Kindred in Death (In Death #29)(25)

“She texted me, the night after he got informed,” Jamie told her. “I think she tagged everybody she knew. She was really proud. I was surprised she didn’t go on the trip, like a family celebration.”

“A girl, in the first weeks of a romance,” Peabody said. “She doesn’t want to go off with her parents for the weekend when she can stay home and see the guy. Even if she was on the fence about it, one word from him, how he’d miss her, and she stays.”

“We work the lines we have. Peabody, contact somebody at Columbia on the off chance he told her the truth. I want a list of every male student—and add in any staff—currently enrolled or employed, or who have been enrolled or employed within the last five years who are from Georgia. Age range eighteen to thirty. While that’s running tag Baxter, he and his boy are back on the roll. I want them to take Garcia, then follow up on all door-to-doors, and expand same to a three-block radius of the scene.”

In her office she ran like crimes, and did a full-scan search through Feeney’s brain child, IRCCA, to take it global, and run the data through off-world as well.

While her computer labored, she set up a second murder board in her office. Deena’s image—alive and dead—would stay with her while she worked.

“Smart girl,” Eve murmured as she pinned images, reports, time lines. “Cop’s daughter. Everyone says that. But under it you’re still just a girl. A nice-looking boy pays attention, says the right things, looks at you just a certain way. You’re not smart anymore.”

She hadn’t been, Eve thought. Not a cop’s daughter, but a seasoned cop—a cynic, a badass herself. And Roarke had paid attention, said the right things, looked at her in that way. She couldn’t claim she’d been smart. She’d bent her own rules, taken chances, fallen for a man she’d known was dangerous, one who’d been a murder suspect.

No, she hadn’t been smart. She’d been dazzled. Why would anyone expect Deena to be otherwise?

“I know what you felt, or thought you felt,” Eve murmured. “I know how he got to you, broke down your resistance, your defenses, your better judgment. Me, I got lucky. You didn’t. But I know how he got under your guard.”

So now, instead of thinking like the girl, she needed to think like the pursuer.

She turned toward the AutoChef—stopped.

Coffee, she remembered. Roarke’s first gift to her had been a bag of coffee. The real deal. Irresistible to her, and worth more to her mind than a fistful of diamonds.

Charming and thoughtful—and exactly right.

Had there been a token given? she wondered. Something small and exactly right?

She stepped back to her desk, studied Deena’s photo. Music and theater, she recalled. Big interests. And reading. All those music discs, she thought. Maybe he put together a music mix, designed just for her. Or poems—didn’t women get off on poetry, especially if it was from a man?

Wanted to join the Peace Corps or Education For All. But damned if she could think of a token that applied there.

Her computer signaled the first search was complete. Letting the other angle simmer, Eve sat down to read case files on rape-murder.

Nothing popped, though she read, analyzed, ran probabilities for more than an hour. The search through IRCCA gave her the same results. She had a handful of long shots to track down, but her gut told her it was just for form. Had to be done.

She’d eliminated half the long shots when Peabody stepped in.

“I got a partial list from Columbia—the currents. It’s going to be tomorrow before I can get the formers. At this time there are sixty-three male students from the great state of Georgia, and four instructors, one security guard, and two other employees. The guard’s on the high side at thirty, a groundskeeper at twenty-four, and a maintenance tech, twenty-six.”

“We’ll do background runs on them, all of them.”

“It just doesn’t feel like he’d have given her that much truth.”

“I think he gave her enough truth, so if she played cop’s daughter, checked him out, it would fly. He’s too careful to leave himself open.”

Peabody gestured toward the AutoChef, got a nod. “You think he’s a student there?” she asked as she walked over to program coffee.

“I think he may have set it up so if she checked, he’d pop up as a student. He may have already taken care of that, wiped the record. Here’s what you could do, if you were being careful. You find a student, clone his ID, take his name, or change it—dealer’s choice. You can bet your ass he had what would look like student ID. You get discounts, right, when you go to vids, theater, concerts. He took her out, he’d have to show it—and it would have to pass the scan.”

“I didn’t think of that. Which is why you get the slightly less crappy bucks than I do.” She passed Eve fresh coffee. “So maybe, one of these sixty-three is his dupe. Or . . . it could be he had a partner.”

“He works alone. A partner means you have to trust. Who could he trust this much? No loose ends if you work alone. I’m going to bet one of those students had their ID stolen or lost it within the last six months. He clones it, replaces the photo with one of himself, tweaks the basic data if necessary. If Deena gets a buzz, and checks, she’s going to find he’s registered as a student. For now, we run them. Dot every i. Tomorrow, we check to see if any of them replaced their ID. Take the top thirty,” she ordered. “I’ll take the rest. Work here or at home, and report to my home office in the morning, oh-seven-hundred.”