Creation in Death (7 page)

He’d inched all those same questions through his mind, turning them over from every angle. “If he works for me, I can find out. The travel,” Roarke said. “Whether it was business-related or personal time, I can search files for employees who were sent to the locations of the other murders in that time period, or who took personal leave.”

“How many employees would you figure you have?”

His lips curved again. “I honestly couldn’t say.”

“Exactly. But using Mira’s profile—and we’ll have an updated one tomorrow—we can cut that back considerably.”

Following the usual arrangement when he dealt with the meal, Eve rose to clear the dishes. “I’ll run a probability, but I think there’s a low percentage he works for you. He doesn’t strike me as a disgruntled employee.”

“Agreed. I can check the same information on major competitors and subcontractors. Using my private equipment.”

She said nothing at first, just carted the dishes into the kitchen, loaded them into the machine. His private office, with its unregistered equipment, would allow him to evade CompuGuard and the privacy laws.

Whatever he found, she couldn’t use it in court, couldn’t reveal where she’d gotten the data. Illegal means, she thought, crossing the line. Such maneuvers gave a defense attorney that flea-ass opening.

Can’t you hear us screaming?

She walked back into the office. “Run it.”

“All right. It’ll take considerable time.”

“Then you’d better get started.”

Alone, she began to set up her murder board while her computer read off the progress reports from her team.

Board’s too small, she thought. Too small to hold all the faces, all the data. All the death.

“Lieutenant.”

“Computer pause,” she ordered, then turned to Summerset. “What? I’m working.”

“As I can see. Roarke asked I bring you this data.” He held out a disc. “The employee search he asked I run.”

“Good.” She took it, walked over to put it on her desk. Glanced back. “You still here? Go away.”

Ignoring her, he stood in his funereal black suit, his back stiff as a poker. “I remember this. I remember the media reports on these women. But there was nothing about these numbers carved into them.”

“Civilians don’t need to know everything.”

“He takes great care in how he forms them, each number, each letter so precise. I’ve seen this before.”

Her eyes sharpened. “What do you mean?”

“Not this, not exactly this, but something similar. During the Urban Wars.”

“The torture methods?”

“No, no. Though, of course, there was plenty of that. Torture’s a classic means of eliciting information or dealing out punishment. Though it’s rarely so…tidy as this.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

He looked over at her. “You’re too young to have experienced the Urbans, or to remember the dregs of them that settled in some parts of Europe after they ended here. In any case, there were elements there, too, that civilians—so to speak—didn’t need to know.”

He had her full attention now. “Such as?”

“When I served as a medic, the injured and the dead would be brought in. Sometimes in piles, in pieces. We’d hold the dead, or those who succumbed to their injuries—for family members if such existed, and if the body could be identified. Or for burial or cremation. Those who didn’t have identification, or were beyond being identified, would be listed by number until disposal. We kept logs, listing them by any description possible, any personal effects, the location where they’d been killed, and so on. And we would write the number on them, and the date of their death, or as close as we could come to it.”

“Was that SOP?”

“It was what we did when I worked in London. There were other methods in other areas, and in some of the worst areas only mass burials and cremations without any record.”

She walked back over to the board, studied the carving. It wasn’t the same, she thought. But it was an angle.

“He knows their names,” she said. “The name’s not an issue. But the data’s important. It has to be recorded. The data’s what identifies them. The time is what names them for him. I need another board.”

“Excuse me?”

“I need another board. I don’t have enough room with one. We got anything around here that’ll work?”

“I imagine I can find what you need.”

“Good. Go do that.”

When he left, she went to her desk, added the Urban Wars data to her notes, then continued to jot down her speculations.

Soldier, medic, doctor. Maybe someone who lost a family member or lover…No, no, she didn’t like that one. Why would he torture and desecrate the symbol, you could say, of anyone who’d mattered to him? Then again, if a loved one had been tortured, killed, identified in that manner, this just might be payback or some twisted re-creation.

