Dead Connection (13 page)

“When?”

“I don’t know. About two weeks ago, not long after our date. I even tried to e-mail Amy about it, but she had blocked me. Look — I can show you.”

He turned to the computer and pulled up a message sent to MoMAgirl eleven days earlier.
Amy, I know you’re not interested in seeing me, and I know this will sound really weird. I was in your neighborhood visiting a friend and noticed a man in the alley by your building. DON’T FREAK OUT. I only know you live there because I happened to see you walk in once. Anyway, I think I saw the same guy watching us at the coffee shop. I know it sounds crazy, but please be careful. I promise not to contact you again
.

It was indeed the last message he’d sent her, and it had been bounced back to him with a notification that he’d been blocked from the user’s FirstDate account.

A man beneath Amy’s fire escape, in the same alley where her body was found. “What did the guy look like? The one you saw in the alley.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. Tall, I guess. Not big, though. He was all bundled up in the cold. I think I’d recognize him if I saw him again.”

Ellie tried having Taylor look at Amy’s connections on FirstDate in the hope of jogging a memory loose, but it was no use.

“I should have done more,” Taylor said. “I could have called her or something.”

Ellie took a final look at Taylor Gottman, slumped at his boss’s computer, staring at the messages supposedly sent by a successful advertising executive.

“It wouldn’t have made a difference, Taylor. She wouldn’t have believed you.”

18

SPECIAL AGENT CHARLIE DIXON STARED OUT AT THE HUDSON
River, but saw something else altogether. He saw the smiling face of Tatiana Chekova framed by long, loose, honey brown curls, blown by the winds that rushed over the Hudson River on an unseasonably warm spring afternoon almost two years ago.

Charlie had called in sick that day so he and Tatiana could take a sightseeing cruise. The champagne-pouring, sailor-hat-wearing tour guide was corny, but they both knew this was the closest they could come anytime soon to fulfilling Tatiana’s dream of a real luxury cruise. He thought of the glee on her face — the utter carefree abandon — as they waited among the tourists to board at Pier Eighty-three. The way she pushed her cheek into his hand when he reached for her. The one time he had touched her in public. That’s what Charlie remembered now as he stared at the water.

They had met two months earlier when Charlie drove to the precinct in Brooklyn to debrief a Russian female who had just been arrested for heroin possession and credit card fraud. His friend and supervisor Barry Mayfield liked to say that Charlie “got played” by Tatiana. It was easier for Mayfield to think of it that way — to think of Charlie as the victim instead of Tatiana. In Mayfield’s view, Tatiana had immediately spotted an easy mark.

Charlie used his federal authority to cut her loose from the state felony charges she was facing. But instead of giving cooperation, she gave Charlie fake stories and false promises that led to nothing except the violation of a number of Justice Department guidelines — enough to lose Charlie his job and his pension, if not his freedom. In Mayfield’s view, Tatiana was probably killed by some other gullible horn dog who was sucker enough to fall for her shit. As Mayfield saw it, Charlie was luckier for it, as long as no one ever found out about him and Tatiana.

Charlie understood why Mayfield liked that version of the story, but he also knew it wasn’t true. He remembered the way Tatiana cried during that first interview. He’d seen a lot of suspects — male and female — try to cry their way out of it, but these tears were real. She was in over her head, and she had no idea how to get out.

Russian heroin importers were among the most sadistic, ruthless, and organized criminals Dixon had ever encountered. They also expected loyalty among cohorts, meting out heinous reprisals against those who disappointed. Dixon had flipped a member of the Russian mob three years ago. Six hours after the plea deal was struck, the informant’s wife and three children disappeared from the family’s home. Three days later, eight hack-sawed thumbs arrived in a care package mailed to the informant at his federal holding facility. The bodies were never found, and Dixon’s informant backed out of the cooperation agreement and served his full sentence. Tatiana didn’t want to go upstate but she wasn’t about to double-cross the men who fed her drug habit.

She was in the worst position suspects could find themselves in. She was a stripper-slash-occasional hooker who wanted a television she couldn’t afford. An eager-beaver cop’s search for the flat-screen led to her pop with enough horse to trigger eight years under the state’s Rockefeller sentencing laws. She was just dangerous enough, to men who were just bad enough, that she just might find herself killed. But she didn’t have an established record of cooperation, and she couldn’t corroborate anything she had to say. She was of marginal worth as an informant and was not even close to being the kind of deep player who could earn witness protection as a quid pro quo.

