“We are. Louise had night duty at the clinic and just got home. I’m making breakfast. Want an omelet?”
“I was going to leave you a message, see if you could give me a little time today.”
“For you, any . . .” The smile faded from his face. “I wasn’t thinking. You call at this hour, someone’s dead. Someone I know?”
“I’m not sure. Ava Crampton.”
“Ava?” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Yes, I know her. What happened? Can you tell me?”
“I’d rather not over my pocket ’link. I’m out in the field, not that far away. I could—”
“Come over.”
“On my way.”
The garden Louise had planted in the days before she and Charles married thrived. More sweet than elegant, with just a touch of wild, it added another layer of personality to the townhouse they shared.
Louise met her at the door, her blond curls still a little damp from her shower. She took Eve’s hand, drew her in to kiss her cheek. “I wish somebody didn’t have to die for you to come by.”
“You look good.” Still sun-kissed from the honeymoon, Eve thought, and still glowing from the happiness marriage brought her. “Sorry to cut in on your personal time.”
“We’re having breakfast. Charles is cooking—really cooking. His omelets are incredible. So you’ll eat with us while you talk to Charles.”
Louise walked her back to the kitchen as she spoke. Charles stood over the stove, shaking a skillet back and forth. “Just in time,” he said. “Have a seat.”
“Is your AutoChef broken?”
“I like to cook when there’s time and a reason.”
“It smells good.” Louise put a mug in her hand, and Eve drank automatically. “Oh, this is real coffee. This alone is a reason to believe in God.”
“Wait till you taste my omelet. You’ll testify. What happened to Ava?”
“I’m sorry about your friend.”
“We were friendly, but not really close. I liked her, you had to. She was charming and bright and just interesting. I can’t believe it was a client. She was so careful.”
“It was and it wasn’t. He set her up, used false ID, covered himself thoroughly from the way it looks. She met him at the amusement park on Coney Island. Public place. She’d vetted him. I don’t see she’d have had anything to question.”
“You’re saying she didn’t even know him?”
“It looks that way. Like I said, she vetted him—or so it reads in her appointment book. How would she go about that?” With a skill that surprised Eve, Charles slid a fluffy omelet onto a plate, then poured more egg mixture into the skillet.
“Eat that while it’s hot,” he told her. “She’d have done a background check, similar to what police or private investigators would do. She’d access his criminal record, if he had one, his employment, his marital status.”
“Basic data?”
“Yeah. Then she’d do a search for articles on or by him, mentions in the media. Then, I have to assume she’d run a program that would extrapolate all the information she’d gathered and give him a rating. By the time she met him, she’d have a good idea who he was, what his habits were, his lifestyle. It’s a matter of protecting yourself, but also a method to give the LC a sense of what the client may be looking for.”
“So she’d be careful,” Eve said, “but at the same time, she was a risk taker. I saw the S&M room in her place.”
“I worked with her once or twice.” He completed another omelet. “But not in that area.”
Eve drank her coffee, and wondered how Louise could sit, eating an omelet, while her husband talked about his experiences in group sex.
When he finished the last omelet, he sat to join them.
“Charles, this is wonderful.” Smiling at him, Louise topped off his coffee from the pot on the counter. “You never said how she was killed, Dallas.”
“She was stabbed,” Eve said and left it at that for now.
“And her killer was masquerading as this other man, the man she vetted?”
“That’s right.”
“He must have looked enough like him to fool her.”
“Yeah, we’re working on that. Would she have kept the appointment, gone on with it, if she’d known this wasn’t the man who’d booked?”
“No.” Charles shook his head. “She’d have risked her license, and that she’d never have done. And going with someone you haven’t checked out is just too dangerous. She did like the edge, but not enough to put herself in that kind of situation. She liked variety in the work, but she followed the rules. When a client hires someone at Ava’s level, he or she—or they—aren’t just paying for sex. They’re paying for an experience relatively few can afford. She’d provide that, but she’d stay within the law and she’d have taken every reasonable precaution to protect herself.”
Maybe, Eve thought, but it hadn’t been enough.
When Eve got back to Central, Peabody wasn’t at her desk, but most of her detectives were. Baxter, looking sleek as a fashion vid, glanced up from his.
“Took her crash time,” Baxter told her. “She’s been down about fifteen.”
“Fine.”
“Mira’s in your office.”
“Oh.”
“My boy and I are heading out. Got a floater in the pond in Central Park. Couple of kids found it.”
“Nice way to start the day.”
“Fun never ends.”
Mira sat in Eve’s ugly visitor’s chair in her pretty pale pink suit. She’d matched the suit with heels several shades deeper and a multi-chain necklace with tiny little pearls and colored stones. Her rich brown hair curled around her lovely face in a way both stylish and flattering.
Her quiet blue eyes tracked up from the screen of her PPC to meet Eve’s.
“I was just rereading your data. I had some time now so thought I’d wait for you here.”
“I appreciate you getting to it so fast.” It threw her off, just a little. Consults were usually in Mira’s airy office, and included cups of flowery tea Eve pretended to drink.
Which reminded her to offer.
“You want some tea or something?”
“Actually, I’d love some of your coffee. Dennis and I were out late last night with friends. I could use the boost.”
“Sure.”
“Have you slept?”
“Not yet. I’ll get some in when I can.” Sometime between the vic’s apartment and Central her second wind had settled in.
Maybe it was the omelets.
“He’s hit fast,” Eve said as she took the steaming mugs from the AutoChef. “Two for two. Both risky, organized, and planned.”
“Yes. He’s organized, controlled enough to spend time with, and interact with, his victims and maintain his prepared persona. Clients, both times.”
Eve turned with the coffee in her hand. “He buys his kill.”
The smile lit Mira’s face. “You could have gone into my line of work.”
“No thanks. You have to be nice to the whacked. Buys his kill,” she repeated. “That’s an interesting angle. Does he figure since he’s paid for them, they’re his to bag? Like a hunter. But you don’t hunt with a bayonet, so the hunting thing’s thin.”
“I’m not sure. We think of a bayonet as a wartime weapon, when man certainly hunts man. The killer has chosen the ground, established the rules—his—selected the weapon. All in advance.”
“But in Houston’s case, he couldn’t know, not for certain, who he’d get for prey. No, that’s not right,” Eve corrected. “You don’t know which furry animal you’re going to shoot in the woods. It’s just the species—the type. You go after a type. He likes the rush.”
“In both cases, it was a fairly close-in kill, and in a location where discovery was a factor—and likely part of the excitement. He’s mature, and the esoteric nature of the weapons tells me he’s interested in the unique—in showing his knowledge and his skill.”
“Showing off, that’s how it hits me.”
“Yes. God, this is good,” Mira murmured over her coffee. “He has wealth or access to it. Excellent e-skills, or again access to them. His choice of the men whose identification he used tells me one of two things: He either resents those in authority, specifically in the corporate world, or he considers them subordinates, those to be made use of.”