Alafair Burke - Dead Connection

“So you think she lied? Maybe she was at a boyfriend’s place?”

“I don’t think so. There’s a glass of water and an open book on the nightstand. She’s got hair and makeup stuff scattered all over the bathroom. No. She’s definitely been sleeping at home, and there’s no signs of a man around. The e-mail wasn’t printed out from here because she didn’t print it out. Think about it: Why would she need to? She clearly knew where the bar was – she said it was one of her favorite places.”

McIlroy looked excited. “No one can read a thirty-year-old woman like another thirty-year-old woman. Okay, so now tell me what you think it means if Amy Davis wasn’t the one who printed out the e-mail.”

“Well, it might mean there’s some perfectly innocuous explanation.”

“Or?” He obviously wanted to hear her say it.

“Or it might mean that someone else printed out the e-mail and deliberately planted it in her coat pocket so the police wouldn’t miss the fact that Amy had been using FirstDate.”

“And what would that mean?”

“That someone wants us to know he’s out there.”

It meant that, just possibly, Flann McIl-Mulder had much more than a crazy hunch.

ANONYMITY. THE PROMISE OF AN UNREVEALED IDENTITY.Anonymity is appealing. Anonymity provides a shield, and a shield provides safety. Ellie Hatcher and Flann McIlroy were learning, however, that a shield could also be used as a sword.

FirstDate was not like an old-fashioned dating service. There were no background checks and no interviews to determine shared interests and values. The company purported to know nothing about its individual members, let alone who was best suited for whom. In fact, FirstDate’s refusal to suggest potential matches was precisely what attracted the lovelorn, at least those who believed that chemistry and love were too irrational and unpredictable to be crassly calculated by a computer.

FirstDate left the hunt for these elusive objects to the hunters but made the possibility of a successful end to the hunt seem plausible. It did so by providing a virtual meat market with no geographic or temporal limits. With FirstDate, you could hook up with your next love from your desk, with none of the messiness (or potential lawsuits) inherent in dating a coworker. With FirstDate, you could meet someone on a Saturday morning while you surfed the net in your pajamas in front of the television.

But what really attracted customers to FirstDate was the anonymity provided by cyberspace. FirstDate users went by pseudonyms. No addresses, no phone numbers. Not even e-mail addresses. Members contacted each other – at least initially – directly through the FirstDate site, using the FirstDate mailboxes and messaging systems, rather than personal e-mail accounts. The entire system was set up so that careful members could “meet” and get to know any other FirstDate member without ever disclosing their identities.

Anonymity. Safety. Privacy. It all sounded good. Unless, of course, a killer used the anonymity to ensure safety and privacy from the police.

To find the men who contacted Amy Davis through FirstDate, Ellie and Flann needed access to her account. That simple task was proving to be frustratingly difficult.

The many pages on the FirstDate Web site listed only one telephone number, and that was for members of the media. Everyone else was supposed to make contact via e-mail. Ellie called the number, and a public relations representative eventually put her through to a customer service representative. Much to Ellie’s surprise, even after she identified herself and explained the nature of her inquiry, the FirstDate employee informed her that she would need a court order before the company would release any personal information regarding Amy Davis.

“The poor woman is dead,” Ellie protested. “I think if she were here, she’d be more concerned about the police finding the man who killed her than about her privacy.”

There had been an uncomfortable silence, followed by the comment, “We at FirstDate assume that our customers value privacy above all else. We will, however, comply with any lawfully issued court orders.”

Anonymity. Safety. Privacy.

After their efforts with FirstDate petered out, they tried the department’s computer technicians, but were told the staff was too backed up to look at Amy’s laptop. Apparently McIlroy’s suck with the honchos didn’t trickle down to the crime analysts.

“Aah, why bother? Corporations and crooks take all of the techies worth having anyway.” He and Ellie sat side by side at his desk, staring at Davis’s laptop screen. McIlroy picked up the phone. “I know an A.D.A. who will help us get a court order. We’ll force FirstDate to open Davis’s account.”

Ellie waved him off. “That’ll take forever. Let me try a few things.”

She pulled up the log-on page at FirstDate. She typed “MoMAgirl” in the user name box, offered a few random letters for the password box, then hit enter. The computer responded with an error message informing her that the user name and password did not match.

“No shit,” McIlroy said. “You really think you’re going to stumble upon it?”

“Nope.” Ellie clicked on the hypertext beneath the error message: Forgot your password ?

Ellie smiled when the next screen appeared. The screen contained three prompts: the e-mail address the member had used to register, the member’s date of birth, and the name of the member’s pet. “For a company that values privacy, they sure haven’t done much to protect it.”

She had seen a few e-mails printed out on Amy’s desk at her apartment. They had all listed an e-mail address in her name at the Museum of Modern Art. She typed that address into the first box on the screen, followed by Amy’s date of birth, followed by “Chowhound.” That was a good cat name. Good and memorable.

She hit enter, mentally crossing her fingers. Then she received another message. Sorry but the information you provided does not match our records .

McIlroy reached again for the phone. “I’m going to make that call to the D.A.’s office now. Good thing I didn’t bring you onto the case for your computer skills.”

“Don’t you dare,” Ellie said, holding up her hand. “And here I thought you were starting to have some faith in me.”

She pulled up the member profile for MoMAgirl. The photograph of Amy Davis was flattering, but with enough shadows to maintain some mystery. Her dark hair was windblown, and she wore sunglasses. She was smiling, seemingly happy to be wherever she was when the picture was taken.

In the box of basic information, next to her photograph, and above a lengthier statement Amy had written about herself, MoMAgirl listed her height (5’3”), hair and eye color (brown and blue, respectively), body type (athletic), ethnicity (white), and age (29).

“Got it,” Ellie said, clicking back to the password reminder page. “Amy wasn’t twenty-nine, but she wanted FirstDate to think she was.”

Ellie typed in the requested information again, this time shaving two years off Amy’s birth year. When she hit the enter key, a message popped up informing her that her FirstDate password had been sent to the member’s e-mail address.

“Call MoMA, please? Ask them how employees check their e-mail from home. And make sure you get her log-in information.”

A few minutes later, McIlroy had the information they needed to access Amy’s work account. Ellie logged in and found eighty-two messages waiting. The most recent was from FirstDate, reminding Amy that her password for the profile MoMAgirl was “Colby.”

“Hot diggity,” Flann said, rubbing his palms together.