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“Group house—if it’s still standing, I want a look at it once we find it. Maybe those keys fit a door there, maybe they don’t. But I’d like to see it either way. Once we find out where the hell it is.”
“I can dig it up—it’ll take some time unless one of them owned or owns it. Maybe Mr. Mira knows.”
Eve let out a sigh, and once again went on the hunt for a parking space. “Yeah. He might know. We’ll ask before we dig.”
—
Suzanne Lipski had a cramped little office space in a dilapidated building that housed a rape crisis center. The center did its best, Eve imagined, with whatever funding it could scrape up, to offer support, information, medical and emotional assistance to victims. The walls of that space—one smaller than her division at Central—held soothing and uplifting posters. Calm water, misty forests, sunny beaches. And a bulletin board full of emergency numbers, counseling information, support group information.
Eve stopped, studied a flyer—a pretty summer meadow under a perfect blue sky—for Inner Peace.
“Bang,” she murmured.
Lipski sat at a battered, overburdened metal desk on a squeaky swivel chair. She had no window, but a pot of greenery thrived on an ancient file cabinet under some sort of grow light.
She was a bone-thin woman of about sixty, with a messily curling mop of stone-gray hair. Her face was long, narrow, and brown as a cashew. She had dark eyes that told Eve the woman had seen it all, and was fully expecting to see it all again before she was done.
“We appreciate you seeing us,” Eve began.
“Mike’s persuasive. You’re doing your job, and I don’t fault you for it. In fact, thanks for your service, sincerely. But I have to do mine. The women who come here, to the support groups I head, to the shelters I endorse, they’re my priority and my responsibility. They’ve been raped, beaten, abused, had their security stripped from them. And too often, the law and society strips them all over again.”
Eve wasn’t going to argue, as too often it held true.
“The women I’m looking for have beaten, tortured, sodomized, and murdered two men. I believe they have another, and will end him by tonight. Whatever happened to them doesn’t justify these actions.”
“You don’t know what might have happened to them.”
Eve set photographs of the two victims on the desk. “This isn’t justice served.”
Lipski sat back, sighed. “These men. Powerful, influential, wealthy. Does it matter to you what they might have done to engender this sort of rage?”
“It matters. And if they raped their murderers, I would have done everything within the law to bring them to justice.”
“‘Within the law.’” Lipski pointed a long, bony finger. “I believe in the law, Lieutenant, Detective. I couldn’t sit here if I didn’t. But there are times, and too many, when I believe the law is cold and hard and blind. And still, if I knew who’d done this I would try to convince them to stop, to turn themselves in.”
“The first thing I’m going to tell you, and look at me,” Eve demanded. “Look at me and hear what I’m telling you. If you know, or you figure out who’s doing this, you do not contact them, do not approach them. What they’re doing is done with a rage so cold it would turn on you. I believe they have three more targets, and they won’t stop until they’re finished, they won’t stop because you reason with them, sympathize with them.”
With her jaw set, Lipski peered up at Eve. “And what of those targets? If you stop them, if you lock them up for what they’ve done, what of the men they targeted?”
“If these men raped the women I lock up? If they abused and raped them, I don’t care if they’re as powerful, influential, and wealthy as God, I will bring them down.”
Eve set her hands on the battered desk, leaned in. “But these women will kill again, and again. Now that they’ve gotten a taste for retribution, what’s to stop them from targeting other men? This one raped, this one tuned up his girlfriend, this one might have raped. Is that what you serve here? You get raped, go after the rapist and kill him?”
“No, that’s not what we serve here. But I believe in violence.”
“Hey. Me, too.”
For the first time the faintest smile cracked the stern, thin face. “Despite what we do, you and I, seeing, dealing with, living with violence every day of our lives, we believe in using it to protect and defend.”
“This isn’t for protection. This isn’t for defense.”
“If these men raped the women who killed them, their deaths protect women they would have raped.”
“Are we condemning people for crimes not yet committed? I’m not here to debate with you over what rape does to the body, to the mind, to the spirit. I’m here about murder.
“Charity Downing, Lydia Su, Carlee MacKensie, Allyson Byson, Asha Coppola, Lauren Canford. Do you know any of these women?”
Lipski’s chin jutted up while her arms folded over her bony chest. “I can’t and won’t disclose any confidential information about any woman who has come into this center.”
