Kindred In Death

5

FEENEY CHOMPED DOWN ON A LOADED SLICE. He stood at the conference table, focused on the pie while Jamie and McNab attacked a second one. Her former partner, now captain of the Electronic Detectives Division managed to balance what was left of the slice and what appeared to be a tube of cream soda while studying crime scene photos Peabody had yet to tack to the murder board.

He’d had his hair chopped recently, Eve noted, but it did little to combat the spring of ginger and wires of gray that spooled through it. His face, weathered and worn, drooped like a sleepy hound’s. She figured he’d bought the shit-brown jacket he’d paired with wrinkled trousers before his best boy, McNab, had been weaned from his mother’s tit.

In contrast, the young EDD ace and Peabody’s cohab sizzled in atomic red cargos and a tee the color of radioactive egg yolks scrambled with lightning bolts. His long blond hair was tucked back from his thin, pretty face in a slinky braid.

Since it was there, Eve scooped up a slice.

“You okay having Jamie work on this?” she asked Feeney.

“He’s going to push on it anyway. It’s better if he does it where I can keep my eye on him.” He took a swig of cream soda. “He’s going to be rocky right off, but he’ll steady up. I knew Deena, too. Good kid.” He kept his eyes on the crime scene photos. “Sick fuck. This one’s going to spread through the department. You’ll have more cops lining up for detail on this than you can use.”

“How well do you know MacMasters?”

“We worked a few together, knocked back some brews together. Good cop.”

It was, she knew, Feeney’s highest praise.

“You look at this, Dallas, and you think-as a cop, as a father-you can do everything right, do the job, keep it clean, and you still can’t protect your own kid from something like this. You think you can, even though you know what’s out there, you have to think you can. Then something like this brings it right home, right in the front door. And you know you can’t.”

He shook his head, but it didn’t budge the anger on his face. “We want to believe we can protect our own.” Then he paused, took another long drink. “I was going to head out with the wife to New Jersey this afternoon, a cookout at our boy’s. New Jersey for Christ’s sake,” he added with the deliberate disdain of a native New Yorker.

“Well, look at it this way, traffic would’ve been a total bitch.”

“That’s fucking A. Anyway, the wife’s bringing me back a plate.” He looked down at Deena again. “This little girl had a lot more than a holiday barbecue taken from her.”

“He went for her, Feeney, knew how to get to her. There has to be a reason. We work from there.”

“Payback.” Feeney nodded. “Could be. He’s been a cop a long time, LT of Illegals near ten years, I guess. Captain now. He closes cases and doesn’t take any bullshit. Good cop,” he repeated. “Good cops make enemies, but-”

“Yeah, I’ve been working on the ‘buts.’ Let’s get started here, and we’ll go through them. Screen on,” she ordered.

The command signaled the others, and the briefing began.

“The victim is Deena MacMasters, female, age sixteen. ME has confirmed homicide by manual strangulation. The victim was raped and sodomized multiple times over a period between six and eight hours. Traces of barbiturate-street name Slider-mixed with a small amount of powdered Zoner found during tox screen indicate she was drugged.”

“That’s Wig.”

Eve paused, lifted her eyebrows at Jamie.

“Sorry, Lieutenant. I wanted to inform you the freaks call that cocktail Wig because it, well, wigs you out. If you take enough to conk, you go into weird-ass nightmares. They’re supposed to be really real, and you have one bitch of a headache after.”

Feeney jabbed a finger at Jamie. “How do you know so much about it? If you’re playing around with that shit at college, I’m going-”

“Hey, don’t look at me. I’m clean. I get one bust I can lose my scholarship. Plus, Jesus, if I want a nightmare I’ll eat a burrito and watch a horror vid at midnight.”

“Damn right.”

“Jamie confirms what I learned from Dickhead at the lab. As there are no defensive wounds, no sign of struggle prior, we believe she was drugged with this combination, then taken to her bedroom where she was restrained. Cuffs on her hands, sheets used as ropes on her ankles.”

