“You look absolutely, diagnosably OCD right now.”
“You’re not going to believe this, Jess. He was one of the three. He was one of the guys I picked from the very beginning. Enoch. I should have kept pushing. When he didn’t write back, I should have pressed him.”
“So he’d send you some trite bullshit on his e-mail? Then what would you have done? Kept exchanging messages with him until he decided you should be his next victim? Until that schmuck at FirstDate was willing to give you the names behind the accounts, you couldn’t do anything.”
“Well, now the schmuck is cooperating, and we still don’t have anything. I’m tracking down that stupid user name. It was something biblical, remember?”
“This is terrific, Ellie. The fringy religious crazies are the craziest of them all.”
“This guy really does like the head games. There are two Enochs in the Bible, both in the bloodline of Adam. One’s the son of Cain, and then there’s another one who’s the basis of something called the Book of Enoch. The Bible says Enoch lived for sixty-five years, and then for another three hundred with God. I guess in the lineage, he was Noah’s grandfather, like from Noah’s Ark.”
“Him, I’ve heard of.”
“I can’t believe this. The most accepted translation of the Book of Enoch is by R. H. Charles. The fucker used the fake ID for a guy named Richard Hamline to open his FirstDate account – R. H.”
“There’s no way you could have figured that out,” Jess said.
“No, but it’s yet another thing he did to piss us off once we were on his trail.” She shook her head in disbelief as she continued to read the material on her screen. “The Book of Enoch is all about these fallen angels called the Watchers, who mated with mortal women.”
“Sounds like my kind of scene.”
“This is truly bizarre stuff. I guess most of the established religions say that the book was wrongly attributed to Enoch, but I don’t know – a couple of these sites make it sound like the book is inspired by God. Apparently these people think it’s apocalyptic.”
As Ellie moved from Web site to Web site – each quite amateur, and each devoted to analyzing the supposedly lost biblical text – she grew increasingly angry at herself for not looking into this earlier. If she’d read any of this sooner, she would have known to pay more attention to Enoch.
“Promise me you won’t stay at this all night.” Jess began pulling his coat on over a sweater.
“Where are you going?” Ellie asked.
“Work.”
“Where are you playing tonight?”
“I’m not. Or at least it’s not that kind of playing. I got that job at Vibrations.” Jess delivered the news with a grin.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
“You’re the one who’s always after me to get a real job. This has the kind of hours I can deal with. Decent pay too. The views aren’t bad either. I’ll be pulling my first full shift tonight.”
“Oh, shit, it’s late. I forgot to call Mom again.”
“I figured,” Jess said. “Don’t worry – I called her. I knew you had your hands full and would worry about it later. And, no, I didn’t mention anything about your case. I told her you had a date.”
“Why, Jess Hatcher. You called our mother. And you did it all on your own.” For me, she thought. Ellie was surprised at how touched she was.
“Hey, I gotta run. My dream job awaits. Oh, and Ellie, bolt the door behind me. Don’t open it. Don’t talk to strangers. Keep the blinds drawn. Gun near the bed. Polo mallet as a backup.”
She threw a pillow his way. “Because I have so many mallets at the ready. I’ll be fine, you. Get out of here.”
He continued mumbling safety advice as the door closed behind him. An hour later, Ellie was still surfing the net, reading about the Book of Enoch, when her eyes began to close involuntarily. She took a last look at Enoch’s FirstDate profile. Active within 48 hours! the screen announced. He hadn’t logged on today. Mark Stern had promised they’d be paged the minute Enoch accessed his account, but Ellie knew that he was too smart to log on again – at least, not as Enoch.
She could not resist the temptation to sneak a peak at Peter Morse’s profile while she was at it. Active within 48 hours! He hadn’t signed on today either. She wondered if that meant anything about the night they’d spent together. She looked at Peter’s picture, wondering if some other woman out there would snatch him off FirstDate. Some other woman who didn’t follow her self-imposed rules was going to end up with the man who could have been her next boyfriend.
She exited the FirstDate Web site and went to Barnes and Noble’s site, which promised twenty-four-hour delivery in Manhattan. She had a copy of The Book of Enoch, translated by R. H. Charles, sent to her attention at the police precinct.
AN HOUR LATER, the man who called himself Enoch was sitting at his special laptop, composing a letter. He could tell from the media coverage what the police were trying to do, but he was going to kick it up a notch. That’s what that fat, hairy TV chef liked to say. One of the ladies down the street – the one who always harped on him about smoking in the alley – used to have his cooking show on at all hours. Kick it up a notch. Bam! He’d kicked it up scads of notches when he’d bammed the old bag’s spoiled cat in the alley with his boots. Car accident, my ass.
He reread the words on his screen. This was the perfect way to rattle that blond detective’s cage. He’d been tempted a few times to respond to that ridiculous little flirt she’d sent his way. He’d even thought about making her the last victim instead of Megan. But this letter was better. For now.
He was careful to save the letter to his hard drive before pressing the print command on his keyboard. Then he pulled on a pair of latex gloves, removed the piece of paper from the printer, and folded it into an envelope. He used some water from the tap to moisten the seal with his knuckle, and found a phone number for the New York Daily Post.
28
“YOU’RE NOT REALLY GOING TO READ THAT ENTIRE THING, ARE you?”
Ellie was sucking on a spoonful of Nutella, using her free hand to hold open the paperback edition of The Book of Enoch, which Flann eyed suspiciously.
“Nonsense goes surprisingly quickly,” Ellie said. “I’m just trying to get a feel for what we’re dealing with.”
“And do you have a full-blown criminal profile ready for us to distribute to the fine citizens of New York City?”
She shot him a mock glare. “My inclination is that he’s not actually a religious zealot. He’s been too clever, too meticulous, and too techsavvy to be some homeless schizo inspired by the Book of Enoch.”
“Agreed.”
“Okay, so then why does he use the name Enoch? Because he’s a game player. He wants a cat-and-mouse chase with us. He waits a full calendar year between Hunter and Davis, to create a pattern. He even puts a copy of Davis’s FirstDate e-mail in her coat pocket, to give us another hint. By the time he kills Megan, all subtlety is gone. He places the FirstDate note right on top of her body, but then never signs on again. He knew that once we found Megan, we’d know that Enoch had contacted both her and Davis. He knew signing on under that account would be too risky. But the user name itself is another layer in the game. He had to have picked it intentionally.”
“I was skeptical at first, but you’re on to something. The name’s peculiar, but you noticed him in the first place because the profile itself was so generic.”
“Right. Absolutely vanilla. No personality. But instead of the standard lame handles – Looking for Love, Sleepless in SoHo – he picks an oddball name like Enoch. And using Rick Hamline’s credit card to pay for the FirstDate account?” Ellie flashed the book cover toward Flann. “This is the established, accepted translation. It’s been around nearly a century. Notice the name of the translator.”