Page 120 of Passions in Death
“I think it’s possible. And now, what? She’s dating another woman? She’s engaged? She’s getting freaking married?”
“An ego thing? Like what’s wrong with my penis?”
“It’s a solid point. That wasn’t a damn pun.”
“It would be a good one.”
Eve pulled into the now familiar loading zone, flipped on her On Duty light.
“So his ego, led by his penis, decides Erin has to go,” Eve continued. “Or his big brother deal demands he has to go to save Shauna from making a mistake. A combination of both would work.”
She considered as they hiked to the apartment building. “It’s something to bounce off Mira. Both yours, and mine.”
“But you think it’s him.”
“At this point, Peabody, it’s a gut thing. It’s the deli meat—‘Let me make you a sandwich,’ and Becca’s casual ‘Stop hovering.’ Like he tends to do that. It’s the walking home with her from work, and it’s the timing when he moved here and where he moved.”
At the building, she took out her master.
“And topping all of that? His face when he saw me in the hall. The way he shifted the box, the way he tried to pump me for info and kept tossing out the lowlife theory.
“And I didn’t like the way he talked about Crack’s place. Personal maybe, but I didn’t like that, or how it slid just over the edge of victim shaming.”
Inside, they hiked up the stairs.
“No proof,” she added. “Nothing to hang that on but my gut. Nothing to hang it on Lopez but logic. We need enough to get one or both of them in the box. Just enough for that. It’s a first kill, and if a kill can be planned and impulsive at once, this one was.
“We’d break him—or her. Killing’s not who they are. Controlling is.”
“Yeah, controlling,” Peabody agreed. “Both of them. You’re right on that. Maybe benign in Barney’s case, but it’s still a controlling nature.”
“They shouldn’t have left the case,” Eve said as they came out on the fourth floor. “Whichever of them did it, they shouldn’t have left the case, should’ve resisted the need to add pain onto pain for Shauna. We’d have almost nothing without that.”
“I wish we had more than we do.”
“Hope can suck you dry. Work instead. We won’t be able to tell what Barney took—but we’ll go through and see if anything strikes.”
She mastered in.
After a quick scan of the living area, she gestured left, then to the side. “Photos gone, there and there. Of the two of them.”
“She might’ve wanted those. I’d want those.”
“Yeah, we’ll see if we can find out. Art’s still up.”
She walked into the kitchen, checked the friggie. Not only empty, but spotless. Not a single spill in sight.
“AC’s empty, too,” Peabody said after a check.
They walked out. Peabody took the bedroom, Eve the office/studio.
“The wedding dresses—they’re gone.”
“Yeah, some of Shauna’s shoes from in there.”
“Same with the dresser, Dallas. Some of Shauna’s stuff. It’s the size, the style makes it easy to see what’s hers, what was Erin’s.”
Eve moved in to the bedroom.
