by J. D. Robb
"You eating a doughnut?"
"What do you need electronic eyes and ears for, you can tell I’m eating a cruller from in there?" There was a slurping sound as Feeney washed down the cruller with coffee. "Roarke bought the team a little something to keep us alert."
"Yeah, he’s always buying something." She wished she had a damn cruller. Better, the coffee
.
"You should have worn the beads, Lieutenant." Roarke’s voice cruised on. "I think they might have appealed to Bobbie."
"Yeah, that’s what I need. Baubles and beads. I could use them to - "
"Picking up something," Feeney interrupted.
"I hear it." Eve went silent, and as she focused, the sound - a humming - took on the pattern of a tune, and a female flavor. She drew her weapon.
"Exits and egresses," she murmured to Feeney.
"Undisturbed," he said in her ear. "I’ve got no motion, no visual, no heat-sensor reading on anything but you and Peabody."
So it was on a timer, Eve decided. An electronic loop EDD had missed.
"Dallas?" Peabody’s voice was a frantic hiss. "You read? I see - "
The earpiece went to a waspy buzz. And the air went to ice.
She couldn’t stop the chill from streaking up her spine, but no one had to know about it. She might have cursed the glitch in communications and surveillance, but she was too busy watching the amorphous figure drift toward her.
Bobbie Bray wore jeans widely belled from the knees down, slung low at the hips and decorated with flowers that twined up the side of each leg. The filmy white top seemed to float in a breeze. Her hair was a riotous tangle of curls with the glitter of diamond clips. As she walked, as she hummed, she lifted a cigarette to her lips and drew deeply.
For an instant, the sharp scent of tobacco stung the air.
From the way the image moved, Eve decided tobacco wasn’t the only thing she’d been smoking. As ghosts went, this one was stoned to the eyeballs.
"You think I’m buying this?" Eve pushed off the wall. But when she started to move forward something struck out at her. Later, she would think it was like being punched with an ice floe.
She shoved herself forward, following the figure into what had been the bedroom area of the apartment.
The figure stopped, as if startled.
I didn’t know you were up here. What’s it about? I told you, I’m bookin. So I packed. Don’t give me any more shit, Hop.
The figure moved as it spoke, mimed pouring something into a glass, drinking. There was weariness in the voice, and the blurriness of drugs.
Because I’m tired and I’m sick. I’m so fucking messed up. This whole scene is fucked up, and I can’t do it anymore. I don’t give a shit about my career. That was all you. It’s always been all you.
She turned, stood hipshot and blearily defiant.
Yeah? Well, maybe I have lapped it up, and now I’m just puking it out. For Christ’s sake look at us, Hop. Look at yourself. We’re either stoned or strung out. We got a kid. Don’t tell me to shut up. I’m sick of myself and I’m sick of you. I will stay straight this time.
The image flung an arm out as if heaving a glass against the wall.
I’m not humping some other guy. I’m not signing with another label. I’m done. Don’t you get it? I’m done with this, and I’m done with you. You’re fucking crazy, Hop. You need help more than I do. Put that down.
The image threw up its hands now, stumbling back.
You gotta calm down. You gotta come down. We’ll talk about it, okay? I don’t have to leave. I’m not lying. I’m not. Oh God. Don’t. No. Jesus, Hop. Don’t!
There was a sharp crack as the figure jerked back, then fell. The hole in the center of the forehead leaked blood.
"Hell of a show," Eve said, and her voice sounded hoarse to her own ears. "Hell of a performance."
Eve heard the faint creak behind her, pivoted. Maeve stepped into the room, tears pouring down her cheeks. And a knife gleaming dully in her hand.
"He shot me dead. Dead was better than gone - that’s what he said."
Not John Massey, Eve realized. The Bray/Hopkins legacy had gone down another generation.
"You look alive to me, Maeve."
"Bobbie," she corrected. "She’s in me. She speaks through me. She is me."
Eve let out a sigh, kept her weapon down at her side. "Oh step back. Ghosts aren’t ridiculous enough, now we have to go into possession?"
"And he killed me." Maeve crooned it. "Took my life. He said I was nothing without him, just a junky whore with a lucky set of pipes."
"Harsh," Eve agreed. "I grant you. But it all happened before you were born. And both players are long dead. Why kill Hopkins?"
"He walled me up." Her eyes gleamed, tears and rage and madness. "He paid off the cops, and they did nothing."
"No, he didn’t. His grandfather did."
"There’s no difference." She turned a slow circle as she spoke, arms out. "He was, I was. He is, I am." Then spun, pointed at Eve with the tip of the knife. "And you, you’re no different than the cops who let me rot in there. You’re just another pig."
"Nobody pays me off. I finish what I start, and let me tell you something: this stops here."
"It never stops. I can’t get out, don’t you get it?" Maeve slapped a hand over her lips as if to hold back the gurgle of laughter that ended on a muffled sob. "Every day, every night, it’s the same thing. I can’t get away from it, and I go round and round and round, just like he wanted."