Maybe he’d been tortured, survived it. Tortured by a female with brown hair, within the age span.

Or maybe he’d been the torturer.

She rose, paced. Then why wait decades to re-create? Did some event trigger it? Or had he been experimenting all along, until he found the method that suited him?

And maybe he was just a fucking lunatic.

But the Urbans were an angle, yes they were. Mira’s profile had indicated he was mature, even nine years back. Male, likely Caucasian, she remembered, between the ages of thirty-five and sixty.

So go high-end, and yeah, he could’ve seen some of the wars as a young man.

She sat again and, adding in new speculations, ran probabilities.

While they ran, she plugged in the disc Summerset had brought in. “Computer, display results, wall screen two.”

Acknowledged. Working…

As they began to scroll, her jaw simply dropped. “Well, Jesus. Jesus.” There were hundreds of names. Maybe hundreds of hundreds.

She couldn’t complain that Summerset wasn’t efficient. The names were grouped according to where they worked, where they lived. Apparently, there were just one hell of a lot of women with brown hair between twenty-eight and thirty-three who worked in some capacity for Roarke Enterprises.

“Talk about a big, honking octopus.”

She was going to need a whole bunch of coffee.

R
oarke’s private office was streamlined and spacious, with a dazzling view of the city through privacy screens. The wide U-shaped console commanded equipment as sophisticated and extensive as any the government could claim.

He should know, he held several government contracts.

And he knew, however artful the equipment, successful hacking depended on the operator’s skill. And patience.

He ran his own employee files first. However numerous they were, it was still a simple matter. As was the search he implemented to locate any male employees who worked or had worked for him who had traveled to the other murder locations or taken personal leave during that time frame.

As it ran he generated a list of major competitors. He would, subsequently, search through those companies he didn’t consider genuine competition. But he’d start at the top.

Any company, organization, or individual who was, in actuality, competitive would have—as he did—layers and layers of security on their internal files. And each would need to be peeled back with considerable care.

He sat at the console where the controls shimmered or flashed like jewels. His sleeves were pushed up, his hair tied back.

He started with companies with offices or interests in one or more of the locations.

And began to peel.

As he worked, he talked to himself, to the machines, to the layers that tried to foil him. As time passed, his curses became more Irish, his accent more pronounced, and layers melted away.

He took a break for coffee and to scan the results of his initial search.

He had no employee who fit all the requirements. But, he noted, there were some who’d been in at least two of the locations or on leave during the time of the murders.

They’d be worth a closer look.

He shifted back and forth between tasks, to keep himself sharp. He wormed his way through security blocks, picked his way through data. Ordered search, cross match, analysis so his equipment hummed in a dozen voices.

At some point he got up for yet another pot of coffee, and glanced at the time.

Four-sixteen a.m.

Cursing, he sat back, scrubbed his hands over his face. Hardly a wonder he was losing his edge. And Eve, he knew, would be asleep at her desk. If she’d decided to call it a night, she would have come by to check his progress first.

Instead, she’d work herself into the ground, and as he was doing exactly the same, he had no room to fight with her about it.

Nearly half-four, he thought. Gia Rossi might already be dead, or praying to all the gods death would come soon.

Roarke closed his eyes a moment, and though he knew the guilt was useless, let it run through him. He was too tired for the anger.

“Copy document C to disc, save all data. Ah, continue current run, copy and save when complete. Operator will be off-line.”

Acknowledged.

Before he left, he put in a call to Dublin.

“Good morning to you, Brian.”

His old mate’s wide face creased with a surprised smile. “Well now, if it isn’t the man himself. Which side of the pond would you be on?”

“The Yank side. It’s a bit early on your side of it for me to be calling a publican. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“You didn’t, no. I’m just having my tea. How is our Lieutenant Darling?”

“She’s well, thanks. Would you be alone there?”

