Kindred in Death (In Death #29)(26)

“Where are you going?”

“I want to go back to the scene, walk through it, then I’ll pick up the runs at home. Copy the data from Columbia to my home unit.”

“Okay. If I hit anything, I’ll let you know.”

Eve downed more coffee, and tagged Roarke. “Any progress?”

“This won’t be quick or easy.”

“I’m done here. I’m going to go back to the scene, do a walk-through, then take the rest home.”

“I’ll meet you in the garage.”

“Not quick or easy, remember?”

“With the captain’s blessing, I’m having some of the units sent to my lab at home. I’ve got better equipment. Five minutes.”

He clicked off.

She loaded up what she needed, sent copies of all reports, notes, files to her home unit. On the way to the garage she took a tag from one of the officers on the knock-on-doors. All residents on the victim’s block had been located and interviewed. And not one of them had seen anyone enter or exit the MacMasters home, save Deena herself, over the weekend.

Maybe Baxter and his faithful aide, Trueheart, would have better luck, she thought. Or she and Peabody would get a hit from the morning circuit of the park. But when a man left no trace of himself at a rape murder, when he took hours to complete the task and left nothing behind, the likelihood of him being careless enough to be seen with his victim was low.

Still, someone somewhere had seen them. Remembering was a different matter.

They’d walked, talked, eaten, played in the city, and over a number of weeks. She only had to find one venue, one person, one crack in the whole to pry open.

She walked to her car, leaned back against the trunk as she took out her memo book to key in more notes.

Columbia. Student ID.

Georgia. Southern accent.

Truth or lie? Why truth, why lie?

Missing pocket ’link, PPC—possible e-diary?—handbag. Other contents of handbag important? Protection and trophy?

She looked up when Roarke crossed the garage. “When you worked a mark, did you ever fake an accent?”

“A cop shop’s an odd place to discuss such matters from my standpoint. Since you’re working, I’ll drive.”

He waited until they were in the vehicle before he answered the question. “Yes, now and then, tailoring such to suit the mark. But more often the Irish suited well enough. I might layer it on—switching to a thicker West County brogue, or posh it up with public school tones.”

“But, especially if it was a long con, or some job that would take several weeks and a lot of communication with the mark, it would be easier and safer to stick close to natural. Posh it up or thicken it up, but stay with the basics.”

“That’s true enough,” he agreed as he headed uptown. “One slip and the whole thing can fall apart.”

“Guy tells her he’s from Georgia. She likes the accent, tells her friend that part. He’s smart, so the smart thing is to use what you have, what you’re comfortable with. Maybe he lived in the south, at least for a while. He tells her he goes to Columbia, so maybe he did, or he knows enough about it to be able to speak intelligently when she says, hey, I have a friend who goes there. No point in getting tripped up on those kinds of details. It’s hard to believe he’s nineteen, and has this kind of patience and control, this kind of focus.”

She glanced at Roarke. “Though some do.”

He switched lanes to slide into a narrow gap in traffic. “At nineteen I had a lifetime behind me, of being a street rat, of running games, thieving, and aiming toward getting the f**k out. So by then I’d honed some skills, and learned the need for that patience and control.”

“Murder’s different from thievery.”

“It is indeed entirely different. And more yet when it’s the deliberate murder of an innocent girl. It would be all in the motivation, wouldn’t it? To plan it, run it, execute it this way would take a strong motive. But for some, the motive’s all in the thrill, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t feel like a thrill killing. It’s too exacting for that. And too cold.”

He said nothing for a few moments as he nipped around a Rapid Cab and through a light seconds before it flashed red. “When I went for the men who’d tortured and killed Marlena, it was cold. Cold-blooded, cold-minded. Some might have looked at the results and thought otherwise, but there was no thrill involved in it. None of it.”

Eve thought of Summerset’s young daughter—a girl Roarke had thought of as a sister, and who’d been used and murdered as a warning to him. “Deena wasn’t executed. If there’s a similarity it’s between her and Marlena. The payback. It keeps ringing for me. On the other hand, he could have taken her out other ways, at other times. Abducted her, put MacMasters through that agony before killing her.”

“He liked playing the boyfriend, you’re thinking. Stringing it out, making her care. He likes the game maybe. If there was a thrill, it would’ve been in that stage of it. Cold blood and a cold mind. You’d need both to be able to romance a girl, to use that for the express purpose of taking her life.”

When he pulled up in front of the MacMasters home, Eve got out to stand on the sidewalk.

“It’s later than it would’ve been when he walked here. He had to walk, nothing else makes sense. He could’ve come from either direction, even through the park. Until we find somebody who saw him that night, we can’t know. He had the cuffs, he had the drug. Warm night, but he could’ve been wearing a jacket. A lot of kids wear them more for style than need. Restraints in a pocket, maybe, same with the drug. But he’d need tools, wouldn’t he, for the security. Maybe he had a satchel, a bag, a backpack. Or he’s just got the tools in another pocket. McNab wears pants that have a million of them.”