J. Robb - Kindred In Death

Feeney shot a finger at her. “Neck-deep. Gonna need a transfusion for the blood I lost leaking out of my freaking eyes.”

He sat, circled his neck. Eve heard the pops and cracks from across the room.

“Son of a bitch used some new virus. Nothing like we’ve seen before. I’ve got men working on identifying it, piecing together the elements.”

“New viruses pop up every day,” Eve said. “Comps are supposed to be shielded anyway. CompuGuard’s supposedly on that.”

“They’re busy trying to regulate, screwing around with privacy issues, unregistered. The new shit crops up every few weeks, really good new shit every year or two. This is really good new shit.”

Eve considered. “How long would it take you to come up with really good new shit?”

He put on a sober face. “I’m an officer of the law.”

“Yeah, and?”

He shrugged. “Depends on how much time I’ve got to work it, how much damage I want to do.”

“Something like this?” McNab put in. “You’d have to have a good hundred-fifty dedicated hours in it. More if you’re a hobbyist and not cued in. Plus you’d have to do it shielded. CompuGuard’s got spotters. They don’t catch everything, that’s for frigging sure, but if they slap you, you’re slapped hard.”

She started to speak, but he anticipated her. “We started a run on CG’s known infractions and fines. The trouble is they don’t like to share, so we have to get an official go every time we hit a flag.”

She thought of Roarke’s skills, and his unregistered equipment. There, she considered, she might be willing to blur the line if necessary.

She turned back to the board, wrote: New comp virus, possible e-education or employment.

“Yeah.” Feeney nodded. “It’s an angle.”

“Mira’s profile, which I’ll cover, includes his having employment, or an income source. It includes education, skill, focus. All required for e-work.”

“Bet your ass,” McNab agreed, then grinned as Peabody came in hauling another box. “Hey, She-Body, let me give you a hand.”

“See, my guy’s a gentleman, too.” Peabody added a flutter of eyelashes.

“He scented food,” Baxter said.

“Sandwiches, soy chips, Energy bars.” Peabody snagged a sandwich herself. “Water, fizzies, Pepsi.”

“Brain drain,” Jamie said, “need fizzy.”

“Current.” Eve grabbed a tube of Pepsi, cracked it, then briefed the team on the morning’s progress and avenues.

“Method as mirror.” Feeney shoved the last of the mystery meat and processed cheese in his mouth. “That’s a good one. He didn’t take her out that way for the hell of it.”

“On the other hand, using a blade, bat, pipe, something of that nature,” McNab speculated. “It’s messier.”

“He had drugs. ODing her’s not messy, but he didn’t go with that. Even a blade,” Baxter continued, “in a heart jab-and he had plenty of time to aim, isn’t going to give you spatter. Bare-handed strangulation. That takes time, effort, and yeah, that purpose again.”

“Hurting her was the thing, right?” Jamie stared down at the fizzy in his hand. “That was the score.”

“He didn’t really mess her up.” Trueheart cleared his throat when eyes turned to him. “Her face. If he was working off rage, he would have. I think. Maybe he didn’t want to use his fists, mess up his hands. But there were plenty of weapons in the house. Objects he could have used as either blunt or sharp instruments. And he choked her more than once, so… that’s what he wanted. That’s the way he wanted to kill her. I think.”

Baxter beamed. “Boy gets an A.”

“To pursue this angle, I’m running searches on like rape-murders within the penal system, with victims who connect to MacMasters and his investigations or the investigations by officers under his command.”

“That’s going to take a hell of a while,” Feeney calculated. “But it’s a good angle.”

“Meanwhile, as Detective Yancy is not here, he’s still working with one or both of our wits. We’ll get that status after the briefing. Baxter and Trueheart have goose egg thus far on the canvass. They will recanvass when we have a sketch.

“We’re also tugging lines with Columbia. We’ll do searches on students and staff-again-” she said before anyone commented. “Widen it to include all Southern states, and go back another five years. We’ll also cross-reference the articles brought from the vic’s room pertaining to theater and lectures with any given at the university since April. If he took her or accompanied her, we’ll have another location, and more potential wits. Peabody. Shoes.”

“Shoes. Okay, the wit from the park made the suspect’s shoes. Anders Cheetahs, navy on white. These are high-end, geared for running shoes. As the wit’s opinion was they were new, or fairly new, I’ve been doing a search for vendors with sales of this model starting in January. Let me just say a hell of a lot of people fork out a hell of a lot of scratch for a shoe you’re supposed to run in. I’ve split that into various categories. Online, Skymall, New Jersey, and New York sectors. As the locations where the suspect is known or believed to have been with the vic, I flipped to concentrate below Fortieth, online, and outside Manhattan.”

She paused to slug down water. “And still, a lot of shoes. Given his reputed height, I’ve focused on average sizes for males of six feet, and slender build, according to the highest probability. And still-”

“We get it, Peabody,” Eve snapped.

“Sorry. I’ve kept the search on Auto on my PPC. But I had some thinking time riding the subway back to Central. School’s sprung, and there were a lot of teens and twenties in the car. I thought about how they were dressed, you know? And that started me thinking. We’re going on the theory he blends, acclimates. I agree. But I started to wonder about that first meet. He had it planned out. The Columbia sweatshirt-it was like a costume for his character, something she’d relate to. And the shoes? She was a runner, so she’d have probably recognized he was wearing high-end running shoes.”

“Dressed the part,” Eve agreed.

“Yeah. And he plans, right? Thinks things out in advance. So why wouldn’t he plan out his costume? When I’m buying something important to wear-like, say, for an important event, I want to coordinate, be sure everything goes together. If I can I buy it all-dress, shoes, bag, all that, in one place. If I just can’t, I take one of the pieces I have, or even a picture of it when I’m hunting for the rest.”

“A picture?” Eve asked, sincerely astonished.

“Sure. You don’t want your bag to clash with your shoes, or your shoes to look crappy with your dress. You want to look good. And even if you’ve got a squeeze…” She sent McNab a flirty look. “Even then, you want to make an impression.”

McNab sent Peabody a gooey smile. “You always look good to me.”

“Stop before I’m sick,” Eve ordered.

“Maybe he bought the shoes, the pants, the running pants together. In the same place, I mean,” Peabody continued, but snuck her hand between the chairs to wiggle fingers with McNab. “An outfit. It was, in a really twisted way, like a first date. First-date wardrobe is major. He wanted her to see him in a certain way, to give off a certain impression.”

“I get it,” Eve murmured. “Girl gets an A.”

“Really?” Peabody puffed out. “Because I’ve started another search for venues that sell college gear, running gear, and Anders shoes. There’s a lot, but not as many as just the shoes.”

“Shades,” Eve said. “He had on shades, and a cap.”

“I’ll plug it in. The other thing is, if he did buy all this from one vendor, he probably didn’t go with cash. Not if he didn’t want to stand out. It has to be near a grand, or more. He’d use credit or debit. He’d leave a trail.”