Delusion in Death (In Death 35)

“I’ll take jealousy, personal gripes, and the rest.”

“Because that’s your deal?”

She shrugged. “If you cheated on me, I wouldn’t kill a bar full of people. Just you,” she said with a big smile. “And I’d do it myself because that’s how much I care.”

“I’m touched.” He moved to her, cupped her face. “Don’t work yourself into a stupor. You have to take your own power and position at your eight o’clock briefing.”

“I’m good.”

“Stay that way.” He kissed her lightly before returning to his office.

Pumped with more coffee, she dug for spouses, cohabs, lovers—former and current. She pored over family members. She scanned for official complaints or civil suits, picked through for criminal records, cross-referenced with any education, experience or employment within the military or that had connections to drugs, labs, added in medical, practice or research.

Like slogging through knee-deep mud, she thought, aligning, realigning bytes of data.

Because she wanted the visual, she hauled in another board, filled it with her possible suspects, connected them with the specific victim or victims.

She had a contentious divorce with an equally contentious child custody battle. A former cohab charged with assault who’d done time. A vic who’d worked in corporate medicine, another whose brother was an internist, a mother who was a retired army colonel. Six civil suits filed for a variety of reasons, and a number of family members, cohabs, spouses, exes, and coworkers with criminal records.

Not as many as she’d feared, she thought, but still numerous. She sat again, put her feet up again, and studied the faces of her possibles. Lives to explore, questions to ask. Lines to tug.

Some may—should—connect to whoever Roarke found. Those she’d bounce to the head of the class. Two motives were better than one.

It would give the investigation, at least an arm of the investigation, a direction. If the direction was correct, one of those faces hid a calculating, psychotic nature.

Most people, however clever, however controlled, never hid it completely. There were chinks, clues, habits. At some point, the real person showed through the facade.

Most tended to live alone, live quietly, keep to themselves—as neighbors and coworkers routinely claimed after the killer among them was revealed.

But not this one, no, she didn’t think this one stayed huddled in his space.

He frequented or worked in that bar. He knew how to socialize, how to make himself part of the fabric. He thought far too much of himself to live the quiet, unassuming life.

That’s what her father had done, though he’d traveled from place to place, never staying too long. But he’d socialized while leaving her locked away. He’d made his deals, run his cons, played his games.

As Stella had. Morphing, absorbing herself into the role she played. But there’d been chinks, other than the ones the child had seen long before the worst of the nightmare began. Weaknesses for illegals, for sex, for money, and a pure love of destroying others on the way to the goal.

Annoyed, she pushed herself up straight. Why was she thinking about them? They had nothing to do with the case, no connection or correlation to it. Yet her thoughts kept drifting back to both of them, to Dallas, to all that pain.

Push it down, push it away, she ordered herself.

Though she understood it was likely a waste of time she ran fresh probabilities, and picked three possibles at random. She did deeper runs now, shifting through layers, looking for triggers, abnormalities, odd affiliations.

To switch her focus and keep sharp, she brought up a split screen of crime scene images and the promotion image of the bar, before it was washed in blood.

She tried to imagine the killer. Had he served drinks or ordered them? Had he walked in that day with a smile on his face, alone, in company, or to take his shift?

Sat at the bar, or worked

behind it?

Ventilation system was on, circulating the air. That’s what carried the substance throughout.

The bar, she thought again, or near it. The bar’s the hub. Not a big place, and everyone’s moving or talking—grabbing food, ordering drinks while they’re still on special.

Sit at the bar, your back’s to the room, she thought. But you could angle your stool, or use the mirror behind the bar to keep an eye on things.

She put her feet up again, thinking position. And tried to put herself inside that noise, that movement—the smells, the sounds.