Dead Connection (30 page)

MARK STERN was in the middle of a hands-free telephone call when Ellie walked into his office without knocking. He looked behind her for the imaginary person who might protect him from unwanted interruption.

“Jan, I’m sorry. I need to call you back…. Yeah, I know it’s urgent. I’ll call you right back.” He pulled off his headset and tossed it on his desk. “Well, come on in, Detective Hatcher. What can I do for you?”

“What? No ‘Sorry about your partner’? No ‘I guess he was right. I should have helped the two of you earlier’?”

“Sorry. Obviously I’m very sorry about what happened to Detective McIlroy, but I told that to the other detectives who informed me of his death, and I’ve been cooperating as much as I can with the police department since then. But you’ve got your case all wrapped up, and I’m in the middle of a serious shit storm here.”

“Mass membership cancellations probably screw up a company’s plans to go public, huh?”

“That, Detective, is the understatement of the fucking century. That was my lawyer,” he said, pointing to the headset. “He says the deal can’t happen. To avoid fraud, I’d have to disclose the membership cancellations, and that’s going to destroy the stock price. Fuck.” He sent a stack of documents flying from his desk.

“The company can’t just ride this out?”

Stern took a deep breath and collapsed into his chair, trying to regain his composure. “No. I definitely do not see a good riding-it-out scenario in front of me. My next phone call is to my wife to talk to her about taking another mortgage out on our apartment. That should go well.”

“I have to ask you a question, Mr. Stern, and I want you to control your temper when I do. I’m willing to keep an open mind about whatever you tell me, but after what has happened the last few days, I just don’t have the energy to get into a fight with you.”

“I don’t have a lot of fight left in me either. Go ahead and ask your questions, Detective Hatcher.”

“Do you know that your customers’ credit card numbers are being stolen off your server?”

Stern’s obvious surprise confirmed Ellie’s suspicions.

“That’s what I thought. I’ll be honest. I walked into the building just now assuming you were involved. But seeing you try to save your company in the middle of all this chaos reminded me that every person I’ve spoken to who’s had any encounter with you has mentioned your ferocious dedication to FirstDate. You frustrated the hell out of me, in fact, with your single-mindedness.”

Stern nodded gently. “I tell people that this company is my baby. I created it.”

“Exactly. Your baby. And stealing credit card numbers from your customers could jeopardize that baby, and you wouldn’t do something like that unless the payoffs were substantial.”

“I wouldn’t do it at all, Detective.”

“I’m not judging you. I’m pointing out that you don’t appear to be enjoying those kinds of financial windfalls. And if you were reaping side profits from fraud, you never would have called attention to it by taking your company public. That would only open you up to the scrutiny of shareholders and financial analysts.”

Charlie Dixon had assumed that Stern was sitting on a pile of untraceable money, but the truth was, the man was broke. He was living above his means, and now the public offering that was going to save him was nothing but a fantasy.

“So you’re telling me that on top of all my other problems, I’ve got a hole in my server that someone’s hacking into? What does this have to do with Ed Becker?”

“I don’t think he killed those women. I think he had something to do with two of them — it’s a long story. My point is that I think someone else murdered Amy Davis and Megan Quinn, and they did it to ruin you. When Caroline Hunter was killed, all the news coverage mentioned her research into online dating. Someone with a grudge against you saw the opportunity to destroy your baby — and you along with it. And whoever it was also had a grudge against Amy Davis. They sent her that bogus solicitation for a free membership, then used Richard Hamline’s credit card to pay for it. They killed Amy exactly one year after Hunter was killed, placing a FirstDate e-mail in her coat pocket to make sure the police connected the two cases. Then, when the media still didn’t name your company or you, he added another victim — Megan Quinn.”

“This is nuts. This is absolutely sick. I don’t know
anyone
who would do something like that. I can’t even imagine knowing someone who could concoct such a demented plan, let alone someone who’d carry it out.”

“You can’t think that way,” Ellie argued. “A man like this can be a father, a husband, a church leader, a man of the community. No matter how absurd you think this is, I need to know who might have a grudge against you, particularly with respect to FirstDate.”

Stern was shaking his head.

“It’s possible it’s someone who knows about computers or even has access to your server. Maybe an employee? Someone you fired?”

