The In Death Collection Books 26-29 - J.D. Robb [468]
6
AS SUMMERSET MADE NO APPEARANCE WHEN they walked into the house, Eve lifted her eyebrows. “Where’s Mister Scary?”
The look Roarke sent her managed to be both resigned and mildly scolding. “Summerset has the night off.”
“You mean the house is Summerset-free? Damn shame we have to waste it with work.”
He slid a hand down her back, over her ass. “A break wouldn’t be uncalled for.”
“Nope. I’ve got over thirty runs to do. Plus I put off reporting to Whitney hoping we’d catch a miracle.” She started up the steps, then stopped dead when she spied the cat sitting on the landing, staring at her with unquestionably annoyed eyes.
“Jesus, he’s almost as bad as your goon.”
“He dislikes being left on his own.”
“I’m not going to start hauling him to crime scenes. Deal with it, pal,” she told the cat, but stopped to crouch and stroke when she reached the landing. “Some of us have to work for a living. Well, one of us has to. The other one mostly does it for fun.”
“As it happens I need to go have a bit of fun. After which I’ll put in some time in the lab.”
“Work, on Peace Day—or pretty much Peace Night now, I guess.”
“A little something I started this morning when my wife left me on my own.”
They continued up together with the cat prancing between them.
“Can you make a copy of this disc?” she asked him. “I need to keep the original clean.”
“No problem.” He took the evidence bag. “We’re eating in two hours,” Roarke decreed as he walked past her office toward his own. “Meanwhile, you can feed the cat.”
She didn’t bother to scowl, it was energy wasted. She moved through her office, and again stopped dead when she saw the stuffed cat Roarke had given her—a toy replica of Galahad—sprawled on her sleep chair.
She looked at the toy, at the original, back to the toy. “You know, I don’t even want to know what you were doing with that.”
In the kitchen she fed the cat, programmed a pot of coffee.
At her desk she booted up her comp then sat to organize her notes, the reports, and start the first ten runs from the Columbia list. While the computer worked, she looked over the report she’d drafted for Whitney.
She refined it, read it again. Hoping he’d be satisfied, for now, with the written, she sent copies to both his home and office units.
She ordered the computer to display the runs, in order, on screen. Sitting back with her coffee she studied data, images.
Young, she thought, all so young. Not one of her initial runs had so much as a whiff of criminal, no juvie bumps, no illegals busts, not even so much as an academic knuckle rap.
She ran the rest, then started over from another angle.
“Computer, run current list for parents, siblings with criminal record and/or connection to MacMasters, Captain Jonah, as investigator or case boss.”
Acknowledged. Working . . .
Payback, if payback it was, came from different roots, she thought. While the run progressed, she rose to set up yet another murder board.
Data complete . . .
“On screen.”
Now there were some bumps and busts, and a few whiffs. Eleven on her list had illegals hits, some more than one. And yet, she noted, none of those had any connection to MacMasters.
Considering, she ordered a run on the investigating officer or team. Maybe the connection with MacMasters was more nebulous.
Once again, she hit zero. And paced.
She’d ask MacMasters directly. Maybe one of the investigators was an old childhood friend, or a third cousin once removed.
Waste of time, that wasn’t it, but they’d cover the ground.
She recircled the murder board, coming from another angle, but saw nothing new. She shook her head as Roarke came in.
“Daughter,” she said. “Payback—if we run with that—was to kill MacMasters’s daughter. Is it a mirror? Is MacMasters somehow responsible—in the killer’s mind—for the rape or death of his own daughter—child. Make it child as MacMasters only had a daughter.”
“If the killer is anywhere near the age he pretended to be, he’d be a very young father. What if he’s the child, and