Free Possession in Death by J. D. Robb Page A

you up, so I’m open to it.”
    “Smug bastard.”
    “Maybe you’d like to swear at me in Russian or Hungarian.”
    “And you said
I
was mean. Twenty-four.” She took a slug of wine,
considered how she’s push for more if she needed it. “Let’s look at the runs.”
    Roarke ordered data on-screen, leaned a hip against the side of her desk.
“Your prime suspect,” he began. “You had most of this, but the second-level run
added a bit, and I extrapolated from your notes. Allie Madison’s apartment,
where it’s verified Alexi Barin began the day, is an easy ten-minute walk to the
alley—considerably less if a healthy, athletic man took it at a jog, even a run. It’s
about the same from the restaurant where he had brunch. As is his own
apartment,” Roarke added, ordering the map he’d generated on-screen. “These
locations are clustered, more or less, in the general area.”
    “So he could’ve slipped out, slipped away, put on a mask, sliced Szabo up,
and gotten back. Which would involve knowing she’d be in the alley at that
convenient moment, and wearing something for the blood spatter. Because you
don’t hack somebody up the way she was hacked and walk away clean and fresh
to take your alibi to brunch.”
    She paced in front of the screen. “He could have set a meet with her,
pinning the timing. Told her he had some information on Beata. It’s a lot of
planning for an impulsive guy with a temper.”
    “Something set him off at the brunch if we go with your TOD, or prior if we
stay with science,” Roarke suggested. “He went to confront her, saw her in the
alley—he’d have come from this direction, so he’d have passed the alley. He
snaps, pulls the knife, goes in.”
    “Why is he disguised?”
    “She could have seen his face, Eve. The condition she was in when you
found her? It’s not a stretch to believe she wasn’t lucid.”
    “She didn’t see it. She saw the devil.” Eve paused a moment. “I know. It’s
what I saw. I had… a moment in the alley. I know what she saw.”
    “All right.”
    Because she’d expected an argument, even yearned for one, she rounded on
him. “I don’t know whether to be grateful or pissed off that you accept so easily.”
    “Not as easy as it might seem, just easier than you. So if you say you saw
what she saw, I know you did. The occult, on some level, is involved—even
that’s logical.”
    “If you’re a superstitious Irish guy.”
    “If you’re currently able to curse in Hungarian and make goulash,” he
countered—and shut her up. “It could be your suspect has some power of his
own.”
    “I’m not going there. Logic, facts, data. So while it’s possible Alexi slipped
out, did the murder, it’s low on the logic and probability scale with the data we
have at this time. Give me the guy Beata worked with. The one who walked out
of the restaurant with her the night she was last seen.”
    “David Ingall, twenty-two, single. He’s had two bumps. One for an airboard
incident where he lost control and mowed down a group of pedestrians in Times
Square, and another for manufacturing and using false ID—he was underage and
got into a sex club before an undercover busted him. He dropped out of NYU
and takes a couple of virtual courses a semester, lives in a one-bedroom
apartment a few blocks from the restaurant with two roommates. He’s worked
at Goulash for three years.”
    “Doesn’t sound particularly murderous.”
    “In addition, the file from your Detective Lloyd has a statement from one of
the roommates confirming his arrival home—and the drunken night of computer
gaming that followed, on the night Beata Varga went missing.”
    “Roommates make it harder for him to take Beata, hold her, unless they’re
complicit.”
    “The information on the roommates is as benign as this one.”
    “Switch to the theater,” Eve decided. “Where she was understudying. What
did Peabody get?”
    She studied the data as it scrolled, listened to