Dead Connection (3 page)

“No, sir. If I can help there and come back when I’m through, that’s what I’d like to do.”

“I didn’t have a doubt in my mind that you’d say precisely that.” He handed her a slip of paper with McIlroy’s name and an address scrawled on it. The tell in his jaw was gone. Ellie took it as a sign of something Jenkins would never say aloud — he had been worried about her ability to handle the scrutiny that would come with the assignment, but he no longer was.

It took Ellie only ten minutes and one box to pack up her desk, and the box was only half full. A picture with her mom and brother taken two Thanksgivings ago back in Wichita, a handful of hair clips, her favorite water glass, a jar of Nutella, a spoon, a cigarette lighter, and the potpourri of pens, Post-its, Jolly Ranchers, and other crap that fell out of her top desk drawer. That was it. All she had gathered in thirteen months.

And somehow those thirteen months had led her to a murder assignment.

3

ELLIE HATCHER NEVER THOUGHT SHE’D BE A COP. SURE, LIKE ANY
little kid modeling herself after a parent, she’d thrown around the idea. But
police officer
had fallen somewhere on the list between fashion designer and astronaut. Then, after her father died, she believed she’d lost every positive feeling she had about law enforcement. Her father literally gave his life to the job, and it left his family with nothing. No money. No support. Not even answers about his death.

It also left her without the luxury of dreams about her future. When her older brother, Jess, ran off to New York to become a rock star, Ellie and her mother had been on their own. Even if Ellie had been willing to leave as well, the scholarship money she earned in B-level beauty pageants fell far short of out-of-state tuition. That left Ellie as a part-time waitress and a part-time prelaw student at Wichita State University.

She’d probably be a lawyer in Kansas now if it weren’t for Jess — or at least for her mother’s inability not to worry about his pattern of mixing alcohol (and most likely other substances) with a general penchant for recklessness. After two years of watching her mother age ten, Ellie realized the best thing she could do for her mother — and herself — was to leave Wichita to look after her brother.

Then a strange thing happened. She fell in love — not with a man, but with New York City. Young people, living beyond their means in cramped apartments, walking to the corner deli for takeout — tiny specks moving intently, carving out their own patterns among the chaos. Life in the city was exciting and unpredictable, exactly the opposite of the endless enclaves of ranch homes she’d known as a child. She was turned down for every paralegal job she applied for, but she learned not to care. Waiting tables paid more anyway, at least on the good nights.

Then a stranger thing happened. As is inevitable in any relationship, Ellie started to notice the darker side of the city she loved. Beneath the tall buildings, upscale boutiques, and bright lights lived signs of a seedier and more harsh New York. A woman with fading bruises, pausing discreetly at the garbage can outside of the bakery, eyeing the half-eaten croissant lying just under that discarded cigarette butt. A homeless man tucking himself more tightly beneath urine-soaked cardboard boxes, hoping to avoid a roust to the shelters that would not permit his one and only possession — the matted beagle snuggled into the crook of his knees. Too many men waiting at the Port Authority for the young girls who arrive from faraway towns with big dreams but nowhere to sleep.

Ellie tried to look away — to ignore the signs like everyone else. But as she strived for blissful ignorance, the problems only grew more glaring. She realized that only one job would allow her to love this city the way she wanted to: She could be the person who stopped to help instead of looking away. It took three years of part-time classes at John Jay, but she finally became a cop. Then after four years of hard work, she made detective. One serious boyfriend had come and gone along the way, but she still had New York. And she still had her job.

Now that job was taking her to the Thirteenth Precinct, home of the Manhattan South Homicide Task Force, a boxy six-story building on East Twenty-first Street between Second and Third avenues. At the front desk she asked one of a handful of uniformed officers for Flann McIlroy, and he escorted her to the task force offices on the third floor.

“Fourth desk back, on the right,” the officer instructed, pointing across a room crammed with desks, shelves of notebooks, and men. The male-to-female ratio among the detectives here was even higher than what she was used to at Midtown North.

Walking the gauntlet. That’s how it felt. Eyes intentionally followed Ellie and her half-filled brown cardboard box. The eyes’ owners exchanged knowing smiles. Each whisper grew bolder than the last.
That must be McIl-Mulder’s Date Bait
. Another said something about Scully being a blond. And having a box. A big box.

Ellie pretended not to hear their remarks or notice their lingering glances. In a way, she appreciated them — or at least what they represented. Offensive jokes, lewd gestures, and the open resentment of outsiders often defined the working atmosphere of cops — at least for those who were not yet a part of it. But the veneer served an important purpose. Reinforced daily in small ways such as these, it protected the bonds that lay beneath the thin but often impenetrable cover.

