“Too many regard the female circle as weak.” He stroked a hand over Eve’s hair—much as she’d stroked the cat. “To their peril.”
“The killer’s female.”
“You have a witness? That’s burying the lede, darling.”
“Process, not a wit. She killed the first victim as a woman, killed the second in the guise—and mind-set—of a man.”
She told him of the security video, moved through to the conversation at the DeLano house.
“The younger kid—Piper—strikes me as scary smart. Not just with the school stuff and math and whatever. Just … canny. That’s one of your words.”
“Is it?”
“It even sounds Irish. Anyway, she makes this woman from the printouts—no hesitation. Describes what she’s wearing, and it was two months ago. DeLano’s nervous because the suspect was that close to her family, obviously following them around, but she’s not surprised the kid remembers. Apparently she remembers shit.”
“How old is she?”
“Fourteen—sister’s got a couple years on her. But here’s the thing, and something I didn’t say to any of them. I think, yeah, maybe the kid observes and remembers, but I don’t think a fourteen-year-old girl pays that much attention to some random woman, not when she’s juiced about Christmas, in the shopping mode.”
“You think something about the woman had her paying more attention.”
“Probably subconscious. Just an instinct. She might have seen her otherwise—looking different—but something triggered something.”
“Are you concerned for DeLano and her family?”
“Not yet.” But she’d fully apprised Brooklyn PSD. “Eight books in the series, and she’s going to want at least a couple more. She’s planning on all of them, but she might snap before eight.”
Because she worried about that snap, Eve frowned into her wine.
“Then she’ll go for DeLano. Or one of the kids, the mother, to make her suffer first. I’ve got Brooklyn keeping an eye on things, and I gave the family the precautions to take. Mira thinks the killer’ll turn on what she calls the creator at some point, but not yet. She’s having too much fun to eliminate the source.”
“What do you hope to find in the books?”
“DeLano’s not a cop or a killer, but she has to try to think like one. And she taps a retired cop for some research when she needs to. I’ve got three detectives I know of who say she hits the mark.”
“Add an expert consultant, civilian.”
“Okay. But in a story, there’s got to be a trail or a screwup, or some luck, right? It seems to me our killer’s real familiar with the books, and she’d avoid that trail, screwup, try to block the luck.”
“Ah.” Understanding her, Roarke managed to top off their wineglasses without disturbing the snoring lump of cat. “She’ll need to do some editing.”
“You could say. The first’s a serial, but she’s not going to go after another LC. That’s not the point. Did that, move on. In the second, the killer—male—was connected to a competitor of the victim. She won’t have a connection.”
“So you’re looking for what not to look for.”
“Sort of. You’ve still got to cover the ground, but I have to figure she’s copying the book, so she thinks: Doing this led to Killer A’s downfall. So I’m going to do this instead. The other thing is, for the first book the killer’s just targeting street-level LCs between eighteen and twenty-two, because that’s what her husband goes for, for sideline fucks. Our killer needed to find a more specific type, one that matched the first victim. Eighteen, in her first two months in the life, who used a time-in-and-out flop.”
“Writing it’s one thing, a blank page. Re-creating is more limiting.”
“Bang. And still, with street-level LCs it’s not hard. You troll around some, you cull out the ones who fit the age bracket. Maybe you take some pictures on the sly, find a way to get info on them. It’s going to take a little time, but you’re a planner, and planning well takes time.”
Understanding where she was going, Roarke nodded. “The second’s more difficult. A young actress with a vid habit. A classic vid habit. The Hitchcock vid—was it the same vid in the book?”
“DeLano said it was the Bitchcock—”
“Funny.”
“It’s got a ring. It was him, but another vid. Ah, shit, M Stands for Murder—I need my notes, because that’s not it.”