CHARLIE DIXON WATCHED THE DETECTIVES PULL INTO A PARKING spot in front of the Thirteenth Precinct. The female detective waved to McIlroy as he hopped out of the car and walked into the precinct. The woman then climbed behind the wheel and restarted the engine. She took Twenty-first Street west to Park Avenue, then turned left to go south.
Once she cleared the corner, Charlie pulled into traffic. Trailing people in the city was easy. The streets carried too many cars for one to stand out. In any event, his light blue Chevy Impala made for ideal urban camouflage. He’d followed the detectives all the way to Westchester and back without a hitch.
Traffic was heavy, so it was easy to stay a few cars back. He tried to tune out the sounds of trucks, rattling buses, and honking horns as he followed her down Broadway, past City Hall Park. It was time for midday deliveries. Double-parking was high, and so were tensions. His head was starting to throb, and he could swear that the burning in his stomach was back.
Two blocks short of Battery Park, the detective stopped in a loading zone and threw something on the dash, undoubtedly a police parking permit. Charlie allowed himself to get locked in behind a UPS truck in the middle of a delivery. Watching her on foot would be trickier.
Fortunately, she didn’t stray far. She dashed across the intersection at a catty-corner, glancing up at the sign above a Vietnamese restaurant before entering. Charlie wasn’t sure what to do now. For all he knew, she was meeting a girlfriend for lunch. Maybe McIlroy was the one doing the legwork, while he was spinning his wheels watching the girl just because she left the precinct first.
It had been just over twenty-four hours since he learned that the NYPD was asking Stern for the personal information of FirstDate users. Two women were dead, and a Detective McIlroy seemed to be working a serial killer theory. Apparently Mark Stern was convinced that the theory was nonsense. According to Dixon’s source at the company – a nice-enough guy with a nasty penchant for recreational coke – Stern even sounded slightly smug about the coincidence. From the singleminded perspective of a successful entrepreneur, two murder victims tied to his company in a twelve-month period demonstrated just how ubiquitous the service had become among New Yorkers.
Nevertheless, Stern was firmly committed against handing over private information to the police. The promise of anonymity, he emphasized, was FirstDate’s most valuable asset. He circled the wagons and made sure that his employees understood that any inquiries about the matter should go directly to him.
In the end, it was Dixon who helped get the cops off Stern’s back. A few discreet calls revealed McIlroy was known as a loose cannon, a detective who conjured up wild fantasies out of imaginary evidence. His nickname was McIl-Mulder, for Christ’s sake. The higher-ups were letting him run amok on this theory to reward him for getting lucky on an earlier case. Once this indulgence ran its course, his star would fall.
So Dixon had made the call. It was risky. He could have let the NYPD get the information it was looking for. Once they realized it was a dead end, they’d move on. But he had too much at stake with FirstDate. If Stern got nervous – even about some wild theory – he might change his habits while Dixon was still trying to figure them out.
But now apparently McIlroy and his partner had done enough digging to turn up Tatiana. First they had requested the police reports, then they’d driven all the way to Scarsdale to see that sorry excuse for a detective who never even scratched the surface of Tatiana’s murder. Why in the world were they asking about Tatiana? Was it part of the serial killer theory, or had they moved directly into his territory?
Now that Tatiana was on their radar, her death might give them a direction, something to focus their attention on. She wouldn’t fit easily into their serial theory, so they’d have to dig further. Work from the victim outward, that would be the goal. It would be the smart way to investigate. It was also a problem. If McIlroy and his partner were even half decent cops – not like that other one – the trail could lead right back to Dixon.
His stomach was starting to burn again when he saw another woman he recognized walk into the Vietnamese restaurant. He had never seen her in person, but he had her driver’s license photograph on his dining room wall – the wall on which he had mapped out the corporate structure of FirstDate. She was prettier in person.
The pain in his gut was subsiding. She was down at the bottom, both literally on the wall and figuratively in the corporate hierarchy. She was the receptionist. What was her name again? Conroy or something.
He’d already dug into the backgrounds of everyone at the company. The redhead was clean. Dixon also knew a bit about her boss. Mark Stern was a control freak. No way did he let his receptionist know anything about the company. She was there strictly to answer telephones.
If Detective Hatcher was spending her lunch hour on a liaison with her, they were definitely still working their serial killer theory, still trying to get a list of the men who contacted that woman who was strangled this week. They hadn’t begun to connect the dots that actually connected Tatiana Chekova and FirstDate – the dots that drew a line back to Special Agent Charlie Dixon of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A line that had nothing to do with the jurisdiction of the NYPD. A line that hopefully they would never find.
He called the FBI field office to report the good news to his boss, Special Agent in Charge Barry Mayfield.
“Stay on top of it,” Mayfield warned. “You’re sure your source at FirstDate won’t mention your side project?”
“Positive,” he said.
“And make sure to get rid of anything that could tie you to that dead girl.”
Dixon hated hearing Tatiana referred to as
ELLIE DIDN’T GET much time with Christine Conboy. The receptionist made it clear she’d talk as long as it took to walk out with her pork noodle bowl and a spring roll, and no longer.
“I want to help you. I do. Nothing scares me more than the idea of someone hunting down single women. But, like I said, no one I know can directly access user information.”
“What about the employees who handle the billing?”
“They only have access to the billing information – how much to charge, and what credit card to charge it to. They’d know people’s real names but wouldn’t be able to match those to the profile names you have. Trust me. I tried.”
“You told them it was for the police?”
“Are you kidding? No way. Stern sent a memo out yesterday saying that police were conducting an inquiry that related to the company – but only indirectly. He was clear about that. He was also clear that all communications from police were to go through him. I know billing can’t help you because I started getting serious with someone online a few months ago, and I got suspicious. I begged my friend in accounting, and she swore she couldn’t help me.”
“I’m not just spying on a new boyfriend, Christine. I’m looking for a killer. Can’t you at least ask around and find someone who can help?”
Christine hushed Ellie with a pat on the forearm, checking again to make sure she didn’t recognize anyone in the restaurant.
“So you can pressure them? You don’t seem to get what I’m saying. We don’t have civil service protection. We don’t have a union. Mark Stern will fire any one of us at the drop of a hat, and the job market’s rough out there. Not that you would know.”
Ellie had made the mistake of momentarily forgetting that she was bullying an innocent person. It wasn’t the bullying that was wrong; it was the forgetting. Ellie was asking Christine to put something important on the line for a cause that was not hers, and she had acted as if it were owed to her.
“Look, Christine. I’m sorry. I appreciate the help. I appreciate your time. I appreciate your meeting me. Did I mention that I appreciate you?” Christine smiled. “I’ll find some other way.”
The woman at the cash register called out a number, and Christine raised her hand. “That’s me. I’m sorry if I’m a little testy. I’m sure my job seems Podunk, but it’s all I’ve got.”
Christine stopped Ellie as she was heading toward the door. “You know, if you want some help from someone who’s not afraid of Stern, there’s one guy you might want to talk to first. Jason Upton. He worked at FirstDate for a long time. He left about a year ago when the company got a little too big for him.”
“You know this guy?”
“Yeah. He was one of the early programmers. Stern’s always saying how fond he was of Jason and what great friends they were, so Jason’s probably not afraid of him either. If there’s a way to pull together the information you
