Takes out the sash, lifts the head to wind it, winds it around the neck. Thinks of punishment come due because she’d had no right to flaunt those breasts, that skin, that face.
Nerves, fears, doubts—can I actually do this?—fade away in cold rage.
Tightening, tightening the sash, heart drumming, drumming.
The eyes flutter open, blind, bulging. The whore-dyed lips open, like a fish gulping. The body shakes.
It’s like sex, yes, like the sex the little whore sold. Tightening, tightening as tears of grief and betrayal gather. No more, no more selling sex, no more tempting, no more taking. Then it all dies away. It dies. It’s done.
Relief makes the killer almost tender. Patient fingers tie the bow, adjust it, perfect it, study it, approve it.
And with it makes death a gift.
Eve closed the book, stared at the fire as she let it roll around in her head. Moments later, Roarke closed his.
“No question about it,” he said. “Lethal plagiarism. Why don’t we eat in here and talk about it?”
“In here?”
“What better place to discuss books? Computer, open drapes.”
The heavy drapes parted on the window between sections of shelves.
“Ah, it’s snowing.”
Eve scowled at the windows. “Crap.”
“It’s lovely from in here.” Rising, Roarke walked to another cabinet, opened it to an AutoChef. He called up the menu, perused it a moment. “Well now, Summerset said we wouldn’t starve while he was away, and he certainly saw to it. I think a snowy night in the library calls for shepherd’s pie.”
“Why is it ‘pie’ when it’s not?”
“I think before potatoes came around England and Ireland, it was made with a pastry crust. But as we won’t be tending sheep, Summerset does his up pub style.”
He programmed two servings before she could wheedle him into pizza. “The Deann Dark character’s fascinating. I’ll definitely read more of the series. But as to the relevant book, I see your point. The killer followed the book when it came to victim and method, but shifted other things about—as plagiarists are wont to do—trying, often succeeding at least for a time, in getting away with it.”
“What changes?”
He brought two personal casseroles to the library table, gestured for her to bring the wine. “No reversible coat or changing from male to female. The killer walked in and out as himself, but made a point of asking for the vid in the theater two down from where the victim would be.”
He walked to another table, took the two heavy candlesticks, and carried them to the library table. Lit them.
“How did he know the victim would be there?”
“Amelia Benson—the character—talked about it in dance class, in the workshop she was part of, and on her social media. She admired Grace Kelly particularly, and had never seen the vid. She had a friend planning to attend with her, but said friend received a text minutes before the show’s start, purportedly from the restaurant where she worked as a line cook, citing a staff emergency and instructing her to come in and cover.”
“ ‘Purportedly’?” Eve sat, studied the pie that wasn’t pie.
“Yes. When the friend arrived at work some twenty minutes later, no one knew what she was talking about. No one had texted her, but it was too late for her to go back, as the vid had already started.”
Once again, he topped off their wine. “Meanwhile, the killer slipped from one theater to the other, and there we have your mirror scenes. With the deed done, he slipped out again, back into the other theater. In this case, the killing wasn’t discovered until the houselights came up, and by then he’d left with the crowd exiting the other theater.”
“How did they identify him and wrap him up?”
“Haven’t gotten there yet.” Roarke dug into the pie. “But I have gotten to the point where he raises the suspicions of the clever and intrepid Deann Dark. The victim’s mother hired her, by the way, as she believes her daughter’s former lover did the deed, despite being cleared by the police—Hightower specifically—as he has a solid alibi for the time in question.”
“Okay, the mother hires the PI because she thinks the cops are idiots, and the PI ends up proving the cops aren’t idiots. Back in reality, the killer reads the book, concludes strolling in and out, letting the security cams track her may lead to trouble. Because if the cops, and the PI, don’t review the feed, eventually pinning the killer as connected to the victim, they’re all idiots.”
“I suspect you’re right, and am now invested—fiction and non—in discovering for myself. And yours?”
It wasn’t pie, and it had a hell of a lot of vegetables, but they were all inside a meaty stew that had just enough kick, and mushed up with mashed potatoes that weren’t exactly mashed potatoes.
So it all went down easy.
“If I didn’t know the fictional killer to be female, I’d know after reading the killing scene.”
