Secrets in Death (In Death #45)(99)

“I figure she used that couple of years to decide on who she’d become, and how. The face and body she wanted to inhabit,” Eve explained. “I could probably track her from Kansas to the sort of high-end, specialist doctors who did her work, but it’s not going to apply to the now.”

“I could certainly help with that, but I agree. The doctor or doctors who transformed her physically were only a step along the way. The name she chose, a nod to her past, was a kind of private joke. The woman she became symbolically eliminated her sister altogether in her bio, and made herself an orphan. Indeed they meant nothing to her. She felt no bond. Her emotions, her loyalties are all self-directed. A narcissist’s narcissist with the sociopath’s lack of feeling. Yet in her own way, she was devoted to her work. Dedicated.”

“It was her window into the blackmail.”

“Yes, but she was no less devoted or dedicated,” Mira insisted. “Or ambitious. The work fed her. The secrets discovered—those she revealed publicly to her audience, those she held close for profit.”

“She was hitting close to a billion in personal wealth, but she didn’t stop. Couldn’t. Okay,” Eve allowed, “devoted. Dedicated.”

“And addicted,” Mira added. “Not only to what she did, but to the rewards.”

Eve sat back down. “The more I look at this, the more I add information, get a fuller picture of her and her … process, the more it’s leading me away from her marks. She chose carefully. She calculated, and was damn good at it. Yeah, she had data on Roarke, for instance, and that’s a rich mine. But she only gave him a single nudge—which he shut down in his Roarke way.”

Mira’s lips curved, her soft blue eyes danced. “I’m sure he did.”

“She kept collecting data there, but it doesn’t amount to anything that he doesn’t want anybody to know. She couldn’t dig down. So he gets the low rank. And it’s my take she collected the data more for her public work than her private. When I look at the ones she exploited—though we’ve got a lot more to talk to now—they follow a pattern.”

Mira nodded. “A secret that usually embarrasses another, and the financial power to pay easily.”

“Yeah, it’s a fertile field. Or the ones she hit for favors instead of cash? Easily intimidated, those afraid to do otherwise. Not the sort who’d kill. Everybody’s capable under the right circumstances, but she picked types who’d cave and cooperate. She read people and well.”

“She might have had a touch of the sensitive.”

As she’d thought the same, Eve gave a shrug of agreement. “So where did she make the mistake in her read? Who did she pick who could and would kill? Or is it not a mark? Someone connected to one somehow. Someone who made it his business to eliminate her.”

She pushed up again, restless. “Not one of them goes to the cops. Not one. Even Roarke. He didn’t tell me she’d tried to put the arm on him.”

“Do you tell him every time a suspect threatens you?”

Hissing out a breath, Eve jammed her hands in her pockets. “I say that’s different because it is. And I’m saying if somebody she successfully put the arm on had gone to the authorities, she’d be alive. Probably, hopefully, doing some time, but alive.”

She paced the confines of Mira’s office. “It’s none of the marks I’ve talked to. Somebody connected maybe. I’ve got dozens more to look at now, but if the pattern holds…”

She turned back to Mira. “Looking at the pattern, what’s your take?”

“Anyone under pressure may snap. Someone being victimized can strike back, end the victimization.”

“When you snap, you punch somebody in the face.” Frustrated, Eve jabbed the air. “Throw them out a window. Grab a heavy object and whale away. This was planned out, and carefully. But I get it. You can snap, then start planning. He had to stalk her, at least enough to get her routine. Any of the marks she shook down at that bar would know she used it, know how the place is set up. But they wouldn’t know she’d be there at that particular time unless he’d clocked her habits and routines.”

So Eve circled back.

“He’d been in the bar enough to have cased it, scoped out the security. What if she hadn’t gone down to the restroom? Could have taken her outside,” Eve continued, talking as much to herself as Mira now. “Maybe that was the preferred plan. Take her right on the street. Just a quick swipe, and keep walking.”

Once again, she sat. “The bathroom was of the moment. That makes more sense. She goes down, he thinks: I can do it now. He’s been sitting there, sitting there, it’s building up—or maybe it’s ebbing. He’s starting to lose his nerve. Then she goes downstairs, and he straps on his balls and goes after her.”

“The killer had the control to plan. It wasn’t impulse,” Mira said. “While it’s certainly possible the killer and his victim just happened to be in the same place at the same time, he had a weapon. Morris’s opinion is scalpel. While a medical might have a scalpel in a medical bag or kit, your witnesses never mention one. And the security feed doesn’t show the person you’ve identified with one. So he armed himself for this purpose.

“I’d say he has medical knowledge, as the strike was accurate, and lethal. However,” Mira qualified, “it takes only a little research to learn about this kind of injury, and a bit of practice to successfully inflict that injury. If he didn’t have previous medical knowledge or training, he also has the intellect and control to research and practice.”