Dead Connection

by Alafair Burke

  “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.

  “So can I ask you how you wound up in New York from Wichita, Kansas, or will that inevitably lead to verboten subject matter?” he asked.

  “That’s well within limits. I came here because I have a very funny and crazy and irresponsible big brother who dropped out of college so he could hit it big as a rock star. He’d call Mom and tell her he was opening up for big names at CBGB’s — as if she even knew what that was. But I knew my brother, you know? When it came time for me to decide what I wanted to do, my high school teachers laid it out for me: What’s it gonna be — KU, K. State, or WSU? I stuck it out at Wichita State for a couple of years but eventually it hit me: I’d only lived one place my entire life, and there was absolutely no reason for me to stay. My mom needed me, but most of what she worried about was my brother. So I finished the semester, then came up here.”

  “And your mom’s still in Kansas?”

  “Yep. I call her every night. Just spoke to her before coming here in fact.” Ellie had tried not to let her mother’s continued attempts to pull Ellie into a visit to Wichita get to her.

  “She’s got a good daughter. You went to John Jay right away?”

  The rhythm of the conversation should have been awkward. Here they were, having what was essentially a first date — at least for him to get to know the real her — but he already knew so much about her past, and they’d already been together physically. In a strange way that she didn’t understand, she felt completely at ease with him.

  “No. I figured I’d get here, settle in, and apply to CUNY or something. I wanted to be a lawyer.”

  “But then you realized you were carbon-based. Buh-dump-bum. Sorry, obligatory lawyer joke.”

  “Thank you for that. So, yeah, I realized I was carbon-based, and I also realized I couldn’t afford to live here and pay for school. So I was waiting tables and hanging around with Jess’s crowd, and keeping his kind of hours, and I guess I realized I was a little more of a cop at heart than I realized. Like a hand-to-hand drug exchange would be going down in a club bathroom, and I’d notice in a way that most people wouldn’t. And I’d see all of these disturbing things every day on the street that would really eat at me. Then one night I saw a girl, way too young even to be out at that hour, wander off from Washington Square Park with some Wall Street cokehead after the bars closed, and I just wanted to stop him from even being near her.”

  “Sure.”

  “I even confronted the guy — like an idiot, you know? Like, ‘Hey, isn’t she a little young for you, buddy?’ He told me to mind my own business, and she swore she was eighteen. I couldn’t do anything about it. I just watched them walk away, knowing full well what was going on, knowing the kind of life that girl was going to have. That was the moment it all clicked for me. I knew what I wanted to do, and I knew I’d be good at it. I enrolled at John Jay the next morning.”

  “It sounds more like you needed to do it.”

  “I guess. In training, one of the sergeants told us that being a cop should be a calling. That if you see it as just a job, you may as well go sell RV’s or tennis rackets. Anyway, I’ve never regretted it.”

  “Not even after days like today?”

  “Never. How about reporting? Is that your calling?” she asked dramatically.

  He thought about it for a second. “No. Writing might be, but the reporting is just a part of it. I’d like to do more. I’ve been working on that novel for a few years now, but I’m never quite willing to call it done. It’s probably some deep-seated fear of failure, undoubtedly traceable to my parents. Someday, when I’m over it, I’d like to be able to say I’m an author, not just a reporter, but I certainly don’t regret the journalism. I just wouldn’t want it to get in the way of my friendships with anyone I might come to care about.”

  Ellie knew he was trying to ease her fears, but she wound up laughing. Some whiskey trickled down her chin. “Sorry,” she said, wiping the dribble with a napkin. “Very attractive, I’m sure.”

  “Delightful, actually, but I should be the one to apologize. A little over the top?”

  “No, I’m sorry. It was incredibly sweet.”

  “And sweet makes you spit whiskey?”

  “No, it was just really funny to me.”

  “Oh good. Funny’s what I was going for.”

  “It’s just that, here we are, saying that maybe we’ll wind up being friends, and we’ve already slept together. I’m sure it’s perfectly normal, but if you had any idea what a nun I’ve been. My stupid idea about having one anonymous night of passion — I just realized how funny it is.”

>   Ellie found herself laughing uncontrollably. The stress of the case, her nervousness about seeing Peter again, and the surreal quality of this second first date all culminated at once. To her inestimable relief, Peter joined her.

  Two hours later, lying next to each other in Ellie’s bed, they were both still smiling when Ellie’s cell phone rang.

  “Ignore it.” Peter pushed a strand of sweat-dampened hair from her forehead and kissed the newly revealed spot on her face. For a second, Ellie was tempted. She could let it ring. She could pretend she was Ally the paralegal, who wasn’t in the middle of a murder investigation. But the thought lasted only a second. She flipped her phone open on the third ring.

  “Hatcher.”

  “Detective Hatcher, this is Officer Griffin Connelly, Tenth Precinct. I’m sorry to bother you after hours.”

  “Not a problem.” Ellie sat up and pulled a sheet over her naked body. Peter smiled and pulled it off of her with one finger.

  “They can’t see you over the phone,” he whispered.

  Ellie was so distracted by the thing Peter was doing to her stomach that she almost missed what the officer said next.

  “I’m at St. Vincent’s Hospital with a Jess Hatcher. He says he’s your brother?”

  OFFICER CONNELLY WAS a thin man with fair skin and light brown hair. He waited for Ellie outside of a treatment room in St. Vincent’s emergency care center. Peter had initially insisted on coming with her, and to her surprise, she actually wanted him to. But she ultimately persuaded him to go back to his apartment. If whatever happened to Jess had anything to do with the case, she didn’t want to find it on the front page of the Daily Post, and she didn’t want Peter to be in the position of keeping it quiet before they’d reached an agreement about how to balance his job with hers.

  “Thanks for waiting for me, Officer. I just wanted to make sure someone was with him until I got here.”

  “I had a hard time explaining it to my sergeant. Is there something more to this than meets the eye?”

  “Nothing but a protective little sister. Please thank your sergeant for me.”

  According to the statement Jess had given to Officer Connelly, two men had jumped him outside of Vibrations before his shift. He didn’t recognize either of the men and was too busy getting his ass kicked to give a helpful description — two white men, average height and weight and, in Jess’s words, “apparently royally pissed off at me for reasons unknown.” She felt a knot in her stomach as Connelly related the story.

  “Lucky for your brother you’re on the job. Bouncer at a strip club, random assault in the parking lot? We were searching him for drugs when he told us to call you.”

  “You can finish up if you think it’s appropriate, Officer.”

  “Not necessary. Just get your brother whatever help he needs.”

  Ellie found Jess reclining on a narrow hospital bed. He tried to sit up when she walked in, but winced from the movement. The smile he forced onto his face seemed to pain him as well.

  “Note to self: Cracked ribs hurt.” He eased himself back down into the bed.

  “What happened, Jess?”

  “It looks like I finally found a beating I couldn’t talk my way out of.”

  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.