“That’s the pattern.” She headed up the stairs. “Change ID, move locations, start a new game. But here’s a new angle. From the case notes, it’s clear MacMasters believed Patterson—or Pauley—was part of the fraud. He let her take the rap, and she let him. She went down for it. More, Vinnie said nothing about illegals. His brother’s got no illegals bumps on his record. That’s new. Where’d it come from?”
It didn’t fit, it didn’t play, Eve thought.
“And the solicitation? Those are stupid risks for these kind of grifters. Stupid, and it doesn’t come off she’d been stupid. The woman played Vinnie for a year. She knows—knew—how to run a game, long and short. Then, boom, she goes down not just for fraud, but possession and solicitation? It’s off.”
“Sex and drugs are quick money if you need it,” Roarke commented. “And big money if you know how to play them. That’s telling.”
Eve paused on the stairs, considered. Quick and big. “It might fit Pauley. Greed, impatience. It might.”
“And it’s telling,” Roarke added, “that when she made this deal for the eighteen, she didn’t roll on Pauley. It would be SOP, wouldn’t it, to offer her a still lighter sentence if she implicated her partner?”
“Yeah, it would. And there would have been some sympathy for her. Young mother, clean record—or so it appeared. She went with a public defender.” She moved into her office, straight to her computer. “I’ve got the name, and the name of the APA from MacMasters’s case notes. But he wouldn’t have the negotiations in here. I need his memory on this.”
“She didn’t die in prison.”
“No, she didn’t die in prison. Why is MacMasters to blame for her death, whenever and wherever and however it happened? It’s illogical, and in his twisted way, he’s logical.”
She paced to the board, around it. “Something not in the case files, the notes, something not on record? But he’s a kid, hell almost a baby really, right? So how does he know what happened, how does he know MacMasters has to pay?”
She pinned up Irene’s mug shot.
“Because Pauley tells him,” she concluded, studying the photograph, the harsh and weary eyes of the woman. “Pauley tells him how it went down, from his point of view anyway. Or how he wants it to play. It can’t be, yeah, I let your mother take the full rap while I walked. No, it can’t be that.”
As she circled, spoke, talked it out, Roarke eased a hip onto the corner of her desk. He loved watching her work, watching her re-create, dig down.
“What kind of man lets the mother of his child take the hit? How can you stand back, let her fall while you walk?”
She thought of Risso Banks. “I looked at this guy, had to check him out. Young guy. His older brother made him an addict, played him into the sex game, then when the bust came, left the kid and tried to save himself. And that’s how he remembers his brother, leaving him and trying to save his own ass.”
“Darrin Pauley would have been too young to remember.”
“Yeah.” Eve nodded. “Yeah, so Vance Pauley can write the story however he wants. They worked together, no question, but she goes down alone. He can’t let it come off like that to his son, or he’s a coward, a user. MacMasters railroaded her? You can make that play, you can always make it play that the cops screwed with you. And still . . .”
“A year and a half in prison against the rape and murder of the cop’s child twenty years later?” Roarke looked at the photos, the stark differences, on her board. “Very imbalanced.”
“Symbols. Mira said it was all symbolic. So there’s more, has to be. Something between her release and her death, something that Pauley can point back to? Something about her arrest, her time in that led to her death?”
She pushed at her hair, tried to put herself in Darrin Pauley’s place. “If Darrin told Vinnie the truth about when she died—and why lie about that—it was about two years after the arrest, about six months after her release. What happened during that six months? I need to find her dead, that’s what I need to find, and track back from there.”
“You have considerably more data on her now. You’d be able to streamline the search you’ve already done.”
“Exactly.”
“Allow me. Computer access results of search of female victims of rape-murder by strangulation and suffocation and refine with DOD 2041. Victims with initials I, S.”
Acknowledged . . .
“Computer,” Eve added, “input victim’s age as between twenty and twenty-eight, and as having given birth to at least one child.”
