“You take the, what is it, Dark Deeds—with the rocker. I skimmed the murder scene, but you may catch something I missed. I want to see what the hell there was in Sudden Dark that snapped this woman, get a better sense of it before I talk to DeLano again. And her mother,” Eve said. “The mother’s probably got a better sense of the communications.”
She stepped into the library, unsurprised to find it ordered. Dishes cleared, wineglasses whisked away, books they’d been reading neatly stacked on the bench table.
Because he knew her, Roarke headed to the cabinet first. “Coffee time’s passed at this point. I believe I’ll have a brandy.”
Knowing her opinion on brandy, he brought her water.
She considered arguing, then considered if she won said argument—doubtful—she’d probably be awake until it was time to get up again.
She took the water, pulled Sudden Dark off the shelf.
Once again she sat beside Roarke with a book, with the fire simmering. The only thing missing was the cat, and she imagined they’d find Galahad sprawled over the bed when they got there.
She didn’t have to hunt up the first murder, as the book opened with it, from the killer’s point of view. Male, a sexual predator who abducted women—first victim age twenty-four—kept her for three days, raping, torturing, and eventually drowning her in a bubble bath. After which he applied makeup to her face, styled her hair, and dressed her in a business suit.
He added pearl studs to her earlobes, kissed her tenderly, and called her Britina. Then, in the early hours of the morning, he transported the body to a location in Little Italy and dumped it on the sidewalk in front of a restaurant called Lucia’s.
She skimmed through to the first Dark scene, then skimmed until she found the killer again. His thoughts as he stalked and captured his next victim.
She set the book aside, got up to prowl and pace.
“I think you summed up the victim here in Dark Deeds well enough,” Roarke told her. “I’d add it may apply that the only reason Dark took the case was because the victim’s mother—a friend of a friend’s mother—came to Dark and pleaded with her. The victim’s painted as careless, selfish, even a bit vicious. But the mother never gave up on her.”
“So see if there’s one on my list of rocker girlfriends who has a mother who hasn’t given up. It could apply.”
Roarke set his book aside. “You’re frustrated because you find yourself investigating on two fronts. Fiction and reality.”
“Fiction is reality to this bitch.”
“It is. And for you fiction is an occasional form of entertainment, and for you again, primarily through vids. A book’s a different thing.”
“Made-up stuff is made-up stuff.”
Roarke shook his head. “A vid comes to you, even at you. It’s visual, it’s auditory, and can, of course, pull you in. Its purpose is to do just that, draw you into the world you see and hear. But a book? You go into it. There’s no visual or auditory other than what forms in your own mind. You visualize the characters, the scene, through the words. You, as reader, interpret the tone of voice, the colors, the movement as you physically turn the pages. Now you have a killer not just experiencing the story, not just replicating it, but living it. So you have to do the same, and that’s frustrating for a woman as reality-based as you.
“And more,” he added, “with each killing she becomes a different character with a different motive, a different psyche.”
“But under it, she’s just one sick, twisted—and you know what?—whiny bitch. Whoever she puts on?” Eve waved her hands around her face. “She’s still under it.” Then she sighed. “And the sick and twisted is, I don’t need Mira to tell me this one is likely to end up in a facility for the sick and twisted instead of an off-planet cage when I find her.”
“Yet another frustration.”
“It’s how it is.”
“Still, a part of you will think, however damaged she is, she still took the lives of the people on your board, she still shattered the lives of those who loved them.”
“I’ll worry about that later. Worry about catching her now.” She paced a little more, and circled a finger in the air. “This,” she said, indicating the books surrounding them. “They’re different kinds of fantasy.”
“You could say.”
“And she’s zeroed in—reader and writer—on murder fantasies, crime fantasies. That’s what—like you said—pulled her in, and enough for her to spend time writing to DeLano, enough for her to spring off another fantasy of being a writer, of that kind of fiction. Why read murder mystery type books?”
“Entertainment,” he began, but Eve cut him off.
“No, you. You’re the reader here. Why do you read them?”
