Devoted in Death

7

Eve read Baxter’s roundup of the interviews, did a spot-check on the recordings. Nothing stood out, nothing popped – and she hadn’t expected it. But it gave her a chance to evaluate Trueheart’s interview techniques, his rhythm.

A good balance with Baxter’s slicker style, she decided.

She made another note to team Trueheart up in interviews with other detectives, take him out of his comfort zone.

She finalized another report to Whitney and Mira with her conclusions that data and evidence indicated Kuper had been a random victim, the last known in a long-term spree by two unsubs, and not target specific.

She let Morris know they’d ID’d Earnestina. Morris reported that the victim’s mother had come in, had asked when she could have her son. Eve recommended the body be turned over to the next of kin or her representative as soon as possible.

No point, she thought, just no point in prolonging the misery. Kuper’s body had told them all it could.

She reached out to two more primaries, which entailed long, winding conversations, no fresh insights or information, and promises on all sides to share all data.

When Roarke came back in, she was running fresh probabilities on the New Jersey victim.

“I’ve generated several routes, with three being top contenders,” he told her. “These three run too close in probability to pull one out at this point. Even those would have any number of variance.”

“Can I see them, on screen?”

He set it up. “This brings them from southeast Texas, through Louisiana, into Arkansas, touching into Mississippi before meeting up with your first known in Tennessee. It also speculates, as you see from the highlighted points, other most probable stops in Tennessee, and across the Missouri border through Kentucky, which eliminates the gap before West Virginia, and the second point in West Virginia. Another in the western part of Maryland eliminates the gap prior to Ohio. You’ve two in Pennsylvania, but it seemed unusual, and the computer agreed, that they wouldn’t hunt in one of that area’s more rural, less populated areas, so there’s yet another point there before the jog over to New Jersey, then into New York.”

“Some detours, but a fairly direct route northeast.”

“The second comes from the west. I started as far west as California, across Nevada, into Arizona, through New Mexico. Touching on Texas, then into Oklahoma, once again into Arkansas, and the route remains as the first from there.”

“California. A long way, a lot of time.” A lot of potential bodies, Eve thought.

“Both, yes. It would be a southeastern route to start, curving into a northeastern direction. The last route supposes they had a purpose in Tennessee or changed directions there, initially coming from Florida, going through sections of Alabama and Georgia, potentially Mississippi again before your first known in Tennessee, and the following route would remain as the other two.”

“What’s the probability range?”

“From 70.2 to 73.4. It’s far too speculative for higher without more hard data.”

“Let’s take the third one.” She studied it, tried to imagine it. “Coming from the south – where it’s warm and sunny, right? They’d have started out in the fall – most likely – for this timeline – but winter’s coming. People do leave the warm and sunny for the cold and bitter, but if you’re on a killing spree, and you’ve pulled it off in the warm, why not wait for spring to drive so far north?”

“New York as destination,” he reminded her.

“Yeah, I get that, they want to come take a big, bloody bite out of the apple. But, then, why not work to get here before the holidays? See it all dressed up? People do that, they come in armies to see the holiday fuss. Why leave reasonably warm for seriously cold? Given human nature, I’m going to rate this three out of the three. The second, coming from California.”

She wandered around the board, looked back on screen. “That southern chunk, same deal, but maybe something happens. You’ve got to blow. Or you just start off. A longer trip than coming from the southeast, so maybe back in the summer. Probably that far back. Not thinking about winter, and off you go. But that’s a lot of unfounds and/or unsolveds.”

“Pick any point along that route as a starting point,” Roarke told her. “Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma. Any of those are more likely than the points north of them.”

“Yeah, that’s why I like it, and I don’t.” Studying, speculating, she hooked her thumbs in her pockets, drummed her fingers. “They could’ve started anywhere from the far western point, and it makes logical sense on the map. Timeline… it strikes more possible if they had their first here? What is this?”

“New Mexico.”

“Why did those map people, or state-naming people go with so many New Wherevers?”

