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“A pattern. You believe he’s been killing for—Christ—forty years? Without slipping, without suspicion?”
“I stopped thinking it halfway through the forty. I know it. It’s a way to solve a problem, it’s a choice. It’s going to take more to find out what the problem might have been in each case. Some are obvious,” she continued, gesturing at the board as she paced in front of it. “An affair resulting in a pregnancy, and the other party wouldn’t let go. Money difficulties pawned off on a partner, one who might have either been in on the skimming or learned of it. A nosy photographer who saw or photographed something damaging. A stupid young girl who pushed for marriage, likely threatened to tell his wife.”
“Sex and money, as you said all along.”
“Most are violent, somewhat impulsive. A shove, a blow. A cover-up. He might even see them as accidents. Or self-defense in a twisted way.”
Roarke laid a hand on her shoulder when she stopped beside him. “Nine people.”
“Very likely more, but it’s a hell of a start. He’s a serial killer who doesn’t fit the standard profile. He doesn’t escalate, or stick to type, stick to method. His connections or involvements with each pop out when you lay it out, but otherwise, it’s just a four-decade span of accidents, suicide, misadventure. Just bad luck. Who’s going to connect an almost ninety-year-old hiker slipping off a canyon path with a drunk twenty-year-old college kid falling down the stairs six years earlier?”
“You.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know if I would have. I looked at this—at Harris—as a first kill. I looked at the list of suspects and thought argument, impulse. Period. Panic, cover-up. Mira thought the same, though she did talk about there being two different styles—the impulse, the calculation. I saw it, but I didn’t. Not clearly. Then you said maybe he’d done it before. I never considered that. Never considered this.”
“What do you see now, when you look at the pattern?”
“Ambition, greed, self-indulgence, an obsessive need to preserve status and reputation. Sociopathic tendencies and a need to control, absolutely. He killed Asner rather than pay him off, risking that second kill. But there’s calculation there. He’s alibied, and while Asner was connected to Harris, he was also connected to any number of unsavory types given his line of work. He paid Valerie off for the alibi. He can’t afford a third kill, not now. But eventually she’ll have an accident. He’ll make sure she’s paid and rewarded until he can get rid of her.”
“He killed Harris because she’d seen the pattern.”
Eve nodded. “Or some of it—even one element—and she hired Asner to dig into it. He may have seen more of the pattern. We’ll probably never know the full extent of what he and Harris knew.”
She sat on the edge of her desk, picked up her empty coffee cup, scowled at it. “I can’t prove any of it.”
“Yet.”
“It’s nice having somebody believe I can work small miracles.”
“Every day. It’s likely he’s made other payoffs. I can look for that, near the dates of each of these deaths. I can look into the embezzlement for accounts opened during that period. And starting with the college roommate, into his academic records.”
“I’ve got a couple of ex-wives I can approach, police reports I need to go through again—investigators to nudge. There’s no such fucking thing as a perfect murder. There will be mistakes, more connections. He may have gotten away with this for longer than I’ve been alive, but his time’s up.
“It’s up,” she murmured. “And he’s going to pay for every face on these boards. I need coffee. Then let’s start working some small miracles.”
Cold cases had their own tone, approach, dynamics. Memories faded or altered. Evidence was misplaced. People died.
For once she had an advantage in the time zone area. It was early enough in California for her to start making contacts, asking questions, requesting additional data.
She got lucky with Detective McHone—now Detective-Sergeant—who’d been secondary lead on the Buster Pearlman suicide.
“Sure I remember. Pearlman downed enough barbs to kill himself twice. Waste of good scotch, or so my partner said at the time. He had the lead on that. He’s retired now, lives out in Helena, Montana. Spends all his time fishing.”
“The data I’ve been able to access indicated Pearlman was—allegedly—embezzling funds from the studio.”
“He’d skimmed fifty large just that morning, into an offshore account under his wife’s maiden name. She swore he wouldn’t steal a gum-ball. They weren’t living over their means. Their means were pretty damn good as it was. The funds skimmed came up to ten times what we found. Never could zero in on the rest.”
“What tipped you to the embezzlement?”
“The wife. She and the kids had been visiting her parents for a few days. When they got back, they found him. She said it couldn’t have been suicide. He’d never kill himself, never leave her and the kids. Pushed and pushed. It didn’t take long for us to find the money, or to smell out the problem at the studio. They had an audit scheduled for the next week.”
“Tell me about Steinburger.”
“Is he on your list for K.T. Harris?”
“He was there, so he’s on the list.”
“I remember he was adamant about Pearlman being innocent. About it being some kind of accident. Pretty damn pissed we’d smear a good man’s name, upset his family. Went public on it, too. Got a lot of play for standing up for his friend and partner, trying to support the widow and kiddies.”
