Following the scenario Eve had laid out, the killer – the face an almost cartoon-like sketch – set the box on a table, took a box cutter from the left pocket of the coat, broke the seal.
Removed a can of Seal-It from the box, removed the gloves.
“She’d have sealed up before she came in. Hands, feet, everything. Maybe she gave the hands another backup coat, but she didn’t step in without being sealed first.”
“The cleaning service came in on the twenty-third,” Peabody said, referring to her notes. “No one came to her place that we know of until this. The sweepers didn’t find any hair, fiber, prints that weren’t the vic’s.”
“Sealed up tight. She might even have a seal cap under the hat, just to be sure. She’d have put the security back on – this program doesn’t show that, but she would’ve. No chances. And she’d have taken off the coat. Too hot, too bulky, but we don’t know what’s under it. And why take her into the bedroom?” she added as the killer deadlifted Bastwick, hefted her into a fireman’s carry.
“More comfortable?” Peabody speculated.
“Drawing it out a little, that’s what I think. There has to be some nerves, so she’s drawing it out. Curious, too. Into the bedroom, check it out. Lay her down,” Eve continued, “take a breath or two, go back for the box.”
Eve watched murder, saw the way, even stunned, the body’s heels beat a tattoo on the bed. And the eyes rolled open again, went to glass as the blood slid down the throat.
“From behind. Had to take the coat off, sure. Have to be sealed up under it. Protective clothing under it in case of blood, even the vic’s hair. You burn the protective gear later, but there’s no chance of blood or trace on the coat.”
“Medical gear, morgue gear, sweeper gear?”
“Like that. Or like painters or exterminators use. Put it on to kill, take it off. Roll it inside out or even bag it, put it back in the box. Pause program.”
The scene froze in place as Eve moved through it, circling the killer with her sketched face.
“You had this planned out for so long, every single detail. Computer, elapsed time?”
Elapsed time is twelve minutes and forty-five seconds.
“Add into elapsed time removing protective suit from box, putting it on, removing it again, bagging it, replacing it in the box.”
Average time calculated at one minute and fifty-two seconds for full protective covering.
“Recalculate with additional time, continue program.”
“We had her at twenty-seven minutes from entry to exit,” Peabody said.
“Exactly, and she’s only used about half that time. Writing the message adds to it,” Eve commented as the killer did so. “Replacing everything in the box, resealing it, replacing the coat, the gloves. A glance around to be sure you got everything, then out. With that little spring in the step.”
She waited, still watching the killer, until the computer announced program, first stage, end.
“Elapsed time?”
Twenty minutes, ten seconds.
“What did she do with the other seven minutes?” Peabody asked.
Insufficient data to answer.
“I’m not asking you. Maybe she took a quick tour of the place. It’s a nice place, classy. Maybe she did take a couple things nobody noticed.”
“I don’t think so. I’d say, possibly, she needed time to gather herself to do the kill, or to pull herself together after. But she’d waited so long to do this, she’s so happy when she leaves. And the writing’s rock solid.”
“Gloating?”
“No.” Once again Eve circled, studied. “That’s wasting time. She can gloat when she’s in the clear. I’m betting she had a power beam and some microgoggles in that box. She checked the bed, just in case – smoothed it all out so she could detect a stray hair. Retraced her steps from bedroom to living room, back again. That’s what she did with the time.”
“So, she’s smart, thorough, and probably anal.”
“Maybe some obsessive-compulsive thrown in. I’m betting when we get her, Mira finds a whole deep well of neuroses. Computer, begin second stage.”
No security cams here, no way to know the time the killer spent. But Eve was betting she’d spent extra combing over the dirt and debris of Ledo’s flop to be certain nothing of herself was left behind.
“More emotional this time. It’s a similar sort of kill.”
As she had in the other program, Peabody looked away when the killer took out a scalpel to remove the tongue.
“Similar?”
“She had to put her back into both. Pulling back on the wire so it cut that deep? Her arms probably trembled with the effort. Jamming the cue into Ledo? She had to push down, both hands, give it her weight. She needed to feel the kill, feel responsible for it, in control of it. But the second time she’s a little, just a little, less controlled.”
“Shouldn’t she be more? More confident?”
