Dead Connection

by Alafair Burke

  “Thank you, Roger.” The reporter was attractive, with thick layers of black hair, dark eye makeup, and deep mauve lipstick. Ellie guessed the hushed voice was meant to connote the seriousness of the story at hand. “I’m standing in front of an apartment building in the Yorkville section of the Upper East Side. Normally, this neighborhood is a quiet haven for the largely professional population that resides here. But this morning, Roger, that sense of solitude — and safety — was shattered by a startling murder.

  “Sources tell me that the victim is a thirty-three-year-old single woman who resided alone in this doorman building. The woman was found smothered to death in her apartment. Police believe the murder occurred last night. We are withholding the victim’s name pursuant to a request from the NYPD, but according to both the neighbors and the police, the woman was unlikely to have been killed by anyone who knew her.

  “Her death follows the strangling murder last weekend of Amy Davis, another single woman of approximately the same age, who also lived alone, killed on the Lower East Side outside of her residence. Police believe she was killed by a stranger as well.

  “Although we have not received official confirmation from the police department, we are able to report to you now that the police are investigating a possible connection between the Davis murder and the murder inside this building last night.”

  “Anne, if both women were killed by the same stranger, are you saying that these murders are the work of a serial killer?”

  “Our sources have been careful not to use those words” — even though Channel Five wasn’t — “but we do know that one theory the police are looking into is that both women were customers of the same company. We have not confirmed the identity of that company, but apparently it is a common link between the two women. Obviously, we here at Fox 5 News will bring it to you as soon as we know.

  “On another note, Roger, there’s an intriguing connection between this case and one of the investigating detectives, New York City Detective Ellie Hatcher. Now, according to our sources, Hatcher has been a detective for only one year and was brought into the homicide unit specifically for this case.”

  “Have you been able to determine the reason for that, Anne?”

  “The police don’t usually share such information with us, but it’s certainly raising questions. We do know that Detective Hatcher is herself a thirty-year-old woman, not dissimilar from these two victims, so perhaps she can offer some insight from that perspective. But a more intriguing explanation is Detective Hatcher’s connection to a serial killer in her own personal background. You might remember a couple of years ago, Roger, when police in Wichita, Kansas, arrested William Summer, the College Hill Strangler.”

  “That was an awful story, wasn’t it?”

  “Well, Ellie Hatcher’s father was one of the lead detectives on that College Hill Strangler investigation. Maybe the NYPD is hoping tonight that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “Interesting and scary stuff there, Anne. Thanks for the report, and keep us updated.”

  “I will, Roger.”

  “Also tonight, fire marshals investigate a blaze in Queens that—”

  Ellie hit the power button on the television. An awkward silence filled the room as a civilian aide who had just removed a Snickers bar from the vending machine stared at Ellie, as if obligated to say something.

  The young woman finally settled on, “Who knows? Maybe the killer will be jealous of all the attention you’re getting. Come out of the woodwork.”

  Ellie threw a look at Flann. “Huh…we hadn’t thought of that. That would be interesting, wouldn’t it?”

  “You never know,” the woman said, unwrapping her candy bar and fleeing while she had the chance.

  “You all right?” Flann asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just give me a second.”

  “No problem. I’m going across the street for some decent coffee. You want anything?”

  She shook her head. “But thanks,” she added as he walked out.

  She wanted the time to mull over her thoughts. To her surprise, they were filled not with concerns about her renewed status as a media target, but instead by the nagging feeling that they were missing something important. It had to be related to Amy. All of the other murders had been quick — relatively painless as far as murders go. But with Amy, he’d been brutal. She remembered the deep bruises and contusions in the morgue photograph, reconstructing the struggle that must have taken place to leave those injuries. She mentally compared those images to what she’d just seen at Megan Quinn’s apartment. Something about Amy had been special.

  Before bringing in Ellie, Flann had eliminated from consideration anyone in Amy’s current life, and she trusted Flann not to miss an obvious suspect. That left Amy’s past.

  The fact that Amy had a restraining order against a boy from her hometown kept jumping out at her. Lots of women had problems with ex-boyfriends, but how many required a court’s intervention? And then there was the fact that the boy in question had been so computer savvy. An obsessive person with techie skills was precisely whom they were looking for. She pictured a personality like Taylor Gottman’s. Was it so far-fetched that something could reignite an obsession a decade later?

  She looked at the notes she’d made — and then crossed out — from her conversation with Suzanne Mouton. Edmond Bertrand had been looking like a prime suspect until Suzanne said that he had died. He overdosed on heroin. I heard about it at LSU.

  Ellie realized then that she may have been too quick to write Bertrand off. Suzanne hadn’t lived in New Iberia when he supposedly overdosed. She heard about it, undoubtedly from someone who repeated a secondhand story. And people embellish when they repeat, and then other people embellish further. Like in a slumber party game of Operator, news of a bad drug trip one night in New Iberia might have turned into a fatal overdose by the time it hit Suzanne Mouton’s dorm on LSU’s Lafayette campus.

