“Well, I hope you’re wrong. A cop involved in something like this?”
McIlroy said nothing in response.
“I’m on my way back from Brooklyn. Do you have time for a drink or something? We can throw all of this around, see if something comes out.”
“Sorry, I can’t tonight. I want to wrap some things up here at the desk, then I need to go.”
“Hot date?”
“No,” he said, then after a pause, “I’m seeing my daughter again.”
“Oh, Flann, that’s great.” Ellie kept her tone upbeat but the silence on the other end of the line had her wondering. “Well, I guess tomorrow morning it is, then.”
“Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow.” He sounded distant.
“Is everything okay, Flann?”
“Yeah. Just end-of-the-day fatigue is all. Enjoy your youth while you’ve got it, Hatcher.”
Ellie flipped her phone shut and spent the next twenty minutes of the drive pulling at the threads of information they had. Tatiana was plugged into a ring of Russian criminals who had some connection to FirstDate. Ed Becker – who dropped the ball on Tatiana’s murder, who’d been so eager to give Ellie a hand, whose surname was in Caroline Hunter’s notes. Stolen credit cards – used by Lev Grosha, by Enoch, by Edmond Bertrand six years ago in Boston. Zoya and Vitya Rostov, who saw Tatiana with Charlie Dixon.
She called Jess’s cell number.
“Yo, sis. What up?”
Ellie heard the thumping of Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” in the background. “Please tell me you’re at Vibrations.”
“You don’t think Dog Park should try playing a little Def? I could wear my hair all big, slip into some leather, and ride the eighties revival.”
“Did you get the picture I e-mailed you?” She wanted to know if the club manager, Seth Verona, recognized Charlie.
“Hello? Why do you think I’m here? I don’t start my shift for three hours, but I’m trying to catch Seth before he leaves. Who’s the stud muffin?”
“An FBI agent named Charlie Dixon. Remember when we talked to Seth, he said he remembered a straightlaced guy who would come in and talk to Tatiana? I want to know if that’s him.”
“All right. I just got here, so give me a while.”
By the time Ellie reached the precinct and returned the fleet car, she still wasn’t ready to go home. She needed to think about something other than the case. She needed to clear her head and come back to it later. She could think of only one person to call. She found his business card in her jacket pocket, took a deep breath, and dialed his number.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, the man who called himself Enoch hung up his phone, disappointed. The game was going to have to end earlier than intended. He had planned to wait, at least for a few days of headlines about the FirstDate murders. But now there was a problem.
He had only now learned that police were asking questions about Tatiana Chekova, not just Caroline Hunter, Amy Davis, and Megan Quinn. They were asking questions about information Tatiana had given to the FBI. They were trying to figure out how Tatiana fit into the pattern.
He should have realized they would make the connection. It was the one mistake he’d made during an entire year of planning. He needed to put an end to those inquiries.
Fortunately, there was no harm done if the game had to end early. The letter left in the library would ensure a front-page story the following morning about the FirstDate murders. And he knew precisely how to halt the investigation. He closed the laptop on his kitchen table and thought about what else he needed to bring with him. He was expected on City Island in two hours.
32
ELLIE MET PETER MORSE AT HALF KING, A PUB HE CHOSE IN Chelsea. He wore faded jeans, a long-sleeve black T-shirt, and a crumpled charcoal gray blazer that would have looked formal on another man, but worked just fine on Peter. He greeted her with a friendly kiss on the cheek, and Ellie caught a group of women two tables over taking notice. Peter had those kind of looks.
“Great place,” she offered.
“A writer friend of mine owns it. They’ve got a regular reading series, and, as you can probably tell, it’s a favorite place for writers to gather and look for inspiration.” Ellie noticed a few customers scribbling in open notebooks. “Me, I can only write in total silence. I come here to eat and to drink.”
“That makes it my kind of place.”
“I’m really glad you called, Ellie.” He emphasized the first syllable of her name.
“Me too,” she said, meaning it. It felt good to hear him use her real name.
“And with perfect timing. I just finished filing the article with my editor right before you called. I put the focus on the letter from the library. It’s the first time I’ve become a part of my own story, so it was tricky, but I think I got the tone right.”
“That’s good.”
“Of course, I couldn’t write the story without including a little bit of your own background. The parallels to the College Hill Strangler case were so obvious that the connection had to be explained. I hope it’s something you can live with.”
“I guess we’ll find out in the morning.”
“I thought about running it by you, but-”
“I wouldn’t even think of it,” Ellie said. “You’ve got your job, and getting prior permission from me isn’t part of it.”
“Thanks for understanding. I guess the same has to be true for you too – keeping your work life separate from the personal.”
“That’s right, so you better hope I don’t find that meth lab you’ve got stashed away in your bedroom closet.” His comment had been a clear invitation to discuss her reasons for trying to preempt a relationship between them, but she wasn’t ready for that conversation. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to talk about, in fact, and was second-guessing her decision to call him. She wanted to see him in part because she needed to be with someone with whom she would not – could not – discuss the case.
“If it helps any, I turned it in with a blurred photograph of Enoch’s letter, instead of a picture of you. Hopefully the editor won’t make any changes.”
“I hope you didn’t make that decision just because of me.”
“Nah, a threatening letter from a sex-phobic religious zealot is much more ominous than a beautiful police officer. Macabre sells. I was thinking about following up with a story fleshing out the computer angle. Maybe interview some experts about how the killer might have been able to access the e-mail accounts of his victims.”
Ellie liked that angle. It wouldn’t involve any details of the actual case, and it had absolutely nothing to do with her. “I know just the guy for you. He used to work at FirstDate and knows a lot of stuff. Very helpful.” She fished around in her purse and found Jason Upton’s business card.
Peter fingered the edges of the card. “A guy who knows a lot of stuff, huh? Should I be worried about the competition?”
“Nope. He’s a little too Waspy for my taste.” The truth was that until she met Peter, she thought she went for preppy men.
“An upper-crust computer nerd?” Peter feigned skepticism.
“A rich kid with a hobby as a day job. And he likes Pulp Fiction. You’ll like him.”
Peter thanked her and placed the card in his wallet, and Ellie took the opportunity to change the subject. “So what’s good here?” she asked, opening a menu.
“Ah, nice transition. So either you’re starving, or that’s a sign that we should declare your current case and my current story a conversational no-no.”
“Both actually, if that’s okay with you.”
“More than okay. And you can’t go wrong with the menu, but your first time here, I’d go with either the shepherd’s pie or the fish-and-chips.”
When the waiter came, Ellie ordered a Johnny Walker Black and shepherd’s pie. Peter opted for a pint of Guinness and fish-and-chips.