“Yeah. I have to talk to you. I have to find out what’s going on. That woman, Gia Rossi, she’s dead. Ariel…”
“I’ll take him,” Peabody told Eve.
“No, I got it. Get the image to Jenkinson. Let’s sit down, Erik.” She didn’t have time to take him to the lounge, didn’t have the heart to boot him out. Instead, she led him to one of the benches outside her own bullpen.
“You’re worried and you’re upset,” Eve began.
“Worried? Upset? I’m scared out of my goddamn mind. He’s got her. That maniac has Ariel. They said he tortures them. He’s hurting her, and we’re just sitting here.”
“No, we’re not. Every cop assigned to this case is working it.”
“She’s not a case!” His voice rose, threatened to crack. “Goddamn it, she’s a human being. She’s Ariel.”
“You want this prettied up for you?” Her voice was sharp, deliberately so to cut off any risk of hysteria. “You want pats and strokes, you’ve come to the wrong place, and you’ve come to the wrong person. I’m telling you that everything I’ve got is on this, is in this, just like every cop working it. If you think we don’t know who she is, you’re wrong. If you think her face isn’t in everyone’s head, you’re wrong.”
“I don’t know what to do.” His hands fisted on his thighs, pounded against them. “I can’t stand not knowing what to do, how to help. She must be so scared.”
“Yeah, she must be scared. I’m not going to bullshit you, Erik. She’s scared, and she’s probably hurting. But we’re going to find her. When we do, I’ll make sure you’re contacted. I’ll make sure you know we’ve got her safe.”
“I love her. I never told her. Never told me either,” he managed on a long, shaky breath. “I’m in love with her, and she doesn’t know.”
“You can tell her when we’ve got her back. Go home. Better, go be with a friend.”
When she’d nudged him along, she went back to the war room, straight to Roarke’s station. She picked up his bottle of water and guzzled.
“Help yourself,” he commented.
“Popped a buzz a couple hours ago. Always makes me thirsty. And…” She rolled her shoulders. “Wired. Location, location, location,” she added and made him smile.
“I have some others for you, and I’m working on trimming the number of them down. Any help on the opera connection?”
“Pieces, bits and pieces of him—and I’m getting a handle on the women he’s re-creating, we’ll say. Once we ID her, we’re going to have more data on him. I’ve got to go flap lips with the media.”
She started out, nearly ran headlong into Morris. “Sorry. Sorry.” The damn booster made her feel as if she were jumping out of her own skin. “What have you got? Tell me while we walk. I’ve got to get to the media room.”
“Energy pill?”
“It shows?”
“Generally, on you. He used dopamine and lorazepam on her. We haven’t detected those substances before.”
“What do they do?” She wished she’d copped Roarke’s water. “Would they have turned her off?”
“I’d say he was hoping for t
he opposite result. They’re sometimes used on catatonics.”
“Okay, so she turned off on him, and he tried to bring her around, keep the clock going.”
“I agree. Still, if she went into true and deep catatonia, he could have, potentially, kept that clock going for hours more. If not days.”
“But what fun is that?” Eve countered. “Not getting any reaction. She’s not participating.”
“Yes, again I agree. It holds with the fact she didn’t sustain as many injuries as the others. He couldn’t bring her around, so he gave up.”
“I don’t imagine you can pick up dopamine or whatzit?”
“Lorazepam.”