The In Death Collection Books 21-25 - J. D. Robb [26]
“Wilfred B. Icove—doctor and saint.”
“I heard that on the way home. I wondered if he’d be yours.” He came back with a couple of plates, steam rising from the fried cod and chipped potatoes, fresh from the AutoChef. “I knew him a bit.”
“I thought you might. He lived in one of your buildings.”
“Can’t say I knew that.” He’d walked back into the kitchen as they spoke. “I’d met him, and his son—son’s wife—at charity functions. Media report said he’d been killed in his office, at his landmark center here in New York.”
“They got that right.”
He brought back vinegar for the chips, salt—his woman used bloody blizzards of salt on damn near everything—and a couple of cold bottles of Harp.
“Stabbed, was he?”
“Once. Through the heart. No lucky jab.” She sat with him, ate with him, and filled him in, using nearly the same straight, efficient reporting style she had with her commander.
“Can’t see the son for it,” Roarke said, forking up some fish—and memories of his own youth in Dublin with it. “If you want an outside opinion.”
“I’ll take it. Why?”
“Both devoted to their field of medicine—a lot of pride in that, and each other. Money wouldn’t be a factor. And power?” He gestured with his fork, then stabbed more fish. “From what I know the father’s been ceding that to the son, more as time went on. The woman looks professional to you?”
“The hit looked pro. Clean, quick, simple, well planned. But . . .”
He smiled a little, picked up his beer—as comfortable, Eve knew, with the brew and fried fish as he would have been with a two-thousand-dollar bottle of wine and rare filet.
“But,” Roarke continued for her, “the symbolism—the heart wound, death in his office in the center he founded, the sheer cojones, to borrow the Spanish she purported to be—of the murder in a place so well secured. A point proven.”
Yeah, Eve thought, she’d be wasting a valuable resource if she shut Roarke out of her work. “Maybe she’s a pro, maybe not. We’ve got no hits on her, not through IRCCA, not through Feeney’s imaging. But if she was hired, the motive was personal. Personal in a way, I think, that relates to his work. He could’ve been taken out quick and easy elsewhere.”
“You’ve run his immediate staff by now.”
“Whistle clean, every one. And nobody has a bad word to say about him. His apartment looks like a holo-room.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You know, one of those programs used to fabricate a home for realtors. Perfect urban living. It was clean and coordinated to fricking death. You’d hate it.”
Intrigued, he angled his head. “Would I?”
“You got the high life, same as he did. Got it different ways, but you’re both drowning in money.”
“Oh,” he said easily, “I can tread water quite well, and for quite a while.”
“While you’re doing the backstroke, he’s got a two-level apartment, where everything’s squared off, the bathroom towels match the bathroom walls, sort of thing. No creativity, I guess I’m saying. You’ve got this place, which may be big enough to hold a small city itself, but it’s got—well, it’s got style and life. It reflects you.”
“I think that’s a compliment.” He raised his beer to her.
“It’s an observation. You’re both perfectionists in your ways, but his ran toward obsession—everything just so. You like to mix it up. So maybe his need for perfection caused him to bruise somebody, or fire them, or refuse to take them as a patient. I can’t make this just so, so forget about it.”
“I’d say it was a big bruise to warrant murder.”
“People kill for a chipped fingernail, but you’re right there. This was big enough to do something showy. Because under the efficiency, the tidiness, this was showing off.”
Eve snagged another fry. “Take a look at her. Computer,” she ordered, “display ID image, Nocho-Alverez, Dolores, on wall screen one.”
When it flashed on, Roarke lifted his eyebrows. “Beauty is often deadly.”
“So why would somebody who looks like that consult with a face and body sculptor? Why would he take her?”
“Beauty’s often irrational