But Charlie got her out of the local charges anyway. He didn’t have it in him to do anything else. Not this time. She was too vulnerable, too needy. She seemed too good, and it had been a long time since he’d used his position to help anyone. So he helped Tatiana. He listened to her. And to reconcile the help he had given her with his obligations as an FBI agent, he had even acted on the limited information she did provide. He set up a controlled buy with a dealer she gave up. He popped another guy walking out of a motel with nearly a hundred stolen credit card numbers.

But, on paper, he didn’t document one word about Tatiana — not the information she gave him, and not the consideration he’d shown her at the Brooklyn precinct. If he did, it would be obvious she got too good a deal for the information she gave. There’d be an inquiry. His motives would be questioned. And someone might figure out that he had fallen in love.

Everything might have been fine if Charlie had ignored the most intriguing piece of information Tatiana provided.
This one time
, she said,
I heard some guys talking about some arrangement they had with a company called FirstDate
. Charlie pressed her for more. What guys? What kind of arrangement? Nothing. He should have let it drop. But even with that vague description, he had a theory: Organized criminals had to have a means of washing the proceeds of their criminal enterprises, and it was often legitimate businesspeople who did the laundering.

He couldn’t extract cooperation from the members of the criminal ring themselves, but he figured a man like Mark Stern would make a deal the minute the possibility of federal criminal charges was mentioned. So, nearly three months after he first met Tatiana, with absolutely no evidence to back him up, Dixon went to Mark Stern and told him he was a target. He claimed he had an informant who could document the use of his company, FirstDate, to hide financial transactions for Russian drug dealers.

But, to his surprise, Stern feigned ignorance, and then threw Charlie out of his office. Three nights later, Tatiana was shot in the Vibrations parking lot.

Looking back on it, almost two years after her death, he realized that Tatiana knew more than she told him. Her elusive mention of “some guys” with “some arrangement” was intentionally unhelpful. Tatiana wouldn’t have hidden anything from him, though, unless she were truly terrified. What crushed Charlie the most was the possibility that she was even trying to protect him. She had loved him too, after all. And they both knew that the men she was talking about made the crooks Charlie usually dealt with look like Boy Scouts.

So because Charlie had not let the FirstDate matter go when it would have made a difference to Tatiana, he had vowed never to let it go. He was still trying to figure out how Stern knew his information came from Tatiana. He was also still trying to find a connection between Stern and the men whom Tatiana was wrapped up with. In short, he was still looking for a way to bring Stern down.

Stern had all the signs of a man up to no good. According to his tax returns, he was drawing only a modest salary — modest for a CEO, at least — and had no other documented income. Meanwhile, he and his strictly volunteer-work wife managed to cover the mortgage on their twenty-four-hundred-square-foot apartment, complete with keys to Gramercy Park. They blew thirty grand on a weeklong stay last winter at a five-star resort on Paradise Island. They had a private driver. They were not living on Mark Stern’s salary. A hundred times Charlie had been tempted to turn what he had over to the tax division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. After all, Al Capone had been taken down for tax evasion. But then Charlie would have to explain how he knew so much about Mark Stern. And Stern would remember his meeting with Charlie two years ago. And Charlie would have to identify his informant. And then Charlie’s career would be over. He might even be prosecuted himself.

So Charlie kept waiting and watching, thinking someday Stern would slip up. Charlie would catch him with the wrong person. Figure out who else was involved. He’d make it look like one of them had been cooperating with the FBI all along. It was an old lawman’s trick — find out what you need to know first, then find yourself an informant to take the credit.

He’d used laws intended for terror investigations to get access to Mark Stern’s financial information. He kept up an undocumented informant relationship with a marketing assistant at FirstDate — on federal parole for a little coke habit. He could lose everything but had gotten absolutely nowhere. Up until this week, the only dirt he’d uncovered was that Mark Stern lived above his explainable means. Then, yesterday, out of the blue, his informant called to report that Stern had sent out an office-wide memo about a police inquiry related to the company. And now two NYPD detectives were threatening his mission by asking their own questions about FirstDate.

