New York to Dallas (In Death 33)

“Yeah, I figure that. His other priority would be the partner. He needs that attention, support, and someone to run interference.”

“The visitor’s list, communications. She’d be in there, wouldn’t she?”

“Has to be. He might escape on impulse and opportunity, but if he hadn’t had a plan in place, he’d have gone underground until he had one.”

She paused a moment, let herself think it through now that her mind had cleared. “They’re looking for somebody running, hiding, even scrambling. He’s not. He deliberately sought attention, so he’s confident, secure. He’s not on the run. Getting a hit off the BOLO we’ve got out on him would be sheer luck. He kept his first New York victim in that room for three years. She was strong. He lived there in a working-class neighborhood, on the third floor of a well-occupied building, and managed to transport his victims in, and we assume transport the bodies or remains of the ones who didn’t survive out, without anyone seeing him. He won’t go down easy.”

“I don’t question your judgment, but will add that this time it’s more than feeding his need, more than the girls. It’s you. It’s showing you up, paying you back. And payback is a distraction. It adds an element of risk that wasn’t in play before.”

“It’s a factor,” she agreed. “And the break in his pattern complicates things for him more than us. Still, he’s had twelve years to think it through, plan it out, refine the details. I have to catch up.”

“Then we’d better get started.” He rose, took her hand to bring her to her feet. “You didn’t take him down all those years ago just because you were lucky. You were smarter than he was, even then. He was stronger, had the advantage, but you didn’t lose your head or panic. And you didn’t stop. He may have had this time to plan and refine, but you’ve had it to hone your instincts, to build experience. And you have something else now you didn’t have then.”

“You.”

“See how smart you are?” He brushed a kiss over her forehead. “It’ll give me pleasure to use my considerable resources, not to mention skills—”

“You just mentioned them.”

“So I did. In any case, I’ll enjoy using them to help you put him away a second time, and for good. And I can start doing just that by accessing his visitors and communications logs from the prison.”

She opened her mouth, a knee-jerk refusal on the tip of her tongue. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t bent the rules before, but it never sat quite right. “Yeah. Yeah, you do that. They’ve got no business stonewalling until tomorrow while they work on their spin. I don’t care about their spin or the politics. I need to know who he’s talked to, seen. I need it all. A few hours’ jump on this might save some kid from being taken.”

They set up in Roarke’s private office, with the unregistered equipment, shielded from the intrusive eye of CompuGuard. He walked to the wide, U-shaped command center, laid his palm on the security plate. “This is Roarke. Power up.”

And the controls glittered like jewels against the sleek black console. Nothing accessed here could go in any report, not until the data came to her by proper and legal channels. But . . .

One of his shades of gray, she thought. He had more than she did, a thinner and more adjustable line. Still, all she had to do was remember all the girls, all those eyes inside that obscenity of a room, to step over to Roarke’s side of it.

She sat at the auxiliary comp, called up her files. She’d need to set up a board, she worked better with visuals. But for now she’d take the time to refresh herself on all things Isaac McQueen.

She steeped herself in it, in the photographs, the data stream, the psychiatric reports, court transcripts. She surfaced when Roarke set a mug of coffee on the console beside her.

“The medical he killed yesterday had a wife and a two-year-old daughter.”

She nodded. “You think I need to justify what I’m doing, or letting you do. Maybe sometime down the road I will. Right now I’m clear on it. I’m sidestepping politics.”

She looked up at him. He’d tied his hair back—work mode. “I’ve got no problem with that.”

“All right, then. I have his visitors log, and the record of all approved communications. I imagine you’ve considered he communicated with someone outside by non-approved means. If so, he didn’t use any variation of his own ID, or send or receive by anyone using any variation of those on the approved list. I’ll look deeper.”

He leaned on the console, sipped from a mug of his own. “I programmed a search for key phrases, repetitions. So far all the e-coms are innocuous. Answers to messages from reporters, writers, an inmate advocacy group. There’s very little over a twelve-year period, which weighs on the side he found a way to skirt around approval.”

Eve drank coffee and considered. “He’s got the e-skills. He wouldn’t make a mistake there, and he’d be very careful what he put on a hard drive. We stripped down his electronics before. Next to nothing. He’s very careful. The way to the partner, if he’s lined one up, would be through visitation. Face-to-face contact. Privacy rules, thanks to prison advocacy groups—prevent monitoring prisoner visitation. It’ll be a woman, between forty and . . . adding the twelve years in, probably more like between fifty and sixty. Attractive, with some sort of addiction or vulnerability he can exploit.”

“Nearly all his visitors were female. Data’s copied to your unit.”

Eve called it up. Out of twenty-six visitors, eighteen were women, and most of them repeat visitors.

“I get the reporters—after a juicy story, maybe a big book deal or vid. He’d probably string them along awhile, get them to come back, entertain him. Tell them nothing. But the rest? What did they get out of spending time with him, knowing what he’d done, what he is? I don’t—Jesus, Melinda Jones.”

“Yes.”

“August, ’fifty-five. About five years ago. Single visit. I need to run her.”

“I did. She’s a rape and trauma counselor, attached to the Dallas police department, where her sister is a cop who just made detective. They share an apartment, live only a few miles from their parents, and the home where they grew up. She’s single, and she’s clean.

”