“I would be, more’s the pity. I’ve no enchanting woman to warm the sheets with me at the moment, as you do.”

“I’m sorry for that. Brian, I’m looking for a torturer.”

“Is that so?” Only the mildest surprise showed in Brian’s eyes. “And are you too delicate these days to be after taking care of such matters yourself?”

“I was always too delicate for this, and so were you. He’s done over twenty women in the last decade, late twenties, early thirties, all of them. And all of them with brown hair, light skin. The last was found only yesterday. She worked for me.”

“Ah,” Brian said. “Well.”

“Another is missing—that’s part of his method—and she was mine as well.”

Brian sucked air through his nose. “Were you diddling with them, on the side, like?”

“No. He’d be older than we are, that’s how they’re profiling him. At least a decade older if not more. He’s very skilled. He travels. He must have enough of the ready to afford a place, a private place, to do this work. If he’s a professional, he takes this busman’s holiday every year or two. There’s no sex involved. No rape. He takes, binds, tortures, kills, cleanses. And he times how long each lasts under it.”

“I haven’t heard of anyone like this. Nasty business.” Brian pulled on his ear. “I can make some inquiries, tap a few shoulders.”

“I’d be grateful if you would.”

“I’ll be in touch if and when,” Brian told him. “Meanwhile, give Lieutenant Darling a sweet kiss from me, and tell her I’m only waiting for her to throw your worthless ass aside and come into my waiting embrace.”

“I’ll be sure to do that.”

After he’d ended the transmission, Roarke took the discs he’d generated and, with the machines still humming, left the office.

He found Eve where he’d expected to. Her head was on her desk, pillowed on her forearm. He noted the murder boards, the pair of them, the discs, the handwritten notes, the comp-generated ones.

The half cup of coffee, not quite cold—and the cat curled in her sleep chair.

He moved to Eve, lifted her out of the chair. She muttered some complaint, stirred, and shifted.

“What?”

“Bed,” he said as he carried her toward the elevator.

“Time is it? Jeez.” She rubbed at her eyes. “I must’ve conked.”

“Not for long, your coffee was still warm. We need to shut down, both of us.”

“Briefing at eight.” Her voice slurred with fatigue. “Need to be up by six. Need to organize first. I didn’t—”

“Fine, fine.” He stepped out of the elevator into the bedroom. “Go back to sleep, six will come soon enough.”

“You get anything?”

“Still running.” He set her on the bed, seeing no reason she couldn’t sleep in her sweats. Apparently neither did she as she crawled under the duvet as she was.

“Is there any data I can use? Anything I can work in?”

“We’ll see in the morning.” He stripped off his shirt, his pants, slid into bed with her.

“If there’s any—”

“Quiet.” He drew her against him, brushed her lips with his. “Sleep.”

He heard her sigh once—it might’ve been annoyance. But by the time the sigh was done, she was under.

IT WAS SO UNUSUAL FOR HIM NOT TO BE UP
before her that Eve just stared into the Celtic blue eyes when he woke her by stroking her hair.

“You think of something?”

“Apparently, I inevitably think of something when I’m in bed with my wife.”

“Being a man—and you—you probably think of sex when you’re crossing the street.”

“And aren’t you lucky that’s true?” He kissed the tip of her nose. “But thinking’s as far as we’ll get this morning. You wanted to be up at six.”

“Oh, yeah. Shit. Okay.” She rolled onto her back and willed her body clock to accept morning. “Can’t you invent something that pours coffee into the system just by the power of mind?”

“I’ll get right on that.”

She climbed out of bed, stumbled her way over to the AutoChef. “I’m going to go down, swim a few laps. I think that’ll wake me up and work out the kinks.”

“Good idea. I’ll do the same. Give me some of that.”

She thought, crankily, he could easily get his own damn coffee, but she passed the mug to him, along with a scowl. “No water polo.”

