The In Death Collection, Books 16-20

by J. D. Robb

  Eve recognized Piers Chan’s type, the beefy arms in shirtsleeves, the pencil mustache over thin lips. The humble surroundings and diamond pinky ring.

  He was mixed-race, with enough Asian to have him set up in the business bustle of Chinatown, though she imagined his last ancestor to see Peking might have been at his prime during the Boxer Rebellion.

  Just as she imagined Chan kept his home and family in some upscale suburb in New Jersey while he played slumlord of the Lower East Side.

  “Wooton, Wooton.” While two silent clerks busied themselves in the back, Chan flipped through his tenant book. “Yes, she’s got a deluxe single on Doyers.”

  “Deluxe?” Eve repeated. “And what makes it deluxe?”

  “Got a kitchen area with built-in friggie and AutoChef. Comes with the package. She’s behind. Rent was due a week ago. She got the standard reminder call a couple days ago. She’ll get another today, then an automatic evict notice next week.”

  “That won’t be necessary as she’s changed her address to the city morgue. She was murdered early this morning.”

  “Murdered.” His eyebrows lowered into an expression Eve interpreted as irritation rather than sympathy or shock. “Goddamn it. You seal the place?”

  Eve cocked her head. “And you ask because?”

  “Look, I own six buildings, got seventy-two units. You got that many tenants, some of them are going to croak one way or another. You get your unattended death, your suspicious death, your misadventure, and your self-termination.” He ticked them off on his fat fingers. “And your homicide.” For that he used his thumb. “Then you guys come along, seal the place up, notify next of kin. Before I can blink some uncle or other is clearing the place out before I can put in a claim and get my back rent.”

  He spread his hands now, and sent Eve an aggrieved look. “I’m just trying to make a living here.”

  “So was she, when somebody decided to carve her up.”

  He puffed out his cheeks. “Person’s in that kind of work, they’re going to take some lumps.”

  “You know, this outpouring of humanitarianism is choking me up, so let’s stick to the point. Did you know Jacie Wooton?”

  “I knew her application, her references, and her rent payment. Never set eyes on her myself. I don’t have time to make friends with the tenants. I’ve got too many.”

  “Uh-huh. And if somebody falls behind on the rent, wiggles around the evict, do you pay them a little visit, try to appeal to their sense of fair play?”

  He rubbed a fingertip over his mustache. “I run by the book here. Costs me plenty in court fees annually to move the deadbeats out, but that’s part of the operating expenses. That’s part of the business. I wouldn’t know this Wooton woman if she stopped in to give me a handjob. And I was home, in Bloomfield, last night with my wife and kids. I was there for breakfast this morning, and came into the city on the seven-fifteen, just like I do every day. You need more than that, you talk to my lawyers.”

  “Creep,” Peabody stated out on the sidewalk.

  “Oh yeah, and I’d make book he takes some of his rent in trade. Sexual favors, little party bags of illegals, stolen goods. We could squeeze him if we had nothing but time and righteousness.” She angled her head as she studied the display of naked hanging fowls so skinny death must have been a relief, and the odd groupings of webbed feet for sale. “How do you eat feet?” Eve wondered. “Do you start at the toes and work up, or at the ankle and work down? Do ducks have ankles?”

  “I’ve spent many sleepless nights pondering just that.”

  Though Eve slanted over a bland stare, she was glad to see her aide back in tune. “They do some of the butchering right here, don’t they? Slice and dice the merchandise in the kitchens. Sharp knives, lots of blood, a certain working knowledge of anatomy.”

  “Cutting up a chicken’s got to be a lot simpler than a human.”

  “I don’t know.” Considering, Eve rested her hands on her hips. “Technically, okay. There’s more mass, and it’s going to take more time, and maybe more skill than your average fowl plucker. But if you don’t see that mass as human, it wouldn’t be so different. Maybe you practice on animals, get the feel for it. Then again, maybe you’re a doctor, or a vet, who’s gone around the bend. But he had to know what he was doing. A butcher, a doctor, a talented amateur, but somebody who’s been perfecting his technique so he could pay homage to his hero.”

  “His hero?”

