Obsession in Death (In Death #40)(26)

“Ah. All right then, she’s one of your suspects. But you say she lives in Ohio?”

“And has a full-time job. A kid. I don’t find any travel to New York except for a long weekend last February. And she doesn’t have the scratch to hire a pro. This first letter came in three years ago this coming March. I barely remember it. I think I rolled my eyes, tossed it in the file. You’ve got to keep this kind of thing – for reasons that are pretty f*cking clear right now. I sort of remember another coming in a few months later, but by then Peabody was working as my admin, and I had her deal. No answer because the standard is not to encourage.”

She sat, opened the water after all. “She came to New York specifically to meet me – there’s a letter dealing with that. She understands I’m unable to come to her, to dump you right away, but she needs to see me, to hear my voice and blah blah, so we’d meet on Valentine’s Day at the top of the Empire State Building.”

“An Affair to Remember,” Roarke murmured. “A classic vid. A love story.”

“Yeah, she put that in there. I got the next in March. She was a little pissed that time. How could I break her heart and all that. You could say we had our first spat. Then a couple months later, it’s like it never happened when she writes again, but she starts getting explicit about our physical love, more demanding about starting our lives together.”

Eve rolled the cool bottle over her forehead. “I don’t see how it could be this one. Whoever killed Bastwick spent time here, studied her routines, knows the city and how to get around. Knows something about cop work. But this is…”

“Disturbing.” He moved over, stood behind her, rubbed her shoulders.

“There’s a sixty-nine-year-old man in Boca Raton who’s been writing me once a month like clockwork since he read Nadine’s book. Starts off kind of normal. Admiration, thank you for your service, then it gets progressively more personal until he’s asking me to run away with him, how we’ll sail around the world and he’ll treat me like a queen. Christ, I’m half his age, and he should know better. He’s got the scratch.” She sighed. “Not Roarke scratch, but he’s not hurting. So we’ll give him a closer look, but he’s never had any criminal. A couple stints in facilities for emotional issues.

“Another guy in England,” she continued, wound up. “Apparently I come to him in dreams, and we bang like jackrabbits. Over and above the sex, we have this connection – emotional, psychic, depends on the day. He’s the only one I can trust. Dark forces surround me. The law, stupid as it is, hampers my destiny, so when we’re not dream-banging, he’s helping me on my cases. He tried to enlist in the cops over there, but failed the psych.”

“I’m shocked.”

“Yeah.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “One more guy, out in California. Seems sane initially if over-the-top. Big fan of book, vid, me. He, too, fights crime in his way – he claims. And would like to work with me. Then sleep with me. He’s also fine if you participate in that.”

The back of her neck was tight, knotted like twisted wires. Roarke used his thumbs to try to loosen them, kept his voice easy. “The work or the sex?”

“Both. He’s very open-minded. With my assistance, he’d like to come to New York, work as my consultant, one who will find ways around the system to bring the bad guys to justice. He doesn’t believe I get the admiration or respect I’m due, as – according to his last letter – I should be commanding the NYPSD, and he’s outraged on my behalf.”

“Travel?”

“He’s been to New York twice, but not in the last six months. I’ll take a closer look at all of them, but…”

“Another?”

“The last Mira sent tonight. Twenty-eight-year-old female, lives in New York, Lower West Side, works as a paralegal for a firm – her specialty is family law. She’s written eight times in the last year, with the gap between the correspondence narrowing as it goes. She knows we’d be best friends if we ever got together. She tries to advocate for victims and the innocent, too. We’re so much alike. Her boyfriend dumped her last summer, and there’s a long letter – more like a short story – where she cried on my shoulder, knew I was the only one who would understand. Nothing sexual in this one, it’s more like she’s decided we’re like sisters, best friends, and she wants to help me the way she thinks I’ve helped her. I helped her stand up for herself, take better care of herself, to be strong and find her courage.

“God.”

“Criminal?”

“No, nothing. A light tap for illegals possession a few years back. I’ve got a couple of DD calls. Neighbors complaining about shouting, crashing around. Fights with boyfriend, but no charges. I can’t find a connection to Bastwick. Can’t find a trigger, but… She comes off smart, has an unhealthy and completely fictional relationship with me, sees our work as similar, and is often frustrated by the rules of law not fully serving justice. She sounds weird but harmless, and yet —”

He leaned down, kissed the top of her head. “You’re upset because whether or not any of these apply to your investigation, you now understand you’re a central point in the lives of people you don’t know – and don’t really want to know. You dislike the center stage at the best of times. For you, it’s the victim, the perpetrator, the survivors, the job. Your life, our life.”