On this specific occasion, the jabs were aimed at her, and she understood why. She’d suffer through until the comments had served their purpose — a purpose that would ultimately benefit her, once these men came to realize, as others had before, that Ellie was no creampuff.

At the fourth desk back on the right sat a man Ellie thought she recognized from various departmental press conferences. He didn’t fit Ellie’s stereotype of a pseudocelebrity law enforcement stud. The NYPD had bred its fair share, and they usually fell into one of two molds — the good-looking buff Italian, or the good-looking buff Irishman. Different coloring, distinguishable jawlines, but the looks were always off the charts. Flann McIlroy, by contrast, resembled an older version of the Lucky Charms leprechaun. He was not unattractive, but he had the look of a child star, decades later — in his forties, but forever destined to resemble a fourteen-year-old redhead with a gap in his teeth.

“Are you Detective McIlroy?”

“Does Keith Richards pick coconuts?” McIlroy’s eyes remained on the report he was reading.

“I think the surgeons might’ve removed that impulse while they were fixing the rest of his brain.”

“Ah, very nice. A woman who keeps up with her pop culture.” McIlroy rose from his chair and offered a thick hand. “You must be Ellie Hatcher.”

Ellie shifted her cardboard box for a handshake, and McIlroy quickly relieved her of the parcel, setting it on his desk. In a framed photograph that he pushed aside, Ellie recognized the men on either side of Flann McIlroy as Rudy Giuliani and Bill Bratton.

“That’s me,” Ellie said, “reporting to duty. Thank you for bringing me over.”

“You make an excellent first impression. Most of my colleagues don’t get my rhetorical questions.”

“Aging rock stars, I get. Throw out any allusions to French literature, and we might have some problems.”

“You must be wondering why you’re here.” McIlroy had a gleam in his eye.

“I go where I’m told,” Ellie said matter-of-factly.

“I got permission from the assistant chief to work a single case exclusively.”

Ellie did her best to conceal her surprise. Lieutenant Jenkins said McIlroy had suck with the brass, but the assistant chief was extremely brassy — he ran the entire Manhattan detective borough.

“My lieutenant’s not particularly happy about it, so the freedom may not last. He’s already threatened to pull the plug tomorrow if it doesn’t go anywhere, but he’s mindful of the politics. If nothing breaks — the case, you, me — we all turn back to pumpkins. So let’s just say you better not unpack this box quite yet.”

“Not a problem. Desks are overrated anyway.” Ellie tried to sound like she was taking it all in stride.

“Unless you’ve got a hearing problem, you probably noticed some comments as you walked in.”

McIlroy hadn’t bothered to lower his voice. Nearby detectives shifted their eyes back to their work.

“No hearing problem, sir,” Ellie said.

“And none of this ‘sir’ stuff. Call me Flann.”

“And call me Ellie. Or my friends just call me Date Bait.” She threw a look to the younger detective at the next desk, and he laughed aloud and smiled.
One down, the rest of the room to go
, Ellie thought.

“Let’s talk while we drive,” Flann said. “I want you to see something.”

“FRIDAY NIGHT, AROUND three in the morning, two men found a woman’s body in an alley off of Avenue C.” McIlroy flipped down the sun visor on the department-issued Crown Vic as he hung a left onto Third Avenue, followed by another quick left onto Twentieth Street to take them to the far East Side. “The girl’s name was Amy Davis. She lived in the adjacent building. We’ve already determined she was walking home from a date when the bad guy grabbed her. Strangled.”

He pushed a manila folder across the seat toward Ellie. She opened it and removed an eight-by-ten photograph. Amy Davis lay on a metal slab. A white sheet was pulled up to her shoulders, but the rest of the picture told the story. Her face was scarlet. Dark contusions discolored her neck and throat, her eyes protruded from their sockets, and her swollen tongue peeked out from encrusted lips. Ellie could tell from the many marks between Amy’s jaw and clavicle that the killer had used his hands. She had definitely struggled.

“How do you know the date didn’t walk her home and do all of this himself?”

“We called his cell right after we found
this
in the vic’s coat pocket.” McIlroy handed Ellie two sheets of folded white paper from his own jacket. “That’s a photocopy, obviously.”

Ellie read the string of e-mail messages from the bottom up, starting with the earliest. The first message was sent a week ago, from CameraMan to MoMAgirl:
I saw your profile. We seem to have a lot in common. Maybe between my photography and your love of Warhol, we can take the art-world by storm. Check out my profile and let me know. My name’s Brad
.

MoMAgirl responded two hours later:
You don’t look too bad yourself. What kind of stuff do you usually shoot? Amy (aka MoMAgirl)

The two had e-mailed each other once or twice a day for the next few days, until Brad finally suggested on Friday evening that they meet for a drink that night at eleven o’clock.