“But she knows how good it feels now, and that adds anticipation on a different level. Not just duty – as she sees it – but pleasure, too. Or at least satisfaction. Plus, she got my attention, but it wasn’t exactly what she wanted. She wanted approval,” Eve said as the killer wrote on the grimy wall. “And some fucking gratitude. She’s trying to convince herself she saw all that in the media conference. That I somehow signaled that to her. But the words I said – and words matter – aren’t the right ones.”
“You think she’d already started to turn on you?”
“She started to turn when she walked out of Bastwick’s apartment feeling joyful. Because it became about her – it always has been, but she let herself see it. It’s about what she wants, who she is. I’m an excuse. An important one, and she needs that excuse. Run final program.”
This was interesting, Eve thought. When you watched the progression, it solidified. There were so many other ways to get to Hastings. Or to someone else, someone more like Ledo who’d be easy pickings. But Hastings was more…
“Daring,” she said aloud. “She’s taking more physical risk here, going up those stairs. Yeah, sure, who looks up?”
“Tourists, foreigners,” Peabody began, and Eve turned to grin at her.
“Bingo. People who don’t live here look up all the time. Wow, look how tall that building is! Look, there’s a sky tram – we should take one. She dared that. Good odds, really, because even if somebody saw her, it’s just somebody carrying a box up the stairs. But…”
“She didn’t have to take the risk, I get it. She wanted to. To impress you, maybe?”
“Maybe, and to add a little thrill to the kill. She likes the thrill now. And waiting, buzzing. If she’s studied Hastings, she knows he’s capable of telling her to fuck off without opening that door, but she wants it so bad, needs him to open that door.
“And he does.”
Eve listened to his explosive cursing, felt an odd fondness for him. Watched the close-in stun – closer than with Bastwick – knock him back, body jiggling, then crashing to the floor.
Set the box down, start to close the door, and Matilda calls down the stairs, comes down the stairs. Wine bottle flies; stun goes wide.
“Yeah, some of that wine splattered on the coat. It had to. But here’s the thing. A couple things. End program.”
Eve turned to Peabody.
“First, if she really studied Hastings, why didn’t she factor in creativity? He might’ve had a shoot, browbeat the models, the team into working late until he got what he wanted. Factor out the idea of a girlfriend and a sexy dinner, but he’s volatile, demanding, weird. He’s a bad target, at least this way.”
“But an impressive one. If she can get to him, take him out – and she would have if Matilda hadn’t been there – it’s a lot more of a wow than Ledo,” Peabody pointed out. “Even than Bastwick. And it’s number three – which would’ve officially made her a serial killer. More impressive if you take out a successful photographer/imaging artist instead of another junkie.”
“Take out a second junkie, people say ho-hum. Second point. She had an unarmed, half-naked woman, but didn’t pursue. To finish it. She doesn’t think – ha ha – outside the box, didn’t account for thinking and acting on her feet. Matilda was off script, and all she could do was run.”
“You said, from the start, she’s a coward.”
“It’s more than that.”
And seeing the three reconstructions in succession made that clear.
“The first two went smooth,” Eve pointed out. “Everything happened the way she’d expected it to happen. She needs order and logic. Matilda was out of order. Matilda wasn’t logical.”
“So she didn’t know what to do,” Peabody concluded. “Didn’t have the instincts to act off that script.”
“Exactly. Instead of charging after the half-naked, unarmed woman, steadying it up, taking another shot, she ditched it all.”
Your allotted time has expired. Please log out and exit the facility.
“Fine. Computer, send program to my home and office comp – Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. She goes back to wherever she feels safe,” Eve continued as they started out. “And tries to calm down. She starts writing me an apology. ‘Eve, I failed. I failed you.’ But the whole thing keeps running through her head. It shouldn’t have gone wrong. I should’ve been more grateful in the first place. Whose fault is it really, when she had it all perfectly orchestrated? She trusted me, above all, and this is what she gets in return.”
“What does that tell you?”
“She’s not a cop. Or is/was a piss-poor one. Any cop worth dick who’s been on the job two days learns how to think on their feet. Cops pursue, run after, not away. You’re armed, target isn’t? You sure as hell don’t run away. Not a cop. A wannabe, maybe. In law enforcement in some capacity, yeah, but not on the job.”