“Easy to say.”
“Mmm.” Mouth full, she shook her head. “It’s the way the killer looks at the vic’s body when the vic’s unconscious, before the kill. It’s not with lust or disgust, not with admiration or perversion. It’s with envy. The firmness, the smoothness, the youth. It’s an older woman envying the young. You could twist it, sure, make it play the other way, but the killer’s thoughts and sensibilities at that moment are female and envious.”
“Interesting. I don’t know if I caught that when I read it.”
“She’s resentful. The fictional killer, she’s snapped. She’s not planning things out step-by-step like the real one. She’s on a mission. It’s revenge and it’s—in her mind—protecting her family, her home, her way of life. It doesn’t matter to her that the vics are new and inexperienced, and therefore easier prey. It matters that her cheating husband bought them, that he sneaks off to buy sex from barely legal LCs. And she’s stupid because the LCs are just doing their jobs, so if she wants to punish somebody, she ought to tie a damn bow on the husband’s dick before she lops it off.”
Roarke held up a finger as he swallowed. “Or perhaps have a firm and reasoned discussion with him on why he solicits those barely legal LCs.”
“ ‘Reasoned discussion’ my ass. Next time after he gets home late—telling her he had to work—she waits until he’s asleep, and whacks it off. Think you can go out and stick that in some teenage working girl, then try to stick it in me? Think again, asshole. Then maybe while he’s still screaming, she grinds up his cheating, dismembered member in that kitchen thing she likes so much, cooks it up in a pie, and force-feeds him his own cock.”
She pointed at him with her fork. “Let that be a lesson to you, pal, or a dire warning.”
“I require neither, and you’re putting me off my dinner.”
Eve shrugged that off, kept eating. “But does she go after the real problem, with that discussion or the whack? No. She kills three women. And would’ve gotten a fourth if Dark hadn’t tromped all over the law and the rules, stolen and hacked into the killer’s pocket ’link and found the first three victims and their data listed, along with three more.”
“How do you know that? You couldn’t have finished the book.”
“I skipped to the end.”
“You …” He closed his eyes as he drank more wine. “Some things are unforgivable.”
“It’s work, ace. I need to know what the killer knows, and how she uses it. They were closing in. Hightower was building a case, had a plan for drawing the killer in. But Dark jumped over the line, and if Hightower hadn’t covered her, would’ve lost her badge, likely soiled the case against a serial killer. She was right to turn in her badge at the end.”
“She’d known the first victim since childhood. That family was more family to her than her own. She was in emotional turmoil.”
“She was a cop,” Eve countered. “And if Hightower hadn’t caught up with her in that flop, she might have killed the killer. She wanted to, recognized that in herself. Recognized she’d warped the badge.”
“She saved a life.”
“And still. Justice first—I get that. And Hightower’s along those lines, but he stays on the right side of it, or bends it a little. She—Dark—snapped it.”
“He reminds me of you a bit. Hightower. An excellent cop, with good instincts—maybe not as deep as yours,” Roarke commented, “but good. And becoming, being a cop? A goal he never deviated from. He’s by the book, but understands the book isn’t only the law, the rules, but people and justice.”
“And she—Dark—tends to find the book a limitation, becomes frustrated by procedure. Maybe it’s growing up rough, learning how to slip and slide early, but … Hey, she’s a little like you, now that I think about it.” She shot him a grin. “You’re the girl in this one.”
“Now you’re metaphorically whacking off my dick.”
Amused, she shoved in more pie. “Just saying. Anyway, the killer changes scenes, enacts them differently, as the ones in the book get caught. She doesn’t intend to get caught.”
“So you’d look at the books as not only a blueprint, but a kind of dry run?”
“Yeah. The killer knows the books inside and out. Who knows the books as well as the writer?”
“I suppose, first, the editor.”
“Yeah, looked there. DeLano’s editor’s a guy, in his sixties, married, two offspring, and offspring from offspring. Not only doesn’t he fit the profile, but on the night of Rylan’s murder he was in his office—confirmed—until eighteen hundred, then met—also confirmed—one of his other writers for drinks at your Palace Hotel bar. And, just to be thorough, I also confirmed that on the night of Kent’s murder he was in Chicago speaking at a conference.