“What do you need?”
“I need to see the run from your office.” She tightened her hand on his. “It’s not mistrust of you. I need to get into her head. I need to know what she was thinking, feeling, when she left. It can’t have been many hours after that she got beat up. Where did she go, who did she go to? It might help me figure it out.”
“All right then, but it’s not going into the file. Your word on that first.”
“You’ve got it.”
He left her to go back into his office. When he returned, he handed her a fresh disc. “There’s audio as well.”
With a nod, she plugged it in. Looked and listened.
She knew him, the ins and outs of him, and still, his face, his tone even more than his words, made her belly jitter.
When the run ended, she took the disc out, gave it back to him. “It’s a wonder she didn’t piss herself and ruin your expensive chair and carpet.”
“Would’ve been worth it.”
Eve rose, paced around the room. “She had to be working with someone. But if it was Bobby… nothing I have on him clicks for this. It takes a certain type to punch out your own mother. I don’t like him for it. Someone else.”
“She was an attractive enough woman. A lover, perhaps.”
“Logical, and lovers are notorious for using fists and weapons. So, she’s scared, scared bad, maybe wants to drop the whole thing and head back to Texas, and this pisses him off. She had a job to do, a part to play, and she didn’t pull it off. He slaps her around to remind her what’s at stake. When he comes to see her later, she’s whiny, she’s half-drunk. I want to go home. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to do this anymore. And he’s pissed again, and kills her.”
“Logical.”
Yeah, logical, she thought. But shook her head. “I don’t like it. She doesn’t give up that easy. Plus, while you scared her, he hurt her. Maybe she’s caught between the two—fear and pain. But she’s not running from either. And why kill her?” She lifted her hands. “Wait until she’s calmed down. With her dead, you’ve got nothing.”
“He lost control.”
She brought the murder scene, the body, back into her head. “But he didn’t. Three blows. Three deliberate blows. He loses control, he’s drunk or juiced or just plain murderous, he beats the shit out of her, he smashes her face. He whales on her, but he doesn’t. He just bashes the back of her head, and leaves her.”
She rolled her shoulders. “I’m going to set up a board. I have to start putting this in order.”
“Well then, let’s have a meal first.”
* * *
Chapter 9
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SHE ATE BECAUSE HE’D NAG HER OTHERWISE.
And the mechanical act of fueling the body gave her more time to think. She had a glass of wine, nursing it throughout the meal. Small sips, like medicine taken reluctantly.
She left the wall screen on, data scrolling over. More pieces of the players she knew, or knew of, thus far. Trudy herself, and Bobby, Zana, and Bobby’s partner, Densil K. Easton.
Finances looked solid, if not spectacular, all around. Easton had attended the same college as Bobby, graduated with him. He was married, one offspring.
A knuckle rap for disorderly conduct his last year in college. Otherwise, no criminal.
Still, a good candidate if Trudy had a partner, or a lover. Who’d know the ins and outs of personal and professional data better than the son’s business partner?
Easy enough to get from Texas to New York. Tell the wife you’ve got to make a quick trip out of town, wheel a deal.
The killer had to be good with details. Remembering to take Trudy’s ‘link, bringing the weapon, or using something handy, then taking it along with him.
Quick temper, though, bashing a woman’s brains out with a couple of hard blows. But not rage.