“If that’s a euphemism for pool sex, you’re safe. All I want’s a swim.” He passed her back the coffee.

They rode down together, she bleary-eyed, him thoughtful.

The pool house was lush with plants, sparkling with blue water. Tropical blooms scented the warm, moist air. She would have liked to indulge herself with a strong twenty-minute swim, followed by more coffee and a soak in the bubbling curve of the hot tub.

And hell, since he was there, maybe just one quick match of water polo.

But it wasn’t the time for indulgence. She dove in, surfaced, then pushed off in a full-out freestyle. The dullness in her brain and body began to fade with the effort, the cool water, the simple repetition.

After ten minutes, she felt loose again, reasonably alert. She might have thought wistfully about lounging for just a couple of minutes in the hot, jetting water of the hot tub, but acknowledged the comfort of it might put her back to sleep.

Instead, she pulled on a robe. “Do you want to go downtown with me, or work from here?”

He considered as he scooped back his dripping hair. “I think I’ll stick with the unregistered, at least for the time being. If I manage to finish or find anything, I’ll contact you or just come down on my own.”

“Works.” She crossed to the elevator with him. “Any progress?”

“Considerable, but as of four a.m., nothing really useful.”

“Is that when we finished up?”

“A bit later, actually. And darling Eve, you haven’t had enough rest.” He touched her cheek. “You get so pale.”

“I’m okay.”

“And did you find anything useful?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

She told him about Summerset’s observation while they readied for the day.

“So you think it’s possible he was in one of the medical centers, in some capacity, during the Urbans.”

“It’s a thought. I did some research,” she added as she strapped on her weapon harness. “Not a whole lot of detail about it, that I’ve found so far anyway. But there were other facilities that used that same basic method. A handful here in New York.”

“Where he started this.”

“I’m thinking,” she agreed with a nod. “Something here in particular that matters. He starts here, he comes back here. There’s a wide, wide world out there and he’s used some of it. But now he repeats location.”

“Not just location. You and Feeney. Morris, Whitney, Mira. There are others as well.”

“Yeah, and I’m mulling on that. More usually if a repeat killer has a thing about cops, he likes to thumb his nose at us. Send us messages, leave cryptic clues so he can feel superior. We’re not getting that. But I’m mulling it.”

She took one last, life-affirming glug of coffee. “I’ve got to get started, or I won’t have myself lined up for the briefing.”

“Oh, I’m to tell you Brian’s waiting for you with open arms when you’re done with me.”

“Huh? Brian? Irish Brian?”

“That would be the one. I contacted him, asked him to look for torturers. He has connections,” Roarke continued. “And knows how to ferret out information.”

“Huh.” It struck her she’d married a man with a lot of unusual associates. Came in handy now and then. “Okay. I’ll see you later.”

He moved to her, ran a hand over her hair again. “Take care of my cop.”

“That’s the plan.” She met his lips with hers, stepped back. “I’ll be in touch.”

I
n briefing the team, Eve had everyone give their own orals on progress or lack of same. She listened to theories, arguments for or against, ideas for approaching different angles, or for pursuing old ones from a new perspective.

“If the Urbans are an angle,” Baxter put in, “and we look at it like this fucker was a medical, or he got his torture training back then, we could be looking for a guy pushing eighty, or better. That gives him a half-century or more on his vics. How’s a guy starting to creak pull this off?”

“Horny Dog’s missing the fact that a lot of guys past middle age keep up.” Jenkinson pointed a finger at Baxter. “Eighty’s the new sixty.”

“Sick Bastard has a point,” Baxter acknowledged. “And as a borderline creaker himself, he’s got some insight on it. But I’m saying it takes some muscle and agility to bag a thirty-year-old woman—especially since he goes for the physically tuned ones—off the street.”

“He could’ve been a kid during the Urbans.” As if in apology for speaking out, Trueheart cleared his throat. “Not that eighty’s old, but—”

“You shave yet, Baby Face?” Jenkinson asked.