  “Jack,” Eve said as she turned away to walk back to her vehicle. “Jack the Ripper.”

  “Jack the Ripper?” With her mouth dropping open, Peabody trotted to catch up. “You mean like over in London, back in . . . whenever?”

  “Late 1800s. Whitechapel. Poor section of the city during the Victorian era, frequented by prostitutes. He killed between five and eight women, maybe more, all within about a one-mile radius over a period of a year.”

  She got behind the wheel, flicked a glance over to find Peabody gaping at her. “What?” Eve demanded. “I can’t know stuff?”

  “Yes, sir. You know great bundles of stuff, but history isn’t generally your long suit.”

  Murder was, Eve thought as she pulled away from the curb. And always had been. “While other little girls were reading about fluffy as yet ungutted duckies, I was reading about Jack, and other assorted serial killers.”

  “You read about . . . that sort of thing when you were a kid?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Well . . .” She didn’t quite know how to put it. She was aware that Eve had been raised in the system, in foster homes and state homes. “Didn’t any of the adults in charge monitor your interests? What I mean is my parents—and they were big on not restricting our choices—would’ve brought the hammer down in that sort of area when we were kids. You know, formative years and all, nightmares, emotional scarring.”

  She’d been scarred, in every possible way, long before she could read more than a few basic words. As for nightmares, Eve didn’t remember a time she hadn’t had them.

  “If I was scrolling the Internet for data on the Ripper or John Wayne Gacy, I was occupied and out of trouble. Those were the essential criteria.”

  “I guess. So, you always knew you wanted to be a cop.”

  She’d known she wanted to be something other than a victim. Then she’d known she’d wanted to stand for the victim. That meant cop to her. “More or less. The Ripper sent notes to the police, but only after a while. He didn’t start off, like our guy. But this one wants us to know what he’s about straight off. He wants the play.”

  “He wants you,” Peabody said and got a nod of acknowledgment.

  “I’ve just come off a highly publicized case. Lots of screen time. Lots of buzz. And the Purity case, earlier this summer. Another hot one. He’s been watching. Now he wants some buzz of his own. Jack got plenty of it back in the day.”

  “He wants you involved, and the media focused on him. The city fascinated by him.”

  “That’s my take.”

  “So he’ll hunt other LCs, in that same area.”

  “That would be the pattern.” Eve paused. “And what he wants us to think.”

  Her next stop was Jacie’s counselor, who worked out of a three-office suite on the lower fringes of the East Village. On her large, overburdened desk was a bowl of colorful hard candies. She sat behind them in a gray suit that gave her a matronly air.

  Eve judged her to be on the shadowy side of fifty, with a kind face and, by contrast, a pair of shrewd hazel eyes.

  “Tressa Palank.” She rose to offer Eve a firm handshake before gesturing to a chair. “I assume this concerns one of my clients. I’ve got ten minutes before my next session. What can I do for you?”

  “Tell me about Jacie Wooton.”

  “Jacie?” Tressa’s eyebrows lifted, a slight smile touched her lips, but there was a look in her eyes, a steady look of dread. “I can’t believe she’d give you any trouble. She’s on a straight path, determin
ed to earn back her A-Grade license.”

  “Jacie Wooton was murdered early this morning.”

  Tressa closed her eyes, did nothing but breathe in and out for several seconds. “I knew it had to be one of mine.” She opened her eyes again, and they remained direct. “As soon as I heard the bulletin about the murder in Chinatown, I knew. Just a feeling in the gut, if you understand me. Jacie.” She folded her hands on the desk, stared down at them. “What happened?”

  “I’m not free to give you the details as yet. I can only tell you she was stabbed.”

  “Mutilated. The bulletin said a female licensed companion had been mutilated in a Chinatown alley early this morning.”

  One of the uniforms, Eve thought, and there would be hell to pay for the leak when she found the source. “I can’t tell you any more at this time. My investigation is in its earliest stages.”

  “I know the routine. I was on the job for five years.”

  “You were a cop?”

  “Five years, sex crimes primarily. I switched to counseling. I didn’t like the streets, or what I saw on them. Here, I can do something to help without facing that day after day. This isn’t a picnic, by any means, but it’s what I do best. I’ll tell you what I can; I hope it helps.”

