In Death 25 - Creation in Death

Usually she heads straight back. Short Sundays she might do some shopping, or some of us would meet up for lunch or something.”
    “We’d like to look in her apartment.”
    “Okay, sure. She wouldn’t mind. I’ll get the key. We’ve got keys to each other’s places.”
    “Did she say anything about having an appointment today? About meeting someone?”
    “No. Or, God, I don’t know. I had my head buried under the pillow and was praying for a quick, merciful death when she popped in this morning. I didn’t pay attention.” He dug a set of keys out of a drawer. “I don’t understand why she’s not answering her pocket ’link. I don’t understand why you’re asking all these questions.”
    “Let’s take a look at her place,” Eve suggested. “Go from there.”
     
    I t smelled of cookies, Eve realized. Though the kitchen was small, it was organized and equipped by someone who knew what they were doing.
    “Some women buy earrings or shoes,” Erik said. “Ari, she buys ingredients and baking tools. There’s a specialty shop in the meatpacking district called Baker’s Dozen? She’ll have an orgasm just walking in there.”
    “Is there anything missing that would normally be here if she was just going to work?”
    “Uh, I don’t know. I don’t think so. Should I look around?”
    “Why don’t you?”
    While he did, Eve studied the little computer on a table just outside the kitchen. Couldn’t touch it, she thought, not until there was an official report.
    Bending the line of probable cause.
    “He might be on there,” Roarke murmured. “Something to do with this might be on there.”
    “And she could walk in the door in the next thirty seconds, and I’d have invaded her privacy, illegally.”
    “Bollocks to that.” He started to move past Eve to open the computer himself.
    “Wait, damn it. Just wait.”
    “Her shoes.” Erik stepped out of the bedroom, his face radiating both confusion and concern.
    “What about them?”
    “Her good black shoes aren’t here. She wears skids to work. She walks. It’s eight blocks, two of them crosstown, and she’s on her feet all day. Her work skids aren’t here, either. She’d take a change if she was going somewhere after. She’d take other shoes.”
    His face cleared. “She took her good black shoes. She must’ve had a date or something, just forgot to tell me, or I was so out of it…. That’s all it is. She hooked up with somebody after work.”
    Eve turned back to Roarke. “Open it.”

11
    EVE RELAYED THE NEW DATA TO THE TEAM AT Central, and ordered Ariel’s electronics picked up. Riding on the fresh spurt of adrenaline, she turned to Roarke. “We’ve got a jump on him.”
    Roarke continued to study the little screen with its images of wedding cakes and cost projections. “From the glass-half-empty side, it seems he’s gotten the jump on us.”
    “That’s wrong thinking. We’re moving on a lead we didn’t have before this investigation. And we’re moving in the right direction. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have known, not for hours—potentially days—that Greenfeld was missing. We wouldn’t know how he pulled her in.”
    “And how does that help her, Eve?”
    “Everything we know gives her a better chance of making it through. We know he’s had her about five hours. We have to assume he’s frequented the store where she worked, and contacted her by some method. Five hours, Roarke,” she repeated. “He hasn’t done anything to her yet. Probably has her sedated. He won’t start on her until he’s…”
    He looked up then, eyes frigid. “Until he’s finished with Gia Rossi. Until he’s done cutting and carving on her.”
    “That’s right.” No way to soften it, Eve thought. No point in trying. “And until we find Rossi’s body, she’s alive. Until we find her body, she’s got a chance. Now, with this, she has a better one. We canvass, we check parking lots, we check public transpo. We talk to her coworkers, her other friends. We have his age, his body type. We didn’t have any of that twenty-four hours ago.”
    She stepped to him, touched his arm. “Make a copy of that program, will you? We’ll work this from home. Maybe something will shake loose on the search Summerset’s been running, or on the real estate angle. Something’s going to click into place.”
    “All right. But neither of us is working on this until we’ve stepped back for a couple hours. I mean it, Eve,” he said before she could