“He wanted it to start for her even when she was unconscious,” Peabody murmured.

“And while she was unconscious, he may have taken the time to run the plates and his glass through the sanitizer, may have accessed the control room. He would then have time to return to the bedroom before she’d come around.

“Except for her underwear, her clothes were not removed but pulled away during the assaults. There are some tears on her shirt, but they don’t indicate much force. This shows a lack of rage, of frenzy, and a deliberation.”

Eve cut her gaze toward Jamie as he started to speak. It was enough to have him subsiding. “Minor bruising on the face, the torso indicates she was struck, but not with serious force. Bruising on the biceps, shoulders, indicates she was held down. The bruising and lacerations on her wrists, her ankles mean she fought, and fought hard.

“Her killer took his time, incapacitating her by choking or smothering until she passed out, at which time we believe he removed the ankle restraints, turned her over, and retied. He most likely waited for her to regain consciousness before raping her again. It appears he repeated this pattern more than once.”

She glanced toward Jamie again. His face was very white, his eyes very dark, but he said nothing.

“This tells us a lot,” she said, and waited.

“Um. He didn’t waste time and energy smacking her around,” Peabody began. “He wasn’t interested in hurting her that way. He didn’t bother to strip her because he didn’t care. It wasn’t about that kind of humiliation.”

Eve nodded. “It’s more insulting to leave her dressed. It makes the act more base than it already is. Penetration. Dominance. Pain.”

Her heart fluttered, a quick beat of panicked wings. And she looked at Roarke, straight into his eyes, to calm it again.

“The lab has confirmed a glass left on the kitchen counter contained the same drugs found in her system. Also confirmed, the restraints used on her wrists were police issue. Only her blood and tissue have been found on the cuffs. Thus far, Crime Scene has found no trace of the killer on scene. There is no DNA of the killer on or in the vic’s body. He sealed up. Peabody, witness statements.”

“The lieutenant and I spoke to two of the victim’s known friends, as well as Jamie. I also spoke with two others on the list given us by the vic’s parents. Of these, only Jo Jennings stated any knowledge of a man the victim had been involved with. He is reported to be nineteen years of age, and apparently told the victim he was a student at Columbia, originally from Georgia. They met several weeks ago in the park where Deena routinely jogged, and began dating secretly. All subjects interviewed stated that the victim had a PPC, a pocket ’link, but neither were found on scene or on the premises. We conclude the killer took them as there may be communications between them thereon. None of Deena’s friends or family met or can identify this man, according to their statements.”

“According to Jo’s statement,” Eve continued, “the vic told the UNSUB her father was a cop, an Illegals cop. He then told the vic he’d once been arrested for illegals use, and appears to have used that to convince her to keep their relationship from her friends and family.”

“She’d have gone along.” Jamie glanced at Eve, got her nod. “If he said he was embarrassed or weirded out by that, she’d have gone along so he wouldn’t be uncomfortable. She didn’t like to put anyone on the spot, you know?”

“Added to it,” McNab said, “a secret boyfriend? Pretty juicy for a kid that age.”

“By all appearances the vic not only let him in on the night of the murder, but was expecting him. Again from Jo’s statement, the vic believed the killer was coming by to have something to eat, then taking her to the theater. The log on the AutoChef records two single-serving pizzas-one meat while the vic’s was a vegetarian-ordered at about eighteen-thirty. She ingested her first dose of drugs, through her soft drink.”

“First dose?” Feeney asked.

“She ingested a second dose around midnight. I believe the killer knew when her parents were due back, which was late this afternoon. I believe this second dose was given to ensure it showed clearly on the tox screen. He couldn’t know her parents would decide to come back several hours earlier than planned. He left the glass on the counter to be sure we’d run it, and find the drugs.”

“A slap at MacMasters.” Feeney frowned at the tox report on the wall screen. “It follows, but… if you go after a cop, you go for the cop. If you’re going to go at him through his family, where’s the signature? You’d want him to know, no doubt, it was payback. Plus, Christ knows this fuck couldn’t have taken the kid out before today. Getting Deena to play along with the secret, that’s risky. A kid that age talks. She told one friend parts of it.”