As Ellie listened to her own thoughts leave her mouth, she heard discordant lines of recent conversations clashing in her head. Mark Stern:
This company is my baby. I created it
. Another voice saying, I wouldn’t have worked to start the company if I didn’t think it could serve a good purpose…. Mark and I really believed…. We did our best….

She saw a pause in Mark Stern, a momentary hesitation.

“Tell me about Jason Upton,” she said.

“But how did you—”

“Because I know what happened.”

38

ELLIE GAVE STERN A CONDENSED VERSION OF THE STORY THAT
Upton had told her: Upton and Stern had started the company together, went their separate ways with no hard feelings, and Upton had lived happily ever after on his severance package and his trust fund. Stern offered a slightly different account.

“He was pissed. When we incorporated, he demanded equal footing in the company, and I refused to give it to him. He claimed to be a founder, and he was only a programmer. It was my idea. I found the capital. I created the structure. All he did was program.”

Ellie remembered the nostalgic way that Upton conveyed his memories of starting FirstDate with Stern, and wondered if perhaps Upton’s claims had more merit than Stern was letting on.

“But he walked away from the company despite all of that?”

“He continued working as a programmer at first. Occasionally he’d make snarky, pissy remarks, but for the most part, I thought he was over it. Then he threatened to sue. Shit, in retrospect, he threatened to do a lot more than that. I assumed it was hothead stuff — blowing off steam. I’d known the guy for five years, and he never struck me as violent. In the end, I had my lawyer bring him in and offer a settlement. I swore I’d fight a penny more, and he backed down. Or so I thought. You don’t really think—”

“I don’t know. I’m still trying to make sense of it myself. He’s got plenty of money, so why would he do all of this? Just out of pride? Because you didn’t give him the recognition he wanted?”

“Don’t look at me. I think this entire conversation is absurd. But I can tell you that if Jason Upton has money these days, it’s not from his family, and it’s certainly not from his settlement with me.”

“I know for certain he said he had a trust fund. In fact, he suggested it was the reason he didn’t share your ambitions. And I remember thinking he seemed like the kind of person who’d have family money. He’s got that whole preppy thing going on like he was born on the Princeton campus.”

“That’s all an act. Jason went to Tufts, but it was on scholarship. His dad sold shoes, and his mom was a teacher. He grew up in Oklahoma. He developed that Waspy affectation over time because it helped him land chicks. I met him about six months after he got to New York, and he was living in some ratty old studio on the Lower East Side.”

“Tufts. That’s in Boston, right?”

Stern nodded.

“And Upton would’ve still been in Boston six years ago?”

Stern thought for a moment, then nodded again. “Yeah. I think he hung out there for about a year after he graduated, then I met him shortly after he moved here. That was almost exactly six years ago.”

Stern had met Upton when he first moved to New York, not long after a man using the name Edmond Bertrand had an arrest warrant issued in Boston for his failure to appear on charges of using a stolen credit card.

Accents are easy to fake
. Flann had made the observation when he first suggested that Becker could be their man. But they had been assuming that the person who called Peter about the letter in the library was faking a southern accent, not concealing it from everyone else.

“Did you ever verify that Upton even went to Tufts?”

Stern’s facial expression was answer enough. “You don’t think—”

“You’re not the first employer who didn’t check on a friend’s references. Do you think you might have a record of Upton’s date of birth?” Ellie suspected that most of what Upton had told Stern about himself was a lie, but, like many people who used aliases, he might have been truthful about his birth date. Juggling multiple names was enough work without keeping track of corresponding birth dates.

“Human resources probably has it. I can ask.”

While Stern picked up his phone to make the call, Ellie took out her cell phone to call Charlie Dixon with an update. A red flashing light indicated she had a new message that must have come in while she was on the subway. She checked her voice mail and smiled when she heard Peter’s voice. Then she got to the end of the message and dropped the phone.

ENOCH. The killer called himself Enoch. Reading something into that moniker had thrown Ellie onto the wrong track. She had glommed onto the Book of Enoch, just because the name Richard Hamline had been used to open Enoch’s FirstDate account. R. H., like
The Book of Enoch
translated by R. H. Charles.

