Calculated in Death

with another cop.
    But sitting in her own home, with a real meal, and a man who not only listened but got it? She’d won life’s trifecta.
    “You’ve eliminated a personal motive,” Roarke commented after she’d laid out the basics.
    “It was business. I can’t find one whiff of personal for motive or in execution. I’m going to ask Mira for a profile,” she added, referring to the department’s top shrink and profiler. “But this was what I think of as a semi-professional hit.”
    “Semi-pro? Not quite good enough for the majors?”
    “I’m thinking no, not quite good enough. There was a . . . bullishness about it. Charging in. She didn’t know she was working late until that afternoon, so not much planning ahead. Still, a decent plan. Stun—though the stun feels unnecessary—snatch, grab, transport, and get her inside for privacy. The killing method, that takes training, and again, it’s impersonal.”
    “I doubt the victim thought so.”
    “She thought they’d let her go, or she sure as hell hoped they’d let her go, right down to the instant. And he took her from behind, again, impersonal. He—they—got whatever information they asked for, plus whatever she had in her briefcase. Then they used the standard cover of a botched mugging.”
    “A homicidal classic.”
    “It might’ve worked. But what kind of mugger stuns a mark, smacks her around, then snaps her neck from behind?”
    “A particularly vicious one, but no,” he continued before Eve could speak. “If you’re a mugger lucky enough to have a stunner, you stun, take the valuables, and run off to stun another day.”
    “Agreed.”
    “If you’re particularly vicious, you don’t bother to stun. You’d want to do some damage and you’d inflict it.”
    “Also agreed. Plus why? She was a mugger’s dream. A woman walking alone who doesn’t fight back. No defensive wounds. If she’d screamed or shouted for help say, and spooked him, someone would’ve heard it. And in that neighborhood, would likely report it, or at least tell the cops on canvass. And
if
he was spooked—”
    “And had a stunner.” Roarke picked up her train of thought. “Quicker, easier to jam it against her throat and kill her that way.”
    “That’s why the stunner doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the marks are on her. And one more plus. She had no business being that far from the office, that far from home. It was too cold and too late for her to walk it, and she’d told her husband she was just walking to the subway—a block and a half from the office.”
    “All that, yes. And the blood on the tarp.”
    “That’s the big one as it proves she was inside the apartment. To get her inside, they needed the code.”
    “Ah, well . . .” He only smiled, wiggled his fingers.
    “If they could afford or had a B&E man good enough to get through that security without a trace, they could afford a pro hit.”
    “There wasn’t much time to recruit.”
    She pointed a finger at him. “Exactly.” Pleased he followed the same line, she lifted her wine to drink. “She gets passed the accounts, the audits, just that afternoon. That’s the most likely motive. Maybe, maybe, it was one of the other, older deals, and she’d just reached some stage on it that sent up the red flag, but the probability’s higher if it was new because it reads like a rush job.”
    “New to her.”
    This time she toasted him. “Exactly. Word gets back to the client, or the auditee—is that a word?—or the person involved with the business who doesn’t want somebody fresh coming in, can’t afford it. She’s only had a few hours, hell, maybe she didn’t even scratch the surface. But you can’t take the chance. Things are a little confused, a little bogged down at Brewer and company, with the two accountants in a Vegas hospital. It’s a smallish department. Everybody knows everybody. You can bet anybody who needed to know could find out who’s working on what. Nobody’s going to think a thing about a question like, say, who got slammed with Jim’s or Chaz’s work? Or the supervisor told the interested party who’d be handling the audit when they contacted him to express concern.”
    “Not to worry, Mr. Very Bad Man,” Roarke began, “Marta’s one of the best. She does excellent work, and in fact, will be burning the midnight oil right here tonight to catch up.”
    “As simple as that,” Eve agreed. “Then Mr. Very Bad Man calls in a couple of goons,