“More fun this way.” Eve switched the image on screen to Deena’s ID photo-young, fresh, smiling. “More personal. Not only in the house, in the girl’s pretty bedroom. And she opened the door. Confirmed?”

Feeney nodded. “No sign of tampering, of bypass on any door or window in the place. Our prelim time line matches yours. Locks disengaged, from the inside and with proper procedure, at eighteen-twenty-three, and immediately re-engaged, again from the inside and with proper procedure. She let him in, then locked back up. At twenty-three-eighteen, the door to the control room was opened, with passcode, and the cameras disengaged with proper procedure.”

“He’d worked on her for about four hours by then.” Eve thought, couldn’t stop herself from thinking what it was to be raped and abused for hours. “She’d have given him the passcode. He didn’t have to work it himself. He worked her instead.”

“She was a cop’s kid,” Jamie objected. “And she was smart. I don’t think she’d make it that easy for him.”

Couldn’t see, Eve concluded. How could you when you’ve never been there? “Four hours being raped and terrorized, choked, smothered. He tells her, okay, I’m going, but I need to turn off the cameras, get the discs. Maybe she says no the first time, or the first few times. So he hurts her again, again. Give me the codes, Deena, and all this stops.”

“She didn’t give him the code to get the discs, not the right one anyway.” McNab spoke up. “It may be she didn’t have them. No reason for her to have them. He hacked that, but it didn’t take him long. Ten minutes maybe, so he’s got some skills or some good equipment. The discs were removed according to the log at twenty-three-thirty-one. The hard drives were wiped and corrupted, but we dug out the time. And we may be able to reconstruct the data, with images. It’s not going to be a walk, but we’ve got a shot. The system’s ultra. The more ultra, the more fail-safes, the better chance at reconstructing a wipe and bypass.”

“That’s a priority,” Eve said. “Once he had the discs, did the wipe and disengaged, he went back up and went at her for another two hours.”

“He left by the front door,” Feeney put in. “Opening the locks from inside, resetting them at oh-four-three.”

“Giving him a space after TOD to clean up, do his own sweep, leave the glass. No hurry, no panic, just one step at a time. Bet he had a check-list,” Eve muttered. “He leaves early enough not to be noticed or seen. Yet he arrived in daylight, and we’ve got no one who saw him. Blends well, moves well. There’re a couple of subway stops within three blocks. I’ve ordered copies of all security. But…”

She didn’t like the odds. “If he’s smart enough to do all this, he’s too smart to get caught on security at a station close to the scene. On foot most likely. If his hole is any distance from the scene, maybe he rides or cabs it within ten blocks, any direction. Takes the damn bus. He could have his own transpo.”

“Walking’s best,” Roarke commented. “Saturday evening, the city’s busy. It was good weather. Who’d notice a boy-or a young man-walking along? Dressed well, I’d expect, but not so well as to draw attention. Sunny out, so he’d be wearing shades, maybe a cap or hoodie. Maybe have an earbud in so it looks like he’s listening to music, or he’s using his ’link as a prop, so it looks like he’s talking or texting. The opportunity comes along, he might slide in with a group of people-if he hits on some about his age. Less noticed yet if he’s with others. It’s best, if you’ve a mind to do crime in a neighborhood, and show yourself beforehand, you blend in-disappear as it were into the fabric. What I’d do, in his place, is use that ’link a couple blocks back, to call the target.”

Eve narrowed her eyes. “Let her know you’re nearly there. Can’t wait to see you. Just up the block. We’re still on, right? That sort of thing.”

“Aye. Then wouldn’t she be right there, keeping watch for him while they talk a bit more? Right there to open the door even before he starts up the stairs. He’s in, a matter of seconds.” Roarke shrugged. “Well, that’s how I’d have played it out.”

