“Depending on the brand and the level of the kit, they go from ninety-five to three-fifty wholesale,” Peabody told her.
“So the minimum requirement would be wasteful. It would be difficult for him to tolerate such waste, unless he could make up the minimum with other, useful products.”
“He’s already got the other products, but … Peabody, can you buy the cheap stuff at these places?”
“Not the really snooty ones, but I’ll check on that.”
“Yeah, we’ll cover it, but it’s going to be in person. He had to move on the nails fairly quickly, and have time to study how to apply them.”
“I’m going to agree with you. She bit her nails,” Mira mused. “That would have upset him. Terrible habit, he’d think. And ruins the illusion. It may have been something that minor that caused him to kill her.”
“It’s a mistake. The illusion, as you put it, that’s paramount. The clothes, the shoes—all the mother’s sizes. The shoes and the jeans were both snug on Elder, and the shoes and skirt both a little loose on Hobe. So he either knew what size the mother wore, or he’s decided on it.”
Mira lifted a finger, ticked it at Eve. “That’s good, the deciding. It may very well be that. He placed the second victim at another venue for children. She broke the illusion—didn’t qualify so had to be eliminated. But he left her, with that illusion—where parents, where, for him, mothers take their children.”
Walking to the AutoChef, Mira programmed her flowery tea. “He makes her—to his eye—beautiful, then lays her near a playground, a child’s center. Because there’s love. But he does all of this because there’s also hate, and there’s rage, and pain. Who can cause us more pain than the people who brought us into the world?”
Mira took her tea, and, turning a chair around, sat facing Eve and the board. “The child wants love—for her and from her. The man feels the rage and the pain. He can’t stop himself from this quest to re-create her, as he wishes her, and the women he takes can never be who he wishes.”
“What are Covino’s chances?”
Like Eve, Mira studied Covino’s ID shot. “She may prolong the inevitable. The illusion may hold awhile, but it will shatter. When it does, he’ll kill her.”
“He wants to kill her as much as he wants to re-create her. He’s punishing the mother every time he chains one of these women up, every time he kills.”
“Yes,” Mira agreed. “Create and destroy, that’s the cycle. The man can look back at who she was—at this age—and judge her. Bad Mommy. Whatever disappointments, failures, difficulties he’s experienced in his life all, to his mind, come from that. Something, and something traumatic, happened at this particular time in his life and hers. So now, after something related to her, to that, to them happened and caused this psychic break, he’s compelled to go back to that time. Or rather just before. Before the trauma. With this second victim, the pattern’s very clear.”
“The map.” Eve gestured so Mira turned in her chair to study the screen. “The highlighted locations are the two crime scenes, the victims’—including Covino’s—residence and workplace. Dotted lines are their routine routes to and from work—or in Covino’s case, the subway.
“Computer, highlight properties from first list of same generated by Roarke, mark those eliminated. You see private homes and other properties that fit the parameters,” she told Mira. “Owned, rented, and/or occupied by single males. We’re doing door-to-doors, and have eliminated those so marked.”
“A considerable amount of legwork,” Mira commented.
“That’s why cops have legs. Computer, highlight properties from the second list generated by Roarke. We expanded,” Eve explained. “Single occupancy, but owned or occupied—on record—by a female, couples or families, or a group or a company. We’re starting more door-to-doors.”
“I absolutely agree this is his hunting ground. He lives or works there, perhaps both.”
“I think—” Eve broke off as Nadine walked in, along with Quilla, her teenage intern.
“Nadine, we’re in the middle of a consult.”
“So I was told when I asked in the bullpen.” Nadine shook back her sleek and streaky hair. “We’ve got something that’s going to add to that.”
Eve knew Nadine well enough to recognize the smug. She had a moment’s tug-of-war regarding Quilla, then let it go.