Ellie waved, trying to get his attention, but Flann was fixated on whatever he was watching in the cabin. She walked slowly toward him, each gentle step sounding louder than the last among the unoccupied, darkened boats. With four boats between her and Flann, she was reluctant to move any closer. Presumably Ed Becker was inside his boat, and Flann did not want him to know he was being watched. Walking along the pier, Ellie felt as if she glowed in the dark.
She lowered her body to the ground and began to crawl along the right edge of the pier so any view Becker might have of her would be blocked by other boats. She also got a better look at Flann. He held his weapon at his chest, hands set to fire if necessary. She crawled faster.
As she quickened her pace, her leg caught a loose nail head protruding from a plank in the pier. She sucked in her air to suppress the cry in her throat, then continued her crawl. Just two boats away now, but Flann was too focused on whatever he was watching to feel her eyes on him.
She was still watching Flann when a high-pitched chirp penetrated the silence. It was coming from her hip. She smacked the side of her cell phone and saw the incoming text message through the small window.
Just as Ellie slapped her phone, she heard Flann move on the boat in front of her. He’d made a sound, on Becker’s boat, just feet away from Becker. She watched Flann pull his body back from the glass doors of the boat. She didn’t dare move as she watched him freeze too. He waited three beats, then leaned to look inside the cabin again. She held her breath and convinced herself that Flann could talk his way out of the situation if Becker saw him.
It happened so fast that she had a hard time later remembering what Flann had said. Flann swung his entire body to the right, stepping directly in front of the boat’s cabin entrance. Then he cried out. She would replay the video in her head over and over again on an endless loop, but the sound was lost. It was loud though. Urgent. Panicked. Abrupt. Maybe he had yelled, “No.”
By the time Flann rushed through the double doors, Ellie was moving too, out of her crawl stance and into a full sprint. She pulled her gun from her holster. Twist, then up, the Glock was at the ready. She chose speed over silence now. She jumped from the pier onto the boat’s stern, but as the weight of her body landed, she heard a louder noise than she’d prepared herself for. It wasn’t the sound of her boots on the boat. It was a pop, followed by two more. Three shots. Three gunshots.
Moving quickly through the cabin entrance, Ellie found herself alone in a sleeping cabin. She walked more cautiously to a doorway at the end of the bulkhead, then held her breath as she slowly pushed the door open from the side. To her left, Ed Becker had collapsed on a small couch. The bottom of his face was gone, replaced by a hollow red cavity of bone and skin. To her right, Flann sat with his back against the wall, his legs splayed in front of him. One dark red hole pierced his neck above his left shirt collar. A flower of red blossomed across the right side of his shirt.
There had been one, two, three gunshots. Her senses competed for her complete attention. As she tried to comprehend the visual, she heard different noises. In front of her, then behind her. A scurry along the right side of the deck, past the cabin, and then gone. The department would try to convince her later that she should have looked – that if she’d really heard the noises she described, her instincts would have carried her out of the cabin, down the pier, after whoever it was who was responsible for making those sounds. But in that moment, all she could think about was the hole in Flann’s throat, the wound in his stomach, the amount of blood that indicated massive internal damage.
Her instinct was not to chase the noises. All she could do was fall to her knees beside Flann. She pulled off her coat and pressed it against his belly, then held him tight while she punched 911 into her cell phone. She screamed at the dispatcher, “10-13, Officer shot, City Island marina, fourth row of slips on the east. 10-13. He’s shot. Hurry. Please.” And she screamed at Flann. She held him and rocked him and pleaded with him not to die.
PART FOUR
35
FOUR MORNINGS LATER, ELLIE CONFRONTED HER REFLECTION IN the bathroom mirror. She dabbed more concealer under her swollen eyes, but nothing could cover the circles that had grown darker every day since Flann had died in her arms on Ed Becker’s boat. She ran a brush through her hair, knowing that her appearance would do nothing to change what was going to happen at this meeting.
Jess had gotten up early to fetch coffee and breakfast sandwiches from the deli down the street. Ellie tried to wave off the food, but he insisted that she’d feel better if she had a little energy when she went in to work. This would be her first trip back to the Thirteenth Precinct. According to standard protocol for police homicides, she’d been driven that night from City Island to the precinct to meet with an appointed police union representative. With this stranger by her side, she had sat in an interrogation room for three hours with Lieutenant Dan Eckels and two homicide detectives whose names she no longer remembered.
She gave them a detailed timeline of the entire FirstDate investigation, from the moment she met Flann McIlroy to the moment an ambulance carried his body away. She made sure to tell them about Stephanie Hart, and her mother, Miranda. Flann had a daughter. Someone needed to tell her that her father was dead. She would miss him. She should get his benefits. She should get his Siamese cat. Then Lieutenant Eckels sent her home, and the union representative delivered the news that she was officially on administrative leave. Again, it was standard protocol, she was assured.
In the three and a half days since she walked out of the precinct, the New York Police Department had erected a wall between her and the investigation into Flann McIlroy’s murder, Ed Becker’s apparent suicide, and the tying together of the connections between Becker and four dead women. Despite the occasional urge to smash down the wall and continue investigating on her own time, she forced herself to steer clear. She did not want the department to blame any shortcomings in its conclusions on her interference. She’d spent four nights and three full days completely shut off from the case that had been all consuming until those three shots. Pop, pop, pop.
She found other ways to keep busy. She was back to her kickboxing schedule, cheered for Dog Park at an open mic night in the West Village, and finally visited the top of the Empire State Building. She even went to Miranda Hart’s house and told her how much it meant to Flann to see his daughter for dinner. But still, she couldn’t rid herself of the image of Flann, dead on the floor of Becker’s boat. The finality of his death seemed to feed like parasites at her heart.
After three days of silence, Lieutenant Eckels called to say he wanted to see her first thing in the morning. When she asked if she would be going back to work, he informed her they would discuss it in the morning. He reminded her of her right to bring not only union representation but an attorney of her choice. For three days, she had heard nothing – no request to question her again, no appointment with the D.A.’s office, and no estimation for when she would return to work. Now, the department wanted to see her, and the request was accompanied by none of the expected assurances –
The way Ellie’s union representative explained it, the department’s questions would be about her competence. She could lose her detective designation. She could lose her shield. She was a new enough cop that they could even strip her of her pension. But as the union rep pored over the potential consequences, all Ellie could hear was her own internal voice.
