The In Death Collection, Books 16-20

by J. D. Robb

  Every damn body.

  Had she herself ever trusted people so completely, so simply? Hardly, Eve thought. But then again, she hadn’t come from a nice, stable home, with nice, stable parents and a perky kid sister. Everything had been almost preternaturally normal in Rachel’s life. Up until the last hours of it. Family, friends, school, a shitty part-time job, a settled neighborhood.

  At Rachel’s age Eve had already graduated from the Academy, had already donned a cop’s uniform. Had already seen death. Had already caused it.

  And she hadn’t been a virgin, not since she’d been six. Seven? How old had she been the first time her father had raped her?

  What difference did it make? Her light had sure as hell never been pure.

  That’s what had drawn him to her. What he’d wanted from her. Her simplicity, her innocence. He’d killed her for them.

  She looked over as McNab came in, carting the bulky unit from the data club.

  She couldn’t stop herself from checking the rhythm of his walk. The previous month he’d taken a direct hit with a police issue, and it had taken several worry-filled days until the feeling had started to come back in his left side.

  He wasn’t quite back to prancing again, Eve noted. But there was no limp, no drag in the step. And the stringy muscles in both arms were bulging satisfactorily at the effort of carrying the unit.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant.” He puffed a bit, and his cheeks were already red from hauling the weight. “Just take me a minute to set up.”

  “You’re not late yet.” She watched him as he worked.

  He wore summer-weight pants in grass green with a skin top that had green-and-white stripes. The vest over it was hot pink, like his gel sandals.

  Rachel had been wearing jeans and a blue shirt. Slip-on canvas shoes. Two little pinprick studs, silver, in each ear.

  Victim and cop, she thought, might have come from different planets.

  So why did a conservative young girl frequent a data club? She wasn’t a geek or a freak, a nerd or a cruiser. What was the draw?

  “You hit the data clubs on your off-time, McNab?”

  “Nah, not so much. Boredom city. I did some when I was a kid, and fresh into the city. Figured I’d find action, and skirts who’d be impressed with my magical skills with the comps.”

  “And you found them? Action and skirts?”

  “Sure.” He sent her a quick and wicked grin. “All pre–She-Body era.”

  “What was she doing there, McNab?”

  “Huh? Peabody?”

  “Rachel.” She scooted the picture down the table toward where he was working. “What was she looking for in that club?”

  He angled his head to study the picture. “It’s a big draw for students, especially under drinking age. You can go in and play grownup. Nonalcoholic drinks with snappy names, hot music. You got the comps so you can do homework, break, take a spin on the dance floor, talk about classes, flirt. Whatever. It’s like, I don’t know, a bridge between being a kid and being an adult. That’s why you don’t see many over-thirties in those places.”

  “Okay. I get that.” She stood, heading for coffee as Peabody hurried in a few steps ahead of Feeney.

  “Looks like the gang’s all here.” Feeney dropped down at the table. “How about a hit of that shit, kid?”

  Eve got a second mug. Kid, she thought. Feeney was the only one who ever—had ever—called her that. Odd that she’d just noticed it.

  If she’d had a bridge, Eve realized, it had been Feeney.

  She set the mug down in front of him. “Okay, this is what I’ve got.”

  Once they were briefed, she gestured to McNab. “Over to you, hotshot.”

  “The transmission was sent from this unit to Nadine Furst’s station at 75. We have the time stamp on Nadine’s machine, and the correlating stamp on this. When reviewing the security disc for the time in question, we see . . . a lot of flashing lights, bodies, and mass. On-screen,” he ordered.

  “This unit is—wait.” He dug in several of his many pockets until it came up with a laser pointer. “Here.” He circled a section of the screen. “It’s blocked by people moving around, back and forth, crowding in. But here, yeah, pause disc. Here you get a glimpse of the operator. Split screen, display enhanced image. Didn’t take much, just bumping out the light show, magnifying.”

