“So what you’re telling me is you can’t do it.”
“I didn’t say can’t.” He looked insulted.
“Okay, sorry. I know you’re busting your computer chips on this, but I don’t know how much time we’ve got. He’s got to go for somebody else. Until we find Nadine . . .”
“You think he snatched her.” Feeney scratched his nose, his chin, reached for his bag of little candied nuts. “That breaks pattern, Dallas. And all three bodies he hit he left where someone was going to stumble over them pretty quick.”
“So he’s got a new pattern.” She sat on the edge of the desk and immediately shifted off, too edgy for stillness. “Listen, he’s pissed. He missed his target. It was all going his way, then he fucks up, downloads the wrong woman. If we go with Mira, he got plenty of attention, hours of airtime, but he failed. It’s a power thing.”
She wandered to her stingy window, stared out, watched as an airbus rumbled past at eye level like an awkward, overweight bird. Below, people were scattered like ants, rushing on the sidewalks, the ramps, the handy-glides to wherever their pressing business took them.
There were so many of them, Eve thought. So many targets.
“It’s a power thing,” Eve repeated, frowning down at the pedestrian traffic. “This woman’s been getting all the attention, all the glory. His attention, his glory. When he takes them out, he gets the kick of the kill, all the publicity. The woman’s gone, and that’s good. She was trying to run everything her way. Now the public is focused on him. Who is he, what is he, where is he?”
“You’re sounding like Mira,” Feeney commented. “Without the thousand-credit words.”
“Maybe she’s nailed him. The what is he, anyway. She thinks male, she thinks unattached. Because women are a problem for him. Can’t let them get the upper hand, like his mother did. Or the prominent female figure in his life. He’s had some success, but not enough. He can’t quite get to the top. Maybe because a woman’s in the way. Or women.”
She narrowed her eyes, closed them. “Women who speak,” she murmured. “Women who use words to wield power.”
“That’s a new one.”
“That’s mine,” she said, turning back. “He cuts their throats. He doesn’t rough them up, doesn’t sexually assault or mutilate. It’s not about sexual power, though it’s about sex. If you term it as gender. There’s all sorts of ways to kill, Feeney.”
“Tell me about it. Somebody’s always finding some new, inventive way to ditch somebody else.”
“He uses a knife, and that’s an extension of the body. A personal weapon. He could stab them in the heart, rip them in the gut, disembowel—”
“Okay, okay.” He swallowed a nut manfully and waved a hand. “You don’t have to draw a picture.”
“Towers made her mark in court, her voice a powerful tool. Metcalf, the actress, dialogue. Furst, talking to viewers. Maybe that’s why he didn’t go after me,” she murmured. “Talking isn’t my source of power.”
“You’re doing all right now, kid.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” she said with a shake of the head. “What we’ve got is an unattached male, in a career where he’s unable to make a deep mark, one who had a strong, successful female influence.”
“Fits David Angelini.”
“Yeah, and his father if we add in the fact that his business is in trouble. Slade, too. Mirina Angelini isn’t the fragile flower I thought she was. There’s Hammett. He was in love with Towers but she wasn’t taking him quite as seriously. That’s a squeeze on the balls.”
Feeney grunted, shifted.
“Or there’s a couple thousand men out there, frustrated, angry, with violent tendencies.” Eve hissed a breath through her teeth. “Where the hell is Nadine?”
“Look, they haven’t located her vehicle. She hasn’t been gone that long.”
“Any record of her using credits in the last twenty-four hours?”
“No.” Feeney sighed. “Still, if she decided to go off planet, it takes longer to access.”
“She didn’t go off planet. She’d want to stay close. Damn it, I should have known she’d do something stupid. I could see how ripped she was. I could see it in her eyes.”
Frustrated, Eve dragged her hands through her hair. Then her fingers curled in, went tense. “I could see it in her eyes,” she repeated slowly. “Oh my Jesus. The eyes.”
“What? What?”