“So speaks the New Yorker.”

“Question still holds. If they were so attached to the Mexico or the Hampshire or the York, why didn’t they just stay there? Anyway, about there, or that part of Texas or Oklahoma. That gets a higher bump from me, and so does the first possibility. Up from southeast Texas, hit Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas. Why is S-A-S pronounced S-A-W? It should be Ar-Kansas. Did Kansas object?”

Oddly enough, he found the question perfectly just. “I can’t tell you.”

“It doesn’t apply to this, but it’s a question. Second one’s highest for me.”

Again, oddly enough, he thought, it had struck the same for him. “Why? And that’s also a question.”

“It’s that south-to-north deal again. Warm to cold. That’s just a gut thing, but it strikes me.”

“It did the same for me,” he told her. “But that may be as I’m used to how your mind travels.”

“Or it may be because it just seems right. We’ll work on missing persons, unsolved on the other routes, but I’m going to focus my own efforts on the second.”

She reached for her coffee on her desk, realized it wasn’t there. Even as she frowned Roarke handed her what was left of it.

“This is good,” she told him. “Gives us angles to work until we get the next body.”

He ruffled her hair. “That’s positive thinking.”

“It is. I’m positive there’s going to be a next body. What’s despicable is knowing another DB may give us more to work with.”

She studied the map again, shook her head. “So working back, that’s the best we can do. I’m going to put this together, send it out. Peabody can start doing some searches on the first route.”

“Why don’t I do the same on your least likely? If nothing else you may be able to cross it off.”

She looked at him. Even in casual clothes, he radiated command. He’d have plenty of his own to see to. “That’s a lot of boring cop work for one night.”

“Boring enough I can get some of my own somewhat less boring work done at the same time.”

“I owe you.”

“We’ll work out a payment schedule.”

“Yeah, like I don’t know that currency.”

He laughed, pulled her in for a kiss. “Which makes me the richest man in the world.”

“You already are – pretty much.”

“Not without you.” This time he kissed her forehead, tenderly. “Not any longer.”

He meant it, she thought as she returned to her desk. And she understood the sentiment. Once, the badge had been enough for her. All for her.

Not any longer.

With the first route in Peabody’s lap, another in Roarke’s, Eve buckled down on the second probability. She tapped into IRCCA, refined it region by region, splitting into three searches. Missing persons, unsolved homicides and, the last, incidents that combined the two.

It took time – it always did – so while she waited for the initial results, she went back to her board, chose a victim at random.

She sat, reviewed the case file, asking herself what she might have done differently, if anything, if there were any gaps she could fill, what pattern she could begin to create.

Escalation was a clear pattern – the increase in the violence and duration of the torture, the narrowing of the time between known kills.

Standard, she thought, for spree killer profile and pathology.

From first known to last known, she noted, the time frame went from eighteen hours from last seen to TOD to forty-nine hours. The gap between first known vic TOD and second’s last seen ran ten days. The gap between the victim in New Jersey and Kuper ran four days.

No more traveling, if she read them right. Settled in now. No more small towns, no more back roads. Big city time.

She shifted, looked out the window at the dark.

They’d have another one now, or soon. Before morning if the pattern continued. And that gave her two days to find them, and save a life.

Her eyes rounded with shock when the results began to come in. Too many missing persons who remained missing, she decided, and too many unsolved.

She focused in on the third search, and its lesser number.

“I may have a couple possibilities,” Roarke said as he came in. Then lifted his eyebrows as he saw the fierce look on her face as she worked. “And I’d say you have their scent.”

“Southeastern Missouri. That little wedge that squeezes between Arkansas and Tennessee.”

“A backwater place called Cutter’s Bend.”

That fierce look flicked up. “You hit that one.”

“It just barely edged into my search. A nineteen-year-old boy, gone missing last September on his way home from the ballfield one balmy evening. He never made it home.”

