by J. D. Robb
“He did sort of go crazy. Jeez, Dallas, he basically locked himself up there in that place for over ten years, with a body behind the wall.”
“Maybe. Let’s get the bones dated and identified before we jump there. The crime scene guys were all but weeping with joy over those bones. While they’re having their fun, we’ve got an active case, from this century.”
“But you’re curious, right? You gotta wonder if we just found Bobbie Bray. And the hair clips. Is that spooky or what?”
“Nothing spooky about a killer planting them. Wanted us to find the bones, that’s a given. So connecting the dots, the skeleton and our vic are linked, at least in the killer’s mind. What do we have on Hopkins so far?”
“Vic was sixty-two at TOD. Three marriages, three divorces. Only offspring—son from second marriage.” Peabody scanned her memo book. “Bounced back and forth between New York and New L.A., with a couple of stints in Europe. Entertainment field, mostly fringe. Didn’t seem to have his grandfather’s flair. Parents died in a private plane crash twenty-five years back. No sibs.”
Peabody glanced over. “The Hopkins line doesn’t go toward longevity and propagation. Part of the curse.”
“Part of birth control practices and lousy luck,” Eve corrected. “What else—salient—do we have?”
“You gotta wonder,” Peabody went on. “I mean Hopkins number two was married four times. Four. One surviving son—or surviving until now. He had a daughter from another marriage who drowned when she was a teenager, and another son—still another marriage—who hanged himself when he was twenty-three. That’s the kind of consistent bad luck that says curse to me.”
“It says pretty irrelevant background data to me. Give me something on our vic.”
“Okay, okay. Rad Hopkins went through a lot of the money his father managed to recoup, and most of what he’d inherited from his mother, who was a socialite with some traces of blue blood. He had a few minor smudges for illegals, solicitation, gray-area business practices. No time served. Oh, no collector’s license for firearms.”
“Where are the ex-wives?”
“Number one’s based in New L.A. B-movie actress. Well, B-minus, really. Number three’s in Europe, married to some minor English aristocrat. But Number two’s here in New York. Fanny Gill—dance instructor. The son’s Cliff Gill Hopkins—though he dropped the Hopkins legally at age twenty-one. They run a dance studio.”
“New York’s an easy place to get to and get out of. We’ll run them all. Business partners?”
“None currently. He’s had a mess of them, off and on. But he was the sole owner and proprietor of Number Twelve Productions, which has the same address as his residence. He bought the building he died in at auction about six months ago.”
“Not much work done in there in six months.”
“I tagged the construction company from the name on the building permit. Owner tells me they got called off after three weeks. Their scuttlebutt is Hopkins ran out of money, and scrambled around for some backers. But he said he had a call from the vic a few days ago, wanting to schedule work to start up again.”
“So maybe he got some money, or wheeled some sort of deal.”
She found the miracle of a street-level spot a half block from Hopkins’s building.
“Decent digs,” Eve noted. “Fancy antique wrist unit, designer wallet, pricey shoes. Doesn’t give the appearance of hurting financially.”
She flashed her badge at the doorman. “Hopkins,” she said. “Radcliff C.”
“I’ll ring up and let him know you’d like to speak with him.”
“Don’t bother. He’s in the morgue. When’s the last time you saw him?”
“Dead?” The doorman, a short, stocky mixed-race man of about forty, stared at Eve as his jaw dropped. “Mr. Hopkins is dead? An accident?”
“Yes, he’s dead. No, it wasn’t an accident. When did you last see him?”
“Yesterday. He went out about twelve-thirty in the afternoon, came back around two. I went off duty at four. My replacement would have gone off at midnight. No doorman from midnight to eight.”
“Anybody come to see him?”
“No one that checked in with me. The building’s secured. Passcodes are required for the elevators. Mr. Hopkins’s apartment is on the sixth floor.” The doorman shook his head, rubbed a gloved hand over the back of his neck. “Dead. I just can’t believe it.”
