Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(111)

Not everybody had a husband with his own island, she thought. She’d even mostly stopped feeling weird about it. Because white sand, blue water hooked her like a fish.

“I could put in for the time, if I’m not in the middle of a hot one.”

“We’ll imagine us both in several hot ones—on the island. It’s already, tentatively, on your calendar.”

“That damn calendar has a life of its own.”

“Which means so do you.”

“Yeah. He doesn’t.” She gestured to Jones’s photo. “His work’s his life, and I get it. But he struck me as sort of balanced and content on that initial impression thing. Not like little brother. They surrounded him. No solo travel, like I said—at least none that shows. No particular job, and what he did have they ran. No hint of relationships unless we count Shelby and her famous bjs.”

“Let’s not.”

“No one mentions any friends, none of the staff ever had anything but the lightest, vaguest things to say. He never left an impression. He was weightless. What time is it in Zimbabwe?”

“Too late. And here as well. Sleep on it.” He pulled her to her feet. “If Mira’s right, and she most often is, he’ll come back. At the very least he’ll contact his sister. Will she tell you?”

“I think she will. Blood may be thicker, but she’s scared, and she’s sick. People who are scared and sick call the cops.”

“Then sleep on it.”

She stopped on her way out with him, looked back at the board. “The last vic? We can’t find her. No matches, not yet, and we’ve been running the search for hours. Feeney’s doing a global, and no matches. She’s no one.”

“She’s yours.”

For now, Eve thought, that had to be enough.

• • •

She had all the faces, and woke with a faint memory of dreaming of them again. But she couldn’t remember what they’d said. She felt as though there was little left for the girls to tell her now.

She had it all in front of her, somehow. If she’d taken the right track, if her beliefs were valid, she would deliver justice, what she could of it, to the victims. She would give answers to those who’d loved and searched for them.

And if she’d gone wrong, if she’d turned the wrong way, she’d go back and start again.

She said as much to Roarke as she dressed for the day.

“You’re not wrong, not about the core of it. I’ve slept on it as well,” he added. “And a man doesn’t leave his work, work he’s devoted to, along with a sister he feels strongly he’s bound to protect for no reason.”

“A side skirt I haven’t turned up, and a sudden need to nail her like a bagful of hammers. And no,” she said, “I would’ve found her if he had an important woman, or if he had an important man for that matter. Plus, sex isn’t nearly as important to him as his mission, and his sister. He wouldn’t leave her to deal with me alone without some sort of solid purpose or desperation.”

“So you’re left with his involvement in some way, and a woman whose memory of her experience as a child, almost certainly in that building, is partially blocked.”

She sat for a moment, an indulgence, and added to it with more coffee. “I’ve got the core of it, you’re right about that. But I have a whole ream of unanswered questions that keep it from firming up. If it wasn’t Montclair Jones in Africa, and I’m pretty damn sure it wasn’t, who ended up in a lion’s digestive system, and why did he agree to masquerade as Jones’s brother? What did Jones do with his brother’s body, because the only way a serial killer stops cold is death or incarceration.”

“A spanner in the works.”

“That’s a wrench. I remember that one. Why don’t you say wrench, because this is America.”

“A wrench then. Is it plausible it went somewhat as you see it, but on that night when DeLonna was taken, Jones discovered them, but rather than play Cain, his brother was afraid of the discovery, of his brother’s righteous wrath, of the thought of being exposed, going to prison, he agreed to go away, to go to Africa. Where he was able to control his urges for that short time, perhaps even believed that higher power he’d been raised on had given him a sign. Then fate or justice, or whatever you chose, intervened to punish him.”

“I don’t like it. I don’t like it because it’s just over the edge of plausible. And I don’t like it because I can’t believe, and neither can you, that after killing twelve—and the time line reads the count comes in at under three weeks. Twelve murders in what comes out to roughly eighteen days. Somebody does that, he doesn’t just stop, and say, ‘Hallelujah, I repent, and I’m going to Zimbabwe to spread the good word.’”

He gave her a friendly little poke. “You just like saying Zimbabwe.”

“It’s hard to give up. But regardless, my ‘I don’t like it’ stands. But it’s plausible.”

She got up. “I’m going to contact Zimbabwe now, and review my notes one more time before I head in.”

“I’ll walk with you.” He slid a hand around her waist and they started out, and the cat streaked by them. “That’s a place we’ve never been. Africa.”