Page 101 of Random in Death
He fled, as planned, through the emergency exit. But not with the strutting satisfaction he’d imagined. He had to run, to shove, to push his way through the crowd as he heard her screaming:
“That asshole stabbed me!”
He was barely out the door when the houselights came up.
With his heart pounding, his ears ringing, his stomach churning, he kept running.
Chapter Fourteen
Private school, Eve thought as she looked over the lists Jenkinson and Reineke had generated. The killer she saw came from money and privilege and attended private school.
She’d start there.
She glanced up as Roarke came in from his adjoining office.
“How can I help?”
“I thought you had some stuff.”
“I did, now it’s done, so I no longer have some stuff.” Stepping behind her, he rubbed at the knots in her shoulders. “It’s near to half-nine, and I expect you want to put another hour or two in.”
“I tapped Jenkinson and Reineke to dig into schools with a solid chemistry department, but I didn’t have a chance to start on it.”
“You’ll want private schools, I imagine, from how you described him at dinner.”
“That’s where I want to start. I had them pull in universities, too, but I’m pushing that down. He wants and hates what he sees. He’s not killing college girls.”
“How many do you have?”
“Two hundred and thirty-three. I can cut that back to two hundred and six by eliminating ones focused exclusively on the arts, theater, music.”
“That would be a hundred and three for each of us.”
“These are just in the city.” Thinking of that, she reached for her coffee. “But he’s not killing in Brooklyn or Queens. Not targeting girls in Yonkers or the Bronx.”
“You start with the most probable.” He kissed the top of her head.
“Yeah. Yeah,” she repeated. “We eliminate female students, any male student under fifteen. Fourteen,” she corrected. “Better to dig through more than miss. We bump down any athletes—he doesn’t have the build or the time for that. Focus on Caucasian males, the honor students, the chemistry angle—or premed.”
“Some of the private schools include boarding as an option, as we do at An Didean.”
“I don’t think he’s boarding. Too much supervision with that. We’ll set that aside for the second pass. We pull up the rosters and the—what is it?—yearbook thing. That’ll have photos. If he’s not top of the class, he’s close to it. No clubs outside of his interest in chemistry.”
Following her line, Roarke added, “He won’t hold an office—class president, student council.”
“Definitely not. Whatever we can’t get to tonight, I’ll dump on Peabody or whoever’s clear tomorrow. Twenty each for now.”
“I’ll use your auxiliary. And your coffee,” he added, “as it’ll go nicely with the pie.”
She’d forgotten about the pie, and now wanted it.
She used her command center to program coffee while Roarke dealt with pie.
“He’s not an average student,” she said over the first bite. “He’s exceptional there. But”—Eve sent Roarke his twenty—“he’ll stand out because he doesn’t stand out.
“Were you ever in a yearbook thing?”
“I was rarely in school in any case, and for that? I most deliberately was not.” He glanced over. “You?”