  Ellie left the solitude of the break room and pulled up the New York DMV database on Flann’s computer. No New York driver’s license or identification card. She tried crime reports. No New York arrests or convictions. She went next to the NCIC database, a national clearinghouse of records like fugitive warrants, missing person alerts, and sex offender registrations. She ran Bertrand’s name and got a hit.

  Edmond Bertrand, date of birth, October 16, 1974. Arrested in Boston six years earlier for forgery. Bertrand no-showed for his arraignment, and was never picked up on the warrant.

  According to Suzanne Mouton, the Edmond Bertrand who’d stalked Amy Davis had overdosed ten years ago. She found Suzanne’s phone number and called.

  After apologizing in advance for the bizarre nature of her question, she asked Suzanne if she were certain that Edmond Bertrand’s drug overdose was fatal.

  “Um, you warned me to expect the bizarre. It’s not like I saw the body or anything, but, yeah, that’s what everyone said.”

  Ellie took another look at the six-year-old Massachusetts arrest warrant on the computer screen in front of her. “And you’re sure about the timing? It couldn’t have been in the last six years?”

  “No. I was definitely at LSU. I’m pretty sure I was a junior; maybe even a sophomore.”

  “Did you actually see an obituary? Or do you know anyone who went to the funeral?”

  “What’s this all about?”

  “It registered after we hung up last time that you had heard about Bertrand’s death secondhand while you were in school. I thought I’d verify it wasn’t just a rumor — just to make sure we didn’t jump the gun counting him out. That’s all.”

  “I guess I never questioned what I heard. I know that Amy and her parents heard the same thing.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll call around down there and have someone check the death records, just to be sure.”

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ve got a neighbor down the road who works for the sheriff’s office. He can get you all the details. Do you have
a phone number or e-mail or something?”

  Ellie rattled off her number and e-mail address. “And can you also ask him to look up Edmond Bertrand’s date of birth? It’s important.”

  THE WOMAN AT the records division of the Boston Police Department was able to pull up the information Ellie requested in less than a minute.

  “The only entry in our database for an Edmond Bertrand is that one arrest. And, unfortunately, there’s no booking photo coming up on that. But a picture from a six-year-old forgery might not have made it into the computer anyway.”

  “So is there somewhere else I could get a photograph?” Ellie spotted Flann heading her way, coat still on and coffee in hand. He looked excited and gestured at her to cut the call short.

  “My guess is on a charge like that, the officer probably cited and released him, in which case we wouldn’t have either a picture or prints. The only way to know for sure is from the police report. Want me to put in a request for you?”

  “I’d appreciate it.” Ellie gave her the fax number at the precinct and hung up.

  “What was that?” Flann asked.

  “A favor for a friend.” Ellie wasn’t sure whether she fibbed to gloss over the long-shot phone call to Boston, or because of lingering resentment toward Flann for his own secrecy. Either way, it didn’t seem to warrant discussion in light of Flann’s eagerness. “What’s up?”

  “I told you media attention would be our friend. I just got a call from a very apologetic Mark Stern, who assured me he called the moment he got our messages.”

  “He’s finally willing to help?”

  “GregUK’s real name is Greg London.”

  “And we both know he’s not going to be our guy, just like Amy Davis’s date wasn’t our guy.”

  “That’s why he’s going to pull up all the names of the men who contacted Caroline Hunter, Amy Davis, and Megan Quinn while we have a little chat with Mr. London.”

  GREG LONDON had absolutely no criminal history, was fully employed as a lighting technician for Broadway shows, and insisted that on the night Megan Quinn was murdered he was at home reading a Truman biography. Although no one could vouch for his whereabouts, they were nevertheless able to exclude London from suspicion: The man in the security video from Megan’s apartment building was six feet tall. Greg London was five foot eight.

  Ellie wasn’t particularly disappointed, and she certainly wasn’t surprised. The killer would never make it that easy.

  LIKE A LOSING politician who gives verbal hugs to the candidate he spent fourteen months trashing, Stern welcomed them into his office as if he had never been their adversary. “I’ve got the names of every account holder who ever contacted Caroline Hunter, Amy Davis, or Megan Quinn — just like you asked. But there’s one guy you’re going to want to check out first. His name’s Richard Hamline.”

  “What puts him at the top of the list?” Flann asked.

  “Because I cross-referenced the lists. He’s the only user who’s been in contact with two of the women: Amy Davis and Megan Quinn.” Stern directed their attention to the flat-screen monitor on his desk. “I pulled up a dummy of his account. We’re basically seeing what Hamline would see if he pulled up his own account, but I’m able to go through the back door without actually logging in. That way, he won’t be able to tell someone else is in his account.”

  The screen displayed Hamline’s FirstDate connections. Stern clicked first on Megan Quinn, opening up a series of e-mails, then on Amy Davis. Ellie shook her head in disbelief.

  “We had him in front of us the whole time, Flann. The user name. Check out the user name.”

  Richard Hamline was the real name behind the pseudonym Enoch, the one with the generic profile and very specific questions about Amy Davis. The one who never did return the flirt from Ellie. The one using the biblical name she was going to ask about if he ever contacted her. The killer had contacted the two most recent victims through the same FirstDate account. He had to know they would make the connection. He was engaging them. Ellie took a hard look at the dark-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned man smiling at her from the screen and wondered if Hamline was bold enough to use a real photograph.