She had made the same mistake the D.C. Sniper investigators made when they attributed meaning to reports of a white truck near all the shootings. It was the same mistake shared by Wichitans who’d found a seeming pattern in the number three, found in the addresses of many of the College Hill Strangler’s victims. But white trucks and number threes are so common that they can always be found, as long as you’re looking for them. She had found a connection to the Book of Enoch because she had searched for it.

What she had overlooked was the other Enoch — the son of Cain, who betrayed and killed his brother, Abel. All along, the name Enoch had been Jason Upton’s private joke, referring to FirstDate itself, the offspring of the traitorous Mark Stern.

She realized now the truth that lay beneath all of the illusions created by Jason Upton. Disgruntled with Stern’s refusal to recognize him as a cofounder of the company, Upton started stealing credit card numbers off the FirstDate server and selling them in the vast black market that exists for such information. He could steal here and there and never get caught because credit card companies tended to eat the losses without investigating how the numbers were lost. But Caroline Hunter was different. He rigged the FirstDate server to get a preview of any online complaints, and Caroline’s complaint would have jumped out at him. He’d made the mistake of stealing the credit card number of a customer who’d used her card for only one purchase — a FirstDate membership.

I don’t suppose you still have some magic password you can use to log on to the system
? Ellie had asked the question jokingly six days earlier in Upton’s office.
Sorry. I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that
.

But that was precisely how it worked.

When he read the complaint Caroline Hunter filed with FirstDate, he would have told Vitali Rostov, his contact for the buyers of the stolen card numbers. Rostov sent Becker to quell Hunter’s concerns, but Becker must have left with doubts that Hunter would let the matter drop. To play it safe, Rostov killed her. After all, he’d done it once before: Tatiana.

When Upton read the news of Caroline Hunter’s murder, and learned about her online dating research, he saw his opportunity. He tracked down Amy Davis to use as the “next” victim of a serial killer using FirstDate to murder. Ellie wasn’t certain yet why Upton wanted revenge against Amy, but she knew it had something to do with Edmond Bertrand.

Then, as luck would have it, the detectives searching for Enoch had shown up in Jason Upton’s office looking for help. He hadn’t given Becker’s boat registration to Flann initially because he realized it might tip the detectives off to Becker’s connection to Vitali Rostov. To misdirect the investigation, he left a letter for a
Daily Post
reporter quoting from the Book of Enoch.

But when Ellie began asking too many questions about Chekova and Rostov anyway, Upton realized that his personal vendetta against Stern could jeopardize the money train. When Flann had asked for a background check on Becker, Upton saw an opportunity to pin all of the murders on him.

And because Ellie had fallen for all of these tricks, she had sent Peter Morse directly into the hands of a man who would sacrifice two innocent women as pawns in a one-sided war.

There was no answer at Peter’s desk. She tried his cell. No answer. She called the general number for the
Daily Post
newsroom. A woman picked up.

“Hi, is this, um—” Ellie blanked out on the name of the intern Peter had mentioned.

“Justine Navarro. For whom are you calling?”

“Peter Morse. This is Detective Ellie Hatcher—”

“Oh, I know all about you.”

Ellie didn’t have time to pursue that one. “I really need to find Peter. Is he there?”

“No, he left about a half hour ago. He was meeting someone at his apartment.”

Ellie thanked Justine and hung up, wondering what to do next. A taxi ride to Peter’s apartment would take at least half an hour.

She called Peter’s cell phone again. “Listen very closely to me, Peter. Act like I’m not telling you anything special. Keep your gaze straight ahead and your expression neutral. Jason Upton is very dangerous. Don’t take any chances with him. Call me as soon as he leaves your apartment.”

She dialed another number and reached yet another voice-mail recording. “Jason, hi. This is Ellie Hatcher. I’ve got that laptop ready.” She worked to steady her voice. Cool and calm. “I’m not going to be able to keep it long, so whenever you can check it out, that’d be great. Talk to you soon.”

“I take it you couldn’t reach either of them?” Stern asked.

Ellie shook her head and dialed Peter’s cell number again. The call went directly to his outgoing message.

“I need to ask you one more question, Mark, and I need you to give me an honest answer. How flexible are you willing to be on the details of how we figured out what we think we know about Jason Upton?”

