Take out the note. Smile at it, amuse yourself. Place it carefully on the body.
Walk out of the alley. Fifteen minutes, maybe. No more than fifteen, and you’re walking away. Carrying your prize back to your car. Excited, but controlled. Need to drive carefully. Can’t risk a routine stop when you smell of death and have that part of her with you.
Back home. Reset security. Shower. Dispose of your clothes.
You did it. You’ve imitated one of the great killers of the modern age, and no one’s the wiser.
She opened her eyes, stared up at the ceiling. If it was one of her five current candidates, he’d have to dispose of the body part as well, or have a very secure place to keep it as a souvenir.
Would a regular household recycler handle that sort of thing, or would you need something that handled medical waste? She’d need to check on that.
Bringing up a map on-screen, she calculated time and distance from the murder site to each of the suspect’s residences. Giving fifteen minutes in the alley, the time to hunt the victim—likely scoped out at some point earlier—clean up, drive home. Any of them could have done the job in under two hours.
Straightening up, she began to type up a report, hoping inspiration would strike. When it didn’t, she read over the facts, finished it off, and filed it.
She spent another hour learning about recyclers and the availability of laser scalpels. And decided to go back to the scene.
The street did a decent business during the day. A couple of bars, a storefront eatery, a market, and a money exchange were the closest businesses to the alley.
Only the bars had been open after midnight, and both of them were at the far ends of the block. Though the neighborhood had already been canvassed, she swung through each place again, running the routine, asking the questions, coming away empty.
She ended up standing at the mouth of the alley again with the beat cop, the neighborhood security droid, and Peabody.
“Like I said,” the cop named Henley told her, “I knew her, the way you know the locals LCs. She never caused any trouble. Technically, they’re not supposed to use the alley or any public access for work, but most of them do. We roust them now and again for it.”
“She ever complain about any john getting rough or hassling her?”
“Wouldn’t have.” Henley shook his head. “She steered clear of me, and the droid. Give me a little nod if we passed each other on patrol, but she wasn’t the friendly sort. We get some rough stuff in this sector—johns and janes slapping an LC around. You got some mopes coming through mugging them, and sometimes they wave a sticker around. Had some use ’em, but not like this. Never had anything like this.”
“I want a copy of any reports where they used a sticker, any kind of blade.”
“I can get that for you, Lieutenant,” the droid told her. “How far back do you want to go?”
“Give me a full year. Keep it to attacks on women, with LCs the priority. Maybe he practiced first.”
“Yes, sir. Where should I transmit?”
“Send it to me at Central. Henley, where’s the safest place to park in this area? Street or underground, not a surface lot or port.”
“Well, you want quiet, lower crime, probably you’d go west, maybe Lafayette. You want busy, so there’s too much going on for anybody to mess with your ride, you could hike it up the other side of Canal, into Little Italy. Restaurants stay open late.”
“Okay, we’re going to try this. One of you take from here to Lafayette, the other head north. Ask residents, merchants who might have been around at that time of night, if they noticed a guy alone carrying a bag. Some kind of bag, good-sized one. He’d’ve been moving along pretty quick, no meandering, and going for a car. Talk to the LCs,” she added. “One of them may have tried to hustle him and got brushed off.”
“Long shot, sir,” Peabody said when they’d split off again.
“Somebody saw him. They don’t know it, but they saw him. We get lucky, jog a few memories.” She stood on the sidewalk, baking in the heat as she scanned the street.
“We’re going to have to see how much we can stretch the budget for added security and surveillance for a square mile around this scene. He’ll stick to the mile, stick to the script. And it played too well for him the first time—he’s not going to want to wait too long before act two.”
Chapter 6
It was a diffi
cult meeting for him to take. It had to be done, and Roarke could only hope that some of the weight he was carrying at the base of his skull would lift once it was over.
He’d put it off too long already, and that wasn’t like him. Then again, he hadn’t felt completely like himself since he’d met Moira O’Bannion, and she’d told him her tale.
His mother’s story.