“And she’s got her ’link, right there,” Eve added. “He’s going to need to take that, and this way he wouldn’t have to look for it if she didn’t put it back in her bag. That would be smart, efficient. That would fit him.”

She tapped her fingers on her thigh as she paced a moment. “We still hit the rest of the neighborhood. And the park. The park’s the best bet. Peabody, we’re on that in the morning. Feeney, your team’s on the electronics. Focus on the security. I’m going to run like crimes, and I’m pulling Mira in for a profile. Currently I have officers doing the rounds on all her usual haunts, and a pair doing a check on one Juan Garcia, a chemi-dealer.”

Feeney lifted his chin toward the crime scene photos. “That type doesn’t operate like this.”

“Agreed, but we’ll eliminate him, and any others who pop up out of MacMasters’s file or memory. The likelihood is slim that he went with her where she was known. After the initial contact, he’d need to steer her away. For walks-out of her perimeter, to the vids-but not her usual spots-the park? Probably moved to a different sector for meets after he’d established.”

“If it was payback…”

She nodded at Feeney. “We’ll be going over MacMasters’s cases, and I’m going to talk to him again, go back with him. Jamie, would she recognize a gang type?”

“I think so, yeah. She was smart, like I said. Really street aware, just sort of… not self-aware? Is that right, do you get it? She knew to be careful, what types to avoid.”

“What type would draw her?”

“Well… he’d have to be clean. I don’t just mean cleaned up. He’d have to look right, sound right. Jo said he told her he went to Columbia? That might hook her since I do, and she’ll be going next year. It’s an opening, you know? And, ah, manners. Like, he’d be polite. If he came on too strong, he’d scare her off.”

Plenty of other schools in New York, Eve thought, but he hits on the one where one of her closest friends goes, where she plans to go. Eve didn’t see it as coincidence.

“He studied her, stalked her, researched her. And he took his time.” No, it wasn’t some illegals dealer or one of his spine-crackers. “MacMasters made the reservations for this trip ten days ago. This bastard was ready. This was his opportunity. She’d have told him her father got promoted.”

“She texted me, the night after he got informed,” Jamie told her. “I think she tagged everybody she knew. She was really proud. I was surprised she didn’t go on the trip, like a family celebration.”

“A girl, in the first weeks of a romance,” Peabody said. “She doesn’t want to go off with her parents for the weekend when she can stay home and see the guy. Even if she was on the fence about it, one word from him, how he’d miss her, and she stays.”

“We work the lines we have. Peabody, contact somebody at Columbia on the off chance he told her the truth. I want a list of every male student-and add in any staff-currently enrolled or employed, or who have been enrolled or employed within the last five years who are from Georgia. Age range eighteen to thirty. While that’s running tag Baxter, he and his boy are back on the roll. I want them to take Garcia, then follow up on all door-to-doors, and expand same to a three-block radius of the scene.”

In her office she ran like crimes, and did a full-scan search through Feeney’s brain child, IRCCA, to take it global, and run the data through off-world as well.

While her computer labored, she set up a second murder board in her office. Deena’s image-alive and dead-would stay with her while she worked.

“Smart girl,” Eve murmured as she pinned images, reports, time lines. “Cop’s daughter. Everyone says that. But under it you’re still just a girl. A nice-looking boy pays attention, says the right things, looks at you just a certain way. You’re not smart anymore.”

She hadn’t been, Eve thought. Not a cop’s daughter, but a seasoned cop-a cynic, a badass herself. And Roarke had paid attention, said the right things, looked at her in that way. She couldn’t claim she’d been smart. She’d bent her own rules, taken chances, fallen for a man she’d known was dangerous, one who’d been a murder suspect.

No, she hadn’t been smart. She’d been dazzled. Why would anyone expect Deena to be otherwise?

“I know what you felt, or thought you felt,” Eve murmured. “I know how he got to you, broke down your resistance, your defenses, your better judgment. Me, I got lucky. You didn’t. But I know how he got under your guard.”

