ELLIE WALKED alone into the Thirteenth Precinct. She felt the eyes of the homicide bureau – the detectives who worked with Flann McIlroy, the ones whom she never had a chance to know – follow her to the office of their lieutenant, Dan Eckels. Eckels was waiting for her. His salt-and-pepper hair was cut close to a large head that perched on a short, squat body – a fire hydrant topped with a Brillo pad. Ellie smiled sadly, remembering Flann’s depiction of him as the gruff boss in a Hollywood cop movie.
To Ellie’s surprise and relief, she recognized another face in Eckels’s office. It belonged to the man who had warned her not so many days earlier about getting too far ahead of herself in a homicide assignment. “Lieutenant Jenkins,” Ellie said with a nod.
“Detective.” Randy Jenkins’s tone was formal, but he returned the nod. Ellie found the gesture from her own Midtown North supervisor comforting under the circumstances.
Eckels directed Ellie to a chair across from his desk, and then moved straight to the business at hand.
“When I spoke to you yesterday, you were adamant about waiving your right to have either a union representative or an attorney here on your behalf. I take it from your arrival here alone this morning that you continue to proceed without representation?”
“Yes, sir. I’m fine on my own.”
“Very well then,” Eckels said. “Two of my detectives have worked around the clock putting together a report of the City Island incident.”
Ellie stifled a wince at his use of the word
“As with all police homicides, a grand jury will hear the facts of the case, probably not for another couple of weeks, but we do not anticipate any problems here. I thought it fair, Detective Hatcher, to share with you what we’ve learned since we spoke last.”
“I appreciate that, sir. Thank you.”
“The evidence very firmly establishes that Ed Becker, a former detective of this department, is the man that you and McIlroy were looking for.”
Ellie had come to that realization herself four nights earlier, but hearing it said aloud as an official determination still sounded surreal. A former homicide detective had killed four women. The man who called himself Enoch had given her a ride home.
“As you learned before going to City Island,” Eckels continued, “Ed Becker kept a boat not far from the cybercafe used two nights earlier by Enoch. He appears to have ignored the Tatiana Chekova investigation that he conveniently headed, and his name was found in Caroline Hunter’s notes. We have learned more in the last three days. We have confirmed that the laptop found on Becker’s boat is the same computer used by Enoch to sign on to the FirstDate account. The Internet usage matches up with Enoch’s, and a copy of the letter left for Peter Morse in the Midtown library was saved to the hard drive. We also found a marked-up copy of
“But why?” Ellie asked. “Why did he do all of this?”
Eckels was clearly put off by the question. “You of all people should know you can’t make sense of the motivations of a serial killer.”
Jenkins offered a suggestion. “Obviously I’m not one of the leads on this, but maybe he had some kind of relationship with Tatiana. She was a prostitute. Some cops have been known to sample the trade. If she was trying to get out of the life, as you said the club manager indicated, maybe she was shaking down Becker, trying to find another way to support herself. He shoots her, then realizes he likes it. He used FirstDate as his outlet.”
“I spent the entire weekend mulling all of this over and came up with the same theory. But what I can’t figure out is why I found him at the Rostovs that day in Brooklyn. He claimed the loose ends he left behind on Tatiana’s murder were bothering him. If he’s the one who killed her, then why was he outside of her sister’s apartment?”
“I’ve got to hand it to you,” Eckels said. “McIlroy would’ve been proud of you, Hatcher, trying to get into the head of a sociopath. We can make up motivations for him all day long. Did you ever think he might’ve gotten off watching her sister? Maybe he sat out there every day for the past two and a half years, like revisiting the scene of the crime. When you ran into him, he provided a convenient cover story.”
“Or maybe there’s more to this. We know the killer somehow got into Amy Davis’s and Megan Quinn’s FirstDate accounts. And he doctored that phony e-mail to get Amy to sign up in the first place. Becker didn’t strike me as someone with that kind of computer sophistication. Becker must have had a partner, and it obviously has something to do with Vitali Rostov. My brother was assaulted just a couple of hours before Flann was killed. He says Rostov did it and included a warning for me to back off. Clearly something I said to his wife touched a nerve. And Becker’s got that expensive boat. If he was dirty, taking money from the Russians, then we don’t know the whole story yet.”
Eckels looked at her like a gnat he wanted to squash. “There’s no corroboration of that account, Detective. Officer Connelly was left with the impression that the assault against your brother was drug related.”
“I’m the corroboration. I know what my brother told me.”
“So you’re saying you permitted your brother to file a false police report?”
“He told the truth to me, and the last time I checked, I was also a cop.”
“A cop who might have a hard time admitting the true nature of her brother’s problems. Have you ever considered that your brother told Officer Connelly the truth about what happened in the parking lot, and told you what you wanted to hear?”
Ellie pictured Jess lying on that hospital cot, pleading with her to stay safe, and fought the urge to tell Eckels precisely what she thought of his theory. She needed to focus on getting the investigation back on track.
“Where did you find
“On the deck.”
Ellie nodded, picturing the layout of the boat. Doors in the back of the cabin. Another set of doors on the right side of the front bulkhead.
“Was it on the right? The side by the doors?”
“I believe that’s correct. On the starboard.”
“He left a book on the deck of his boat at night in the winter? The right side is where I heard the noise. The footsteps. If someone dropped that book there for us to find, that explains the footsteps. And the shots. I told the detectives. It was like one pop, then a pause, then two more, closer together. Someone else was on that boat. Someone shot Becker first – one shot –
Eckels gave Jenkins a
“That’s one of the things we need to talk about, Ellie.” Jenkins placed a protective hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure you heard something that could have sounded like footsteps from your position. You were in an unknown place, under incredible stress. And the sounds of bullets can be very misleading. You said yourself that things happened quickly.”
Ellie quietly shook her head, disappointed. She hadn’t brought a lawyer or a union rep, because their only role would be to protect her. They wouldn’t care about getting the department to do the right thing. With Jenkins’s unexpected appearance, she’d hoped to have an ally. But here he was, trying to throw her a lifeline, yet willing to cover up the truth.
“So what you’re both saying is that you want me to fall in line and get with the official story. Ed Becker acted alone. The serial killer’s dead now, and the women of New York can feel safe once again.”
“What we’re telling you,” Eckels said, “is that you’re in no position to contradict the very clear evidence in this case. Ed Becker put two bullets from a. 38 into McIlroy, then ate one in the mouth. The ballistics back it up. It’s that simple.”
“You tested for GSR on his hands?”
“As soon as we’re done talking here, the assistant chief will be making a public statement. This case is closed.”
“So you’re just glossing over all the details,” Ellie said. “You’re going to wrap this whole case up with a nice little bow without ever answering the hard questions about why Ed Becker would do these things, how he managed to pull it off, and what it all had to do with the information Tatiana Chekova was giving to the FBI. Call the press, everyone – the NYPD saves the day.”
