“Sure.” He stepped out, grinning. He carried the bag in one hand, and was naked but for her summer straw hat. Since it was perched jauntily at his crotch, she assumed her success made him as happy as it made her.
She laughed until she thought her ribs would crack. “You’re such a moron,” she managed, and jumped him.
For Eve it was a matter of merging bare facts with educated speculation. “He had to know their routines, which means he knew them. Doesn’t mean they knew him, doesn’t connect them, but he knew. He’s too cocky for them to have been random. He trolled first.”
“That’s the usual pattern, isn’t it?” Roarke cocked his head at her look. “If my one true love was a dentist, I’d study up a bit on the latest thoughts on dental hygiene and treatments.”
“Don’t say dentist,” Eve warned, automatically running her tongue warily over her teeth.
“By all means let’s stick with bloody murder.” And knowing there was no talking her out of another cup of coffee at midnight, had another himself. “The trolling, the selecting, the stalking, the planning. They are all essential parts of the whole for the typical, if the word can be used, serial killer.”
“There’s a rush in it, the control, the power, the details. She’s alive now because I allow it, she’ll be dead because I want it. It’s clear he admires the serial killers who made names for themselves. Jack the Ripper, the Boston Strangler, so he emulates them. But he’s very much his own man. Better than they were, because he’s versatile.”
“And he wants you pursuing him because he admires you.”
“In his own sick way. He wants the buzz. It isn’t enough to kill. That doesn’t heat the blood enough. The hunt, being both hunter and prey, that does it for him. He hunted these women.”
She turned to the board she’d set up in her home office, with pictures of Jacie Wooton and Lois Gregg, alive and dead. “He watched them, learned their routines and patterns. He needed a prostitute for the Ripper imitation, and a certain type of LC. She fit the mold. He expected her to walk along that street at that time. It wasn’t chance. Just as Lois Gregg fit his need for a Strangler vic, just as he knew she’d be home alone on a Sunday morning.”
“And knew someone would find her before the end of the day?”
“Yeah.” Sipping coffee, she nodded. “Quicker gratification that way. More and more likely he called in the anonymous nine-one-one. Wanted Wooton found as soon as possible so the adulation and horror could begin.”
“Which tells me he feels very safe.”
“Very safe,” Eve agreed. “Very superior. If Gregg hadn’t had family or friends who were bound to check on her in a few hours, he’d have to wait to get the next kick, or risk another nine-one-one. So he targeted these women specifically, just as he’s targeted the next.”
She sat, rubbed her eyes. “He’ll imitate someone else. But it’ll be someone who created a stir, and who left bodies where they could and would be found. We eliminate historic serial killers who buried, destroyed, or consumed their victims.”
“Such a fun group, too.”
“Oh yeah. He’s not going to copy someone like Chef Jourard, that French guy in the twenties, this century.”
“Kept his victims in a large freezer, didn’t he?”
“Where he carved them up, cooked them up, and served them to unsuspecting patrons of his fancy bistro in Paris. Took them nearly two years to catch him.”
“And he was famed for his sweetbreads.”
She gave a quick shudder. “Anybody who eats internal organs of any species baffles me. And I’m off the track.”
He trailed a hand down her arm. “Because you’re tired.”
“Maybe. He’ll stay more straightforward, won’t go for a play on someone like Jourard, or Dahmer, or that Russian maniac Ivan the Butcher. But people being what they are, he’s got plenty of others to work with. He’ll stick with women.”
She walked back to the board. “When you kill women the way he did these two, you’ve got a problem with them. But he’s not connected to the actual victims. I’ll go back and push the paper—the note. See if anyone on the list has a particular interest in celebrity killers.”
“There’s another you might want to speak with,” Roarke suggested. “Thomas A. Breen. He’s written what some consider the definitive book on twentieth-century serial killers, another on mass murderers throughout history. I’ve actually read some of his work, as the subject matter is of some interest to my wife.”
“Breen, Thomas A. I might’ve read some of his stuff. Sounds vaguely familiar.”
“He lives here in the city. I looked up the particulars when you were at Central, as I thought you might want a word with him.”
“Smart guy.”
This time when she reached for the coffeepot, he laid a hand over hers to stop her. “Smart enough to know you’ve had over your quota of coffee for the day, and despite it you’re starting to droop.”
“I just want to run a couple of probabilities.”