Echoes in Death (In Death 44)

“She wanders outside because the assailant released her, as he had with previous targets. Other couples, with similar lifestyles, social and financial standings. A pattern. Murder changed the pattern, expanded it, so the assailant pushes his escalation, in time frame, in violence.”

She could see it—God, she could feel it. All of it. All sides of it.

“It was always going there,” she said. “Always. From the first time he tried to intimidate a woman, to push himself on her, and was rejected. From the first time he fantasized about a woman he couldn’t have, it was going there. This?” She gestured to the board. “This was always in him, no matter what mask he wore to hide it. He couldn’t have this woman. Might have made some overture, was rejected. Maybe simply kept it to fantasy, but the fantasy kept cycling, deepening, darkening.”

She walked back to her comp, opened a file, ordered an image on screen.

The man and woman stood with their arms around each other’s waists, laughing. An ocean flowed behind them. She wore a short, billowing dress that the breeze blew high on her thighs. Her hair lifted in it, swirling dark, wildly curling around a singularly beautiful face.

While the man was handsome, fit, appealing—leaning toward distinguished—she dominated the image.

“This was taken about twenty years ago, for a profile on the couple, published in some glossy mag.”

“Who are they?”

Eve held up a finger, called up another image.

Now two couples stood together, formal wear, jewels, glamour. Along with the glamour was an ease, a look of enjoyment.

“Are the women related? There’s a resemblance, though the one on the left is…”

“Exceptional. Stunning. The object of his desire.”

Roarke nodded, came to lean against the curve of the command center. “His mother?”

“No. His mother’s on the right. His aunt’s on the left. He spent a lot of time with his aunt and her family. Visiting, spending school breaks.”

She called up a picture of the woman, just the face, then split-screened it with another.

“Do you see it?”

Roarke glanced back at Eve, then looked more closely at the two images. “Both have dark, curling hair, both are extremely beautiful.”

“It’s more,” she insisted. “The shape of the face, the shape of the mouth. Not exact, but very similar. The way their eyes are set—I did a comparison. They don’t resemble each other, but they do, on a kind of subliminal scale. It’s the balance of their features, the almost perfect symmetry. He may not have understood it, not consciously, but there, suddenly, the woman he’d fantasized about most of his life. There she was, young, beautiful, available. But—”

Eve reached for her coffee. “She didn’t want him. She wanted his cousin.”

“You believe…” He had to look at the board to read the name. “You believe Kyle Knightly attacked his cousin, beat and raped his cousin’s wife. Stole from them, tormented them, shattered them because he lusted for his cousin’s mother?”

“I know it. I felt something off, just off, when I talked to him at the studio. Something about the way he talked about Rosa—not the words, so much. But he did say that he’d seen her first, like he was joking, but his eyes weren’t joking. He said he’d told his cousin to make a move, even though she was with someone else. But today, she told me she’d made the move. It’s a small thing, but it’s going to matter, I think. And I think when I talk to her alone, she’s going to tell me Kni

ghtly approached her, she’ll tell me she had to brush him off.”

“Rejected him.”

“She wouldn’t have seen it that way. She’d have barely seen him at all because she’d already seen Neville. She told me today that the minute she saw him, that was it.”

Pausing, Eve turned to Roarke. “I know what she means. That’s another echo for me. The first time I saw you—that was in a crowd, too, the funeral for one of my dead—it hit, and hard. I didn’t like it one bit. It pissed me off, but it hit.”

“On both sides. One look.” Without thinking, he slid a hand into his pocket, rubbed his fingers over the button he’d carried ever since, one that had fallen off her truly ugly suit the day they’d met. “So, she barely saw him because all she saw was his cousin.”

“And, oh, that festered. He wants what he wants. He’s rich and powerful, actors and screenwriters and industry people come to him, and she says no? The others say no? His cousin thinks he can steal what should be his? First his cousin’s mother flaunts herself, makes him want, but won’t let him have. Now his cousin takes the fantasy that’s standing right in front of him, young and fresh. They have to pay for it, they all have to pay, these fucking people who remind him, over and over, of what he’s denied. Because he’s the best those bitches have ever had, and he can make them admit it.”

She let out a breath. “His second victim—the female—writes screenplays, like his aunt. That fits, and it solves the puzzle for me of why Lori Brinkman when none of his other female targets had any kind of career. He’s never been married, never officially cohabbed, or unofficially that I can find. He has a rep as a ladies’ man: dating beautiful women, never sticking according to gossip rags. And—”

She broke off, took another hit of coffee. “He’s got a sexual assault hit, charges dropped, right after his eighteenth birthday. And I went back, took a look, noted that right about the same time a cool mil was transferred from his parents’ financials to the complainant, the twenty-year-old woman who recanted.

“I think I’m going to find more payoffs, from him, that didn’t get as far as formal charges first. He dabbled in school plays, but hit his stride performing in and producing vids, high school, college. One of his highlights—self-proclaimed in an interview—was the restaging of Dracula, in which he also starred, his freshman year in college. He said, in the interview, he saw Dracula as romantic as well as sexual, and that by seducing and taking his female victims, he was giving them sexual release during a time when repression was the rule. He … released them. Bound them by his power, then released them from their own inhibitions.”