Obsession in Death (34 page)

“Sorry, the game idea. It’s intriguing. The body type… No, you’re not looking for fragile or soft. She carried the dead weight of a full-grown woman. She outran you.”

“She didn’t outrun me,” Eve protested, insulted. “She had a street-wide lead plus, because I had to dodge traffic to get across.”

“Apologies.” But his lips twitched. “I mean to say she’s quick. How far did you chase her?”

“Two and a half blocks, not counting through the restaurant.”

“Quick and at least some endurance as all this would’ve been as flat-out as possible. So the odds are she’s in shape.”

“She runs,” Eve stated, then cocked her head. “She’s fast, yeah, yeah, and likely fit. Maybe she trains. A fitness center maybe, keep in tune. She had Bastwick planned all the way through, I’m sure of it. So she knew she’d have to carry her from the living area to the bedroom since she wanted her on the bed. And – shit.”

“What?”

“I’m an idiot. She put her in bed. She killed Ledo in bed.”

Eve began to pace. “I don’t know what she planned for Hastings. No way she would carry him all the way upstairs. But he’s got props, right? In the studio. Something that could stand in for a bed. That’s what she’d use for him. Why in bed? Why does she put them or take them in bed?”

“Vulnerability? Sleep, sex, sickness. Wouldn’t those be the top reasons for being in bed? All of those make you vulnerable.”

“Good, that’s good.” Struck, she pointed a finger at him. “They’re vulnerable, she’s in control. And it’s tidy, too, isn’t it? She doesn’t leave them sprawled on the floor. She cuts out the tongue – that’s a statement – but doesn’t otherwise mutilate. Tidy. And a bed, it’s like a display. Here’s your present.”

She told him about the holo program she’d run, the time lag. How she calculated the killer had used it.

“You challenged her today. The media conference.”

“I need to piss her off, shake her up. I think I did. And chasing after her added to it. I’m betting she’s not feeling real friendly toward me right now.”

“You’d like her to come after you. In your place, I’d want the same. But that’s not likely to be her next move, is it?”

“No, not likely. Kill me, the whole thing’s finished. She’s given me gifts, and I just haven’t appreciated them properly.”

“If we equate the two murders as giving you something – which hasn’t been fully appreciated,” Roarke considered, “it follows that now she’ll want to take something away.”

“Yeah.” And something would be someone she cared about. “I’m going to tag some people before I get down to things.”

“I’ll just copy that morphing program.” He did so, with a couple of quick clicks. “And send it to the lab. I may be able to add to it.”

“For the case or for the game?”

He smiled, brushed a fingertip over the dent in her chin. “I can do both, Lieutenant. Why don’t we say pie and coffee a bit later?”

“That works. If you’ve got time, Feeney had this other angle. Geek angle,” she added, and laid out the search-and-match idea.

“All right, I’ll set it up. It won’t be quick.”

“He said the same.”

Alone, she started down the list. It made her feel better, just to touch base, to repeat the need for caution. Better yet, everyone she contacted was in for the night.

Really, who wanted to go out in the bitter the night before New Year’s Eve?

That’s the night she had to worry about, she decided. When so many she knew and cared about would be out at some party, some shindig.

She didn’t think her killer would take someone in public. But what better time to get into a target’s empty place, lie in wait?

If she didn’t have the suspect in a cage by the eve, she’d set up some sort of surveillance on potential targets’ houses, apartments.

“But you’re going for somebody tonight, aren’t you? You missed last night. You have to make up for it. You had to run twice now, and once from your… bestie,” she muttered, thinking of Mavis’s term. “Hard on a girl’s self-esteem. You need a win, and you need it bad.”

Considering, Eve brought ID shots on screen.

Not Mavis, she decided, studying the official shot where Mavis had opted for a cotton-candy-pink poof of hair and electric green eyes. Low probability on Mavis and her family.

Same with Peabody and McNab, with Feeney – who looked as if he’d slept in the dung-brown suit and industrial-beige shirt. Too risky, at this point, to go for a cop, so she included all the cops in her division.

The Miras – now, that was a worry. She could count on Mira to be smart and careful, but she’d put an attempt on them in the high probability range. Even without the link to law enforcement – and she was sure the killer had one – anyone who’d read Nadine’s book or seen the vid would know she had a particular link, personal and professional, with Dr. Charlotte Mira.

She also had an embarrassing little crush on Dennis Mira, but nobody knew about that. Mira would, Eve corrected, and felt foolish. Mira always knew.

But look at the guy, with his incredibly kind eyes and mussed-up hair and that absent smile that said he was thinking about something else altogether.

She considered contacting Mira again, impressing on her – again – that the killer might ditch the delivery guise now, go for a straight break-in using the master.

But the master wouldn’t work, Eve reminded herself, and going over it all again edged over into nagging.

Nadine, same deal. High probability – the connection between her and Nadine was well known. Nadine Furst was nobody’s fool, Eve thought, and had top-notch security on her building and her apartment.

Still, the memory of Nadine’s abduction, of the previous attempt on her life two years before, flashed.

It would flash for Nadine, too, Eve decided. She’d take no chances.

Reo? Another concern. If the killer knew details of Eve’s life – personal and professional – she’d know details of Reo’s. The APA was smart, but she wasn’t… tough. Not physically.

Morris? A hell of a lot smarter than a killer. Security decent, she mused, but not as good as it could be.

Louise and Charles. Good security on their home, but each of them worked, patients, clients. Anyone could walk into Louise’s clinic, where the security sucked. Or book a session with Charles. High probability again, but not tonight, she determined. Smarter to try at the clinic, or to pose as a client for Charles. Daytime hit there, most likely.

