by J. D. Robb
“Yancy does good work.” Eve held the photos of John Massey—youth and maturity—side-by-side.
“He does,” Roarke agreed. “As do you, Lieutenant. I doubt I’d have looked at the boy and seen the man.”
“It’s about legacies. Redheads ran in Bray’s family. Her father, her daughter. Her grandson.”
“And Yancy’s work indicates he’s alive and living in New York.”
“Yeah. But even with this I’ve got nothing but instinct and theories. There’s no evidence linking the suspect to the crime.”
“You’ve closed a case on a murder that happened decades before you were born,” Roarke reminded her. “Now you’re greedy.”
“My current suspect did most of the work there. Discovered the body, unearthed it, led me to it. The rest was basically lab and leg work. Since the perpetrator of that crime is long dead, there’s nothing to do but mark the file and do the media announcement.”
“Not very satisfying for you.”
“Not when somebody kills a surrogate figuring that evens things up. And plays games with me. So it’s our turn to play.” Eve shifted in the limo. She felt ridiculous riding around in the big black boat.
But no one would expect Roarke to ride the subway, or even use a common Rapid Cab. Perception was part of the game.
“I can’t send you in wired,” she added. “Never get a warrant for eyes or ears with what I’ve got. You know what to say, right? How to play it?”
“Lieutenant, have a little faith.”
“I got all there is. Okay,” she added, ducking down a little to check out the window when the limo glided to the curb. “Showtime. I’ll be cruising around in this thing, making sure the rest of this little play is on schedule.”
“One question. Can you be sure your suspect will hit his cue in this play of yours?”
“Nothing’s a given, but I’m going with the odds on this. Obsession’s a powerful motivator. The killer is obsessed with Bray, with Number Twelve—and there’s a sense of theatrics there. Another legacy, I’d say. We dangle the bait, he’s going to bite.”
“I’ll do my best to dangle it provocatively.”
“Good luck.”
“Give us a kiss then.”
“That’s what you said last night, and look what happened.” But she gave him a quick one. When he slipped out of the limo, she pulled out her ’link to check on the rest of the game.
Roarke walked into Bygones looking like a man with plenty of money and an eye to spend it as he liked. He gave Maeve an easy smile and a warm handshake. “Ms. Buchanan? I appreciate you opening for me this afternoon. Well, it’s nearly evening, isn’t it?”
“We’re happy to oblige. My father will be right out. Would you like a glass of wine? I have a very nice cabernet breathing.”
“I’d love one. I’ve met your father, though it’s been three or four years, I suppose, since we’ve done business.”
“I’d have been in college. He mentioned you’d bought a particularly fine Georgian sideboard and a set of china, among other things.”
“He has an excellent memory.”
“He never forgets a thing.” She offered the wine she’d poured, then gestured to a silver tray of fruit and cheese. “Would you like to sit? If you’d rather browse, I can point you in a direction, or show you whatever you’d like. My father has the piece you inquired about. He wanted to make sure it was properly cleaned before he showed it to you.”
“I’ll just wait then, if you’ll join me.” As he sat, he glanced toward the portrait of Bobbie on the far wall. “It’s actually Bobbie Bray who put me in mind to come here.”
“Oh? There’s always interest in her and her memorabilia, but in the last day it’s piqued.”
“I imagine.” He shifted as he spoke so he could scan the black-and-white photographs Eve had told him about. And two, as she’d mentioned, were desert landscapes. “Just as I imagine it won’t ebb any time soon,” he continued. “Certainly not with the publicity that will be generated from the case finally being solved.”
Maeve’s hands went very still for a moment. “It’s certain then?”
“I have an inside source, as you might suspect. Yes, it’s certain. She’s been found, after all these years. And the evidence proves it was Hopkins who hid her body.”
“Horrible. I—Daddy.” She got to her feet as Buchanan came into the shop. He carried a velvet case. “You remember Roarke.”
“I certainly do. It’s good to see you again.” They shook hands, sat. “Difficult circumstances when you were here recently with your wife.”
“Yes. Terrible. I was just telling your daughter that they’ve confirmed the identity of the remains found at Number Twelve, and found Hopkins’s—the first’s—fingerprints on the inside of the wall, on several of the bricks.”
“There’s no doubt any longer then.”
“Hardly a wonder he went mad, locking himself up in that building, knowing what he’d done, and that she was behind that wall, where he’d put her. A bit of ‘The Telltale Heart,’ really.”
Keeping it conversational, Roarke settled back with his drink. “Still, it’s fascinating, isn’t it? Time and distance tend to give that sort of brutality an allure. No one can speak of anything else. And here I am, just as bad. Is that the necklace?”