“Right you are,” Roarke commented.
She had to smile at him. “You did okay, for a civilian.”
Acknowledged . . . File accessed, search commenced. Working . . .
“No,” Roarke said when she turned toward the kitchen. “No more coffee, not at this hour. You’ll never sleep. And while the answers you hope to get with this search are vital, they won’t help you catch your man tonight.”
It was hard to argue, even though she wanted the damn coffee. She stuck her hands in her pockets. It wasn’t just the comp that could give her answers. “He’s got to have another ID, has to be using one. Why isn’t it popping? Why do we only get Darrin Pauley?”
“Change your hair and eye color, even skin tone, some features. All perfectly legal, and even fashionable. While he may have elected to use the same basic look for the student ID he used with Deena and his Darrin Pauley ID, he’s likely to have a half-dozen others, with enough variation to slip by a search. More hair, or less, a variance of coloring and some subtle shift in features to pass for mixed race. And with some skill, and some money, it’s very easy to keep an ID off the grid entirely.”
“If he works, he has to have one that would pass, and would be on the grid. At least initially. It’s routine to do a quick background check before hiring.”
“Depends who’s hiring, but yes, most routinely. But one doesn’t have to stick with the same. Once hired, how often is an employee’s ID run through the grid? Especially if, as you’ve theorized, he keeps out of trouble, stays steady.”
“So he uses one look for his time at Columbia, possibly another for his approach to Deena, and maybe varies it otherwise. Different looks and personalities for different marks. Mavis worked that way back when.”
She itched for coffee, but hooked her thumbs in her front pockets and focused on the job. “Mira’s profile suggests he lives alone. Maybe so, maybe. But maybe he’s still hooked with his old man. A partnership like that, it would continually reinforce the mission, wouldn’t it? And it would help him maintain that control, that patience, because he’d always have someone to talk to about it, to share his success with, to brag to.”
“Someone to cheer him on,” Roarke added. “To help with the legwork, the research, the income.”
“Maybe he doesn’t work at all, the income source is the grift. They’re good at it, and it teaches him how to blend, to acclimate, how to get along. That fits profile.”
Task complete, the computer announced. One result from search. Display?
“On wall screen one,” Eve ordered. “Illya Schooner, age twenty-five, born in North Dakota, parents deceased, no sibs.”
“Easier if you eliminate any family, as their data would need to be generated.”
“Yeah, yeah, but she’s got the kid on record. David Pruit this time, and lists Val Pruit as husband and next-of-kin, as father of the boy. She looks different from the ID and mug shots taken as Irene Schultz. Longer hair, lighter hair, curly, change of eye color, fuller lips, sharper cheeks, the mole beside her top lip. She’s shaved off a year on her age, the neck’s longer, the eyebrows thicker and higher.”
“Much of which can be done by some e-tweaking, if the subject doesn’t want to deal with more permanent facial adjustments. Who really notices some of the more subtle differences, except a cop? And much of it’s just put down to whim. She changed her hair, wanted green eyes instead of blue.”
“She died with thi
s face, or a close proximity, in Chicago, where she had her address at the time, in May of 2041. Rape-murder by strangulation. I need more than that. I need the case file, the investigator.”
“Eve, it’s too late to push Chicago PD to search for a file for a murder nineteen years ago. You’d have better luck in the morning.”
“I can get some data through IRCCA now. And . . . Computer, search for David Pruit, DOB October six, 2037, mother Schooner, Illya, father Pruit, Val. Second search for Val Pruit, same data.”
Acknowledged. Working . . .
“They won’t be in the database.”
“No, but I want to confirm that. At some point, wouldn’t they repeat an ID? You’ve gone through all that time, trouble, expense. Why not update it? Reuse it.”
“An excellent point.”
“And meanwhile, I can tap IRCCA, and put through an official request for the case file.”
“All right then, but you have to be done for the night.”
