Creation In Death

“You need more men,” Baxter added, “you get more men. But we don’t go off the clock. How about you, Sick Bastard?” He used Jenkinson’s nickname.

“We’ll sleep when we get him.”

“All right,” Eve agreed. “We’ll try it that way. I’ve done a global search for mutilations, murders, and missings meeting the targets’ descriptions. We concluded in the first investigation that it was likely the killer had killed before, practiced before. I widened the search,” she told Feeney, “went global and back five years, and netted thousands of results.”

She held up the disc copy of the run, tossed it to Feeney. “We need to whittle it down, refine it. And we need to find one or more that could be his-and find his mistakes.

“Item second,” she continued, and worked through her list.

A s Eve briefed her team, listened to their reports and coordinated the duties, Ariel Greenfeld came awake. She’d surfaced twice before, barely registering her surroundings before he’d come in. Small room, glass walls, medical equipment? Was she in the hospital?

She struggled to see him clearly, but everything was so blurry. As if her eyes, and her mind, had been smeared with oil. She thought she heard music, high trilling voices. Angels? Was she dead?

Then she’d gone under again, sliding down and down to nothing.

This time when she awoke, the room was larger. It seemed larger to her. The lights were very bright, almost painful to her eyes. She felt weak and queasy, as though she’d been sick a very long time, and again thought, “Hospital.”

Had she been in an accident? She couldn’t remember, and as she lay still to take stock, felt no pain. She ordered herself to think back, to think back to the last thing she could remember.

“Wedding cakes,” she murmured.

Mr. Gaines. Mr. Gaines’s granddaughter’s wedding. She had a chance for the job, a good job, designing and baking the cake, standing as dessert chef for the reception.

Mr. Gaines’s house-big, beautiful old house, pretty parlor with a fireplace. Warm and cozy. Yes! She remembered. He’d picked her up, driven her to his house for a meeting with his granddaughter. And then…

It wanted to fade on her, but she pushed the fog away. When it cleared, her heart began to hammer. Tea and cookies. The tea, something in the tea. Something in his eyes when she’d tried to stand.

Not the hospital. God, oh God no, she wasn’t in the hospital. He’d drugged her tea, and he’d taken her somewhere. She had to get away, had to get away now.

She tried to sit up, but her arms, her legs were pi

She was naked, tied, hands and feet, to a table. Some sort of metal table with rope restraints that looped through openings and bit into her skin when she strained against them. As her eyes wheeled around the room she saw monitors, screens, cameras, and tables holding metal trays.

There were sharp things on the trays. Sharp, terrifying things.

As her body began to shake, her mind wanted to deny, to reject. Tears leaked when she twisted and writhed in a desperate attempt to free herself.

The woman in the park. Another woman missing. She’d seen the media reports. Horrible, that’s what she’d thought. Isn’t that horrible. But then she’d gone off to work without another thought. It didn’t have anything to do with her. Just another horrible thing that happened to someone else.

It always happened to someone else.

Until now.

She dragged in her breath, let it out in a scream. She screamed for help until her lungs burned and her throat felt scorched. Then she screamed some more.

Someone had to hear, someone had to come.

But when someone heard, when someone came, fear choked off her screams like a throttling hand.

“Ah, you’re awake,” he said, and smiled at her.

E ve input the names on the list Roarke had generated of season ticket holders. Her first search requested highlighting males between sixty and eighty years of age.

She’d expand that, if necessary, she thought. He may have created a bogus company for this particular purpose, or any type of persona.

No guarantee he sprang for season tickets, she mused. He could cherry pick the performances that appealed to him rather than just blanket the whole season.

When the amended list came up, she followed through with a standard run on each name.

She was over three-quarters through when she zeroed in.

“There you are,” she murmured. “There you are, you bastard. Stewart E. Pierpont this time? ‘E’ for some form of Edward. Who’s Edward to you?”

His hair was salt-and-pepper in the ID photo, worn in a long, dramatic mane. He claimed to be a British citizen, with residences in London, New York, and Monte Carlo. And a widower this time around, Eve noted. That was new.

The deceased wife was listed as Carmen DeWinter, also British, who died at the age of thirty-two.

Eve narrowed her eyes at the date of death. “Urban War era. Maybe you got too damn clever this time, Eddie.”

She did a run on DeWinter, Carmen, but found none who matched the data given on the Pierpont ID. “Okay, okay. But there was a woman, wasn’t there? She died, was killed, or hey, you took her out yourself. But she existed.”

She went back to Pierpont, checked the listed addresses. An opera house in Monte Carlo, a concert hall in London, and Carnegie Hall in New York.

Sticks with his pattern, she thought. But the season tickets were either delivered somewhere, or were picked up.

She grabbed what she had, hustled to the war room, and Roarke’s station. “Who do you know at the Metropolitan Opera, and how much grease can you use to clear the way for me?”

“I know a few people. What do you need?”

“Anything and everything on him.” She tossed down the printout on Pierpont. “That’s him, season-ticket-holder style. Nice call on that, by the way.”

“We do what we can.”

“Do more. There isn’t time for bureaucracy and red tape. I want a clear path to whoever can give me the juice on this guy.”

“Give me five minutes,” he said, and pulled out his personal ’link.

She stepped away to give him room as her own ’link signaled. “Dallas.”

“Might have something,” Baxter a

“I thought we checked there before.”

“Did, nobody remembered, no rings of that specific style carried. We decided to give it another push. Classic style, classic store. And while they’re not flashy, they are sterling. We’re trolling the clerks, batting zero, then this woman overhears. A customer. She remembers being in there right before Christmas and noticing this guy buying four sterling bands. Commented on it, and the guy gives her a line about his four granddaughters. She thought it was charming, so she remembers it. Turns out, when we get the manager to dig a little, they carried a limited supply of that style late last year.”

“Record of the sale.”

“Cash, four sterling accent bands, purchased December eighteenth. The wit’s a peach, Dallas. Said she ‘engaged him in conversation.’ I get the feeling she was trying to hit on him, and she said she complimented him on his scent, asked what it was. Alimar Botanicals.”

“Trina’s got a damn good nose. That’s one of her picks.”

“Better yet, he mentioned he’d first discovered it in Paris, and had been pleased to find it was carried here in New York, in a spa boutique on Madison, with a downtown branch. Place called Bliss. He scoped Trina in the downtown salon.”

“Yeah, that’s the spot. See if your wit will work with Yancy.”

“Already asked and answered. She’d be, quote, ‘tickled pink.’ A peach, Dallas, with eyes like a hawk. She saw a photo in his wallet when he took out the cash. She said it was an old photo, took her back to her own youth. A lovely brunette. She thinks she can give Yancy something to work with there, too.”