Spoke to External Recruiter, Then Fund Publicly Posted Job

Last month I reached out to and spoke with an external recruiter about a job opportunity that turned out to be at a fund I respect and for a role I'd actually quite like to explore. The recruiter was enthusiastic (or at least compellingly acted that way) about my candidacy because the fund has some unusual main criteria for the role and I fit all of them quite well, but it's been crickets ever since our convo. She claims to have sent my info to the head of HR at the fund that day. Market's been crazy volatile past few weeks, so I haven't really thought much of the delay until...

Today I see that the head of research for this particular fund posted late last week a new post on LinkedIn saying they were hiring, and the company publicly posted the role. I also (by chance) happened to learn the company had previously posted (and then taken down) a posting late last year for this role. 

Here's my question: do I reach out to the fund directly and/or apply to their new public job posting? I do think I'm an excellent fit for this particular role, so I want to be conscious of optics. But I find this situation quite odd -- why does a firm post an opening that they just contracted out to a recruiter who is also posting it? I'm suspecting the recruiter may not have got an exclusive contract and/or had the contract pulled. Recruiter  did say last week (when the company posted the job) that she was waiting to hear back, after I asked for an update.