Abandoned in Death (In Death, #54)(75)

“I’d love to do that. Will you be gone very long?”

His eyes narrowed, sparked at her as the man swallowed up the little boy. “Why?”

“Because I’ll miss you, of course.”

“I have to go do my chores, but we’ll spend lots of time together when I come home. I made you a nice breakfast.”

“You’re so good to me.” You rat-fucking son of a bitch.

“We have to take care of each other. Mommies and their baby darlings have to take care of each other.”

He started for the steps, started up them, turned. The man looked down at her, sly and smiling. “You’re number three and the third time’s the charm.”

She heard the locks fall into place, the bolt slide home.

And waited, waited. She heard him walking over her head, thought, as she strained, she might have heard a door slam home. But she didn’t hear the rumbling sound.

A different part of the basement, she concluded. He’s gone, she told herself. I know he’s gone.

But she forced herself to wait, counted to a hundred five times before she rose to examine every part of the room she could reach.

She spotted a pipe, not unlike the one in her first space, one she could reach.

She started to strike the wrist cuff against it, then spotted the scratches, the tiny nicks in the metal. Like the ones she’d put on the pipe in the other room.

“God. God. Anna.” She banged and banged, shouted, pleaded.

But there was no answer.

“He moved her, too, so she can’t hear me. That’s all.” But when she rested her forehead on the pipe, she knew better.

Third time’s the charm, he’d said.

He’d done something to Anna.

“Don’t lose it, don’t lose hope, either. Hang on, M.K., just hang on.”

She breathed her way through it. She’d figure out how to take a shower with one hand and one ankle chained. She’d eat because she’d stay strong. And if she couldn’t find a weapon, by God, she’d be the weapon.

She wouldn’t live the rest of her life here. She wouldn’t let him end her life here.

“I’ll kill him if I have to,” she mumbled, staring at the locked door. “I’ll do what I have to do.”





16





By the time Peabody came into the conference room, Eve had nearly finished updating the board.

“Pull up the map,” she told Peabody, “add the second crime scene, and leave it on display.”

“I hit some new accounts. One wholesaler had fourteen in the last week. The thing is,” Peabody continued as she worked, “you can’t just buy, like, one nail kit or whatever. There’s a minimum purchase. But there are also—from Trina’s list—some brick-and-mortar locations. You have to be a licensed salon owner or tech, but you can go in person, and there’s no minimum.”

“There’s where we focus when we ID the brand. Fake the license, go in, get what you need. Mistake, and a stupid one, but it plays in with obsession.”

She turned as Mira walked in.

“Question,” Eve said. “How deep is his need for precision, perfection?”

“It’s one of the drivers of his psychosis.”

“Okay. The second vic bit her nails. He used what we believe are salon-grade fakes, precisely. So precisely, I missed it on scene. To get them, he’d have to forge a license, then create or open an account, either order—what’s the minimum, Peabody?”

“At the wholesalers I got to, two grand for an initial order, new account, and fifteen hundred thereafter.”

“He’d have to do that,” Eve continued, “or go, in person, to one of the brick-and-mortar vendors who don’t have a minimum.”

Mira walked closer to the board in a pair of needle heels with open toes and backs that matched her canary yellow suit.

Her nails, Eve noted, sported a summer-sky blue—that matched the hint of lace under the jacket.

“The kit likely runs about a hundred, a hundred and fifty, I’d think.”

“Depending on the brand and the level of the kit, they go from ninety-five to three-fifty wholesale,” Peabody told her.

“So the minimum requirement would be wasteful. It would be difficult for him to tolerate such waste, unless he could make up the minimum with other, useful products.”

“He’s already got the other products, but … Peabody, can you buy the cheap stuff at these places?”

“Not the really snooty ones, but I’ll check on that.”

“Yeah, we’ll cover it, but it’s going to be in person. He had to move on the nails fairly quickly, and have time to study how to apply them.”

“I’m going to agree with you. She bit her nails,” Mira mused. “That would have upset him. Terrible habit, he’d think. And ruins the illusion. It may have been something that minor that caused him to kill her.”

“It’s a mistake. The illusion, as you put it, that’s paramount. The clothes, the shoes—all the mother’s sizes. The shoes and the jeans were both snug on Elder, and the shoes and skirt both a little loose on Hobe. So he either knew what size the mother wore, or he’s decided on it.”

Mira lifted a finger, ticked it at Eve. “That’s good, the deciding. It may very well be that. He placed the second victim at another venue for children. She broke the illusion—didn’t qualify so had to be eliminated. But he left her, with that illusion—where parents, where, for him, mothers take their children.”