room, and Dixon and Ellie joined them on the other. Ellie sat patiently while Dixon explained how nearly two years earlier a federal defendant informed him that an associate named Vitya – last name supposedly unknown – was engaged in a criminal conspiracy that related somehow to a company called FirstDate.

“What was this informant’s name?” Eckels asked.

“Alexander Federov.”

“And where can we find Mr. Federov today?”

“You can’t,” Dixon said. “He was killed in prison.”

“Go on,” Mayfield encouraged.

“All I had was a guy’s first name and a company name. It wasn’t enough to pursue formally, and Federov made it clear he wasn’t about to flip. Since then, however, I’ve remained curious about the tip and informally kept an eye on FirstDate.”

“What do you mean you ‘informally kept an eye’ on it?” Eckels asked. Ellie noticed that Barry Mayfield was leaving the questioning to Lieutenant Eckels. She hoped it was a sign of the friendship Charlie Dixon claimed he had with his boss.

“Just that. I read up on the company and its CEO, Mark Stern. Newspaper articles and advertisements would catch my eye. I was hoping to find some kind of connection to a person named Vitya. Nothing ever came of it. Then two Mondays ago, I heard from a source that Detectives McIlroy and Hatcher had arrived at Mark Stern’s office asking for records as part of a criminal investigation.”

“And who was your source?” Eckels asked.

“Again, nothing formal. A marketing assistant at FirstDate was on parole for a minor drug violation and was willing to stay in touch.”

“Please, Lieutenant,” Mayfield interjected. “If you’d let my agent tell the story, we’d get through this faster. You’ll have time for questions afterward.”

The rest of the official story unfolded without interruption. At Dixon’s request, Detectives McIlroy and Hatcher briefed him about their investigation into a series of murders connected to FirstDate. When they identified a woman named Tatiana Chekova as a potential victim based on ballistics evidence, Dixon was intrigued because the man who originally tipped him off about FirstDate had also been Russian. Then things took off when Dixon learned that Tatiana Chekova had a brother-in-law named Vitali Rostov. Vitya, Dixon explained, was a familiar Russian nickname for Vitali.

Dixon explained how he began following Vitali Rostov to the extent that his other investigations allowed. He saw Rostov meet at an Internet café with a man he recognized from his early surveillance of FirstDate as Jason Upton, a former programmer with the company.

“And where was this café?” Eckels asked.

Mayfield threw Eckels a look of warning, but Dixon answered without hesitation. He gave a Midtown address – one of the three Manhattan Internet cafés that Upton had used for his Enoch activities on FirstDate.

“Anyway, I recognized Upton from my early research into FirstDate, when he was still at the company. At that point, I realized that Upton had to have been the point person for whatever was going on between Rostov and the company. That’s when I went to Mark Stern for assistance.”

Ellie knew that Stern would have already backed up this part of the official story. She had rehearsed the information with Stern before leaving his office that day for Peter Morse’s apartment. True to his word, he’d been willing to be flexible.

“Stern then informed me of the conflict between him and Mr. Upton. He also realized that Upton could have potentially given himself access to customers’ credit card records. At that point, I continued to follow Vitya Rostov in the hope of witnessing an actual exchange of cash for information. That is how I wound up at Peter Morse’s apartment a week ago. I saw Rostov enter the building. Then when Detective Hatcher arrived shortly thereafter, I knew I had to intervene.”

“How did you get access to the apartment?” Eckels asked. “The lock was controlled by a combination.”

“We got lucky,” Dixon said. “When Hatcher went in, the door didn’t close completely. I just pushed it open.”

Ellie continued to listen as Dixon summarized all of the admissions that Upton made while Rostov had held her at gunpoint. From this point in the story, the official version hewed pretty closely to the truth.

Just as Ellie knew it was wrong to wish for Jason Upton’s death, she knew that at some level it was wrong to lie and to have encouraged Dixon and Stern to do the same. But they had no choice if they wanted to see Upton punished. A skeptic might take issue with some of the details in the official version that Dixon offered, but Ellie knew that in the end the powers-that-be would accept any credible lie as truth. They didn’t want to see Upton walk either. And as long as that was the case, Ellie wasn’t going to lose sleep over it.

