“Daughter,” she said. “Payback-if we run with that-was to kill MacMasters’s daughter. Is it a mirror? Is MacMasters somehow responsible-in the killer’s mind-for the rape or death of his own daughter-child. Make it child as MacMasters only had a daughter.”
“If the killer is anywhere near the age he pretended to be, he’d be a very young father. What if he’s the child, and MacMasters is, to his mind, responsible for the rape or murder of his parent? Or, for that matter himself. He might perceive himself as a victim.”
“Yeah, I’m circling those routes, too.” She dragged both hands through her hair. “Basically, I’m getting nowhere. Maybe taking that break, clearing it out of my head for an hour, is a good idea.”
“I copied the music disc.”
Something in his tone had her looking away from the board, meeting his eyes. “What is it?”
“I ran an auto-analysis while I was working on the other e-business. It’s both audio and video, which is very unusual. Performance art is often a part of a disc like this. But there was an addition made this morning at two-thirty, and another at just after three.”
“He added to it. Son of a bitch. Did you play it?”
“I didn’t, no, assuming you’d disapprove of that.”
She held out her hand for the disc, then took it to her comp. “Play content from additions, starting at two-thirty, this date. Display video on screen one.”
Roarke said nothing, but went to her, stood with her.
The music came first, something light and insanely cheerful. The sort of thing, she thought, some stores play in the background. It always made her want to beat someone up.
Then the image slid on screen-soft focus, then sharper, sharper until every bruise, every tear, every smear of blood on Deena MacMasters showed clearly.
She’d been propped up on the pillows so that she reclined, half-sitting, facing the camera. Probably her own PPC or ’link, Eve thought. Her eyes were dull, ravaged, defeated. Her voice, when she spoke, slurred with exhaustion and shock.
“Please. Please don’t make me.”
The image faded, then bloomed again.
“Okay. Okay. Dad, this is your fault. Everything is your fault. And, and, oh God. Oh God. Okay. I will never forgive you. And I hate you. Dad. Daddy. Please. Okay. You’ll never know why. You won’t know, and I won’t. But-but I have to pay for what you did. Daddy, help me. Why doesn’t somebody help me?”
The image faded again, and the music changed. Eve heard the cliché of the funeral dirge as the camera came back, panned up, slowly, from Deena’s feet, up her legs, her torso, to her face. To the empty eyes.
It held on the face as text began to scroll.
It may take you a while to find this, play this. Your dead daughter sure liked her music! I played it for her while I raped the shit out of her. Oh, btw, she was an idiot, but a decent piece of ass. I hope our little video causes you to stick your weapon in your mouth and blow your brains out.
She didn’t deliver her lines very well, but that doesn’t diminish the truth. Your fault, asshole. If it wasn’t for you, your deeply stupid daughter would still be alive.
How long can you live with that?
Payback is rocking-A!
For the crescendo, the audio blasted with Deena’s screams.
“Computer, replay, same segment.”
“Christ Jesus, Eve.”
“I need to see it again,” she snapped. “I need it analyzed. Maybe he said something that we can pick up, maybe there’s something that picks up his reflection.” She moved closer to the screen as it began its replay.
Roarke crossed over to open the wall panel. He pulled out a bottle of wine, uncorked it.
“There’s no mirror, no reflective surface. Her eyes? The way he’s got her sitting, maybe he can get a reflection off her eyes.”
“Alive or dead? I’m sorry,” Roarke said immediately. “I’m sorry for that. Truly.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not. She’s so young, and so afraid, so helpless.”
“She’s not me.”
“No. Not you, nor Marlena. But…” He handed her a glass of wine, then took a long drink from his own. “I’ll see if I can get something off it. I’d have a better chance with the original than a copy.”
“I need to log that in, in Central, run it through Feeney.” Time, she thought, it all took time, but… “No shortcuts on this.”
“All right then.” Roarke gestured to the screen. “You won’t show this to the father.”
“No.” She drank because her throat was dry. “He doesn’t need to see this.”
Because he needed to, needed the contact, Roarke took her hand in his as they studied the screen together. “It seems revenge, your payback, holds as motive.”
“It had to. I couldn’t see it any other way.” Again, and again, she read the final text, that ugly message from the killer.
“It’s boasting,” she said quietly. “He couldn’t resist digging in the knife. Leaving the music disc wasn’t the mistake. But adding this, that’s a big one. He doesn’t care about that, but it’s a mistake.”
“It wasn’t enough even to torture that child, to force her to say those words-her last-to her father. He had to add his own.”
“Exactly right. That’s a crack in control, in logic, even in patience.”
“The kill,” Roarke suggested. “For some it’s a spike, a rush.”
“That’s right. He was so damn pleased with himself. All those weeks, those months of preparation coming to a head here, in what he sees as his victory. So he has to do his little dance. It’s a mistake, a weakness,” she said with a nod. “He put too much of himself in there, couldn’t resist claiming that much responsibility for her. It’s the kind of thing that gives us a handle.”
Personal, she thought. Deeply personal. “He needed MacMasters to know, and to suffer for the knowing. It gives us a focus. We concentrate on MacMasters, his case files, his career. Who has he taken down, what cops has he kicked over the years. Everything he did up to that was cold, controlled. This part? It’s cocky, and even while it’s smug, it’s really pissed off. It helps.”
Because he’d had enough, maybe too much, Roarke turned away from the screen. “I hope to God it does.”
“We’ll take a break.”
“Which you’re doing now for me.”
“About half.” She ordered the screen off, ordered a copy of the disc. “You’re right, it hits really close to home. I need it out of my head for a little while.”
He went back to her wondering why he hadn’t seen how pale she’d gone, how dark her eyes. “We’ll have a meal. Not in here. We’ll step away from this. We’ll have a meal outside, in the air.”
“Okay. Yeah.” She let out a breath that eased some of the constriction in her chest. “That’d be good. I need to inform Whitney, and the team. I have to do that now.”