“Yeah. I guess it’s not enough sleep and too much on the brain.”
“You need to take a break.”
“Maybe I do.” She knuckled her eyes again, but this time to clear fatigue instead of tears. “If it wasn’t so cold out, I’d take a walk, get some air, some exercise.”
“I don’t know about the air,” he said as she rose. “But I can help with the exercise.” Grinning, he laid a hand on her ass, gave it a squeeze.
“Yeah?” Her eyes danced; her libido boogied. “You wanna?”
“Let me answer that question by ripping your clothes off.”
She let out a laughing squeal as they tumbled to the floor. “I thought, you know, you weren’t feeling the bloom and spark.”
“Something’s blooming just fine,” he said as he dragged off her sweater.
She tugged his pants down ov
er his hips to check for herself. Looking down, she said, “I’ll say.”
“And as for sparkage.” He crushed his mouth to hers in a kiss hot enough she envisioned smoke coming out of her ears. “Any more, and we’d torch the place.”
She saw his eyes go dreamy when his hand cupped her breast, felt her stomach muscles tighten in response.
“Mmmm, She-body, the most female of females. Let’s see what we can light up.”
Later, considerably later, Eve studied the data Peabody had sent to her office unit. “She’s right,” Eve mumbled. “Too young, wrong method. Dobbins hits me as just too sloppy, just too disinterested. Klok’s coming across as straight and narrow. But there’s something here. I just can’t see it yet.”
“Maybe you would if you got a decent night’s sleep.”
Instead, she walked around her boards again. “Opera. What about the opera-tickets angle?”
“I’ve got the list for season ticket holders for the Met. Nothing on the first cross-check. I’ll try others.”
“He jumps names, jumps names and ID data. Covert stuff. Smooth, under radar. Where’d he learn how? Torture methods. Covert operations have been known to employ torture methods.”
“I can tell you my sources on the matter of torturers isn’t popping anyone of this generation still living and in business, or anyone who moonlights by targeting young brunettes.”
“It was worth a shot,” Eve mused. “Covert might change that. Someone who was in military ops, or paramilitary at one time. He learned the methods somewhere, and developed the skill to manipulate his data.”
“Or has the connections or the funds to hire someone to manipulate it,” Roarke reminded her.
“Yeah, there’s that. So. Why do we torture someone?”
“For information.”
“Yeah, at least ostensibly. Why else do you torture? Kicks, sexual deviation, ritual sacrifice.”
“Experimentation. Another tried and true rationale for inflicting pain.”
She looked at him. “We eliminate the need or desire for information, and the sexual deviation. No doubt in my mind he gets personal gratification from inflicting pain, but it has to be more. Ritual’s part of it, but this isn’t some sick religious deal or cult. So, experimentation,” she repeated. “Fits. Factor in that he’s very good at it. Torture skills are specialized. He isn’t messy about it, he’s precise. Again, where did he learn?”
“And you’re back to the Urbans.”
“It keeps crossing there. Someone taught him, or he studied. Experimented before the experimentation. But not here, not in New York.”
Circling her board, she studied, considered angles. “We ran searches for others before. I did a Missing Persons run on the victim type. But what if he experimented elsewhere? If he purposefully mutilated the bodies to eliminate the correlation, or disposed of them altogether?”
“You’re going to do a global search on mutilations and missing persons involving the victim type.”