"Well, I’m going to help you get out of here. And you can spend every day, every night of the rest of your natural life in a cage. Might be a nice padded one in your case."
Maeve smiled now. "You can’t stop it. You can’t stop me, you can’t stop it. ‘You’re never leaving me.’ That’s what he said when he was walling me up in there. He made me, that’s what he said, and I wasn’t going anywhere. Ever. Fucking bastard killed me, cursed me, trapped me. What the hell are you going to do about it?"
"End it. Maeve Buchanan, you’re under arrest for the murder of Radcliff Hopkins. You have the right to remain silent - "
"You’ll pay for leaving me in there!" Maeve hacked out with the knife she held and missed by a foot
.
"Jesus, you fight like a girl." Eve circled with her, watching Maeve’s eyes. "I’m not an overweight dumbass, and you don’t have a gun this time. So pay attention. Stunner, knife. Stunner always wins.
You want a jolt, Maeve?"
"You can’t hurt me. Not in this place. I can’t be harmed here."
"Wanna bet?" Eve said, and hit Maeve with a low stun when the redhead charged again.
The knife skittered out of Maeve’s hand as she fell back, hit hard on her ass. There was another swipe of cold, this time like ice-tipped nails raking Eve’s cheek. But she pushed by it, yanking out her restraints as she dragged Maeve’s arms behind her back.
Maeve struggled, her body bucking as she gasped out curses. And the cold, whipped by a vicious wind, went straight down to the bone.
"This stops here," Eve repeated, breathless as what felt like frigid fists pounded at her back. "Radcliff C. Hopkins will be charged with murder one in the unlawful death of Bobbie Bray, posthumously. That’s my word. Period. Now leave me the hell alone so I can do my job."
Eve hauled Maeve to her feet as the wind began to die. "We’re going to toss in breaking and entering and assault on an officer just for fun."
"My name is Bobbie Bray, and you can’t touch me. I’m Bobbie Bray, do you hear me? I’m Bobbie Bray."
"Yeah, I hear you." Just as she heard the sudden frantic squawking of voices in her ear and the thunder of footsteps on the stairs.
"I couldn’t get to the stairs," Peabody told her. "All of a sudden the place is full of people and music. Talk about jeebies. My communication’s down, and I’m trying to push through this wall of bodies. Live bodies - well, not live. I don’t know. It’s all jumbled."
"We went to
the doors soon as communications went down," Feeney added. "Couldn’t get through them. Not even your man there with his magic fingers. Then all of a sudden, poof, corn’s back, locks open, and we’re in. Damned place." Feeney stared at Number twelve as they stood on the sidewalk. "Ought to be leveled, you ask me. Level the bastard and salt the ground."
"Maeve Buchanan rigged it, that’s all. We’ll figure out how." That was her story, Eve told herself, and she was sticking with it. "I’m heading in, taking her into interview. She’s just whacked enough she may not lawyer up straight off."
"Can I get a lift?"
Eve turned to Roarke. "Yeah, I’ll haul you in. Uniforms are transporting the suspect to Central. Peabody, you want to supervise that?"
"On it. Glad to get the hell away from this place."
When he settled in the car beside Eve, Roarke said simply, "Tell me."
"Maeve was probably already inside. We just missed her in the sweep. She had a jammer and a program hidden somewhere."
"Eve."
She huffed out a breath, cursed a little. "If you want to be fanciful or whatever, I had a conversation with a dead woman."
She told him, working hard to be matter-of-fact.
"So it wasn’t Maeve who bruised and scratched your face."
"I don’t know what it was, but I know this is going to be wrapped, and wrapped tight tonight. Buchanan’s being picked up now. We’ll see if he was in this, or if Maeve worked alone. But I’m damn sure she’s the one who fired the gun. She’s the one who lured Hopkins there. He had a weakness for young women. He’d never have felt threatened by her. Walked right in, alone, unarmed."
"If she sticks with this story about being Bobbie Bray, she could end up in a psychiatric facility instead of prison."
"A cage is a cage - the shape of it isn’t my call."
* * *
At Central, Eve let Maeve stew a little while as she waited for Mira to be brought in and take a post in observation. So she took Buchanan first.
He was shaking when she went into interview room B, his face pale, his eyes glossy with distress.
"They said - they said you arrested my daughter. I don’t understand. She’ll need a lawyer. I want to get her a lawyer."
"She’s an adult, Mr. Buchanan. She’ll request her own representation if she wants it."
"She won’t be thinking straight. She’ll be upset."
"Hasn’t been thinking straight for a while, has she?"
"She’s… she’s delicate."
"Here." Peabody set a cup of water on the table for him. "Have a drink. Then you can help us help your daughter."
"She needs help," Eve added. "Do you know she claims to be Bobbie Bray?"
"Oh God. Oh God." He put his face in his hands. "It’s my fault. It’s all my fault."
"You are John Massey, grandson of Bobbie Bray and Radcliff Hopkins?"
