In Death 28 - Promises in Death

specific?”
    “Yeah.” In her office, she sat behind her desk, told him the details while she ate.
    “The locks were checked for tampering?”
    “Yeah, and they say no. Could’ve used a master, could be another tenant in the same building. Could have managed to dupe her key card, or someone else’s in the building. Or he could be as good as you, and didn’t leave a trace.”
    “She was taken down with a stunner,” Roarke mused. “They’re not easy to come by, and very pricey. Could he have disarmed her first and used her own weapon both times?”
    “It doesn’t play. No defensive wounds, and other than the kill burns, and the bumps on the back of her head, her shoulder blades, no offensive wounds. No cop turns over her weapon like that, not even to someone she knows.”
    “You’d give yours to me,” he pointed out. “If I asked to see it for a moment, you’d give it to me.”
    Eve considered that. “Okay, maybe she would, to someone she was really tight with. But it still doesn’t stream that way for me. She was heading out, sidearm and clutch piece. Taking the stairs, because she always did. That’s a setup. And it had to be done fast and smooth. No time to ask her nice if she’d let you hold her stunner.”
    She pushed up, began to pace. After, Roarke noted, she’d eaten only half her meal. “We ran all the tenants. Got a few criminal pops, but nothing major. We’ll interview everyone again who came up with any sort of a sheet, but I have to ask myself why she’d be going out, armed, to meet one of her neighbors.”
    “She might have been using the stairs simply to get to one of the other floors rather than the exit.”
    Eve stopped, frowned. “Okay, that’s a thought. She arms herself first, though, so it’s not a neighborly visit. It wouldn’t be smart, going to another apartment for a meet when it’s on the shady. Then why did the killer, if he’s inside, need to jam the rear door security camera? Maybe to throw us off,” she said, answering herself. “So we’re looking outside the building.”
    She paced again. “Unnecessary complication. But we’ll interview the tenants again. It just feels like an extra step to take, when SOP would be to run and interview everyone anyway.”
    “I can help with the electronics.”
    “That’s Feeney’s call. He’s always happy to have the uber e-geek on board, but he may have it well under control. I’ve got a lot of case files to wade through. I need to study her currents, her closed, her open, and what I got from Atlanta. You can—yeah, yeah, it’s an insult to you—but you can think like a cop. Maybe you can take a look at Atlanta while I do New York. Plus, they need to be cross-referenced. I need to know if anything from before connects with now.”
    “And I can do that faster than you.”
    “Yeah, you can.” She angled her head. “You can also think like a criminal, which is handy. Would you have sent her weapons to the primary? Why or why not?”
    “I wouldn’t have taken them in the first place. A smart criminal takes nothing—unless it’s straight thievery, which this wasn’t—and leaves nothing of himself behind. Otherwise, there’s that connection.”
    “But he did take them. And I don’t think he’s stupid.”
    “They must have served a purpose. Leaving them—especially if he used one to kill her—would be, in my opinion, more of an insult to her. And you, or whoever caught the case. So taking them served another purpose, even if it was just the jab to you by sending them back. He’s not a pro.”
    “Because?”
    “A pro does the job, walks away, moves on. He doesn’t taunt the police.”
    “Agreed. He might be a professional criminal, but it wasn’t a professional hit. It looks simple, on the surface, but it was actually much too elaborate—and too personal—for a straight hit. A straight hit, you don’t take her in a populated building, but lure her out of it, maybe to a meet. Take her there, or along the way. He wanted something, information or something she might have taken with her we can’t know about. Or he wanted to give her a message before he finished her. And he wanted her found without much delay.
    “I want to set up my board here, and run some probabilities before I start on the case files.” She dug out a disc. “Here’s Atlanta. All data’s on my office unit, which I know you can access.”
    “Then I’ll get started.”
    “Roarke.” It had niggled at her all day, and