Stern handed her a sheet of paper. “That’s his name, billing information, and e-mail address from the account. I called one of our I.T. people to pull up his I.S.P. information.”
“You called in a what for a who?” Flann asked.
“I called an information technology staffer to locate the Internet service provider. Like most commercial Internet sites, we automatically collect every user’s Internet service provider each time they visit the site. We also get their I.P. address.”
“And an I.P. is-”
“An Internet protocol address,” Stern explained. “Like most of our customers, Hamline used an easy-to-get, free e-mail address to open his account with us. You don’t have to provide any kind of verifiable identifying information to open that kind of an e-mail account. But that’s where the I.P. address is helpful. Every device that links to the Internet – whether it be a computer, or a printer, or a router – has a unique number. It’s used to identify the device and to communicate with other devices. I’ll get someone to track that down for Hamline.”
“And how is that useful?” Flann asked.
“We can use the number to geolocate the device. Just think of the I.P. address as a computer’s street address or a phone number. It identifies a unique, specific computer. In most cases, we can actually use the I.P. address to match the computer to a physical location.”
“And every Web site keeps track of them? So much for privacy,” Ellie said.
“Not only do we do it. We have to do it under the Patriot Act. I’m sure the ACLU is overjoyed.”
“Well, I say thank God for Big Brother,” Flann said. “How soon can we get that information?”
“My I.T. guy’s on his way from Jersey City. Should be forty minutes or so.”
Flann didn’t waste any time asking questions. “Let’s go ahead and work it like the twentieth century. We’ve got a good old-fashioned name and date of birth.”
RICHARD HAMLINE’S name and date of birth appeared only once in the NYPD’s records – in a police report he’d filed two years earlier after a man who was never identified grabbed his gym bag from his shoulder as he left work shortly after midnight. According to the report, Hamline worked as a corporate lawyer at a Wall Street law firm and lived in a seventeenth-floor apartment adjacent to Battery Park.
Ellie held the police report in one hand and a copy of Hamline’s driver’s license photo in another. The picture was nearly eight years old. Although it bore a slight resemblance to the photo accompanying Enoch’s profile, Ellie suspected the better-looking photo on FirstDate was bogus.
“This doesn’t feel right,” Ellie said. “He gives his real name on an account he uses to contact two of the victims? It’s too easy. This is just going to be another cycle in the game.”
“Do you have any other suggestions?” Flann asked. A judge had already issued a telephonic warrant to arrest Hamline. The spreading media hysteria about a possible serial killer no doubt gave them an edge in the probable cause balance.
“Nope. Just making sure we’re on the same page.” It was not yet eight o’clock at night – early by a corporate lawyer’s standards. “We should try his office first.”
26
“I WAS WONDERING IF YOU MIGHT CALL ME IN, BOSS.” CHARLIE Dixon’s tone was friendly but resigned. He settled himself into one of the hunter green leather guest chairs across from Barry Mayfield’s enormous mahogany desk. The windows behind his boss were flanked on either side by the flags of the United States and the Department of Justice. He looked out toward the old World Trade Center site.
“You ever worked a serial case, Charlie?”
“I’ll treat that as a rhetorical question.” Most agents who were merely adequate – agents like Charlie – worked bank robberies and gun cases their entire careers. With a decent amount of ass-kissing and a touch of good luck, Charlie carried a semirespectable fraud caseload, but Quantico reserved its serial cases for the superstars.
“I worked one about fifteen years ago,” Mayfield said. “You want to talk about ulcer-inducing, get involved in one of those bad boys. You literally have a clock ticking over your head, with an unknown number of minutes on the timer. Miss one angle, act a few hours late – bam, you got another body.”
Charlie sat silently, staring at a crystal golf ball clock on the desk, knowing that Mayfield would get to the point in his own time and in his own way.
“I don’t think we can write this off as one cop’s lunatic theory anymore, Charlie. It’s all over the news: The NYPD officially has a serial case on its hands now. When that female cop called the other day, she had three victims including your girl Tatiana. This new one makes four. Apparently they’re convinced that FirstDate’s got something to do with it all. Without knowing more, I suspect most of their work right now is about finding commonalities among their victims. What do you think?”
“Like I said, I never worked a case like that before, but that sounds reasonable.”
“Not knowing everything you can about a victim can really throw things off. If you treat her as just another part of the series when she’s actually the most important…or you throw her in the mix when she really doesn’t belong in the pattern. See how something like that could muck up the picture?”
Dixon was growing impatient but did his best to conceal it. “I can see the problem.”
“So how does Tatiana figure into NYPD’s case?”
“Don’t I wish I knew.”
“It’s pretty fucking weird that she said something was screwy with FirstDate, and now they got three other dead women somehow related to that company. You’ve had your bee all up in a bonnet over Mark Stern. Could it be him?”
Charlie didn’t miss a beat. “No. He’s a crook, but he’s not that kind of wrong. You know, one way to find out would be to take the case, Barry.” Charlie leaned in to make the argument he’d been rehearsing at his desk. “A case like this would be good for the bureau – show we’ve still got room for our meat and potatoes even with all the terrorism investigations.”
“Except that ain’t exactly true now, is it? You know as well as I do where the priorities are these days. And I’ve thought about it. It’s better this way. It’s like a Chinese wall between them and us. If anyone finds out about you and that girl, no one can say the relationship tainted the investigation – not if we’re not the ones conducting it.”
“You assume they can solve it.”
“The NYPD’s good at these cases. They’ll find the guy, and they’ll do it without us.”
“But maybe we’d have a better chance, knowing what we know.”
“And therein lies the rub,” Mayfield said. “I thought about this awhile, and it always comes back to the fact that we know something they don’t. And that’s why one of us needs to change that situation.”
“You want to tell them?”
“Actually, I thought it was more fair to have you do it.”
“Tell them what?”
“You really don’t see an opportunity when it’s handed to you, do you, Charlie?” He smiled at his old friend when he said it, but it still pissed Charlie off. “You go to them, you talk to them, you find out what the fuck’s going on. And then you tell them anything you know that might be relevant. Is the fact that you were nailing that dead girl going to be relevant?”
“No.” It was all Charlie could bring himself to say at that moment. He’d been in love with that dead girl. He hadn’t made love to another woman since.
“All right then. That’s what I meant by an opportunity. You get to control the message. But you better make sure the message gets across.”
As Charlie turned to leave the office, he heard Mayfield call out behind him, “You’re welcome, man.”
Screw you, man, Charlie thought. He knew damn well why Barry Mayfield was sending him to the NYPD alone. If the shit hit the fan, he’d deny all knowledge. Charlie would be a rogue agent with a hard-on for that dead girl.