Alafair Burke - Dead Connection

“All these years, Suzanne, she could never trust anyone. Maybe if that awful business had never happened. Maybe she wouldn’t have been in the city. Or at least she wouldn’t have been alone.”

Evelyn knew that Suzanne, of all people, remembered the incident to which she referred. Amy had learned her lesson. She had to be careful. Careful with men. Careful with trust. Careful with the unpredictability of human emotions. These were valuable lessons, but Amy had learned them too young, and she had probably overlearned them. Plenty of women were unmarried after thirty, but Amy had never even had a serious relationship. She was too careful, too untrusting, too unwilling to be vulnerable.

Evelyn’s crying had subsided and her breathing was more regular now. She stood, straightened her sweater set, and began to gather the things she would need for her trip. “I will pack my own bag, but I do need one very huge favor. Can you make room in your home for a cat? He’s a Persian. I did my best to lobby Hamp, but he’s allergic.”

FIRSTDATE’S CORPORATE OFFICES WERE HOUSED ON THE EIGHTEENTHfloor of a midsize tower on Rector and Greenwich streets in the city’s financial district. A red-haired receptionist stood guard behind a sleek black desk that rested between the elevator and a set of double glass doors. Through the glass, Ellie spotted a dozen or so workers clicking away on keyboards in cookie-cutter cubicles on the floor, with a few private offices scattered along the perimeter.

The redhead wasn’t much of a guard. She hunched in her high-backed chair, twirling a lock of wavy hair with her fingers, speaking animatedly into her cell phone. A couple of light taps of Ellie’s nails against the receptionist’s desktop triggered nothing but a nod. A flash of her detective’s shield finally caught the woman’s attention.

“I’ll call you right back.” The redhead flipped the phone shut, straightened her posture, and asked how she could help. McIlroy asked to speak with someone who might be able to assist them with some profile names that had come up in an investigation.

“I’m sorry. We have a firm policy against disclosing information about our users.”

Apparently all FirstDate employees received the same training.

“We were hoping to talk to someone about that,” McIlroy said. “We certainly understand the reasons for your policy, but this is a little unusual. Our case is a double homicide. Two women are dead, and they were both active on FirstDate. I’m sure you can see the urgency.”

The receptionist’s eyes widened at the mention of a double homicide, a description that wasn’t precisely accurate since the two victims were killed an entire calendar year apart. But people mislead for a reason. Ellie watched the woman’s fingers move toward a directory of telephone extensions that was taped next to the telephone.

“I’m really not sure how I can help you-”

“We just need to talk to someone who might be in the position to look up a few names for us,” Ellie interrupted. She and McIlroy had agreed in advance that Ellie would play the bad cop if necessary to get to the company CEO, Mark Stern.

“There’s only one person I can think of who might have the authority-”

“Why don’t you go ahead and call that person?” McIlroy asked.

“He has a very busy schedule. Can you, like, call later to schedule an appointment?”

Ellie stepped in. “If we have to get a court order and FirstDate ends up on the front page of the New York Daily Post as a stalking ground for serial killers, I suspect Mr. Stern will want to know who turned us away when we tried to make a quiet courtesy call. Is this the name I should give him when he asks?” She held up the nameplate that rested on the desk.

As it turned out, looks really couldn’t kill. Once Ellie and the receptionist came to that mutual realization, a set of manicured pink nails tapped a four-digit extension into a phone, and, after a terse conversation, Ellie and McIlroy were escorted to a corner office.

“Mr. Stern, these are the detectives who wanted to speak with you.”

The chief executive officer of FirstDate lived up to one’s expectations of a man who made his living selling the romantic fantasy of realistic love. He was probably approaching forty and wore a platinum wedding band, a conservative navy blue suit, and a not-so-conservative lime green tie. His hair was on the long side for an executive, with the right amount of gray at the temples. Message: I was young once myself but found the right girl, fell in love, and remained loyal and happy. The silver-framed photograph of his beautiful wife in her beautiful wedding dress, placed prominently on his desk, wasn’t exactly subtle, but selling love, after all, was how Mark Stern made his money.

McIlroy handled the introductions, then got to the matter at hand. “We’re investigating the murder of two women – similar ages, killed precisely one year apart. Both women were killed outside of their homes, apparently by strangers. Both women were using FirstDate.”

Stern nodded a few times, taking in the information. “That sounds quite tragic, detectives, but I’m not sure how I can possibly help you.”

“We have a list of the men who contacted our victims through your service. We need your help to track them down.”

“If you have a list of suspects, I’m not certain what more I can add. Checking them out sounds like police work to me.”

“A list of user names,” Ellie corrected. “We have a list of FirstDate profile names and need to know the identities behind them. Coming up with that list, and figuring out that you’re the one with our answers – that was our police work.”

Stern smiled, more at Ellie than at McIlroy. “I’ll presume that you accessed the accounts lawfully.”

“We did.”

“And you have an entire list of users who contacted both of these poor women before they died?”

Ellie interrupted. “The two poor women had names, Mr. Stern: Caroline Hunter and Amy Davis. And, no, we don’t have a list of men who contacted both of them, but we do have a list of men who contacted either of them. And as you know, a single person can use multiple user names. In fact, Caroline Hunter was using your service to do precisely that. We need the names so we can look for overlap between the lists, among other things.”

“Among other things? You mean things like prying into the backgrounds of our users to see who might seem murderous?”

Ellie gave him her best sardonic smile. “We’ll cross-reference it with registered sex offenders, mental patients, gun records. Sounds like you know police work after all.”

“Let me see if I can save the two of you some time. From what I gather, you have two murder victims who were both FirstDate customers, and so you assume there must be a connection. That’s a logical conclusion only if you assume that the use of my service is unusual. Isn’t that how these things work? You discover two victims use the same tiny dry cleaner, and you track down that lead?”

Neither detective spoke, but Stern caught the glance between them.

“Okay, so here’s where the logic falls apart. FirstDate’s no longer the corner dry cleaner. We have tens of thousands of customers in the New York metropolitan area alone.” Stern was in full-blown sales-speak now. “People are busy. Dating at work’s a no-no. A service like ours has become as common as joining a gym. What you see as a coincidence between two women is yet another indication of just how common FirstDate has become in the lives of city singles. It’s no more coincidental than if both of these women read the New Yorker or bought groceries at D’Agostino’s.”