So now, instead of thinking like the girl, she needed to think like the pursuer.

She turned toward the AutoChef-stopped.

Coffee, she remembered. Roarke’s first gift to her had been a bag of coffee. The real deal. Irresistible to her, and worth more to her mind than a fistful of diamonds.

Charming and thoughtful-and exactly right.

Had there been a token given? she wondered. Something small and exactly right?

She stepped back to her desk, studied Deena’s photo. Music and theater, she recalled. Big interests. And reading. All those music discs, she thought. Maybe he put together a music mix, designed just for her. Or poems-didn’t women get off on poetry, especially if it was from a man?

Wanted to join the Peace Corps or Education For All. But damned if she could think of a token that applied there.

Her computer signaled the first search was complete. Letting the other angle simmer, Eve sat down to read case files on rape-murder.

Nothing popped, though she read, analyzed, ran probabilities for more than an hour. The search through IRCCA gave her the same results. She had a handful of long shots to track down, but her gut told her it was just for form. Had to be done.

She’d eliminated half the long shots when Peabody stepped in.

“I got a partial list from Columbia-the currents. It’s going to be tomorrow before I can get the formers. At this time there are sixty-three male students from the great state of Georgia, and four instructors, one security guard, and two other employees. The guard’s on the high side at thirty, a groundskeeper at twenty-four, and a maintenance tech, twenty-six.”

“We’ll do background runs on them, all of them.”

“It just doesn’t feel like he’d have given her that much truth.”

“I think he gave her enough truth, so if she played cop’s daughter, checked him out, it would fly. He’s too careful to leave himself open.”

Peabody gestured toward the AutoChef, got a nod. “You think he’s a student there?” she asked as she walked over to program coffee.

“I think he may have set it up so if she checked, he’d pop up as a student. He may have already taken care of that, wiped the record. Here’s what you could do, if you were being careful. You find a student, clone his ID, take his name, or change it-dealer’s choice. You can bet your ass he had what would look like student ID. You get discounts, right, when you go to vids, theater, concerts. He took her out, he’d have to show it-and it would have to pass the scan.”

“I didn’t think of that. Which is why you get the slightly less crappy bucks than I do.” She passed Eve fresh coffee. “So maybe, one of these sixty-three is his dupe. Or… it could be he had a partner.”

“He works alone. A partner means you have to trust. Who could he trust this much? No loose ends if you work alone. I’m going to bet one of those students had their ID stolen or lost it within the last six months. He clones it, replaces the photo with one of himself, tweaks the basic data if necessary. If Deena gets a buzz, and checks, she’s going to find he’s registered as a student. For now, we run them. Dot every i. Tomorrow, we check to see if any of them replaced their ID. Take the top thirty,” she ordered. “I’ll take the rest. Work here or at home, and report to my home office in the morning, oh-seven-hundred.”

“Where are you going?”

“I want to go back to the scene, walk through it, then I’ll pick up the runs at home. Copy the data from Columbia to my home unit.”

“Okay. If I hit anything, I’ll let you know.”

Eve downed more coffee, and tagged Roarke. “Any progress?”

“This won’t be quick or easy.”

“I’m done here. I’m going to go back to the scene, do a walk-through, then take the rest home.”

“I’ll meet you in the garage.”

“Not quick or easy, remember?”

“With the captain’s blessing, I’m having some of the units sent to my lab at home. I’ve got better equipment. Five minutes.”

He clicked off.

She loaded up what she needed, sent copies of all reports, notes, files to her home unit. On the way to the garage she took a tag from one of the officers on the knock-on-doors. All residents on the victim’s block had been located and interviewed. And not one of them had seen anyone enter or exit the MacMasters home, save Deena herself, over the weekend.

Maybe Baxter and his faithful aide, Trueheart, would have better luck, she thought. Or she and Peabody would get a hit from the morning circuit of the park. But when a man left no trace of himself at a rape murder, when he took hours to complete the task and left nothing behind, the likelihood of him being careless enough to be seen with his victim was low.

