“Walking’s best,” Roarke commented. “Saturday evening, the city’s busy. It was good weather. Who’d notice a boy-or a young man-walking along? Dressed well, I’d expect, but not so well as to draw attention. Sunny out, so he’d be wearing shades, maybe a cap or hoodie. Maybe have an earbud in so it looks like he’s listening to music, or he’s using his ’link as a prop, so it looks like he’s talking or texting. The opportunity comes along, he might slide in with a group of people-if he hits on some about his age. Less noticed yet if he’s with others. It’s best, if you’ve a mind to do crime in a neighborhood, and show yourself beforehand, you blend in-disappear as it were into the fabric. What I’d do, in his place, is use that ’link a couple blocks back, to call the target.”
Eve narrowed her eyes. “Let her know you’re nearly there. Can’t wait to see you. Just up the block. We’re still on, right? That sort of thing.”
“Aye. Then wouldn’t she be right there, keeping watch for him while they talk a bit more? Right there to open the door even before he starts up the stairs. He’s in, a matter of seconds.” Roarke shrugged. “Well, that’s how I’d have played it out.”
“And she’s got her ’link, right there,” Eve added. “He’s going to need to take that, and this way he wouldn’t have to look for it if she didn’t put it back in her bag. That would be smart, efficient. That would fit him.”
She tapped her fingers on her thigh as she paced a moment. “We still hit the rest of the neighborhood. And the park. The park’s the best bet. Peabody, we’re on that in the morning. Feeney, your team’s on the electronics. Focus on the security. I’m going to run like crimes, and I’m pulling Mira in for a profile. Currently I have officers doing the rounds on all her usual haunts, and a pair doing a check on one Juan Garcia, a chemi-dealer.”
Feeney lifted his chin toward the crime scene photos. “That type doesn’t operate like this.”
“Agreed, but we’ll eliminate him, and any others who pop up out of MacMasters’s file or memory. The likelihood is slim that he went with her where she was known. After the initial contact, he’d need to steer her away. For walks-out of her perimeter, to the vids-but not her usual spots-the park? Probably moved to a different sector for meets after he’d established.”
“If it was payback…”
She nodded at Feeney. “We’ll be going over MacMasters’s cases, and I’m going to talk to him again, go back with him. Jamie, would she recognize a gang type?”
“I think so, yeah. She was smart, like I said. Really street aware, just sort of… not self-aware? Is that right, do you get it? She knew to be careful, what types to avoid.”
“What type would draw her?”
“Well… he’d have to be clean. I don’t just mean cleaned up. He’d have to look right, sound right. Jo said he told her he went to Columbia? That might hook her since I do, and she’ll be going next year. It’s an opening, you know? And, ah, manners. Like, he’d be polite. If he came on too strong, he’d scare her off.”
Plenty of other schools in New York, Eve thought, but he hits on the one where one of her closest friends goes, where she plans to go. Eve didn’t see it as coincidence.
“He studied her, stalked her, researched her. And he took his time.” No, it wasn’t some illegals dealer or one of his spine-crackers. “MacMasters made the reservations for this trip ten days ago. This bastard was ready. This was his opportunity. She’d have told him her father got promoted.”
“She texted me, the night after he got informed,” Jamie told her. “I think she tagged everybody she knew. She was really proud. I was surprised she didn’t go on the trip, like a family celebration.”
“A girl, in the first weeks of a romance,” Peabody said. “She doesn’t want to go off with her parents for the weekend when she can stay home and see the guy. Even if she was on the fence about it, one word from him, how he’d miss her, and she stays.”
“We work the lines we have. Peabody, contact somebody at Columbia on the off chance he told her the truth. I want a list of every male student-and add in any staff-currently enrolled or employed, or who have been enrolled or employed within the last five years who are from Georgia. Age range eighteen to thirty. While that’s running tag Baxter, he and his boy are back on the roll. I want them to take Garcia, then follow up on all door-to-doors, and expand same to a three-block radius of the scene.”
In her office she ran like crimes, and did a full-scan search through Feeney’s brain child, IRCCA, to take it global, and run the data through off-world as well.
While her computer labored, she set up a second murder board in her office. Deena’s image-alive and dead-would stay with her while she worked.
“Smart girl,” Eve murmured as she pinned images, reports, time lines. “Cop’s daughter. Everyone says that. But under it you’re still just a girl. A nice-looking boy pays attention, says the right things, looks at you just a certain way. You’re not smart anymore.”
She hadn’t been, Eve thought. Not a cop’s daughter, but a seasoned cop-a cynic, a badass herself. And Roarke had paid attention, said the right things, looked at her in that way. She couldn’t claim she’d been smart. She’d bent her own rules, taken chances, fallen for a man she’d known was dangerous, one who’d been a murder suspect.
No, she hadn’t been smart. She’d been dazzled. Why would anyone expect Deena to be otherwise?
“I know what you felt, or thought you felt,” Eve murmured. “I know how he got to you, broke down your resistance, your defenses, your better judgment. Me, I got lucky. You didn’t. But I know how he got under your guard.”
So now, instead of thinking like the girl, she needed to think like the pursuer.
She turned toward the AutoChef-stopped.
Coffee, she remembered. Roarke’s first gift to her had been a bag of coffee. The real deal. Irresistible to her, and worth more to her mind than a fistful of diamonds.
Charming and thoughtful-and exactly right.
Had there been a token given? she wondered. Something small and exactly right?
She stepped back to her desk, studied Deena’s photo. Music and theater, she recalled. Big interests. And reading. All those music discs, she thought. Maybe he put together a music mix, designed just for her. Or poems-didn’t women get off on poetry, especially if it was from a man?
Wanted to join the Peace Corps or Education For All. But damned if she could think of a token that applied there.
Her computer signaled the first search was complete. Letting the other angle simmer, Eve sat down to read case files on rape-murder.
Nothing popped, though she read, analyzed, ran probabilities for more than an hour. The search through IRCCA gave her the same results. She had a handful of long shots to track down, but her gut told her it was just for form. Had to be done.