“I never thought to ask. Why does any of this matter now?”
“I’m just trying to nail down a few things about what happened with him and Amy. Do you happen to know if Edmond was good with computers?”
“Edmond? I don’t think so. He was slow, wasn’t he?”
Ellie noticed this was the third time that Helen seemed to be asking questions of Ellie instead of the other way around.
“I don’t know, Mrs. Benoit. That’s why I was calling you – to ask you about Edmond.”
“Well, then, he was slow. I guess that’s what they’d call it. He wasn’t good at many things, other than looking for people to care about him. And the children who came and went through here had all kinds of hobbies – I couldn’t always keep track – but Edmond and the computers? I don’t think so.”
“What about someone close to him? Did he have a friend, or maybe another child in the house, who knew about computers?”
“There was another boy – maybe Jasper, or was it Tommy or Dean? But the one I’m thinking of didn’t live here when Edmond was around. Or at least I don’t think so. Oh, darling, I just don’t know. It’s been so long, and I’m on in years myself. I cared for more than thirty children, and I can’t remember what all of them were interested in.”
“What about religion? Were any of them particularly religious?” Ellie rattled the cages of her memory searching for the information she’d read on the Internet about the name Enoch. Two biblical meanings. One, the son of Cain. The other, the son of someone else, and the source of something called the Book of Enoch.
“I took them all to church with me every Sunday. Can’t say whether it stuck with any of them, to tell the truth.”
“I don’t suppose the Book of Enoch sounds familiar to you?” It was a shot in the dark. Religious fascination often morphs over time as people move from church to church, sect to sect, and text to text, seeking the satisfaction that continually eludes them.
“The Book of what?”
“Enoch.”
“Now that one I haven’t heard of. That’s not in the Bible. This is a Christian household.”
“Does the name Enoch sound familiar at all? Maybe even a pet or something?”
“Oh no. I never let the children have pets. I had enough of a time watching the kids.”
“Would you mind if I spoke to some of the other kids who were in your care with Edmond?”
“I’m afraid they don’t stay in touch with me. That’s one of the hard parts of being a foster parent.”
“Can you give me their names? I can track them down from there.”
“Well, I’d have to go back into my picture albums to see who was here, when. Would pictures be helpful? I could mail you some pictures, and you could look at those.”
Helen Benoit sounded excited and Ellie realized that the woman was reaching an age where she was losing her memories and was offering the one form of assistance she could provide. Ellie hated the fact that her questions were forcing this woman to confront her inability to remember the children she had reared in her own home.
“Maybe someone who went to school with the kids could help-”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll see if I can’t track someone down.”
Ellie added that pictures would be nice, then spelled out her home address to avoid the black hole that was the police department’s interoffice mail system. “And I’ll make sure the photographs get back to you safe and sound.”
Ellie hung up the phone picturing Flann as he waved good-bye. He was right. She had bothered Helen Benoit for nothing.
JESS WAS WATCHING the late night news when Ellie finally got home. The look on his face told Ellie he wasn’t happy.
“You didn’t return any of my calls, so I’m watching TV trying to figure out what the hell my sister’s gotten herself into.”
“Sorry. I’ve been moving nonstop since I woke up.” She went directly to her laptop.
“Where were you last night?”
“Working. I slept at the precinct.”
She felt bad lying to Jess, but she didn’t have the energy to get into her love life when he was clearly upset by what he must have seen on the news.
“Why are they dusting off old stories about William Summer and our family? What does any of that have to do with your case, Ellie?”
“Obviously it has nothing to do with it. But we haven’t released any details. We had a suspect for about five minutes, but then we had to let him go – without anyone knowing about it, thank god – because this asshole keeps sending us on wild-goose chases. The reporters have nothing to say, because we’ve got nothing to tell them. But they know they’ve got a good story, so instead they talk about little old me and our family’s interesting background.”
She stared at the computer screen, willing it to power up faster, then gave up to grab a beer from the refrigerator.
“Please tell me you didn’t do this just to get Dad back in the news again. You tried that before. You gave yourself high blood pressure, got way too skinny, and Mom’s still broke and half crazy.”
She took a few big gulps from the bottle of Rolling Rock, then gave Jess a long stare. “No, Jess, that’s not what happened.”
“So why would you put yourself out there? How’d your name even get out? Why would you let that happen?”
“Stop talking to me that way. If it’s good for the case, I really don’t mind if a bunch of mindless talking heads want to haul out old news.”
“
She sighed. “This guy might not be too happy if they start comparing him to someone better known, who’s gotten more victims, who’s more notorious. Maybe it’ll draw him out. We want him to talk to us.”
“Jesus, Ellie. Talk about psychological suicide. Every once in a while, you really should think about yourself.”
Ellie refrained from telling him that the idea was Flann’s, self-executed without her prior permission.
“I don’t need this right now, Jess. I need to figure out what we’ve been missing. This guy finds these women, he knows who they’re talking to online, he knows when they’re meeting them.”
“And that’s another reason why you don’t want him knowing who you are. I’m not just worried about your psyche here. This guy sounds like he’s one hallucination away from Charlie Manson, and, from what I hear on the news, he takes a liking to pretty women in their early thirties. Sound like anyone you know? And you’re trying to draw him out? What’s going to get him more attention than going after the sweet, attractive cop whose daddy was killed by the College Hill Strangler?”
Ellie blocked out his words with her own. Ellie knew it was natural to worry about her own safety at some level, but she could never let those concerns come first. The minute she let fear control her, she’d never be the same kind of cop. “He uses bogus names, untrackable Internet connections, stolen credit cards. He’s a ghost, and we’ve got nothing.”
Jess had learned early on not to try to engage her in anything else once she hit this mind-set. He went silent as she furiously tapped away at the keys of her computer.
“You look absolutely, diagnosably OCD right now.”
“You’re not going to believe this, Jess. He was one of the three. He was one of the guys I picked from the very beginning. Enoch. I should have kept pushing. When he didn’t write back, I should have pressed him.”
“So he’d send you some trite bullshit on his e-mail? Then what would you have done? Kept exchanging messages with him until he decided you should be his next victim? Until that schmuck at FirstDate was willing to give you the names behind the accounts, you couldn’t do anything.”
“Well, now the schmuck is cooperating, and we still don’t have anything. I’m tracking down that stupid user name. It was something biblical, remember?”
“This is terrific, Ellie. The fringy religious crazies are the craziest of them all.”