Unless the killer lured Louise out of the house, medical emergency. The clinic or her mobile medical service.

Shit.

And there was Trina. Not exactly a friend, more of a personal thorn in the side, but a connection. One who posed for official ID as if she wore a flaming tower on her head – fiery red with hot gold tips.

“And she can be stupid,” Eve mused.

She’d barely closed a case she’d caught because Trina had done the stupid.

An e-mail blast, Eve decided. That wasn’t like nagging, it was just putting it all down so everyone had it right in front of them.

She settled down to it, tried to think of a way to write it out that didn’t seem like nagging.

While she did, the killer poured out her own thoughts in words.

I’m hurt. In my body, in my heart, in my soul. I’d nearly forgotten this kind of pain. Not the bruises, ones I discovered after I’d gotten home, tried to calm myself with a warm bath. I never felt them, but must have gotten them from hips and elbows while running through the crowd on the street, or from carts and counters in the restaurant.
 

She chased me, as if she were the hunter and I some sort of prey.
 

When I saw her in front of Mavis’s building, for one instant
–
here then gone
–
I thought, I actually thought: Oh, at last, we can talk face-to-face, we can sit down, have a drink, talk and talk about our partnership.
 

Finally, she’ll tell me what I mean to her, how important I am to her instead of it always, always, ALWAYS, being me who tells her.
 

But I knew, in the instant after that instant, it was never to be. What I saw on her face wasn’t appreciation, wasn’t friendship. It was feral. Hunter. Prey.
 

I’ve been a fool, letting myself believe she cared about me, respected me, appreciated all I’ve done for her.
 

She’s like all the rest. Worse than all the rest.
 

I balanced scales for her, I did what she secretly wanted to do
–
and I know she wanted those scales balanced
–
and when it came down to it, she cared more about Mavis than me.
 

What has that ridiculous woman ever done for Eve?
 

Could it be, and how I hate to think it, that Eve values fame and wealth more than justice? Look who she married
–
a man everyone knows broke countless laws in his lifetime, but has enough money, enough power, to keep justice at bay.
 

And Mavis, there’s fame and fortune
–
and another shady past.
 

Is this what drives Eve after all?
 

I can’t bear to believe that.
 

Yet now I wonder.
 

She preened for the cameras today, didn’t she? Looking through those cameras at me, into me. But not as a friend, not as a partner. But as someone who used my good work for her own gain. Who would destroy the only person, truly the only person, who held her best interest above all else.
 

Have I lost her? This pain in my heart, this drumming in my head, it feels like loss. It feels too familiar, too unspeakable.
 

I know what has to be done now. This very night.
 

She must lose. She must pay a price. Scales to balance.
 

Will we come closer to each other when she feels something of what I feel? Will she look at me, at last, and really see me?
 

I pray our bond can be repaired, and I pray she comes to understand our bond was forged and will only hold strong in death.
 

As Eve had done, the killer brought images onto her main screen. And studied them one by one.

Delia Peabody, Charlotte Mira, Nadine Furst, Mavis Freestone, Li Morris, Cher Reo, Charles Monroe, Louise DiMatto, Ryan Feeney, Ian McNab, Jamie Lingstrom, Lawrence Summerset. Roarke.

Friends, partners, mate.

Wasn’t it time Eve understood she only had
one
friend,
one
partner? And really, at the core, one mate? All of these, all, were distractions, obstacles to the only relationship that should matter.

Still, until now the indulgence of these distractions had been tolerated. Out of friendship, out of affection and an unselfish generosity.

But real friendship was truth, and Eve had to learn and accept truth. So one by one they would be eliminated.

Time to pick the first.

It only took calling up files to have data, already researched, already accumulated, scrolling. Habits, haunts, other connections, routines, and histories.

Eyes tinted the color of good whiskey, eyes the same shade as the ones in the countless photographs of Eve that covered the wall, read the data carefully.

Those eyes were shrewd, intelligent, and crazed.

Eve had her feet up on the desk, the chair kicked back, and her eyes closed when Roarke came in. Galahad lay belly down on her desk, staring at her.

Not sleeping, he thought. Thinking.

Rather than interrupt whatever train she was riding, he moved into the kitchen, programmed fresh coffee, split the large slab of pie. And to reward the cat for being on guard, added a couple of mouse-shaped feline treats.

“Nadine or Mira,” Eve said, eyes still closed when he set the coffee down on her desk.

“As next target?”

“It’s what makes best sense, and Nadine edges out Mira if it’s a night hit. She lives alone. Might have company at any time, sure, but she’d watch for that. Especially watchful after Hastings.”

She opened her eyes now, watched as Galahad inhaled the little cat cookies as if they’d been air. Wisely, Roarke gave him a nudge off the desk before he set down the pie, or it might have met the same fate.

“You could maybe check my work here,” she told Roarke. “I’ve set up a search and match, NYPSD database. Cops, support staff, lab, morgue, all crime scene personnel, including the cleaners contracted to swipe down a crime scene after we clear it. If I don’t hit anything on this, I’ll expand to relatives of same. Could be. Thinking about running another on applicants to the Academy, forensics, morgue, and so on. We’ve gone through the most direct lines there. So using McNab and Yancy’s best guess, I’m trying it again.”

“Up,” he said, and switched places with her.

He studied the search, the parameters she’d programmed, the images, the language.

“This would do it.”

“Good, because it took me forever.”

“I’m going to refine it with what I’ve done. It doesn’t change much, but sharpens the edges a bit.”

He paused the search, input her new data, ordered a realignment as she sampled the pie.

“You have sharper images?”