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“Then we’ll move on to security and electronics. After we eat.”
“Yeah. I’ll get it. I need to let this sit and simmer some. If I missed something, if there’s a key, I’m not finding it.”
“What are we having?”
“I don’t know.” She checked the AutoChef’s menu without much interest. “They got nachos.” She perked up a bit. “Nachos are supposed to be good here, right? And this tortilla soup. Not bad.”
“I’m in,” Roarke said, thinking that with a messy plate of nachos and the soup she’d have to sit to eat.
She ordered it up, got drinks out of the office friggie. And wandered around her board again.
“The beginning, the beginning again.” She sat, scooped up a loaded nacho. “He’s settled in New York. Excellent hunting ground. He’s got money stashed all over the place—good, solid money—but he’s settled in his working-class building. We haven’t found a second location in New York, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have one. Higher end again. He gets caught, gets caged. But he finds people in the system to exploit. That didn’t start with Stibble and the guard. People running errands, giving him unrecorded access to coms. That takes money. You’ve got to keep the errand boys happy. So if he owned the second location, wouldn’t he sell it? Invest the money?”
“Possibly.”
“Because if he had another, and I think he did, why didn’t he go there, too? Why just where I took him down? He could’ve used that instead of a hotel. If someone else is living there, he
just does what he did to Schuster and Kopeski. More fun anyway. But if he sold it, it doesn’t mean anything. Reaching,” she said, pushing her hair back.
“Maybe, maybe not. Keep going.”
“I’m not sure where I’m going, but okay. He killed the New York partner before I took him down. Our best anal is he kills his partner before he switches locations. But there wasn’t any sign he planned to leave that apartment or New York. He had his collection there.”
“He was bored with that partner.”
“Yeah, or she got on his nerves or screwed up. But say he was bored with her, wouldn’t he have another on the string? A replacement, at least potentials?”
“I’d say yes. Yes,” he repeated, pleased they both seemed to be thinking more clearly. “And wouldn’t he want or need another place—one where he didn’t have to worry about the partner dropping by, or the potential becoming too curious about that locked room. A place where he could entertain her, begin to train her, develop the bond.”
“A place more suited to his tastes.”
“I could find it for you, given time,” Roarke considered. “But I don’t see how it would help you at this point.”
“Just additional data. He’s nested in New York. It’s his kind of town, and he’s having one hell of a run there. He’s listening to the media reports on the Collector, how the cops aren’t any closer. Oh, he’s loving it, maybe about to get a new mommy, too. Life is excellent. Then some poor bastard gets mugged and murdered outside his building, and I show up at his door.”
“He couldn’t have planned on that.”
“No, and that’s what he does. He plans. Anticipates, prepares for contingencies while he”—she trailed off with a spoonful of soup halfway to her mouth—“plans.”
“Someone got a buzz,” Roarke commented.
“He plans.” She pushed up, strode to the board. “That control, anticipation. Routine, procedure. It’s what made him so good at what he did. What did he have to do in prison but plan? Oh, he’s going to get out. It may take time, but that’s all right. He wants everything in place first. It takes time to groom the errand boys, time to get the rhythm of the prison, and show what a good boy he is so he gets a few perks. Time to find the partner, start the training. Time to set it all up, so he can move right ahead.”
Roarke saw precisely where she’d landed. “We haven’t been looking back far enough for the location.”
“No. We’ve been looking back a couple of years. Not far enough.”
“A dozen years is a long time, and clever. Who’d look that far back?”
“Not that far.” She laid a finger on Melinda’s picture. “Here, right here. She went to visit him. Whatever plans he made prior, he adjusted. She was the key. A sign from whatever perverted god he worships. He took her—the last he took—and I freed her. Melinda from Dallas. I knew that would trip his switch. I knew it had. How did I miss this?”
“Bollocks. You didn’t miss a thing. You didn’t even suspect he had another hole until yesterday. Why would you?”
He got up, went to her desk. “When did she visit him?”
“August ’fifty-five.”
“Then we start there.”