With coffee, she could probably push through another hour, maybe two. And would be doing little more than accessing data that could be done while she gave it a rest.
“How hard would it be to set up a search for minor variations like this?” She brought up Inga’s ID photo, splitting the screen. “Adding in a five-year age span, the initials.”
“Setting it up, easy enough. The results? They’ll be all over the bloody place. She’s a very attractive woman in her early to mid-twenties with a certain set of initials, and features with a slight variance. Have you any idea how many there might be in the world who fit that basic description?”
“Stick with the U.S. And I’m thinking him. Darrin/David/Damien.”
“And still.”
“I’ll wade through the results. All you have to do is get them.”
“I’ll set it up, then we’re going to bed.”
“That’s a deal.”
She woke just after five to the blessed scent of coffee. Opening one eye, she saw Roarke by the AutoChef, sipping a tall mug and watch ing her.
“I thought the timing worked,” he said as he lifted a second mug and brought it to her.
“Thanks. Have you already started today’s quest for world economic domination?”
“That’s not scheduled till six, which I calculated was about the time you’d start today’s quest for truth, justice, and ass-kicking.”
“Sounds about right. I’ve got a good feeling. With what we’ve got, what we’re getting, we may be able to pin him down today. I can put together enough to haul him in. If EDD gets me the image of him walking into the house, I’ve got more. Motive, means, opportunity. It’s all there. Circumstantial, but strong.”
“I like an optimistic cop.”
She felt more so after she’d showered, dressed, had a second cup of coffee and a waffle.
In her office, she checked for incoming on the wild hope that someone on the graveyard shift at Chicago PD decided to do a good deed. No luck there, she noted, but she’d push that again and soon. She checked the results of the search Roarke had run at her request, and felt that optimism drop several notches.
“Three hundred and thirty-three thousand possibles? Shit.” She noted he’d run a secondary search adding a current New York address. That cut it down to slightly more than thirteen thousand.
And he’d run those results against people who’d purchased the security system. The man thought like a cop, she decided, even if the result came up goose egg.
There had to be another angle, another way to whittle down those possibles. Back burner, she decided, until she’d updated her reports and prepped for the briefing.
It took her most of the hour, and restored most of her earlier optimism. Just before seven, she contacted Whitney.
“Commander, I’ve just sent you an updated report.”
“Yes, it’s coming in now. Highlight it.”
She did so, smothering the urge to get to her feet, to stand as she preferred when giving orals.
“I feel,” she continued, “we’re stacking the building blocks of a solid case, and refining our search for the suspect. It’s my belief Captain MacMasters may be able to provide more details, and more insights into the matter of the arrest, interrogation, and sentencing of Irene Schultz, and that will further assist us in apprehending Darrin Pauley.”
“When do you brief your team?”
“They’re arriving now, sir.” She signaled Peabody, McNab, and Jamie to silence as they came in chattering.
“I’ll have the captain in my office at nine. He’s agreed to issue a short statement to the media at noon. We’ll need to do the same, and to stand with him. He will not take questions, but you will. Five-minute duration.”
Crap. Crap. Crap, she thought. “Yes, sir.”
“Brief your team, Lieutenant. I’ll contact Chicago from here, give them a push on the information you need.”
“Thank you, Commander.”
She ended the conversation just as Summerset wheeled in a long buffet table, and Trueheart came through the door pushing the other end.
“God, doesn’t anybody think about anything but food?” she demanded.
“Thinking is often clearer when the body is properly attended.” Summerset stepped ably out of the way of the stampede. Eve saw his gaze track to the murder board, and knew it lingered on the crime scene photos of Deena. He looked back at Eve. “I wish you all the clearest of thoughts.”
When he left the room, she rose, got coffee. “Settle down, people. This is a briefing not a stuff-your-face contest. Screens on,” she ordered. “This is our suspect,” she began. “Born Darrin Pauley, age twenty-three. And this is what we know or believe we know about him.”
