Dark in Death (In Death 46)

“Yeah, and the ME cited—especially with the vic being unconscious at the time—it didn’t take a lot of strength to strangle her. We looked at the female angle,” Reineke added. “But hit the wall there, too. We’ve been waiting for the next shoe to drop. You know, the bow, a symbol maybe. But so far, nothing.”

“You hate seeing one open this long.” Jenkinson glanced at the case board. “A month goes by, five weeks, it stays this cold, the odds just get longer. Either a break falls in your lap, or you get another one. You got another one, LT?”

“I think she was another one.”

“Nothing popped out of IRCCA with the white sash and bow. We got scarves and bows and sashes,” Reineke said, easing to his feet again. “But not with all the elements.”

“We’ve got all of them, just not in reality. In fiction.”

“Fiction? Is that why that writer was here with Nadine?” Reineke asked. “The one Peabody was all about? Santiago’s a big fan. Talked me into reading one. I don’t much like cop books. They end up pissing me off, but this one was pretty solid. I keep meaning to try another.”

“Never read a cop book that didn’t blow. You want fiction?” Jenkinson said. “Go with science fiction. You know it’s bullshit going in.”

“This one didn’t blow,” Reineke insisted. “You’re saying the Hightower writer wrote about a killing like ours?”

“She says exactly like, and the way she ran it down, she’s right about that. She also wrote one that plays like the one Peabody and I caught yesterday. Too many mirroring elements to be coincidence. Take a fresh look with this in the mix.

“Your victim wasn’t just plucked off the street,” Eve told them. “She was target specific to mimic the victim in the book. The killer had to stalk and research. The motive arrows back to the books, and the books come from the writer.”

“Which book was it?” Reineke demanded. “Santiago’ll have it. It’ll help to take a look at it.”

“Dark Falls. It’s the connected series … Hightower, and launches the Dark series. The second’s my case. The third’s going to be a poisoning in a dance club. Female vic. Anybody gets a dispatch on that, I hear about it. I take it. Spread that word. I’ve got a consult.”

She looked over as Peabody came in.

“Did you get the fangirl out of your system?”

“Born a fangirl, die a fangirl.”

Eve smiled, very, very pleasantly. “You might just, and sooner than you expect.”

“I wasn’t just fangirling.” Peabody kept herself beyond boot-kicking distance when she joined them. “I escorted her out, and fangirled just the proper amount so she wouldn’t freak any over the line of questioning I worked out while you were handling the more personal in interview.”

“What line was that?”

“How some writers use readers to beta test a story. She doesn’t. I figured if she did, we’d want to look there, but it goes straight from her to her agent and editor. Nobody, not even her mom or her kids—and they’re tight—see any of it. And some writers use researchers to dig up especially obscure or highly detailed information. She doesn’t, so no go on that, either. She’s a little superstitious about the process, like, if she lets too much of what she’s working on or thinking up out there, it, like, diffuses or something. But she has talked to our own Morris a few times, and she sometimes asks Detective Olivia Diaz—retired—some procedural questions. That’s one of the detectives she went to when her ex tuned her up. She was out of the eight-three in Brooklyn. They keep in touch.”

“Diaz still in Brooklyn?”

“She moved to Cape May about three years ago when she put in her papers. I did a quick run on her on the way back up. She looks solid.”

“Reach out, talk to her while I’m with Mira. You’ve avoided unexpected death.”

“Always a good day.”

“The day’s not over,” Eve commented, and walked out.

6

Eve grabbed a glide, then wove her way through people who obviously weren’t in any damn hurry. She quick-walked the rest of the way to Mira’s outer office, where the dragon admin guarded the gates.

She said, “You’re late, Lieutenant.”

Damn it. Deliberately, Eve looked at her wrist unit. Two fricking minutes. Two. “Sorry. I was detained by a little something we call murder.”

The admin simply smiled her thin, humorless smile and tapped her earpiece. “Dr. Mira, Lieutenant Dallas is here. Of course. You can go right in,” she told Eve.

Eve breezed by the dragon’s lair and opened the door to Mira’s sanctum.