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“Sir?” Uniform Carmichael said, standing in her doorway.
“Are you a vid fan, Carmichael? Do you like watching, keeping up with the Hollywood gossip, reading up on the celebrities?”
“When I have time to watch any screen, I like
sports. That’s real action.”
“Right. You’ll do.” She assigned him as escort, ordered him to keep a lid on it, dismissed him.
Happily she transferred all messages from reporters to Kyung, and got back to work.
She’d completed her initial report, including her own statement, had just started a deeper run on Harris when her ’link signaled an incoming text from Roarke.
Not an asshole. From you, glowing praise. Will deal with it.
Satisfied, she leaned back, studied the data on Harris.
Parents divorced, Eve noted, when she’d been thirteen. One sibling, a brother two years her senior. She’d grown up in Nebraska until the divorce. The mother, who’d sued for and had been granted sole custody due to domestic violence, relocated with her children in Iowa.
Eve couldn’t see much difference between Nebraska and Iowa. As far as she was concerned they were both big states with lots of fields, barns, and cows.
She dug a little deeper, scanned some of the police reports, court documents on the domestic violence, frowned over the photographs in evidence of Piper Van Horn—the mother—after her husband Wendall Harris had tuned her up. Also documented was a broken wrist, black eye, minor concussion on then fifteen-year-old Brice Harris—now Van Horn as he’d taken his mother’s name as she had after the divorce. Wendall had done a stint in an Omaha pen, completed anger management and substance abuse courses. Then, Eve saw as she poked a bit more, had died of injuries incurred in a bar fight when Brice had been twenty.
Interesting, Eve thought, that K.T.’d kept her father’s last name. Interesting she appeared to have inherited or chosen—who the hell knew—his bent for pissed-off violence enhanced by too much alcohol.
She scrolled through school records. Average student with some disciplinary issues. No extracurricular activities until the age of fourteen when she’d hooked up with the theater program at her school.
“And look here,” Eve murmured. Harris had racked up a string of DUIs by the time she’d been twenty-two, and had her license revoked. Like father, daughter had completed a substance abuse program.
By eighteen, Harris had left Iowa for New LA. Had a couple brushes in addition to the DUIs for assault—charges dropped in both cases. Another for D&D—fine paid, rehab program completed.
Didn’t take, Eve thought, and remembered the face, the voice, the grief of Piper Van Horn when she’d contacted the woman to tell her K.T. was dead.
The mother grieved, she thought. Most of them did. Not all, but most. Her own hadn’t given the child she’d birthed, abused, and abandoned to a monster a second thought. Hadn’t even recognized her when they’d stood face-to-face.
Doesn’t apply, she reminded herself. Think of the victim. The more she understood the victim, the better chance she had of understanding the killer.
What she saw here was a woman who’d grown up with violence and anger, one who looked to have found escape or pleasure in acting, but who’d continued that anger/violence cycle to her own death.
Why? Eve wondered. And did why matter, really?
She swiveled around to her board. Had the victim known something about one or more of the cast and crew? Something she’d threatened the killer with, some sort of exposure—a career-damaging embarrassment?
Or had she just pushed somebody too hard for too long?
She swiveled back to read an incoming from the lab.
“Dallas?” Peabody stood in the doorway.
“Zoner mixed with the herbals—almost fifty-fifty.”
“Jeez, between that and the wine, she didn’t need the knock on the head to pass out.”
“Pretty sure bet once she went down, she didn’t get back up. Blood trace on the recovered pieces of burned rag. Vic’s blood. Only vic’s DNA on the butts recovered on scene. Drag marks on the heels consistent with skirting material and pattern.”
“That’s pretty quick work.”
“For a change. Let’s keep the zoner on the QT for now, see if anybody mentions that area of her habit.”