  “Female.” Eyes cool, Eve rose to step closer to the screen. “Mid-twenties, tops, mixed race. She weighs a hundred pounds if she’s hauling a full field pack and wearing jump boots. No way this girl killed Howard, and hauled her up and into that bin. She’s a fucking toothpick.”

  “Data junkie,” McNab said.

  “A what?”

  “Data junkie. They get off on data. Can’t get enough of the machine. Some of them hole up in some little room and have little to no actual contact with human beings. It’s all the machine. Others like to be around people, or have people around. They pick up some change sending and receiving, or doing reports—business, school, whatever. Anything that gives them a reason to deal with data.”

  “Like EDD geeks,” Eve commented.

  “Hey.” But Feeney’s lips twitched. “Data junkies rarely hold actual jobs. Or don’t keep them.” He drummed his fingers as he watched the screen. “Yeah, there you go. There’s a drop. See, the waitress dropped off a stack of discs. Waitress probably takes a cut—club might, too—of what the dj charges per transmission or per job.”

  “It’s not illegal,” McNab added. “It’s like I say to you, hey, Dallas, can you send these transmissions for me—my unit’s down, or I’m squeezed for time, and I give you ten bucks for the time and trouble.”

  “Or if you’re an illegals dealer, for instance, you dump discs on a junkie, transmissions are sent from any number of locations that can’t be traced back to you.”

  McNab lifted his shoulders. “Yeah, there’s that. But who’s going to trust a junkie for serious business?”

  Eve hissed out a breath. “The killer did. Let’s get her ID’d. We’ll still need to talk to her. Peabody, call the data club, see if anyone there can give us a name on their resident dj. Does she look at what she’s sending?”

  “Sometimes they do, part of the thrill,” Feeney said. “You get peeks into other people’s lives or thoughts without having to deal with people.”

  “I can get behind that part,” Eve grumbled.

  “You can block the data from the sender,” McNab added. “If you want to keep something private. Still, a good dj could hack through a block. She’s not hacking though. She’s going through the disc stack too fast for that.”

  “What happens to the discs when she’s done?”

  “Waitress will pick them back up and give her a fresh supply if there is one. Done discs would go back on the bar, or a table specified for it. You pick it back up if you want it, or the club recycles. You’re supposed to label them,” he added. “If you want data generated or written, that request goes on a disc, and is set in another location. Fee’s higher for that. She’s just doing sends now.”

  “He could’ve come in any time, dropped the disc off. Hung around for a drink, watched her send it off. Bides his time,” Eve said quietly. “Makes sure he stays in the crowd so he doesn’t show up on the security. A drink, a dance—might even be trolling for the next one—and he picks up the disc, puts it in his pocket, and strolls on out. Goes home, gets himself a good night’s sleep. I bet he slept just fine. And watches some screen so he can hear all about his fine work over morning coffee.”

  “It was easy for him,” Feeney agreed. “It was all easy, straight down the line. He’ll be looking forward to doing it again.”

  “We run the cameras, the enhancements, and the photographers in the three designated sectors. Check through any discarded discs the club hasn’t already cycled in case he didn’t pick it up. McNab, you hunt down the data junkie. You’d speak her language.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “I’m going back to the college,
take a look at the Imaging class, try to reconstruct her last few hours. Then I need to take an hour’s personal time. Peabody, you’re with Feeney.”

  Eve picked up the photographs. She wasn’t ready, not quite, to pin Rachel Howard to the dead board.

  “I’ll be back by fourteen hundred.”

  Chapter 6

  It would’ve been different for Rachel, Eve thought as she stood in the back of the imaging lab and watched the workshop. It had been night, and there wouldn’t have been so many students. Still Rachel would have been at a work station, like many of these young people, refining, defining, adjusting, admiring, the images she’d transferred from reality to camera, from camera to screen.

  What had she been thinking as she’d taken that last class? Had her mind been on her work, or had it wandered toward spending the night with her friends? Had she listened to Professor Browning, as some of the students were now? Or had she focused on her own work, her own world?

