by J. D. Robb
“That’s it?”
“Yes, for now.”
He rose. “Even if he weren’t my brother, I’d tell you Devon is the best man I know. It’s as simple as that. I hope you find who’s responsible, Lieutenant. I don’t believe Devon will begin to heal until you do.”
Start working on getting a warrant for Dr. Lester’s records,” Eve told Peabody when they were alone.
“Okay.”
“Problem?”
“It’s just … The way each of them took up for the other, the way each one of them talked about the other. I’m not being soft,” Peabody insisted. “But it’s hard to reconcile that kind of love, affection, and respect with two people who’d plot a mass murder.”
“Do you have enough fingers to count the number of partners who had affection and respect, possibly love for each other who murdered, raped, stole, tortured, and committed other assorted crimes?”
“I guess not.”
“We follow through, Peabody, every detail, every angle—even when the odds are they’re not going to lead us anywhere.”
“You don’t think the two of them are involved?”
“No, but I can’t prove it. If I thought they were involved, I couldn’t prove it. Let’s get data.”
Eve glanced at the time. “Aw, gee, I missed the media conference. That’s a shame.”
“That statement hits the red zone on the lie-o-meter.”
“But it feels good. I want thirty minutes in my office to check incomings and status, then we’re going back to the crime scene.”
“Do you think they’re not involved—the Lester brothers—for the same reasons as me?”
“Probably not.” Eve headed out, moving fast so Peabody had to hustle to keep pace. “Devon’s not stupid. Roarke doesn’t have stupid people managing any of his interests. But when I push him on buying the place—would he if he could—he’s all pissed off, damn straight. Smarter to say it’s tainted, his friends died there. Smarter, too, to go straight to pissed or shocked when I led him to our looking at him and his brother. Instead he’s just confused at first. He didn’t have an answer for everything. He didn’t have the right answers for everything. If he had, I wouldn’t bump him down the list.
“The brother’s smart, real smart, and a lot more cynical. He caught on fast. I want to look at his research, his experiments, I want a feel for what he does and how he does it. But it would be stupid for him to kill a whole bunch of people in his brother’s bar. If he were going to do it, he’d have done it somewhere else, not so readily connected.”
“Part of your reasoning’s like mine. It’s the kind of people they are—the stand-up-for-your-brother people.”
“Half a point.”
“Three-quarters.”
“Three-quarters because I’m too busy to argue.”
“Yay!” Peabody said as Eve swung off and into her office.
She’d barely started on the first report when Baxter came to her door.
“Need a minute.”
“Take it,” she told him.
“Adam Stewart. We just finished up with him. He’s alibied for the time line, and I’ve got nothing that puts him in that bar yesterday, or at fucking all.”
“But?”
“He’s a bad bastard, Dallas, and he’s cagey. Bad and cagey fits whoever did this.”
She saw his eyes flick toward her AutoChef. Under the circumstances, she thought, what the hell. “Go ahead, but don’t spread it around you got coffee in here.”
“To the grave.” He moved quickly before she could change her mind, programmed a mug for each of them. Knowing its miseries, he sat on the edge of her visitor’s chair.
“But,” Eve prompted again.
“With him being a bad bastard and a cagey son of a bitch, I figure he’s capable of doing this. But I don’t think he had the means or opportunity. Plus, poking around, the sister—that’s Amie Stewart—didn’t go in there routinely. Now and then, sure, but she wasn’t a regular. How’d he know she’d be there? They weren’t close, didn’t hang out together, or make regular contact. But …”
Baxter let it hang a moment while he drank coffee. “He’s sweaty in Interview. He’s evasive, and not doing such a hot job of pretending to be sorry his sister’s dead. I had Trueheart drill down into his financials, and they don’t add up. It looks like he found a way to siphon off some funds from the trust deal, so with a little work we could get him there.”
“We don’t have time to poke at some bad bastard for embezzlement right now.”
