She let out a breath. “His second victim—the female—writes screenplays, like his aunt. That fits, and it solves the puzzle for me of why Lori Brinkman when none of his other female targets had any kind of career. He’s never been married, never officially cohabbed, or unofficially that I can find. He has a rep as a ladies’ man: dating beautiful women, never sticking according to gossip rags. And—”
She broke off, took another hit of coffee. “He’s got a sexual assault hit, charges dropped, right after his eighteenth birthday. And I went back, took a look, noted that right about the same time a cool mil was transferred from his parents’ financials to the complainant, the twenty-year-old woman who recanted.
“I think I’m going to find more payoffs, from him, that didn’t get as far as formal charges first. He dabbled in school plays, but hit his stride performing in and producing vids, high school, college. One of his highlights—self-proclaimed in an interview—was the restaging of Dracula, in which he also starred, his freshman year in college. He said, in the interview, he saw Dracula as romantic as well as sexual, and that by seducing and taking his female victims, he was giving them sexual release during a time when repression was the rule. He … released them. Bound them by his power, then released them from their own inhibitions.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Roarke conceded. “And now I want a drink.”
“I can’t prove it, yet. But I will. He took e-courses, but everybody does. He excelled, but didn’t pursue them. I’m betting when we ask, we’re going to find he’s one of the go-to guys when somebody has a comp issue. ‘I bet Kyle can fix it.’”
She frowned when Roarke offered her a small glass of wine.
“I guess so,” she considered, and sipped.
“I knew, Roarke, everything in me knew, today when he sat across from me, an arm around his cousin’s wife. Her shoulder to lean on. He set it all up. His cousin’s uptown in meetings, he’s downtown, and he talks Rosa into going with him, has a director type there for cover, too. He’s right there to support her when she gets that text.”
“Easily sent by remote, or scheduled to send at a certain time.”
“I got that. And it’s dumped in a recycler half a block from the Patricks’ building—to add more fear—and that bin just happens to do the crush and shred before we can get there. Previous crush is eight A.M., giving him a big wide window to dump it, head into work. No way we could’ve gotten to it before the scheduled crush—he even checked the time to be sure when we were at Central. I went hot all the way, and we were still too late. He had it all worked out.
“He’s smart,” she said, pacing again. “Reckless—that’s arrogance. He didn’t have to take another swipe at his cousin and Rosa, didn’t have to put himself in the position of sitting across from me. He just wanted to.”
“The Patricks will be grateful, will feel grateful he was with her when that text came. That he took her to you, stayed with her. All of it designed to make them grateful to the man who brutalized them.”
“He’s a damn good actor.” She stared at Kyle’s ID shot. “Damn good at setting the stage. I’ve got to write it up. Write it all up, every detail, then I have to convince Reo to get behind it, get me a search warrant. He’s got that hoard he’s stolen stashed somewhere, and somewhere he can bask in it whenever he wants. We still have to finish vetting the list. If I’m wrong—”
“You’re not.” Roarke recalled the images of Knightly’s aunt and Rosa onto the screen. “You’re not wrong. I’ll start working on the other names while you write it up. But you’re not wrong.”
It took her an hour to write up the report in such a way that utilized only facts, only available data, making the connections in a logical point by point.
Then she let it simmer while she updated her lists or eliminated more possibles before going back and reading it all again.
When she felt it would stand, she sent it to APA Cher Reo with a request for a face-to-face meeting at the earliest possible time the next day; to Mira, asking for a consult if the profiler felt one necessary; and to her commander.
She copied the other members of the team on all.
When she’d finished, she sat back, closed her eyes.
“You need sleep.”
“I know. I have to be on top of things tomorrow. If I do it right, he won’t have the chance to do this to anyone else. He’s got the next targets, he’s got the costume, the props, everything. He’s dreaming about it. He’d never stop.”