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?”