“Because it is one.”
She shrugged, added enough butter for her potato to swim in. “I forgot. I brought you dessert.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah, a cinnamon bun. It’s in an evidence bag—in my file bag.”
“Yum.”
She shook her fork at him before dipping it into the pool of butter. “Trust me. It’s from the caterer—Jacko—who did the dinner party.”
“He has a fine reputation. Is he a suspect?”
She shook her head. “Alibied, and no way he fits or his wife or his daughter or any of the catering team I interviewed. Same with the rental company.”
“That’s a lot to eliminate in one day. So again, considerable progress.”
“I guess it is.” She glanced back at the board. “A lot of threads to be tied together or snapped off. I did find a connection.”
“What connection?”
“Both the caterer and the rental company have done jobs for the first vic—or rather his company. The vic himself didn’t use them, but it’s a link from the company to the latest victims. And his partner used them personally a couple times. I need to see if I can make that link to the second victims. The SVU detectives didn’t go there because there wasn’t a there to go to then. Now there is.”
“Wouldn’t that un-eliminate the caterer and the rental company?”
“It’s an avenue to explore,” she admitted, “but … I just don’t think so. Not directly. But somebody who’s used them, done some work for them, knows someone—or more than one person on the crews. It also links to the hospital. Strazza was a big wheel at St. Andrew’s, and Daphne volunteered there for a time. I can link both companies to the hospital for events. So that adds hospital staff to the mix. I’m going to talk to the first four victims tomorrow, and something may shake there.”
She applied herself to the steak. Sleep, sex, shower, wine, and red meat. It was enough to bring a tear to the eye.
“Daphne thinks she smelled sulfur during the attack. So did he add that—let’s give them the full hell treatment? Or did she imagine it as he’d set the stage? Either way, this fucker gets fully in character—that’s the term, right—he likes to be the monster he wraps himself in. So maybe he’s an actor, or a wannabe actor. Actors connect to first vic’s company.”
“So they do.”
“Actor, performance, reviews,” she said as she ate. “Plus, if we go by the wit statements, the disguise is first-rate, so he’s either talented there or he’s practiced a lot. Do actor types do their own makeup and costumes?”
“I imagine some do, and others might pick up some of the steps.”
“That’s how I see it. He had to do some stalking, some research on the vics, on the locations. The attacks went too smooth for him not to have planned them. He had to have known when to move in. Those are all upper-level neighborhoods, all the locations had solid security. Single-family residences, that’s a key. Wealthy married couple, that’s another. Seriously good-looking female vics, so he has a type. That could work a couple ways.”
“He’s jealous of the looks and wealth as he’s had neither,” Roarke suggested, “or he’s of the same social strata and sticks to his own kind, so to speak.”
Again, she wagged her fork at him. “Don’t blame me for saying you think like a cop when you do.”
“I think like a criminal—reformed. It’s basically the same.”
She couldn’t argue with that. “He likes to steal.”
“Well now, I can relate.”
Since she knew he could, she took it a step further. “Can you relate to taking valuables and not cashing in?”
Roarke thought it over while he drank some wine. “I can, to a point. If you don’t need the money, or if profit itself isn’t the goal, it’s quite satisfying to have trinkets around that you’ve lifted from elsewhere.”
“A kind of payback. I’ve got it now, sucker, you don’t?”
“It could be. Still, people routinely collect souvenirs, after all, to remind them of a trip, an event, something they enjoyed. It may be just that simple.”
“Nothing personal,” she muttered.
“It’s often not, even most usually not personal—from the perspective of the thief.”
Something, he knew, the cop he loved would never appreciate.
“But as he’s cleaned out a number of safes,” Roarke continued as Eve brooded, “he’d have to make himself a kind of Aladdin’s Cave for his spoils, wouldn’t he? That’s excessive.”
Now she frowned. “Which guy’s Aladdin?”
“Depending on the version, he’s a young thief who stumbles across a cave filled with treasures—amassed by bigger, badder thieves—and acquires a genie in a lamp.”
“Hmm. So hoarding, basically. That’s an angle. Maybe this guy’s hoarding all the loot, either because he’s just a sick bastard or because he’s a well-off sick bastard. And there was cash in every hit, so that would add to the well-off. Add e-skills, a risk-taker. And I’m betting he knew the layout of the Strazza house. He may have been inside previously. Maybe as a guest, maybe as some sort of worker.”