“I’m going to feel a lot better if you’re right. I really want you to be right, especially after…”
“Talking to Tortelli,” Eve finished, reading her partner clearly. “We’re swinging by EDD. I want to bounce some of this off Feeney if he’s still here. I’ll drive you and McNab home when I’m done.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s not much out of my way, and not out of it period if Mavis is home. Check that for me, will you? I want to look in on her myself if she’s there.”
“Sure. Are you and Roarke going to the ball drop?”
“Oh, absolutely. If we both suffer extensive brain damage in the next twenty-four hours.” She beetled her brows at Peabody as they walked. “You’re going?”
“Well, yeah – if we’re clear. Sure, it’s insanity – I worked crowd control New Year’s Eve my first year on the job, and it’s wild and wicked. But fun, too. And Mavis got us all full-access passes, so we get some VIP treatment and get to hob and nob with celeb and music stars.”
“I’d rather be flayed alive and force-fed my own skin.”
“Eeww!”
“Yeah, that was pretty disgusting, but close to true.” She detoured toward EDD, then stopped outside the bright and jumping world that was the Electronic Detectives Division.
Everybody moved, bouncing in their chairs, dancing on their feet to some inner geek beat. Neon colors gone nuclear adorned every person in the room, save one.
Feeney, Eve thought, a rumpled oasis of sanity in a world gone Day-Glo mad. He stood – and okay, his foot tapped, but that was reasonable – at a board, swiping, sweeping, jabbing while a couple of geeks looked on.
The place smelled like sugary drinks and fruit-flavored gum. Someone dressed in lightning-bolt blue with a poofy tower of green hair did a jump and spin in a cube, and said, “Yee-haw!”
“See this?” Eve said. “Multiply it by a few million, and that’s your ball drop.”
“That’s what makes it mag.”
“And that,” Feeney declared, shooting both index fingers at the screen, “is how it’s done.”
The detective on Feeney’s right pumped her fists in the air, wiggled her pink-and-white-striped covered butt. “Yo fricking ho, Captain.”
“Watch and learn, children, watch and learn.” He dusted his palms together. “Now finish that off and go bag the bastard. Embezzlement, insurance fraud, with a side of blackmail.”
“Fly in the web, boss. Thanks.”
Feeney turned, spotted Eve, nodded to her and Peabody.
“Got a minute?” Eve asked him.
“Now I do.”
“Peabody, check on McNab’s status, and Mavis. In your office? I can’t think out here,” she told Feeney. “I don’t know how you do.”
“Keeps the blood moving to the brain,” he claimed, and led the way. “And some days gives you a mother of a headache.”
He plucked a couple of the candied almonds he kept in a bowl on his desk, then sat, propped his feet on the desk. “I’ve been out there working on that shovel and search damn near an hour. Nice to get the feet up. Spill it.”
“Have you had time to read the updates?”
“Yeah, I’m on the mark there.”
“Up until this attempt on Hastings I’ve been thinking cop – leaning heavy toward it. But what kind of cop runs from an unarmed wit? You’re armed, witness isn’t, and the target’s down. The play is pursue, take out the wit, finish the job.”
“We get some yellow-bellies on the job.”
“Yeah, but even factoring that, what’s the risk? And the adrenaline should be pumping, right?”
“The report says only one stun stream fired.” Feeney nodded. “You’re on the job, you know you don’t stop with one until all targets are down.”
“Damn straight. One more? Crappy shot. Seriously crappy. Maybe she misses on the stream because she was taken by surprise. But we’re only talking about ten, maybe twelve feet. The other two vics were stunned close-range – Hastings even closer than the two DBs. Face-to-face, so it says not only a yellow-belly but a seriously crappy shot to me. That’s the risk, maybe. And still, the wit didn’t have that much of a lead. If she’d gone after the wit, she’d have had her. Odds are. What cop wouldn’t take those odds?”
“Probability is no police training. No street time anyway. Maybe a desk jockey. More probable a wannabe or a civilian.”
“Or both. Somebody in the loop, Feeney, because unless you read my report on Ledo, you wouldn’t know we’d gotten physical.”
She grabbed a couple of almonds herself, paced and circled. “Bastwick, all that was public fodder. Bastwick herself made it clear she had a problem with me, played up a personal feud.”
“And Bastwick came first.”