Still, someone somewhere had seen them. Remembering was a different matter.

They’d walked, talked, eaten, played in the city, and over a number of weeks. She only had to find one venue, one person, one crack in the whole to pry open.

She walked to her car, leaned back against the trunk as she took out her memo book to key in more notes.

Columbia. Student ID.

Georgia. Southern accent.

Truth or lie? Why truth, why lie?

Missing pocket ’link, PPC-possible e-diary?-handbag. Other contents of handbag important? Protection and trophy?

She looked up when Roarke crossed the garage. “When you worked a mark, did you ever fake an accent?”

“A cop shop’s an odd place to discuss such matters from my standpoint. Since you’re working, I’ll drive.”

He waited until they were in the vehicle before he answered the question. “Yes, now and then, tailoring such to suit the mark. But more often the Irish suited well enough. I might layer it on-switching to a thicker West County brogue, or posh it up with public school tones.”

“But, especially if it was a long con, or some job that would take several weeks and a lot of communication with the mark, it would be easier and safer to stick close to natural. Posh it up or thicken it up, but stay with the basics.”

“That’s true enough,” he agreed as he headed uptown. “One slip and the whole thing can fall apart.”

“Guy tells her he’s from Georgia. She likes the accent, tells her friend that part. He’s smart, so the smart thing is to use what you have, what you’re comfortable with. Maybe he lived in the south, at least for a while. He tells her he goes to Columbia, so maybe he did, or he knows enough about it to be able to speak intelligently when she says, hey, I have a friend who goes there. No point in getting tripped up on those kinds of details. It’s hard to believe he’s nineteen, and has this kind of patience and control, this kind of focus.”

She glanced at Roarke. “Though some do.”

He switched lanes to slide into a narrow gap in traffic. “At nineteen I had a lifetime behind me, of being a street rat, of running games, thieving, and aiming toward getting the fuck out. So by then I’d honed some skills, and learned the need for that patience and control.”

“Murder’s different from thievery.”

“It is indeed entirely different. And more yet when it’s the deliberate murder of an innocent girl. It would be all in the motivation, wouldn’t it? To plan it, run it, execute it this way would take a strong motive. But for some, the motive’s all in the thrill, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t feel like a thrill killing. It’s too exacting for that. And too cold.”

He said nothing for a few moments as he nipped around a Rapid Cab and through a light seconds before it flashed red. “When I went for the men who’d tortured and killed Marlena, it was cold. Cold-blooded, cold-minded. Some might have looked at the results and thought otherwise, but there was no thrill involved in it. None of it.”

Eve thought of Summerset’s young daughter-a girl Roarke had thought of as a sister, and who’d been used and murdered as a warning to him. “Deena wasn’t executed. If there’s a similarity it’s between her and Marlena. The payback. It keeps ringing for me. On the other hand, he could have taken her out other ways, at other times. Abducted her, put MacMasters through that agony before killing her.”

“He liked playing the boyfriend, you’re thinking. Stringing it out, making her care. He likes the game maybe. If there was a thrill, it would’ve been in that stage of it. Cold blood and a cold mind. You’d need both to be able to romance a girl, to use that for the express purpose of taking her life.”

When he pulled up in front of the MacMasters home, Eve got out to stand on the sidewalk.

“It’s later than it would’ve been when he walked here. He had to walk, nothing else makes sense. He could’ve come from either direction, even through the park. Until we find somebody who saw him that night, we can’t know. He had the cuffs, he had the drug. Warm night, but he could’ve been wearing a jacket. A lot of kids wear them more for style than need. Restraints in a pocket, maybe, same with the drug. But he’d need tools, wouldn’t he, for the security. Maybe he had a satchel, a bag, a backpack. Or he’s just got the tools in another pocket. McNab wears pants that have a million of them.”

“With a jacket you could hook the cuffs in the back, cover them, as cops often do.”

