Echoes in Death (In Death #44)(96)

“Soy milk, soy milk. Say that a few times running and tell me it doesn’t sound revolting.”

“I fear I can’t.” He glanced at his wrist unit when it beeped. “That’s Tokyo. I need to deal with this, then I’ll be back. For cookies and something other than milk of any kind.”

She went through the next five, painstakingly. Moved on to another three before she pushed away from the command center, moved around the room, circled the board.

Her gut wasn’t wrong, she thought, and her head was in line with it now. But she still had work to do, the routine, the eliminations.

She went back, brought up the names of the possibles the other team members had sent her. And lined them up.

Seventeen so far. Seventeen who had enough in their backgrounds, histories, routines, lives to be considered potential rapists, murderers.

Eighty more eliminated, by herself and people she trusted to do the job right.

Another forty-plus yet to be put through the intrusion of a police search.

And every inch of the cop she was knew what he hid behind his mask.

She went back, set aside the current work, pushed down the avenue where her gut, her head told her to go.

“Took longer than I’d hoped,” Roarke said as he came back. “You really should take that break. Five minutes to rest your eyes, your brain.”

He paused when he glanced at the wall screen, at the list of names.

“You have more.”

“I put up what the other team members sent. We’re more than halfway done with this first pass. We’ll need those deeper runs on what we cull out. I’m going to want to take a look at the ones the others have listed, but if they pulled them out, there’s something.”

He looked back at her. “You’re a cop to the bone.”

“No surprise there.”

“And the love of my life. I know all sides of you. You found something. Someone.”

“I can’t say that. More than one someone up there.”

“What did you find?” he persisted.

“Cheats, liars, some shady dealings, embarrassments, mistakes, good deeds, broken hearts.”

“Eve.”

“Life’s full of all of that.” Then she sighed. “You have a respected, high-skilled doctor—not much liked on a personal level, but respected. A BFD in his world. His bad luck isn’t just being dead, but that the investigation into his murder will expose him as an abuser, possibly a sadist. A cruel, domineering son of a bitch who preyed on a vulnerable, much younger woman and essentially made her a prisoner of his will.

“I might say she was old enough to get out, she had people to run to, but she didn’t. And we may never know how he managed to wrap the chains around her that kept her with him.”

She got up now, let herself move.

“That woman, cowed, fragile already, is brutally, viciously attacked, raped, beaten, choked by an assailant that uses staging to terrify his prey. Who humiliates her—and this woman had already suffered, no question, constant humiliation. During the long, brutal, and humiliating assault, her husband’s struck down, and in turn, she is struck down. Blow to the back of the head. When she recovers, she’s in such deep shock she ends up wandering the streets naked in the middle of a frigid night.”

She looked toward the board and Daphne’s battered face.

“She wanders outside because the assailant released her, as he had with previous targets. Other couples, with similar lifestyles, social and financial standings. A pattern. Murder changed the pattern, expanded it, so the assailant pushes his escalation, in time frame, in violence.”

She could see it—God, she could feel it. All of it. All sides of it.

“It was always going there,” she said. “Always. From the first time he tried to intimidate a woman, to push himself on her, and was rejected. From the first time he fantasized about a woman he couldn’t have, it was going there. This?” She gestured to the board. “This was always in him, no matter what mask he wore to hide it. He couldn’t have this woman. Might have made some overture, was rejected. Maybe simply kept it to fantasy, but the fantasy kept cycling, deepening, darkening.”

She walked back to her comp, opened a file, ordered an image on screen.

The man and woman stood with their arms around each other’s waists, laughing. An ocean flowed behind them. She wore a short, billowing dress that the breeze blew high on her thighs. Her hair lifted in it, swirling dark, wildly curling around a singularly beautiful face.

While the man was handsome, fit, appealing—leaning toward distinguished—she dominated the image.

“This was taken about twenty years ago, for a profile on the couple, published in some glossy mag.”

“Who are they?”

Eve held up a finger, called up another image.

Now two couples stood together, formal wear, jewels, glamour. Along with the glamour was an ease, a look of enjoyment.

“Are the women related? There’s a resemblance, though the one on the left is…”

“Exceptional. Stunning. The object of his desire.”

Roarke nodded, came to lean against the curve of the command center. “His mother?”

“No. His mother’s on the right. His aunt’s on the left. He spent a lot of time with his aunt and her family. Visiting, spending school breaks.”