Dead Connection

by Alafair Burke

  The first of several communications by the College Hill Strangler to Wichita authorities was in October of 1974. A reporter at the Wichita Eagle-Beacon newspaper received an anonymous telephone call from a man who claimed to have killed Rhonda Cook and her two children. The caller said the reporter would find a letter detailing the crime inside a copy of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. The reporter discovered the letter, as promised, tucked inside the pages of Foucault’s graphic description of a public execution.

  Peter was already pulling on his coat as he finished reading. If his caller was a whack job, he certainly was a creative one.

  29

  LOCATING COPIES OF THE BOOK OF ENOCH WAS NO EASY TASK. With a recently published title, they could have tracked shipments from the wholesale distributors, then looked for sales with the city’s major book retailers. But the ancient text of the Book of Enoch, unprotected by copyright, could be found reprinted in a dozen different books. Used copies could be purchased in myriads of untraceable ways.

  Ellie was on hold with a clerk from the Strand bookstore when her cell phone rang. The screen read, Caller Unknown.

  “Ellie Hatcher.”

  “Detective Hatcher, this is Agent Charlie Dixon of the FBI. I understand that you’re working on this murder case involving Megan Quinn and Amy Davis.”

  She cradled the handset of the desk phone against her shoulder and tossed a pencil toward Flann to break him away from Caroline Hunter’s notes. “That’s right, I’m working on both of those cases. How can I help you, Agent Dixon?”

  She had Flann’s attention.

  “It’s more a question of whether I can help you. Can we meet somewhere?”

  “You’re more than welcome to come on in. We’re doing some desk work now.”

  “Sorry, I’m not a big fan of local police stations. It’s turning into a nice, bright day outside. You feel like taking a little walk? Somewhere near your station — I don’t want to put you out.”

  It was a typical federal ploy for power, but Ellie figured she’d find plenty to argue about with Dixon later. “Sure. There’s an Italian place just around the corner. Lamarca on Twenty-second and Third. How long do you need?”

  “I can see it from my car. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  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.”

&nbs
p; 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.”

  “I’m sorry. You did what?”

  Dixon had figured this would look bad if it ever came out, but saying it aloud now he realized just how ridiculous it sounded — how desperate he had been back then to close the door on the investigation. He reminded himself of Mayfield’s warning: Control the message.

  “We’ve got a full plate these days, trying to stay ahead on terror cases. That takes time away from solving crimes after the fact. Our entire case stats — white collar, fraud, even drugs — are down. I wasn’t going to work this FirstDate thing much longer, so I rolled the dice. I tried to bluff him.”

  “And it didn’t work.”

  “Three days later, Tatiana was killed.”

  Finally, he used his informant’s name. Not Chekova, not the girl, not the C.I. acronym for a confidential informant. Tatiana. Tatiana was killed. Just as Dixon tried to read Hatcher’s face to see if she’d noticed, Hatcher reached for the cell phone on her belt and flipped it open.

  “Sorry,” she said, pushing a couple of buttons on it. “It’s set to vibrate—”

  “You can take it if you need to.”

  She returned the phone to her waistband, shrugging it off. “If you thought a federal informant was murdered for her cooperation, why didn’t the FBI take over the homicide investigation?”

  Again, Dixon thought, more questions about his motivations.

  “If we couldn’t put together probable cause for a conspiracy involving FirstDate, how could we show that she got killed as part of it? We decided it was best to leave the investigation to the NYPD.”

  “And now two years later, McIlroy and I are working on it.”

  “You’re clearly better than those other lazy sacks. How didn’t anyone make a gun match earlier?”

  “The case fell through the cracks. One of the detectives, Barney Tendall, was shot off-duty. His partner sort of fell apart after that.”

  “Huh-uh. I know you guys like to defend your own, but I don’t think so. We might not have taken over the investigation, but I kept an eye on it. That Ed Becker was the worst cop I ever saw — his partner too. They didn’t do shit. They worked their other cases just fine, but Tatiana — Chekova,” he said, catching himself, “she was just a dead cossack stripper to them. They never even worked the case.”

  Hatcher clearly was not inclined to follow this line of conversation. “So here’s the big question now: If Tatiana was killed for cooperating with you, how does that fit with our other three murders?”

  “If I knew, I’d tell you.”

