Calculated in Death (In Death #36)(84)

“I’m sorry to interrupt. Marlo! How nice to see you.”

When Mira came in, Eve thought: What next? A brass band?

Now she had to wait for all the how are yous, you look wonderfuls, and blah, blah, blah with people crowded into her office sucking up her oxygen.

Roarke sent Eve an amused look over Mira’s head. “Marlo,” he began, “I was about to go up to EDD. Would you like to come along, have a little look around?”

“I’d love to, and then I can fill you in myself. I’ll see both of you tomorrow. And thank you, Dallas. Again. I’ll take care of those tickets.”

“Thanks.”

When Roarke led Marlo out, quietly closed the door, Eve let out a huge breath. “God! Why are there so many people?”

“She looks happy,” Mira commented. “You look impatient.”

“She is. I am. I was coming to you as soon as I updated my book and board.”

“I read the reports, studied the recording Peabody sent me, and I wanted to speak with you right away. He’s evolving, Eve.”

“I got that much.”

Mira shook her head. “Update your board. Put this morning’s victims and crime scenes up.”

“Okay.” She went to her unit to load the recorder, make the prints.

“I’m programming coffee,” Mira told her.

“I’ve got some of that tea stuff you like stocked in there.”

“I want coffee.” While Eve worked, Mira programmed two cups.

“You see the first victim,” Mira began. “A clean, quick kill, and the attempt to disguise murder as mugging.”

“It was a job. He didn’t know her. Business.”

“I agree, as we discussed before. The second murder is unnecessarily cruel, would have caused suffering, and was done face-to-face.”

“More personal. I get it,” Eve repeated. “He knew the guy, and he’s got a little taste for it.”

“Face-to-face,” Mira said again, “but a victim in a drugged state, and the restraints. You believe the killer is a big man, a strong man, yet he restrained the smaller, weaker man.”

“He’s a coward at the bottom of it.”

“Yes, he is. The third victim, all but on the heels of the second, fast work, and in the last case, extremely violent. You believe the victim was stunned prior to the bludgeoning.”

“Confirmed by Morris, yes.”

“And that he lay in wait, lured the victim in, incapacitated him, then beat him violently. It’s a very quick escalation, an experimentation in methods, perhaps, but more it’s an embrace of that violence, one that, to escalate so quickly, has always been there. A big, strong man, capable of snapping a woman’s neck, both physically and mentally. And yet a coward, and the cowardice, even more than the strength and violence, makes him very dangerous.”

“Because he’ll ambush, come from behind.”

“It’s more than that. Despite the relative ease of the first killing, he failed. It wasn’t judged a mugging, and it turned the spotlight on his employer. The reaction to that?”

“Try for me and Peabody.”

“Yes. Impulsively, and without any consideration for people who might have been hurt. And his cowardice is clearly shown—and has been touted all over the media—by using a child as a shield and weapon. Again, he failed, and this time he’s been called a coward, a monster, while you’re cheered as a hero.”

“I caught the kid,” Eve began. “It wasn’t heroic, it was a good catch.”

“I disagree, and so does the very vocal public. But the point is, he’s termed a coward. You’re termed a hero.”

“All right. That’d be a pisser for him.”

“Do you believe his employer ordered, or expected him, to carry out these two killings today with increasing violence? With no attempt at all to mask them?”

Eve shook her head. “Probably not. I expect the order was just, Take care of this. I don’t think Alexander thinks things through any more than his muscle.”

“No. Impulse, carelessness, cowardice, violence unleashed. He may not, very well may not, wait to be ordered before killing again. He’ll see his last two murders as successes. He committed them his way, released that violence. Enjoyed it. He’ll want that feeling again, that accomplishment, that release. And his first kill was a failure due to you, and Peabody. His second attack, on you and Peabody a failure.”

“So he’ll want to correct that mistake.” Considering, Eve sat on the corner of her desk. “Okay.”

“Need to correct it. He lost considerable face, considerable pride when those vids of you snatching that baby out of the air hit the media, the Internet. He was able to offset that by these kills, rack up success, feel accomplished, and enjoy the act. Increasingly. Whether or not his employer directs him, circling back to you will be imperative.

“And now you’re calculating how you can use that threat to your advantage.”

She wasn’t the department’s top shrink for nothing, Eve mused.

“If I can’t, if I can’t figure out a way to outsmart and stop this moron, I should be in another line of work. I figured if he got ambitious, he’d kill the hacker next.”