“While it’s sad and true that Officer Baby Face doesn’t have as much hair on his chin as Sick Bastard does in his ears, there were a lot of kids kicked around, orphaned, beat to shit during the Urbans. Or so I hear,” Baxter added with a wide grin for Jenkinson. “Before my time.”

She accepted the bullshit and insults cops tossed around with other cops. She let it go for another few minutes. And when she deemed all current data had been relayed, all ideas explored and the stress relieved, she handed out the day’s assignments and dismissed.

“Peabody, locate York’s ex. We need to have a word. I’m taking Mira into my office for a few minutes. Doctor?”

“So many avenues,” Mira commented as they started out.

“One of them will lead us to him.” Eventually, Eve thought.

“His consistency is both his advantage and disadvantage. It’ll be a step on the avenue that leads you to him. His inflexibility is going to undermine him at some point.”

“Inflexibility.”

“His refusal to deviate,” Mira confirmed. “Or his inability to deviate from a set pattern allows you to know a great deal about him. So you can anticipate.”

“I anticipated he’d have taken number two. That isn’t helping Gia Rossi.”

Mira shook her head. “That’s not relevant. You couldn’t have helped Rossi as she was already taken before you knew, or could know, he was back in business.”

“That’s what it is?” Eve led the way to her office, gestured toward the visitor’s chair while she sat on the corner of her desk. “Business.”

“His pattern is businesslike, a kind of perfected routine. Or ritual, as I said before. He’s very proud of his work, which is why he shares it. Displays it, but only when it’s completed.”

“When he’s finished with them, he wants to show them off, wants to claim them. That’s why he arranges them on a white sheet. That’s the ring he puts on them. I get that. During the Urbans—if we head down that avenue—bodies were laid out, piled up, stacked up, depending on the facilities. And covered. Sheet, drop cloth, plastic, whatever was available. Usually, their clothes, shoes, personal effects were taken. Mostly these were recycled to other people. It’s ‘waste not and want not’ in wartime. So he takes their clothes, their personal effects, but he reverses, leaving them uncovered.”

“Pride. I believe, to him, they’re beautiful. In death, they’re beautiful to him.” Mira shifted, crossed her legs. She’d pinned her hair up into a soft roll at the nape of her neck, and wore a pale, pale yellow suit that seemed to whisper a promise of spring. “His choice of victim type indicates, as I said in the briefing, some prior connection with a woman of this basic age and coloring. She symbolizes something to him. Mother, lover, sister, unattained love.”

“Unattained.”

“He couldn’t control this person, couldn’t make her see him as he wanted to be seen, not in her life or in her death. Now he does, again and again.”

“He doesn’t rape or molest them sexually. If it was a lover, wouldn’t he see her as sexual?”

“Love, not lover. Women are Madonnas or whores to him, so he fears and respects them.”

“Punishes and kills the whore,” Eve considered, “and creates the Madonna, who he cleanses and displays.”

“Yes. It’s their womanhood, not their sexuality, he’s obsessed with. He may be impotent. In fact, I believe we’ll find this to be the case when you catch him. But sex isn’t important to him. It doesn’t drive him or, again if impotent, he would mutilate the genitals or sexually abuse them with objects. This hasn’t been the case in any of the victims.

“It’s possible he gains sexual release or satisfaction from their pain,” Mira added. “But it’s secondary, we could say a by-product. It’s the pain that drives him, and the endurance of the subject, and the result. The death.”

Eve pushed up, wandered to the AutoChef, absently programmed coffee for both of them. “You said ‘businesslike,’ and I don’t disagree. But it seems like a kind of science to me. Regular and specific experiments. Artful science, I guess.”