“He live alone?”
“He did, yes.”
“Entertain much?”
“Occasionally.”
“Overnight entertaining? Come on, Cleeve,” Eve prompted, scanning his brass name tag. “Guy’s dead.”
“Occasionally,” he repeated and puffed out his cheeks. “He, ah, liked variety, so I couldn’t say there was any particular lady. He also liked them young.”
“How young?”
“Mid-twenties, primarily, by my gauge. I haven’t noticed anyone visiting the last couple of weeks. He’s been in and out nearly every day. Meetings, I assume, for the club he’s opening. Was opening.”
“Okay, good enough. We’re going up.”
“I’ll clear the code for you.” Cleeve held the door for them, then walked to the first of two elevators. He skimmed his passcode through the slot, then keyed in his code. “I’m sorry to hear about Mr. Hopkins,” he said as the doors opened. “He never gave me any trouble.”
“Not a bad epitaph,” Eve decided as the elevator headed up to six.
The apartment was single-level, but spacious. Particularly since it was nearly empty of furnishings. There was a sleep chair in the living room, facing a wall screen. There were a multitude of high-end electronics and carton after carton of entertainment discs. It was all open space with a colored-glass wall separating the sleeping area.
“There was art on the walls,” Eve noted. “You can see the squares and rectangles of darker paint where they must’ve hung. Probably sold them to get some capital for his project.”
A second bedroom was set up as an office, and from the state of it, Eve didn’t judge Hopkins had been a tidy or organized businessman. The desk was heaped with scribbled notes, sketches, memo cubes, coffee cups and plates from working meals.
A playback of the desk ’link was loaded with oily conversation with the recently deceased pitching his project to potential backers or arranging meetings where she supposed he’d have been doing the same.
“Let’s have EDD go through all the data and communication.” The Electronic Detective Division could comb through the transmissions and data faster and more efficiently than she. “Doesn’t look like he’s entertained here recently, which jibes with our doorman’s statement. Nothing personal in the last little while on his home ’link. It’s all about money.”
She walked through the apartment. The guy wasn’t living there so much as surviving. Selling off his stuff, scrambling for capital. “The motive’s not all about money, though. He couldn’t have had enough for that. The motive’s emotional. It’s personal. Kill him where the yellowing bones of a previous victim are hidden. Purposeful. Building was auctioned off six months ago? Private or public?”
“I can check,” Peabody began.
“I got a quicker source.”
It seemed to her the guy she’d married was always in, on his way to or coming back from some meeting. Then again, he seemed to like them. It took all kinds.
And she had to admit when that face of his filled her screen, it put a little boost in her step to think: mine.
“Quick question,” she began. “Number Twelve. Any details on its auction?”
His dark brows raised over those intense blue eyes. “Bought for a song, which will likely turn out to be a dirge. Or has it already?” Roarke asked her.
“You’re quick, too. Yeah, current owner’s in the morgue. He got it on the cheap?”
“Previous owners had it on the market for several years, and put it up for public auction a few months ago after the last fire.”
“There’ve been several. Unexplained,” he added with that Irish lilt cruising through his voice. “Hopkins, wasn’t it? Descendent of infamy. How was he killed?”
“Nine millimeter Smith and Wesson.”
Surprise moved over that extraordinary face. “Well now. Isn’t that interesting? You recovered the weapon, I take it.”
“Yeah, I got it. Fill you in on that later. The auction, you knew about it, right?”
“I did. It was well-publicized for several weeks. A building with that history generates considerable media attention as well.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured. If it was a bargain, why didn’t you snap it up to add it to your mega-Monopoly board?”
“Haunted. Cursed.”
“Yeah, right.” She snorted out a laugh, but he only continued to look out from the screen. “Okay, thanks. See you later.”
“You certainly will.”
“Couldn’t you just listen to him?” Peabody let out a sigh. “I mean couldn’t you just close your eyes and listen?”
