Born in Death (In Death #23)(39)

“Just the fiancé.” Roarke nodded. “Because she trusted him completely.”

“I get that. But I don’t believe she didn’t at least mention something to one of the partners or her supervisor, her department head. She was meticulous. You’ll see what I mean when you look at her files.”

“I’ll take your word on that for now.”

Eve set down her glass. “I thought we’d squared this, and you’d step onto the team—at least when you had time for it.”

“For now,” he repeated, “I’d rather wait to look at the files. By meticulous, you mean she kept everything in excellent order.”

Eve struggled back her annoyance. “That, yeah, but she was meticulous in the way she kept her office space, her apartment, her closet. She never had a single work eval that wasn’t glowing. She had a good relationship with her department head, and apparently with everyone she worked with. She was tight pals with the grandson of one of the partners.”

“Romantic link?”

“No. It comes off as pals. Good, platonic pals. Grandson has a girlfriend, and the four of them hung. But she doesn’t mention there’s this problem to her pal.”

“Blood’s thicker?”

“Maybe, maybe.” She pushed away from the little table where they’d eaten. “It’s inconsistent with her type, her pathology. She was a team player, and she was a rule keeper. She took this to one of them, Roarke, and the one she took it to was the wrong choice.”

“She must have dealt with some clients directly.”

“In the office, or in theirs—New York–based. Some travel, too, sure. But nothing out of the ordinary I’ve found. No last-minute appointments worked in, according to her assistant. No last-minute travel to meet with a client or their representatives. If you look at her office, on the surface, it’s straight business as usual. Taking the home units without making it look like a bungled burglary was a mistake.”

“I don’t know.” He considered it. “Simpler, as you said, to take the units than to stay there and fiddle with them. Especially since the killer had a second job to do. It could simply be confidence. Go ahead and look at her office files, I’ve taken care of that. Covered the tracks.”

“Nobody ever covers them all the way. Okay, okay, present company excepted,” she added when he lifted an eyebrow. “If he was as good as you, and as—let’s say—meticulous—he’d have found a better way to do Copperfield and Byson.”

“Such as?”

“Arrange a meet, take them out together outside their apartments. You make it look like a mugging or a thrill kill. Rape the woman, or him, or both. Send the investigators mixed signals. I figure I’m looking for someone focused on the task—eliminate the threat, remove the evidence. That’s straight-line thinking, leaving out the flourishes.”

“Perhaps the only way he could take lives was to block out all but the target. Reach the goal, don’t consider the enormity of the action to get there.”

“I don’t think so, or not completely. Yeah, okay, reaching the goal. But if he’d needed to distance himself emotionally from the action, he wouldn’t use strangulation. It’s intimate. And it was face-to-face.”

Narrowing her eyes, she brought the crime scenes, the bodies, back into her mind. “He experienced the killings. You don’t want an active part in it? You got the tape right there. You slap it over their mouths, over their nose, and you walk away. You don’t have to see them suffer and die. But he looked right into their eyes as they did.

“And this isn’t what I need you for,” she snapped. “I can get into his head. Or I can get a profile from Mira, talk it through with her. I need a numbers man. I need a business man. Big business, big risks, big benefits. I need you to look at the data, analyze it in a way I can’t.”

“And I will. But tonight I’d prefer the generalities. I can take a look at her client list, give you a take on what I know that might not show on records or bios.”

“Why tonight?”

He considered again. Easier to evade, but she’d been straight with him and deserved the same. “I’m going to have my lawyers draft a con tract of sorts which will prohibit me from using any of the data I may be privy to during the course of this investigation.”

“No.”

“It covers our respective asses. It will also prohibit you, or any member of the team, from revealing the name of the organization, corporation or company whose data I analyze. I can, quite easily, work with the figures only.”

Frustration nearly blew out of the top of her head. “This is a crock. Your word’s good enough.”

“For you, and thank you for it. But it’s simple enough to do, and it’s logical. It’s very likely I’m in competition, or certainly will be at some point, with some or all of the clients on your victims’ list. And at some point, while I can promise you I wouldn’t use the data you’ve put in my hands—”

“I don’t want your damn promise!” she exploded.

Her fury over it was like a warm, comforting kiss. “Then none of that between us. But, let’s be practical. It could appear, or be argued that I have or will use it. It still could, come to that, but this shows good intent at least.”