In Death 26 - Strangers in Death

wait.” Scooping back her hair, Eve launched to her feet. “Computer, display on screen, data for Custer, Suzanne.”
    “Who might that be?” Roarke wondered.
    “Wait, wait. Computer, display on second screen, data on Custer, Ned.”
    Roarke did wait, studied both photos, the basic identification data. “Husband and wife, and he’s deceased. Recently.”
    “He’s Baxter’s.” She dropped back down into the chair. “I didn’t keep the damn file. I need the damn case file on this guy.”
    “Move,” Roarke ordered. “Get up. Give me a moment.”
    “Don’t hack into Baxter’s police unit. I’ll tag him and—”
    “And I’ll have it for you a great deal quicker. It’s hardly hacking, as it’s ridiculously easy. And you’re authorized in any case.” He gave her shoulder a light, but purposeful shove. “Give me the chair a minute.”
    “All right, all right.” In any case, it gave her time to pace and think. She stared at the woman on screen—pretty in a toned-down, tired-eyed kind of way. Couple of kids, professional mother’s stipend, philandering, heavy-handed husband.
    “Coincidence, my ass.”
    “Quiet,” Roarke muttered. “Half a minute more here. Ah, and there we are. What do you need from this?”
    “Take down the data on screen, put that up. We’ll scroll through.” She felt it, felt it in her bones. But…“I want your take here without any of my input first.”
    He read, as she did, of the quick and nasty death of one Ned Custer by person or persons unknown. Cheap sex flop, slit throat—attack from behind—castration, no trace or DNA, no witnesses. No trail.
    “So the wife was well-alibied, I see.”
    “Solid. They ran the ’link calls, confirmed the source. She was in her apartment when he got sliced. No boyfriends, no close relatives or friends. Baxter and Trueheart are thorough, and they didn’t pop anything on this.”
    “She’s one of Ava’s mothers.”
    “Yep.”
    “Strangers on a Train.”
    “Huh?” Her head swiveled back toward him. “What train? Nobody was on a train.”
    “I haven’t run that vid for you, have I?” Coolly, he continued to study the screen, continued to read data. “It’s a good one. Mid-twentieth-century, Hitchcock film. You’ve enjoyed Hitchcock.”
    “Yeah, yeah, so?”
    “Briefly, two men—strangers—meet on a train, and the conversations turn to how each wishes to be rid of a certain individual in his life. And how it could be done without the police suspecting them if each did in the other’s. Very clever, as there’s no real connection between the two men. It was a book first, come to think of it.”
    “Strangers,” Eve repeated.
    “In this case, the one who wanted his wife done didn’t take the other—an unstable sort, who wanted his father done—seriously. But, the wife was dispatched, and the unstable sort pressured the sudden widower to complete the bargain. It’s twisty and complex. You’ll have to watch it.”
    “The exchange is what clicked for me,” Eve told him. “The possibility of that. You do mine, I do yours. We’re both alibied, and who’d look at either of us for the other’s? Why would Baxter look at Ava Anders in the murder of this guy? She doesn’t know him, and even if you note that Suzanne Custer’s in the Anders program, it doesn’t pop. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
    “Until you look at Anders’s murder, won’t let it slide as an accident, and dig deep enough to see this. And wonder.”
    “Probability scan’s going to bottom out.” Already annoyed by that, Eve hissed out a breath. “It’ll bottom out until I can plug in more. What about you? Do you buy it?”
    “The stronger personality, the more powerful one, hatches the plan, draws the weaker one in. And does the job first, to add pressure and obligation. Even threat. When the weaker follows through, it’s not quite as clean and tidy. Yes, I’d buy it.”
    “It’s easier to pry open the weaker one. We pull Suzanne Custer in, we work her.” Pacing, Eve circled the murder board. “Work her right, work her hard enough, she’ll flip on Ava. Need more first. You move.”
    He pushed back from the desk. “Do you still want runs on the other names?”
    “I’ll put a drone on that. This is the money shot here, this is the one. I’ve got a tingly.”
    “Save it for me, will you?”
    “Ha. I need everything I can get on her. Baxter’s got a solid murder book. We just have to look at the data from a different angle