“Oh, come on. We both read a hundred of those trite profiles yesterday. Looking for a partner in crime. Tired of the bar scene. I want a girl who can go from pearls to blue jeans. No drama queens. Gag me. I mean, you’ve got two paragraphs to say something interesting about yourself and what you’re looking for in life, and this is what they come up with?”
“And what should they say?”
“Something original. Something interesting. My god, even just something that doesn’t sound cribbed from a high school yearbook might be nice. But everyone writes the same stupid stuff. That’s what got me thinking about Enoch. In a sea of profiles filled with the same banal platitudes, his stood out almost like a prototype. At first, I just thought it was lame. But then I reread the e-mails between him and Amy, and there seemed to be a disjoint between his profile and the e-mails. As generic as his profile was, his messages were specific. He was one of the few men to ask for her name immediately, which I take is a bit taboo in the online world. He wanted to know where she was from, where she went to school, what was the worst thing she’d ever done – that kind of thing.”
“A bit too curious?”
“Yeah. And intense. When I went back and read his profile again in light of that intensity, it was almost like he was in on the joke, using all of the standard lines. I don’t know. A long shot but-”
“That’s the nature of risk,” Flann said, pulling the car to a stop in front of the precinct. “The long shot’s the only way to the jackpot.”
ELLIE WENT STRAIGHT to Flann’s computer, pulled up her account on FirstDate, and immediately laughed out loud. In response to Flann’s curious look, she explained. “I have eight new messages and ten flirts.”
“You must have slapped together some profile.”
Ellie began clicking on the messages in her in-box. “My alter ego, otherwise known as DB990, already got a response from Mr. Right. Nothing from the other two yet. What’s next? This isn’t the part where you tell me I’m supposed to go on dates until we catch the bad guy, is it?”
“No. Despite the moniker, I never intended to use you as date bait.” He apparently caught the significance of her user name.
“Phew,” she said, wiping her brow. “I thought I’d have to haul out my best Pacino. Hoo-ah!”
“Hey, Sea of Love is still classic Pacino compared to Scent of a Woman. Nice impersonation there, by the way.”
Ellie gave a mock stage bow. “Thank you, thank you. And thank god for the next generation of personal ads. No personal contact necessary. I’ll just do what Amy would’ve done. Get a couple of e-mail exchanges and be receptive to a phone call?”
“Sounds good. In the meantime, I see archives sent down the file on Tatiana Chekova.” He held up a navy blue binder that was waiting for them on his desk. “This should keep us busy awhile.”
INDIVIDUAL DETECTIVES CAN justify different ways of organizing a file. Chronologically to show how the investigation unfolded, piece by piece. By type of evidence – witness statements separate from forensics. But the investigating detectives on Tatiana Chekova’s case used no apparent filing system whatsoever. Initial interviews, follow-ups, crime lab reports, victim info – all of it was commingled. Some sheets of paper hadn’t quite made it through the hole-puncher and were jammed into the notebook’s worn plastic pockets. Random handwritten notes were left unexplained and indecipherable. Ellie had never seen an NYPD murder book, but she took better care of her files on Podunk cases.
According to the initial report, Tatiana Chekova lived in Bensonhurst but was shot outside of Vibrations on the West Side Highway in Manhattan. The report filed by a Detective Ed Becker euphemistically referred to the establishment as a “gentlemen’s club.” Ellie did a double take at the name typed at the bottom of the police report. Something about it seemed familiar. She’d come across it recently in another context but couldn’t place it.
It was two in the morning on April 22 when one of the members of a bachelor’s party ducked to the edge of the parking lot to take a leak during a smoking break and spied bare legs behind a parked car. Assuming the legs belonged to a hooker, passed out after turning a trick, he waved his friends over for a free peep show. Her raincoat had fallen open to reveal a jeweled bra and thong. A closer look revealed a less titillating picture. Most of the woman’s brain matter had spilled to the parking lot concrete.
The bouncer at the door confirmed that the body, outfit, and butterfly-tattooed ass belonged to Tatiana Chekova. She worked part-time as a waitress and, when money fell short, as a reluctant lap dancer on the floor. She’d been employed at Vibrations for six weeks. Sadly, no one at the club claimed to know her well.
Considering she devoted more words to a typical burglary, Ellie thought the report fell woefully short. The detectives supposedly questioned everyone who was still at Vibrations when they arrived, but the report tersely concluded that “there were no witnesses to the shooting.” Details of the interviews were omitted. Even names were missing, except for the manager on duty, the drunken groomsman who found the body, and the lucky husband-to-be.
It was piss-poor police work.
The background information the detectives gathered on Chekova wasn’t any more impressive. They quickly determined she was a Russian immigrant, in New York for almost five years. They ran her record: three prostitution pops her first two years in the country; more recently, a bust for credit card fraud and heroin possession three months before her murder. According to a computer printout, the officer arrested Chekova for the fraud, then found heroin in her bedroom. The case was declined for prosecution. Ellie guessed that the search was bad. Arresting a woman in her apartment usually didn’t require a search of her bedroom.
As she turned to the ballistics reports, Ellie fished out her jar of Nutella and spoon from the cardboard box she’d stashed underneath Flann’s desk. The crime lab reports were considerably more thorough than the detectives’. Two bullets, fired into the back of the victim’s head, close range. A lot of damage.
“What’s that smell?” Flann looked up from his reading. “That’s something you’re eating?”
“Nutella. A little bit nutty, a little bit of chocolate. It’s culinary perfection.”
“Smells like something you’d scoop from the bottom of a pigpen. Not to mention it’s barely ten in the morning.”
Ellie helped herself to another scoop and smiled. “You’ve looked at the murder book on Caroline Hunter, right?”
“Yeah. Not much there. Her purse was stolen, so it looked like a robbery gone bad. No neighborhood witnesses. The trail ran cold – fast.”
He looked up at Ellie, apparently waiting for her to come up with the right question. He’d also seen the crime lab reports on Chekova.
“What about the gunshots?” she asked.
“Two of them. Back of the head.”
“Close range?”
“Ballistics’ best guess was two to three feet.”
Just like Tatiana Chekova. Same gun. Same shots. Same number of bullets. Chekova was killed nine months and ten days before Caroline Hunter. Twenty-one months and ten days before Amy Davis. No reason to suspect a FirstDate connection. No reason to dismiss it either. The original investigators had no cause to look for it. Even if they had, they might not have bothered. A Russian heroin addict, living in Bensonhurst, stripping in Manhattan.
“I was hoping to avoid this,” Flann said, “but I think we need to talk to one of the investigating detectives on the Chekova case.”
“Afraid of a turf battle?”
“There’s no turf to fight over. Barney Tendall is dead – shot, off-duty, when he tried to stop a robbery. Ed Becker took retirement two months later. I guess Becker talked to Tendall on the phone a couple of hours before it all happened and couldn’t get past it – like he was supposed to stop his partner from grabbing a beer.”