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She lowered her eyes. “It’s the only lead I have. The killer has taunted me with these notes. It’s very upsetting. But that doesn’t excuse my disturbing your wife at home. Please convey my apologies to Mrs. Renquist.”
He smiled now, thinly. “I will do so. However, Lieutenant, I have the impression that you wouldn’t be here, offering this apology, had your superiors not insisted you do so.”
She lifted her gaze, met his, and let a hint of the resentment show through. “I was doing my job as best I know how. I don’t play politics well. I’m just a cop. And I follow orders, Mr. Renquist.”
He nodded. “I can respect someone who follows orders, and give some leeway to a public servant who allows her zeal for duty to cloud her judgment somewhat. I hope you weren’t reprimanded too harshly.”
“No more than my actions warranted.”
“And you remain as primary in this investigation?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Then I’ll wish you luck with it.” He rose and offered a hand. “And hope that you identify and arrest the person responsible quickly.”
“Thank you.” Eve took his hand, held it and his eyes. “I intend to put him into a cage, personally, very soon.”
He cocked his head. “Confidence, Lieutenant, or arrogance?”
“Whatever works. Thank you again, sir, for your time and your understanding.”
“I take it back,” Peabody said when they were clear of the building. “You’re good. Frustrated apology, with just a hint of resentment. The foot soldier who’d tried to do her job, and got shafted by her superiors. Forced to eat that crow, and swallowing it down stoically. You really sold it.”
“Wasn’t that far off. He could turn up a lot of heat under the department. He’s got both political and media connections. Nobody ordered me to apologize, but nobody’s going to be sorry I did, either. Fucking politics.”
“You make rank, you’ve got to play them sometimes.”
Eve merely shrugged and climbed back into the car. “Don’t have to like it. Don’t have to like him, either. In fact, every time I see him, I like him less.”
“It’s the snooty factor,” Peabody explained. “It’s really hard to like somebody who has a high snooty factor, and his is top of the scale.”
She looked back at the glossy white building, the shining tower, the waving flags. “I guess dealing with diplomats and ambassadors and heads of state every day makes a high snooty factor a prerequisite.”
“Diplomats, ambassadors, and heads of state are supposed to represent the people, which makes them no different than us. Renquist can take his snooty factor and shove it.”
She drove away from the white walls and flags, toward the heart of the city. “Wouldn’t hurt my feelings a bit if it turns out to be him. I’m going to lock the cage on this son of a bitch personally. I meant that. And I wouldn’t mind seeing Renquist’s snotty face on the other side of the bars when I do.”
She hunkered down at Central and used the exercise of clearing her desk to let her thoughts brew. She forwarded a dozen messages and demands from reporters to the media liaison, and happily forgot about them. She imagined there was a press conference in her future, but she didn’t have to think about it now.
She caught up on paperwork as much as she ever caught up on paperwork, then made some calls of her own.
She took out the notes, reread them, searching for a rhythm, phrasing, word uses, anything that clicked with the speech patterns of the people on her list.
It wasn’t his voice, she thought again. Deliberately not his voice. He assumes and mimics and becomes. Who did he become when he wrote the notes?
Her desk ’link signaled an incoming, and wanting to avoid reporters she waited for the transmission location to flash on. When she read Feeney, Captain Ryan, EDD, she answered.
“You work fast,” she said.
“Kid, I’m a frigging rocket. Got a pop might be your guy. Case is cold. Vic was a fifty-three-year-old female. Schoolteacher. Found strangled in her apartment by a sister. Cooked for a few days first. Raped with a piece of statuary, which he also used to bash her over the head. Strangled with a pair of those panty hose you people wear. Tied in a bow under the chin.”
“Bingo. How cold and where?”
“Went down June of last year, Boston. I’ll send you all the particulars. No note with this one, and he smashed her head and face pretty good with the statue. ME report says she was already on the way out when he strangled her.”
“Practice makes perfect.”
“Could be. I got another with enough clicks to make me wonder. Six months before Boston, out in New L.A. Fifty-six-year-old vic. This one was a squatter though, and that doesn’t fit. But somebody did her in her flop, raped her with a ball bat, smashed her up with it before he strangled her with her own scarf. Got a bow there, too, which is what pulled it.”
