“You’re not going to blow it, and you won’t let anyone down. This isn’t aboutDallas, or anybody else. It’s all about you.”
“She trained me, she put me up for it.”
“So she must figure you’re ready. It ain’t no snap, She-Body.” He gave her cheek a quick nuzzle. “It’s not supposed to be. But you’ve got the training, you’ve got the field time, the instincts, the brains. And, honey, you’ve got the guts and heart, too.”
She turned her head to look up at him. “That’s so damn sweet.”
“It’s a fact, and here’s another one, here’s what you don’t have right now. You don’t have the balls.”
Her gooey affection toward him transformed into brittle insult. “Hey.”
“And because you don’t have the balls,” he continued calmly, “you’re not trusting your gut, or your training. You’re second-guessing yourself. Instead of going with what you know, you keep wondering what you don’t know, and that’s why you keep messing up on thesims.”
She’d pulled away from him. Her breath hissed out. “I hate you for being right.”
“Nah. You love me because I’m so damn good-looking.”
“Asshole.”
“‘Fraidy cat.”
“‘Fraidy cat.” Her lips twitched into a reluctant smile. “Jeez. Okay, set up another one. Make it tough. And when I nail it, I not only get the chips, but…” Her smile widened. “You wear the hat.”
“You’re on.”
She rose to pace and clear out her head while he programmed the sim. She’d been afraid, she admitted. Afraid she wanted it too much. So she hadn’t used the hunger, but had let it eat away at her confidence. That had to stop. Even if her palms were damp and her stomach in knots it had to stop.
Dallasnever let nerves get in the way, she thought. And she had them, nerves and something deeper, darker. It had peeked through on theGregg scene, for just a moment that afternoon. Now and again on a sexual homicide, it peeked through. It turned her lieutenant’s cheeks pale. Took her back,Peabody was sure, to something horrible. Something personal.
Rape,Peabody was sure, just as she was sure it had to have been brutal. And she’d have been young. Before the job.Peabody had studiedEve ’s career with the NYPSD like a template, but there’d been no report of a sexual assault onDallas.
So it had been before, before the Academy. When she was a teenager, or possibly younger. In automatic sympathy,Peabody ’s stomach roiled. It would take guts, and balls, to face that, to revisit whatever had happened every time you walked into a scene that reverberated with sexual violence.
But to use it, instead of being used by it, that took more,Peabody determined. It took what she could only define as valor.
“Ready here,” McNab told her. “And it’s a doozy.”
She sucked in a breath, squared her shoulders. “I’m ready, too. Go in the bedroom or something, okay? I want to do it on my own.”
He looked at her face, saw what he’d hoped to see, and nodded. “Sure. Nail the bad guy, She-Body.”
“Damn right.”
She sweated through it, but stayed focused. She stopped asking herself whatDallas would want her to do, even after a point whatDallas would do, and just concentrated on what needed to be done. Preserve and observe, collect and identify. Question, report, investigate. It began to click for her, the pattern emerging. She waded her way through conflicting witness statements, shaky memories, facts and lies, forensics and procedure.
She built, she realized with rising excitement, a case.
Though she wanted to hesitate on the final stage, the arrest, she bore down and selected. And was rewarded with the graphic of a prosecuting attorney.
Pick him up. Murder One.
“Yes!” She popped up from the chair, did her little victory dance. “I got an arrest. Nailed the murdering bastard. Hey, McNab, bring me those damn potato chips.”
“Sure.” He stepped out, grinning. He carried the bag in one hand, and was naked but for her summer straw hat. Since it was perched jauntily at his crotch, she assumed her success made him as happy as it made her.
She laughed until she thought her ribs would crack. “You’re such a moron,” she managed, and jumped him.
– -«»--«»--«»--
ForEve it was a matter of merging bare facts with educated speculation. “He had to know their routines, which means he knew them. Doesn’t mean they knew him, doesn’t connect them, but he knew. He’s too cocky for them to have been random. He trolled first.”
“That’s the usual pattern, isn’t it?” Roarke cocked his head at her look. “If my one true love was a dentist, I’d study up a bit on the latest thoughts on dental hygiene and treatments.”
“Don’t say dentist,”Eve warned, automatically running her tongue warily over her teeth.
“By all means let’s stick with bloody murder.” And knowing there was no talking her out of another cup of coffee atmidnight, had another himself. “The trolling, the selecting, the stalking, the planning. They are all essential parts of the whole for the typical, if the word can be used, serial killer.”
“There’s a rush in it, the control, the power, the details. She’s alive now because I allow it, she’ll be dead because I want it. It’s clear he admires the serial killers who made names for themselves. Jack the Ripper, the Boston Strangler, so he emulates them. But he’s very much his own man. Better than they were, because he’s versatile.”
“And he wants you pursuing him because he admires you.”
“In his own sick way. He wants the buzz. It isn’t enough to kill. That doesn’t heat the blood enough. The hunt, being both hunter and prey, that does it for him. He hunted these women.”
She turned to the board she’d set up in her home office, with pictures ofJacieWooton andLoisGregg, alive and dead. “He watched them, learned their routines and patterns. He needed a prostitute for the Ripper imitation, and a certain type of LC. She fit the mold. He expected her to walk along that street at that time. It wasn’t chance. Just asLoisGregg fit his need for a Stranglervic, just as he knew she’d be home alone on a Sunday morning.”
“And knew someone would find her before the end of the day?”
“Yeah.” Sipping coffee, she nodded. “Quicker gratification that way. More and more likely he called in the anonymous nine-one-one. Wanted Wooton found as soon as possible so the adulation and horror could begin.”
“Which tells me he feels very safe.”
“Very safe,”Eve agreed. “Very superior. IfGregg hadn’t had family or friends who were bound to check on her in a few hours, he’d have to wait to get the next kick, or risk another nine-one-one. So he targeted these women specifically, just as he’s targeted the next.”
She sat, rubbed her eyes. “He’ll imitate someone else. But it’ll be someone who created a stir, and who left bodies where they could and would be found. We eliminate historic serial killers who buried, destroyed, or consumed their victims.”
“Such a fun group, too.”
“Oh yeah. He’s not going to copy someone likeChefJourard, that French guy in the twenties, this century.”
“Kept his victims in a large freezer, didn’t he?”
“Where he carved them up, cooked them up, and served them to unsuspecting patrons of his fancy bistro inParis. Took them nearly two years to catch him.”
“And he was famed for his sweetbreads.”
She gave a quick shudder. “Anybody who eats internal organs of any species baffles me. And I’m off the track.”
He trailed a hand down her arm. “Because you’re tired.”
“Maybe. He’ll stay more straightforward, won’t go for a play on someone like Jourard, or Dahmer, or that Russian maniacIvan the Butcher. But people being what they are, he’s got plenty of others to work with. He’ll stick with women.”