with someone, but then decided to go for the money without giving up the quid pro quo. Two bullets, back of the head.”
It was a better theory than Barney Tendall’s. And it described a kind of murder that was nearly impossible to solve.
“That was my theory. Barney had his. Neither of them got us anywhere.”
“Flann told me about your partner. I’m sorry.”
Flann finally broke his silence. “He was a good man, Ed.”
“Great partner too. It was rough for a while there, what happened to Barney. Looking back on it, I was in a fog my last couple of months on the job. I knew if I stuck around, I’d be chained to a desk by the year’s end. The union got me an early retirement package, and I moved out here. After all those years living in the city, watching the crime rate yo-yo, I just couldn’t take it anymore after Barney.”
“I can’t even imagine,” Ellie muttered, knowing her words fell short.
“Aah, what are you gonna do, right? Anyway, we never closed on Chekova. That was one of our last cases together. I tried working it on my own after I was reassigned, but – well, I wasn’t doing anyone much good by then. Maybe that’s why I didn’t get further with it.”
“Can you think of any suspects we should be looking at?”
“No, we never homed in on anyone.”
“We’ve been looking at this Internet dating connection between our two victims. Any chance Chekova was using a service? Did she have a computer?”
Becker shook his head. “Not that I can remember. She was sort of transient. Moved around a lot. Staying with whatever guy was getting her high that week. Not exactly the technological type. I think I’d remember if she’d had a computer. It would have seemed out of place.”
“I hope you’ll understand if we have to look at her again with new eyes. Try to find the connection between her and our victims.”
“It’d be sloppy work not to.”
“Can you remember anything that might help?”
“The file should have all my notes.” This time Becker must have caught Flann’s frustrated expression as well. “You can always call if you need anything specific.”
“Do you remember if she had family? Someone who might know if she was using FirstDate?”
“Now that I can’t remember. But the vic didn’t seem close to anyone, so we were pretty sure it wasn’t a domestic. We worked the club angle. It’s not in the file?”
“No sir.”
Becker shook his head. “I was out of it back then, but I thought I left behind my notebooks all right.”
“I’ll look again,” Ellie offered.
“Yeah, okay.”
“You a full-time retiree now, Ed?” Flann’s tone was cordial enough, but the question struck Ellie as odd.
“Oh yeah,” Becker said. “I’m not one of those second career guys. You never know how much time you got, right?”
“That’s the way to do it,” Flann said.
“Well, like I said, call if I can help. I got a pretty good memory, at least for the stuff that seemed to matter.”
MCILROY WAS QUIET during the ride back to the city.
“You okay, Flann?” Ellie asked.
The question bounced right off of him. “That was a really nice house. Brick. Nice block. Good shape inside. How much you think that goes for in this market?”
“I’m too impoverished to bother browsing the real estate section. Why?”
“Just seems like an awfully nice house for a retired cop without a second income.”
“He did say he got a retirement package. Maybe the union got him something extra because of his partner.”
Flann’s lips remained pursed in a straight line, his blond eyebrows furrowed. He kept his eyes on the traffic, both hands firmly gripping the wheel. By the time they hit the Hudson, Ellie was fed up. She was grateful for a murder assignment, but McIlroy’s tight lips were getting ridiculous. He was her partner, at least temporarily, and she believed that meant something. They should at least get to know each other.
“You never mentioned you had a daughter.”
McIlroy sighed loudly. “No, I didn’t. I’m sure glad lazy old Becker did.”
“I’m sure he was trying to be nice.”
“He was trying to get under my skin.”
“Odd way to get under someone’s skin.”
McIlroy sighed again. “I don’t get to see her much. We were never married, her mother and I. Becker knows all that, and he asks about her anyway.”
“That must be rough.”
“All these single moms out there trying to get a daddy involved in the picture, and this one prefers I walk away. She thinks one way to do that is to make it hard for me to see my kid.”
“What’s her name?”
“Miranda. Oh, you meant my daughter. Stephanie. Stephanie Hart, not McIlroy. She’s thirteen. Thirteen-year-old girls need their fathers, you know?”
Ellie nodded. “I was fourteen when my father was killed. He wasn’t even fifty yet.” If McIlroy was going to open up to her, it was only fair that she did the same.
“I know some of the details already,” Flann said. “I read about you last year.”
“I assumed that had something to do with the special request. It’s not true, most of what they said. I didn’t always know I wanted to be a cop, and my father didn’t start training me when I was five. Quite the opposite in fact. He always pushed my brother in that direction, but me, he humored. If he’d been around when I finally decided to take the leap, he would have tried to stop me.”
“Fathers can be protective that way.”
“You’ve probably figured out by now I’m not the high-tech bill of goods they were selling.”
He nodded. “They wanted to use your story to talk about the next generation of law enforcement, which they’d like to think is all about the high-tech solutions they see on
Ellie thought about that. Mutual advantage. That’s precisely what she had tried to do with all those interviews and profiles she’d agreed to last year. “Hope I didn’t disappoint.”
“Not at all. Your supposed expertise in modern crime fighting wasn’t the reason I called you.”
Ellie did not interrupt the silence that followed.
“You work homicide as long as I do and have nothing else going for you but the job, it can be hard sometimes to hold it together. To keep waking up in the morning and going to sleep at night – I don’t want to sound morose, but even though I rarely see her, my daughter’s the closest thing I’ve got to someone who cares whether or not I come home each night.”
“Flann-”
He held up a hand and shook his head. “That’s just the way it is. When you described to that reporter how haunted you’ve felt all of these years – even about the
“I’m glad you asked for me.”
“And I’m glad you let me tell you why.”
14
