Abandoned in Death (In Death, #54)(63)

Roarke handed her coffee, sat at her auxiliary station. “For a few days, he had three women.”

“Yeah, thought about that, too, and it weighs on me. Now he has two. Does he need the three? Is he going to grab somebody tonight? I’ve got extra patrols in the area tonight, in case. But I can’t keep that up indefinitely.”

She blew out a breath. “Otherwise, holding three women—feeding them, toilet facilities.” She pushed up to pace. “McQueen, he held more at a time, but he didn’t give a rat’s ass about feeding them. It was the having them, then raping them, then killing them. This one had another purpose.”

“Does he keep them together or separate them?”

“McQueen kept them together, chained up, desperate, terrified. But this is different.”

Around and around the board.

“He can’t keep them together. How could he maintain the illusion any one of them is his mother—or will become her—if they’re together, if they talk to each other? He has to keep them separate, has to keep a wall between them—for them, for him. Has to have a big enough space.”

She turned back. “Good job, pointing me at another angle. Maybe a big basement, maybe he keeps them on separate floors. But he’s got to have those toilets. You can’t keep three people chained up for days and days and not provide a john. Who wants to clean up the mess? And he likes things clean. Elder was clean. Body, hair, nails, the clothes. All perfectly clean.”

She wound around again. “No signs of dehydration with Elder. She’d had a good last meal. Eat, drink, you gotta eliminate.”

She sat again. “Planning. He took the three too close together not to have planned for at least three. Maybe he had to have those toilets installed. Yeah, he could’ve had them already. Hell, he could keep one of them locked up in a bathroom. As long as there’s no window. But—”

“I can do some digging on permits. The houses on the list, additional plumbing in the last, what would you like, twelve months?”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s a good one. That’s a solid maybe.”

“I’ll just do that here then.”

She picked up the coffee she’d forgotten. “He’s two people,” she said aloud.

“You think two are working together?”

“No, not like that. He’s two people inside one man. The planner, the calculating adult, and the needy, angry child. Both of them are killers, both of them are crazy. But the adult maintains, he can contain, he can look and act sane. He’d have to, wouldn’t he?”

She kicked back, put her boots on the counter. “Yeah, he would. Eccentric at worst, people would think. But not overly because nobody notices him. Does that piss him off, or is that how he likes it?”

She saw Roarke watching her. “What? Sorry. Just thinking out loud.”

“And it’s fascinating. You’re building him.”

“A potential him. Just more maybes.”

“Don’t stop on my account. Keep building.”

“Well, if he’s somewhere in his sixties or seventies as we profile, we’d say he has the maturity of his age and experience. But that inner brat’s all impulse and rage. Plenty of rage in the man, too, because he doesn’t have what he wants, because he’s been disappointed, maybe mistreated. Probably mistreated. But he’s got that control.”

Studying the board, she let it come.

“Mosebly was let down, and damn well mistreated. He escaped—with plenty of anger. But he had the grandparents, and, without that better-yourself message, he may have kept going down a hard road. When his mother asked for forgiveness, he gave it. And the years after, reforming his family.

“This guy doesn’t have any of that in him. When I saw Stella, recognized her—”

“Eve.”

“No, no guilt here. I would never have forgiven her, and never have reconnected. But I didn’t wish her dead. I live with death, work with it, and I don’t wish it on anyone. This guy? He has to kill. He kills what … disappoints him again.”

She tilted her head, narrowed her eyes. “He sees, he imagines and needs, so he plans. Every step. It takes time and patience—and money, too. He has to make an investment. He watches, waits, and he takes.”

She sipped coffee. “He doesn’t physically or sexually assault—that would be … disrespectful, unseemly? They must beg him to let them go—it’s human nature. And that’s going to piss him off.”

“Why?”

“A mother wants to be with her child. This hurts his feelings—but he doesn’t strike out at them. It’s why he needs more than one. One of them will understand. One of them will become, and stay and love him.”

“He can make them like her—physically,” Roarke put in. “The tattoo, the piercings.”

“That’s right, and that’s important, but he can’t change who they are, or make them who they aren’t. So, he’ll end up disappointed again.”

She shifted her gaze from the board to his.

“But under it all, Roarke, he doesn’t forgive her for what she did or what he perceives she did. So he’ll kill her, and go on killing her.”

“You’ll find him. You’ll stop him.”