“Eleven o’clock on a Friday night? What a cheese ball,” Ellie muttered under her breath.

“The cheese factor, as you put it, gets considerably worse,” McIlroy said. “But he’s not our guy. I called his cell at three thirty in the morning, after we found the e-mails. I think I hit redial six times before he finally picked up. By that time, he was in bed at another woman’s apartment. According to the bedmate, our playboy Brad called her around midnight saying he was in the neighborhood.”

“He could have made that call after the murder to give himself some semblance of an alibi.”

“Except the girl remembers bar noises in the background, and the waiter at Angel’s Share remembers Brad on his cell phone when he signed for the check. Apparently he was pissed off about the price of the wine Amy was drinking.”

“Did you check the call records on Brad’s cell phone?”

McIlroy nodded. “They’re consistent: Two back-to-back calls around midnight. One to a woman in the West Village, which went unanswered. Then another call, which his overnight companion picked up.”

“And he couldn’t have killed Davis between the phone call and the booty call?”

“Nope,” Flann said, smiling. “The booty call, as you so aptly described it, took place next to the Flatiron Building. The security camera in the elevator has him arriving ten minutes after the cell phone call.”

Ellie finished the chain of reasoning. “And it’s impossible to get from the Village to Avenue C, then back up to the Flatiron in even twice that time.”

“I was impressed he made it to the Flatiron in ten minutes.”

“When sex awaits,” Ellie said, refolding the sheet of paper and handing it back to McIlroy. “So the victim had a date that night, but it’s got nothing to do with her murder.”

“Now
that
I’m not so sure about. Here’s my hunch.”

Ellie raised an eyebrow. According to her lieutenant, one of McIlroy’s misplaced hunches could tarnish her reputation for years.

“Don’t worry,” Flann said, catching her expression. “It’s one notch stronger than a hunch — I guarantee. Did you notice how our victim met this courtly gentleman, Brad?”

“On the Internet. Very Twenty-first Century.” The e-mails had been sent through a company called FirstDate.com. Ellie had recognized the name. From what she could tell, FirstDate was one of the biggest online dating companies around, at least in the New York area. She could hardly ride the subway or pass a bus stop without spotting an ad announcing that true love was waiting for her somewhere out there in cyberspace. If the men on the service were anything like Brad the bed-hopping CameraMan, then Ellie had no remorse about resisting her occasional curiosity.

“I read that you’ve got an interest in high-tech law enforcement,” Flann said. “I’m hoping that’s going to come in handy.”

It was Ellie’s first confirmation that McIlroy knew about her fifteen minutes of fame. In retrospect, Ellie regretted giving any interviews. She’d done it for her mother, hoping that a profile piece might bring more attention to her case against the police department back in Wichita. The strategy hadn’t worked. The case was still pending, the police department was still calling her father’s death a suicide, and her mother was still broke.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Ellie cautioned. “I said I was interested in it, not that I was an expert.”

“Do you remember this murder?”

McIlroy handed Ellie another folded piece of paper. It was a photocopy of a newspaper article, dated just over a year earlier, about the discovery of another young woman’s body — this one shot to death in NoLita, just north of Little Italy.

An aspiring psychologist and author who devoted herself to the study of interpersonal relationships died alone early yesterday morning after she was shot in the trendy NoLita neighborhood in downtown Manhattan, a police spokesman said. Caroline Hunter, 29, was killed on the corner of Spring and Elizabeth shortly after 2 a.m. in what police investigators believe was a botched robbery attempt.
Hunter was pursuing her Ph.D. in social psychology at New York University, where her dissertation examined the role of online relationships in contemporary society. She had justsigned a significant publishing contract to write a book summarizing her findings for a broader audience.
“Carrie, without a doubt, would have emerged as one of the most significant sociological voices of her generation,” said her editor at Penman Publishing, Joan Landers. “We have all lost the opportunity to learn from her.”
The gunshots interrupted a telephone conversation Hunter was having with her mother.
“She often called late because of the time zones,” said Barbara Hunter, of Yakima, Washington. “She’d say good night and let me know all was well. She was in the middle of telling me about a meeting she had with her editor when I heard some kind of scuffle, then two loud bangs.”
Mrs. Hunter believed her daughter may have been walking home to her East Village apartment from a meeting arranged on an Internet dating Web site as part of her ongoing research. Police say they have confirmed that Hunter’s dinner companion was not involved in the shooting. Witnesses have reported seeing a lone man flee with Hunter’s purse. Police had no comment on current suspects, but said the investigation continues.