Page 146 of Random in Death
“Yancy, Kiki, David, bits and pieces.” She jogged and weaved her way down the glide. “And Charro.”
“Charro?”
“Personal shopper—the shoes. Actually, Quilla had a good angle I was working. What have you got, Peabody?”
“Some mild nausea from reading while running down this glide. Dr. Nolan Bryce, Caucasian, age fifty-three, head of Grant and Frisker Pharmaceutical’s research lab, New York branch. One marriage, one divorce. Mariella Reeder, now deceased.”
Peabody looked up when Eve banged through the garage door and down the metal stairs. “She OD’d, Junk cocktail—needle syringe. Five years ago. She had a sheet.”
“Highlights,” Eve said as they got into the car.
“Possession, assault, resisting, unlicensed solicitation. First bust… twelve years ago. Mandatory rehab.”
“Didn’t take.”
“Not even a little,” Peabody confirmed. “She did the ninety—swank center. Busted just under a year later. Another rehab stint. Barely made it six months. Did thirty inside, another ninety in rehab, another thirty in a halfway house.”
“He’d have been about four, wouldn’t he, when this began.” Roarke glanced at Eve as he pushed through traffic. “Younger, certainly, when she started using, but about that when his mother spent long lengths of time away.”
Before she could speak, he shook his head and skimmed around a corner. “It gives him no right to kill, nor does it make him an object of pity—at least not mine. But it’s a foundational issue, isn’t it now? His mother wanted the drug more than him.”
“So he kills girls with the drug—a purer version—who wouldn’t look at him twice. Or once,” she corrected. “He can spend the rest of his life in a cage working out his foundational issue.”
“Third bust,” Peabody continued, “less than three months after she left the halfway house. Got three to five, served four, ninety in halfway. Bryce divorced her while she was inside, and was given full custody of the minor son.”
“Quick, rounding math?” Roarke breezed through a yellow. “She OD’d shortly after her release, and he’d have been roughly eleven.”
“That’s accurate math,” Peabody told him. “No criminal on the doctor, Dallas. He’s squeaky clean. Plenty of money here. Not Roarke plenty, but plenty. Family money in addition to his income. He’s got the house here, a boat, country club membership, a place in the Hamptons.
“Not to be pissy, but he didn’t pass on his looks to his son. The doctor’s dreamy.”
“Not pissy, relevant.” Eve had Nolan Bryce on her own screen. “The father’s got looks. So did the mother. The addiction took care of that, but she started out with them. And the son lost the DNA lottery. He’s short, soft, ordinary, mouse-brown hair, dead brown eyes.
“Flip back through Francis Bryce’s ID shots,” she suggested. “His eyes have always been off. Foundational issues, sure. But some are born psychopaths.”
At the incoming signal, Eve gave a satisfied nod. “Reo came through.” She printed out the warrants.
“And again, excellent timing.” Roarke pulled into a No Parking zone, engaged the On Duty light.
A good, solid brick house, Eve noted. Three stories, square on the corner, with a short flight of brick steps leading to the double entrance doors.
Flat roof, and what looked like a roof garden on it. Maybe Francis grew his poppies up there, she thought.
She got out, took a long look.
“Smart enough to have one of your security systems.”
“So it is. Do you want to me get through it?”
“We’ll start with a knock. On record.”
Knowing the security cam would pick them up anyway, Eve approached the door. Rather than the knock, she pressed the buzzer, and recognized the voice that answered seconds later as a droid. Female.
“Good evening. How may I assist you?”
“You can assist us by opening the door.” She held up her badge. “NYPSD.”
“Dr. Bryce is not in residence at this time.”