Dead Connection

computer activity was so commonplace, they didn’t bother to note who the people were, let alone remember them. So, until they came up with a better plan, Ellie was reading The Book of Enoch, and Flann was reviewing all of Caroline Hunter’s notes again looking for a link to Enoch.

“My current theory is that there’s something ‘cute’ about the book from his perspective. The most famous part of the book is the legend of the Watchers, who came from the highest level of angels. But when they descended to Earth – supposedly for the purpose of watching over the mortals – they lusted for human women and ended up mating with them. Enoch tried to intercede with God, but to no avail. God sent the Great Flood to punish the Watchers – to force them to witness the slaughter of their offspring with mortals.”

“Yeah, I see what you mean about ‘cute.’”

“Like I said, from his perspective. Something clever. One possibility is that he’s trying to say something about the process of judgment, or the risks of lust. He’s the fallen angel lusting for these women on FirstDate.”

“And how does knowing that help us?”

“It doesn’t. The other possibility, though, is that he sent us to the Book of Enoch not just as a clever reference to his motivations but because that’s where we’re really going to find the game. Another section of the book has Enoch learning all of these mysteries embedded in astronomy and the calendar, then he has these dream visions that supposedly prophesied some of the most significant events in the Bible. Some people believe it’s all a puzzle – that you can align the calendar to Enoch’s lunar calendar and track significant dates in Christ’s life.”

“So maybe the year-long gap between Hunter and Davis is an allusion to that?”

“I thought you said I was crazy to read this book.”

“You forget you’re talking to McIl-Mulder. I don’t think anything’s crazy.”

“I keep going back to something my father always said: Find the motive, and the motive will lead you to the man.”

“Not a bad maxim.”

“The problem I’m having is making the leap from motive to the man. On my dad’s case, he thought the motive was sexual, so he spent a lot of time in the red light district and responding to calls of peeping toms. And on your psychiatrist case last year-”

“The key was figuring out that the killer was obsessed with the number eight.”

“And from there you went to the homeless shelters to find the neighborhood crazies. But if our guy thinks he’s following a pattern that’s related to the Book of Enoch, I have no idea how that leads us to the man. There’s talk in here about twelve winds, the four quarters of the world, seven rivers, the moon, the sun – there’s no way to know how someone might twist that around to pick the date of the next murder, or the next victim, or whatever it is he might be using the book for.”

“So stop trying to predict what the killer’s going to do next. You forget that on the number eight case, I did the most obvious thing. Once you think you know what makes the killer tick, you use that information to resolve the clues you already have – the clues on the crimes he already committed.”

“So if the Book of Enoch is a clue about his motives, then he must have a copy of the book. I ordered mine off the Internet. I wonder where he bought his.”

“Now that sounds like something you can work with.”

PETER MORSE SLURPED his coffee – it was a little too hot – while he admired the morning’s Daily Post. Side-by-side photographs of Amy Davis and Megan Quinn graced the front page. Davis had shoulder-length brown wavy hair, pale skin, and dark lips. Megan had shorter, curlier hair. She was chubby but cute, with freckles and bright eyes. He had had to persist with the families in that unctuous way he always found uncomfortable but had come up with great pictures of both women by deadline. He took another look at the banner headline running across the top of the page: Two Beauties Slain: More to Come?

Peter had reported some bombshell stories before, but this one had the potential to be legendary. Murdered girls came and went from the front pages of newspapers, but another serial killer at work in New York City? Jimmy Breslin had worked the Son of Sam case, and he was a journalistic god. Granted, his iconic status came from something other than receiving that renowned letter from Berkowitz, but still, you couldn’t talk about Breslin without mention of the summer of 1977.

That’s because the story about Son of Sam was about more than just Berkowitz or the lives he claimed. It was a story about an era. It was a story about an entire city – a great city – made vulnerable by one man, a man who could be any of us and could choose any of us as his next victims.

Peter opened the paper to the article he wrote yesterday afternoon when he first got the tip that the two murders were related. This one had potential. This one would have legs. Flann McIlroy called in the tip himself. That was unusual. It meant he wanted the story out there, which could only mean that he didn’t have any leads. If he had a suspect – a landlord, a mutual boyfriend, the bartender who closed a watering hole shared by the two women – the cops would be worried about scaring a suspect off. But McIlroy also must have had a feeling in his gut about this one. And from what Peter knew about the detective, that was saying something.

He flipped through the pages of notes he had put together for tomorrow’s article. Hopefully it would be the next entry in a long and meaningful series, the beginning of what would ultimately become a book. He sorted his material into two piles.

One pile related to Detective Ellie Hatcher. The Daily Post had run a story about her in a sidebar a year ago, presenting the local angle to the College Hill Strangler case. She might make a good front- page story for tomorrow – assuming that another victim didn’t turn up in the meantime. Haunted by the death of her father, raised under the fearful influences of a killer and the hunting instincts of his pursuer, not too dissimilar in her demographics from the victims themselves. Peter could picture the story and he liked what he saw.

The other pile related to the murder of a woman named Caroline Hunter. She was about the same age as the other victims. Her murder also remained unsolved. He’d written a couple of stories about her case last year, before the city’s attention – and his – moved on to other things. The date of her murder was precisely one year earlier than Amy Davis’s.

He had a strategic decision to make about whether to focus on one story or both. If the public’s interest stayed hot, it was better to dole out a new angle each morning – keep the papers moving from the stands. But if the police were going to announce an arrest tomorrow night, he was better off shooting his wad at once, before the focus turned to a suspect.

He stuck with the feeling in his gut and decided to use just one story for now and save the other for the following day. The Caroline Hunter angle was risky. His speculation could be totally off-base, and there was no guarantee he could come up with sufficient corroboration by deadline. On the other hand, with risks came rewards. He might be the only reporter to make the connection, while the TV news had already tapped into Ellie Hatcher’s backstory.

Maybe he’d let photogenics break the tie. His editor always said that pictures sold papers. He studied the head shot of Caroline Hunter that had run the morning after her murder. Even prettier than Davis and Quinn, she’d be awfully hard to compete with, especially by some cop. He pulled up Google on his computer and ran a search for images under the name Ellie Hatcher.

The screen changed to a display of twelve thumbnail photographs, most of them of the same award-winning quilt apparently designed by a woman named Ellie Hatcher. Toward the bottom of the screen was a small photograph of a blond woman in a white blouse and dark jacket. The text beneath it read Family of College Hill Strangler Detective Cries Cover-Up, followed by a link to People magazine’s Web site. He double clicked on the link.

He’d followed the College Hill Strangler story at the time, but not closely enough to remember the accompanying photograph two years later. Gazing at him from the screen with big blue eyes, full pink lips, and a heart-shaped face was the woman he’d been thinking about every twelve minutes for the last twenty-seven hours: Ally, last name unknown, whom he promised never to contact again.

“Who’s the hottie?” Peter looked up to find the smiling face and dark eyes of Justine Navarro, the intern from NYU with a pierced tongue and an uncomfortably revealing wardrobe. Today’s ensemble was the usual hip-hugger pants and a clingy off-white sweater with a plunging neckline.

“Believe it or not, she’s apparently an NYPD detective.”