“His body was found nearly a week later, dumped in a wooded area over the Tennessee border. Decomp and animals had gotten to him by then. Broken wrist, broken fingers, gashes, punctures, no sexual abuse in evidence, but evidence of binding on what was left of his wrists and ankles. Blunt force trauma, back of the head, some burn marks in evidence.

“Ten days before our first confirmed on the day he went missing. No carved heart, but decomp, animals, that’s not likely anyway. And if you follow from this vic—”

“Noah Paston.”

“Yeah, follow from Paston to the first confirmed and you get Ava Enderson.”

Roarke stepped over, edged a hip down on her desk. “I didn’t turn her up.”

“Nobody has. She went missing right about the time two kids stumbled over Paston’s remains. Traveling alone, from Memphis to Nashville, last seen – confirmed – having dinner at a diner about seven in the evening, about ten miles off the highway. Friendly sort, according to the waitress who served her. She said she was heading to Nashville to have a little reunion with some girlfriends, but since they weren’t due till the next day, she was toying with stopping for the night, getting off fresh in the morning. How her car was acting up anyway.”

As she spoke, Eve brought the woman’s ID shot up on screen. “The waitress recommended a couple places. Enderson said she wanted quiet and rustic, something out of the way. So the waitress told her about this place, some sort of inn. Enderson looked it up on her PPC, liked the look, booked a room.”

“And, I assume, didn’t make it there.”

“You assume correctly. Her car was found about two miles shy of this… Here it is.” She highlighted it on screen. “Sundown Inn. Broken down. Hood up, her luggage still in the trunk. The in-dash comp had been removed – expertly. They haven’t found her.”

“Show me the route,” Roarke requested, then nodded as he studied it on screen. “I see, yes. Very logical navigation from the boy, to this woman, to the first confirmed.”

Yes, she had the scent, and had to push up, pace as she followed it.

“I’ve got another in Kentucky that rings for me, and one in West Virginia I know in my gut is their work. That one was doing the hiking/camping thing, which baffles me. Why would anybody do that on purpose? Huddle down by a fire outdoors, sleep in a tent? But they do. His wife sent out an alarm when he didn’t check in – as he checked in every morning – and didn’t answer his ’link. She raved at the cops until they went out to his campsite. He registered it. Not there, and they figure he’s just gone hiking as there’s no sign of foul play.”

She prowled back, stared at the screen.

“Six days before they found his body, down a ravine. Animals and decomp again, and they ruled it as accidental death. But the wife raised serious hell, went to the media, got lawyers, hired a private investigator. So they flagged his file.”

Eve gestured as she sat again, split-screening the ID shot with the route. “Jacob Fastbinder. And I believe the wife here as he was a hiking fanatic, took hiking trips at least twice a year, every year since he was about twelve. He knew the region, he was smart and prepared and he was careful. And he didn’t have his pack when they found him. Locals said it could’ve been lost or dragged off, but that’s bullshit. Didn’t have his fancy hiker-guy wrist unit, either. ME can’t confirm if some of the wounds were inflicted or suffered during the fall.”

“You’ll talk to the wife.”

“Oh yeah. She went for burial, that’s what I got from his obit. I think she might be willing to have his remains exhumed and examined by a forensic anthropologist.”

“You’ll pull in DeWinter.” Roarke nodded. “A good call.”

“I’ve got a couple more I want to look at harder.” She rubbed her tired eyes. “But I know these up the count. Can’t say if the kid in Missouri was the first – still doesn’t feel like it, but he’s theirs.”

“Now he’s yours.”

She shrugged, glanced toward the AutoChef.

“You need sleep. You can’t contact the wife of the hiker at this hour, or roust any of the police on these cases, not at this hour.”

He pulled her to her feet. “Unless Peabody hits as well, you can start your route in Missouri, and move back from there if you feel the boy wasn’t their first. Give your brain and your instincts a rest.”

She didn’t argue only because she wanted to let it settle in, stew around in her subconscious. Noah Paston – and she’d add him to her board in the morning – hadn’t been their first.

