Page 77 of Thankless in Death

Satisfied with that, for now, Eve looked back at her board. Start at the beginning, she reminded herself.

As soon as she generated what would be a very, very long list of possibles, she was going back to the beginning, and the Reinhold apartment.

•••

It was starting to piss him off.

“You’re stalling, Ms. Farnsworth. I feel a snip coming on.”

Her eyes met his, wearily. “I tried to teach you, Jerry, doing a project right takes time. If you don’t do this right, it won’t pass. If it doesn’t pass, I know you’ll hurt me. I don’t want you to hurt me anymore, Jerry.”

She was stalling, a little. It took time to do a project right, especially when she needed him to carefully insert a beacon that would—she hoped—alert the police if and when the ID was scanned.

Just as she’d needed him to undercode a message into the financial routing she prayed someone with exceptional e-skills would find.

Jerry’s skills were good—wasted potential, she thought—but he was lazy, simply too lazy to look deep, to learn more.

The ID was delicate and complicated work, and he was ham-handed and impatient. But they were nearly there.

And she’d wheedled out a little water, for herself and Snuffy, though he’d dripped it into her mouth, then her dog’s, a few stingy drops at a time.

“I’ve got an appointment, goddamn it. If I miss it because you’re screwing around, you’re losing two fingers, and your ugly dog loses an eye.”

He took out his knife, snapped out the blade, and waved it back and forth in front of her face. “I bet I can pop his eye right out with this.”

Through sheer force of will, she kept her gaze calm and steady on his. “It’s not going to take much longer, Jerry. It’s a lot of data to upload if we’re going to give you a complete background. Now you need to key in the next code, exactly as I tell you.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He checked his wrist unit, one he intended to replace with something mag before he met the realtor. And Asshole was due back any minute with the take from hocking the first round of electronics.

“You’ve got twenty minutes,” he warned her.

“Master Command D, backslash generate...”

It had to be right, she thought, just exactly right, or he’d walk away clean. It had to be perfect, or the program itself would alert him to the addition.

He’d make good on his threat then. Though she could no longer feel her fingers, she wanted to keep them. And Snuffy slept in her lap, a warm weight. His little chest rose and fell. As long as it did, she’d do what she could for him, and for herself.

And if the little bastard killed her, at least she’d die knowing she’d handed him the means to his own end.

“Insert code twenty-five backslash B,” she continued, her voice soft and slow. Her eyes filled with cold, feral hate.

EVE BROKE THE SEAL ON THE REINHOLDS’ apartment door and entered. It still smelled of death, with a lacing of the sweeper’s chemicals.

“We’re going through it again.”

“What are we looking for?” Peabody asked her.

Eve scanned the living area, still surprisingly neat and tidy in the wake of murder. “He played Little League, and kept the bat. Or more likely his parents kept it. They’d have kept other stuff, right? Isn’t that how it works? Parents hang on to things, to pieces of their kids. Photographs, sure, but mementos.”

“Kid drawings, school reports, trophies, and awards, like that, sure. Most would. Mine sure did—do.”

“Anything they kept he didn’t take we look at. Family photos, too. Vacation and holiday stuff. Anything might connect to someone he’s got a grudge against, or somewhere he wants to go again.”

She walked into the kitchen. “It started here. When he picked up the knife, turned it on his mother, that’s when it all started for him. Reconstruction says she was here. It’s lunchtime. He’s fixing his lunch or she’s fixing it for him. She’s fixing it.”

Eve put a picture of the mother in her head, as she’d been in her ID shot. “She’s fixing it because that’s what she does. She fixes the meals, keeps the house. Probably a sandwich so the knife’s out. It’s right there when he decides to do it. She’s nagging at him, that’s how he sees it.”

And seeing it herself, Eve walked around the table. “You’ve got to get a job, grow up, get your shit together. Maybe she tells him she and his father are giving him a deadline or he’s out. Maybe she didn’t wait to confront him together with her husband. So he picks up the knife, jams it into her. And it feels so good, the look on her face is so satisfying he does it again. Just keeps doing it even when she tries to get away, when she falls, even when she’s already dead. And then he eats his lunch.”