fact, let alone two years.
“Let me ask my question again,” Campbell said, again firmly but in a friendly way. “What do we need to tell you for Rick to go home?”
Usually a defense attorney’s attempt to steer the direction of a conversation in the interrogation room would have provoked threats of high sentences, cherry-popping cell mates, and death row. But under these circumstances, Ellie shared Campbell’s desire to clear Hamline as quickly as possible.
She looked at her watch. It had been more than an hour since Mark Stern had called in the employee from Jersey City to track Enoch’s computer usage by location.
“You bill your hours at the law firm, right?” Ellie asked.
“Unfortunately,” Hamline said.
Ellie knew from her ex-boyfriend that corporate lawyers were obligated to keep detailed records to account for their professional time in six-minute increments. At five hundred bucks an hour, clients tended to complain about rounding up. Ellie had a feeling that a comparison of Hamline’s billing records against Enoch’s log-ons would exonerate him.
“Give us a second, and we’ll see if we can’t clear this up.”
ELLIE REACHED the credit card company while Flann called Mark Stern to ask for a report of Enoch’s log-ons to FirstDate. The card had been opened only a month earlier. Whoever opened the account used Hamline’s home address as his residence, but asked that the credit card and all bills be sent to a post office box at a Mailboxes Etc. No doubt they’d find out that the box had been rented with Hamline’s stolen ID.
“Were there any charges on the account other than to FirstDate?” Ellie asked the woman at the other end of the line. By tracking down purchases, they might locate the purchaser.
“No, ma’am. Just the two charges to FirstDate, each for thirty dollars.”
“I’m sorry. You said there are
“That’s right.” She provided two dates to Ellie. One corresponded with the day Enoch enrolled with FirstDate. The other payment was made three days later. Ellie thanked the woman for her time and flipped her phone shut.
She found Flann at his desk, reviewing a fax from Mark Stern. It was the computer-locating information for Enoch.
“Thanks to this,” Flann said, “we’ve got a timeline of Enoch’s online activities, matched with physical locations. We need to cut this Hamline guy loose. Almost all of Enoch’s connections to FirstDate were made from three different cybercafes throughout Manhattan: one downtown, one in Murray Hill, and one in Midtown. The one exception was when he logged on last night from a cafe on City Island.” Ellie recognized the name of the town, a seaport community off the western edge of the Long Island Sound. “I’m still waiting on the billing records, but that firecracker in there already vouches that Hamline was taking a dinner break downtown last night, not frolicking on City Island.”
Ellie told Flann what she’d learned from American Express. “If Enoch made two payments to FirstDate in the last month, he must have another profile, using another name to contact who knows how many other women. We need to call Stern.”
“Good. You do that while I wrap up Hamline’s alibi.”
TO ELLIE’S SURPRISE, Stern sounded downright gleeful to hear from her. “Did you get the I.P. data I sent?” Mark Stern, citizen extraordinaire, fighting crime wherever it was found.
“Yes, thank you. It’s proving very helpful. Look, I’m calling because we need one more thing. It turns out Richard Hamline’s credit card paid for two different memberships this month. Can you check on that?”
“No problem.” She heard fingers tapping on a keyboard. “Huh. That’s odd.”
“What?”
“The other membership. Wow, that’s really weird.”
“What’s weird?”
“The charge was for Amy Davis. Richard Hamline paid for Amy Davis’s membership.”
Ellie paused, trying to process the information Stern was giving her. “Are you sure?”
“Positive. I’m looking at it right here.”
“But Amy had a free membership.”
Stern laughed. “Sorry. Free membership’s an oxymoron at FirstDate.”
“But I saw the offer on her computer. It was a thirty-day trial membership.”
“Not for FirstDate, it wasn’t. The marketing types have proposed it, and I’ve held firm. If people think they can subscribe for free, they’ll stop paying me.”
Ellie was certain of what she’d seen in Amy’s e-mail account. She described it in detail to Stern, who didn’t seem to be surprised.
“It’s fishing,” he said.
“Fishing for what?”
“No, phishing. With a ph. It’s a doctored e-mail, so it looks like it came from a legitimate company. It probably contained a link to a Web site that looks like FirstDate’s site, and then asks the recipient of the e-mail for information about themselves. I can tell you one thing, though – if it offered a free account, it didn’t come from us.”
Ellie thanked Stern for his time and hung up in a daze. Flann was walking toward her, a piece of paper in his hand.
“Hope you don’t mind, but I went ahead and sprang Hamline. His billing records all checked out. The guy’s barely got time to take a leak, let alone hang out in cybercafes all day long. You okay?” Before Ellie had a chance to answer, he offered her the paper in his hand. “This fax came for you. An old police report on an Edmond Bertrand?”
According to the Boston Police Department, Edmond Bertrand, date of birth, October 16, 1974, had been arrested for forgery six years earlier. Cited and released. No booking photo and no fingerprints. He had been arrested after trying to use a stolen credit card number to pay for a suit at Brooks Brothers.
Ellie needed to call Suzanne Mouton again.
27
“I’M SORRY TO BOTHER YOU AT HOME, DETECTIVE ROBI-” ELLIE stumbled over a seemingly unpronounceable Cajun last name.
“Just call me Dave.”
“Sorry. Your neighbor Suzanne Mouton gave me your number. I believe she might have told you that I was interested in Edmond Bertrand?”
“I was just fixing to give you a ring.”
“Do you know the details of his drug overdose? He had some problems years ago with a homicide victim we’ve got up here.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure this fellow can’t be up your way. He’s dead.”
“You’re sure?”
“Suzanne told me you’d probably be asking that, so I checked the death records. It was no rumor. Edmond Bertrand died of a fatal drug overdose. Says here his body was found on Avery Island.”
“I’m just being thorough.”
“Don’t apologize. I had a partner who was just as tenacious, and now she’s the sheriff.”
“Did you happen to get a date of birth for me?”
“Five, twenty, seventy-seven.”
The man arrested in Boston had given his birth date as October 16, 1974. The easiest explanation was that the man arrested in Boston had no connection to the Edmond Bertrand who had died in Louisiana nine years ago. But