Charlie reached into his pocket for the one piece of evidence that remained of his relationship with Tatiana — a single photograph of them together, purchased for five dollars that day on the sightseeing cruise. Her smile was radiant. She was clean of the drugs. She was happy. His own face was at peace in a way he hadn’t felt since. He would remember that day on the boat with her — and the love he felt for her then — forever.

He took one last long look and tore the picture in half. Then he continued tearing, watching its unrecognizable pieces fall to the river below.

19

“CAN I JUST SAY YOU WERE A LOT HOTTER AS DB990?”

“Thanks. I’ll make a mental note. Now about the alibi—”

“How much detail do you need from me, Detective?”

The tone of the question was intended to be seductive. Unfortunately for Ellie, the questioner — Rick Newton, aka “Mr. Right” — was anything but. His jeans were a size too tight, and his disheveled hair was an inch too long. He gazed at Ellie in the interrogation room over rose-tinted sunglasses the size of salad plates. His attempt to be hip was more David Cassidy than George Clooney.

“Not nearly as much as you’ve got in mind,” Ellie responded. “Just a name and phone number would be fine.”

She pushed a notepad across the table in his direction, and he flipped his cell phone open to retrieve the requested information.

“I forgot the last name, but I’m sure she’ll be…forthcoming.” Newton grinned at Ellie as the final word dripped from his lips.

“It’s that kind of schtick that landed you here in the first place.”

“It’s also what
landed
me with Reeva. Hey, what does a Chinese Elvis impersonator say?”

“Why do I have a feeling you’re going to tell me anyway?”

“Reeva Ras Vegas.”

“That’s not even how the accent — oh, forget it.”

Newton was still singing when Ellie left the room to call poor Reeva. Her last name turned out to be Stanton. She also turned out to be mortified.

“I knew it. I just fucking knew it. I
knew
that sleeping with that sleaze-meister motherfucker was going to come back to haunt me.”

Ellie stifled a laugh. “I hate to do this to you, but could you give me a rough timeline?”

“Jesus, I’m so tempted to tell you I never met the guy. Too late, huh?”

Now Ellie snickered aloud. “Afraid so. That whole lying to the police thing can ruin a perfectly good day.”

“Oh, yeah.
That
. Well, don’t share it with the world, but I only met him that one night. At Uptown Lounge, at the bar.”

Ellie knew the place. It was an Upper East Side restaurant, particularly popular with good-looking single people.

“What time was that?”

“I got there pretty late, around eleven thirty. He was already there.”

“He, meaning Rick Newton?”

“I’m trying to repress it, but yes. Anyway, I just went through a horrible breakup, so I went out with my girlfriends. I’m following some silly book that says you’re supposed to go sixty days without talking to the asshole you’re trying to get over, and you’re supposed to stay busy while you go cold turkey. The same book probably says somewhere not to sleep with the first loser who comes sniffing your way, but, chalk it up to four ginger martinis and a broken heart, right?”

“So, as far as a timeline goes—”

“How long was it before my inner slut took him home? A couple of hours. We left around two. He tried to stick around in the morning, but I woke up early and told him I had to go to yoga. That was probably around nine on Saturday. Then I stayed hungover in bed for another six hours. I was hoping never to hear about it again.”

“Hopefully this will be the end of it. Can I get a name of one of your girlfriends? Just to corroborate?”

Reeva sighed loudly and gave Ellie a name and number. “She is going to give me so much shit.”

FLANN WAVED ELLIE over to his desk when she was finished with her call. “What did you get from Mr. Right?”

“A nasty case of the crabs if he had his way. In a development that proves that there’s someone out there for everyone — at least for an evening — Rick Newton somehow managed to get lucky Friday night.” Ellie shook her head in bewilderment. “He looks good to go.”

“So get a load of this. My friend from the D.A.’s office called.”

“Jeffrey P. Yong the poker player?”

“That would be the man. He worked his way up the ladder to figure out why he was told to back off the FirstDate subpoena. It wasn’t Stern after all. It was a call from the FBI field office.”

It took a moment for the information to sink in. “Why would the feds care about FirstDate?”

McIlroy raised his eyebrows. “Interesting question, isn’t it? Go ahead and wrap up things with your guy. Maybe you can call the feds while my lieutenant chews me out.”

“And what exactly did you do to make you chew-out-able?”