"I got away from all that. I had to get away from it. It destroyed my mother. There was nothing I could do."
"So during the Urbans, you saw your chance. Planted your ID after an explosion. Mostly body parts. All that confusion. You walked away."
"I couldn’t take all the killing. I couldn’t go back home. I wanted peace. I just wanted some peace. I built a good life. Got married, had a child. When my wife died, I devoted myself to Maeve. She was the sweetest thing."
"Then you told her where she’d come from, who she’d come from."
He shook his head. "No. She told me. I don’t know how she came to suspect, but she tracked down Rad Hopkins. She said it was business, and I wanted to believe her. But I was afraid it was more. Then one day she told me she’d been to Number Twelve, and she understood. She was going to take care of everything, but I never thought she meant… Is this ruining her life now, too? Is this ruining her life?"
"You knew she went back out the night Hopkins was killed," Eve said. "You knew what she’d done. She’d have told you. You covered for her. That makes you an accessory."
"No." Desperation was bright in his eyes as they darted around the room. "She was home all night. This
is all a terrible mistake. She’s upset and she’s confused. That’s all."
They let him sit, stepped out into the hall. "Impressions, Peabody?"
"I don’t think he had an active part in the murder. But he knew - maybe put his head in the sand about it, but he knew. We can get him on accessory after the fact. He’ll break once she has."
"Agreed. So let’s go break her."
Maeve sat quietly. Her hair was smoothed again, her face was placid. "Lieutenant, Detective."
"Record on." Eve read the data into the recorder, recited the revised Miranda. "Do you understand your rights and obligations, Ms. Buchanan?"
"Of course."
"So Maeve." Eve sat at the table across from her. "How long did you know Hopkins?"
A smirky little smile curved her lips. "Which one?"
"The one you shot nine times in Number Twelve."
"Oh, that Hopkins. I met him right after he bought the building. I read about it, and thought it was time we resolved some matters."
"What matters?"
"Him killing me."
"You don’t look dead."
"He shot me so I couldn’t leave him, so I wouldn’t be someone else’s money train. Then he covered it up. He covered me up. I’ve waited a long time to make him pay for it."
"So you sent him the message so he’d come to Number Twelve. Then you killed him."
"Yes, but we’d had a number of liaisons there before. We had to uncover my remains from that life."
"Bobbie Bray’s remains."
"Yes. She’s in me. I am Bobbie." She spoke calmly, as if they were once again sitting in the classy parlor in her brownstone. "I came back for justice. No one gave me any before."
"How did you know where the remains were?"
"Who’d know better? Do you know what he wanted to do? He wanted to bring in the media, to make another fortune off me. He had it all worked out. He’d bring the media in, let them put my poor bones on-screen, give interviews - at a hefty fee, of course. Using me again, like he always did. Not this time."
"You believed Rad Hopkins was Hop Hopkins reincarnated?" Peabody asked.
"Of course. It’s obvious. Only this time I played him. Told him my father would pay and pay and pay
for the letters I’d written. I told him where we had to open the wall. He didn’t believe that part, but he wanted under my skirt."
She wrinkled her nose to show her mild distaste. "I could make him do what I wanted. We worked for hours cutting that brick. Then he believed."
"You took the hair clips and the gun."
"Later. We left them while he worked on his plan. While, basically, he dug his own grave. I cleaned them up. I really loved those hair clips. Oh, there were ammunition clips, too. I took them. I was there."
Her face changed, hardened, and her voice went raw, went throaty. "In me, in the building. So sad, so cold, so lost. Singing, singing every night. Why should I sing for him? Murdering bastard. I gave him a child, and he didn’t want it."
"Did you?" Eve asked her.
"I was messed up. He got me hooked - the drugs, the life, the buzz, you know? Prime shit, always the prime shit for Hop. But I was going to get straight, give it up, go back for my kid. I was gonna - had my stuff packed up. I wrote and told my old lady, and I was walking on Hop. But he didn’t want that. Big ticket, that’s what I was. He never wanted the kid. Only me, only what I could bring in. Singing and singing."
"You sent Rad a message, to get him to Number Twelve."
"Sure. Public ‘link, easy and quick. I told him to come, and when to come. He liked when I used Bobbie’s voice - spliced from old recordings - in the messages I sent him. He thought it was sexy. Asshole. He stood there, grinning at me. I brought it, he said."
"What was it?"
"His watch. The watch he had on the night he shot me. The one I bought him when my album hit number one. He ha
d it on his wrist and was grinning at me. I shot him, and I kept shooting him until the clip was empty. Then I pushed the murdering bastard over, and I put the gun right against his head, right against it, and I shot him again. Like he did to me."
She sat back a little, smiled a little. "Now he can wander around in that damn place night after night after night. Let’s see how he likes it."
Epilogue
When Eve stepped out, rubbed her hands over her face, Mira slipped out of observation.
"Don’t tell me," Eve began. "Crazy as a shithouse rat."