J. Robb - Indulgence in death

“Where?”

“Naples, Italy, or off the coast of. They were in a sailing tournament, and in and around that area for a couple weeks. During that time Sofia Ricci, age twenty-three, went missing. She’d been at a club, and had been drinking, as one would. She had a row with her boyfriend, and left.”

“Alone?”

“Alone,” Roarke confirmed. “Under quite a head of steam according to witnesses. The last anyone remembers seeing her was about half-midnight. She didn’t make it home, and her roommate didn’t worry, as she assumed she was at the boyfriend’s. She didn’t work the next day, so again, no one noticed she was missing. Until Sunday when the boyfriend went by her flat to make amends. He told the police, who looked at him hard and long, that he’d gone home about a half hour after she had, and he’d tried her ’link twice the next day-which was verified on his own outgoings-and assumed she was still not speaking to him. They’ve never found her. That was seven months ago.”

“It’s a big ocean,” Eve commented.

“It is, yes. Your suspects stayed on Dudley’s yacht or in Moriarity’s villa during that period. Both of them, along with several others from their sailing club, joined in the initial search.”

“More of a thrill. Another woman,” she considered, “on the young side. Could’ve started that way figuring women are easier game-two men, one woman. Most women wouldn’t stand much of a chance.”

“The police cleared the boyfriend, but he was their focus for the first seventy-two hours. They’re looking at it as an abduction. She had friends, family, stability, no major troubles, a good job, and so on.”

“Two months between. Peabody tossed out they might have practiced on people no one would miss, but I think no. It’s a bigger rush if there’s an alarm, a search, media reports. Ricci might be their second. Two months gives them time to congratulate each other on getting away with murder, ride on the juice, lose the juice. Want that again.”

“Time to plan,” Roarke agreed. “Working together requires deciding who’s responsible for what, coordinating schedules.”

“Time to talk it through, work it out, pump it up. Away from their base again,” Eve noted. “And they either figure out they don’t want to be involved with another dead body or decide to switch it up, so they can use the location to dump it where it won’t likely be found, at least not while they’re in the area. Maybe they trolled awhile, and they got themselves a pissed-off, little-bit-drunk woman.”

“A very pretty one,” Roarke added and put the image on-screen.

“Yeah, that might’ve been part of it at first. Use her, share her, kill her. But they didn’t need the sex. It was the kill that got them both off. They’d need to do it again, maybe mix it up a little, see what happens.”

“Was it already a game, do you think? Already a competition between them?”

“It’s intimacy. It’s…” She shifted to look over at him, to meet his eye. “It’s what we’re doing here, looking for the missing and the dead. It’s you and your aunt saying a few words-words that matter-in Irish. It’s Charles making omelets for Louise when she’s pulled the night shift.”

She stopped, hesitated. “That sounds lame. I don’t know how-”

“No, it’s perfectly clear. It’s more than teamwork, shared interests, partnership. You see it as a terrible kind of love.”

“I guess I do. If I was going to pull a Mira, I’d say they found each other, recognized each other. Maybe if they hadn’t…” She shrugged. “But they did. And in that terrible way, they complete each other.”

“Yes, I see. There might have been others, Eve. Before Africa. Others, who as Peabody theorized, wouldn’t have been noticed.”

“Easing into it,” she considered even as her stomach tightened at the idea. “Perfecting that teamwork before they tried someone who’d show, who could even be connected to them.” She raked a hand through her hair. “Let’s work from here, sticking with victims who show. Let’s start with six to eight from Italy. These kinds of killers generally start to escalate. They need their fix.”

She ordered the computer to factor in her suspects’ whereabouts for that time frame, and refined the search.

“Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch. I knew it! Data on-screen, goddamn bastards. Look at that,” she snapped at Roarke. “Seven weeks almost to the damn day after the woman in Italy. Quick gambling trip, Vegas. Closer to home now. They don’t travel together, but meet up there. Dudley arrives a day ahead. Big baccarat tourney, which is a stupid game.”

“Actually, it’s-”

“Don’t interrupt.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Smart-ass,” she muttered. “Twenty-nine-year-old female, found dead in her own car on the side of the road in the desert north of Vegas. Stun marks on her chest. Beaten to death with a tire iron left at the scene. No defensive wounds, no sexual assault. Put her out first, then killed her. No bag, no jewelry. Played at making it look like robbery. Smashed her car up, too. Cops look at that, think illegals. Some chemi-heads, drifters with bad attitudes, along those lines. Get her to pull over, stun her and the rest.

“But here’s the kicker. Our vic, Linette Jones, tended bar at the casino holding the tourney. She had the next two days off, her pay, and a boat-load of tips, and was heading off to Tahoe to meet up with her boyfriend. Everyone within hearing distance knew where she was going and when because it was like an anniversary thing, and she had this ring she was going to give him-also not found at the scene. She was going to propose.”

“They gave statements,” Roarke observed, reading the data.

“Fucking A. I bet they couldn’t wait. Just loved watching the cops go off in the wrong direction. Here’s where they started getting more and more full of themselves, put the connection back between them and the vic. I’m going to tie them up with this, tie them up and choke them.”

“I don’t doubt it, but it’s all what you people insist on calling circumstantial.”

“As you people say, bollocks to that.”

He let out a delighted laugh that only got a snarl from her. “I wonder how it is that hearing your use of the idiom of my youth makes me both sentimental and aroused at the same time.”

“Idiom-smidiom. It’s to the point. I can put this together, show a pattern. I just have to make it shiny enough to convince a judge to give me a search warrant. I need the next. Three to four months out now.”

She found the next, three and a half months out. A male this time, older than the other victims.

“An architect,” Eve read, “considered one of the best in his field, killed while vacationing at his secondary home on the Côte d’Azur. Found floating in his swimming pool by his wife the next morning. He’d been stunned, then garroted-weapon left on the body-before falling into or being dumped in the pool.”

“And the wife?” Roarke asked when Eve ran it through.

“Heard nothing. They had a kid, six, and he’d been restless and feverish, so it says-and medical confirms-so she bunked down in the kid’s room. No motive for the wife they could find. No trouble in the marriage, no outside affairs unearthed. She has money of her own and plenty of it. She cooperated fully, including opening all financials without a blink. She wouldn’t have had the strength to do what was done to him with that wire, even with him stunned. And there’s no evidence she bought a hit.”

“The first male victim you’ve found,” Roarke observed. “And a family man, one who left a wife and a son.”

“I know her-the wife.” Eve narrowed her eyes as she searched her memory. “How do I know her? Carmandy Dewar. I know that damn name. Computer, search for Carmandy Dewar in files and notes on Dudley/Moriarity.”