She watched as Stern’s mouth turned up slightly at one corner. “If flexibility means getting back at the motherfucker who did all of this, then consider me extremely flexible.”

Ellie had only one way to play this.

ELLIE KNEW the layout of Peter’s apartment. She knew he was there with Jason Upton. She was fairly confident that Upton would be unarmed. She had a good cover story for showing up — she needed Jason to check out Becker’s laptop and was told by Peter’s intern that the two of them were holed up here. The plan was to play it cool and walk Jason out of the apartment, leaving Peter safely behind.

Of course, she knew there was a chance Jason would be waiting for her. He could have realized something was up when she called. And it was at least conceivable he had a gun. But it was precisely in those circumstances that Peter would need her intervention most.

She had done everything she could to stack the deck in her favor, but now she had no choice but to accept the odds and go upstairs on her own. She punched in the electronic security code she’d seen Peter use the past few days.

Ellie never even checked her blind spot when she stepped inside the building and considered the dark, narrow staircase in front of her. By the time she heard a sound behind her and reached for her gun, it was too late. She felt cold, circular metal against the base of her skull and immediately realized her mistake. Zoya had claimed that Vitali Rostov was at work, but stopping Ellie
was
Rostov’s work. He’d been standing behind the door — not inside the apartment, but on the ground floor at the entrance.

“Uh, uh, uh. I’ll take that.” She felt a hand move across the back of her waistband to her holster, then felt the weight of her Glock leave her body. “Upstairs, Detective.”

As she climbed the stairs, Ellie considered her options. She could hear Rostov close behind her. She smelled his sweat and stale deodorant. She could almost feel the warmth of his body against hers. He was only one step behind her. A heavy rear push kick might send him falling. It might also get her shot, leaving Peter helpless. And even if she made it upstairs, it would still leave her unarmed, trapped above the bottleneck of a staircase, with an injured Rostov waiting for them below. She had to wait it out.

When she stopped at Peter’s closed apartment door, Rostov ordered her to open it. He nudged her with the gun to emphasize the point.

Ellie opened the door to find Jason Upton sitting at Peter’s dining room table. He slowly bobbed a tea bag up and down in a mug Ellie had drunk from the previous morning. Rostov pushed her through the apartment door.

“Good afternoon, Detective. Where’s that laptop you called me about? Funny, you don’t seem to have it with you.” Rostov shoved Ellie to the back corner of the room and stood next to Upton. She watched as he placed her service pistol on the table in front of him while he kept his own weapon fixed on her. “That was a stupid thing you did, calling me like that. I was planning to deal with you later, once you got that laptop. I’d tell you what you needed to hear to go away and, well, if that didn’t work, I’d find some other way.”

“Where’s Peter?” Ellie asked.

“You’re the one who dragged your boyfriend into this. He was in the bathroom the first time you called. I saw your name on the screen of his phone. Then you called him again. Then you left a message for me, and that’s when I turned his phone off. See, if you were so hot to have me examine that laptop of yours, why would you call Peter first?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t insult me.” In his anger, the cultured affectation left his raised voice, and she picked up the hint of a husky southern drawl. “You told me this morning that getting that laptop would take a while, then you call me two hours later saying you’ve got it already? I’m not stupid. In fact, some would say you were the one who was stupid by making this all so easy for me. I took my time tutoring your boyfriend until Vitya arrived. I knew you’d be close behind. That’s what you do when your partners go missing, isn’t it? Go out and look for them?”

She pictured McIlroy again, sitting on the floor of Becker’s boat. Two bullet holes. So much blood.

“So you
were
on the boat. You got a new gun since you planted the. 38 on Becker.” She looked at the double-action pepper shot Derringer that Rostov pointed at her. It held only four shots, required a manual repeat between each one, and didn’t pack a ton of power. It could do some damage at close range, but still, she had caught a break when he’d opted for his own weapon over hers. “What did you do with Peter, you son of a bitch?”

“How sweet,” Upton mocked. “He’s tied up in the bathtub. Are you into that kind of thing?”

Ellie ignored his question. She knew he was trying to break her. “There’s no reason to bring him into this. He doesn’t know anything.”