Calculated in Death (In Death #36)(32)

“Semi-pro? Not quite good enough for the majors?”

“I’m thinking no, not quite good enough. There was a . . . bullishness about it. Charging in. She didn’t know she was working late until that afternoon, so not much planning ahead. Still, a decent plan. Stun—though the stun feels unnecessary—snatch, grab, transport, and get her inside for privacy. The killing method, that takes training, and again, it’s impersonal.”

“I doubt the victim thought so.”

“She thought they’d let her go, or she sure as hell hoped they’d let her go, right down to the instant. And he took her from behind, again, impersonal. He—they—got whatever information they asked for, plus whatever she had in her briefcase. Then they used the standard cover of a botched mugging.”

“A homicidal classic.”

“It might’ve worked. But what kind of mugger stuns a mark, smacks her around, then snaps her neck from behind?”

“A particularly vicious one, but no,” he continued before Eve could speak. “If you’re a mugger lucky enough to have a stunner, you stun, take the valuables, and run off to stun another day.”

“Agreed.”

“If you’re particularly vicious, you don’t bother to stun. You’d want to do some damage and you’d inflict it.”

“Also agreed. Plus why? She was a mugger’s dream. A woman walking alone who doesn’t fight back. No defensive wounds. If she’d screamed or shouted for help say, and spooked him, someone would’ve heard it. And in that neighborhood, would likely report it, or at least tell the cops on canvass. And if he was spooked—”

“And had a stunner.” Roarke picked up her train of thought. “Quicker, easier to jam it against her throat and kill her that way.”

“That’s why the stunner doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the marks are on her. And one more plus. She had no business being that far from the office, that far from home. It was too cold and too late for her to walk it, and she’d told her husband she was just walking to the subway—a block and a half from the office.”

“All that, yes. And the blood on the tarp.”

“That’s the big one as it proves she was inside the apartment. To get her inside, they needed the code.”

“Ah, well . . .” He only smiled, wiggled his fingers.

“If they could afford or had a B&E man good enough to get through that security without a trace, they could afford a pro hit.”

“There wasn’t much time to recruit.”

She pointed a finger at him. “Exactly.” Pleased he followed the same line, she lifted her wine to drink. “She gets passed the accounts, the audits, just that afternoon. That’s the most likely motive. Maybe, maybe, it was one of the other, older deals, and she’d just reached some stage on it that sent up the red flag, but the probability’s higher if it was new because it reads like a rush job.”

“New to her.”

This time she toasted him. “Exactly. Word gets back to the client, or the auditee—is that a word?—or the person involved with the business who doesn’t want somebody fresh coming in, can’t afford it. She’s only had a few hours, hell, maybe she didn’t even scratch the surface. But you can’t take the chance. Things are a little confused, a little bogged down at Brewer and company, with the two accountants in a Vegas hospital. It’s a smallish department. Everybody knows everybody. You can bet anybody who needed to know could find out who’s working on what. Nobody’s going to think a thing about a question like, say, who got slammed with Jim’s or Chaz’s work? Or the supervisor told the interested party who’d be handling the audit when they contacted him to express concern.”

“Not to worry, Mr. Very Bad Man,” Roarke began, “Marta’s one of the best. She does excellent work, and in fact, will be burning the midnight oil right here tonight to catch up.”

“As simple as that,” Eve agreed. “Then Mr. Very Bad Man calls in a couple of goons, tells them to find out what Marta knows, get the files, and get rid of her.”

“Which they do, but Lieutenant Very Smart Woman detects the subtle mistakes in their work.”

“They shouldn’t have taken the coat.” She cut a bite of steak before gesturing with her knife. “It’s a little thing, but it was overkill. Or if they took the coat, they should’ve taken the boots. They were good boots, pretty new. Probably worth more than the coat. And if they wanted it to look like a mugging, they should’ve used a sticker. Messy, sure, but putting a couple of holes in her would read more like a mugging. Using that apartment was convenient, but not smart. It gave us the connection.”

“WIN to Brewer to the vic’s new audits.”

“I know at least eight clients at this point who cross, and three who had audits assigned to Marta on the day of her murder. We may find more yet.” She plucked up a fry, frowned at it. “Too f**king convenient.”

“Why not one of the construction crew? One of them could have finessed the codes.”

“Not impossible, and I need to dig into Peabody’s report more thoroughly. So far, nobody’s popping. And it seems to me one of the crew would be more likely to spread that tarp back out. They’d know how the place looks every morning. Leaving it bunched up just brings more attention to it. And when you straighten it out, you’re more likely to spot the blood.”