The In Death Collection Books 21-25 - J. D. Robb [534]
“Slow and steady.”
“Yeah.”
“Follow-up. You’re veering well away from Principal Mosebly, though you’ve shown she had motive.”
“Yeah.” Raking her fingers through her hair, Eve walked out of the classroom again. “I could be way off on her, but I can’t see her for it either. Murders on her sanctified ground, under her watch? It’s a nightmare for her, worse than having her sexual indiscretion revealed. She’s hemorrhaging students out of here, getting slammed with unpleasant media. Maybe she did it, maybe she thought she could spin it all and weather the damage. But it doesn’t ring. Still like to fry her for crying rape. Bitch.”
She frowned. “Where was I?”
“The two girls go to the classroom.”
“Right. If they’d come up fifteen minutes earlier, Foster’s got a chance. Instead, he’s gone and they run out screaming. Dawson runs over, sees what’s happened, calls the principal.”
“A fairly predictable series of events.”
“It is, isn’t it? Now we’ll take Williams.”
She led the way downstairs, through the fitness center, into the pool area.
“Not bad,” Roarke commented.
“Yeah, a pretty sweet setup for a kid or a teacher. In here, Williams intersects with Mosebly. Allika Straffo is on premises—no intersections reported—then, according to her statement, she went looking for Williams, and—using your terms—ran a parallel line with him and Mosebly, overhearing their argument.”
From where she stood, Eve could see the exits, entrances into the pool area. Staff. Students.
“She leaves, Mosebly leaves, more intersections with her and Hallywell, Dawson. Dawson comes in to see Williams, and for the second time in a week finds himself a dead body.”
“Quite the coincidence.”
“Yeah, yeah. But he and the nurse, who was also called to both scenes, they’re peripheral. Someone else reached the center of both these circles, undetected.” Eve stared down at the surface of the water. “Both times.”
“You’re sure it was the same killer?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am. Pretty sure I know who the killer is, but I don’t have the why. I have to have the why on this one.”
“Well now, share.”
She nearly did, then shook her head. “Not yet, okay? I’d like to see what a geek like you comes up with without prejudicing the, ah, theorem. Want to talk it over with Mira, too. But that’s all gut right now. I’m going to look at the solid first, and track the go-cup angle.”
“Are we going shopping?”
“Just going to check a few of the places that sell that make and model, in a ten-block radius.”
“You said radius. Does that make you a geek?”
“Smart-ass.”
He took her hand. “That’s more like it.”
It didn’t blow the investigation open for her. Like the majority of cop work it was routine—repetitious and tedious.
She spoke to clerks, to managers, to the clueless and the chirpy. The item in question was a popular model, not the cheapest or the priciest. A good value, she was told endlessly. Practical, attractive, and hard-wearing.
“We had to order in another shipment two weeks before Christmas,” Eve was told by an eager-to-help assistant manager. “Great stocking stuffer or emergency gift, and we had them on sale. Couldn’t keep them on the shelf. We’re still selling them briskly. Valentine’s Day. Free inscription inside a heart, or with heart motif.”
“Adorable. You’ve got records. I’m interested in one of these models inscribed to ‘Craig.’” She spelled it out.
“Sure, I’ll look it up. If they went credit or debit, we’d have a record. Cash, we wouldn’t. Most people don’t do cash because once they come in, they end up buying multiple items.”
“Uh-huh.” Eve glanced around, noticed that Roarke was roaming, browsing, examining. All the things that people who actually liked to shop ended up doing.
“I’m really sorry.” And the guy actually looked it. “We don’t have a sale of that model—or any other—with an inscription added that says ‘Craig’—any spelling—during the last thirty days.”
“Go back another thirty.”
“Oh. Um.” He looked distressed now. “That’ll take me a few minutes, and on the main unit in the back, since I’d have to go back into last year. You