“No. She’s not here?”
“She and Grandma left Friday to hook up with some friends for a girl week, take advantage of the holiday. They’re okay?”
“As far as I know. We need to come in, Jamie.”
“Who is it? Tell me who it is.”
No point trying to soften the blow. “Deena MacMasters.”
“What? No. No. Deena? Oh God. Oh, goddamn!”
He turned away, strode into the living area that had changed little since she’d brought death into it almost two years before. He paced it, veering around tables, chairs, circling like a cat in a cage. “Give me a minute, okay? Give me a minute.”
Eve gestured Peabody to a chair herself, and remained standing while Jamie took his minute.
He stopped, turned, with an air of weary resignation at odds with his youth. “When?”
“Early this morning.”
“How?”
“We’re going to talk about that. When’s the last time you saw her?”
“Ah.” He rubbed the space between his eyebrows. The gesture seemed to steady him a little. “A couple weeks ago. Wait.” He lowered to the arm of a chair, then stared hard into space for a few minutes.
And Eve watched him pull control and composure back. If he decided to pursue law enforcement, he had the spine to make a cop, she thought.
“Tuesday, two weeks ago this coming Tuesday. A bunch of us went to see this new group—Crusher—play at Club Zero. I asked her to come along because we hadn’t seen much of each other in a while, and she’s into music. All kinds, even the old stuff. It’s an underage club, so she could get in, no prob. They sucked extra large, so she and I split off after the first set and went for pizza, caught up some. I took her home, got her home before midnight. She’s got a curfew.”
“What did you talk about?”
“All kinds of shit. School, music, vids, e-bits. She’s not much into the e-scene, but she liked to hear me talk about it. We’ve known each other forever. Grandpa knew her dad, and she was looking hard at Columbia for next year. We talked about that since I’ve done two semesters.”
“Did she talk about her boyfriend?”
“What boyfriend?” His eyes went on alert. “She wasn’t tuned into anybody I knew about. She wasn’t hooked up. She got all spazmotic when it came to guys, hardly ever did the one-on-one.”
“One-on-one?”
“Dating, you know? She didn’t think she was pretty, but she was. And she said she couldn’t think of what to say or how to say it. Mom said how she was just self-conscious and shy, and she’d grow out of it. Now she won’t.” Bitterness coated the words. “What happened to her, Dallas?”
“Her parents were away for the weekend.” Eve kept her tone brisk and neutral. “Sometime yesterday, she let someone into the house. It appears she expected him, and given what we know of her at this point, we conclude she knew him and trusted him.”
He’d get the details soon enough, Eve knew. Better to hear them now, and from her. “He restrained her. He raped her. He killed her.”
His gaze didn’t waver from hers. Fury snapped into it as he got to his feet, then his eyes went cold. Yeah, he’d be a good cop, she decided.
“She was harmless. I want to say she was the kind of person who’d go out of her way not to hurt anyone. But she was strong and fast, and smart. She knew self-defense. She took me down a few times when we practiced. He wouldn’t have been able to restrain her without a fight. You’ve got to have some trace.”
“It may be he slipped her a drug to incapacitate her so he was able to restrain her and prevent her from causing him any harm. She fought, Jamie, and hard, but it was too late.”
“If she let someone in, she knew him. You’re right there. We haven’t been as tight since I started college, so I don’t know everyone she might have . . .”
“What?”
“When we peeled off from the group, were hanging out over pizza, she asked me what college guys looked at in a girl. I made some crack like the same thing every guy looks for. But she wanted to know, like, if it was looks or common ground, and if we all really expected sex. We could talk like that because we didn’t have that kind of thing.”
He eased back down on the arm of the chair. “I think I said it wasn’t expected, it was hoped for. Pretty much always. But I didn’t score with every girl I went out with. I said how she could worry about college guys when she was a college girl. She smiled. I didn’t think anything of it, the way she smiled and bounced off topic. She wasn’t just talking about guys. There was a guy. Son of a bitch.”