“Didn’t seem to be. Like some, she didn’t think she remembered or saw what she remembered and saw. It’s just a matter of easing them along. Huh. Straight wit, right? And not even because she didn’t witness a crime. Just got a glimpse at some art that pertains.”
“That’s right.” Since it was there, Eve leaned a hip on the corner of his desk. “No ethical lines crossed, if that’s what you’re asking, by buying her that drink. How much did you ease along out of her?”
“Besides her ’link numbers and the fact she’s not in a relationship?” He grinned now. “I think I replicated the art, as close as I can without seeing it myself. Used a regular sketch pad. I was about to transfer it to the comp and send it.”
“Do that, but let’s see it now.”
He opened a pad, flipped up a page. “I started with the whole works, as that’s how she saw it. The five women together.”
“Says unity, doesn’t it?” Eve studied the portrait of the women, shoulder to shoulder. “Downing—the wit knew her. But those are decent sketches of MacKensie and of Su—and she didn’t know them. Makes me think we’ll have some luck with facial rec on the others.”
“Factoring in that this is an approximation of an artist’s interpretation. The two unidentified—this one’s young. Early twenties tops, to my eye. And the other more mature. Mid-forties or more.”
“The youngest in the middle. It’s . . . like they’re supporting her.”
“Might be.” He frowned, studying his own work. “Might be,” he repeated, “the way she’s centered. I did individuals of the faces, but Laurie was clearest on Downing. Like you said, she knew that one, saw her off and on, talked to her. I can run the face rec with them.”
Eve started to say she’d do it herself, then backtracked. More hands, quicker work. “Appreciate it.”
“All in a day’s. Now the other painting?”
He flipped through his sketches of the faces, stopped on a study of six male figures, faces masks of evil and agony, falling toward a sea of flame. More flames shot out of the house in the background.
“It’s dark work,” Yancy said.
Eve took the pad from him, studied it up close. He’d been able to draw more details out of Esty, she noted. The house stood three stories, and sprawled some. Flames striking out of the windows lit what looked like brick. It didn’t strike her as a contemporary structure, but, despite the fire, seemed old in that rich sense. A wealthy house.
One she thought she’d know when she saw it.
Just as she recognized the men behind the demonic faces.
“Edward Mira, Jonas Wymann, William Stevenson—all dead, though Stevenson’s been that way for a while. Ruled self-termination, but we’ll take another look. Frederick Betz, currently missing. Marshall Easterday, trembling in his house, and Ethan MacNamee, currently alive and well in Glasgow, with the locals keeping an eye out. This is good work, Yancy.”
“We do what we do. Laurie said I got it, and I don’t think it was just because she was hitting on me.”
Eve flipped back through, studied the individual sketches of the women, and thought they had a good shot at IDing them. Better than fifty-fifty.
“Send me everything. If you get any hits on the women, I know when you do.”
“You got it.”
Eve went back to Homicide, arriving in time to hear Baxter ragging Jenkinson over his choice of tie.
“How can you wear purple and gold with that shade of brown suit?”
“The tie says it all.”
“It says I left my taste at home. At least you could think about color families and proper contrast.”
“Gotta take some fashion risks,” Jenkinson said, just to rag back. “Yo, Trueheart, I got a source on these. He’ll make you a nice deal if you want to polish up your detective wardrobe.”
“Thanks, Jenkinson, but I’ve got the one your wife gave me last night as a thank-you gift.”
“Thinks he can be a smart-ass now. Hey, boss. What do you think of my tie?”
“Jenkinson, I try not to think about your new tie fetish.”
“Just adding color to a dark world. Show the LT your socks, Reineke.”
“I don’t want to see—” She broke off when Reineke shot his foot out from behind his desk and showed off red socks shocked with blue lightning bolts.
She had a terrible flashback to Juju’s airboots.
“There is no merciful God,” Eve muttered.
“I gotta keep up with my partner,” Reineke claimed. “Figured I’d go for the footwear, and shoes cost too much to play with.”
The best cops she knew, Eve thought as she escaped to her office. Her bullpen was stocked with the best cops she knew.
But there were times.
She contacted Reo, again, for another warrant to get her into Betz’s bank box.
She got coffee, updated her board and book. Then did what she’d wanted to do for hours. She put her boots up on her desk and let herself think.
Five women, with a mutual secret, a mutual goal. Downing hadn’t had those two pictures in her apartment studio by chance.
Painting out her issues. Painting out her feelings.
Love and hate? Yeah, it could play like that.
Five women, Eve thought. It took deep loyalty and determination to keep a secret.
Age ranges, if the portrait held true, went from early twenties to mid-forties. A solid twenty-year gap. That gap took the older woman out of the usual range as a sexual target for the men in the morgue.
Six men. Half of them dead, and none by natural causes or accident. Six men who’d shared a house in college—and, she was convinced, a great deal more. Powerful men, wealthy men. Her two dead known adulterers with a taste for young flesh.
Something brought them together in college, she thought. Six young men, with privileged backgrounds. Ivy league young men.
What brought young men together?
Young women—the desire for them, the attaining of them.
At a university like Yale, they’d have to work, study, produce, or—money or not—they’d get the boot. A lot of stress, particularly as there’d been a war brewing. And that brew was stirred with anger and resentment against all of that privilege.
More restrictions, she concluded, for security.
What did young men want—besides women—that college provided? Freedom from the parental locks. No parents clocking their time, their activities. But now those restrictions set in, squeezing at those freedoms.
Sex, drugs, drink. Isn’t that a way to celebrate breaking the parental lock? To flip the bird at rules? To prove yourself a man? An adult?
But with rebels outside the gates, shaking fists, throwing stones, the gates get locked. What do you do?
None of their records showed any bumps for illegals, for alcohol violations. Could have been covered up—war and money—but either way, that left sex.
And sex was the key.
Six young men. Had it started all the way back there?
Old keys in a hidden drawer. A rich old house symbolically—or literally—burning.
And six old men on their way to hell.
She shifted to glance at her comp when it signaled an incoming. And dropped her boots to the floor when she noted it was from Morse.
Analyzed tattoos on both victims. Fully scientific report to follow. Simplifying same, the tattoos are between forty and fifty years old—and I lean toward closer to fifty. Have sent samples to lab for further analysis and verification, but evidence indicates your victims were young men when inked.
Six young men, she thought again, forging a brotherhood.
And five women, bound together.
She took the next incoming—Yancy’s work.
“Computer, run a search for properties within twenty-five miles of Yale University that carry no less than an eighty percent match with the house in sketch two, and are no less than fifty years old. Identify same whether or not the house still exists. Copy to my home unit, all search results.”
Search parameters acknowledged. Working . . .
“You do that, and so will I.”
And rubbed the tension in her neck at yet another incoming.
“Eve,” Mira began. “I wish I could give you more.”