“With Lieutenant Dan Eckels, simply being Flann McIlroy is generally enough.” They shared a glance toward the man inside the glass office occupying one side of the detectives’ room. Ellie could see from the way that Lieutenant Eckels’s salt-and-pepper hairline barely cleared the back of his chair that he was short. Big, though. Wide. She remembered Flann telling her that his lieutenant wasn’t happy about the assistant chief’s decision to run with this investigation.

“Shouldn’t both of us go?” Ellie asked.

“You really don’t need to go to a Lieutenant Eckels chew-out session to feel like you’ve been there. Just imagine the mean, gruff boss in any cop movie you’ve ever seen. He’ll lean on me, remind me for the sixty-third time we don’t have the resources to run off on fantasy missions. He’ll scold me when I tell him we don’t have anything solid yet. And then he’ll set some arbitrary deadline by which we have to catch our man or he’ll shut us down. Got the general picture?”

“You sure you don’t want a second body to share the wrath?”

“Nah, he’s waiting for me. Besides, if all else fails, I can use the fact that the feds are interested to buy us a little more time. Eckels might hate me, but I’m a pal compared to the fibbies. Call the FBI office and see what you can find. Unless of course you need a little more private time with Rick Newton.” Flann threw her a cheeky wink before heading to the gallows.

ELLIE DID CALL the FBI, but the conversation was short. When she told Special Agent in Charge Barry Mayfield why she was calling, she could practically hear the thud as she hit the brick wall.

“I’m sorry, Detective. Tell me again why you think our office has any involvement with this company you’re talking about?”

Ellie couldn’t let on that she knew the FBI impeded their efforts to get a subpoena for FirstDate’s records. She didn’t want to burn Jeff Yong.

“The way you let word get around, I didn’t know it was a secret.”

“I know what cases my agents are working, and this one doesn’t ring a bell.”

“We’re working a murder case. Three of them actually. Tatiana Chekova. Caroline Hunter. Amy Davis. There’s a connection to an online dating company called FirstDate. The CEO is Mark Stern.”

“I understood that the first time you said it, Detective. None of it sounds like a federal concern. Unless of course you’re asking for the FBI’s assistance with a suspected serial killer. In that case, I’ll certainly call in Quantico. You’ll have national experts there within twenty-four hours.”

“We’ve got our case under control. In the spirit of cooperation, I was trying to see if we had some overlap. The company’s about to go public. Maybe you’ve got some kind of white collar investigation on it? Fraud in the initial public stock offering, perhaps?”

“Like I told you, Detective. I know the caseload out of this office.”

“Maybe it’s not an official case? Perhaps you’ve got an agent who’s friends with Stern? Asking a few questions for him about our investigation? We’d sure appreciate knowing something like that.”

“I don’t keep tabs on my agents’ friendships unless there’s a reason to worry about them. Now if you’ve got some specifics, something one of my agents did that’s inappropriate—”

“I didn’t say any such thing.”

“I didn’t think so. Thank you for calling, Detective. Good luck with that investigation. It sounds like a real barn burner.”

A young civilian aide lingered beside Flann’s desk with a manila envelope. “A messenger dropped this off for Detective McIlroy.”

“I’ll take it.” The mailing label on the envelope indicated it came from the law firm of Larkin, Baker & Howry. Ellie slid a letter opener across the top and removed a half-inch-thick stack of papers. On the first sheet was a Post-it note:
Detective, The works, as you requested. Should all be self-explanatory. Jason Upton

Ellie flipped through the documents. Financial information. Public records. Property archives. All relating to Ed Becker.

She scanned the first printout. It showed a real estate transaction almost a year and a half earlier. The title of a house in Scarsdale had transferred from James Gunther to Edward Becker. The next page documented the simultaneous closing on a house in Staten Island, sold by Ed Becker for slightly less than what he paid for his new home in Scarsdale.

Ellie bit her lower lip as she realized what McIlroy had done. Forgotten gloves? Right. He had snuck upstairs to ask Jason the wunderkind to do a background check on Becker.

Ellie was still seething when McIlroy emerged from the lieutenant’s office. He failed to notice.

“Something better break for us soon,” he reported. “I played the fibbie card, but Eckels is talking about pulling the plug if we don’t start tying some pieces together. At this rate, we may not get a decent lead until our guy kills another victim.”

“You almost sound like you’re looking forward to it.” Ellie regretted the comment at once, knowing it was a passive-aggressive way of dealing with what actually angered her.