“I get that, but there’s more. The trustee who oversees all that stuff went missing two weeks ago. Being a detective, I detect two ways, the trustee was in on it with Stewart and went on the lam, or the trustee found out what Stewart was up to, and Stewart made him disappear. Either way …”
“Yeah.” She calculated. “Do you have any problem turning this over to Carmichael and Sanchez?”
Baxter winced, comforted himself with coffee. “I gotta say, I want to see it through. The fucker’s dirty, and he just makes my ass twitch. But I can live with passing it on, at least until we clear this case.”
“Do that, and move to the next.”
“That’d be Callaway, then Weaver. They’ve been in meetings all morning, but we’re going over to the offices, corner them, separately, try to follow up with some of the others. That place lost five people.”
He rose, set aside the empty mug. “I wish it was Stewart, because he needs to go away.”
She made a note to stay on top of Stewart, then toggled back to continue with the reports, read Strong’s, and saw the Illegals detective currently pushed on a lead on sources for large or regular purchases of LSD.
Back to the beginning, Eve decided, and returned to the bullpen. “Peabody, with me. Unless otherwise notified, I want everybody in that briefing at sixteen hundred. I’m in the field.”
“I went to Reo for the warrant,” Peabody told her on the way to the garage. “She doesn’t see a problem getting it, and quick. Everybody’s on full alert on this one.”
“I want at least two men on that, with experience and knowledge in Lester’s field. Send in a request to Whitney.”
“Dickhead would have people.”
Eve sighed. “Yeah, he would. Copy him on the request, further requesting Dickhead handpick two of his people to examine Lester’s records, his lab—and I want reports on same in plain English.”
“I talked to McNab for a minute.”
“I don’t want to hear your perverted sex chats,” Eve warned as they got into the car.
“We only spent like ten seconds on that part. They’ve about finished with the ’links. They got a couple more who were on when they were infected, and a couple more who made calls directly after becoming infected. It’s ripping, he said, listening to it. They’ve been going over any and all recovered electronics. Memo books, notebooks, PPCs. Some of them were in use, too. It doesn’t look as if they’ve got anything that’s going to help. Nothing that pops as a communication with or from the perpetrator. But it shows, again, how fast and how strong the vics were affected.”
“How about the door surveillance?”
“They went back forty-eight hours. There’s no break in the time scan, no anomalies. They ID’d some of the vics—I guess regulars— who went in and out the day before approximately the same time frame, and they’re working on a search for any of the people who connect to vics or survivors to see if any showed up within the last couple days. They’ll have those for you at the briefing. Some coworkers. The after-hours activity is just what you’d expect. Staff leaving, either alone or in groups. Last one out the two nights before the incident was Devon Lester, and that coincides with the work schedule for the week.”
Normal day-to-day, Eve thought. Until the world ends.
“Whoever’s responsible knew about the door cam, which means anybody as it’s right there in plain sight. If they didn’t jam it, then they just walked in as staff or customer, and
left the same way.”
“McNab says no jamming. They’ve run it through every analysis, including Roarke’s. Feeney’s also put a couple of his uniforms on listening detail. They’re monitoring sites globally, and off-planet. Listening for any chatter on the incident. Any hint of any individual or person with prior knowledge, or claiming credit. Lots more chatter—it’s the big buzz—but nothing that stands out.”
“He/they? There’s going to be a reaction to the media conference. Lots of chatter and buzz, but Whitney’s statement, and his delivery? It’s going to strike as a challenge. Whitney’s confident, stoic, steady. He might let some of the anger show, but that’s just juice for this type.”
“You think he’ll make some sort of contact.”
“That’s what I’m hoping for.” But not what she feared.
When they got to the bar, Eve broke the seal, then took a moment to clear her mind. She stepped in, scanned the dimly lit space.
The ugly and all too familiar scent of blood and chemicals, of death and sweepers’ dust, clung to the air. She cleared her mind of that, too.