“I think he strode along, a young guy with somewhere to go. Just another teenager or college type, good-looking, clean, upscale clothes. Nobody pays attention. I think he tagged her from a block or two away, got her on the ’link, the way you said. Maybe just to say, ‘I’m nearly there,’ maybe, yeah maybe to pretend he wasn’t sure of the house. That would be smart. She’d guide him in, keep her eye out for him, open the door to greet him even as he makes the turn for the steps.”

“She would want him in quick and smooth, too, wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t want one of the neighbors mentioning to her parents how they’d seen the boy visiting while they were away.”

“Good point.” Eve narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, good point. They may have even worked it out ahead, when he talked her into having him over. ‘I’ll tag you when I’m close, so you can watch for me.’ Their little secret.”

She saw it in her head as she went up the steps, broke the police seal, used her master to open the locks.

“Still, somebody might see. He’s not worried about anyone mentioning it. She’ll be dead, game over. But he’d have to take precautions about what they see. So yeah, I’m betting jacket, probably a cap, shades. Keep your head down, hands in your pockets, using an earbud or headset. Maybe they can ID the clothes, but you’d ditch those. Maybe they can give a general idea of your height and build. Your coloring. So what? Even eye wits rarely get it just right. He’s just a boy going to see a girl.”

She stopped to stand in the foyer, to keep it rolling through her head. “She’s excited. He kisses her hello. Still the shy guy, still the sweet boy. He needs to keep that up so he can take her without a struggle, so she doesn’t have a chance to fight or get away or scrape any pieces of him off. She’s got music on, she likes music. They like music. Maybe show him some of the house, at least take him back to the kitchen so you can get the drinks, the food.”

She walked back, with Roarke beside her. “It’s fun, it’s exciting to have dinner, just the two of you. He’s careful not to touch anything, or if he has to touch something to make note of it and wipe it down after. But hands in the pockets again. Shy guy. You’re kids so you eat in here, in the kitchen. Right over there.”

She walked over to a bright blue table with padded benches that offered a view of a small courtyard backed by a high wall.

“Sit across from each other so you can talk. So you can look in his eyes as you talk. Eat, laugh, joke, flirt. Oh hey, do you want another fizzy? Sure he does, and when you go to get it, he slips the drug in your drink. It’s so easy. You feel woozy for a minute, you feel off, but with the Zoner to kick it, mellow, too. You just slide out, slide under. And he carries you upstairs.

“She weighed one-thirteen and change. Deadweight, but not that much for a young, healthy man to carry up a flight of stairs.” She continued as she followed the path to the kitchen stairs. “Makes more sense to take her up the back. Why waste the energy? If he’d scoped out the house, and he damn well would have, he’d know which room was hers. He’d have seen her through the window anytime she didn’t use the privacy screen. Even if he wasn’t sure, it’s so easy to make which room is hers. The color, the posters. It’s all girl.”

Roarke said nothing, not yet. He knew what she was doing, walking it through as both victim and killer. “You’d want to restrain her first, take no chances. The cuffs, the sheets. Tight on the sheets; you want her to feel it. You want to leave marks. You hope she struggles. She will. You know she will. So you go down and clean up. Dishes, but for her glass, in the machine. Run it on sterilize, wipe out any trace. Check out the security door. No point working on that. She’s going to give you the code. You’ll make sure of it. Strip down, seal up.”

She circled around, shook her head in annoyance. “No, no, out of order. You’d do that downstairs, even before you bring her up. Nothing of you up here. All your things in a neat pile, careful, very careful. After you finish with her, get her bag, check the contents, take it down to put it with your stuff. Upstairs again, go through the room, make sure, very sure there’s nothing of you, nothing on her comp, on the bedroom ’link. Anywhere…”

She paused, wandering the room, opening drawers she’d already searched. “Would he take something to make sure he got hard? Multiple rapes take a lot of energy, a lot of wood. That’s a thought, that goes in the wonder pile. Maybe he doesn’t need it. Maybe her thrashing around trapped in the nightmare he gave her, helpless and scared, even unconscious, maybe that gets him up.

