"How many?"
"Give me a dozen. And transfer this disc run to my office unit and Peabody's PPC."
Peabody opened her mouth, then wisely decided not to ask how a civilian could transfer data to an official unit without pass codes and electronic authorization.
"Let's see if we can save some time. Peabody, I want you to do 'link calls to the jewelers. Show them the image of the ring. See if we can tag the shop or craftsman who made it. Is there a place she can set up here, for maybe an hour?" Eve asked Roarke.
"Of course." He contacted his executive assistant on the interoffice communicator. "Ariel, Officer Peabody requires a private workspace. She'll meet you at main."
He glanced at Peabody. "Just go out to the main reception this floor. Ariel will take care of it."
"Great." And with visions of another sparkling mango in her future, Peabody headed out.
"You'll want to see the rest of this," Roarke said, and resumed play at normal speed and range.
On-screen, the killer lined the flutes side by side. He poured a half glass of each, scanning the room as they foamed and bubbled. His hand lifted, hovered over one of the glasses.
"Freeze. Enhance."
She walked to within inches of the screen and saw clearly the trickle of clear liquid spilling from his hand into the glass. "When I get this bastard, the PA's going to do fucking cartwheels over this disc. Resume play, same enhancement, quarter speed. There, there, look at that. He's got a vial palmed in his hand. Pre-measured or I'm a monkey's butt."
"And I can attest you're not. Time stamp," Roarke continued, "shows he's given himself a few minutes leeway. In case she's early. He's filled both glasses now, set the spiked one across the table."
"Give me full view again. Look at him. Look at his face. Awful damned pleased with himself. A little private toast. Now he makes the call. His partner. Everything's in place, can't wait to get home and tell you how it went. We'll get a lip reader to study this, see how close I am."
"Here she comes," Roarke commented.
Moniqua stepped into the lounge. Hesitated. Then her lips curved. "There he is, she's thinking," Eve said quietly. "And he's handsome, just as she hoped he would be. Look, perfect gentleman's getting up. Takes her hand, a little peck on the knuckles for that romantic touch.
"Champagne? How delightful. Click glasses. Perfect script. You'd hardly notice that predatory look on his face as she drinks if you didn't know he was a monster. If you didn't know, in his mind, he's killing her right now."
"I'll never know how you do this. Day after day." Roarke spoke from behind her now, laying his hands on her shoulders to rub at the knots of tension.
"Because I know, in my mind, I'll get him. Them. Both of them. They think they've covered all the angles, but you never hit them all. There are always mistakes. Little mistakes. He thinks he's safe, think's he's smart. Anybody looking at them would see she's the one making the moves here. She's the one sliding closer in the booth, touching his arm, his hair, leaning in. Who'd look at that pretty scene and see rape?"
"It hurts you. Don't tell me it doesn't," he said, and there was an edge in his voice. "You bandage it, but it hurts you."
"It only makes me work harder to stop him. Oh jeez, there's Charles and Louise."
"Is that why you sent Peabody out?"
"I don't need her distracted, and I'mnot thinking about her weird-ass platonic thing with Charles and her weirder-ass sexual one with McNab because it distractsme. What is it, standard seduction plan A: Champagne and caviar?"
"You preferred coffee and red meat as I recall."
"I'll take real cow over a bunch of fish eggs any – There! He's given her a booster. Same little palm deal, new vial. Two doses in her before they get to her place. That's off. Lab found traces of Whore in the living room glass, Rabbit in the bedroom. But her tox screen didn't put that much Whore in her system. That's why she's not dead."
"She's drinking it," Roarke pointed out.
"Yeah, giving him a little hand job under the table and swilling it back. He gives her the third dose at her place. How does her system absorb that much? Because it didn't. She purged. Sicked it up. She's slim, but not skinny," Eve mused. "Doesn't look like the eating disorder type. Probably just got queasy. When she was in the lounge here, or at home. Tossed up some of the wine and fish eggs, and enough of the drug to keep her system from fully overloading.
"Mistake," she said. "He didn't think of that. When he left her she was out cold and he took her for dead. Tells me he's not a doctor or any sort of med-tech. It's the other guy who knows that end. This one's just the computer freak. Run the disc from the second murder. I want to see if I can get a good image of that ring, too."
"Kevin, you really are becoming tedious." There was a mechanicalwhoosh and a fog of cold air as Lucias unsealed the cryo-unit and selected the desired solution in its freezer pack. "The first time you're nearly hysterical because the girl died. Now you're biting your nails because this one didn't."
"I didn't mean to kill the first one."
"And did the second." With tongs, Lucias set the pack in a slot in a treated glass tray. "I'd say, as far as the game goes, old friend, you're in the minus column."
"You're the one doing the cooking." Suspicion, mixed with anger and fear, made Kevin's voice ugly. "What's to stop you from playing around with the mix for my bag?"
"A sense of fair play, of course. Cheating would lessen the satisfaction of winning. We agreed on the honor system, Kev."
"She's very likely to die, so don't mark your score card quite yet."
"That's the spirit. And again in the interest of fair play, I suggest we consider her hospitalization as five points, as we put death at a full ten. If your little playmate dies before I get home from my date tonight, you'll actually be in the lead again. Can't get fairer than that. And if she doesn't…" He shrugged, then slid the tray with its various packs into a thin compartment, programmed time and temperature. "I go ahead. We can increase the stakes with some double booking."
"Two in one day?" The horror, and the thrill, of the idea struck Kevin simultaneously.
"If you're man enough."
"We haven't prepared. The schedule calls for three nights off after this evening's round. None of the targets are in line until next week."
"Schedules are for amateurs and drones." Lucias prepared them both a little cocktail. Unblended scotch with a dash of Zoner. "Let's rack them up, Kev. We'll both have impressive American scores before we move the game to France."
"A picnic in the park," Kevin considered. "An afternoon rendezvous. Yes, that might be fun. And, it would be best to start mixing up our methods. Toss the police a sudden curve to screw up their probabilities and profiles."
"Day games. They have their own special panache, don't you think?"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"No pops on the rings," Eve told her team.
She'd had to pull rank, step on toes, and bribe the scheduling clerk with a block of Swiss chocolate, but she'd managed to hook a conference room.
Roarke was good for the chocolate and would only smirk a little at the bribery angle.
"Best we've got is they're not heirlooms. The jewelers Peabody tapped agree that they're not antiques. If the stones and settings are genuine, the value's estimated at two hundred fifty k each."
"Any guy wears a quarter mil on his finger's a putz" was Feeney's opinion. "And a showoff."
"Agreed. Putz and showoff percentages are high. I want to take the search on them global, so I'm passing that ball to EDD." And she'd tap her own personal source on showoff items. Roarke might not wear baubles himself, but he was sure an expert at buying them and draping them all over her.