  Maybe she’d flirted with one of the boys who worked nearby. There were mild flirtations going on—the body language, the eye contact, the occasional intimate whisper that made up the mating dance.

  She’d liked to date, she’d liked to dance. She’d enjoyed being twenty. And she’d never be a day older.

  She listened while Browning wrapped things up, outlined assignments, and she made sure the professor saw and acknowledged her as the class began to disperse.

  They coupled up, Eve noted. Or grouped up, with a few solos winding through the cliques. That sort of thing hadn’t changed since her school days, she mused.

  God, she’d hated school.

  She’d been a solo, by personal choice. No point in getting close to anyone, she thought now. Just passing through here, just marking time until I’m out of the goddamn system and making my own choices.

  Which had been the Academy. The department. And another system.

  “Lieutenant Dallas.” Browning gestured Eve forward. She’d tamed her hair somewhat by pulling it back, pinning it up, but she still looked lush and exotic. Hardly Eve’s internal vision of a college professor.

  “Is there news?” she asked. “News on Rachel?”

  “The investigation’s ongoing” was all Eve would say. “I have a few questions. What would Rachel have been working on in here?”

  “Wait.” Leeanne drew out a memo book. “That’s an introductory course, summer semester. We have a number of part-time students, like Rachel, and a good portion of full-timers on a fast track during summer session,” she continued as she flipped through the book. “Not quite as big a load as during the fall and spring semesters, but . . . Ah yes, Faces. Portraits in the City. The connection between image and imager.”

  “Would you have any of her recent work?”

  “Yes, I should have some samples and finished assignments in my files. Hold on just a minute.”

  She went to her computer, keyed in a password, gave a series of commands. “As I told you, Rachel was a conscientious student. More, she was having fun with this course. It wasn’t a make or break for her, simply a filler, but she put effort into her assignments, and wasn’t just warming a seat. Here. Take a look.”

  She stepped back so Eve could see the screen.

  “Remke. It’s the guy who runs the deli across from the 24/7 where she worked.”

  “You can see she captured a certain toughness by the angle of his head, the jut of his chin. He’s a bulldog from the look of him.”

  Eve remembered the way he’d clocked City Maintenance. “That’s on target.”

  “Yet there’s a kindness in his eyes that she catches as well. There’s the staging, the sheen of perspiration on his face, and the coolness of the tubs of salads in the chill box behind him for a good contrast and sense of place. It’s a nice portrait. There are a few more, but this was the best of them.”

  “I’d like a copy of anything she turned in.”

  “All right. Computer, copy and print all imaging documents from Rachel Howard’s class file.” She angled toward Eve as the computer went to work. “I don’t understand how these will help you find her killer.”

  “I want to see what she saw, and maybe I’ll see what her killer saw. The students who just left this class, most of them had bags. Disc bags or portfolios.”

  “Education requires a lot of baggage. A student will need a notebook, a PPC, discs, probably a recorder, and for this course, a camera. That doesn’t touch the enhancements, the refreshments, the ’links, the completed assignments, the personal items they haul around campus.”

  “What kind of bag did Rachel carry?”

  Browning blinked, looked blank. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, I can’t say I noticed.”

  “But she carried one?”

  “Well, they all do.” Browning reached behind her desk, held up a large briefcase. “So do I.”

  The killer had kept her bag, or disposed of it, Eve decided. He hadn’t dumped it with the body. Why? What use was it to him?

  She made her own notes as she walked down the hall, as Rachel had done.

  There wouldn’t have been as many people wandering through that night. Just a handful here and there from evening classes—summer evening, Eve thought. Campus isn’t as full.

  She’d walked out with a group. Laughter, talking. Let’s go have pizza, a beer, coffee.

  She declines. Heading over to the dorm to hang out with some pals. See you later.

  Eve stepped out of the building, as Rachel had done, loitered a moment on the steps, as she imagined Rachel had done. Then stepped down, turned left on the walkway.

