Dead Connection

a fantasy.

“So you’re telling me that on top of all my other problems, I’ve got a hole in my server that someone’s hacking into? What does this have to do with Ed Becker?”

“I don’t think he killed those women. I think he had something to do with two of them – it’s a long story. My point is that I think someone else murdered Amy Davis and Megan Quinn, and they did it to ruin you. When Caroline Hunter was killed, all the news coverage mentioned her research into online dating. Someone with a grudge against you saw the opportunity to destroy your baby – and you along with it. And whoever it was also had a grudge against Amy Davis. They sent her that bogus solicitation for a free membership, then used Richard Hamline’s credit card to pay for it. They killed Amy exactly one year after Hunter was killed, placing a FirstDate e-mail in her coat pocket to make sure the police connected the two cases. Then, when the media still didn’t name your company or you, he added another victim – Megan Quinn.”

“This is nuts. This is absolutely sick. I don’t know anyone who would do something like that. I can’t even imagine knowing someone who could concoct such a demented plan, let alone someone who’d carry it out.”

“You can’t think that way,” Ellie argued. “A man like this can be a father, a husband, a church leader, a man of the community. No matter how absurd you think this is, I need to know who might have a grudge against you, particularly with respect to FirstDate.”

Stern was shaking his head.

“It’s possible it’s someone who knows about computers or even has access to your server. Maybe an employee? Someone you fired?”

As Ellie listened to her own thoughts leave her mouth, she heard discordant lines of recent conversations clashing in her head. Mark Stern: This company is my baby. I created it. Another voice saying, I wouldn’t have worked to start the company if I didn’t think it could serve a good purpose… Mark and I really believed… We did our best…

She saw a pause in Mark Stern, a momentary hesitation.

“Tell me about Jason Upton,” she said.

“But how did you-”

“Because I know what happened.”

38

ELLIE GAVE STERN A CONDENSED VERSION OF THE STORY THAT Upton had told her: Upton and Stern had started the company together, went their separate ways with no hard feelings, and Upton had lived happily ever after on his severance package and his trust fund. Stern offered a slightly different account.

“He was pissed. When we incorporated, he demanded equal footing in the company, and I refused to give it to him. He claimed to be a founder, and he was only a programmer. It was my idea. I found the capital. I created the structure. All he did was program.”

Ellie remembered the nostalgic way that Upton conveyed his memories of starting FirstDate with Stern, and wondered if perhaps Upton’s claims had more merit than Stern was letting on.

“But he walked away from the company despite all of that?”

“He continued working as a programmer at first. Occasionally he’d make snarky, pissy remarks, but for the most part, I thought he was over it. Then he threatened to sue. Shit, in retrospect, he threatened to do a lot more than that. I assumed it was hothead stuff – blowing off steam. I’d known the guy for five years, and he never struck me as violent. In the end, I had my lawyer bring him in and offer a settlement. I swore I’d fight a penny more, and he backed down. Or so I thought. You don’t really think-”

“I don’t know. I’m still trying to make sense of it myself. He’s got plenty of money, so why would he do all of this? Just out of pride? Because you didn’t give him the recognition he wanted?”

“Don’t look at me. I think this entire conversation is absurd. But I can tell you that if Jason Upton has money these days, it’s not from his family, and it’s certainly not from his settlement with me.”

“I know for certain he said he had a trust fund. In fact, he suggested it was the reason he didn’t share your ambitions. And I remember thinking he seemed like the kind of person who’d have family money. He’s got that whole preppy thing going on like he was born on the Princeton campus.”

“That’s all an act. Jason went to Tufts, but it was on scholarship. His dad sold shoes, and his mom was a teacher. He grew up in Oklahoma. He developed that Waspy affectation over time because it helped him land chicks. I met him about six months after he got to New York, and he was living in some ratty old studio on the Lower East Side.”

“Tufts. That’s in Boston, right?”

Stern nodded.

“And Upton would’ve still been in Boston six years ago?”

Stern thought for a moment, then nodded again. “Yeah. I think he hung out there for about a year after he graduated, then I met him shortly after he moved here. That was almost exactly six years ago.”

Stern had met Upton when he first moved to New York, not long after a man using the name Edmond Bertrand had an arrest warrant issued in Boston for his failure to appear on charges of using a stolen credit card.

Accents are easy to fake. Flann had made the observation when he first suggested that Becker could be their man. But they had been assuming that the person who called Peter about the letter in the library was faking a southern accent, not concealing it from everyone else.

“Did you ever verify that Upton even went to Tufts?”

Stern’s facial expression was answer enough. “You don’t think-”

“You’re not the first employer who didn’t check on a friend’s references. Do you think you might have a record of Upton’s date of birth?” Ellie suspected that most of what Upton had told Stern about himself was a lie, but, like many people who used aliases, he might have been truthful about his birth date. Juggling multiple names was enough work without keeping track of corresponding birth dates.

“Human resources probably has it. I can ask.”

While Stern picked up his phone to make the call, Ellie took out her cell phone to call Charlie Dixon with an update. A red flashing light indicated she had a new message that must have come in while she was on the subway. She checked her voice mail and smiled when she heard Peter’s voice. Then she got to the end of the message and dropped the phone.

ENOCH. The killer called himself Enoch. Reading something into that moniker had thrown Ellie onto the wrong track. She had glommed onto the Book of Enoch, just because the name Richard Hamline had been used to open Enoch’s FirstDate account. R. H., like The Book of Enoch translated by R. H. Charles.

She had made the same mistake the D.C. Sniper investigators made when they attributed meaning to reports of a white truck near all the shootings. It was the same mistake shared by Wichitans who’d found a seeming pattern in the number three, found in the addresses of many of the College Hill Strangler’s victims. But white trucks and number threes are so common that they can always be found, as long as you’re looking for them. She had found a connection to the Book of Enoch because she had searched for it.

What she had overlooked was the other Enoch – the son of Cain, who betrayed and killed his brother, Abel. All along, the name Enoch had been Jason Upton’s private joke, referring to FirstDate itself, the offspring of the traitorous Mark Stern.

She realized now the truth that lay beneath all of the illusions created by Jason Upton. Disgruntled with Stern’s refusal to recognize him as a cofounder of the company, Upton started stealing credit card numbers off the FirstDate server and selling them in the vast black market that exists for such information. He could steal here and there and never get caught because credit card companies tended to eat the losses without investigating how the numbers were lost. But Caroline Hunter was different. He rigged the FirstDate server to get a preview of any online complaints, and Caroline’s complaint would have jumped out at him. He’d made the mistake of stealing the credit card number of a customer who’d used her card for only one purchase – a FirstDate membership.