IT WASN’T HARD to miss the tall man in a suit, trench coat, and wool cap, settling into a corner table at Lamarca. He had thinning dark hair, small brown eyes, and a puffy, unshaven face. He also had a tray with three coffees and several pastries. They exchanged introductions and handshakes as they unbundled from their coats.
“No partner?”
“Like I said, we’re tied to our desks right now.” The truth was that Flann had so many choice words about the FBI and their penchant for poaching good cases that Ellie had ultimately insisted on meeting Dixon alone.
“I won’t waste your time then. It’s my understanding you’re looking into the murder of Tatiana Chekova as part of this suspected serial killer case. Here, take one of these coffees. And dig into these bad boys too. I didn’t know what you’d want so I-”
“It’s your understanding, huh?” Ellie helped herself to a hazelnut roll. “And how exactly did you come to have this understanding about one of our cases?”
“I know you’re new to this, Detective, but you do realize, don’t you, that if we don’t like the kind of cooperation we get from you, the FBI can always take this case away. Patternistic multiple homicides are a Quantico specialty.”
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s really going to happen though. I already spoke to your Special Agent in Charge. What’s his name – Barry Mayfield? Anyway, he knows we’re working this case. I asked about Tatiana – and a company called FirstDate too, by the way – and he has to have gotten wind of yesterday’s news by now. If he wanted jurisdiction, he’d take the case. He’d at least come talk to us. You wouldn’t be here. So let’s make this a two-way street: Why are you so interested in Tatiana Chekova?”
Dixon smiled. “Honestly, I don’t want to get into a jurisdictional pissing match with you. Let’s start fresh. I got coffees, I got treats, I’m trying to play nice with you in our little law enforcement sandbox. So why don’t we get past the part where you pretend to be surprised that the FBI – and the NYPD – find ways outside of official channels to know what other agencies are working on. I know you guys pulled Chekova’s cold case file. I just want to know why so I can figure out if I have any information that might be helpful to you.”
“That’s one way to proceed. Or you could start by sharing whatever information you have, and I can decide whether or not it’s helpful.”
“So much for avoiding the classic pissing match.”
“At least we’ve got tasty snacks to mitigate the unpleasantness.” Ellie took another nibble from the hazelnut roll, and then reached for a chocolate something-or-other. “I’m not trying to be a bitch. If you’ve got information, we want it. But I might have been a little more forthcoming before Megan Quinn was murdered. I called your boss trying to find out why you guys were keeping us away from FirstDate.”
“At the time, it seemed like you were fishing. I hope you don’t mind me saying, but your partner’s reputation didn’t help much in that regard. We didn’t want you guys screwing up a long-term investigation because of some misguided tangent.”
“And you no longer think it’s a misguided tangent?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. The fact that you’ve got another body suggests you might have a pattern. I’m trying to figure out how Tatiana Chekova fits into it, and whether we might have information relevant to your investigation.”
“Fair enough. I’ll go first. Counting Megan Quinn, we now have three women killed in the last year, all of whom were enrolled on FirstDate. The most recent two had notes at the crime scenes referring to FirstDate, and the same two had been in contact with the same man using the service. We’re doing our best right now to ID the person behind the online persona, but he’s done some work to cover his trail.”
“And what made you look into Tatiana Chekova’s murder?”
Ellie realized then that Dixon didn’t know about the gun that linked Chekova and Hunter. He was arrogant enough to assume she and Flann had their heads up their asses, but whatever source he had in the NYPD wasn’t thorough enough to tell him about the gun match. When she dropped the bomb about the common weapon used to kill both women, his frustration was obvious.
“You never thought the connection would be that concrete, did you?” Ellie asked.
“I didn’t know what you had. Like I said, it’s why I’m here.” He was playing it cool, but Ellie detected a discomfort in his expression that was more than just frustration. It was pain, almost betrayal. She resisted the urge to remind him that he could have obtained the information sooner if Mayfield had been more forthcoming when she called.
“So now I’ve shared,” she said. “Maybe you should start by explaining why you got the D.A.’s office to back off from a subpoena against FirstDate.”
“I’ve been watching that company for two years. I had a confidential informant who said something was shady there – some connection they’d heard about between Russian criminals and the company.” Ellie noticed his ungrammatical use of the gender-ambiguous pronoun they to describe a single informant. “It wasn’t a good enough tip to get a search warrant or a wiretap – but I believed it. Still do.”
“What kind of something shady?”
“Like I said, no details – just some nefarious connection between the corporation and a criminal element. My theory is that it has to be money laundering – buy and sell stock to outsiders, and structure the deals in a way that hides the source of the cash. The company’s going public in less than two weeks. There’s extraordinary opportunity there to wash money through stock options and the I.P.O.”
“So why isn’t the S.E.C. involved?”
“We don’t have enough for them to launch an official securities proceeding.”
And yet, Ellie thought, you have enough to keep an eye out on the company for two years, and to justify keeping the NYPD away from your turf.
“And how does Tatiana Chekova fit in?”
Dixon took another sip of coffee, taking time to blow on the hot liquid that he’d drunk comfortably just a minute earlier.
“She was your informant?” Ellie prompted.
Dixon nodded. “We never even put her through the system officially – for her protection, obviously. She gave us some minor players here and there, but no one who could dime up FirstDate. We always assumed that she was too afraid to give us whoever knew about that connection directly.”
“Did her cooperation with you have something to do with her arrest in Brooklyn a few months before she was killed?” It would explain how a perfectly decent bust got dumped from the system, a fact that had been troubling Ellie all along.
Dixon nodded again. “She told the arresting officer she had major info to trade on, but would only work with the feds. No NYPD.”
“Did you ever figure out why?”
“She told me later that the people she knew had cops in their pockets.”
“But she didn’t give you the cops, just like she didn’t give you whoever could flip on FirstDate. Did it ever dawn on you that she was lying? Suspects with no information to trade have been known to fabricate when necessary.”
“Fine, if you think she was lying, then I guess nothing I have to say is relevant to your investigation. Sorry I’ve wasted your time.” He moved to put on his hat, but Ellie stopped him.
“Come on, that’s not what I meant,” she said. “Obviously it’s got something to do with the bigger picture. I’m just trying to understand why you would have believed her back then.”
DIXON WAS STARTING to wish he’d called McIlroy. This probing into his personal motivations seemed uniquely female. McIlroy would have looked for conspiracy theories involving Tatiana and FirstDate, but Hatcher’s questions were taking him into the very territory that he was trying to avoid.
“To tell you the truth, I doubted it at times. And, even when I believed it, I still knew I’d blown a lot of time on the case without getting anywhere. The bureau can’t abide that these days. That’s why I went to Mark Stern and told him I knew something was up and that he needed to consider coming forward with a complete confession implicating any other members of a criminal enterprise he might be involved in.”