Public places, public access. Phony accounts. Careful, careful, careful. “You with Peabody?”
“Yeah. She’s in the other room.”
“Why don’t you check out the club? See if you can pinpoint the unit he used. Maybe you can get us a better description.”
“No problem.”
“We’re going to brief at my home office, eight hundred hours.”
His mouth might’ve been full of pizza, but she recognized a groan when she heard one. Served him right for eating on her empty stomach.
“You get anything hot, I want to hear right away. No matter what time it is. That’s good work on the ’links.”
“I am the wizard. You guys got any of that real bacon?”
She cut him off. Sitting back in the blue-shadowed dark, she thought about diamonds and pizza and murder.
“Lieutenant.”
“Hmm?”
“Lights on, twenty-five percent.” Even in the dimness, Roarke watched her blink like an owl. “You need to eat.”
“McNab had pizza. It broke my focus.” She rubbed her tired eyes. “Where’s Feeney?”
“I sent him home, not without a struggle. His wife called. I think she’s going into a low-level state of panic that he’s going to do what he suggested to you earlier and postpone this family trip.”
“I won’t let him. You got anything for me?”
“The first stage of matching’s done on Judith Crew, nearly so on the boy. Once that’s done we’ll… ” He remembered who he was talking to and edited out the techno jargon. “Essentially, we’ll cross-match and reference the two sets. If she kept her son with her until he came of age-and it certainly seems she’d do so-we should be able to locate that match, or matches.”
He cocked his head at her. “Is it going to be pizza for you, then?”
“I would give you five hundred credits for a slice of pepperoni pizza.”
He sneered. “Please, Lieutenant. I can’t be bought.”
“I will give you the sexual favor of your choice at the next possible opportunity.”
“Done.”
“Cheap date.”
“You don’t know the sexual favor I have in mind. Did you get your warrants?” he called out as he went into the kitchen.
“Yeah. Jesus, I had to tap-dance until my toes fell off, but I’m getting them. And McNab’s pinned locations on transmissions. He and Peabody are going to check out a cyber club tonight where one was zipped to Cobb.”
“Tonight?”
“They’re young, able and afraid of me.”
“So am I.” He brought her in a plateful of bubbling pizza and a large glass of red wine.
“Where’s yours?”
“I had something with Feeney in the lab, and foolishly assumed you’d feed yourself.”
“You’ve already eaten and you still fixed me dinner?” She scooped up pizza, singed her fingertips. “Wow, you’re like my body slave.”
“Those roles will be reversed when I collect my payment. I think it may involve costumes.”
“Get out.” She snorted, bit into the pizza and burned her tongue. It was great. “He made a call to both Cobb and Gannon from a port in Grand Central. Called Gannon’s place the night he killed Jacobs-twice, two locations. Just covering his bases, sounds like. Gets her answering program on both aborts, confirms the all clear. Goes over.”
She washed down pizza with wine and knew God was in His heaven.
“Could’ve walked from there, that’s how I’d’ve done it. Better than a cab. Safer.”
“And allows him to case the neighborhood,” Roarke added.
“Then he gets there, gets inside. Maybe he’s smart enough to do a room-by-room check of the house first. Can’t be too careful. Then he goes upstairs to get started, and before you know it, the house sitter comes in. All that care, all that trouble, and for what?”
“Pissed him off.”
Eve nodded, drank some more wine, considered the second slice of pizza. Why the hell not? “I’m thinking, yeah. Had to piss him off. You know he could’ve gotten out. Or he could’ve debilitated her, restrained her. But she’d ruined his plans. She’d become the fly in his soup. So he killed her. But he wasn’t in a rage when he did it. Controlled, careful. But not as smart as he thinks. What if she knows something? He didn’t take that leap in logic.”
“He struck out, coldly, but didn’t take the time to completely calm himself.” Roarke nodded. “He had to improvise. We could assume he’s not at his best when he hasn’t been able to script the play and follow the cues.”
“Yeah, I can see inside his head, but it’s not helping.” She tossed the slice of pizza down and stared at the artist’s image she kept on screen. “If I’ve structured this investigation right, I know what he wants. I know what he’ll do to get it. I even know, if we’re following the same logic, that his next step would be to go after Samantha Gannon or one of her family. To buddy up with them if he calculates it’s worth the time and effort, to threaten, torture, kill, if it’s not. Whatever it takes to get the diamonds or information leading to them out of her.”
“But he can’t get to her, or them.”
“No, I got them covered. And maybe that’s part of the problem. Why it’s stalled.”
