Alafair Burke - Dead Connection

Zoya pushed a loose strand of hair out of her face and turned toward Ellie. “Vitya is a good provider. He works at the storage warehouse like I told you. They do imports and exports out of there, but I do not know the details.”

“You make a point of not knowing the details. But Tatiana didn’t have any reason to keep her eyes shut, did she?”

“As much as Vitya enjoyed insulting Tatiana’s lifestyle, yes, I always suspected that acquaintances of his might have shared some of her – bad habits.” She was still distancing her husband from the criminal activity, but at least she was talking.

“And it didn’t strike you as odd when your husband’s pal Ed Becker turned out to be the lead detective on your sister’s murder case?”

“Vitya told me that Becker took the case because he is our friend – that he would find out who killed her. I had no idea she was working for police.”

“And now what do you think, Zoya?”

A tear fell slowly from the corner of her eye, down the bridge of her nose, and stopped at her lips. She brushed it away. “I do not know what to think. Vitya, he is the father of my children.”

“And Tatiana was your sister. I talked to Charlie Dixon. He’s the FBI agent in the picture I showed you. He knew Tatiana was holding something back. She was protecting Vitya. She was protecting you and your son. She didn’t want you to have to earn a living the way she did, and it got her killed. If she hadn’t cared so much about you, if she had simply told Dixon everything she knew, Vitya would have gone down, and Tatiana would still be alive right now. Are you really going to be able to forgive him for that?”

Zoya took short quick breaths, trying to fight back tears, but then broke into a full sob. Across the room, her baby’s brow furrowed, and the bouncy seat came to a halt. Ellie told herself she should feel no sympathy for this woman. If anyone, anyone , ever hurt Jess, she knew exactly where her loyalties would lie.

“Tatiana told Agent Dixon that FirstDate had something to do with your husband’s friends. What’s the connection? You know now why your sister was murdered, but the families of three other women still don’t have the truth. If you can tell me how FirstDate fits into this, I might be able to give them some answers, and I could leave you out of this.”

Zoya shook her head frantically in her hands. “I told you, I don’t know anything. He doesn’t tell me anything. I am his wife. I am mother to his children. It is not like American marriage, these people on TV who talk to each other and share their secrets. He goes to work, he sees his friends. I do not ask what goes on, and he does not tell me.”

Ellie could no longer stomach being part of a conversation that Zoya was using to cement her misguided feelings of victimization. “I hope you can live with the choices you’ve made, Zoya.”

“I GOT ZOYA to admit her husband knew Becker.” Ellie called Charlie Dixon on her way to the subway station and gave him a quick update. “Barbara Hunter says her daughter used her new MasterCard only one time before an unauthorized charge turned up in Texas. Want to guess where she used it?”

“FirstDate.”

“You got it.”

“Damnit. That’s how FirstDate was involved,” Dixon said. “I assumed all along it was money laundering. Whenever you see white collar guys like Stern wrapped up with the kinds of scumbags Tatiana was involved with, it’s either because they’re using or pushing dope, or they’re washing money. Stern never struck me as a junkie-”

“But he could very well be a thief. You said he lives above his means, right? Well, he’s got access to a steady stream of credit card numbers. He hands those to Rostov and his buddies in exchange for a piece of the pie. Tatiana must have heard Rostov talking about FirstDate, but didn’t want to give him up directly because of her sister.”

“But then Rostov saw her with a guy like me and realized something was wrong.”

“Rostov followed my brother to Vibrations before the assault. He probably found a way to follow you to the federal building.”

In the momentary silence that followed, Ellie sensed that Dixon was forcing himself to hold it together, delaying the complete meltdown that would come if he allowed himself to contemplate his role in Tatiana’s death. “So Rostov killed Tatiana for cooperating, and then killed Caroline Hunter as a precaution? Or do you think Becker pulled the trigger?”

“Becker was on duty when Tatiana was killed,” she said. “I think Rostov’s the shooter; Becker made sure to take the call-out. That would mean Rostov’s probably the shooter on Caroline Hunter as well. Becker saw her death in the paper and figured out it wasn’t just a robbery. He took title to that boat just a month after Caroline’s murder. Want to bet it was the payoff for his silence?”

“I’ll see what I can learn about its previous owner. Maybe it’ll give us another link back to Rostov.”

“Thanks.”

“So if Tatiana and Hunter were killed to cover up a fraud ring, how do the other two FirstDate murders fit in?”

Four women. Two patterns. “I don’t know yet, but I’m about to ask Mark Stern that exact question.”

FOR THE LAST three days, while the media had futilely dug around the NYPD for leaks, Peter Morse was the only reporter in the entire world who knew for certain that the City Island murder-suicide involving two members of the NYPD family was related to McIlroy’s serial killer investigation. To Peter’s surprise, the decision not to report the connection earlier had been an easy one. Even the reporter in him knew that it was simply off-limits to use information he had deciphered from Ellie’s circumstances, at least before the two of them had a chance to agree on some ground rules.

In some ways, the last few days had been a vacation from the real world as he and Ellie got to know each other while agreeing not to talk about the case until the police department made an official statement. Now, that statement had been made.

When the assistant chief announced at this morning’s press conference that Ed Becker was the FirstDate killer, the rest of the reporters in the room were as shocked as if they had just learned the Dalai Lama had a nasty porn habit. Mentally, Peter had a head start wrapping his brain around the facts, but he hadn’t allowed himself to begin writing until now.

He needed help understanding the technological aspects of the case. A critical turn in the police investigation was the tracking of the locations that the killer used to access the Internet. Peter had tried fifteen different ways of glossing over the details but was still not conveying the gist of it well enough.

He tried his usual go-to contact on computer issues, but the lucky jerk was in Cabo. Then he remembered the source Ellie had mentioned during their dinner at Half King. He found the man’s business card in his wallet. Hopefully, Jason Upton had some time to give him an Internet 101 primer. It would be ironic if Ellie wound up helping him report this story after all, despite their agreement not to talk about it since Friday night.

He hadn’t heard from Ellie since her meeting this morning with the brass, and calling her to say he was going to contact her source would be an excuse to touch base. He tried her cell, but the call went directly in to voice mail.

Hey, it’s me. Sorry. Is that too familiar? It is I, Peter Morse of the Daily Post. I just got back from the assistant chief’s press conference. I half expected to see you there, so I hope everything went okay this morning at the precinct. Oh, and thanks for pointing me to Jason Upton. I’m hoping he can walk me through the computer locating stuff. Anyway, I’m going to be workin’ hard, as the president would say, trying to get this story done for deadline, but I’d love to see you later on. Give me a call, okay? ’Bye .