New York to Dallas (In Death #33)(31)

“Has the picture of the female we believe is McQueen’s current partner been shown?”

“As soon as we received it from your department, Lieutenant. We didn’t get any hits. We’ve run down or are running down everyone booked into the motel last night. So far, we’ve cleared everyone.”

“They didn’t book,” Eve put in. “They didn’t stay there. They dumped her vehicle there, possibly transferred her to another. Most likely a van. You might re-interview asking about a van parked near where you located your sister’s car. Highest probability?” she continued when Bree took out a notebook. “The female suspect met Melinda Jones outside of the designated location. Probably some sort of restaurant—down-scale, but busy. Café, diner, bar. Requests the vic to take her somewhere else, maybe quieter. She wouldn’t want to go in with her target, be seen with her. The suspect’s behavior is nervous, upset—as the vic would expect, and being predisposed to help she lets the suspect into her vehicle. Is that consistent with your sister, Detective?”

“Yes.” Bree paused in her notes, circled the ring again. “Melinda would have taken her wherever she wanted to go.”

“At some point the suspect asks your sister to pull over, or maybe pull into an empty lot. She feels sick, or she becomes hysterical. It’s smarter, simpler to incapacitate the—your sister and gain control of the vehicle if they’re stopped. Suspect takes the wheel, McQueen joins them, or suspect drives to the motel, meets McQueen. They make the transfer, leave your sister’s vehicle. Doesn’t matter if you find it. It’s better if you do, then waste time looking for them in that area. They’re nowhere near that area.”

“If I’d checked when I got home—”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference.” Eve cut Bree off. They didn’t have time for the luxury of guilt. “It wouldn’t have mattered if you’d been home when she got the contact. She’d have responded, exactly as she did. She may have given you the name of the woman she intended to meet, but that wouldn’t have mattered either because it’s a lie. And within . . . I don’t know the traffic patterns and routes around here, but I’d say in no more than an hour, long before you’d have felt any concern, she was secured in the location they had ready.”

Eve turned to Ricchio. “That’s the most likely scenario.”

“In your opinion, would he have taken her out of the city?”

“He’s an urbanite—and he’s been confined for years, away from the action, the energy, the movement. Neighbors tend to pay more attention to each other in the suburbs or outlyings. Best guess is an apartment or condo, mid-level. Nothing too flashy. His partner would already be established there. Could be weeks or months, but she’s got it all set up for him. It’s soundproofed, has top-grade security, and plenty of room. In prior partnerships, the female maintained her own residence. I don’t see that changing. He doesn’t want her in his space night and day. He likes his privacy.”

“You have an accomplice in custody.”

“Randall Stibble,” Eve confirmed for Ricchio. “We’ll call him a broker. For a fee he set McQueen up with potential partners who visited him in prison. My partner and another detective have him in Interview. If he’s got anything more to give, they’ll get it. Jones knew the female suspect, you said someone she’d counseled. You have her records?”

Ricchio nodded at Bree. “We’ve accessed them, and we’ve run searches on every patient she’s counseled in the last six months. We’ve found no matches on face recognition, DNA, or prints.”

“You need to go back further. It won’t be that recent. A year, maybe more. They’ll have put some distance between the alleged rape, the initial consults, and this contact and abduction. The ID she used to meet with McQueen is fake, good enough to beat the prison scans. Like McQueen, her appearance is probably altered somewhat. But they can’t alter who and what they are.”

“I’d like you to brief my officers, give them profiles. Your experience with McQueen will be invaluable to the search for Melinda.”

“Agents Nikos and Laurence should be here within twenty.”

“Then we’ll brief in thirty, if that suits you.”

“It does.”

“How is he financing this?” Ricchio asked her. “The travel, the apartment, the transportation?”

“We always knew he had money. We just couldn’t find it. He’ll have funneled some to his partner for expenses on the setup. That’ll give us a trail, once we find the crumbs on it. Our civilian consultant has a particular expertise on financials.”

She glanced at Roarke, nodded.

“He’ll have multiple accounts,” Roarke began. “Stibble and the guard he worked with both had secondary, buried accounts. Not particularly well buried. McQueen was able to transfer relatively small amounts out of an account—standard off-shore, registered to a dummy corporation—to theirs. He most usually used Stibble’s e-mail account to do the transfers. The off-shore account was easy to find once we looked, which tells me he has more. More and fatter. As he greatly depleted, we’ll say this payroll account, he’ll likely need to tap one or more of the others to cover his current expenses.”