  “What else can you tell us about him?” Ellie asked.

  Stern handed her a sheet of paper. “That’s his name, billing information, and e-mail address from the account. I called one of our I.T. people to pull up his I.S.P. information.”

  “You called in a what for a who?” Flann asked.

  “I called an information technology staffer to locate the Internet service provider. Like most commercial Internet sites, we automatically collect every user’s Internet service provider each time they visit the site. We also get their I.P. address.”

  “And an I.P. is—”

  “An Internet protocol address,” Stern explained. “Like most of our customers, Hamline used an easy-to-get, free e-mail address to open his account with us. You don’t have to provide any kind of verifiable identifying information to open that kind of an e-mail account. But that’s where the I.P. address is helpful. Every device that links to the Internet — whether it be a computer, or a printer, or a router — has a unique number. It’s used to identify the device and to communicate with other devices. I’ll get someone to track that down for Hamline.”

  “And how is that useful?” Flann asked.

  “We can use the number to geolocate the device. Just think of the I.P. address as a computer’s street address or a phone number. It identifies a unique, specific computer. In most cases, we can actually use the I.P. address to match the computer to a physical location.”

  “And every Web site keeps track of them? So much for privacy,” Ellie said.

  “Not only do we do it. We have to do it under the Patriot Act. I’m sure the ACLU is overjoyed.”

  “Well, I say thank God for Big Brother,” Flann said. “How soon can we get that information?”

  “My I.T. guy’s on his way from Jersey City. Should be forty minutes or so.”

  Flann didn’t waste any time asking questions. “Let’s go ahead and work it like the twentieth century. We’ve got a good old-fashioned name and date of birth.”

  RICHARD HAMLINE’S name and date of birth appeared only once in the NYPD’s records — in a police report he’d filed two years earlier after a man who was never identified grabbed his gym bag from his shoulder as he left work shortly after midnight. According to the report, Hamline worked as a corporate lawyer at a Wall Street law firm and lived in a seventeenth-floor apartment adjacent to Battery Park.

  Ellie held the police report in one hand and a copy of Hamline’s driver’s license photo in another. The picture was nearly eight years old. Although it bore a slight resemblance to the photo accompanying Enoch’s profile, Ellie suspected the better-looking photo on FirstDate was bogus.

  “This doesn’t feel right,” Ellie said. “He gives his real name on an account he uses to contact two of the victims? It’s too easy. This is just going to be another cycle in the game.”

  “Do you have any other suggestions?” Flann asked. A judge had already issued a telephonic warrant to arrest Hamline. The spreading media hysteria about a possible serial killer no doubt gave them an edge in the probable cause balance.

  “Nope. Just making sure we’re on the same page.” It was not yet eight o’clock at night — early by a corporate lawyer’s standards. “We should try his office first.”

  26

  “I WAS WONDERING IF YOU MIGHT CALL ME IN, BOSS.” CHARLIE Dixon’s tone was friendly but resigned. He settled himself into one of the hunter green leather guest chairs across from Barry Mayfield’s enormous mahogany desk. The windows behind his boss were flanked on either side by the flags of the United States and the Department of Justice. He looked out toward the old World Trade Center site.

  “You ever worked a serial case, Charlie?”

  “I’ll treat that as a rhetorical question.” Most agents who were merely adequate — agents like Charlie — wo
rked bank robberies and gun cases their entire careers. With a decent amount of ass-kissing and a touch of good luck, Charlie carried a semirespectable fraud caseload, but Quantico reserved its serial cases for the superstars.

  “I worked one about fifteen years ago,” Mayfield said. “You want to talk about ulcer-inducing, get involved in one of those bad boys. You literally have a clock ticking over your head, with an unknown number of minutes on the timer. Miss one angle, act a few hours late — bam, you got another body.”

  Charlie sat silently, staring at a crystal golf ball clock on the desk, knowing that Mayfield would get to the point in his own time and in his own way.

  “I don’t think we can write this off as one cop’s lunatic theory anymore, Charlie. It’s all over the news: The NYPD officially has a serial case on its hands now. When that female cop called the other day, she had three victims including your girl Tatiana. This new one makes four. Apparently they’re convinced that FirstDate’s got something to do with it all. Without knowing more, I suspect most of their work right now is about finding commonalities among their victims. What do you think?”

  “Like I said, I never worked a case like that before, but that sounds reasonable.”

  “Not knowing everything you can about a victim can really throw things off. If you treat her as just another part of the series when she’s actually the most important…or you throw her in the mix when she really doesn’t belong in the pattern. See how something like that could muck up the picture?”

  Dixon was growing impatient but did his best to conceal it. “I can see the problem.”

  “So how does Tatiana figure into NYPD’s case?”

  “Don’t I wish I knew.”

  “It’s pretty fucking weird that she said something was screwy with FirstDate, and now they got three other dead women somehow related to that company. You’ve had your bee all up in a bonnet over Mark Stern. Could it be him?”