“Jesus, Hatcher. I was only kidding. I forget you haven’t thickened your skin yet. Any luck with the G-men?”

“No. They denied all knowledge of the subject. Are you going to do the same about this?” She dropped the stack of paper on McIlroy’s desk. He flipped through the pages, nodding as he read.

“You did a background check on another cop?” A couple of nearby heads turned, and Ellie lowered her voice. “I may be junior to you, but what the hell are you thinking? Show some loyalty.”

“You’re right, you are junior to me, so don’t talk to me like I’m I.A. I don’t
have
any loyalty to cops like Becker. You saw that house up there, in that highbrow neighborhood. When Upton said he could dig up information that the law keeps us from getting—”

“Well, I hope you’re happy. There’s nothing there. That house cost the same as he was paying back at his old place on the job. Oh, excuse me, the house itself cost slightly more, but if you check out his mortgage payments, he’s actually paying a little less per month now thanks to interest rates.”

“His mortgage payments are in here?”

“You did ask for the works, after all. What did you expect? An offshore account? A secret warehouse filled with piles of cash?”

Flann’s face fell. “I don’t know. A higher purchase price on that house, for one — something too spendy for a cop’s pension.”

“Well, you’re not going to find it there. Or anything else for that matter.”

“I guess some guys are just lucky.”

“Yeah, I’m sure Becker will feel real lucky knowing we checked up on him.”

“He’s not going to know, Ellie.”

“That wasn’t my point.”

“Look, I’m sorry that I’ve offended you. Becker’s not the most wholesome cop in my book, and the luxury digs set off my spidey senses. I didn’t see the harm in having someone check it out. I should have told you before I went back to Upton’s office.”

“You mean before you
snuck
back to his office?”

“Yes, before I snuck, like the snake in the grass that I am, back to his office. I should have told you the truth. Now does that tiny hint of a smile on your face mean we’re gonna be okay? You’re going to forgive the snake?”

“Yeah, we’re fine, Flann. As long as you promise not to do a background check on me.” Ellie wasn’t about to let on that she was harboring doubts about her new partner.

“I think I can live with that.”

“So, moving on to other subjects, I was thinking about trying to track down Tatiana’s sister tonight. Maybe check out the club she worked at too. You in?”

Flann checked his watch. “Sorry. I should have realized. I mean I shouldn’t have made other plans.”

“That’s okay. We hadn’t talked about it.” Ellie had just assumed that, like herself, Flann worked past the clock, regardless of the O.T.

“It’s just that — well, after our talk yesterday, I called Miranda, Stephanie’s mom. My daughter’s mother. Anyway, I’m going over there tonight. Stephanie and I are having dinner. I’m eating dinner with my daughter.”

“Flann. That’s wonderful.” Ellie couldn’t figure this guy out. One minute he seemed like a self-promoting turncoat, and the next he was a teddy bear.

“All right. Enough of that. You’re going to be cooing cute noises at me soon if you don’t stop looking at me like that.”

“Just gives me faith in the world. That’s all.”

“Get some rest tonight,” Flann said, pulling on his coat. “We’ll take another crack at it tomorrow.”

Ellie assured him she was going straight home too, but in the back of her mind, she couldn’t shake Flann’s passing remark:
We may not get a decent lead until our guy kills another victim
. She was not going to wait around for that to happen.

ELLIE’S FATHER ALWAYS believed that the key to finding a killer was to identify his motive.
Find the motive
, he used to say,
and the motive will lead you to the man
. Jerry Hatcher had been convinced that the College Hill Strangler was motivated by masochistic sexual voyeurism. That conviction had guided his thirteen-year search for men who got off watching women in pain.

Ellie reread all of her notes on the case, wondering about motive. None of the women were raped, but the absence of sexual contact didn’t preclude the possibility of a sexual motive. On the other hand, maybe she was overlooking an entirely different possibility. She found herself fixed on the words she’d transcribed politely while Amy Davis’s parents retrieved Chowhound. High school boy. Changed grade. Restraining order. Call Suzanne Mouton to verify. A New Iberia telephone number.

Changed grade
. Ellie remembered that at some point in her own education, handwritten report cards were replaced by computer printouts. She assumed the same modernization had occurred in New Iberia by the time Amy Davis and Suzanne Mouton were in high school. What if Amy’s parents had given her their best clue at the very beginning? Ellie dialed Suzanne Mouton’s number.