Ellie always saw Jess as younger than his true years – always happy, never worried, almost invincible. But she hated the way he looked right now – tired, too old to be in this position, and extremely vulnerable.
“They just attacked you in the parking lot for no reason?”
“I went outside to call you, and there they were. Could this have something to do with the picture I showed the Vibrations manager? Seth thinks it was the same guy he saw with Tatiana, by the way.”
Ellie wondered how she’d managed to endanger Jess by verifying the relationship she suspected between Charlie Dixon and Tatiana Chekova. Had she read Dixon entirely wrong? Then Jess asked her if the man in the picture was Russian.
“Why? The men who did this to you were Russian?”
“Russian, Czech, Romanian, Ukrainian. Slavic, whatever. One of those. When I left the apartment, I noticed a couple of guys standing across the street. I didn’t think much of it, but I’m pretty sure they were the same ones who did this to me.”
“Why didn’t you say something to the officer?”
“Because my beat down came with a warning, Ellie. And if it was only for me, I would have told them to fuck themselves. But it was about you. I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, but they said to back off. Next time we’re both dead. And they know where you live. Ellie, please, you’ve got to get off this case.”
33
ELLIE’S CALLS WERE ALL PUT THROUGH TO FLANN’S VOICE MAIL. When he didn’t return three back-to-back messages, she tried to tell herself that the policing could wait until tomorrow. She tried to sit and comfort her brother like any other family member of an assault victim. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the Slavic accents of the men who had beaten Jess.
She wanted mug shots. She wanted a positive ID from Jess. She wanted to track them down and, in an ideal world, find them resisting arrest. She wanted an excuse to act on her rage.
But while she worried about protecting her brother, he was still trying to shield her from the threat that had been delivered through him. He refused to let her pass the information on to Officer Connelly, promising that if she did, he would stick to his bogus cover story. So she kept coming back to the same dilemma: Either she needed to leave Jess’s side to print some pictures of suspects for him to ID, or she needed to find Flann.
She tried Flann’s cell phone one last time, then dialed directory assistance and requested a listing for Miranda Hart. She’d apologize to Flann later for bothering the mother of his child but, at that moment, all she could think about was her own need to get some help. The operator connected her directly.
“Hello?” The woman sounded distracted. Ellie heard water running in the background and the faint sounds of a television.
“Ms. Hart?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Ellie Hatcher. I’m Flann McIlroy’s partner at the NYPD. I really need to find him, and he’s not answering his phone.”
The running water stopped. “I’m not sure why you have this number. He doesn’t live here. He never has.”
“I thought maybe he was there with your daughter. Or maybe you could tell me where he took her for dinner?”
“I’m sorry. There’s some misunderstanding. He saw her earlier in the week.”
“He told me he was having dinner with her again tonight.”
“No. We agreed to take things slow. I want to ease him into Stephanie’s life.”
“But I just talked to him a few hours ago. Wasn’t he supposed to see her?”
“He told you that? No. We talked a long time after he brought Stephanie home the other night. He’s supposed to call to schedule something next week. I haven’t talked to him since.”
Ellie thanked Miranda for her time, cut the call short, and began redialing Flann’s number. Once, twice, three more times. Straight to voice mail. His phone was turned off, and she was beginning to worry. Her brother was in the hospital. Her partner had lied to her and was missing. If they had gotten to Jess, could they have gotten to Flann too?
She sat at the edge of Jess’s bed. He looked at her like he didn’t know whether to laugh or scream at her. “Just go, Ellie. Seriously, do what you need to do, but you’ve got to promise me to be careful. I got a good thing going with the Vicodin here, and all your stress is seriously harshing my mellow.”
After a few minutes of repeated “are you sure’s?” Jess threatened to have the attending nurse call security if Ellie did not leave him to rest.
“If I arrange to fax some pictures here, do you think you can find the energy to take a look at them and maybe give me a text message?”
“Now that’s my baby sister. Yeah, I think I can handle it. I didn’t get enough punches in to hurt these babies,” he said, wiggling his fingers.
ELLIE SPLURGED for a cab to the precinct, not wanting to lose her cell phone signal on the subway in case Flann called. As she checked her phone for incoming calls one last time before she paid the driver, a thought suddenly hit her, and she felt stupid for not realizing it earlier: Flann’s phone might be going directly to voice mail simply because he was somewhere without a signal. It still left her questioning why he lied to her about seeing his daughter, but at least it shifted her thoughts from the more unnerving possibilities she’d conjured.
She settled herself in front of a records terminal and began printing out copies of the photographs she wanted Jess to see. Vitali Rostov was first. He had no criminal record, so she pulled his New York driver’s license photograph. Next, she ran off the photographs of the two men who were on Lev Grosha’s list of approved inmate visitors: Ivan Ovinko and Mark Jakov. She numbered the photographs with a pen – one through three – then faxed them to the hospital along with a note for the security guard who had promised to shepherd the fax to Jess’s room.
As she watched the pages feed through the fax machine, she took a deep breath. Now came the hard part. Waiting. She checked her phone. No new calls. She tried Flann again. Still straight to voice mail. Where was he?
A folder rested on Flann’s desk, its contents spilling out slightly. She recognized it as the folder Jason Upton had sent to the precinct after running a background check on Ed Becker. She opened it and found three documents that had not been there originally.
One was a copy of a New York DMV boat registration for a 1995 Gibson 5900 Cabin Yacht, registered to Ed Becker. The second was a copy of title information on the same boat, documenting ownership transferring from a man named Luke Steiner to Ed Becker the previous March. The third document was a fax addressed to Detective Flann McIlroy, dated that afternoon, from the law firm of Larkin, Baker & Howry, where Jason Upton worked.
On the cover sheet was a handwritten note: Got your message. Sorry I missed you, and sorry I missed the boat. Goes to show there’s always somewhere else to look. Here’s the registration if you don’t already have it. Call me if you need anything else. He had left a telephone number with a cellular phone area code, followed by the initials J. U. Attached was a copy of the same DMV boat registration that Becker had apparently printed out on his own before receiving Upton’s fax.
Ellie tried to call Flann again. Still straight to voice mail. She stared at the registration for Ed Becker’s 1995 Gibson 5900 Cabin Yacht, then Googled “Gibson 5900” on Flann’s computer. She double clicked on the first result and pulled up a listing of a 2002 yacht. Asking price: a quarter of a mil. She let out a whistle, then checked a few more listings. The cheapest 1995 she could find was still $160,000. How did a retired cop afford a boat like that? It certainly explained why Flann had been curious, but what led him to ask Jason Upton about the boat in the first place?