Feeney hustled in, a grim smile on his f
ace. Roarke strolled in behind him, grinned cheekily at Eve. “I wouldn’t mind a cup, while you’re at it.”
“I don’t serve civilians.”
“Serve and protect, Lieutenant,” he reminded her. “Protect and serve.”
“Bite me,” she mumbled under her breath and carried the coffee to Whitney’s desk.
“We got ’em,” Feeney said.
“Hold that call. What have you got?”
“Me and the civilian here did some E-finessing. If only the budget could afford this boy.” With sincere affection, he slapped Roarke’s shoulder. “Devious mind and magic fingers. Ah well.”
“Cut through the bullshit, Feeney, and give me some weight.”
“Our suspect took diplomatic, public, and private shuttles—and the private transpo was buried deep—to Paris, to London, to Boston, and to New L.A. He was in those cities during the time of the unsolved murders preceding the ones here. He frequently travels to London, as you’d expect. Less frequently to Boston. For London he uses the diplomatic transpo. For Boston, public, though it’s first-class and pricey all the way. But for the West Coast, he went private, and alone. Two trips by this method, the first, one month before the murder of Susie Mannery, the second, two days before with a return the following day—the day after the murder. Same pattern on the other unsolveds.”
He turned to Eve. “Bull’s-eye, kid.”
Even with the added weight, it was almost midnight before Eve had the warrants in hand. Still, her earlier fatigue had burned away in a rush of adrenaline.
“How did you know?” Roarke asked as she drove uptown. “Walk the civilian through it.”
“It had to be one of them. The stationery was too pointed, too much there for it not to be. He used it purposefully, to bring himself into it. The attention, the amusement, the excitement. He needs that.”
She swung in behind a Rapid Cab, and let the cabbie plow the road for her. “But he’d have to know there’d be others, in New York, viable suspects. So he wouldn’t have been the first to buy it. Smith was, and Smith would be easy to track. He’s public, and he likes to make a splash.”
“Go on,” Roarke prompted.
“There’s Elliot Hawthorne with his supply of the same paper.”
“Speaking of him, he’s divorcing his current wife. Something about a tennis pro.”
She took time to smirk. “Figured Hawthorne would get around to it. He was a toss in, never seriously on my list. Too old for the profile, and nothing there. No pop.”
“But you still had to take the time to check him out, had to have him in the general mix. That would’ve pleased Renquist.”
“There you go. Then Breen, sending him the paper, just added a nice touch for Renquist. Breen was the expert, and someone Renquist probably admired. A month’s pay says we find Breen’s books in Renquist’s office. He’s studied Breen, the work and the man.”
“You never thought it was Breen.”
“Didn’t fit. Arrogant enough, knowledgeable enough. But this isn’t a guy who hates or fears women.”
She remembered his devastated face as she hammered at him, remembered the broken look in his eyes. She’d have to live with her part in putting it there.
“He loves his wife, and that makes him a sap, not a murderer. He likes being at home with the kid. Probably he’d do it whatever the mother did. But I pushed him anyway, pushed him hard.”
He heard the regret in her voice, and brushed a hand over her arm. “Why?”
“In case I misjudged him. In case . . .” She blew out a breath and tried to let the guilt blow out with it. “In case I was wrong. I liked him, right off, the same way I didn’t like Renquist.”
“So you worried part of it was personal for you.”
“Some. And Breen could’ve been involved, that was an angle I had to factor in. He could’ve provided the killer with data, pooled all of it to put into his next book. How he acted and reacted, answered, didn’t answer, in interview mattered.”
“He’ll get through it, Eve, or he won’t. It’s his wife who betrayed him, not you.”