“If you use her as bait, you could lure him out.”
With the wineglass cupped in her hand, Eve tipped back, closed her eyes. “She’d do it, too. I can see that in her. She’d do it because it’s a way to end it, and because it makes a good story, and because she’s gutsy. Not stupidly, but gutsy enough to go for this. Just like her grandma.”
“Gutsy enough, because she’d trust you to look out for her.”
Eve shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t like to use civilians as bait. I could put a cop in her place. We can fix one up to look enough like her to pass.”
“He’d have studied her. He might see through it.”
“Might. Hell, he might even know her. Anyway, I’m too tall. Peabody’s the wrong body type.”
“A droid could be fashioned.”
“Droids only do what they’re programmed to do.” And she never fully trusted machines. “Bait needs to be able to think. There’s someone else he might go for.”
“Judith Crew.”
“Yeah. If she’s still alive, he might try for her. Or the son. If neither one of them is a part of this, he might push those buttons. There’s nobody else left from back then, nobody with direct knowledge of what went down, and how. He can’t even be sure they exist.”
“Eat.”
Distracted, she looked down at the pizza. Because it was there, she picked it up, bit in, chewed. “It’s a kind of fantasy. Now that I see he’s younger than I assumed, it makes more sense to me. It’s a treasure hunt. He wants them because he feels he’s entitled to them, and because they’re valuable, but also because they’re shiny,” she added, thinking of Peabody outside the display windows at Fifth and Forty-seventh.
“You talked me into swimming around that reef off the island. Remember? You said not to wear my pendant deal. Not only because, hey, big fat diamonds can get lost in the ocean, but because I shouldn’t wear anything shiny in there. Barracudas get hyped up when something shines and gleams in the water and can take great big, nasty bites out of you.”
“So you have a barracuda on a treasure hunt.”
Yeah, she liked bouncing a case off Roarke, Eve thought. You didn’t have to tell him anything twice, and half the time didn’t have to tell him the first time.
“I don’t know where this is taking me, but let’s play it out. He wants them because he feels entitled, because they’re valuable and because they’re shiny. This tells me he’s spoiled, greedy and childish. And mean. The way a bully’s mean. He killed not only because it was expedient but because he could. Because they were weaker and he had the advantage. He hurt Cobb because there was time to, and he was probably bored by her. This is how I see him. I don’t know what it gets me.”
“Recognition. Keep going.”
“I think he’s used to getting what he wants. Taking it if it isn’t given. Maybe he’s stolen before. There was probably a safer way to get information, but he chose this way. It’s more exciting to take something that isn’t yours in the dark than to bargain for it in the light.”
“I certainly used to think so.”
“Then you grew up.”
“Well, in my way. There’s a thrill about the dark, Eve. Once you’ve experienced it, it’s difficult to resist.”
“Why did you? Resist.”
“I wanted something else. More.” He took her wine for a sip. “I’d built my way toward it, with the occasional and often recreational side step. Then I wanted you. There’s nothing in the dark I could want as I want you.”
“He doesn’t have anyone. He doesn’t love. He doesn’t want anyone. It’s things he craves. Shiny things that gleam in the dark. They’re shinier, Roarke, because they already have blood on them. And I think, I’m damn sure, some of that blood runs in him. They’re more valuable to him, more important to him, because of the blood.”
She rolled her shoulders. “Yeah, I’ll recognize him. I’ll know him when I see him. But none of this gets me any closer to where he is.”
“Why don’t you get some rest?”
She shook her head. “I want to look at the matches.”
Steven Whittier sipped Earl Grey out of his favorite red mug. He claimed it added to the flavor, a statement that caused his wife, who preferred using the antique Meissen, to act annoyed. Still, she loved him as much for his everyman ways as she did for his sturdiness, dependability and humor.
The match between them-the builder and the society princess-had initially baffled and flustered her family. Patricia was vintage wine and caviar, and Steve was beer and soy dogs. But she’d dug in her fashionable heels and ignored her family’s dire predictions. Thirty-two years later, everyone had forgotten those predictions except Steve and Pat.
Every year on their anniversary, they tapped glasses to the toast of “It’ll never last.” After which, they would laugh like children pulling one over on a bunch of grown-ups.
They’d built a good life, and even his early detractors had been forced to admit Steve Whittier had brains and ambition, and had managed to use both to provide Pat with a lifestyle they could accept.
From childhood he’d known what he wanted to do. To create or re-create buildings. He’d wanted to dig in his roots, as he’d never been able to do as a child, and provide places for others to do the same.