“The eyes. He saw her eyes.” She leaped toward her ’link. “Get me Peabody,” she ordered, “Field officer at the—shit, shit—what is it? The four oh two.”
“What have you got, Dallas?”
“Let’s wait.” She rubbed her fingers over her mouth. “Let’s just wait.”
“Peabody.” The officer’s face flipped on screen, irritation showing around the mouth. There was a riot of noise on audio, voices, music.
“Christ, Peabody, where are you?”
“Crowd control.” Irritation edged toward a sneer. “Parade on Lex. It’s some Irish thing.”
“Freedom of the Six Counties Day,” Feeney said with a hint of pride. “Don’t knock it.”
“Can you get away from the noise?” Eve shouted.
“Sure. If I leave my post and walk three blocks crosstown.” She remembered herself. “Sir.”
“Hell,” Eve muttered and made do. “The Kirski homicide, Peabody. I’m going to transmit a picture of the body. You take a look.”
Eve called up the file, flipped through, sent the shot of Kirski sprawled in the rain.
“Is that how you found her? Exactly how you found her?” Eve demanded over audio.
“Yes, sir. Exactly.”
Eve pulled the image back, left it in the bottom corner of her screen. “The hood over her face. Nobody messed with the hood?”
“No, sir. As I stated in my report, the TV crew was taking pictures. I moved them back, sealed the door. Her face was covered to just above the mouth. She had not been officially identified when I arrived on scene. The statement from the witness who found the body was fairly useless. He was hysterical. You have the record.”
“Yeah, I’ve got the record. Thanks, Peabody.”
“So,” Feeney began when she ended the transmission. “What does that tell you?”
“Let’s look at the record again. Morse’s initial statement.” Eve eased back so that Feeney could bring it up. Together they studied Morse. His face was wet with what looked like a combination of rain and sweat, possibly tears. He was white around the lips, and his eyes jittered.
“Guy’s shook,” Feeney commented. “Dead bodies do that to some people. Peabody’s good,” he added, listening. “Slow, thorough.”
“Yeah, she’ll move up,” Eve said absently.
Then I saw it was a person. A body. God, all the blood. There was so much blood. Everywhere. And her throat . . . I got sick. You could smell—I got sick. Couldn’t help it. Then I ran inside for help.
“That’s the gist of it.” Eve steepled her hands, tapped them against her jaw. “Okay, run through to where I talked to him after we shut down the broadcast that night.”
He still looked pale, she noted, but he had that little superior smirk around his mouth. She’d run him through the details much the same as Peabody had and received basically the same responses. Calmer now. That was expected, that was usual.
Did you touch the body?
No, I don’t think—no. She was just lying there, and her throat was wide open. Her eyes. No, I didn’t touch her. I got sick. You probably don’t understand that, Dallas. Some people have basic human reactions. All that blood, her eyes. God.
“He said almost the same thing to me yesterday,” Eve murmured. “He’d never forget her face. Her eyes.”
“Dead eyes are spooky. They can stay with you.”
“Yeah, hers have stayed with me.” She shifted her gaze to Feeney’s. “But nobody saw her face until I got there that night, Feeney. The hood had fallen over it. Nobody saw her face before I
did. Except the murderer.”
“Jesus, Dallas. You don’t seriously think some little media creep like Morse is slicing throats in his off time. He probably added it for impact, to make himself more important.”
Now her lips curved, just a little, in a smile more feral than amused. “Yeah, he likes being important, doesn’t he? He likes being the focus. What do you do when you’re an ambitious, unethical, second-string reporter, Feeney, and you can’t find a hot story?”
He let out a low whistle. “You make one.”
“Let’s run his background. See where our pal comes from.”
It didn’t take Feeney long to pull up a basic sheet.
C. J. Morse had been born in Stamford, Connecticut, thirty-three years before. That was the first surprise. Eve would have pegged him as several years younger. His mother, deceased, had been head of computer science at Carnegie Melon, where her son had graduated with double majors in broadcasting and compuscience.
