Kindred in Death (In Death #29)(32)

“Bollocks,” she muttered, and made him laugh over her co-opting one of his oaths.

“I adore you, every day. And I realize I needed more than the meal and the break. I needed to get that out of my system. So, to your question, Lieutenant.”

“What the hell was the question?” she asked.

“Did I threaten or boast or transmit to the men who’d killed Marlena that I intended to make them pay for it? No. Nor did I leave any trace so any of those involved would know the why of it.”

“That’s what I thought.” Calmer, she nodded. “But then, it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t revenge. That’s part of the difference, and part of the need here. The reason for the video, the message.”

“Aye. I’d agree. That kind of revenge? It’s thirsty.”

“Thirsty,” she murmured, and ran the message back through her head. “Yeah. That’s a good word for it.”

“Generally you’d leave enough so the target of that revenge knew which quiver the arrow came from. Otherwise, there’s no point in that victory dance.”

“Yeah, but we have to check it out. We’ll need to comb through the university, that’s an angle. And we’ll analyze the disc. Feeney needs to take that.”

“Am I being demoted?” Roarke asked lightly.

She arched her brows. “We’re too entwined for that,” she said. “But it’s a cop’s kid. We need to be careful. I want the head of EDD in charge of that piece of evidence. We’ve got an unlimited budget, unlimited manpower—and there will be those, in the media, even in the department, who question that.”

A faint line of annoyance rode between her eyes. “How come this case gets so much time and effort? Why didn’t Civilian Joe get the same treatment? The answers are simple. You come after a cop or a cop’s family, we come after you. And it’s more complex. You come after a cop or a cop’s family, it puts us all in the crosshairs and makes it goddamn hard to do the job for Civilian Joe. We live with that, but this intensifies. MacMasters had partners through the years, and as a boss, men under his command. How many of them might be vulnerable? And more, when we catch this bastard, every piece of evidence, every point of procedure has to be above reproach. We can’t have anything questionable in court, nothing some defense attorney can hang us on.”

She ate a bite. “That said, if you had the time and the inclination to work with the copy, nobody’s stopping you. As expert consultant, civilian, assigned to EDD, you report to Feeney.”

“Which isn’t nearly as fun as reporting to you. But message received.”

“One of the most valuable things you do is let me bounce stuff off you. Listen, give opinions. Just talking it through opens up angles for me. That’s why I asked the question.”

“Understood. Now you have another, so bounce.”

“Okay, I have to play all the lines—pull, tug. One of them that keeps circling for me is the Columbia connection. Maybe, maybe it was just more bullshit. But it feels like he’d have played it with roots in truth. Just like you said about the accent. So he went there, or worked there, or knows someone who did. Alternatively he scoped it out, maybe—what is it—monitored classes. Got the feel so he could talk about it to her. Maybe he faked his name, but he probably picked something that felt natural to him, or meant something to him. He’s not going to give her too much truth, but those roots again.”

“With a school that size, even with the security, it’s not difficult to get on campus, study the layout, gather particulars. Names of instructors, times of classes. He could get most of the information online or simply by requesting it.”

It was more, she thought. Something more.

“He studied her, so he knew she had a friend who went there. It was, I’m dead sure, one of his angles. One of the ways he used to get her to talk to him. In those first stages, she’s got no motivation to keep it all secret. So she might say to Jamie how she met this guy who goes there.”

“Ah.” Following her lead, Roarke nodded. “And if he’d been studying her, he would know her friend Jamie’s interest in e-work, police work. Wouldn’t he want to cover himself there, if Jamie got it into his head to check out this boy who put stars in the eyes of his good friend?”

“If he had a brain he would. Maybe, once they’re established and he’s got her hooked, he doesn’t know teenage girls well enough to realize she’s got to tell someone. A peer, a pal. So he’s not worried about us digging there. But he had to worry about Jamie checking or her—cop’s daughter—checking, even just to satisfy her curiosity. He had to show student ID at the vids and so on to get the discount, or wouldn’t she wonder why he didn’t? Where did he get it?”

“Stolen or forged.”

“Maybe both, because if someone checked—and he’s got to cover that—he needs to show up on the roster.”

“We know he has some e-skills. It wouldn’t be hard to do. And,” Roarke added, “if he had a brain, he’d have already wiped himself off that roster.”

“High probability on that. So tomorrow I’m going to start pushing somebody at the college to get me a list of students reporting a stolen ID, then start wading through that.”

“Why tomorrow?”