She pushed at her hair. “I’m going back to the makeup. A lot of damn makeup.”
“I’m going to say the T word.”
Eve shook her head. “It’s not high-dollar stuff. It’s stuff you buy in the drugstore. Trina would look down her nose. Anyway, how did he learn how to apply it—so exactly? Did he practice? Does he work in that area—theater, entertainment?”
“What about the top—from the Nashville store—you told me about?”
“Yeah, that. Can’t track it down. We wound back to vintage shops again, but…”
“Finish the thought.” Knowing her, he programmed coffee for both of them.
“He didn’t plan this yesterday, right? Nor a week from yesterday. Weeks at least, and more like months. So I don’t think he bought all the clothes, the makeup, the damn shackles right before he grabbed Elder.”
Roarke handed her coffee, sat at her auxiliary station. “For a few days, he had three women.”
“Yeah, thought about that, too, and it weighs on me. Now he has two. Does he need the three? Is he going to grab somebody tonight? I’ve got extra patrols in the area tonight, in case. But I can’t keep that up indefinitely.”
She blew out a breath. “Otherwise, holding three women—feeding them, toilet facilities.” She pushed up to pace. “McQueen, he held more at a time, but he didn’t give a rat’s ass about feeding them. It was the having them, then raping them, then killing them. This one had another purpose.”
“Does he keep them together or separate them?”
“McQueen kept them together, chained up, desperate, terrified. But this is different.”
Around and around the board.
“He can’t keep them together. How could he maintain the illusion any one of them is his mother—or will become her—if they’re together, if they talk to each other? He has to keep them separate, has to keep a wall between them—for them, for him. Has to have a big enough space.”
She turned back. “Good job, pointing me at another angle. Maybe a big basement, maybe he keeps them on separate floors. But he’s got to have those toilets. You can’t keep three people chained up for days and days and not provide a john. Who wants to clean up the mess? And he likes things clean. Elder was clean. Body, hair, nails, the clothes. All perfectly clean.”
She wound around again. “No signs of dehydration with Elder. She’d had a good last meal. Eat, drink, you gotta eliminate.”
She sat again. “Planning. He took the three too close together not to have planned for at least three. Maybe he had to have those toilets installed. Yeah, he could’ve had them already. Hell, he could keep one of them locked up in a bathroom. As long as there’s no window. But—”
“I can do some digging on permits. The houses on the list, additional plumbing in the last, what would you like, twelve months?”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s a good one. That’s a solid maybe.”
“I’ll just do that here then.”
She picked up the coffee she’d forgotten. “He’s two people,” she said aloud.
“You think two are working together?”
“No, not like that. He’s two people inside one man. The planner, the calculating adult, and the needy, angry child. Both of them are killers, both of them are crazy. But the adult maintains, he can contain, he can look and act sane. He’d have to, wouldn’t he?”
She kicked back, put her boots on the counter. “Yeah, he would. Eccentric at worst, people would think. But not overly because nobody notices him. Does that piss him off, or is that how he likes it?”
She saw Roarke watching her. “What? Sorry. Just thinking out loud.”
“And it’s fascinating. You’re building him.”
“A potential him. Just more maybes.”
“Don’t stop on my account. Keep building.”
“Well, if he’s somewhere in his sixties or seventies as we profile, we’d say he has the maturity of his age and experience. But that inner brat’s all impulse and rage. Plenty of rage in the man, too, because he doesn’t have what he wants, because he’s been disappointed, maybe mistreated. Probably mistreated. But he’s got that control.”
Studying the board, she let it come.
“Mosebly was let down, and damn well mistreated. He escaped—with plenty of anger. But he had the grandparents, and, without that better-yourself message, he may have kept going down a hard road. When his mother asked for forgiveness, he gave it. And the years after, reforming his family.