“Smart little fucker,” Feeney commented. “Twentieth in his class.”
“I wonder if it was good enough.”
His employment record was varied. He’d bumped from station to station. One year at a small affiliate near his hometown. Six months with a satellite in Pennsylvania. Nearly two years at a top-rated channel in New Los Angeles, then a stretch in a half-baked independent in Arizona before heading back East. Another gig in Detroit before hitting New York. He’d worked on All News 60, then made the lateral transfer to Channel 75, first in the social data unit, then into hard news.
“Our boy doesn’t hold down a job long. Channel 75’s his record with three years. And there’s no mention of his father in family data.”
“Just mama,” Feeney agreed. “A successful, highly positioned mama.” A dead mama, she thought. They’d have to take time to check on how she died.
“Let’s check criminal.”
“No record,” Feeney said, frowning at the screen. “A clean-living boy.”
“Go into juvie. Well, well,” she said, reading the data. “We’ve got ourselves a sealed record here, Feeney. What do you suppose our clean-living boy did in his misspent youth bad enough that somebody used an arm to have it sealed up?”
“Won’t take me long to find out.” He was cheering up, fingers ready to dance. “I’ll want my own equipment, and a green light from the commander.”
“Do it. And dig into each of those job positions. Let’s see if there was any trouble. I think I’ll take a swing by Channel 75, have a nice, fresh chat with our boy.”
“We’re going to need more to take him down than a possible match with the psych profile.”
“Then we’ll get it.” She shrugged into her shoulder harness. “You know, if I hadn’t had such a personal beef with him, I might have seen it before. Who benefited from the murders? The media.” She locked in her weapon. “And the first murder took place when Nadine was conveniently off planet on assignment. Morse could step right in.”
“And Metcalf?”
“The fucker was on scene almost before I was. It pissed me off, but it never clicked. He was so damn cool. And then who finds Kirski’s body? Who’s on air in minutes giving his personal report?”
“It doesn’t make him a killer. That’s what the PA’s office is going to say.”
“They want a connection. Ratings,” she said as she headed for the door. “There’s the goddamn connection.”
chapter nineteen
Eve did a quick pass through the newsroom, studied the viewing screens. There was no sign of Morse, but that didn’t worry her. It was a big complex. And he had no reason to hide, no reason to worry.
She wasn’t going to give him one.
The plan she’d formulated on the trip over was simple. Not as satisfying as hauling him out by his camera-friendly hair and into lockup, but simpler.
She’d talk to him about Nadine, let it leak that she was worried. From there, it would be natural to steer things to Kirski. She could play good cop, for a good cause. She could sympathize with his trauma, add a war story from her first encounter with the dead to nudge him along. She could even ask him for help in broadcasting Nadine’s picture, her vehicle, agree to work with him.
Not too friendly, she decided. It should be grudging, with underlying urgency. If she was right about him, he’d love the fact that she needed him, and that he could use her to pump up his own airtime.
Then again, if she was right about him, Nadine could already be dead.
Eve blocked that out. It couldn’t be changed, and regrets could come later.
“Looking for something?”
Eve glanced down. The woman was so perfect, Eve might have been tempted to check for a pulse. Her face could have been carved from alabaster, her eyes painted with liquid emerald, her lips with crushed ruby. On-air talents were often known to leverage their first three years’ salaries against cosmetic enhancement.
Eve figured unless this one had been born very lucky, she’d bet the first five. Her hair was gold-tipped bronze swept up and away from that staggering face. Her voice was trained to a throaty purr that transmitted competent sex.
“Gossip line, right?”
“Social information. Larinda Mars.” She offered a perfect, long-fingered hand with tapered scarlet tips. “And you’re Lieutenant Dallas.”
“Mars. That’s familiar.”
“It should be.” If Larinda was irked that Eve didn’t place her instantly, she hid it well behind a dazzling white-toothed smile and a voice that held the faintest whiff of upper-class Brit. “I’ve been trying for weeks to nail down an interview with you and your fascinating companion. You haven’t returned my messages.”
