He ran his hands down her arms, back again. “He’ll know what you are to me. Or if he doesn’t, he’ll now make it his business to find out.”
“Why does he hate you, particularly?”
“Particularly? He claimed to be Patrick Roarke’s bastard, and as senior to me, his oldest son.”
“Was he?”
“Unlikely, but not impossible, I suppose. Unlikely, as the old man liked him considerably more than me, and if he’d been his blood, would have taken him in. That’s not important at the moment. He bloody well didn’t just happen to be in the park when a woman—a wealthy one—ends up gutted. And gutting, throat slitting, disemboweling are favorite pastimes of Lorcan Cobbe.”
“All right, I’ll run him. I’ll put out a BOLO.”
Now he framed her face with his hands before she could object. “And you’ll take care. Take very good care.”
“Yes,” she said because he needed her to. “And same goes.”
“He won’t try for me right off—what’s the fun in that? I have to contact some people.”
“We’re going to need to talk about this, in more detail.”
“And we will. Your car’s here.” He gestured toward the arch. “I’ll see you at home.”
As she watched him stride away, she realized she was worried because he was worried.
Marriage, she thought. It could fuck you up.
“LT.” McNab pranced over in his airboots, long tail of blond hair swinging. “Got your security discs. I already looked at the footage of the kill.”
“We have the kill on the feed?”
“Yes and no. I’m going to say the killer knew the cam angles, and kept his face clear. What we’ve got is the vic coming in, then what appears to be a male, about six feet, probably about one-ninety, black pants, black hoodie worn up, cutting across her path. We got him from the back, so no way to tell age or race or make a firm determination of gender.”
McNab glanced back as the morgue team bagged the body. A line of colorful hoops glittered on his earlobe. “He had his hands in his jacket pockets, his head down, moving right along, then cuts in front of her. She stops. You can see his right arm jerk up, then pull back. He keeps right on walking, and she staggers a couple steps. A lot of blood even before she goes down. Then you’ve got a couple of people running over to her. One of them turns her over. And the screaming starts. He’s already out of cam view by then.”
“Take them in, run through them. I need copies. All feed, all angles.”
“You got it. He had to be waiting for her, Dallas. The way he moved on her. It was purposeful, you know? Not random, it just didn’t feel random.”
He might dress like a circus act, but she knew his cop instincts hit solid.
“No, I don’t think random. Peabody,” she said when her partner joined them.
“I talked to a handful of people, and to a couple of the uniforms who talked to people. Most didn’t see or notice anything until she went down, but I have two who stated they saw a man in a black hoodie walking away as she fell. No solid description beyond the hoodie, worn up, and the assumption of male.”
“That coordinates with the security feed. McNab, when you’re going over the discs, look for a male—the height and build you described. Caucasian, late thirties to early forties, light brown hair—man bun deal—red jacket. Flag anything you find with a view of him.”
“Okay. Is he a suspect?”
“Odds are. His name’s Lorcan Cobbe, out of Dublin. Roarke saw him in the crowd, recognized him. He’s a pro.”
“I can start reviewing on my portable if I stick with you for now,” McNab told her.
“Fine. Let’s move. Peabody, start a run on the vic’s husband, Jorge Tween, and let’s go notify him.”
“If this was a hired hit,” Peabody began.
“The spouse is number one,” Eve finished.
Her car waited at the curb, as advertised. She got in, sat a moment. “We’ll run Cobbe, too, put out a BOLO, but let’s see who we’re about to talk to first.”
Peabody got in the passenger seat, not so discreetly slipped her feet out of her party shoes as McNab climbed in the back. “Tween is forty-two, a VP in distribution at Modesto. He’s worked for them for sixteen years. No criminal coming up. Married Galla Modesto six years ago—first and only marriage for both. Son, Angelo, age four.”
Eve pulled out, started the short drive to the Modesto/Tween residence.
“They purchased their New York residence five years ago. Tween works out of the New York headquarters. Got his net worth here at just under nine million.”
“Hers is more than ten times that,” Eve remembered. “There’s a fine motive added to her having an affair.”
“She broke it off,” Peabody pointed out, but Eve just shook her head.
“She had an affair, and more, if Stowe’s not full of it, fell in love. It takes a little time to arrange a hit, so there’s that. Then do you call it off because she called off the affair? Are you sure she did? Did she confess all? Doubtful. Either way, what’s to stop her from changing her mind, going back to her artist lover, taking her big mountain of money, and moving to Italy?”
Reluctantly, as Eve squeezed into a spot at the curb near the address, Peabody pushed her feet back into her shoes.
“I’ll stick here with this,” McNab said from the back. “Especially if I can get a fizzy from the AC.”
“Do that.”
He added a winsome smile. “Maybe you got some chips in here.”
“I don’t know what the hell’s in the AutoChef.” Leaving him to find out, Eve got out.
Peabody didn’t quite hide the wince when they started the half-block walk, crosstown.
“Why are you wearing those idiot shoes?”
“They’re pretty shoes! We went out dancing—date-night dancing. You need pretty shoes for date-night dancing. I didn’t know they were going to be work-a-case shoes.”
She moaned a little. “And they’re killing me.”
“Suck it up.”
“This is sucking it up. So Roarke knew this Cobbe back in Ireland?”
“Dublin, when he was a kid. I’ll get more details, but Cobbe let Roarke spot him. Wanted him to. Roarke says he’s a killer by nature and profession. I’ll get more details,” she said again, and stopped in front of the house to get a sense of it.
Three stories of whitewashed brick had an elegance, a quiet charm. The security light glowed pale green, but no glow came from the lights at either side of the front door.
The lights that would have welcomed someone home.
Windows stayed dark, so no one waited up for the woman who’d never come home again. Flowers spilled out of painted boxes on the windows flanking the door.
She caught the scent of something soft and sweet as she stepped up, pressed the buzzer.
The household has retired for the night. Please leave your name and contact information. If this is an emergency—
“NYPSD.” Eve cut off the computer, held up her badge. “Inform Jorge Tween the police need to speak with him.”
Please state the nature of your emergency.