“Oh, that.” She touched her fingers to the still-raw scratches. She’d never found that first aid kit. “A difference of opinion. I won.”
“Naturally. Put something on it, Lieutenant. I should be able to make it there by six thirty. We can eat on the way.”
“Fine.” Eat on the way? “Wait a minute. Don’t bring the limo.”
He only smiled. “Six thirty.”
“I mean it, Roarke, don’t—” She hissed when the screen blanked. “Damn.” With a sigh, she swiveled back to the computer.
The IRCCA was a fount of data on this one, she thought. she skimmed through, pausing over pertinent facts on David Baines Conroy.
Divorced, one child, male, Charles, born January 22, 2025, custody awarded to mother, Ellen Forte.
Big surprise, Eve thought. Mass murderers weren’t generally given custody of minor children. “Let’s get down to it,” she murmured. “Charges and convictions.”
Charged and convicted, Murder in the first, torture killing, posthumous rape, and dismemberment of Doreen Harden, mixed race female, age 23. Sentenced to life, maximum facility, no parole option.
Charged and convicted, Murder in the first, rape, torture killing, and dismemberment of Emma Tangent, black female, age 25. Sentenced to life, maximum facility, no parole option.
Charged and convicted, Murder in the first, sodomy, rape, torture killing, and dismemberment of Lowell McBride, white male, age 18. Sentenced to life, maximum facility, no parole option.
Charged and convicted, Murder in the first, rape, torture killing, and dismemberment of Darla Fitz, mixed race female, age 23. Sentenced to life, maximum facility, no parole options.
Charged and convicted, Murder in the first, sodomy, posthumous rape, torture killing, and dismemberment of Martin Savoy, mixed race male, age 20. Sentenced to life, maximum facility, no parole options.
Currently serving term on Penal Station Omega.
Suspected of twelve additional murders, cases open. Insufficient evidence to charge. Primary investigators available on request.
“List primaries,” Eve ordered and watched as names and data scrolled. “Moved around, did you, Conroy?” she muttered, noting that the detectives in charge were scattered all over the country.
She’d still been a teenager when Conroy had dominated the news. She remembered snatches, weeping family members begging Conroy to tell them where to find the remains of loved ones, grim-faced cops giving statements, and Conroy himself, a quiet face slashed with vicious, dark eyes.
They’d called him evil, she remembered. The Antichrist. That was the term used over and over again to describe him, to try, perhaps, to separate him from the human.
But he’d been human enough to conceive a child. A son. And that son was on her current list of suspects. Maybe, just maybe, she’d been focused too relentlessly on Selina Cross.
The son was drawn to power, she mused. Witchcraft was about power, wasn’t it? He’d known at least one of the victims. And two had been killed with a knife. Conroy had been very handy with a knife.
He’d also claimed to have been the instrument of a god, she recalled, scanning data. Yes, there, there in one of his rambling statements. She highlighted. “Give me audio on this.”
Working…
“I am a force beyond you,” Conroy’s voice crooned out, beautiful diction, almost musical. The son’s voice, Eve thought, was equally charismatic. “I am the instrument of the god of vengeance and pain. What I do in his name is grand. Tremble before me for I will never be vanquished. I am legion.”
“You are garbage,” Eve corrected. Legion. Cross had used the same term. Interesting…Had Conroy dabbled in Satanism, she wondered, in witchcraft? And had the son been attracted to the same areas?
Just how much, she wondered, did Charles Forte know about his father’s work? And how did he feel about it?
“Computer, run Charles Forte of this city, formerly Charles Conroy, son of David Baines Conroy, all data.
Working…
As the information beeped on, she tapped her fingers on the desk and considered. The mother had taken her son to New York, which meant, Eve mused, that the boy had traveled back to attend the trial. He’d made the effort, likely over his mother’s objections. Dropped out of college, second term. Studied pharmaceuticals. Very interesting. Licensed as a chemical drone, worked on drug cloning and manufacture. Moved around quite a bit, she noted. Like his dear old dad. Then settled back in New York, co-owner of Spirit Quest.
She leaned back, unconsciously rubbing her wounded throat. No marriages, no children, no arrests. She played a hunch.
“Medical data.”