“Lights on full,” she ordered, and imagined what it would have looked like at opening. Rather than broken chairs and tables, shattered glass, floors and walls stained with blood and gore, there would have been the shine and clean of closing mopping.
“Devon took us through the opening routine,” she said to Peabody. “Be Devon. Walk through it.”
“Office first, check receipts and drawer.”
“Temp controls first,” Eve corrected.
“Right.”
While Peabody ran through the checklist, Eve stood back, watched.
Whoever opened moved through every area of the space—office, kitchen, storeroom, restrooms, behind the bar.
“He sees what he sees every day,” Eve said out loud. “Sometimes people miss, in a routine, don’t see what they don’t expect to see. But Devon Lester’s meticulous. He thinks of this as his place. I’d say the bartender followed suit, or he wouldn’t stick as assistant manager.”
“No criminal on the bartender,” Peabody told her. “I talked to the fiancée. Tough one. She said he thought of the bar as his home away from home as much as a job.”
“I saw the report.” And she’d read Roarke’s background checks on the bartender, and the other employees. Nobody popped out.
“The substance or device had to be handy if it was used by a customer,” she considered. “If it was staff, there aren’t that many hidey-holes Lester, the bartender, or one of the other staff wouldn’t see at some point during the day.”
“They’re open for lunch,” Peabody pointed out.
“Yeah. Why risk leaving a dangerous substance on the premises, where it can be found or accidentally triggered before you’re ready? You bring it with you, keep it with you.”
She moved to the bar, behind it, crouched, rose again.
“Not suicide.”
“Why?” Peabody wondered.
“All the next of kin have been notified. A good chunk of friends and coworkers have been interviewed. It’s taking time, but vics’ residences and places of employment are being searched. This was a big statement.”
She saw it again, like a film over the room. The blood, the bodies, the battlefield.
“If you’re using it to self-terminate and take a bunch of people with you, where’s your announcement, your statement in your words? Suicides typically want people to know. And murder/suicides? They’re not just depressed, they’re pissed off. It’s not impulse, so where’s the mission statement?
“No,” Eve repeated, “not suicide. He’s out there. He came in.”
She moved back to the door, imagined the noise, the color and movement, the tables of people, the crowded bar. “He’s been here before, knows the place. He doesn’t particularly stand out. He’s one of the type who comes here after work, before heading home. Wears a suit, carries a briefcase or a file bag, a purse. Something normal, and it serves to carry the substance.
“He’s not alone.”
“But—”
“You stand out more alone,” Eve said before Peabody could finish. “He’s got to figure there’s a good probability there’ll be at least a couple survivors. Maybe more. This is the first, so he can’t be absolutely sure. Stop off for a drink with friends from the office, or meet a client, grab a table or a seat at the bar, order drinks. Get some finger food, talk shop, talk business. Blend in.”
“Pretty damn cold.”
“Cold, sure. But cool, too. Cool-headed. Controlled, detail-oriented. He’s excited, has to be. He talks to the bartender or the waitress, maybe both. And he thinks, ‘Soon you’ll be dead. I’ll kill you soon and I won’t so much as smear the shine on my shoes. Today I’m God.’”
“Oh, man,” Peabody mumbled.
“And the same with the people he works with every day. You’re not going into the office tomorrow, he thinks, or coming in for your shift. You’ll never get that raise or promotion you’ve been busting your ass for. And I’m the reason. I’m the power here.
“His pulse may be racing at the thought of it, but it doesn’t show. Not enough. He looks around at all the people—the suits, the drones, the eager beavers, the overworked. It ends for them here, over half-priced drinks and free salsa.”
“God,” Peabody breathed, because she could see it, too.
“It’s so fucking funny when you think about it, and he thinks about it. But he doesn’t laugh. He just has his drink, talks shop, eats a spring roll, bitches about the workload or the client or the boss—whatever the topic of the day might be.”
She wandered, glanced up, over. “At the bar or a table close to it. This area, most likely. He wants to cover as much ground as he can—this space, the kitchen, down to the restroom. Ventilation’s right overhead here.”
