Creation in Death (In Death #25)(84)

“Let me answer that question by ripping your clothes off.”

She let out a laughing squeal as they tumbled to the floor. “I thought, you know, you weren’t feeling the bloom and spark.”

“Something’s blooming just fine,” he said as he dragged off her sweater.

She tugged his pants down over his hips to check for herself. Looking down, she said, “I’ll say.”

“And as for sparkage.” He crushed his mouth to hers in a kiss hot enough she envisioned smoke coming out of her ears. “Any more, and we’d torch the place.”

She saw his eyes go dreamy when his hand cupped her breast, felt her stomach muscles tighten in response.

“Mmmm, She-body, the most female of females. Let’s see what we can light up.”

L ater, considerably later, Eve studied the data Peabody had sent to her office unit. “She’s right,” Eve mumbled. “Too young, wrong method. Dobbins hits me as just too sloppy, just too disinterested. Klok’s coming across as straight and narrow. But there’s something here. I just can’t see it yet.”

“Maybe you would if you got a decent night’s sleep.”

Instead, she walked around her boards again. “Opera. What about the opera-tickets angle?”

“I’ve got the list for season ticket holders for the Met. Nothing on the first cross-check. I’ll try others.”

“He jumps names, jumps names and ID data. Covert stuff. Smooth, under radar. Where’d he learn how? Torture methods. Covert operations have been known to employ torture methods.”

“I can tell you my sources on the matter of torturers isn’t popping anyone of this generation still living and in business, or anyone who moonlights by targeting young brunettes.”

“It was worth a shot,” Eve mused. “Covert might change that. Someone who was in military ops, or paramilitary at one time. He learned the methods somewhere, and developed the skill to manipulate his data.”

“Or has the connections or the funds to hire someone to manipulate it,” Roarke reminded her.

“Yeah, there’s that. So. Why do we torture someone?”

“For information.”

“Yeah, at least ostensibly. Why else do you torture? Kicks, sexual deviation, ritual sacrifice.”

“Experimentation. Another tried and true rationale for inflicting pain.”

She looked at him. “We eliminate the need or desire for information, and the sexual deviation. No doubt in my mind he gets personal gratification from inflicting pain, but it has to be more. Ritual’s part of it, but this isn’t some sick religious deal or cult. So, experimentation,” she repeated. “Fits. Factor in that he’s very good at it. Torture skills are specialized. He isn’t messy about it, he’s precise. Again, where did he learn?”

“And you’re back to the Urbans.”

“It keeps crossing there. Someone taught him, or he studied. Experimented before the experimentation. But not here, not in New York.”

Circling her board, she studied, considered angles. “We ran searches for others before. I did a Missing Persons run on the victim type. But what if he experimented elsewhere? If he purposefully mutilated the bodies to eliminate the correlation, or disposed of them altogether?”

“You’re going to do a global search on mutilations and missing persons involving the victim type.”

“He might not have been as careful. If we find something…he might have left something behind.” She stopped, stared at the sketch of the man she hunted. “Still honing his craft, still finding his way. We did globals, but maybe we didn’t go back far enough.”

“I’ll set it up. I can do it faster,” he said before she could argue. “Then it’ll take a good long while for any results you can actually work with. I’ll set it up, then we’re getting some sleep.”

“All right. Okay.”

T he dreams came in blurry spurts, as if she were swimming through fog that tore and re-formed, tore and re-formed. The clock ticked incessantly.

Over that endless, echoing tick, she heard the sounds of a battle raging. A firefight, she thought. Blasts and bullets and the wild shouts and calls of the men and women who fought.

She could smell the blood, the smoke, the burning flesh before she could see it. Carnage carried a sickly sweet aroma.

As vision cleared, focused, she saw the battle was on a stage, and the stage was dressed to depict the city in a strange, stylized form. Buildings, all black and silver, were tipped and tilted above hard white streets that jagged into impossible angles or inexplicable dead ends.

And the players on stage were dressed in bright, elaborate costumes that flowed through bloody pools and swirled in dirty smoke as they murdered each other.

She looked down on it all with interest, from her gilded box seat. Below, in a pit where bodies lay twisted, she could see the orchestra madly playing their instruments. Their fingers ran with blood from razor-sharp strings.

On stage, the shouts and calls were songs, she realized, fierce, violent. Vicious.

War could never be otherwise.

“The third act is nearly over.”

She turned, looked into the face of the killer as he took a huge stopwatch out of the pocket of his formal black.

“I don’t understand. It’s all death. Who writes these things?”