Another truth, she knew, and it touched her, but she poked a finger in his belly. “Making it sound poetic doesn’t change how it’s screwed up.”
“And yet.” He kissed her. “We have pie.”
“That’s a bonus. But I need to get things set up before any pie.”
“And I need to check on some matters, as I left the work abruptly. Once I do, and you do as well, it’s my fondest wish—next to apple pie—to dip my fingers into the victim’s financials.”
“Always happy to grant those wishes.”
“I’ll come work on the auxiliary when I’m done with my own.”
On his way to his adjoining office, he ordered the fireplace on medium flame.
Another jolt. She had a fireplace in her office.
Mentally rubbing her hands together, she headed for the kickingest of kick-ass command centers.
Though she still had some trouble with the more advanced tech, she managed, generating what she needed from notes, her recording, official data, and carefully built her murder board, her murder book.
And completed the report she’d begun in the car.
She sent copies to her partner, her commander, and, after a moment’s thought, to Mira. As straightforward as this case seemed, it never hurt to have the department’s shrink and top profiler cued in.
When Roarke came back, she sat, boots up on her desk, still nursing the same glass of wine, watching the last moments of Mars’s life on the wall screen while the cat stretched out, full-length, on a curve of the command counter.
Roarke stood, slipped his hands in his pockets, studied as she did.
“Take another look,” she said to Roarke. “I’m looking for any sign the killer hung around. A lot of satisfaction to be gained by watching your target go down. I looked, and didn’t find a discarded weapon, but the sweepers’ report isn’t in yet. So I might have missed it.”
“Unlikely.”
“Unlikely’s not impossible. Computer, replay, half speed.”
Roarke saw several glasses shatter on the floor, the waiter Eve had interviewed wobbling as he tried to balance the tray and more glasses fell.
The image jerked—Eve leaping up, he thought.
He heard a laugh cut off in midstream, and the first screams. A man at a table shoved up, knocking his chair over. A woman standing at the bar glanced over, dropped her own glass, and lurched backward.
Larinda Mars, her right arm a sleeve of blood, continued her sleepwalker’s shuffle into the bar, her pupils so dilated her eyes read black. The image bobbled as Eve rushed toward the dying woman.
In the periphery, people froze. Some dropped to the ground, some started forward as if to try to assist, others moved away.
The screen began to fill with Mars as Eve rushed closer: the red blood flowing out against the bold pink, the mouth—yes, freshly dyed—slack, the eyes already sightless.
The sounds continued—panic, fear, confusion—as Eve’s hands and arms showed on screen, grabbing on as Mars collapsed.
“
Nobody sticks out,” she said.
“You do. The glasses hadn’t finished hitting the floor when you hit record,” he pointed out. “You reached her in under five seconds. That’s excellent reaction time, even for a cop, and I’d venture to say whoever killed her didn’t expect to have a cop in the bar, one who’d react so quickly, who’d engage her recorder.”
He ordered the recording to run again, studied the bystanders as he knew she had.
“No, nobody else stands out within recorder view. Still, it’s possible the killer might have strolled back up to the bar, ordered another drink to enjoy while someone discovered her body, or she managed to do what she did and come upstairs again. But if so, he or she didn’t show any reaction but the expected. Or weren’t visible on the recording.”
“Agreed. Computer, display exterior security feed, Du Vin, as previously cued.”