“I’m sorry. We have a firm policy against disclosing information about our users.”
Apparently all FirstDate employees received the same training.
“We were hoping to talk to someone about that,” McIlroy said. “We certainly understand the reasons for your policy, but this is a little unusual. Our case is a double homicide. Two women are dead, and they were both active on FirstDate. I’m sure you can see the urgency.”
The receptionist’s eyes widened at the mention of a double homicide, a description that wasn’t precisely accurate since the two victims were killed an entire calendar year apart. But people mislead for a reason. Ellie watched the woman’s fingers move toward a directory of telephone extensions that was taped next to the telephone.
“I’m really not sure how I can help you-”
“We just need to talk to someone who might be in the position to look up a few names for us,” Ellie interrupted. She and McIlroy had agreed in advance that Ellie would play the bad cop if necessary to get to the company CEO, Mark Stern.
“There’s only one person I can think of who might have the authority-”
“Why don’t you go ahead and call that person?” McIlroy asked.
“He has a very busy schedule. Can you, like, call later to schedule an appointment?”
Ellie stepped in. “If we have to get a court order and FirstDate ends up on the front page of the New York Daily Post as a stalking ground for serial killers, I suspect Mr. Stern will want to know who turned us away when we tried to make a quiet courtesy call. Is this the name I should give him when he asks?” She held up the nameplate that rested on the desk.
As it turned out, looks really couldn’t kill. Once Ellie and the receptionist came to that mutual realization, a set of manicured pink nails tapped a four-digit extension into a phone, and, after a terse conversation, Ellie and McIlroy were escorted to a corner office.
“Mr. Stern, these are the detectives who wanted to speak with you.”
The chief executive officer of FirstDate lived up to one’s expectations of a man who made his living selling the romantic fantasy of realistic love. He was probably approaching forty and wore a platinum wedding band, a conservative navy blue suit, and a not-so-conservative lime green tie. His hair was on the long side for an executive, with the right amount of gray at the temples. Message: I was young once myself but found the right girl, fell in love, and remained loyal and happy. The silver-framed photograph of his beautiful wife in her beautiful wedding dress, placed prominently on his desk, wasn’t exactly subtle, but selling love, after all, was how Mark Stern made his money.
McIlroy handled the introductions, then got to the matter at hand. “We’re investigating the murder of two women – similar ages, killed precisely one year apart. Both women were killed outside of their homes, apparently by strangers. Both women were using FirstDate.”
Stern nodded a few times, taking in the information. “That sounds quite tragic, detectives, but I’m not sure how I can possibly help you.”
“We have a list of the men who contacted our victims through your service. We need your help to track them down.”
“If you have a list of suspects, I’m not certain what more I can add. Checking them out sounds like police work to me.”
“A list of user names,” Ellie corrected. “We have a list of FirstDate profile names and need to know the identities behind them. Coming up with that list, and figuring out that you’re the one with our answers – that was our police work.”
Stern smiled, more at Ellie than at McIlroy. “I’ll presume that you accessed the accounts lawfully.”
“We did.”
“And you have an entire list of users who contacted both of these poor women before they died?”
Ellie interrupted. “The two poor women had names, Mr. Stern: Caroline Hunter and Amy Davis. And, no, we don’t have a list of men who contacted both of them, but we do have a list of men who contacted either of them. And as you know, a single person can use multiple user names. In fact, Caroline Hunter was using your service to do precisely that. We need the names so we can look for overlap between the lists, among other things.”
“Among other things? You mean things like prying into the backgrounds of our users to see who might seem murderous?”
Ellie gave him her best sardonic smile. “We’ll cross-reference it with registered sex offenders, mental patients, gun records. Sounds like you know police work after all.”
“Let me see if I can save the two of you some time. From what I gather, you have two murder victims who were both FirstDate customers, and so you assume there must be a connection. That’s a logical conclusion only if you assume that the use of my service is unusual. Isn’t that how these things work? You discover two victims use the same tiny dry cleaner, and you track down that lead?”
Neither detective spoke, but Stern caught the glance between them.
“Okay, so here’s where the logic falls apart. FirstDate’s no longer the corner dry cleaner. We have tens of thousands of customers in the New York metropolitan area alone.” Stern was in full-blown sales-speak now. “People are busy. Dating at work’s a no-no. A service like ours has become as common as joining a gym. What you see as a coincidence between two women is yet another indication of just how common FirstDate has become in the lives of city singles. It’s no more coincidental than if both of these women read the New Yorker or bought groceries at D’Agostino’s.”
Ellie gave McIlroy a look that said, Get a load of this guy.
“We have more than coincidence,” McIlroy argued. “The killer left us a message.”
The bluntness of the assertion caught Stern off guard. “I certainly wish we could have started the conversation there. The person who killed these women contacted you?”
McIlroy clarified the nature of the so-called message: the e-mail found in Amy Davis’s coat pocket, printed from somewhere other than her apartment. As Ellie heard the explanation through a stranger’s ears, she realized how tenuous their theory was.
So did Stern, crossing his arms. “I’m sorry, officers-”
“Detectives,” Ellie clarified.
“Of course. Detectives. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I really can’t help you.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“Both. With all frankness, it sounds like you’re grasping at straws. And, under those circumstances, I can’t just let you comb through our records at will. Now, if you come up with individual names, and can offer me some good reason why you need the information, maybe we’d be in a different boat-”
“Maybe?” Ellie asked. “I don’t think you understand how this works. We’ve got a city of eight million people, and we’ve winnowed our attention down to these few. And we’ve given you a reason-”
“But not a reason for looking into the lives of every single person on that list. Even if I treat your theory generously, there is at most one person on that list who deserves your attention. The rest deserve privacy, which is one of the most important assets FirstDate provides. If our customers can’t trust us, we won’t have many clients. And our service only works if we have a vast and diverse clientele.”
“Trust? You want to talk about trust?” Ellie pulled two crime scene photos from a manila envelope. “Caroline Hunter and Amy Davis chose to trust. They took a leap of faith. They put themselves out in front of a world of strangers because your company lures people in with the potential of companionship. Now they’re dead, and you’re saying you won’t help us. You won’t help them.”