Vendetta in Death (In Death #49)(86)

“We’re going to write it up, send a memo to Mira to update any applicable profile. We’re going to interview the other women identified as part of the support group. We’re going to see if the DB told Morris anything new, then we’re going to nag the shit out of Harvo on the hair.”

“So, another day in paradise.”

“We’re going to run down that hair, Peabody. And we’re going to pay another visit to the legend and her granddaughter.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. One step at a time.”

She headed straight to her office, coffee, her board, and her book.

It infuriated her to add the third victim.

“Okay, bitch,” she said aloud, “you got your hat trick, but I’ll be damned if you notch a fourth.”

At her desk, she wrote her report, then outlined a profile of her top suspect for Mira’s review.

Subject is intelligent, organized, possesses IT and AI engineering skills. She is a member of the Women For Women support group and, thus far, acquainted with the female connected to each victim. She is mature, has access to funds, currently resides in a large, private residence—in fact, currently controls said residence and staff.

Subject is the granddaughter of a legendary actor, a globally known and admired celebrity and activist, primarily for women’s rights and status. Subject’s grandparents had a long-term marriage, by all accounts a near storybook-style love affair until the grandfather’s death. Grandmother still wears wedding ring. A wedding portrait hangs in the main parlor.

Theory: Subject expected and desired a relationship and marriage like her grandparents’. Expected and desired a spouse devoted to her as her grandfather appeared to have been to her grandmother. Subject also desired making a mark of her own by creating her own business through her personal skill set.

Subject’s spouse failed to meet expectations by engaging LCs, having an affair—younger woman—manipulating the terms of the business to profit, then, with divorce, forcing the sale thereof. Spouse compounds the betrayal by purchasing a home with the profit, living there with the younger woman.

While I believe these betrayals would have incited subject to violence of some sort, at some point, the true break came with the support group. There, subject met, interacted, came to sympathize and relate with women who had suffered not only betrayal, but violence, sexual assault, rape. Crimes that had gone unpunished—and, at least in the case of the three victims, behavior that had continued.

Like her grandmother—her ideal—she found her cause, not one where she’d march or make speeches, but would take what she sees as real and necessary action. She would become justice. Again, in a way of emulating her grandmother, she takes on roles—complete with costumes, personalities—to lure the men, through sex or the promise of sex.

Drugging them not only serves the purpose of incapacitating, rendering them unable to defend, fight, overpower her, but makes them weak, takes their power. Stripping them naked humiliates. Torturing not only gives her control over their pain, but feeds her need to cause their suffering. Castration, obviously, unmans them. It robs them of the weapon they used on women. They die helpless, suffering, and sexless.

She leaves them outside their home to show their betrayal of the home, potentially. To leave them outside—never to have a home again—in public. A last humiliation.

The poem states their crime—in black-and-white. But it’s the name she chooses—Lady Justice—that tells me this is another role, and one for which she wants attention, appreciation, and glory.

The profile of the killer, the profile of Darla Pettigrew mesh for me. Can you confirm or debunk?



Eve read it over, nodded. It helped to write it down, just lay it all out. Maybe Mira would pick it apart, but damn it, it played out. It worked. It fit.

As she sent it off, Peabody came to her door. “First one’s here. Jacie Pepperdine. Where do you want to interview her?”

Eve had already thought that one through. “Get a box.”

Peabody lifted her eyebrows. “Okay then.” She pulled out her ’link, did a check. “A’s open.”

“Book it, take her in. I’ll be a minute.”

“Got it. I take it we treat her like a suspect.”

“Follow your gut.”

Rising, Eve put together a file. Following her gut, she prepared to go hard if needed. She walked to her skinny window first, took a minute to look out, look down.

Plenty of women out there—and some men, too—who’d experienced what the members of the support group had experienced. And worse, because there was always worse.

She could sympathize, and Christ knew she could relate. But murder sure as hell didn’t balance the scales. Maybe the law didn’t always get it right, but as long as she was on the side of it, she’d damn well try.

She picked up the file, walked out. She assumed Jenkinson and his tie, Reineke and his socks had caught one, as they didn’t man their desks.

Santiago sat at his, scowling under his cowboy hat as he worked his comp. The hat meant he’d lost another bet with Carmichael—who looked pretty pleased with herself while she worked her own.

Baxter had his feet—and his fashionable shoes—on his desk as he held a conversation on his ’link while his young partner diligently wrote up a report. Uniforms buzzed in their cubes.