So it all went down easy.
“If I didn’t know the fictional killer to be female, I’d know after reading the killing scene.”
“Easy to say.”
“Mmm.” Mouth full, she shook her head. “It’s the way the killer looks at the vic’s body when the vic’s unconscious, before the kill. It’s not with lust or disgust, not with admiration or perversion. It’s with envy. The firmness, the smoothness, the youth. It’s an older woman envying the young. You could twist it, sure, make it play the other way, but the killer’s thoughts and sensibilities at that moment are female and envious.”
“Interesting. I don’t know if I caught that when I read it.”
“She’s resentful. The fictional killer, she’s snapped. She’s not planning things out step-by-step like the real one. She’s on a mission. It’s revenge and it’s—in her mind—protecting her family, her home, her way of life. It doesn’t matter to her that the vics are new and inexperienced, and therefore easier prey. It matters that her cheating husband bought them, that he sneaks off to buy sex from barely legal LCs. And she’s stupid because the LCs are just doing their jobs, so if she wants to punish somebody, she ought to tie a damn bow on the husband’s dick before she lops it off.”
Roarke held up a finger as he swallowed. “Or perhaps have a firm and reasoned discussion with him on why he solicits those barely legal LCs.”
“ ‘Reasoned discussion’ my ass. Next time after he gets home late—telling her he had to work—she waits until he’s asleep, and whacks it off. Think you can go out and stick that in some teenage working girl, then try to stick it in me? Think again, asshole. Then maybe while he’s still screaming, she grinds up his cheating, dismembered member in that kitchen thing she likes so much, cooks it up in a pie, and force-feeds him his own cock.”
She pointed at him with her fork. “Let that be a lesson to you, pal, or a dire warning.”
“I require neither, and you’re putting me off my dinner.”
Eve shrugged that off, kept eating. “But does she go after the real problem, with that discussion or the whack? No. She kills three women. And would’ve gotten a fourth if Dark hadn’t tromped all over the law and the rules, stolen and hacked into the killer’s pocket ’link and found the first three victims and their data listed, along with three more.”
“How do you know that? You couldn’t have finished the book.”
“I skipped to the end.”
“You …” He closed his eyes as he drank more wine. “Some things are unforgivable.”
“It’s work, ace. I need to know what the killer knows, and how she uses it. They were closing in. Hightower was building a case, had a plan for drawing the killer in. But Dark jumped over the line, and if Hightower hadn’t covered her, would’ve lost her badge, likely soiled the case against a serial killer. She was right to turn in her badge at the end.”
“She’d known the first victim since childhood. That family was more family to her than her own. She was in emotional turmoil.”
“She was a cop,” Eve countered. “And if Hightower hadn’t caught up with her in that flop, she might have killed the killer. She wanted to, recognized that in herself. Recognized she’d warped the badge.”
“She saved a life.”
“And still. Justice first—I get that. And Hightower’s along those lines, but he stays on the right side of it, or bends it a little. She—Dark—snapped it.”
“He reminds me of you a bit. Hightower. An excellent cop, with good instincts—maybe not as deep as yours,” Roarke commented, “but good. And becoming, being a cop? A goal he never deviated from. He’s by the book, but understands the book isn’t only the law, the rules, but people and justice.”
“And she—Dark—tends to find the book a limitation, becomes frustrated by procedure. Maybe it’s growing up rough, learning how to slip and slide early, but … Hey, she’s a little like you, now that I think about it.” She shot him a grin. “You’re the girl in this one.”
“Now you’re metaphorically whacking off my dick.”
Amused, she shoved in more pie. “Just saying. Anyway, the killer changes scenes, enacts them differently, as the ones in the book get caught. She doesn’t intend to get caught.”
“So you’d look at the books as not only a blueprint, but a kind of dry run?”
“Yeah. The killer knows the books inside and out. Who knows the books as well as the writer?”
“I suppose, first, the editor.”
“Yeah, looked there. DeLano’s editor’s a guy, in his sixties, married, two offspring, and offspring from offspring. Not only doesn’t he fit the profile, but on the night of Rylan’s murder he was in his office—confirmed—until eighteen hundred, then met—also confirmed—one of his other writers for drinks at your Palace Hotel bar. And, just to be thorough, I also confirmed that on the night of Kent’s murder he was in Chicago speaking at a conference.
“He does, however, have a female editorial assistant, and there are proofers and other people who work in the publishing house who could—and do—access books even before they’re published.”
“Another however,” Roarke commented. “For the price of the download or hard copy, anyone can own the book and read it countless times.”
“Yeah, and that’s where I’m actually leaning. It seems to me, as tight as the DeLano family is, she’d have taken her kids to the publishing house. The canny one would likely have met a lot of the people there, and if—as advertised—she doesn’t forget stuff, she’d have recognized the woman shadowing them on the shopping trip. So I’ll be shifting my reading agenda for the rest of the night to fan mail. Anybody this obsessed with books, character, author—or all three—would have contacted DeLano, and probably more than once.”