“Snap out of it, Peabody. Hopkins’s killer had to know the building was up for sale. Maybe he bid on it, maybe he didn’t. He doesn’t move on the previous owners, but waits for Hopkins. Goes back to personal. Lures him, kills him, leaves the weapon and the hair clips with the skeleton behind the brick. Making a statement.”
Peabody huffed out a breath. “This place doesn’t make much of a statement, personal or otherwise.”
“Let’s toss it anyway. Then we’re going dancing.”
The Gill School of Dance was on the third floor of a stubby post-Urban War building on the West Side. It boasted a large, echoing room with a mirrored wall, a barre, a huddle of chairs and a decorative screen that sectioned off a minute desk.
The space smelled of sweat heavily covered with floral air freshener.
Fanny Gill herself was skinny as an eel, with a hard, suspicious face and a lot of bright blond hair tied up with a red scarf. Her pinched face went even tighter as she set her tiny ass on the desk.
“So somebody killed the rat bastard. When’s the funeral? I got a red dress I’ve been saving for a special occasion.”
“No love lost, Ms. Gill?”
“Oh, all of it lost, honey. My boy out there?” She jerked a chin toward the screen. On the other side, a man in a sleeveless skinsuit was calling out time and steps to a group of grubby-looking ballerinas. “He’s the only decent thing I ever got from Rad the Bad. I was twenty-two years old, fresh and green as a head of iceberg.”
She didn’t sigh so much as snort, as if to signal those salad days were long over.
“I sure did fall for him. He had a line, that bastard, he had a way. Got married, got pregnant. Had a little money, about twenty thou? He took it, invested it.” Her lips flattened into one thin, red line. “Blew it, every dollar. Always going to wheel the deal, strike the big time. Like hell. Cheated on me, too. But I stuck, nearly ten years, because I wanted my boy to have a father. Finally figured out no father’s better than a lousy one. Divorced him—hired a fucking shark lawyer—excuse the language.”
“No problem. Cops hear words like lawyer all the time.”
Fanny barked out a laugh, then seemed to relax. “Wasn’t much to get, but I got my share. Enough to start this place up. And you know, that son of a bitch tried to hit me up for a loan? Called it a business investment, of course. Just a couple months ago. Never changes.”
“Was this business investment regarding Number Twelve?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Like I’d have anything to do with that place—or Rad.”
“Could you tell us where you were last night, Ms. Gill? From say midnight to three?”
“In bed, asleep. I teach my first class at seven in the morning.” She sniffed. looking more amused than offended to be considered a suspect in a homicide. “Hey, if I’d wanted to kill Rad, I’d’ve done it twenty years ago. You’re going to ask my boy, too, aren’t you?”
“It’s routine.”
Fanny nodded. “I sleep alone, but he doesn’t.”
“Dead? Murdered?” Cliff lowered the towel he’d used to dry his damp face. “How? When?”
“Early this morning. The how is classified for the moment. Can you give us your whereabouts between midnight and three?”
“We got home about one. We’d been out with friends. Um . . . give me a second.” He picked up a bottle of water, stared at it, then drank. He was a well-built thirty, with streaked blond hair curling in a tail worn halfway down his back. “Lars Gavin, my cohab. We met some friends at Achilles. A club uptown. We went to bed right after we got home, and I got up about seven, seven-thirty. Sorry, I think I want to sit down.”
“We’re going to need names and contact information on the people you were with, and a number where we can reach your cohab.”
“Yeah, sure. Okay. How? How did it happen?” He lifted dazed eyes to Eve’s. “Was he mugged?”
“No. I’m not able to give you many details at this time. When’s the last time you had contact with your father?”
“A couple months ago. He came by to try to hit my mother up for some money. Like that would work.” Cliff managed a half smile, but it wobbled. “Then he put the line on me. I gave him five hundred.”
He glanced over to where Fanny was running another group through barre exercises. “Mom’ll skin me if she finds out, but I gave him the five.”
