“Catchy,” Roarke mused. “I’ll keep it in mind if I ever open a specialty retail outlet of that nature.”
“I’m going to do a search and locate on specialty retail outlets of that nature,” she said, mimicking his accent and making him grin. “Tonight.”
“Well then, we should both be busy enough to keep our minds off things best not thought about. Before we go to our respective corners, tell me this: Why does he do it?”
“Control. Abuse is always about control. Rape is about control, and at its core, so is murder. Even if the motive for murder is greed, jealousy, self-preservation, rage, or entertainment, it still comes down to control.”
“All crime comes down to it at its base, don’t you think? I’ll take this from you, be it your wallet or your life, because I can.”
“Why did you steal when you did?”
A hint of a smile played around his mouth. “All manner of selfish and entertaining reasons, Lieutenant. Certainly to possess something I hadn’t had, before I took it for myself. And the pleasure of doing so successfully.”
“To punish the person who possessed it first?”
He inclined his head, acknowledging the point. “No. They were, in most cases, purely incidental to the goal.”
“There’s the difference. Doesn’t paint the thief white, but murder often roots in punishment. I think it does here. Someone controlled him, punished him. A female, and now he’s showing her who’s boss. That’s why he left her naked. She probably wasn’t naked when he raped her. Tore her clothes—fibers still on her indicate—but he wouldn’t have bothered to strip her down. He bothered after because it added humiliation.”
She paused, considered. “He didn’t mutilate the female part of her, which expresses another kind of rage and control. It wasn’t sexual, but it was personal. He strangles, not with his hands—and odds are he could have snapped her neck like a twig—but he uses the ribbon. So it means something to him. The red cord is also personal. He takes her eyes, carefully, so he can blind her. Naked and blind, more humiliation. But he takes them so he can have that part of her. Does she watch him? I think, somehow, he wants her to watch him. Because he’s in charge now.”
“Endlessly fascinating,” he replied.
“What?”
“Watching you work.” He came around the desk, lifted her chin, kissed her lightly. “And there’s nothing nonsensitive about it. I’ll just put together a meal before we settle in.”
“That’d be good.”
While he went into the kitchen off her office, she set up a second murder board. To this one she added pictures of Marjorie Kates and Breen Merriweather.
She was standing, studying them, when Roarke came back in. He set a plate on her desk. “They’re yours now, too.”
“Yeah. I’m afraid they are.”
“Attractive women. Comfortably attractive rather than stunning. It’ll be the hair, won’t it? It’s the hair that’s the greatest similarity.”
“Build’s close, too. Average build. Caucasian women around thirty with a nice average build and long light brown hair. That’s a big pool for him to fish in.”
“Not so big when you add in the other factors.”
“No, that shrinks it. They have to poke around craft shops, and they have to be out, alone, sometime at night. He works them at night. Still gives him plenty to choose from.”
She stepped back. “I’d better get to it before he picks another one.”
When she went to her desk, she was delighted to see he’d brought out a burger and fries—even though there were a few little broccoli trees alongside them. She could ditch the broccoli—how would he know? But then she’d feel guilty. Since she was more ambivalent toward broccoli than guilt, she ate it first, to get it out of the way, while she started a search for retail shops that specialized in large men.
More than she’d expected, Eve noted as she poured coffee from the pot Roarke had set beside her plate. Upscale—well, think about it, she reminded herself—where else did the Arena Ball players, the basketball dudes, and tall or porky rich guys drop their fashion bucks?
There were midline and discount and, she discovered, design and tailoring services offered by a couple of the major department stores and a number of boutiques.
Didn’t exactly narrow the field.
When she altered the search to shoes, it bounced a few out, and tossed a few new sources in.
He could buy primarily or even exclusively online, she thought as she bit into her burger. A lot of people did. But wouldn’t he—a man who worked hard to build his body, who was proud of the results—want to select his clothes in real life? Check himself out in the mirror, have some fawning clerk tell him how good he looked?
A lot of projection, she admitted, out of a scarcity of solid facts.