“Shoot my share to my unit.”
“Okay. We’ll divide by alpha. We should…I don’t like her,” Eve said suddenly. “Didn’t like her pretty much from the jump. Didn’t like her when I stood watching her on the security screen as she walked into the house the morning of.”
“With her well-groomed hair and coordinating wardrobe,” Roarke remembered.
“Yeah. It was…” Eve snapped her fingers. “But that screws objectivity, so I pushed it back. Thing is, it kept pushing back in again. It took me a while-well, not that much while, but some-to figure out why.”
Since he sensed something there, he sat on the corner of her desk. “All right. Tell me why.”
“Don’t get bent over it.”
He angled his head. “Why would I?”
“She reminds me of Magdelana.”
He said nothing for a moment, just watched her face, then rising, he walked over to the murder board to study Ava’s.
“Not just the high-class blonde thing,” Eve began.
“No,” he said quietly, “not just.” He thought of Magdelana, the woman he’d once cared for. The woman who’d betrayed him, and on the return trip had done everything in her power to hurt Eve and chip away at their marriage.
“Not just,” he repeated. “They’re both users, aren’t they? Manipulators with a wholly selfish core polished over with sophistication and style. Very much the same type. You’re right about that.”
“Okay.”
Hearing the relief in her voice, he looked over at her. “Did you think I’d be annoyed or upset by the comparison?”
“Maybe some, maybe more if I’d finished it out and said that because she reminds me of Magdabitch, I’m going to experience a tingly, even orgasmic satisfaction by bringing her down.”
“I see. Revenge by proxy.”
“She deserves the cage on her own merits or lack thereof. But yeah, maybe some element of revenge by proxy.”
Walking back, he leaned down, kissed the top of Eve’s head. “Whatever works. And now that you’ve pointed it out, I’ll enjoy some of that tingly satisfaction as well. Thanks for that.”
“It’s small, petty, and probably inappropriate of us.”
“Which will make it all the more orgasmic. Send over the file. I’ll just cop some of your coffee, then get started.”
Whatever works, Eve thought again as he strolled into the kitchen. What really worked, was them.
She ordered her unit to copy and send Roarke’s unit the names on file beginning with N surnames. Then she opened the first half of the file, took a quick scan.
Plenty of little slaves and servants to pick from, she thought. A nice wide field of the vulnerable, the needy, the grateful. The bitch just had to keep circling until…
“Wait. Whoa. Wait.”
With coffee in hand, Roarke stepped back in. “That was fast.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Scooping back her hair, Eve launched to her feet. “Computer, display on screen, data for Custer, Suzanne.”
“Who might that be?” Roarke wondered.
“Wait, wait. Computer, display on second screen, data on Custer, Ned.”
Roarke did wait, studied both photos, the basic identification data. “Husband and wife, and he’s deceased. Recently.”
“He’s Baxter’s.” She dropped back down into the chair. “I didn’t keep the damn file. I need the damn case file on this guy.”
“Move,” Roarke ordered. “Get up. Give me a moment.”
“Don’t hack into Baxter’s police unit. I’ll tag him and-”
“And I’ll have it for you a great deal quicker. It’s hardly hacking, as it’s ridiculously easy. And you’re authorized in any case.” He gave her shoulder a light, but purposeful shove. “Give me the chair a minute.”
“All right, all right.” In any case, it gave her time to pace and think. She stared at the woman on screen-pretty in a toned-down, tired-eyed kind of way. Couple of kids, professional mother’s stipend, philandering, heavy-handed husband.
“Coincidence, my ass.”
“Quiet,” Roarke muttered. “Half a minute more here. Ah, and there we are. What do you need from this?”
“Take down the data on screen, put that up. We’ll scroll through.” She felt it, felt it in her bones. But…“I want your take here without any of my input first.”
He read, as she did, of the quick and nasty death of one Ned Custer by person or persons unknown. Cheap sex flop, slit throat-attack from behind-castration, no trace or DNA, no witnesses. No trail.
“So the wife was well-alibied, I see.”
“Solid. They ran the ’link calls, confirmed the source. She was in her apartment when he got sliced. No boyfriends, no close relatives or friends. Baxter and Trueheart are thorough, and they didn’t pop anything on this.”
“She’s one of Ava’s mothers.”
“Yep.”
“Strangers on a Train.”
“Huh?” Her head swiveled back toward him. “What train? Nobody was on a train.”
“I haven’t run that vid for you, have I?” Coolly, he continued to study the screen, continued to read data. “It’s a good one. Mid-twentieth-century, Hitchcock film. You’ve enjoyed Hitchcock.”
“Yeah, yeah, so?”
“Briefly, two men-strangers-meet on a train, and the conversations turn to how each wishes to be rid of a certain individual in his life. And how it could be done without the police suspecting them if each did in the other’s. Very clever, as there’s no real connection between the two men. It was a book first, come to think of it.”
“Strangers,” Eve repeated.
“In this case, the one who wanted his wife done didn’t take the other-an unstable sort, who wanted his father done-seriously. But, the wife was dispatched, and the unstable sort pressured the sudden widower to complete the bargain. It’s twisty and complex. You’ll have to watch it.”
“The exchange is what clicked for me,” Eve told him. “The possibility of that. You do mine, I do yours. We’re both alibied, and who’d look at either of us for the other’s? Why would Baxter look at Ava Anders in the murder of this guy? She doesn’t know him, and even if you note that Suzanne Custer’s in the Anders program, it doesn’t pop. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
“Until you look at Anders’s murder, won’t let it slide as an accident, and dig deep enough to see this. And wonder.”
“Probability scan’s going to bottom out.” Already annoyed by that, Eve hissed out a breath. “It’ll bottom out until I can plug in more. What about you? Do you buy it?”
“The stronger personality, the more powerful one, hatches the plan, draws the weaker one in. And does the job first, to add pressure and obligation. Even threat. When the weaker follows through, it’s not quite as clean and tidy. Yes, I’d buy it.”
“It’s easier to pry open the weaker one. We pull Suzanne Custer in, we work her.” Pacing, Eve circled the murder board. “Work her right, work her hard enough, she’ll flip on Ava. Need more first. You move.”
He pushed back from the desk. “Do you still want runs on the other names?”
“I’ll put a drone on that. This is the money shot here, this is the one. I’ve got a tingly.”
“Save it for me, will you?”
“Ha. I need everything I can get on her. Baxter’s got a solid murder book. We just have to look at the data from a different angle now. Suzanne didn’t kill her husband. She killed Ava’s.”
“There had to be contact between the two murderers,” Roarke pointed out. “Confirming the first, setting up the second.”
“Where did Custer get the murder weapon, the drug, the enhancer? That’s a place to pick at. Ava had to give her the security code, the layout.” As she spoke, Eve scrawled down names, connections, questions. “They changed the code every ten days, so there had to be a way to pass that on. We pick at Ava at the same time. She’s not going to be alibied so damn tight for the night of Ned Custer’s murder. She fits,” Eve added. “She’s the right height for the angle of the killing strike. The right personality to have planned it without leaving a trace behind, the right personality to use someone else to get what she wanted.”