New York to Dallas (In Death #33)(36)

“It went too smoothly for her to have been a novice.”

Eve agreed. “The sex is just a tool. I don’t think he’d have trusted anybody to fake a rape who hadn’t done it before, or used sex for blackmail and profit.”

Roarke glanced over as he negotiated traffic. “Unlike Nikos, I don’t agree with the bulk of your briefing, but with the whole. They wouldn’t have acquired the van locally.”

“Again, same page. Gotta check, but she’d have found one out of Dallas, driven it in. Not until after they had the place. No point in it before that.”

Roarke shrugged as he swung around a pickup. “I’ll find it.”

“Will you?”

“She wouldn’t have driven for days. Most likely she bought it in Texas. A big state, yes, but still just a state. In-state keeps the registration and transfer less complicated. And unless she’s using up ID like candy, she may have used one we know about. Since she’s going to toss it anyway, why not? I’d vote for Sister Suzan. She seems the used, inexpensive van type, doesn’t she?”

Considering, Eve studied his profile. “That’s good. I hadn’t worked that around yet.”

“You would have. This Ricchio likely will, too. He seems capable.”

“Yeah, he does.” She glanced out the window, noted they’d moved into meaner streets. Streets like the ones she’d wandered in shock as a child.

She turned away, tuned them out. When Roarke touched her hand briefly, she realized he knew.

“I’m not thinking about it.”

Oh, but he knew she was. “No need to.”

“I dealt with it when we came back before. We both did.” She remembered he’d beaten his knuckles bloody on a speed bag when they’d come back from that room where it had happened. Where she’d remembered everything.

“Melinda Jones is what’s important now,” she added.

“Do you believe he won’t hurt her—or much—or was that for her sister’s benefit?”

“I don’t see why he would, unless he’s bored, or loses his temper. He’s got control, but he’s also got a switch. That’s what I saw when I stumbled on him in New York. How he is when the switch gets flipped. I’m going to try to keep him from being bored—and keep his temper on me. And if I can’t, it’s all the more likely he’ll snatch a kid. Nikos is wrong there. An adult woman, an older partner, that’s mommy sex, so it’s habit, it’s ingrained. But they can’t give him what he really needs, and what he feels entitled to.”

“And again, what his mother helped acquire for him.”

“Exactly. Forty-eight hours, by my take—no more, and probably less. If we don’t have him, he’ll feed the need.”

Roarke pulled into a lot peppered with potholes, slid in beside the Dallas police.

“Entrance is around front,” Annalyn told them. “She claimed he grabbed her out here, when she came out the back. Held the knife on her until she’d unlocked, then did her right on the floor.”

“There’s a security cam.”

Annalyn looked up as Eve did. “There wasn’t. The owner installed one after the fact. The place isn’t much, but he’s a decent guy. He was pretty upset about the whole deal, and steamed that it happened in his place.”

They walked around front where Eve agreed, the place wasn’t much. When they stepped in she judged it as a bar for serious, nofrills drinking. Long bar, swivel stools, a scatter of tables with hard plastic chairs, crap lighting. No food service, and no amusements other than the ancient, flickering, and palm-sized screen hanging from a hook at the end of the bar.

It didn’t lack for customers. She counted eleven, half of them in cowboy boots, and most of them solo drinkers.

The man running the stick had a gut like a whale and a bald streak straight down the center of his skull. He gave them a look, a nod, then came down the bar to meet them.

“Detectives. Don’t tell me you found that f**ker—excuse my language—who raped Sarajo?”

Bree took the lead. In Eve’s estimation, her partner let her.

“The woman you knew as Sarajo Whitehead is wanted for questioning on another matter. It turns out she was using false identification when she worked for you, Mr. Vik. And we now believe, on strong evidence, she faked the rape.”

“Goddamn it, excuse my language.” He shifted his feet. The enormous gut rolled like a tsunami. “I gave her a week’s pay after that happened, to tide her over. Felt responsible ’cause she closed the place for me that night, and I didn’t have security on the back. Why the hell would she do something like that?”

“The thing is, Mr. Vik, we think she had relations with someone here that night. I know we asked you, and everyone who worked that night before, but with this new angle, can you think of anyone she might have let in after closing?”

“Wasn’t a regular, I’ll tell you that. I grilled every last one of them my own self.” He swiped a rag over the bar. “There was that guy, passing through. He didn’t look nothing like the guy she said. She said he was big, had some Mex in him, dark hair and eyes. This guy was white as an Irishman’s ass—excuse my language—and scrawny. Yellow hair.

Talked too damn much to suit me. Here for his daddy’s memorial, hated the old man anyway, and was heading back to Kentucky when it was over. I left about midnight. He was still here. But the flat fact is, he wasn’t carrying no knife, and Sarajo could’ve squashed him like a bug if he tried anything. I never gave him a thought.”