Alafair Burke: Dead Connection

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.

The photograph accompanying the article jogged a memory somewhere in the recesses of Ellie’s mind. Every once in a while, one of the thousands of gorgeous young women in New York City with a professional head shot fell prey to the random violence of the city. Those were the crime stories that the local papers took hold of. Caroline Hunter had been famous for a few days, then relegated to the unsolved murder files.

Ellie told McIlroy that she had a vague recollection of the story.

“So did I. And when I caught this case and saw how pretty Amy Davis was, I immediately pictured the tabloid headlines. That got me thinking about the last time the media glommed on to one of these cases. Out of curiosity, I pulled the file. Caroline Hunter. Notice anything?”

“Kind of hard not to,” Ellie said. “According to this article, Hunter was shot on the way home from a date she’d arranged on the Internet. She was even writing her Ph.D. on online relationships.”

“Anything else?”

“Two women, both attractive. Both in downtown Manhattan. Approximately the same age. One strangled, though; the other shot.” Ellie knew, however, that killers could change the way they killed, as long as the method itself was not an important part of what they considered their M.O.

“What about the timing?”

She calculated last Friday’s date in her head, then saw what McIlroy was getting at. “Exactly one year apart.”

“To the day. Now you know why I said it’s more than a hunch.”

“I believe you said one notch more,” Ellie added.

“Still, it’s more. And that’s why we’re going to Amy Davis’s apartment. Your charge, Detective Hatcher, is to find me something that says we’re on the right track.”