“Oh, yes. Yes.” Buchanan unsnapped the case, folded back the velvet leaves. “Charming, isn’t it? All those little beads are hand-strung. I can’t substantiate that Bobbie made it herself, though that’s the story. But it was worn by her to the Grammy Awards, then given by her to one of her entourage. I was able to acquire it just last year.”
“Very pretty.” Roarke held up the multistrand necklace. The beads were of various sizes, shapes, colors, but strung in a way that showed the craftsman had a clever eye. “I think Eve might like this. A memento of Bobbie, since she’s the one who’s finally bringing her some sense of justice.”
“Can there be, really?” Eyes downcast, Maeve murmured it. “After all this time?”
“For my cop, justice walks hand-in-hand with truth. She won’t let the truth stay buried, as Bobbie was.” He held up the beads again. “I’m hoping to take her away for a quick tropical holiday, and this sort of thing would suit the tropics, wouldn’t it?”
“After this New York weather?” Maeve said with a laugh as she lifted her gaze once more. “The tropics would suit anything.”
“With our schedules it’s difficult to get away. I’m hoping we can find that window. Though with what they’ve found today, it may take a bit longer.”
“They found something else?” Buchanan asked.
“Mmm. Something about a bank box, letters, and so on. And apparently something the former Hopkins recorded during his hermitage. My wife said he spoke of a small vault in Number Twelve, also walled in. Hopkins must have been very busy. They’re looking for it, but it’s a good-sized building. It may take days.”
“A vault.” Maeve breathed the words. “I wonder what’s in it.”
“More truth?” But Buchanan’s voice was strained now. “Or the ramblings of a madman, one who’d already killed?”
“Perhaps both,” Roarke suggested. “I know my wife’s hoping for something that will lead her to Rad Hopkins’s killer. The truth, and justice for him as well.”
He laid the necklace on the velvet. “I’m very interested in this piece.” Roarke sipped his wine. “Shall we negotiate?”
Ten
In Number Twelve, Eve stood in the area that had once held a stage. Where there had been sound and light and motion, there was silence, dark and stillness. She could smell dust and a faint whiff of the chemicals the sweepers used on-scene. And could feel nothing but the pervading chill that burned through the brick and mortar of an old building.
Still, the stage was set, she thought. If her hunch was off, she’d have wasted a lot of departmental time, manpower and money. Better that, she decided, than to play into the current media hype that the curse of Numbe
r Twelve was still vital, still lethal.
“You’ve got to admit, it’s creepy.” Beside Eve, Peabody scanned the club room. There was a lot of white showing in her eyes. “This place gives me the jeebies.”
“Keep your jeebies to yourself. We’re set. I’m going up to my post.”
“You don’t have to go up right this minute.” Peabody’s hand clamped like a bundle of live wires on Eve’s wrist. “Seriously. We’ve got plenty of room on the timetable.”
“If you’re afraid of the dark, Detective, maybe you should’ve brought a nice little teddy bear to hold onto.”
“Couldn’t hurt,” Peabody mumbled when Eve pulled free. “You’ll stay in contact, right? I mean, communications open? It’s practically like you’re standing beside me.”
Eve only shook her head as she crossed to the stairs. She’d gone through doors with Peabody when death or certainly pain was poised on the other side. She’d crawled through blood with her. And here her usually stalwart partner was squeaking over ghosts.
Her bootsteps echoed against the metal steps—and okay, maybe it was a little creepy. But it wasn’t creaking doors and disembodied moans they had to worry about tonight. It was a stone killer who could come for letters from the dead.
There were no letters, of course. None that she knew of, no vault to hide them in. But she had no doubt the prospect of them would lure Rad Hopkins’s killer into Number Twelve.
No doubt that killer was descended from Bray and Hopkins. If her hunch didn’t pay off tonight, she was going to face a media storm tomorrow—face it either way, she admitted. But she’d rather deal with it with the case closed.
Funny how Bygones had old-timey photos of the desert. Maybe they were Arizona, maybe not, but she was laying her money that they were. There’d been old photos of San Francisco, too, before the quake had given it a good, hard shake. Others of New York during that time period, and of L.A. All of Bobbie’s haunts.
Coincidence, maybe. But she agreed with one of the detectives in her squad on a case recently closed—a case that also included switched identities.
Coincidences were hooey.
She crossed the second tier, and started up to the old apartments.
Eve didn’t doubt Roarke had played his part, and played it well. With the bait he’d dangled, she was gambling that Radcliff C. Hopkins’s killer, and Bobbie Bray’s murderous descendent, would bite quickly. Would bite tonight.
She took her position where she could keep the windows in view, put her back to the wall. Eve flipped her communications channel to Peabody’s unit, and said, “Boo.”
“Oh yeah, that’s funny. I’m rib-cracking down here.”
“When you’re finished with your hilarity, we’ll do a check. Feeney, you copy?”
“Got your eyes, your ears and the body-heat sensors. No movement.”
“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.”