“I’ll follow up on it.”
“He’s going through her computers – home, office, her tablets, PPCs, the works. She did a ’link conference the day she died with her law partner and some support staff.”
“Yeah, that jibes with what I got from Stern.”
“Communication’s light, home and office, since Christmas. Pretty usual for the holiday week. Got three v-mails, her pocket ’link, and one on the office ’link from the guys she was scheduled to meet with for dinner and got murdered instead. Pretty steamed on the third one, but that slides in, too. He’ll tag me if he finds anything that zips. So far we’ve got no threats, no arguments, no suspicious communications or sorry, wrong numbers.”
He drank some coffee. “How you holding, kid?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t thought about that yet. I can’t figure it, Feeney, I can’t turn it so I get clear focus. She didn’t mean anything to me. She did her job, I did my job. I didn’t like her way of doing her job, but she probably didn’t like the way I do mine. And she’s dead because we faced off over the jobs?”
“People kill for any damn reason, Dallas. Who knows that better than you and me? Sit down.”
“I’ve got to —”
“Sit. I still outrank you.”
“Ah, hell.” She sat, sulked.
“Anybody make a move on you? A personal move?”
“What?” Her head came up. If she’d been the type to blush, she’d have been scarlet. “No. Jesus, I don’t put myself in that sort of situation, and… there’s Roarke.”
“Webster did.”
“Christ, Feeney.”
“I’m not saying Webster’s still pining for you – ’specially since he’s off-planet near as much as he’s on, fiddling with that girl cop on Olympus. But he put some moves on you a while back. He’s a cop, a good cop even if he went IAB, and he’s no killer. But there were moves – word gets around. Anybody else?”
“No.” And she really wanted to change the angle. Now.
“Women put moves on women, too.” Feeney tapped his finger in the air at her. “Maybe you didn’t take it that way, or notice.”
“Fucking fuck fuck.” She stood, turned around in a circle. Sat again. “No. I’d notice.”
“Okay. Anybody hanging around more than they should? Just being friendly, or doing you a favor? Somebody you see, but don’t see.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Hadn’t she asked herself the same, a half dozen times already? But he was right to ask her, make her dig in and think. “No. Nothing that springs. We’re covering the ground. Mira’s going over correspondence with the shrink eye. I’ve got Dickhead looking for anybody at the lab who maybe got dinged by the vic in court.”
“That’s a good angle,” Feeney considered.
“I’ve got to look at her, all the way through, like I would any vic. And I’ve got to look at me – try to see what I didn’t see. I’ve got to talk to Nadine. Icove connection. Maybe somebody contacted her about me. Could be another cop, Feeney.”
He only nodded, drank more coffee.
“Somebody who works crime scenes, works evidence. It was a really clean kill. And… he liked it.”
Feeney nodded again. “Yeah, I got that. Damn near danced his way out. Going to want that feeling again.”
“It had to take time to plan Bastwick. Maybe it buys us time before he tries it again.”
“Maybe.”
“Shit.” She shoved to her feet, stayed on them this time. “Efficient. Being efficient, you’d already have the next lined up. Already have the pattern, the timing down. It’s just a matter of when, and if you want to make an impression on a murder cop…”
“You’ve got to do murder. Don’t let it mess with your head. We’ll keep on the electronics. Anything shakes loose, you’re the first.”
“Thanks.”
She had to think, so she closed herself in her office.
Routine first, she decided, and updated her murder board.
No suspects, no leads. No known connection between killer and victim – except for herself. No known motive – except for herself.
No known connection between herself and the killer, but there would be one. Even if that connection was only in the killer’s mind.
Clean, efficient kill. Emotionless, except for the written message. There was the emotion, the need. That communication.
Romanticized, Peabody had said. Romanticized didn’t necessarily mean romance – like sex, like the physical. Idealized.
And that took her back to the book, the vid.
She turned to her ’link to contact Nadine.
“I swore I wouldn’t do this!” Nadine’s usually camera-ready streaky blond hair blew free in a breeze. Fancy sunshades hid her eyes, green as a cat’s.
Eve saw the flash of sun off water, heard the lap of waves, the jingle of music and laughter.
She could all but smell the sunscreen and coconut.
“Where the hell are you?”
“I’m on the beach, on the lovely island of Nevis, where I took a gorgeous piece of eye candy entirely too young for me to ring in the new. Just got here this morning, and I swore I wouldn’t pick up my ’link, my comp, my anything but this lovely and refreshing mai tai. Several of these lovely and refreshing mai tais.”