Kindred In Death

Feeney nodded. “No sign of tampering, of bypass on any door or window in the place. Our prelim time line matches yours. Locks disengaged, from the inside and with proper procedure, at eighteen-twenty-three, and immediately re-engaged, again from the inside and with proper procedure. She let him in, then locked back up. At twenty-three-eighteen, the door to the control room was opened, with passcode, and the cameras disengaged with proper procedure.”

“He’d worked on her for about four hours by then.” Eve thought, couldn’t stop herself from thinking what it was to be raped and abused for hours. “She’d have given him the passcode. He didn’t have to work it himself. He worked her instead.”

“She was a cop’s kid,” Jamie objected. “And she was smart. I don’t think she’d make it that easy for him.”

Couldn’t see, Eve concluded. How could you when you’ve never been there? “Four hours being raped and terrorized, choked, smothered. He tells her, okay, I’m going, but I need to turn off the cameras, get the discs. Maybe she says no the first time, or the first few times. So he hurts her again, again. Give me the codes, Deena, and all this stops.”

“She didn’t give him the code to get the discs, not the right one anyway.” McNab spoke up. “It may be she didn’t have them. No reason for her to have them. He hacked that, but it didn’t take him long. Ten minutes maybe, so he’s got some skills or some good equipment. The discs were removed according to the log at twenty-three-thirty-one. The hard drives were wiped and corrupted, but we dug out the time. And we may be able to reconstruct the data, with images. It’s not going to be a walk, but we’ve got a shot. The system’s ultra. The more ultra, the more fail-safes, the better chance at reconstructing a wipe and bypass.”

“That’s a priority,” Eve said. “Once he had the discs, did the wipe and disengaged, he went back up and went at her for another two hours.”

“He left by the front door,” Feeney put in. “Opening the locks from inside, resetting them at oh-four-three.”

“Giving him a space after TOD to clean up, do his own sweep, leave the glass. No hurry, no panic, just one step at a time. Bet he had a check-list,” Eve muttered. “He leaves early enough not to be noticed or seen. Yet he arrived in daylight, and we’ve got no one who saw him. Blends well, moves well. There’re a couple of subway stops within three blocks. I’ve ordered copies of all security. But…”

She didn’t like the odds. “If he’s smart enough to do all this, he’s too smart to get caught on security at a station close to the scene. On foot most likely. If his hole is any distance from the scene, maybe he rides or cabs it within ten blocks, any direction. Takes the damn bus. He could have his own transpo.”

“Walking’s best,” Roarke commented. “Saturday evening, the city’s busy. It was good weather. Who’d notice a boy-or a young man-walking along? Dressed well, I’d expect, but not so well as to draw attention. Su

Eve narrowed her eyes. “Let her know you’re nearly there. Can’t wait to see you. Just up the block. We’re still on, right? That sort of thing.”

“Aye. Then wouldn’t she be right there, keeping watch for him while they talk a bit more? Right there to open the door even before he starts up the stairs. He’s in, a matter of seconds.” Roarke shrugged. “Well, that’s how I’d have played it out.”

“And she’s got her ’link, right there,” Eve added. “He’s going to need to take that, and this way he wouldn’t have to look for it if she didn’t put it back in her bag. That would be smart, efficient. That would fit him.”

She tapped her fingers on her thigh as she paced a moment. “We still hit the rest of the neighborhood. And the park. The park’s the best bet. Peabody, we’re on that in the morning. Feeney, your team’s on the electronics. Focus on the security. I’m going to run like crimes, and I’m pulling Mira in for a profile. Currently I have officers doing the rounds on all her usual haunts, and a pair doing a check on one Juan Garcia, a chemi-dealer.”

Feeney lifted his chin toward the crime scene photos. “That type doesn’t operate like this.”

“Agreed, but we’ll eliminate him, and any others who pop up out of MacMasters’s file or memory. The likelihood is slim that he went with her where she was known. After the initial contact, he’d need to steer her away. For walks-out of her perimeter, to the vids-but not her usual spots-the park? Probably moved to a different sector for meets after he’d established.”

“If it was payback…”

She nodded at Feeney. “We’ll be going over MacMasters’s cases, and I’m going to talk to him again, go back with him. Jamie, would she recognize a gang type?”

“I think so, yeah. She was smart, like I said. Really street aware, just sort of… not self-aware? Is that right, do you get it? She knew to be careful, what types to avoid.”

“What type would draw her?”

“Well… he’d have to be clean. I don’t just mean cleaned up. He’d have to look right, sound right. Jo said he told her he went to Columbia? That might hook her since I do, and she’ll be going next year. It’s an opening, you know? And, ah, ma

Plenty of other schools in New York, Eve thought, but he hits on the one where one of her closest friends goes, where she plans to go. Eve didn’t see it as coincidence.

“He studied her, stalked her, researched her. And he took his time.” No, it wasn’t some illegals dealer or one of his spine-crackers. “MacMasters made the reservations for this trip ten days ago. This bastard was ready. This was his opportunity. She’d have told him her father got promoted.”

“She texted me, the night after he got informed,” Jamie told her. “I think she tagged everybody she knew. She was really proud. I was surprised she didn’t go on the trip, like a family celebration.”

“A girl, in the first weeks of a romance,” Peabody said. “She doesn’t want to go off with her parents for the weekend when she can stay home and see the guy. Even if she was on the fence about it, one word from him, how he’d miss her, and she stays.”

“We work the lines we have. Peabody, contact somebody at Columbia on the off chance he told her the truth. I want a list of every male student-and add in any staff-currently enrolled or employed, or who have been enrolled or employed within the last five years who are from Georgia. Age range eighteen to thirty. While that’s ru

In her office she ran like crimes, and did a full-scan search through Feeney’s brain child, IRCCA, to take it global, and run the data through off-world as well.

While her computer labored, she set up a second murder board in her office. Deena’s image-alive and dead-would stay with her while she worked.

“Smart girl,” Eve murmured as she pi

She hadn’t been, Eve thought. Not a cop’s daughter, but a seasoned cop-a cynic, a badass herself. And Roarke had paid attention, said the right things, looked at her in that way. She couldn’t claim she’d been smart. She’d bent her own rules, taken chances, fallen for a man she’d known was dangerous, one who’d been a murder suspect.