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“Until now. It’s unlikely she was on that ferry to sightsee.”
“Very. It might’ve been a meet or a target, but odds are it was business.”
“Double cross. But someone like this, experienced, how does she get caught off guard and taken out? Someone she knew? Someone she trusted or underestimated maybe? Another spook? Another assassin?” She felt the frustration rising again, like flood water behind a dam. “Why so freaking public?”
“I couldn’t begin to guess. Tell me what you think about this smudge, this flash of light.”
She blew out a breath. “I left a message for Mira, asking her about the possibility of mass hypnosis. And that sounds crazy when I hear myself say it out loud. Not as crazy
as vortexes or invisibility cloaks, but in that mix of nuts. Still, we’ve dealt with mind manipulation before. The tiny burn in the cortex found in autopsy after suicides, manipulated by your pal Reeanna Ott.”
“Hardly my pal, as it turned out.” But he nodded to show they were on the same page. “Manipulation, in that case, done through audio.”
“So, a possible manipulation done optically,” Eve finished. “One that affects memory. But it has to do more. I can almost swallow people wouldn’t remember seeing someone haul out a dead body, but I have to figure they wouldn’t just let him by in the first place. And Carolee, whether she was conscious or unconscious, her kid wouldn’t have just stood where he was, would he, if he saw her come out? So, maybe we’re dealing with a device that can manipulate behavior, or sight, and memory? That’s a big jump. Mass hypnosis suddenly doesn’t sound so crazy.”
“There have been rumors, underground and through the tech world, of a device in development. A kind of stunner.”
“Ah. Got one of those.” Eve tapped the weapon at her side she’d yet to take off.
“Not your conventional stunner, but one that renders the target incapacitated through an optical signal rather than the nervous system. It sends a signal, through light, that shuts down certain basic functions. Essentially, in a theory not that far from your mass hypnosis, it puts the target into a kind of trance. Hocus Pocus.” He lifted his wineglass in half salute. “It’s often referred to as that, which made me think of it when you used the term. The rumors are largely dismissed, but not entirely.”
“We’re talking dozens of people,” Eve argued. “Potentially hundreds.”
“And the idea this device exists, and has a possibility for that sort of range, is . . . fascinating. And used as a weapon? Devastating.”
Eve pushed up from the table to pace. “I hate this kind of shit. Why can’t it just be regular bad guy crap? You’ve got money, I want it, I kill you. You’ve been screwing my wife, it pisses me off, I cut out your heart. No, I’ve got to worry about disappearing bodies and weapons designed to turn the lights out on masses of people. Crap.”
“It’s an ever-changing world,” Roarke said lightly.
She snorted. “How much credence do you and your R and D people put into this device?”
“Enough to be working on something similar—and a counter-device. Though both are still in the theoretical stages. I’m getting the data for you,” he added, gesturing toward the console.
She sat again, drummed her fingers on the table. “Okay, say this device exists, and was used today. Say its existence speaks to why Buckley was on that ferry, either with the device in her possession or with the hopes to make that so. It still doesn’t explain why she was murdered in the way she was, or why her body was taken off the ferry. Stealing or obtaining the device, even killing Buckley to get it, that’s business. Basically exsanguinating her and taking what’s left? That’s personal.”
“I wouldn’t argue, but business and personal often overlap.”
“Okay.” She lifted her hands and swiped them in the air as if clearing a board. “Why remove the body? Maybe to prove the hit, if it’s hired. Maybe because you’re a sick fuck. Or maybe to buy time. I like that one because it’s weirdly logical. It stalls the identification process. We have to depend on a DNA search and match. And then, we get what appears to be an innocuous vic, corn-f ed Iowa-born female consultant. Maybe, given some time, we’d dig under that, have some questions. But the bigger puzzler would remain, at least initially, how rather than who, since we had the who.”
“But, because I wanted to spend a bit more time with my wife, I happened to be there when she was identified.”
“Yeah. You recognized her, and that’s a variable the killer couldn’t have factored in.”
“Logical enough,” Roarke agreed. “But buy time for what?”
“To get away, to deliver the device and/or the body. To destroy the body, certainly to get the hell away from the scene. This spy stuff doesn’t work like the job. It’s convoluted, covered with gray areas and underlying motivations. But when you wipe away all of that, you’ve still got a killer, a victim, a motive. We cross off random, because no possible way. It wasn’t impulse.”
“Because?” He knew the answer, or thought he did, but he loved watching her work.
“The sign on the door, the getaway. It was vicious—all that spatter. A pro wouldn’t have wasted time with that. Cut the throat, skewer the heart, hit the big artery in the thigh. Pick one and move on. But blood doesn’t lie, and the spatter clearly says this was slice, hack, rip.”
The light softened as they spoke, and he wondered how many couples might sit in the evening light over a meal and talk of blood spatter and exsanguination.
Precious few, he supposed.
“Are you sure none of the blood was the killer’s?”
She nodded. It was a good question, she thought, and only one of the reasons she liked bouncing a case around with him. “Reports just in, taking samples of every area of spatter, and several from the pool, confirm it all belonged to Buckley.”
