She called Dispatch and ordered an all points on the woman and her vehicle.
Calmer, with the twist of her earlier words unraveling in his gut, he slowed, glanced at her. “How many homicide victims have you stood for in your illustrious career, Lieutenant?”
“Stood for? That’s an odd way of putting it.” She moved her shoulders, trying to focus her mind on a man in a long, dark coat with a shiny new car. “I don’t know. Hundreds. Murder never goes out of style.”
“Then I’d say you’re well past the double digits, on both sides. You need to eat.”
She was too hungry to argue with him.
“The trouble with the cross-check is Metcalf’s diary,” Feeney explained. “It’s full of cutesy little codes and symbols. And she changes them, so we can’t work a pattern. We’ve got names like Sweet Face, Hot Buns, Dumb Ass. We got initials, we got stars, hearts, little smiley faces or scowly faces. It’ll take time, and lots of it, to cross it with the copy of Nadine’s or the prosecutor’s.”
“So what you’re telling me is you can’t do it.”
“I didn’t say can’t.” He looked insulted.
“Okay, sorry. I know you’re busting your computer chips on this, but I don’t know how much time we’ve got. He’s got to go for somebody else. Until we find Nadine . . .”
“You think he snatched her.” Feeney scratched his nose, his chin, reached for his bag of little candied nuts. “That breaks pattern, Dallas. And all three bodies he hit he left where someone was going to stumble over them pretty quick.”
“So he’s got a new pattern.” She sat on the edge of the desk and immediately shifted off, too edgy for stillness. “Listen, he’s pissed. He missed his target. It was all going his way, then he fucks up, downloads the wrong woman. If we go with Mira, he got plenty of attention, hours of airtime, but he failed. It’s a power thing.”
She wandered to her stingy window, stared out, watched as an airbus rumbled past at eye level like an awkward, overweight bird. Below, people were scattered like ants, rushing on the sidewalks, the ramps, the handy-glides to wherever their pressing business took them.
There were so many of them, Eve thought. So many targets.
“It’s a power thing,” Eve repeated, frowning down at the pedestrian traffic. “This woman’s been getting all the attention, all the glory. His attention, his glory. When he takes them out, he gets the kick of the kill, all the publicity. The woman’s gone, and that’s good. She was trying to run everything her way. Now the public is focused on him. Who is he, what is he, where is he?”
“You’re sounding like Mira,” Feeney commented. “Without the thousand-credit words.”
“Maybe she’s nailed him. The what is he, anyway. She thinks male, she thinks unattached. Because women are a problem for him. Can’t let them get the upper hand, like his mother did. Or the prominent female figure in his life. He’s had some success, but not enough. He can’t quite get to the top. Maybe because a woman’s in the way. Or women.”
She narrowed her eyes, closed them. “Women who speak,” she murmured. “Women who use words to wield power.”
“That’s a new one.”
“That’s mine,” she said, turning back. “He cuts their throats. He doesn’t rough them up, doesn’t sexually assault or mutilate. It’s not about sexual power, though it’s about sex. If you term it as gender. There’s all sorts of ways to kill, Feeney.”
“Tell me about it. Somebody’s always finding some new, inventive way to ditch somebody else.”
“He uses a knife, and that’s an extension of the body. A personal weapon. He could stab them in the heart, rip them in the gut, disembowel—”
“Okay, okay.” He swallowed a nut manfully and waved a hand. “You don’t have to draw a picture.”
“Towers made her mark in court, her voice a powerful tool. Metcalf, the actress, dialogue. Furst, talking to viewers. Maybe that’s why he didn’t go after me,” she murmured. “Talking isn’t my source of power.”
“You’re doing all right now, kid.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” she said with a shake of the head. “What we’ve got is an unattached male, in a career where he’s unable to make a deep mark, one who had a strong, successful female influence.”
“Fits David Angelini.”
“Yeah, and his father if we add in the fact that his business is in trouble. Slade, too. Mirina Angelini isn’t the fragile flower I thought she was. There’s Hammett. He was in love with Towers but she wasn’t taking him quite as seriously. That’s a squeeze on the balls.”
Feeney grunted, shifted.
“Or there’s a couple thousand men out there, frustrated, angry, with violent tendencies.” Eve hissed a breath through her teeth. “Where the hell is Nadine?”
“Look, they haven’t located her vehicle. She hasn’t been gone that long.”