She studied the bar, pictured the nearby tables.
“Purse or briefcase or bag on the lap, take out the substance, the container. What does he do? What does he do? Under the chair, the table, the barstool? Drop something, bend down to pick it up. Set it down? Who’d notice? Could have your hand sealed, coated with it. Shake someone’s hand, friendly slap on the back, whatever—spread it around some.”
“If it started spreading wouldn’t he be infected?”
“That’s the sticky,” Eve muttered. “It works fast, so he’d have to get out fairly quick. Into the air. Or if he concocted this, he could’ve concocted an antidote, a preventative. But either way, he can’t hang around and see how it goes.
“Gotta go. See you tomorrow. I’ll e-mail you that file when I’m finished. Easy-breezy, and out the door.”
She walked to it, opened it. Stepped out.
Traffic, noise, movement again. More of it when the killer had stepped outside. Slide right into the flood of people heading home, to other bars, to shops.
“Offices,” she said to Peabody, looking up at the towers with countless windows. “But apartments, too. A lot of people like to live close to work. They can walk in the good weather. Plenty of buildings with a good view of the bar. He can’t stay inside, can’t risk planting a camera, but wouldn’t it be fun to stand at one of those windows, look down here and know what was happening inside? Timing it, waiting for it, watching throngs of people walk right by the door, unaware, oblivious to the fact that you’re committing murder right now.”
“I’ll start a cross-search for anyone with a residence in eye-line with the crime scene.”
“Worth a shot,” Eve agreed.
“There are a couple cafés, street level, with street views. He could’ve walked across the street, sat down, and watched from there.”
“Start some uniforms on a canvass, showing photos of everyone who’s marked for another round of interviews to whatever waitperson had window tables during that shift. Yeah, he might’ve enjoyed having a bite to eat or a fancy coffee right across the street, watching the whole damn aftermath. All those cops swarming the place, checking out his work. He mig
ht.”
While Eve stood on the sidewalk, considering a killer’s entertainment, the lunch rush at Café West was in full swing. They served good, simple food with table and counter service. Customers sat ass to elbow, talking over the clatter of dishes.
The air carried the appealing scent of fall with today’s pumpkin soup. Most of the crowd looked for a quick, easy meal that didn’t consume the entire lunch hour, so they could pop out again to handle an errand, or linger over coffee before scrambling back to offices and cubes.
Lydia McMeara picked at her tiny, undressed salad between sips of spring water. She was on a diet—again. She nibbled hungrily at lettuce, struggling not to hate Cellie for her perpetually svelte figure. Then there was Brenda who couldn’t claim svelte but owned smoking.
Plus they both juggled men like tennis balls while she herself was in a two-year rut with dull, earnest Bob.
Even his name was dull and earnest.
Things would be different once she got in shape. And it would be easier if she could afford some body sculpting rather than starving herself on rabbit food.
The money she saved walking the eight blocks to work and back every day would add up, she assured herself. And God knew she spent nearly nothing on food anymore.
What she wouldn’t give for a couple bubbling slices of pizza with the works and a calorically prohibitive beer.
“Here, Lydia.” Cellie with her perfect cupid’s bow mouth smiled sympathetically. “Have half my sandwich. Half doesn’t count.”
“I’m fine.”
“You should join my health club.” The smoldering, smoking Brenda had a salad, too. A huge one with an ocean of creamy dressing, seasoned croutons, and golden slivers of cheese.
At that moment, Lydia hated her.
“I don’t have time, and I don’t have the money. Anyway, I’m not hungry.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do this to yourself, Lydia.” Cellie, big brown eyes radiating sincerity, rubbed a hand up and down Lydia’s arm. “You’re beautiful.”
“I’m fat,” Lydia said flatly. She hated herself, hated Cellie and Brenda. She wanted to slap the stupid, tasteless salad right in Cellie’s face.