“That’s not the first time you gave him money,” Eve deduced.
“No. I’d give him a few hundred now and then. It kept him off my mother’s back, and we do okay here. The school, I mean. We do okay. And Lars, he understands.”
“But this time he went to your mother first.”
“Got to her before I could steer him off. Upsets her, you know? He figured he could sweet talk her out of a good chunk for this investment. Get rich deal—always a deal.” Now Cliff scrubbed his hands over his face.
“They fight about it?” Eve asked him.
“No. My mother’s done fighting with him. Been done a long time ago. And my father, he doesn’t argue. He . . . he cajoles. Basically, she told him to come by again when Hell froze over. So he settled for me, on the sly, and the five hundred. He said he’d be in touch when the ball got rolling, but that was just another line. Didn’t matter. It was only five. I don’t know how to feel. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel.”
“I can’t tell you, Mr. Gill. Why did you remove Hopkins from your legal name?”
“This place—Gill School of Dance. My mother.” He lifted his shoulder, looked a little abashed. “And well, it’s got a rep. Hopkins. It’s just bad luck.”
Three
Eve wasn’t surprised MD Morris had snagged Hopkins. Multiple gunshot wounds had to be a happy song and dance for a medical examiner. An interesting change of pace from the stabbings, the bludgeonings, strangulations and overdoses.
Morris, resplendent in a bronze-toned suit under his clear protective cape, his long dark hair in a shining tail, stood over the body with a sunny smile for Eve.
“You send me the most interesting things.”
“We do what we can,” Eve said. “What can you tell me I don’t already know?”
“Members of one family of the fruit fly are called peacocks because they strut on the fruit.”
“Huh. I’ll file that one. Let’s be more specific. What can you tell me about our dead guy?”
“The first four wounds—chest—and the leg wound—fifth—could have been repaired with timely medical intervention. The next severed the spine, the seventh damaged the kidney. Number eight was a slight wound, meaty part of the shoulder. But he was dead by then. The final, close contact, entered the brain, which had already closed down shop.”
He gestured to his wall screen, and called up a program. “The first bullets entered at a near level angle.” Morris continued as the graphics played out on-screen. “You see, the computer suggested, and I concur, that the assailant fire
d four times, rapidly, hitting body mass. The victim fell after the fourth shot.”
Eve studied the reenactment as Morris did, noting the graphic of the victim took the first two shots standing, the second two slightly hunched forward in the beginning of a fall.
“Big guy,” Peabody commented. “Stumbles back a little, but keeps his feet for the first couple shots. I’ve only seen training and entertainment vids with gun death,” she added. “I’d have thought the first shot would slap him down.”
“His size, the shock of the impact,” Morris said, “and the rapidity of fire would have contributed to the delay in his fall. Again, from the angles by which the bullets entered the body, it’s likely he stumbled back, then lurched forward slightly, then went down—knee, heels of the hand taking the brunt of the fall.”
He turned to Eve. “Your report indicated that the blood pattern showed the victim tried to crawl or pull himself away across the floor.”
“That’d be right.”
“As he did, the assailant followed, firing over and down, according to the angle of the wounds in the back, leg, shoulder.”
Eyes narrowed now, Eve studied the computer-generated replay. “Stalking him, firing while he’s down. Bleeding, crawling. You ever shoot a gun, Morris?”
“Actually, no.”
“I have,” she continued. “Feels interesting in your hand. Gives this little kick when it fires. Makes you part of it, that little jolt. Runs through you. I’m betting the killer was juiced on that. The jolt, the bang! Gotta be juiced to put more missiles into a guy who’s crawling away, leaving his blood smeared on the floor.”
“People always find creative and ugly ways to kill. I’d have said using a gun makes the kill less personal. But it doesn’t feel that way in this case.”
She nodded. “Yeah, this was personal, almost intimate. The ninth shot in particular.”