In Death 25 - Creation in Death

so his choice here is deliberate.”
    He’d inched all those same questions through his mind, turning them over from every angle. “If he works for me, I can find out. The travel,” Roarke said. “Whether it was business-related or personal time, I can search files for employees who were sent to the locations of the other murders in that time period, or who took personal leave.”
    “How many employees would you figure you have?”
    His lips curved again. “I honestly couldn’t say.”
    “Exactly. But using Mira’s profile—and we’ll have an updated one tomorrow—we can cut that back considerably.”
    Following the usual arrangement when he dealt with the meal, Eve rose to clear the dishes. “I’ll run a probability, but I think there’s a low percentage he works for you. He doesn’t strike me as a disgruntled employee.”
    “Agreed. I can check the same information on major competitors and subcontractors. Using my private equipment.”
    She said nothing at first, just carted the dishes into the kitchen, loaded them into the machine. His private office, with its unregistered equipment, would allow him to evade CompuGuard and the privacy laws.
    Whatever he found, she couldn’t use it in court, couldn’t reveal where she’d gotten the data. Illegal means, she thought, crossing the line. Such maneuvers gave a defense attorney that flea-ass opening.
    Can’t you hear us screaming?
    She walked back into the office. “Run it.”
    “All right. It’ll take considerable time.”
    “Then you’d better get started.”
    Alone, she began to set up her murder board while her computer read off the progress reports from her team.
    Board’s too small, she thought. Too small to hold all the faces, all the data. All the death.
    “Lieutenant.”
    “Computer pause,” she ordered, then turned to Summerset. “What? I’m working.”
    “As I can see. Roarke asked I bring you this data.” He held out a disc. “The employee search he asked I run.”
    “Good.” She took it, walked over to put it on her desk. Glanced back. “You still here? Go away.”
    Ignoring her, he stood in his funereal black suit, his back stiff as a poker. “I remember this. I remember the media reports on these women. But there was nothing about these numbers carved into them.”
    “Civilians don’t need to know everything.”
    “He takes great care in how he forms them, each number, each letter so precise. I’ve seen this before.”
    Her eyes sharpened. “What do you mean?”
    “Not this, not exactly this, but something similar. During the Urban Wars.”
    “The torture methods?”
    “No, no. Though, of course, there was plenty of that. Torture’s a classic means of eliciting information or dealing out punishment. Though it’s rarely so…tidy as this.”
    “Tell me something I don’t know.”
    He looked over at her. “You’re too young to have experienced the Urbans, or to remember the dregs of them that settled in some parts of Europe after they ended here. In any case, there were elements there, too, that civilians—so to speak—didn’t need to know.”
    He had her full attention now. “Such as?”
    “When I served as a medic, the injured and the dead would be brought in. Sometimes in piles, in pieces. We’d hold the dead, or those who succumbed to their injuries—for family members if such existed, and if the body could be identified. Or for burial or cremation. Those who didn’t have identification, or were beyond being identified, would be listed by number until disposal. We kept logs, listing them by any description possible, any personal effects, the location where they’d been killed, and so on. And we would write the number on them, and the date of their death, or as close as we could come to it.”
    “Was that SOP?”
    “It was what we did when I worked in London. There were other methods in other areas, and in some of the worst areas only mass burials and cremations without any record.”
    She walked back over to the board, studied the carving. It wasn’t the same, she thought. But it was an angle.
    “He knows their names,” she said. “The name’s not an issue. But the data’s important. It has to be recorded. The data’s what identifies them. The time is what names them for him. I need another board.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “I need another board. I don’t have enough room with one. We got anything around here that’ll work?”
    “I imagine I can find what you need.”
    “Good. Go do