“We don’t disagree.” Mira accepted the coffee. “He’s focused and he’s dedicated. Control—his own, and his ability to control others—is vital to him. His ability to step away, to step outside of the active work for long periods, indicates great control and willpower. I don’t believe, even with this, it’s possible for him to maintain personal or intimate relationships for any length of time. Most certainly not with women. Business relationships? I believe he could maintain those to some extent. He must have income. He invests in his victims.”

“The high-end products, the silver rings. The travel to select them from different locations. The cost of obtaining or maintaining the place where he works on them.”

“Yes, and given the nature of the products, he’s used to a certain level of lifestyle. Cleansing them is part of the ritual, yes, but he could do so with more ordinary means. More mainstream products.”

“Nothing but the best,” Eve agreed. “But it also leads me down the avenue that he may be a competitor of Roarke’s, or an employee in a top-level position.”

“Both would be logical.” Mira drank her coffee, quietly pleased Eve remembered how she preferred it. “He’s chosen to make this connection. Just as he chose to come back to New York to work at this time. But there was a connection for him to make, Eve.”

She set her cup aside now, and her gaze was sober when she looked at Eve. “There was you. These women are, in a sense, Roarke’s. You are his in every sense.”

Testing the idea, Eve frowned. “So he opts for this specific pattern because of me? I wasn’t primary on the initial investigation.”

“You were a female on the initial investigation, a brunette. Too young at that time to meet his requirements. You aren’t now.”

“You’re looking at me as a target?”

“I am. Yes, I am.”

“Huh.” Drinking coffee, Eve considered it more carefully. Mira’s theories weren’t to be casually dismissed. “Usually goes for long hair.”

“There have been exceptions.”

“Yeah, yeah, a couple of them. He’s been smart. This wouldn’t be smart.” Eve tipped the angle of it in her mind, shifted the pattern. “It’s a lot tougher to take down a cop than it is a civilian.”

“You would be a great prize, from his viewpoint. It would be a challenge, and a coup. And if he knows anything about you, which I promise you he does, he would be assured you would endure a long time.”

“Tough to stalk me. First, I’d click to it. Second, I don’t have regular routines, not like the others. They clocked in and out at fairly uniform times, had regular haunts. I don’t.”

“Which, again, would add to the challenge,” Mira argued, “and his ultimate satisfaction. You’re considering that he may have added Roarke as an element because he’s in competition with him. That may very well be true. But what he does isn’t payback, not on a conscious level. Everything he does is for a specific purpose. I believe, in this, you’re a specific purpose.”

“It’d be helpful.”

“Yes.” Mira sighed. “I imagined you’d see it that way.”

Eyes narrowed, Eve tipped the angle again, explored the fresh pattern. “If we go with this, and I could find a way to bait him in—to nudge him into making a move on me before he grabs another one—we could shut him down. Shut him down, take him out.”

“You won’t bait him.” Watching Eve, Mira picked up her coffee. “I can promise you he has his timetable already set. The only variable in it is the length of time his victims last. He has the third selected. Unless he planned only three—which would be less than he’s ever taken before—the next won’t be you.”

“Then we have to find her first. Let’s keep your theory between us, just for now. I want to think about it.”

“I want you to think about it,” Mira said as she got to her feet. “As a member of this team, as a profiler, and as someone who cares a great deal about you, I want you to think about it very carefully.”

“I will.”

“This is a hard one for you, for Feeney. For me, the commander. We’ve been here before, and in a very real sense, we failed. Failing again—”

“Isn’t an option,” Eve finished. “Do me a favor. I know it’s a tough process, but take a look at the list Summerset generated. The female employees. Just see if any of them strike you as more his type. We can’t put eyes on all those women, but if there’s a way to whittle it down…”

“I’ll start on that right away.”

“I’ve got to get going.”

“Yes.” Mira passed her empty cup to Eve, brushed her fingers lightly over the back of Eve’s hand. “Don’t just think carefully. Be careful.”

Even as Mira left, Eve’s desk ’link beeped. Scanning the readout, she picked up. “Nadine.”