  There may have been a few other students walking the same path, heading to dorms or toward public transpo. Quiet, she imagined, it would’ve been fairly quiet. The street and traffic noises buffered back, the bulk of the students in dorms or at their clubs and coffeehouses.

  Others heading to apartments or action off campus. Breezing off to the subway, the bus stop. To the parking facilities. Older students, too, adults who’d decided to expand their horizons with an evening class.

  Anyone might wander on campus. Columbia was part of the city, merged with it. The way it sprawled over Morningside Heights made security a joke. Rachel wouldn’t have worried about it. She was a city girl, and she’d have thought of the campus as a kind of haven.

  Had he walked behind her? Had he crossed that open area between buildings? Or had he walked toward her?

  She paused, judging the distance to the dorm, the parking facilities, the buildings. He’d wait, Eve decided. Why be seen with her if he could avoid it, so watch and wait while she turned again, started moving on the walkway toward the dorms. Still a good, solid five-minute walk, and heading into more secluded areas.

  She wasn’t in a hurry, not with the whole night ahead of her. Dark by this time, but the paths are lit, and she knows her way. She’s young and invulnerable.

  It’s a hot summer night, and she’s enjoying it.

  Rachel! Hi.

  Very friendly, very easy. Just happened to spot her. And she’d stop, recognize the face. Flash that pretty smile.

  But the killer doesn’t want to loiter on the path. Someone could come by. Maybe fall into step with her to keep moving, talk about school. What are you working on, how’s it going? Want me to carry that bag for you, it looks heavy.

  Can’t take her out here, got to get her to the vehicle, and that means parking facility.

  Something to show her, or give her. Something in the van/car/truck. Parked right over on Broadway. Just take a minute. Lead her along a little, keep up the chatter.

  Not too many people heading on or off the campus now. And there has to be some risk, or there’s less thrill.

  Eve detoured toward the four-level vehicle port on Broadway used for college parking. Students and faculty bought a holo-stamp, fixed it to the window. They could come and go as they pleased. Visitors bought an hourly or daily. She made a note to get the data on how many vehicles left the facility between nine and ten on the
night of the murder.

  Of course, he could have parked elsewhere, could have lucked out and found something on the street, but this was the closest point between dorm and the classroom. And the port was more secluded, less likely to have people nearby than a spot on the street.

  It was jammed now, but it wouldn’t have been that evening. Nobody would have paid any attention to two people heading toward a vehicle.

  Top level would have been the smartest because there would be fewer cars, less traffic at the top. Get her in the elevator if it’s empty, the glide if it’s not. Elevator would be lucky. Inside, a quick move with a pressure syringe full of opiates, a little hand squeeze, and she’s floating.

  By the time you step out, Eve mused as she rode up to level four, she’s light-headed. Not to worry, I’ll drop you off close to the dorm. No trouble at all to drive you down. Gee, you look a little pale, let’s get you in the car.

  Eve stepped out on the level, scanned the area. They had security droids do a run-through every thirty minutes or so, but the killer would know, would have it timed. Get her in the car, and it’s over for her.

  She’d be groggy, maybe unconscious by the time they were down to street level. Drive down Broadway and take her to the place you’ve prepared. Have to help her inside, so it’s got to be fairly private. No lobby to go through, no security to record the moment. A house, a small downtown loft, a business closed for the night, an old building set for renovation.

  A business maybe, with an apartment over it. All the conveniences in one place. Nobody to question what goes on inside when the doors are locked.

  She stepped over to the rail, looked down over the campus, out over the city.

  It could have been done in under fifteen minutes. Add the transportation time and there’d been plenty of time left to take that final portrait.

  Back in her car, Eve contacted Peabody at Central. “Get me a list of businesses in or around the college that supply students. Clothes, food, recreation, study guides, whatever. And the photography studios and galleries in the same area. Flag anything that includes private residence. Toss out anything with families. The killer doesn’t have a spouse and kiddies running around. I’m taking personal time,” she added, “but tag me if you find anything that rings.”