“That’s a lot of trouble,” Eve mused. “If she bought two unregistered, why not just use each one, toss it after use?”
“Cheaper this way, if you’ve got the patience and the savvy. You could, potentially, rework the two endlessly. If one’s flagged, you’ve altered it before it can be traced. But you have to be good, and fast, to do that. Easier to shut it down, wipe it, then you’ve time to switch components. And if you’re very clever, you’ve picked up a couple of universal repair kits and you work in those parts.”
“Sounds like experience talking.”
Comfortable, he sipped his coffee. “Well now, there was a time when I had to watch my pennies, so to speak, so the time and effort were easier to come by than the scratch. There are far easier ways to avoid a flag or a trace, but this would be the most economical.”
“Which indicates she needs to economize. A couple of decent drop ’links? It’s an investment.”
“It is, which is why I, watching those pennies, preferred stealing them.”
She let out a sound between a laugh and a snort. “You just liked stealing.”
“Ah, so I did. Very much.”
“The last thing you stole, and when.”
“Other than your heart?”
Rolling her eyes, she poured more coffee. “Professionally. For profit.”
“That would be a strange and fascinating little still life by an underrated painter named Andre Mendini who, in despair at being underrated, leaped into the Seine and drowned in 2027 or ’28—I’m not quite sure now. In any case his fame subsequently rocketed, and his paintings became of great interest to collectors in the decades following. Persimmons by Candlelight—”
“Now you’re just bullshitting.”
Roarke tapped a hand to his heart. “Absolutely not. The strange and fascinating Persimmons by Candlelight was generously lent in 2056 for an exhibition in the d’Orsay. From there, it was stolen on behest of a collector who coveted it for his private collection, where it remained until 2057, when it mysteriously reappeared at another exhibition of Mendini’s works at the Smithsonian.”
“You stole it twice?”
“Well, the first was for a fee as well as the fun, but I found myself regretting the job when I read about the daughter of the original donor who, at only eleven, had a deep attachment to that particular painting.”
“The kid liked persimmons?”
“Apparently as painted by Mendini. It had, in fact, been loaned out in her name. My client simply coveted it, and kept it for his own pleasure. The young girl loved it, and mourned the loss. So I returned it to her.”
“Softy.”
“Guilty. Plus stealing it back, then breaking in to the museum to return it? Vastly entertaining.”
He sighed it away.
“And a handful of months later, while I was contemplating the Baroness of Mallow’s emeralds, and whether I should vastly entertain myself by relieving her of them, I met a cop who interested me a great deal more than emeralds.”
Shaking her head, she drank more coffee. “By the time you stole that painting the first time, you didn’t need a fee. You sure as hell weren’t economizing. Maybe Strongbow just likes to fiddle with tech.”
“If so, and in her place, I’d have purchased higher-end ’links and had a fine time playing with them. You’d still need skill and patience, but you’d have more flexible results and more options.”
“All right, if it’s economy, she probably has to work to pay the rent, and she’d need to keep the rent low. I haven’t been able to trace the coat. Lots of reversibles, but nothing that matches. Nothing close to matching, so far anyway.”
“Perhaps she made it.”
Eve’s gaze narrowed. “Made it. Maybe she made it. Maybe she knows how to make clothes. A seamstress, a tailor. A seamstress or tailor with some good e-skills who lived in Delaware who might have a family connection with the surname Strongbow and aspires to write.”
“To be published,” Roarke corrected. “She writes, and surely continues to do so. But, like Mendini, yearned to be recognized for her art. When that recognition eluded him, he killed himself. As it eludes her, she kills.”
“You’re right, and the persimmon guy’s a good comparison because I’m not going to be surprised if Mira concludes that doing the equivalent of jumping in the Seine becomes the endgame here—whether Strongbow knows it now or not.”
“I’ll live forever, immortalized by my words and deeds.”
“The question is: How many will she manage to take with her before she jumps?”
11
Eve sent the communications and a detailed report to Mira. She sent an update to Peabody and, since between the two of them only Peabody actually knew how to sew, instructed her partner to push that angle.
Because Jenkinson and Reineke had an investment, she copied them.
She widened the search on the Strongbow name, but found no connection in Delaware.
Rising, she walked to the board.
