On his father’s death, he’d taken over as CEO, had inherited the Barrister House, its contents but for some specific bequests, a villa in Tuscany, its contents, some commercial properties—including Zip’s Manhattan headquarters—a yacht, two vehicles, a private shuttle. Not to mention several billion.
She checked the time, calculated she didn’t have quite enough to do deeper runs on the spouse, the sister, the staff.
She glanced over, saw her board complete, and Roarke sitting on the sofa talking on his ’link.
She left him to it and walked over to the board. Hands in pockets, she studied it. Yeah, he knew how she liked it done, and saw nothing left out.
The position of the body at the crime scene. Not where and how he’d fallen, but she could extrapolate, within reason, by calculating how and why it had been moved.
The wife comes in, turns him, ends up cradling him. The medicals move her back, lay the body down to attempt a miracle.
No reason in either case to reverse the direction of the fall, or to change by any substantial amount the distance from the vault, the desk, the door, from where she’d found it.
“Walking away from the vault and toward the desk.” She circled the board. “Had to be. Check with the MTs, make sure they didn’t move him, but had to be.”
When Roarke joined her, she continued to think out loud. “He doesn’t close the vault—not trying to hide it or the contents—but starts toward his desk when he’s hit from behind. That clear kind of tray thing there on that stand. The same size and shape as the murder weapon.”
“A lighted display,” Roarke told her. “It would shine from below, show the amethyst off.”
“On the office door side of the vault. There’s no sign of struggle, scuffle, fight. Maybe the killer slides behind the office door. ‘Oops, gotta hide.’”
She circled, hissed out a breath.
“But shit, didn’t he have ears? Didn’t he hear somebody coming? Maybe not until too late to take a dive out the window. He grabs that big purple chunk of rock. Barrister sees the vault open, walks over, looks in. ‘Well, shit, we’ve been robbed.’ Turns, starts for the desk. Killer steps out.”
Eve joined her hands together to mime holding a bat.
“Swings. Barrister goes down. Drop the rock, then dive out the window.”
“Sloppy,” Roarke said. “In the end, sloppy. Panicked and sloppy.”
“What would you’ve done? You can’t get to the window and out in time.”
“That would’ve been a mistake, but they happen.”
He studied the board, the crime scene as she did. And very easily imagined himself there, in the dark with a fortune in his hands.
“Better to slide behind the office door as you said. Wait. He comes in, goes to the vault, you slip around the door while his attention’s fixed there. If you’ve done your job, you know how to get out another way, as that’s a basic thing to know. The security’s still off. Into the next room I’d go, and out that window. Out and over the wall before he’d finished telling the cops he’s had a break-in.”
“No panic?”
“Panic gets you nicked,” he said simply. “And murder? Beyond taking a life, it gets you life instead of the five to ten you’d deal down.”
“You’d get more than that five to ten if you’d been busted before.”
He acknowledged that. “True enough. Added to it, you’d do the timeempty-handed after having those sparkling baubles in hand. There’s no word about the theft as yet. Not from the sources I’ve tapped. A take like this? There’ll be some talk soon enough.”
He ran a hand down her back. “It could be some of the sources might hear something that cracks the door a bit. Brian’s doing a bit of poking.”
“Brian.”
“He’s not in the game, and hasn’t been, really, since we were barely more than lads. He’s a publican, but he hears things, and knows how to prime a pump. Added, he’s not one who’ll hold back because I’m married to a Garda.”
Smiling, Roarke patted her ass. “He’s very fond of you, Lieutenant Darling.”
“Right. I’ve got to get going.” She walked back to her desk, picked up her recorder, and fixed it on. “Morgue first. Then I’ll go into Central. It should be quiet, so I’ll work there for a few hours. I want to stop back by the Barristers’ on the way home. Do a follow-up, talk to the daughters.”
“I’ll do what I can from here.”