She moved from the suspect to the man believed to be his father, and from there to the woman who’d been his mother.
“She’s the key in his lock,” Eve said. “Whitney is reinforcing my overnight request to Chicago for the files on her murder, and the request to speak directly with the primary and other investigators on that case.”
“I can get media reports,” Jamie suggested. “It’s, like, twenty years back, but I could dig up any media coverage of the murder.”
“All right. The data from IRCCA states she was both raped and sodomized repeatedly, possibly by more than one attacker. She was not bound, which explains why this didn’t pop on like crimes. She was beaten, more severely than our vic, and also showed signs of illegals use.”
She gestured to the board where she’d noted the similarities between the murders of Deena MacMasters and Illya Schooner. “Evidence indicates she was partially smothered with a pillow found on scene, and was strangled with the bedsheets. She was found in a mid-level LC flop by maid service, and had been dead according to the report for eight hours. No witnesses came forward, none who were interviewed gave the police any salient information.”
“Shock and amazement,” Baxter muttered.
“She was not a licensed companion,” Eve continued. “However, when interviewed, Victor Patterson stated that they were experiencing some family difficulties as she had begun to prostitute herself to finance a growing drug problem. He was alibied for the time in question.”
“He could’ve had it done,” Baxter speculated. “If she’d gone on the junk, was a liability to the game, he might have wanted to get rid of her.”
“Possible, but unlikely. Look at the background.” She brought his sheet up on screen. “Bust, bust, trouble, trouble, right up until he got out of prison and ran off with her. Then nothing. He’s skimmed under the surface since. And on her? Nothing, not a damn thing before she took the fall for the fraud. Did he get that smart in prison? My money says she was the brains, she was the smarts. But something changed once she did the time. That’s the turn. Peabody, get data from her stretch in Rikers, find somebody who remembers her.”
“Can do. Maybe it was just the time in itself,” Peabody suggested. “It’s like you said, she had nothing prior. Free as a bird, doing things her way
. Then bam, she’s in a cage for a year and a half.”
“Soured her,” Eve considered. “Shook her confidence. And if she’d gotten a taste for illegals on the outside, that could be fed inside. Expanded, exploited.”
“She’s not the same person coming out as she was going in.” Peabody studied the mug shot. “She looks pretty rough on the going in.”
“Yeah, she does. Not the beautiful, vibrant type Vinnie Pauley remembered just a couple years before.”
“The wrong guy.” Trueheart blinked when all eyes shifted to him. “Um. I mean to say, the, ah, longer-term exposure to Pauley, the wrong guy. His influence maybe started her on a downturn.”
“It could fit. The timing, the changes. What we know,” Eve added, “is between the Inga Vinnie Pauley knew and the Illya who died bad in a Chicago sex flop, there was a big slide. And it would appear that for a chunk of that, and for years after, Vance Pauley had influence over Darrin Pauley. How about the security imaging on the victim’s house?”
“I’ve got that.” McNab rose, held up a disc. “Okay if I plug it in?”
“Go ahead.”
He went to her desk. “Display, screen three. You can see there’s more definition,” he began.
“I can?”
“It’s slow. It’s not like a routine clean and enhance, and can’t work at that pace. We were able to capture and lock the image, but it’s severely corrupted. The pixels have to be repaired every level, every step. Feeney and I captured and locked two more last night, using the same procedure we worked out. And we’ve got those in process. I think that’s all we’re going to retrieve.”
“We’re going to work on a way to speed the process,” Feeney put in. “We’re on that, but no promises.”
“I’m meeting with Whitney and MacMasters at nine, and hope to pick through MacMasters’s memory of the arrest of Irene Schultz, any other data he might have. Peabody will pursue the shoes/ wardrobe angle. Baxter and Trueheart will recanvass the area around the crime scene with the sketch. At noon MacMasters will issue a statement to the media, as will I. I will briefly take questions. I’ve initiated another search, with the current results over thirteen thousand possibles.”