She swiped at tears she’d just realized streamed down her cheeks. “God. I wouldn’t go to the hospital. Big surprise. He took my oral report right there in McQueen’s apartment. Two days later, I was reassigned as his aide. Homicide, Cop Central. In some twisted way, McQueen got me everything I wanted.”
“You’re wrong. In every way, Eve, you got it for yourself. You saw something in him others hadn’t, and maybe wouldn’t have for a long time.”
She took his hand again, needed his hand again. “I saw my father. I saw Richard Troy. I didn’t know it, but I saw him when I looked at McQueen.”
“And saved twenty-two young girls.”
“For twelve years that was enough. Now it’s not. He’s already hunting, Roarke.”
She brought her gaze back to his. “He’ll have a place. If he doesn’t have his partner already, he’ll soon find one. He’ll have transportation, probably a dark van. He broke out through the infirmary, so he’ll have drugs—tranqs, paralytics. He’ll change his appearance a little. His hair was lighter when I caught sight of him today. He’s too vain to change it much, but he’ll do subtle alterations. He’ll dress well, fashionably, but nothing overdone. He’ll look safe, attractive. And he’ll be eager to start again. Julie gave him a release, but she’s not what he’s after. He’ll need a girl, twelve, thirteen, or a young-looking fourteen or fifteen. If she’s with friends or family he’ll find a way to separate her. He’ll lure her into the van, or give her just enough tranq to make her compliant.”
She needed to work, Roarke thought. To utilize data, logic, pattern, and step away from the emotion.
“How?” he asked. “How would he finance or acquire transportation, a place, suitable clothing, and so on?”
“If it’s convenient or necessary, he’ll steal. Pick pockets. He’s as good as you.”
“Please.”
“Okay, maybe not, and I’m going on reports and history anyway. We presumed he had money or funds stashed. The clothes, the electronics, the food and wine in his place? He had to have money, more than we found. He grifted, and well, a long time, and the e-fraud was lucrative. EDD couldn’t find a trace of an account attached to him, other than the standard he had under his own name with a couple thousand in it. It’s possible they missed it, but we figured he kept a stash, as he’d been trained to do as a kid. Just dig in, take the cash, and go.”
“Multiple caches would be smarter. All the eggs in one basket makes an expensive omelette if broken.”
“You’d know. If he had funds tucked away in New York, he’d have access by now. But . . .”
“But?” Roarke prompted.
“I could see a stash, or a few. Running money, quick cash. But he’s smart, greedy, like I said, he wants good clothes, good wine, all that. He knows his way around electronics.”
“He’d have that account—or likely accounts, you’re thinking. Investments, letting his money make money.”
“Yeah, I figure that. His other priority would be the partner. He needs that attention, support, and someone to run interference.”
“The visitor’s list, communications. She’d be in there, wouldn’t she?”
“Has to be. He might escape on impulse and opportunity, but if he hadn’t had a plan in place, he’d have gone underground until he had one.”
She paused a moment, let herself think it through now that her mind had cleared. “They’re looking for somebody running, hiding, even scrambling. He’s not. He deliberately sought attention, so he’s confident, secure. He’s not on the run. Getting a hit off the BOLO we’ve got out on him would be sheer luck. He kept his first New York victim in that room for three years. She was strong. He lived there in a working-class neighborhood, on the third floor of a well-occupied building, and managed to transport his victims in, and we assume transport the bodies or remains of the ones who didn’t survive out, without anyone seeing him. He won’t go down easy.”
“I don’t question your judgment, but will add that this time it’s more than feeding his need, more than the girls. It’s you. It’s showing you up, paying you back. And payback is a distraction. It adds an element of risk that wasn’t in play before.”
“It’s a factor,” she agreed. “And the break in his pattern complicates things for him more than us. Still, he’s had twelve years to think it through, plan it out, refine the details. I have to catch up.”
“Then we’d better get started.” He rose, took her hand to bring her to her feet. “You didn’t take him down all those years ago just because you were lucky. You were smarter than he was, even then. He was stronger, had the advantage, but you didn’t lose your head or panic. And you didn’t stop. He may have had this time to plan and refine, but you’ve had it to hone your instincts, to build experience. And you have something else now you didn’t have then.”
“You.”
“See how smart you are?” He brushed a kiss over her forehead. “It’ll give me pleasure to use my considerable resources, not to mention skills—”
“You just mentioned them.”
“So I did. In any case, I’ll enjoy using them to help you put him away a second time, and for good. And I can start doing just that by accessing his visitors and communications logs from the prison.”
She opened her mouth, a knee-jerk refusal on the tip of her tongue. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t bent the rules before, but it never sat quite right. “Yeah. Yeah, you do that. They’ve got no business stonewalling until tomorrow while they work on their spin. I don’t care about their spin or the politics. I need to know who he’s talked to, seen. I need it all. A few hours’ jump on this might save some kid from being taken.”
They set up in Roarke’s private office, with the unregistered equipment, shielded from the intrusive eye of CompuGuard. He walked to the wide, U-shaped command center, laid his palm on the security plate. “This is Roarke. Power up.”
And the controls glittered like jewels against the sleek black console. Nothing accessed here could go in any report, not until the data came to her by proper and legal channels. But . . .
One of his shades of gray, she thought. He had more than she did, a thinner and more adjustable line. Still, all she had to do was remember all the girls, all those eyes inside that obscenity of a room, to step over to Roarke’s side of it.
She sat at the auxiliary comp, called up her files. She’d need to set up a board, she worked better with visuals. But for now she’d take the time to refresh herself on all things Isaac McQueen.
She steeped herself in it, in the photographs, the data stream, the psychiatric reports, court transcripts. She surfaced when Roarke set a mug of coffee on the console beside her.
“The medical he killed yesterday had a wife and a two-year-old daughter.”
She nodded. “You think I need to justify what I’m doing, or letting you do. Maybe sometime down the road I will. Right now I’m clear on it. I’m sidestepping politics.”
She looked up at him. He’d tied his hair back—work mode. “I’ve got no problem with that.”
“All right, then. I have his visitors log, and the record of all approved communications. I imagine you’ve considered he communicated with someone outside by non-approved means. If so, he didn’t use any variation of his own ID, or send or receive by anyone using any variation of those on the approved list. I’ll look deeper.”
He leaned on the console, sipped from a mug of his own. “I programmed a search for key phrases, repetitions. So far all the e-coms are innocuous. Answers to messages from reporters, writers, an inmate advocacy group. There’s very little over a twelve-year period, which weighs on the side he found a way to skirt around approval.”
Eve drank coffee and considered. “He’s got the e-skills. He wouldn’t make a mistake there, and he’d be very careful what he put on a hard drive. We stripped down his electronics before. Next to nothing. He’s very careful. The way to the partner, if he’s lined one up, would be through visitation. Face-to-face contact. Privacy rules, thanks to prison advocacy groups—prevent monitoring prisoner visitation. It’ll be a woman, between forty and . . . adding the twelve years in, probably more like between fifty and sixty. Attractive, with some sort of addiction or vulnerability he can exploit.”
“Nearly all his visitors were female. Data’s copied to your unit.”
Eve called it up. Out of twenty-six visitors, eighteen were women, and most of them repeat visitors.
“I get the reporters—after a juicy story, maybe a big book deal or vid. He’d probably string them along awhile, get them to come back, entertain him. Tell them nothing. But the rest? What did they get out of spending time with him, knowing what he’d done, what he is? I don’t—Jesus, Melinda Jones.”