“Paston,” she said as Roarke tugged her out of the room. “The locals did a thorough job – and when he was found over the state line, called in the feds. Small, rural-type community. People knew the kid. Liked the kid. He’d had a breakup with his girlfriend, and a push-and-shove with the guy she dumped him for, but nothing serious. And the push-and-shove partner was alibied tight, and just didn’t read like a killer.”

In the bedroom she toed off her skids. “He did okay in school, opted to do online courses instead of going to college so he could stay home and help with the family business. Garden center. And he played ball, coached Little League along with his father. People liked him, it comes through the reports.”

“Why not the first?”

“It just doesn’t read for me. It’s wrong place/wrong time again. In general he drove home from the ballfield. He had a small truck. But he lent it to a friend about an hour before practice ended. And he stayed longer to work one-on-one with a kid, walked the kid home. That wasn’t his usual routine, so if somebody was lying in wait for him, he wouldn’t have come when they expected. He took a short cut, since he was walking, or told the kid he was going to, and he headed off in the direction of the back road that would cross a field and over that to his house. That was at dusk. Just getting dark.”

“And these two drive by, see him.”

“Yeah, could be that. Ask him if he wants a lift, ask for directions. Or the woman lures him somehow. He’s an athlete, young, fast. He’s got a baseball bat, but they get him. He’s not an easy target, not really, but they see young, stupid, alone on a back road in the dark. He’s a kid, so it’s not for money. He didn’t have any to speak of. A ’link, and they never found it, a good bat and glove, but nothing of real value. And they don’t rape him or abuse him sexually, so it’s not that.”

“Luck of the draw.”

“That’s how it looks to me.” It was circling in her brain, and she wanted it to sink in. “And the first isn’t going to be like that. The first had a reason, had the fuse that lit up. I haven’t found the first.”

“Why dump the body so far away – over state lines, pulling in the FBI?”

She pulled on a nightshirt. “They were en route somewhere – had a destination in mind for the night. Took him along, likely incapacitated. I have to figure they didn’t think about crossing the state line, didn’t consider that. Just take him a good distance, gives them more time to play.”

Still thinking, she stretched out on the bed, running an absent hand over Galahad’s head when he leaped up to join her. “Out-of-the-way places around there, like with the vic heading to Nashville. An old house, cabin, fishing shack, whatever. Clean it up when you’re done, dump him far enough away from the kill site. Who’d look?”

“You.”

“Now, yeah. Plenty of hindsight now.”

“Then,” he corrected, and slid into bed beside her. “You’d have considered the route, just as you are now – considered they’d need somewhere to hold him, and you’d have looked.”

“It doesn’t help him now. There’s one in Arkansas, low probability but I want another look. And a second in West Virginia, I think —”

“Tomorrow.” Roarke wrapped an arm around her, tugged her closer. “Let it sit until tomorrow.”

“You just want me to pay up.”

“I had considered letting that debt ride, with considerable interest, but I’m more than willing to take payment now.”

“You’re always willing.”

Eyes on his she traced her hand down his chest, his torso, his belly and found him hot and hard.

“See?” She wrapped her fingers around him. “How do you guys live with this?”

“It’s a man’s burden to bear.”

“Just a few inches, and it rules the brain, the ego and can obliterate common sense.”

“  ‘A few’?” he countered, making her laugh.

“Knew that would get you.”

“Used properly it can rule a woman’s brain, her ego and obliterate her common sense.”

“I guess you’re going to show me how to use it properly.”

“It would be my pleasure.”

He rolled on top of her, but first used his mouth, very properly, on hers.

She let herself sink in, found it easy – where once it had been impossible – to set murder and death aside. To take and to give without the world crowding in.

Just the two of them – or just the two of them after the cat landed on the floor with a thump of irritation – in the big bed under the sky window. Just as it had been only the two of them on the island, through long, sunny days and breezy, balmy nights.

He could take her away, with that mouth, with those skilled hands. They roamed over her now, gliding over her shape as if he’d molded it in glass.