“Then she starts coming around, and the fun begins.”

“Don’t put yourself through that.” It clawed through his heart, left it bleeding. “We know what happened then, so don’t.”

“It’s part of it. Has to be. She’s… bewildered. The drug makes her mind musty at first, then the headache, the stabbing pain of it.”

She looked at the bed, stripped down to the mattress now. “It occurs to me he could’ve made it easier. Given her a dose of Whore or Rabbit. That was a choice. He didn’t want her to participate, even under a date rape drug. He wanted her terrified and hurting. Does he tell her what he’s going to do, or is it right down to business? I can’t see him yet. Just can’t figure him yet. She cries. She’s only sixteen, and that part of her cries and asks why, and doesn’t want to believe the sweet boy is a monster. But the cop’s daughter knows. The cop’s daughter sees him now. He’d want her to.

“She fights-that has to be satisfying-even during the rape she fights. She fights even while she screams and cries and begs. She’s a virgin; nice bonus. She bleeds from where you’ve broken her, from her wrists, from her ankles. She’s strong and she fights hard.”

He stood by, his guts in knots, as Eve went through it, step-by-step, horror by horror. She moved around the room, circling the bed where that obscenity had taken place. Even as she described the last moments of a young girl’s life, her voice stayed steady.

He didn’t speak again until she’d finished and had started another search of the room.

“Even after all this time with you, I don’t know how you can do it, how you can put yourself in these places, make yourself see these things the way you do.”

“It’s necessary.”

“That’s bollocks. It’s more than an objective, observational sort of thing. You do what you do, how you do it for them. You do it for Deena and all the others who’ve had their lives stolen. It’s more than standing for the dead, which is vicious enough to bear. But you walk with them through it. With all I’ve done in all my life, I don’t know if I’d have the stomach to do what you do, every day.”

She stopped for a moment, let herself stop, pressed her fingers to her eyes. “I can’t not do it. I don’t know if it was ever a choice, but I know it’s not one now. I can’t see him. It’s not just because we haven’t found anyone alive who has. It’s who he is, why he is, why he did this and in this way. I can’t see him. He’s murky. Walking through it helps clear some of the murk.”

She rubbed her eyes again, refocused. “How long would it take you to retrieve the discs from a system like the one here, and wipe the hard drive?”

“It has two fail-safes, and requires a code for disc retrieval. But I know the system.”

“Yeah, one of yours, I checked. But he’d know it. Bank on that.”

“Well then, it would take me about thirty seconds for the retrieval, and another one or two to do the wipe. But he infected it to corrupt. We’ve got that much from today’s work. A complicated virus to corrupt the drive and wipe out the data and imagery, and that would take some time to upload, and skill or money to obtain.”

“He’s not as good as you-not a pat on your back, but he doesn’t have your experience. If he passes for nineteen, I doubt he’s hit thirty. So maybe two or three times longer for the retrieval, maybe twice on the wipe since he’s using a virus.”

“What are you looking for, Eve? If I had an idea I might be able to do more than stand here.”

“I don’t know. Something. You gave me coffee.”

“Sorry?”

“A token, something to charm her. A little gift, nothing too important. You sent me coffee right after we met.”

“And you interviewed me as a murder suspect.”

“It worked. The coffee, I mean. Hit the right button. So what did he give her? What… I knew it. I fucking knew it.” She held up a music disc taken from the hundred or so in a holder. “Happy Mix 4 Deena, that’s the label. And look here, she added this sticker thing-a big red heart, and initials inside.”

“DM, for her, DP for him.”

“For the name he gave her anyway,” Eve confirmed. “David, Jo said. Never as smart as they think. He should’ve looked for this, taken it. It’s a link, and the only one so far.”

She bagged it.

“I have to say the odds of tracing that disc-as it’s a common sort-are astronomical.”

“He made it. A link’s a link.” She looked around again, satisfied for now. “Okay, the scene doesn’t have any more to tell me. At least not now. I need to go work it.”