Ellie tuned back in just as Dixon laid a brown mailing envelope with a New Iberia postmark on the conference table. The package was going to help Dixon tie all the pieces together. It had been delivered by the U.S. Postal Service around the same time Ellie’s Kevlar vest was saving her life. Ellie found it in her mailbox when she came home from the hospital. Enclosed were several yellowed photographs of boys and girls of various ages, each picture accompanied by a Post-it note of the shaky writings of an aged hand. On one of the photographs, Helen Benoit had written, The third boy on the left, Jasper, liked computers. He had a mean streak too. Even in his early teens, Jasper looked a lot like Jason Upton.

Also enclosed in the envelope were copies of all of Helen Benoit’s foster parent contracts with the Louisiana Department of Social Services. At the same time she’d cared for Edmond Bertrand, she’d also taken in Jasper Dupre, date of birth 10-16-74. Jason Upton had the same birth date. As did the Edmond Bertrand arrested in Boston six years ago.

Jason Upton had lied about his education, wealth, motives – even his name. Charlie Dixon was still tracking down all of the various aliases that Jasper Dupre had used since he left Louisiana.

By the time Dixon was done telling the official version of the story, and Ellie was finished corroborating the details, it sounded like it took both of their separate investigations to come to the full truth. Ellie, of course, knew the real truth. She was not troubled, though, that the official version made Dixon sound more resourceful than he was, and she slightly less. Dixon needed the credit more. He was staying on the job.

ELLIE RETURNED to her apartment to find her suitcase open on the bed, just as she’d left it. Without bothering to remove her coat or boots, she began folding the last few pieces of clothing that remained in a pile on top of her dresser. Jess eyed her from the bedroom doorway as she placed the items in the suitcase.

“You sure you want to do this?” Jess asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure. This is what I need right now.”

Two days earlier, she’d gotten the call from the lawyer in Kansas. Now that the dust had settled on William Summer’s conviction and sentence, the Wichita police were finally prepared to permit the family of deceased detective Jerry Hatcher to have a supervised look at the evidence. Ellie had booked an early-afternoon flight. She was even trying to arrange a private visit with Summer at the El Dorado Correctional Facility while she was down there.

“And what are you going to do about Clark Kent?”

Ellie took it as a sign of approval that Jess had come up with a nickname for Peter. “Lots of phone calls. He says if I’m away more than three weeks, he’s flying down there himself. He’s already got a story proposal in the works so the paper will pay for it.”

“What about when you get back? Don’t you need to tell the department what you’re doing?”

“I’ll get right on that – just as soon as you know what you’ll be doing for work in a month.”

Ellie was still on paid leave, but Lieutenant Jenkins was already inquiring as to when she might return to her old post at Midtown North. In the last two weeks, she had trusted too many of the wrong people, been suspicious of the others, and had orchestrated an apocryphal, illegal cover story because she came to believe it was the only way to obtain justice. She had watched her partner get shot, and then held him as he died. She knew better than to make a decision prematurely, but she no longer pictured herself as a police officer. At least not yet.

“And you’re sure it’s okay I stay here while you’re gone?” Jess asked.

“Please. You know you’d stay here anyway.”

“A vacant apartment in Manhattan is a terrible thing to waste.”

Jess helped Ellie zip the suitcase and then carried it to the front door. Ellie looked at her watch.

“I better go.”

“Ellie, wait. You’ve thought through this decision, right? About going home? I mean, what if it turns out – you know, what if we’ve been fooling ourselves about Dad?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “But we need an answer. Mom needs to finally move on after all these years. And I’ll be there to get her through it. I’m ready to do that.”

She heard her voice breaking, so she said good-bye to Jess one last time before she hugged him and carried her suitcase to the street. She waved down the next available cab and helped the driver load her oversized bag into the trunk. As the taxi made its way to the Midtown Tunnel, she took in the streets of Manhattan, as she had when she first arrived in the city, knowing she would miss them and that everything would be different when she returned.