Imitation in Death (In Death 17)
“Okay, okay. Thomas A. Breen.”
She went into the kitchen off her home office, felt the cat ribbon around her legs despite the fact he’d had a slice of pizza. She programmed a pot of coffee, got down mugs, then—sending a cautious glance toward the office—went to the small utility closet and dug into the space behind the cat food for the bag of triple chocolate chunk cookies.
She started to take one out for Roarke, decided she could go for one herself. Then thought, what the hell, he was helping her out. They’d blow what was left in the bag.
Sensing dessert, Galahad went into serious purr-and-rub mode. She poured a handful of cat treats into his bowl, watched him pounce on them like a lion on a gazelle as she loaded the coffee and cookies on a tray.
“Initial data’s up, though I assume you already have the basics,” Roarke said. “More’s coming. Why are you looking at Breen?”
“First, it’s standard to run anybody I interview during an investigation.” She set down the tray. “I’m going deeper because he flicked my switch. Don’t know why, exactly.”
She walked toward the wall screen where Roarke had already brought up the standard data. “Thomas Aquinas Breen, age thirty-three, married, one child, male, age two. Writer and professional father. Decent reported income. He makes a solid living, and appears to be on the track to making more. One bust for illegals—Zoner—age twenty-one. College smoke, nothing surprising. Native New Yorker, NYU grad: fine arts with post-grad work in criminology—I like that one—and creative writing. Earns his living writing magazine articles, short stories, and the two published nonfiction books to date, both substantial best-sellers. Married five years, both parents living and in Florida.”
“Sounds normal.”
“Yeah.” But it wasn’t, Eve thought. It wasn’t quite the pretty picture it presented. “Got a nice house in a nice neighborhood. Couldn’t afford it on what he made prior to the second hit book, but the wife has a high-powered job, so you assume they combined incomes as they’ve lived there since their second year of marriage. He deals with the kid, she makes the more regular bucks.”
He sampled a cookie. His wife, he thought as the chocolate exploded in his mouth, had an unerring sweet tooth. “I have any number of employees with a similar setup.”
“There was just something off, that’s all. Hard to pin. Then you add that this guy spends his day thinking about murder, reconstructing it with words, reading about it, imagining it.”
“Really?” He poured coffee for both of them. “Who would devote so much time and energy to murder?”
“I heard the sarcasm. The difference is a murder cop’s supposed to find murder abhorrent. This guy gets off on it. Not that big a leap between fascination and experimentation. He’s got the education, the flexible schedule, the knowledge, and a motive if you figure over and above the thrill, these murders, once it hits the media big, will juice up sales of his books. His wife’s a fashion exec, and I bet she knows the value of publicity, too.”
Studying the screen, she rocked back and forth on her heels. “He’s got the paper. Claims it was a gift from a fan, one he doesn’t remember. No way to prove or disprove. Yet. Be interesting if I find out he or his wife bought it though. That would be interesting.”
“I could smudge those privacy lines a bit, see what I can dig up on that.”
It was tempting, but Eve shook her head. “It wasn’t charged to his or his wife’s account. Not that we’ve found. Pushing that angle would mean more than a little smudge. We’ll stick to the bio for now.”
“Spoilsport.”
“He has the paper, and that’s enough. He has it, and he let me see it. That’s interesting enough for now.”
“If he’s your man, wouldn’t the wife know?”
“Seems to me, unless she’s an idiot. Her bio doesn’t read idiot to me. Julietta Gates, same age, another NYU grad. Bet they met in college. Fashion and public relations, double major. She had her path mapped out, and she’s moved right along it. Minimal break for birthing, then back to work. Made double what he did up until two years ago, and still pulls in about the same annually, and more regularly. Wonder how their financials are set up?”
“What are you looking for?”
“Who runs the show? Money’s power, right? I bet she calls the shots in that household.”
“If that’s the criterion, I feel I’m not as fully in charge as I should be around here.”
“Too bad for you. I don’t give a damn about your money. I bet Tom cares about hers.” She brought him, the house, the child, the feeling of the home back into her mind. “Needs her share to run that nice house, raise the kid the way he wants, until he rises up another level in his own line. Good clothes, good toys, good child-care droid as backup, while he works at his own pace, so he can take time off to play horsey with his son, take him to the par
k.”
“And those marks of a good father make him a murder suspect. As I’m following you, I’m afraid that makes us a very cynical pair.”
She glanced over her shoulder just to look at him. Cynical or not, she reflected, they were a pair. “He never talked about her as a partner, or as one of the points of the family triangle. You saw his stuff and the boy’s lying around. Toys, shoes, and so on, but nothing of hers. Interesting, that’s all. Interesting that they’re not a unit. Bring up the parental data.”
She scanned it, filling in the blanks from the bare essentials she’d studied earlier. “See, the mother’s the alpha dog here, too. Important career, the main wage earner. Father retired from his job to take over as professional parent. And look here, Mom served as an officer, including president, of the International Women’s Coalition, and is a contributing editor to The Feminist Voice. An NYU alum, while Dad went to Kent State. Yeah, that’s interesting.”
“Scenario being, Breen grew up in a female-dominant household, controlled by a woman with strong ideas and a political bent while his father changed the nappies and so forth. The mother pushed him to study at her alma mater, or he did so to gain her approval. And when choosing a mate, he selected another strong personality who would control his world while he took the more historically typical female role of nurturer.”
“Yeah, which doesn’t make him a whacked-out psychopath, but it’s something to consider. Copy and file the data here and to my unit at Central.”