Love, she knew – where once she hadn’t believed – could be quiet and sweet, and still hold the world.

She twined around him, loose and willing, swelling his heart with a sigh that whispered contentment, stirring his blood with the press of her fingers. And he was twined in her – heart, blood and spirit – so intricately woven together they fused into one.

“I love you,” he murmured in English, and again in Irish as her heartbeat thickened under his hand, as her pulse leaped against his lips.

She tightened around him, hard and fast. “You are love to me. You are love.” She framed his face, eased him back just enough to meet his eyes. “Mine,” she said, drawing his lips gently, gently back to hers.

She could drift down, down into that bottomless well of love, into the deep and the breathless. She could float even when sensations shimmered over her, through her, into her. And rise up, drenched, when shimmer turned to spark.

She took him in, took in the hot and the hard, took him with her into the deep and the breathless so they rose and fell together.

Hands clasped tight, beat meeting beat. When they broke, love spilled through them.

She curled against him, holding on to the warm, the shape, drawing in his scent. And her lips curved against his throat.

“Paid in full, pal.”

“I’ll note that in the ledger, with a memo you’ve helped me bear my burden for yet another day.”

She snorted out a laugh as her mind began to fuzz toward sleep. “How’s the brain, the ego and all that?”

“Doing well, thanks. And yours?”

“It’s good. All good. We’re good.”

He stroked her back as she drifted away, felt the bed give when the cat deduced the coast was clear and jumped back up.

He thought, it was good. Very good indeed.

It wouldn’t be good for Jayla Campbell. She was beyond pissed as she trudged her way across Carmine, hunched against the cold. If Mattio hadn’t been such a fuckhead, she wouldn’t have stormed out of the party, wouldn’t be what seemed like miles from her apartment – and without a damn cab in sight.

He’d had his hand – both his hands on that blonde’s fat ass, and they’d been rubbing crotches. No excuses this time, no “I was only fooling around” this time, no “But, baby, I was half stoned” this time.

They were down to the D done.

She should never have come out tonight away. Early workday, and she didn’t know the neighborhood. She hadn’t known anybody at the stupid party.

She should’ve listened to her roommate and stayed home. But she’d been a little pissed at Kari for saying Mattio was a cheating dickwad. She’d been a little pissed, she admitted now, because she’d known it was true.

Why the hell did he have to be so good-looking, and so good in bed?

Down to the D done, she reminded herself, blinking back tears and taking her lumps by texting her roomie.

On my way home – done with this crap. Wait up, okay, if you’re not in bed? Get up if you are. I want wine and whine. J

She blinked at tears that came as much from anger as the loss of the cheating dickwad.

“Hey, miss! Hey, sorry!”

She heard the voice – major twang in it – and kept walking.

“Please, I’m sorry, but I’m really lost. Can you just tell me how to get to Broome? Is that right? Is Broome right?”

The twangy voice hurried up to her, and the woman owning it shivered and bit her lip. “I’m just lost, and I’m awful nervous. If you could just tell me which way to go. It’s so cold, and I can’t find a taxicab.”

“Tell me about it.” Jayla sighed. “Did you say Broome?”

“Yes, with an ‘e,’ is that right? I’m not from New York.”

“Shocked face.”

The woman smiled, then looked down. “Oh, would you look at that?”

Instinctively Jayla looked down, bent over a little.

It hit her like a hammer. Maybe it was a hammer. Pain exploded, the world spun, going red at the edges. She tried to cry out, but only managed a moan.

Something – someone – shoved her, yanked her. She fell hard, hard enough to steal what little breath she had still in her lungs.

“I’ve got her, honey!” The twangy voice came as though through a tunnel, a tunnel flooded with water. “Let’s go, I’ve got her. Told you to let me pick ’em, Darryl. I’ve got a knack.”

Somebody laughed. Even as she whimpered, tried to turn over, the hammer struck again, and knocked her into the dark.