“I’ll flag the tox as priority. She isn’t as damaged as the others.”
“No.”
“Can she be moved yet?”
“I was about to roll her.”
With a nod, he bent to help, and together they rolled the body.
“No injuries on her back,” Morris said.
“Most of them don’t. He likes face-to-face. It has to be personal. It has to be intimate.”
“Some bruising, lacerations, burns, punctures on the back of the shoulders, the calves. Less than the others.” Gently, he brushed the hair aside, examined the back of the neck, the scalp, the ears. “In comparison, I’d say he barely got to stage two in this case. Yes, yes, something went wrong. I’ll take her in now.”
He straightened, met Eve’s eyes. “Will there be family?”
He never asked, or so rarely she’d never registered it. “She has a mother in Queens, a father and stepmother out in Illinois. We’ll be contacting them.”
“Let me know if and when they want to see her. I’ll take them through it personally.”
“All right.”
He looked away, past the lights into the cold dark. “I wish it were spring,” he said.
“Yeah, people still end up dead, but it’s a nicer atmosphere for the rest of us. And, you know, flowers. They’re a nice touch.”
He grinned, and some of the shadows around him seemed to lift. “I like daffodils myself. I always think of the trumpet as a really long mouth, and imagine they chatter away at each other in a language we can’t hear.”
“That’s a little scary,” she decided.
“Then you don’t want to get me started on pansies.”
“Really don’t. I’ll check in with you later. Peabody, get that canvass started.” She left Morris, heard him murmur, All right now, Gia, then stepped up to Roarke.
“I’m nearly done here,” she began. “You should-”
“I won’t be going home,” Roarke told her. “I’ll go in, start working in the war room. I’ll take care of getting myself there.”
“I’ll go on in with you.” McNab looked at Eve. “If that’s all right with you, Lieutenant.”
“Go ahead, and contact the rest of the team. No reason for them to lay around in bed when we’re not. This is a twenty-four/seven op now. I’ll work out subteams, twelve-hour shifts. The clock’s about to start on Ariel Greenfeld. We’re not going to find her like this.”
She looked back. “I’m goddamned if we’re going to find her like this.”
I t was still shy of dawn when she got to Central. Before she went to her office, she walked into the war room. As the lights flicked on she looked around. It was quiet now, empty of people. It wouldn’t be so again, she thought. Not until they’d closed this down.
She was adding more men, more eyes, ears, legs, hands. More to work the streets, flash the killer’s picture, talk to neighbors, street people, cabbies, chemi-heads. More to knock on the doors of the far too numerous buildings Roarke had thus far listed in his search.
More people to push, push, push, to track down every thread no matter how thin and knotted.
Until this was done there was only one investigation, only one killer, only one purpose for her and every cop under her.
She walked to the white board and in her own hand wrote out the time it had taken for Gia Rossi to die after Rossi’s name.
Then she looked down at the next name she’d written. Ariel Greenfeld.
“You hold the hell on. It’s not over, and it’s not going to be over, so you hold the hell on.”
She turned, saw Roarke watching her from the doorway. “You made good time,” he told her. “McNab and I detoured up to EDD, to requisition more equipment. Feeney’s on his way in.”
“Good.”
He crossed over to stand, as she was, in front of the whiteboard. “It depends, on some level, on her now. On you, on us, certainly on him, but on some level, on her.”
“Every hour she holds on, we get closer.”
“And every hour she holds on, is another hour he may move on you. You want that. You’d will it to happen if you could.”
No bullshit, she decided. No evasions. “That’s right.”
“When they killed Marlena, all those years ago, broke her to pieces to prove a point to me, I wanted them to come at me.”
Eve thought of Summerset’s daughter, how she’d been taken, tortured, and killed by rivals of the young, enterprising criminal Roarke had been. “If they had, the whole of them, you’d have ended up in the ground with her.”
“That may be. That very likely may be.” He shifted his gaze from the board to meet hers. “But I wanted it, and would have willed it if I could have. But since that wasn’t to be, I found another way to end every one of them.”
“He’s only one man. And there may not be another way.”
Thinking of those who were lost, he looked at the board again. Only one man, and perhaps only one way. “That’s all very true. Here’s what I know, here’s what I understood out there in the cold and the dark with you tending to what he’d made of Gia Rossi. He thinks he knows you.”
He turned his head now, and those brilliant blue eyes fired into hers. “He thinks he understands what you are, knows who you are. But he’s wrong. He doesn’t know or understand the likes of you. If it comes to the two of you, even for a moment, if it comes to the two of you, he may get a glimmer of who and what you are. And if he does, he’ll know something of fear.”
“Well.” A little shaken, a little mystified, she blew out a breath. “That’s not what I was expecting out of you.”
“When I looked at her, at what he’d done to her, I thought I would envision you there. Your face with her face, as it is on your board.”
“Roarke-”
“But I didn’t,” he continued, and lifted her hand to brush his fingers to her cheek. “Couldn’t. Not, I think, because it was more than I could stand. Not because of that, but because he’ll never have that power or control over you. You won’t allow it. And that, Darling Eve, is of considerable comfort to me.”
“It’s a nice bolster for me, too.” She aimed a glance toward the door, just to make sure they were still alone. Then she leaned in, kissed him. “Thanks. I’ve got to go.”
“And if he kills you,” Roarke added as she strode to the door, “I’m going to be extremely pissed off.”
“Who could blame you?”
She started back to her office, stopped when Peabody hailed her. “Baxter and Trueheart are notifying the mother, as ordered. I just spoke with the father.”
“All right. When Baxter reports in, we’ll clear it for her name to be released to the media.”
“Speaking of the media, I poked into your office in case you were there. There’s about a half a million messages from various reporters.”
“I’ll take care of it. Let me know when everyone’s in the house. We’ll do the briefing asap.”
“Will do. Dallas, do you want me to update the boards?”
“I’ve already done it.” She turned away to go to her office.
She flicked through the source readout on the messages, transferring them to the liaison. Only when she came to one from Nadine did she pause, then order playback.
“Dallas, the lines are buzzing you’ve got another one. It’s going to get ugly, so this is a heads up. The spit’s already flying and most of it’s going to splatter on you and the NYPSD. If you’ve got anything I can use, get back to me.”
Eve considered, then ordered the callback. Nadine picked up on the first beep.
“I thought media darlings slept till noon.”
“Sure, just like cops. I’m already in my office,” Nadine told her. “Working on some copy. I’m going on at eight. Special report. If you’ve got anything, now’s the time to share.”
“A source from the NYPSD stated this morning that new and salient information regarding the individual the media has dubbed The Groom has come to light.”
“What new and salient information?”
“However, the source would not divulge any details of this information due to the need to confine any and all such data within the investigation. It was also stated by the same source that the task force formed to pursue the investigation is working around the clock to identify and apprehend the individual responsible for the deaths of Sarifina York and Gia Rossi. As well as to seek justice for them and for the twenty-three other women whose deaths are attributed to this same individual.”