Thankless in Death (In Death #37)(29)

“It’s not going to last him long.” Eve rose to clear and set the next course. “The sale of the watches and pearls at Ursa’s was a bonus—I doubt he’d expected that kind of a haul. And he’ll net a few more hawking the other stuff, but he’s living high.

“And by the way, since I know you’ll be compelled to buy me shiny things for Christmas, you might try there. Ursa’s, on the Lower East Side. They’re nice people.”

“So noted. Did you see something you liked?”

“The owner. I wasn’t focused on shiny things. Nobody likes him,” she went on. “My man, Jerry, I mean. He’s got three friends, and two of them are reasonably steady types—and both of those aren’t as tight with him as they once were. The third’s another ass**le, so they suit each other.”

She decided Summerset had called it well with the salad. If you had to eat green leafy things, this was the way to get them down.

“So he’d be most likely to reach out to the other ass**le?”

“If any of them, yeah, maybe.” And she’d need to give another good push there.

“I think between me and Peabody we scared them enough so they’ll contact us. Wouldn’t he want to show off? Especially to friends? Maybe head back to Vegas, try to offset his losses and the humiliation of them?”

“Did you run a probability?”

“Yeah. Seventy-two percent. That’s high enough to up the alerts on transpo to Vegas, and to add them in to casinos in New York, Jersey. The thing is, he’d never gambled before that trip, so it’s not in his usual pattern.”

“Having more than a hundred seventy-five thousand at his disposal isn’t pattern,” Roarke pointed out.

“Yeah, so the alerts are out. I want to say I know him, and he’s gotten this far by sheer luck. But I’m not sure about that. He’s got some calculation mixed in there. Getting his hands on the money. That took some thought, some work, even some skill. Just like picking Ursa’s for the watches. It was smart.”

“What about the girlfriend? Like showing off for his friends, he might want to show off to her, prove to her—or really himself—what she threw away.”

“Yeah, and I’m going to nail her down tomorrow. She must still be out.” Eve glanced at her wrist unit, unaware Lori Nuccio lay dead while Jerry shoveled in a smorgasbord of food from her kitchen.

“You’re worried you missed something,” Roarke commented.

“I wonder if I did. There’s nothing in this guy’s history that so much as whispers about this kind of capacity for violence. He’s got a couple a minor knuckle raps, and he may have—not confirmed yet—given the ex a slap or two. He didn’t retaliate against the employers who gave him the axe, or the girlfriend who gave him the boot. He mouthed off a little, then walked.”

“The sleeping beast?”

“Maybe. I’m going to talk to Mira about it. I think the mother was impulse. He snapped. The knife’s right there, and she’s complaining or advising or warning—whatever. He picks up the knife, jabs her with it. And …”

She trailed off, picked up her champagne.

“If you’re comparing this to what you did, at eight, I’m going to be very annoyed with you.”

He saw inside her, Eve knew. He saw fast and deep.

“I’m not, but I understand the moment, and what it can do. I was being raped, my arm broken, and I was in fear of my life, so when my fingers closed around that knife, I used it to stop the pain, to survive. He used it to strike out at someone who posed no physical threat, who provided him with a home, a family. But I know the moment, and it can go a couple of ways. Most people with a healthy control switch can and do lose it in that moment. The reaction would be, ‘Holy shit, what did I do?’”

She took a slow sip, knowing it. Seeing it. “He, and those like him, react with a … a jubilant, ‘Holy shit, look what I can do.’ And the thrill, the revelation of that, however twisted, pushes them on.”

“We both know those, yes. We’ve looked in their eyes.”

“Too many of them,” Eve agreed. “Still, even most of those won’t do what he did. But in that moment, you can just lose your mind. You don’t stop, can’t stop, whether it’s the thrill or it’s the fear driving you.”

This is what she’d needed, she realized as she rose to clear again, and to serve the main. “All that blood, it’s powerful, and it’s horrible. With me, the shock, the pain, the blood, the reality of what I’d done sent me into a fugue state, right? That’s what it was, just wandering around—outside alone for the first time in my life, my arm busted, and the pain from that and the last rape so overwhelming, I blocked it out. The pain, what happened, everything. And I kept blocking it, all that I could, most of my life.

“It was him or me, and I was eight and terrorized. I did what I had to do, but I’m still horrified to know I couldn’t stop. I was switched off, and couldn’t stop. Maybe he couldn’t, or when we get him, his lawyer will try that one. But then he didn’t run. And nearly everyone would. Just run, or try to cover it up. Somebody broke in and killed my mother. He didn’t run because he wasn’t horrified. He, I think, he embraced what he’d done, and so was able to wait—to plan and gather and work—until his father came home. Then he did it again.”