  “Come on now. If you knew, the FBI really would take the case.” She gave him a friendly smile, which he found himself returning. “So what else can you tell me about the people who might have had a grudge against Tatiana?”

  “Two men were prosecuted based on the information Tatiana provided.” Dixon handed the detective a manila folder containing a Form 302, used by federal agents to summarize interviews. Clipped to the 302 was a booking photo. “I made two busts based on tips from Tatiana. One of them was a controlled buy for heroin out of a club she used to work. The guy’s name was Alex Federov. You don’t need to write that down, because Federov was killed in prison two months into his sentence.”

  Hatcher’s curiosity was clearly piqued. “Any chance that was related to Tatiana’s murder?”

  Dixon shook his head. “No. I checked on that. Turns out Federov took a shiv to the stomach in the yard — get this — for preempting an inmate who was ahead of him on the library waiting list for a Harry Potter book.”

  “And so that leaves the second guy.” Hatcher unclipped the photograph from the 302 to take a closer look. “This is him?”

  “Lev Grosha. He was sneaking credit card numbers out of a Brooklyn motel. He paid the clerk at the front desk to run the cards through a scanner. Massive fraud potential. With the U.S. Attorney’s Office leaning hard on him, we assumed he’d cooperate. It’s pretty much the only way to get a sentencing break these days.”

  “And instead?”

  “Grosha pled to all charges and took the full guideline term.”

  “Where’s he serving his time?”

  “MDC Brooklyn. He’s got a sick mom or something, so the Bureau of Prisons kept him local.” The Metropolitan Detention Center was just off the Gowanus Expressway near the bay.

  “Can you put me on his visitor’s list?” Hatcher asked.

  “No problem,” he said, making a note of it. “Do me a favor? If you find anything that leads straight to Stern, will you let me know? I don’t think he’s your doer, but something doesn’t add up with that one. My impression is he’s got way too much money based on what he’s bringing in.”

  Given the illegal investigation tactics he’d used to keep an eye on Stern, Dixon was relieved when Hatcher didn’t press the question of how he’d formed his “impression.”

  “Sure,” she promised. “And, hey, thanks for calling me. And for the sweets.”

  Dixon rose from the table and pulled his coat on. He left the café satisfied with the way he’d controlled the message. He’d given the NYPD the information they needed, and his hands were clean. Hatcher seemed like a decent cop. Maybe she could carry the burden now, and he could finally put all of this behind him.

  ELLIE WATCHED CHARLIE Dixon walk to a blue Impala down the street, then she pulled her cell phone from her waist, flipped it open, and pressed the camera button. Charlie Dixon popped up on the small screen, in color, his coffee cup held just below his chin. It wasn’t a bad photograph.

  She left Lamarca with a small box of tiramisu wrapped
in string, a surprise for Flann. Unfortunately, a very different kind of surprise awaited her. Just outside the precinct entrance, a mere eighty feet away, stood Peter Morse. She could not believe her luck. Millions of people had reckless evenings of casual sex with strangers. She did it one time — only once — and the guy wound up literally at her doorstep.

  She ducked down a metal staircase leading to a basement laundry shop and stifled a scream when a rat scurried across her foot. She watched as Peter pulled open one of the precinct’s glass double doors. How long was she willing to stand here in the cold, with this stench, to avoid him? Until she saw him leave, she decided — no matter how long it took.

  Her cell phone jingled at her waist. She flipped it open and recognized Flann’s number.

  “Hello?” She whispered as if Peter could hear her from inside the walls of the precinct across the street.

  “Are you almost done with the elusive G-man?”

  “Yeah, I’m done. I’m just, um, yeah, I’m on my way back. What’s up?”

  “Just get back here.”

  “It might be a sec—”

  “If this is about the apparently prescient reporter named Peter Morse, he’s standing right here and warned me you’d try to avoid him. Get back here please. The sooner you talk to him, the sooner he’ll leave.”

  30

  PETER MORSE FOLLOWED ELLIE’S SHEEPISH ENTRANCE WITH A pleased expression. Flann shot her eye daggers.

  “I brought tiramisu,” she said, offering Flann the dainty bakery package. She offered Peter her hand, playing it cool. “Hi. I’m Ellie Hatcher. But it sounds like you already know that.”

  “I know now.” Ellie couldn’t tell if he was angry, amused, or both. “I hope you don’t mind, but I told your partner that I really needed to talk to the two of you together.”