Fantasy in Death - J. D. Robb [68]
“Are they on the copy?”
“They are.”
“Stats?”
“We’re pulling and collating them now.”
“Good. And when you run the games, prioritize anything with swords. It’s pizza and a pipe wrench.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Feeney demanded. “You’re losing it, kid.”
“No point in wasting a good pie. No point bringing a sword to a blaster battle. You want to make use of what you’ve got, and take what’s useful with you. He took the sword, but he left the disc. The disc would be useless to us after self-destruct, and incriminating to him if found in his possession.”
She stuck her hand in her pocket, nodded. “Sure. A woman says to the husband she wants dead, Hey, honey, I’ve just got to have a pizza. Be a sweetheart and run down and get us a large veggie. Now he’ll probably say, We’ll just have it delivered, but she’s ready for that. Oh, they take too long and I’m just starving for a pizza. Please, baby? I’ll open some wine, and maybe I’ll change into something you’ll like. We’ll have a little pizza party.”
“What the hell does that have to do with this?”
She glanced at Feeney. Cynical and rough-edged he might be, but he was a blusher. “Working it out. The guy goes for pizza—going to get lucky, so hey, it’s worth the walk. The wife who wants him dead has her lover waiting with the pipe wrench. Smack, bang. No need for a divorce and all that bother, no point losing the nice chunk of life insurance—and hey, there’s a nice fresh pizza, too. It’s mean, just a little mean, but efficient and practical, too, to take the pie, leave the wrench.”
“‘Leave the gun, take the cannoli,’” Roarke said, and Feeney grinned.
“Okay, that I get.”
“It’s mean,” Roarke echoed Eve, “just a little mean, but efficient and practical, too, to murder Bart during a game he enjoys, and to do so by means that play into one of his fantasies. Mean, efficient, and practical to do it in his own home—and it’s another game added to that. How will the cops figure it out? He’ll have played that scenario, your killer, tried the elements out until he was confident of the win.”
“I just bet he has,” Eve agreed.
“But a good game always tosses in an unknown, a bigger challenge. That would be you.”
“Crib’s still up there,” Feeney muttered and earned a sour look from Eve.
“Copy the copy. I’m going to want to work at home. They’re not going to give us a search warrant for private residences with what we’ve got. Everybody’s alibied, no clear motive, no physical evidence. Barely any circumstantial at this point. We need more.”
“Whose residence?” Callendar asked her.
“Partnership’s like marriage. It’s a freaking minefield. And one of Bart’s partners decided on that pizza and pipe wrench.”
Back in her office, she deemed it time to dig deeper, a lot deeper on the three remaining partners of U-Play.
She needed something, just a little something she could turn, twist, or tweak to convince the PA to go after a search warrant.
The killer’s home comps would certainly have been doctored by now. She wasn’t dealing with an idiot. But EDD had its ways, as did her expert consultant, civilian.
While her own computer dug, she rearranged her murder board. Studied it, rearranged it again.
She thought she understood, at least partially, the why. It was small and it was shallow, but murder had been done for much, much less. Without Reineke’s nose, a man’s death might very well have been put down to the contents of his wallet and a veggie pizza.
There’d be bigger under the small, and deeper under the shallow, but it was enough for now. Enough to help her create her own scenario.
“I’m back! Did you miss me?” Peabody bounced in, then flopped in the visitor’s chair. “Jeez, do you know what the shuttle’s like this time of day? It’s a zoo—animal ferocity and smells. Plus, the air unit fizzled twenty minutes out of the station. Add jungle heat to that. I want a two-hour