J. Robb - Kindred In Death

She walked back, with Roarke beside her. “It’s fun, it’s exciting to have dinner, just the two of you. He’s careful not to touch anything, or if he has to touch something to make note of it and wipe it down after. But hands in the pockets again. Shy guy. You’re kids so you eat in here, in the kitchen. Right over there.”

She walked over to a bright blue table with padded benches that offered a view of a small courtyard backed by a high wall.

“Sit across from each other so you can talk. So you can look in his eyes as you talk. Eat, laugh, joke, flirt. Oh hey, do you want another fizzy? Sure he does, and when you go to get it, he slips the drug in your drink. It’s so easy. You feel woozy for a minute, you feel off, but with the Zoner to kick it, mellow, too. You just slide out, slide under. And he carries you upstairs.

“She weighed one-thirteen and change. Deadweight, but not that much for a young, healthy man to carry up a flight of stairs.” She continued as she followed the path to the kitchen stairs. “Makes more sense to take her up the back. Why waste the energy? If he’d scoped out the house, and he damn well would have, he’d know which room was hers. He’d have seen her through the window anytime she didn’t use the privacy screen. Even if he wasn’t sure, it’s so easy to make which room is hers. The color, the posters. It’s all girl.”

Roarke said nothing, not yet. He knew what she was doing, walking it through as both victim and killer. “You’d want to restrain her first, take no chances. The cuffs, the sheets. Tight on the sheets; you want her to feel it. You want to leave marks. You hope she struggles. She will. You know she will. So you go down and clean up. Dishes, but for her glass, in the machine. Run it on sterilize, wipe out any trace. Check out the security door. No point working on that. She’s going to give you the code. You’ll make sure of it. Strip down, seal up.”

She circled around, shook her head in annoyance. “No, no, out of order. You’d do that downstairs, even before you bring her up. Nothing of you up here. All your things in a neat pile, careful, very careful. After you finish with her, get her bag, check the contents, take it down to put it with your stuff. Upstairs again, go through the room, make sure, very sure there’s nothing of you, nothing on her comp, on the bedroom ’link. Anywhere…”

She paused, wandering the room, opening drawers she’d already searched. “Would he take something to make sure he got hard? Multiple rapes take a lot of energy, a lot of wood. That’s a thought, that goes in the wonder pile. Maybe he doesn’t need it. Maybe her thrashing around trapped in the nightmare he gave her, helpless and scared, even unconscious, maybe that gets him up.

“Then she starts coming around, and the fun begins.”

“Don’t put yourself through that.” It clawed through his heart, left it bleeding. “We know what happened then, so don’t.”

“It’s part of it. Has to be. She’s… bewildered. The drug makes her mind musty at first, then the headache, the stabbing pain of it.”

She looked at the bed, stripped down to the mattress now. “It occurs to me he could’ve made it easier. Given her a dose of Whore or Rabbit. That was a choice. He didn’t want her to participate, even under a date rape drug. He wanted her terrified and hurting. Does he tell her what he’s going to do, or is it right down to business? I can’t see him yet. Just can’t figure him yet. She cries. She’s only sixteen, and that part of her cries and asks why, and doesn’t want to believe the sweet boy is a monster. But the cop’s daughter knows. The cop’s daughter sees him now. He’d want her to.

“She fights-that has to be satisfying-even during the rape she fights. She fights even while she screams and cries and begs. She’s a virgin; nice bonus. She bleeds from where you’ve broken her, from her wrists, from her ankles. She’s strong and she fights hard.”

He stood by, his guts in knots, as Eve went through it, step-by-step, horror by horror. She moved around the room, circling the bed where that obscenity had taken place. Even as she described the last moments of a young girl’s life, her voice stayed steady.

He didn’t speak again until she’d finished and had started another search of the room.

“Even after all this time with you, I don’t know how you can do it, how you can put yourself in these places, make yourself see these things the way you do.”

“It’s necessary.”

“That’s bollocks. It’s more than an objective, observational sort of thing. You do what you do, how you do it for them. You do it for Deena and all the others who’ve had their lives stolen. It’s more than standing for the dead, which is vicious enough to bear. But you walk with them through it. With all I’ve done in all my life, I don’t know if I’d have the stomach to do what you do, every day.”

She stopped for a moment, let herself stop, pressed her fingers to her eyes. “I can’t not do it. I don’t know if it was ever a choice, but I know it’s not one now. I can’t see him. It’s not just because we haven’t found anyone alive who has. It’s who he is, why he is, why he did this and in this way. I can’t see him. He’s murky. Walking through it helps clear some of the murk.”

She rubbed her eyes again, refocused. “How long would it take you to retrieve the discs from a system like the one here, and wipe the hard drive?”

“It has two fail-safes, and requires a code for disc retrieval. But I know the system.”

“Yeah, one of yours, I checked. But he’d know it. Bank on that.”

“Well then, it would take me about thirty seconds for the retrieval, and another one or two to do the wipe. But he infected it to corrupt. We’ve got that much from today’s work. A complicated virus to corrupt the drive and wipe out the data and imagery, and that would take some time to upload, and skill or money to obtain.”

“He’s not as good as you-not a pat on your back, but he doesn’t have your experience. If he passes for nineteen, I doubt he’s hit thirty. So maybe two or three times longer for the retrieval, maybe twice on the wipe since he’s using a virus.”

“What are you looking for, Eve? If I had an idea I might be able to do more than stand here.”

“I don’t know. Something. You gave me coffee.”

“Sorry?”

“A token, something to charm her. A little gift, nothing too important. You sent me coffee right after we met.”

“And you interviewed me as a murder suspect.”

“It worked. The coffee, I mean. Hit the right button. So what did he give her? What… I knew it. I fucking knew it.” She held up a music disc taken from the hundred or so in a holder. “Happy Mix 4 Deena, that’s the label. And look here, she added this sticker thing-a big red heart, and initials inside.”

“DM, for her, DP for him.”

“For the name he gave her anyway,” Eve confirmed. “David, Jo said. Never as smart as they think. He should’ve looked for this, taken it. It’s a link, and the only one so far.”

She bagged it.

“I have to say the odds of tracing that disc-as it’s a common sort-are astronomical.”

“He made it. A link’s a link.” She looked around again, satisfied for now. “Okay, the scene doesn’t have any more to tell me. At least not now. I need to go work it.”

AS SUMMERSET MADE NO APPEARANCE WHEN they walked into the house, Eve lifted her eyebrows. “Where’s Mister Scary?”

The look Roarke sent her managed to be both resigned and mildly scolding. “Summerset has the night off.”

“You mean the house is Summerset-free? Damn shame we have to waste it with work.”

He slid a hand down her back, over her ass. “A break wouldn’t be uncalled for.”