“Ah well.” Swirling brandy, he thought it over. “I enjoy a puzzle, I suppose, and playing along with it. Certainly since I married a cop I get more entertainment and satisfaction at experiencing the villain’s ultimate failure. Good overcomes evil in the end, and that makes them a kind of morality play.”
“Okay, but that’s not what she’s after. She wants to flip that. She wants evil to overcome good. She wrote a book she claims makes the killer—the villain—the star, right?”
“And claims that that’s what makes it innovative and brilliant,” Roarke added. “When it’s certainly been done before.”
“She’s self-absorbed. Nobody’s done what she’s done, not in her mind. In this Sudden Dark one? DeLano writes stuff from the bad guy’s perspective so you see him plotting and thinking and doing stuff, but just bits and pieces, right? It’s not his book, it’s Deann Dark’s book. But Strongbow’s rewriting it, all of them, and making herself the star. She’s in charge. What if—”
“It’s the only way she can be,” Roarke finished. “The only time she’s ever been in charge.”
“Bang. It’s not, for her, the puzzle, the entertainment, even the temporary escape from reality, it’s the only way she’s in charge, that she’s important. The only way she wins.”
“What does that tell you about her?”
“It tells me the probability’s high that whatever job she has—or did in Delaware—is low-rung. Likely she’s been overlooked and, at least to her mind, undervalued. And, I think, she’s had little interaction with males. I’m betting female-centric profession, maybe comes from a female-centric background. Female authority figure or figures, because she sure latched on to female-centric books.”
“Yet she wrote her protagonist as a male,” Roarke pointed out, “who kills women. That may stem—edging into Mira territory—because she’s never had any real power as a woman.”
“Could play in. Most likely she lives alone, no real connections to pull her into the real world. Possible, always possible, she’s got a big shit pile of money, but most likely she’s living on a budget, and since a roommate or partner is unlikely, I’d look for her in a small, cheap apartment. And likely in Brooklyn. Likely she works there, too. Maybe has a job where she can work out of her own place. I like that one. Limited contact with actual people, that’s how I see her.
“She’s ordinary,” Eve added. “She’s not particularly attractive because attractive people tend to make connections if they want them. And she does. She wants people to see her, they just don’t. So no sparkling personality, no charm. She doesn’t stand out, never been popular, never been somebody. She’s kind of invisible, and that enables her to become whoever she wants to become.”
“A. E. Strongbow was her chance, to be someone, to become visible and important, and DeLano stole it. Killing DeLano wasn’t, isn’t, enough. Before it comes to that,” Roarke said, “she has to steal DeLano’s work, flip the theme of the morality play, and rewrite it with herself as the center.”
“That’s the circle,” Eve agreed, “and around it are plenty of angles to work. Okay. Okay.” She had them lined up in order of priority in her head, and now she looked at Roarke.
“Well, strip it off, pal, and let’s get this done.”
His eyebrows winged up as she hit the release on her weapon harness. “That’s quite the pivot.”
“Summerset-free house, library not yet checked off. It’s a straight line, not a pivot.” After laying her weapon on the bench table, she pulled off a boot. “That’s a good couch.” She tossed the boot aside, pulled off the other. “It’ll work.”
“I don’t believe I had that purpose in mind when I bought it. Then again, that was before you.”
“I’m here now.” She pulled off her belt. “You, too.”
“I am, yes, and currently watching my wife strip in the most practical and efficient way. And wondering just why that only makes her more alluring.”
“ ‘Alluring,’ right.”
She stripped off her sweater and shirt to the tank beneath. And he timed it well, he thought, waiting until her trousers dropped to her ankles.
Before she could fully step out, he grabbed her—quick and sharp as a whip—so she tumbled on top of him.
“You’re still dressed,” she pointed out.
“Not for long.” And rolled her under him.
Since she seemed in the mood for heat and speed, and he felt the same, he took her mouth, ravished it with his. Her hips pumped up, circled in grinding invitation even as her hands wedged between them to make quick work of the buttons of his shirt.
He dragged her tank down to her waist so flesh pressed to flesh.
“Two more minutes, we’d have been naked.” Her voice came breathless; her teeth nipped. “But this way works.”
While her mouth warred with his, she unhooked his trousers, freed him. He rolled her panties down to her knees.