Page 42 of Calculated in Death

“You’ve some grime on you, Lieutenant.”

“That’s just transferred grime.” She held out a hand. “You’re going to come in handy on this one because you’re filthy rich and you’re not a moron, and you actually understand portfolios and all that crap.”

“All that crap is what’s paid for the wine we’re both going to have—and the food.”

“I get a paycheck,” she reminded him. “I say I paid for the food tonight.”

“As you like.” He gave her hand a tug, brought her close, kissed her again. “But I’m by God not having pizza after this endless day.”

“Good. I want a steak. A really, big, fat steak.”

“There we are in perfect accord. Let’s eat, drink, and talk murder and money.”

She let out a satisfied breath. “I love you.”

IN YEARS PAST, THE CLOSEST EVE CAME TO real cow-meat steak on a cop’s salary was an anemic soy burger. She’d have matched that with fake fries, burying them in salt and been fine with it. Now a perfectly grilled New York strip sat on her plate, beside actual fried potatoes piled like golden shoestrings, and crispy green beans mixed with slivers of almonds.

Not a bad deal.

But the better one, better than real meat and potatoes, was having someone sitting across from her she could run through the case with. In those years past most of her meals, such as they were, had been eaten alone or on the fly. Maybe she’d catch something with Mavis, and there’d been plenty of crappy food chowed down 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.”