Kindred in Death (In Death #29)(96)

“He gave you his name, his credentials.”

“Yes. I guess it was kind of quick, he was a bit fumbly. But we were right on the street. He just walked with me for a few blocks, asked the right sort of questions. He’d done some good background on the clinic. I was impressed, and pleased. We can use some positive exposure. He bought me a cup of coffee from a glide-cart, and asked if he could contact me if he had any follow-ups.”

“And did he?”

“The next week, he was waiting outside the clinic when I closed up, with coffee. I had some time, so we walked over to the park, sat on a bench, drank coffee while we did his follow-up. He was . . . he was a little flirty, nothing over the top or offensive. I was flattered. He’s twenty years younger, easily, and I . . . I’m an idiot.”

“No. He’s very good at what he does.”

“We talked, that’s all, and it came out he’s a fan of Zapoto’s films.”

“Jesus,” Drobski murmured.

“I know. I’m a rabid fan, and we got into that, debating, dissecting. There was a mini-festival in Tribeca that weekend.”

“You went out with him.”

Elysse moistened her lips, pushed at her hair.

Nervous, Eve thought, but equal parts embarrassed.

“I met him there Saturday night. We had drinks after, a little dinner. God, I actually told him I couldn’t ask him back to my place because of my daughter, which was an obvious way of saying let’s go to his. And he said his roommate’s mother was visiting, and it would be awkward. Then he kissed me and put me in a cab. He kissed me,” she repeated, pressing her hand to her lips.

“We went out again the next week—just lunch, soy dogs down on the wharf. He made me feel young, sexy—and eager,” she confessed, “because he said he wanted me to have a little more time. I’d told him about the divorce, and my daughter. I told him about my girl. He wanted me to have more time because he wanted me to be sure.”

“When are you seeing him again?”

“A week from Friday. He’s working this weekend.”

Not if I can help it, Eve thought.

19

“SHE’S NOT THE NEXT IN LINE,” EVE SAID. “He’s playing her along, stringing it out. Divorced—that’s a couple steps further along. He plays her perfectly. Changes his look, his image. Young, but not too young, flirtatious, but not too, interested in what interests her—knowledgeable about those interests.”

“She doesn’t tell anybody about him because it’s early days yet,” Peabody put in. “And she feels a little foolish contemplating an affair with someone twenty years younger.”

“He doesn’t have a house ’link, he tells her, his pocket’s broken. He hasn’t gotten around to replacing it. He doesn’t want her contacting him yet. He needs to keep her anxious and off balance. He’s got the power. But she’s not next.”

“Somebody else is.” Concern covered Peabody’s face as she studied the images of possible targets Eve had displayed on the rear wall screen. “And probably this weekend.”

“He doesn’t get another one. Let’s take the child services supervisor, then the APA.”

She downed coffee between interviews and gave Peabody a twenty-minute break to grab a sandwich of her own.

She began to see the steps, the stages, the story that took place twenty years before, and thought she understood the players, their roles, their choices.

“She went down for him,” Roarke concluded. “He conned her into it, or convinced her in that call she made after the bust. ‘We can’t both go down, baby, who’ll take care of the boy?’ ”

“That, maybe,” Eve agreed, “but he’d already been in once. Prints on file. They’d bust him hard on the ID fraud if she admitted he’d been involved, and he’d do more than the eighteen months for the second offense. He’d use that. ‘You’ll do a year, sugar, and I’ll be there for you. If they look at me, it’s five to seven.’ ”

“You got that right. He had more on the line than she did.”

“And he’d need her to go down quick and clean, make it easy for the cops and the PA. No fuss, no muss, no looking too hard at him.”

“And more, I think more, if they both went down, there’d be no one to maintain their identities. He could push that. The center wouldn’t hold, and they’d be exposed for what they were. A lot more than a year and a half at stake. And she’s the one who got caught, wasn’t she? She’s the one who got careless. Why should they lose it all when she could suck it up?”

“That’s my take,” Eve agreed. “He’d already gone in once, and he wasn’t going back. Some time, some dealing, some pleading hardship, she could’ve gotten off with the year, and part of that, maybe most, in a halfway, mandatory rehab. But that would’ve made it risky for him. The quicker she goes down, the quicker he’s clear. But it’s more, I think.”

Sliding her hands into her pockets, she wandered the room so familiar—an illusion, but familiar. And remembered.

“With my mother, I’m vague. It’s blurry with only a few clear flashes. But I know—I knew—she hated the . . . fact of me. But she had me, and she stayed at least long enough for me to have a few pictures in my head, to remember specific events.”