“She’s got no real connection to anyone up here. It’s all illusion. She’s put them all into her story, one where she’s the writer, the main character, the victorious villain. She makes herself into the killer in the individual books, the sex, the weapon, the method, the crime scene—close as she can get. Kent and Rylan, they’re surrogates, and as close to the fictional victims as she could manage—and it’s damn close in both cases. But DeLano blends into this Deann Dark, and that’s delusion. DeLano’s nothing like this character, not in looks, lifestyle, personality, or experience.”
“The antagonist must have a protagonist,” Roarke pointed out.
“In this case, she’s flipped them, right, from the traditional roles. That’s where she’s living. She’s got to move to the next book. Hell, she’s got the next six picked out and ready. Look at the timeline of the communications. She used those lags to start her research, to select and study and plan. That way she can move from book to book. A month between the first two.”
Stepping back, she took a hard look at both victims. “Some of that’s recovery time. First kill’s big. Time to settle down again, to wait and see if you made any mistakes. And part of it’s just opportunity. She wanted the vid to mirror the one in the book as closely as possible. It’s on the schedule, so she just had to wait until that scene’s set. But the next?”
Eve rubbed her hands over her face. “Could be tonight, could be six months from tonight. If it’s the six months, she’ll move on someone else, or rush it, because she’s in it now, and the need escalates.”
“Who’s the third?”
Moving to it, Eve rolled the stiffness out of her shoulders. “Ex-girlfriend of a trash rocker. Edgy lifestyle, mid-twenties. Lots of illegals and easy sex. Poisoned in a club—high-end sex club pretending to be a dance club. Cyanide in some fancy martini.”
“And the killer?”
“Obsessed fan of the rocker, female, same age group. Rumor is the vic and the rocker may be getting back together. Rocker’s out of rehab, clean, and obsessed fan kills his ex to protect him from her. I need to read it,” she muttered as she came back to her desk. “But I really need to find the victim before she is one. How many badass ex-girlfriends of trash rockers are going to be living in New York? Maybe don’t narrow it to trash rock. Successful rockers, any subset thereof, to start. All the killings are in New York, killer lives in New York, so it has to be … Christ.”
“More than you thought?” Roarke asked when her search results came up.
Her eyes wanted to bleed. “I can narrow it,” she mumbled. “I will narrow it.” But she felt obliged to skim through first. “Double Christ! Nadine’s on here.”
“Nadine?” Roarke stopped his work. “Our Nadine?”
“Wait. Wait. There are a couple articles on gossip sites. Blah, blah, Jesus. Photos, too. Stuff about her having dinner or going to a concert with Jake Kincade. That’s that guy in that band.”
“I know who he is, and Avenue A as well. Strong, innovative rock musicians. Strong and innovative enough they’ve stayed at the top of their game over two decades. And Nadine’s seeing him?”
“Yeah, she is—according to this stuff. He was performing, like Mavis, at Madison Square the night of the massacre. He was backstage, hanging with Nadine when I got back there. He called her Lois.”
“Lois?” It only took a moment. “Ah, as in Lane. Clever. And if you’re worried, I wouldn’t be. Kincade has a reputation for being a hardworking musician, and one with a reasonably clean lifestyle. Nadine doesn’t fit the victim here.”
“No, they don’t fit the characters, and Nadine’s not going to hang out in a sex club … Well, the Down and Dirty, but that’s different. She never mentioned she was banging a rocker.”
“And dinner, a concert, equal banging?”
“They’re grown-ups. Unattached grown-ups. Banging ensues. Anyway.” She narrowed her search parameters. “Younger, toss in the rehab …”
She looked at the notes she’d written earlier.
“Victim made her living charging for interviews, taking kickbacks from clubs, selling data to gossip reporters and blogs. And brokering illegals. Consumed same.”
Bit by bit Eve fed it in until she got down to a half dozen potentials.
“Better, I can work with that.”
“I’m through this,” Roarke told her. “Do you want me to take some of those?”
“No, I’m going to run them on auto for now. I need the books. This one, and the Sudden Dark one. Hell, I need them all.”
“Two library visits in one evening. Why, it could become a habit.”
He went with her. “I’ll take one, you the other?” he suggested as they walked through the house.