She used the back of her board, making a chart of that time line, pin-pointing locations, adding each victim’s photo, linking all with more notes. With fact and with supposition.
Seven dead, she thought as she stepped back from the board. She knew those two pair of hands carried the blood of seven people.
Maybe more.
She continued to stare at those faces as Roarke stepped behind her, laid his hands on her shoulders, rubbed at the aches there.
“All those lives cut off. An adventurous woman, girl with a boyfriend who wanted to make up, a husband and father, a woman about to start the next phase of her life, an old woman who’d spread beauty and culture around the world. And then to another husband and father who’d turned a bad beginning into a solid now, and a woman who’d once given another woman the chance to escape a monster.
“All on this board because they decided they wanted a new thrill. A new form of entertainment. The same as somebody else turning on the screen or going to a vid.”
“No. It’s like a new, stronger drug.”
“Yeah.” Exhausted, sickened, she rubbed her eyes. “You’re right, it’s more that. And that’s going to help me stop them. That need, that addiction, it’ll push them.”
“Come to bed now. You need to sleep.” He turned her, slid an arm around her. “Let it rest a few hours, Eve, so you can.”
“Can’t think anymore, anyway.” She walked out with him.
It was after three hundred hours, she realized, and no call from Dispatch. Maybe she wouldn’t be too late. Maybe she wouldn’t put another face on her board.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AT FIRST, SHE THOUGHT THE LION GNAWING greedily on her leg woke her—which was bad enough. But when she struggled through the surface of the dream, her communicator sent out its sharp, insistent beep.
“Fuck. Just fuck.”
Roarke’s hand ran up and down her arm in comfort as she pushed up in bed. He ordered lights on at ten percent.
“Block video,” she said as she snatched the communicator from the night table. “Dallas.”
Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve.
As Dispatch ordered her to report to the house on the Upper East Side, relayed the basics, she shifted to sit on the side of the bed, dropped her head in her hands. And acknowledged.
“Before you beat yourself up,” Roarke told her, “tell me what else you could have done.”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem. If I knew what else I could’ve done, I’d’ve done it. Then I wouldn’t be going to look at a body.” She scrubbed her hands over her face before she lifted her head. “And I guess I knew I would be.”
“You’re tired, and you’re pissed off. I’m right there with you. We haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since we got back from holiday.” He raked a hand through his hair as he shoved himself up to sit. “I had a dream there was a bloody lion prowling through the house looking for a handy snack.”
She turned her head, pointed at him. “He found it. I had a dream the bitch was chowing down on my leg.” And for some odd reason, the solidarity of their unconsciouses made her feel better. “I’ve got to grab a quick shower, clear my head. Fucking lions.”
“I want one, too. The shower, that is, not the fucking lion.”
She slitted her eyes at him.
“Please. I think I can resist you. This once. I’ll go with you. Your scene’s not far.”
“We barely clocked three hours down,” she pointed out. “You can go back to sleep. You’re not—”
But he was already sliding out of bed. “I’ll be your Peabody until the real one gets there. She’s a lot farther to go than we do.”
She dragged a hand through her hair, considered. “I could use a Peabody until Peabody shows up. And some freaking coffee.”
“Then let’s get moving.”
When they went downstairs fifteen minutes later, Summerset stood, dressed in his habitual and spotless black suit. Eve wondered if he slept in it, like a vampire in a coffin. But she refrained from saying so as he held a tray with two go-cups of coffee and a bag that smelled like cinnamon bagels.
“Perhaps, at some point in the future, the two of you might consider actually living here.”
“In this dump?” Eve snagged a coffee before he could change his mind.
Roarke took the other coffee and the bag. “Thank you. If you’d contact Caro. She can handle the eight o’clock holo. I’ll be in touch with her if anything else needs to be shifted.”
“Of course. Perhaps I should suggest she put ‘police assistant’ on your official bio.”
“Well, that’s just mean.”
But Eve grinned widely as she walked out the door, and glanced back at Summerset, and the cat who squatted at his feet. “Thanks.”
Her vehicle was, as expected, waiting. How did he manage it all? she wondered. “Maybe I need a Summerset. God, did I just say that?”
“I hesitate to point out you have a Summerset. He just provided us with coffee and bagels.”
“I don’t want to think about it. I’ll drive. You can start being Peabody and find out who owns the house we’re going to, and what the connection is to Dudley. It should be a Dudley connect this time.”
She dug out half a bagel, crunching as she drove, washed that down with coffee.
“A house this time. That’s not particularly public. Gotta be an angle on that. Maybe there were other people around when it went down, or—”
“The house belongs to Garrett Frost and Meryle Simpson. Simpson is the CEO of Marketing for Dudley.”
“Well, they’re still playing by the rules. Vic’s a male, so it’s not her. Could be her housemate.”
“Husband,” Roarke corrected. “Married nine years.”
“Probably not him, either, unless they’re shifting pattern a bit. What does he do?”
“Corporate law. Solid firm, and he’s been with them twelve years. Full partner, but nothing that pops out as special, according to the contest rules.”
“So they’re probably still breathing, and have no connection to the victim. I bet Dudley’s been entertained in that house plenty. He’d know the setup.”
“But you think Moriarity did the killing.”
“His turn at bat.” She swung around a maxibus lumbering its way east with its load of sleepy passengers. “And yeah, that means Dudley would have to give him the layout. They want the kill as much as the win—more,” she corrected, “so they keep the playing field even. It’s logical in a really screwed-up way.”
As Eve pushed her way across town, Roarke continued to play Peabody, in his own way. “Frost and Simpson have owned and lived in the house for six years. They also have a place on Jekyll Island, off Georgia. And two children, one of each, six and three. Simpson’s also a loose family relation on Dudley’s maternal side. A niece of his mother’s second husband.”
“Interesting. Increasing the connection, adding another link. It just adds to the supposition he knows the house.”
“More interesting is that Frost and Simpson bought the house from Moriarity.”
She flashed a look at him as she blew through a yellow light. “You’re kidding?”
“I’m not, no. He owned it prior, and for five years. I’d say he already knew the basic layout without his friend’s assistance.”
“They don’t actually give a shit about the risk of tying themselves to the murders. No, they want to.”
“It adds levels and layers to the contest,” Roarke commented. “Gives it a more complex structure.”
“Yeah, adds a bigger rush. It’s part of the rules, part of the contest rules,” she said. “They have to select a target that has some connection, and facilitate the kill by using another connection. It ups the stakes. What are the stakes? What does the winner get?”