“He’s escalating,” Flann explained. “It’s all about his ego. He wants notoriety. If you give it to him, it’ll only up the ante. He’ll kill again to prove that he can live up to the reputation.”
“That’s not enough to justify holding the story. If publication presented an imminent threat-”
“Don’t hold the story,” Ellie said. “Get it out there as soon as you can.”
“Ellie, this is not your decision.”
“I’m sorry if I’m being insubordinate, Flann, but I will not be part of hiding this from the public. I grew up in a town where every couple of years a woman would be tied up in her home and slowly tortured to death. The police knew about it and kept us in the dark. Then they said he was gone, when they should have known he wasn’t. Some of his victims might have lived if they’d known to be more careful. Peter’s right. You’re just speculating about what Enoch will do. He might be more likely to kill again if he
“He signed the letter Enoch,” Peter said. “Is that a name that means something to you?”
It was clear the train was leaving the station. Flann had no way of stopping Peter from running the story – he of all people was not going to report Ellie to the department for cooperating with the press – but that wasn’t going to stop him from salvaging some secrecy. “Any way we can persuade you to at least hold back the name?” he asked.
“I already know it’s from the Book of Enoch. The reference librarian tracked down the quote in the letter for me.”
“Off the record for a second?” Ellie asked.
“Sure.”
Ellie told him about the FirstDate user who called himself Enoch. “His profile is still online. It’s a real long shot, but we’ve got it monitored so we can locate him in the event that he logs back on to his account.”
“Okay. That’s good enough reason for me. The name won’t go in. Neither will the quote.”
“Really?” Ellie tilted her head.
“Even reporters can be reasonable, Detective. I need to do more work on the Book of Enoch angle in any event. Just one more question, back on the record. What do you want me to say about you? About the fact that he’s apparently trying to push some buttons in your background?”
“I think that letter gives you enough for a day’s newsprint. You can say we believe that one man has used FirstDate to kill at least three women and that we believe the letter is authentic.” She chose her words carefully when she described
“Yeah, okay. I’ve got enough to run with for now. You’ll give me a break in the future, I hope. For holding back the Enoch thing?”
“No problem,” Flann said, already turning his attention back to his desk.
Ellie offered to walk Peter out. She finally spoke once they reached the sidewalk. “You probably hate me. I’m so sorry-”
“I don’t hate you. I’m intrigued. And, with tremendous guilt given the circumstances, I’m actually happy to have an excuse to break my promise never to call you again.”
“I’m not the kind of person who lies, who tells stories-”
“Hey, if you want to make it up to me, promise me you’ll stop apologizing. It’s not like I regret anything that happened. And if you really, really want to make it up to me, rethink that whole never-seeing-each-other-again agreement. We’ve both got a ton of work to do – yours more important than mine, obviously – but if you get a chance, even just for a drink, call me tonight.” He scribbled a number down on a business card and handed it to her. “Hopefully I’ll talk to you soon.”
ON THE WAY back to the detectives’ room, Ellie checked her reflection in the glass door to make sure it didn’t reveal the few seconds of giddiness she allowed herself. Nope, plain old normal Ellie, even though Peter Morse knew who she was and what she did for a living. He didn’t hate her. He wanted to see her again. He agreed to hold back the name, without even a fight.
Flann wasted no time getting back to the task at hand. “I sent the original of the letter down to the crime lab, but it’ll be a while before we hear anything.”
“They won’t find anything anyway.” Enoch hadn’t left prints behind on anything yet. “I think I’ve got a better lead from our friendly neighborhood FBI agent.”
Flann ate tiramisu, nodding occasionally as she walked him through her chat with Charlie Dixon.
“So Chekova was killed for flipping for the FBI, but then the same gun used on her is used to kill our first victim? That doesn’t add up.”
“It does if Enoch is somehow tied to whatever criminal enterprise Tatiana had knowledge of.”
“So we’re looking for Russian heroin dealers, or, more interestingly, we’re looking at Mark Stern. You think Stern’s got it in him?”
“Anyone can be evil. But I don’t think it’s Stern. I remember the momentary look of panic on his face when we first told him that someone was using his company to pluck off young single women. He wasn’t panicked because he was our guy; he was freaking out because that piece of information, made public, would ruin his company. If he wanted to go on a killing spree, why drag his livelihood down with it?”
“So that leaves somebody connected to whoever wanted to silence Tatiana. Maybe he kills her to shut her up, gets off on it, and then continues to use FirstDate to find more victims and to develop his Enoch persona?” Flann immediately saw the flaw in his own theory. “But if he’s on a learning curve and using FirstDate to play, how do we explain him luring Amy Davis onto the site?”
“I know,” Ellie said. “None of it adds up. But we’ve got to track down this Tatiana angle. We don’t have any other leads.”
“The doorman at Megan Quinn’s building said the man who delivered the flowers didn’t have an accent of any kind, so my guess is he’s not a Russian.”
“And Peter Morse said the guy who called him had a southern accent. Maybe the Latino doorman couldn’t tell the difference between a southern accent and a plain old generic white boy? We’re looking for a man with a southern accent, connections to Russian criminals, and a fixation on an obscure religious text? Piece of cake.”
Ellie reached across Flann’s desk for the bakery box and caught a glance at Caroline Hunter’s open notebook. Flann had marked a single page with a neon orange Post-it note.
“What’s this?” she asked, turning the notebook toward her.
“See for yourself.” In the margin next to the orange sticky was a handwritten notation:
Ellie recognized the scrawl. When she’d first read the police reports on Tatiana Chekova’s murder, she knew she’d recently come across the name Becker. What she hadn’t realized at the time was that she’d seen the name among the miscellaneous doodles of Caroline Hunter’s research notes.
“It’s my old buddy from Scarsdale,” Flann said.
Ellie wasn’t surprised that Flann would jump to conclusions when it came to Ed Becker. “You don’t know that, Flann.”
“He’s been in front of us the entire time. He caught Tatiana’s murder. Now his name’s in Caroline Hunter’s notebook. And accents are easy to fake.”
“It’s a common last name.” Ellie took another look at the note. “And the way it’s written there, it might even say McBecker. It’s hard to tell.”
“Looks more like MC Becker to me. According to Dixon, Tatiana said the men she knew had NYPD cops on the take, and I know first-hand that Becker’s got that kind of thing in his background. MC could’ve been shorthand for a meeting place.”
“Or maybe it’s his son’s initials? Becker said his son met his fiancee online. Or it may be totally unrelated. I could call him. Ask him about it.”
“He’ll say it’s a coincidence, and then what? No, we’ve got to look into Becker without him knowing.”
Ellie hated the idea that the man who wrote that letter, the man who killed these women, could have given her
