Page 51 of Thankless in Death

“I’m pretty sure she’d just gotten it done, changed the color and style.”

“Ah, even more so. She isn’t allowed to look attractive. I see no overt signs of sexual abuse—but for this bruise on her right nipple.”

“He came in his pants, left his boxers in the bathroom after he cleaned up.”

Mira nodded. “The killing aroused him, or the torture. Both would have. He left evidence of that, as well as his DNA behind. He wants you to know he’s a man—not gender, but a man. You understand me?”

“Okay, yeah.”

“He struck her, primarily the face. To hurt her, to mark her, to feel the power of it. Shopping bags. She’d been shopping?”

“Yeah. I figure he dumped the stuff out, tore it up.”

“She can’t have anything, and he’d have done that before he killed her. Hurting her again. New shoes... wearing them so she looks pornographic perhaps.”

“That’s my take.

“The strangulation, face-to-face. That’s intimacy. The bow he’s tied there, that’s small-minded again, mean again. Eve, I think he took some of her hair.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I don’t want to touch anything, but you see the length of some of these hanks he cut off? I think there should be more hair. Your sweepers will confirm that if I’m right.”

“So he took something of her, a trophy. I didn’t see anything like that at the first scene. Maybe I missed it.”

“I doubt it. She meant more to him than they did. They were just in the way, an annoyance, and dead a means to an end.”

“That’s how I saw it,” Eve agreed.

“She was more important than that. He slept with her in this bed, had sex with her in this bed. And she denied him, rejected him, sent him, like a little boy, back to his parents. And she shops for new things, gets new hair? No, that would never do.

“So young,” Mira said quietly, and moved back to the living room.

“If you’re done in there, I want to let the sweepers get started, and bring the morgue team in.”

“Yes, I’ve seen enough there. Did he do this?” She gestured to the little kitchen area.

“Yeah, he ate after. At least some of it after. He used the AutoChef after TOD.” Eve signaled the sweepers.

“Junk food. Fun food. Party food. His little celebration, all the more enjoyable as she’s dead so close by. Did he take anything else?”

“Her wallet, her tip money, her comp, her new ’link. That’s all I’m sure of for now. Probably some jewelry. I think, out shopping with a girl pal, getting new hair and stuff, she’d’ve had on some earrings, maybe a couple of other pieces.”

“I agree. She’s a young woman, a waitress, so it’s doubtful unless she had a family piece, she had anything particularly valuable.”

Watching Mira wander, Eve felt it build up. “I screwed up.”

Calm and assessing, Mira looked back. “Why do you think that?”

“I never figured he’d go after anyone else—and not this fast—unless in flight or for survival, or possibly if they refused to help him. But I never saw this.”

“I don’t know how you could have or why you would have. Coming here, doing this? It’s risky and it’s calculated. His other killings weren’t. They were, first, impulse, then opportunity. Even with that, you tried to reach her, several times. Circumstances prevented it.”

“I had the wrong handle on him. He’d never shown particularly violent behavior before, or ambition or calculation. Killing his mother, that was impulse, then blind rage.”

“Yes.”

“Then his father, hours later. Rage again, but some glee in there, and the cold-blooded ability to stay in that apartment, first waiting for his father, making plans, then with both of them dead by his hand while he completed the plans. He ate, slept, plotted, with their bodies only a few feet away.”