the vic’s neighborhood.”
“He’s checked out, I take it, or you’d be heading out the door.”
“Yeah, but we’ll get the feed, statements, his bill, sweep his room. He goes for a small, upscale hotel. Because of location, because he likes the higher level of service? Both.”
“I’d agree with that.” He started toward the coffeepot, stopped when he saw the secondary board.
It featured Cobbe, himself, Patrick Roarke, Cobbe’s mother, Summerset, maps—Dublin, New York—the Parkview. The mutilated body of a tabby cat, a burlap sack, bloodied. Time lines stretching back to his childhood.
“Thorough,” he murmured.
“It has to be. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He touched a hand to her shoulder, then continued to the coffeepot. “It’s … disconcerting, but don’t be sorry.”
“There’s a pattern,” she began.
“Is there?”
“Yeah, there is, one exclusive to you. He takes risks. His profession’s a risk, but he minimalizes them in his paid work from what I can see. Sure, I can spot some of the mistakes he made when I read his file, but I can’t say he’s sloppy. In the beginning, more sloppy, but he learned. He’d be dead or in a cage otherwise.”
“All right.”
“But with you, all along with you, he’s let his ego, his—Mira calls it his mission in her amended profile—push him to take more risks, to make more mistakes.
“Patrick Roarke literally tosses him out of the house the first time Cobbe tries to stake his claim, and when you offer him a hand up, he tried to knife you. That’s stupid, sloppy. Now you’re forewarned, right? If he’d taken the hand, tried making friends, let’s say, you’d have been more vulnerable to an attack later. It had to be then for him.”
“We were children,” Roarke began.
“He was a killer. He was born one. I’m telling you he was made that way.”
Roarke lifted his coffee, again said, “All right.”
“I don’t say that because he wants you dead and I don’t. I don’t even say it because of how he makes his living. I say it as a murder cop who’s looked at his file, who’s looked at four hundred and forty-three—forty-four with Modesto—victims. Killing’s in his bones, in his blood, in his gut. Killing is what he is, and that gives him pride.”
Roarke watched her face while she spoke—the cop’s eyes, flat and dispassionate because they had to be.
“All right.” This time he nodded. “All right, yes.”
“We can get into philosophies later, but right now, pattern. The first time wasn’t the only time he tried for you when you were kids.”
“No. I was faster, and smarter. And had mates.”
“And when he couldn’t get to you, what did he do?”
Roarke looked back at the board. “The dog,” he realized. “The little dog. And here, a cat.”
“There you go. You protected the kid and the dog, he kills the dog. You have a cat. He kills a cat. Can’t get to you yet, or isn’t ready to try, but he can stick a thumb in your eye.”
She pointed back to the board. “He rats you out to Patrick Roarke. You get a beating, but he gets worse. But then what happens?”
Frowning, Roarke shook his head. “He let me be awhile, steered clear.”
“Did he? Or did he watch your pattern? Maybe pay or threaten others to tell him where you went, what you did?”
“He could’ve done, I suppose.”
“You wondered tonight if he told Patrick Roarke you were in that alley with your book. I say that’s just exactly right. Why did you choose that time and place?”
“Ah … I can’t say to the timing, it’s vague. But that little hideaway in that alley was a safe spot. So I thought. Had been. The old man … he didn’t venture there, not in daylight. He had … He had business elsewhere. Fuck it, it’s blurry, but he was off, wasn’t he, meeting—someone. The Drowned Rat, was it? Might be, that was his usual pub, and it was blocks from that alley.”
“What would he have done if Cobbe came and told him he’d seen you loafing with a book instead of working?”
“Given Cobbe the back of his hand, maybe the boot for good measure.” No doubt of that, Roarke thought, no doubt, but … “And aye, he’d have come to see if Cobbe told him true.”
“And you got worse that time. A lot worse. He got rid of you. It didn’t work out the way he wanted, but he got rid of you. You just wouldn’t stay down.”
She came back for her own coffee. “I’m going to say there were