“Bad habit of mine. Just like thinking my personal life is personal.”
“When you’re involved with a man like Roarke, personal life becomes public domain.” Her gaze skittered down, latched like a hook on a point between Eve’s breasts. “My, my, that’s quite a little bauble. A gift from Roarke?”
Eve bit off an oath, closed her hand over the diamond. She’d taken to playing with it while she was thinking and had forgotten to shove it back under her shirt.
“I’m looking for Morse.”
“Hmmm.” Larinda had already calculated the size and value of the stone. It would make a nice side piece to her broadcast. Cop wears billionaire’s ice. “I might be able to help you with that. And you’ll return the favor. There’s a little soiree at Roarke’s tonight.” She fluttered her incredible two-layer, two-toned lashes. “My invitation must have been lost.”
“That’s Roarke’s deal. Talk to him.”
“Oh.” An expert on button pushing, Larinda leaned back. “So, he runs the show, does he? I suppose when a man’s so used to making decisions, he wouldn’t consult the little woman.”
“I’m nobody’s little woman,” Eve shot back before she could stop herself. She took a breath for control, reevaluated the eerily beautiful face. “Nice one, Larinda.”
“Yes, it was. So, how about a pass for tonight? I can save you a lot of time looking for Morse,” she added, when Eve sent a new narrow-eyed stare around the room.
“Prove it, and we’ll see.”
“He left five minutes before you walked in.” Without looking, Larinda punched the call coming in on her ’link to hold. Practically, she used a slim pointer rather than her expensive manicure. “In a hurry, I’d say, as he nearly knocked me off the ascent. He looked quite ill. Poor baby.”
The venom there had Eve feeling more in tune with Larinda. “You don’t like him.”
“He’s a puss ball,” Larinda said in her melodious voice. “This is a competitive business, darling, and I’m not against stepping on someone’s back now and then to get ahead. Morse is the kind who’d step on you, then sneak in a nice kick to the crotch and never break a sweat. He tried it with me when we were on the social beat together.”
“And how did you handle that?”
She rolled a gorgeous shoulder. “Darling, I eat little wee
nies like him for breakfast. Still, he wasn’t altogether bad, a whiz with research, and a good camera presence. Just thought he was too manly to scoop up gossip.”
“Social information,” Eve corrected with a thin smile.
“Right. Anyway, I wasn’t sorry to see him shift over to hard news. You won’t find that he’s made many friends there, either. He’s cut Nadine.”
“What?” Bells rang in Eve’s head.
“He wants to anchor, and he wants it solo. Every time he’s on the news desk with her, he pulls little shit. Steps on her lines, adds a few seconds to his own time. Cuts her copy. Once or twice the TelePrompTer’s been screwed up on her copy, too. Nobody could prove it, but Morse is the boy genius with electronics.”
“Is he?”
“We all hate him,” she said cheerfully. “Except upstairs. The brass think he’s good ratings and appreciate his killer instinct.”
“I wonder if they do,” Eve murmured. “Where did he go?”
“We didn’t stop to chat, but the way he looked, I’d say home and bed. He really looked sagged.” She moved her curvy shoulders, sent some classy fragrance wafting up. “Maybe he’s still shaking about finding Louise, and I should have more sympathy, but it’s tough when it’s Morse. Now, about that invitation?”
“Where’s his station?”
Larinda sighed, flipped her call onto message mode and rose. “Over here.” She glided through the aisles, proving that her body was every bit as impressive as her face. “Whatever you’re looking for, you won’t find it.” She sent a wicked smile over her shoulder. “Did he do something? Did they finally pass a law making puss ball tendencies a crime?”
“I just need to talk to him. Why won’t I find anything?”
Larinda paused at a corner cubicle, the console facing out so that anyone sitting behind it had his back to the wall and his eyes on the room. Nice little sign of paranoia, Eve thought.