  “She spoke to you recently, about her upgrade.”

  “Denied. She has—had—another year’s probation. It’s mandatory after her arrests and addiction. Her rehab went well, though I suspect she’d found a substitute for the Push she was hooked on.”

  “Vodka. Two bottles in her flop.”

  “Well. It’s legal, but it violates her parole requirements for upgrade. Not that it matters now.”

  Tressa rubbed her hands over her eyes and simply sighed. “Not that it matters,” she repeated. “She couldn’t think of anything but getting back uptown. Hated working the streets, but at the same time never considered, not seriously, any alternative profession.”

  “Did she have any regulars you know of?”

  “No. She once had quite an extensive client list, exclusive men and women. She was licensed for both. But, to my knowledge, no one followed her downtown. I believe she would’ve told me, as it would’ve boosted her ego.”

  “Her supplier?”

  “She wouldn’t give a name, not even to me. But she swore there had been no contact since her release. I believed her.”

  “In your opinion, did she hold back the name because she was afraid?”

  “In mine, she considered it a matter of ethics. She’d been an LC nearly half her life. A good LC is discreet and considers her clients’ privacy sacred, much as a doctor or a priest. She considered this along the same lines. I suspect her supplier was also a client, but that’s just a hunch.”

  “She gave no indication to you during your last sessions that she was concerned, worried, afraid of anything or anyone?”

  “No. Just impatient to get her old life back.”

  “How often did she come in?”

  “Every two weeks, per her parole requirements. She never missed. She had her regular medicals, was always available for random testing. She was cooperative in every way. Lieutenant, she was an average woman, a little lost and out of her element. She was not street savvy as she’d been accustomed to a more select clientele and routine. She enjoyed nice things, worried about her appearance, complained about the rate restrictions at her license level. She didn’t socialize any longer because she was embarrassed by her circumstances, and because she felt those in her current economic circle were beneath her.”

  Tressa pressed her fingers to her lips a moment. “I’m sorry. I’m trying not to be upset, not to personalize it, but I can’t help it. One of the reasons I was no good out there. I liked her, and wanted to help her. I don’t know who could’ve done this to her. Just another random act, on one of the weaker. Just a whore, after all.”

  Her voice threatened to break, so she cleared her throat, drew air through her nose. “A lot of people still think that way, you and I both know it. They come to me beaten and misused, humiliated and battered. Some give it up, some handle themselves, some rise to a different level and live almost like royalty. And some are tossed into the gutter. It’s a dangerous profession. Cops, emergency and health workers, prostitutes. Dangerous professions with a high mortality rate.

  “She wanted her old life back,” Tressa said. “And it killed her.”

  Chapter 2

  She stopped by the morgue. It was another chance, Eve thought, for the victim to tell her something. Without any real friends, known enemies, associates, family, Jacie Wooton was presenting a picture of a solitary woman in a physical contact occupation. One who considered her body her greatest asset and had chosen to use it to attain the good life.

  Eve needed to find out what that body would tell her about the killer.

  Halfway down the corridor of the dead house, Eve paused. “Find a seat,” she told Peabody. “I want you to contact and harass the lab guys. Plead, whine, threaten, whatever works, but push them on tracking the stationery.”

  “I can handle it. Going in. I’m not going to lose it again.”

  She was already pale, Eve noted. Already seeing it once more—the alley, the blood, the gore. She’d stand up, Eve was sure of it, but at a price. The price didn’t have to be paid, not here and now.

  “I’m not saying you can’t handle it; I’m saying I need the source of the stationery. The killer leaves something behind, we follow up on it. Find a seat, do the job.”

  Without giving Peabody a chance to debate, Eve strode down the hall and through the double doors where the body was waiting.

  She’d expected Morris, the chief medical examiner, to take this one, and wasn’t disappointed. He worked alone, as he often did, suited up in clear protective gear over a blue tunic and skin-pants.

  His long hair was corded back in a shiny ponytail and covered with a cap to prevent contamination of the body. There was a medallion, something in silver with a deep red stone around his neck. His hands were bloody, and his handsome, somewhat exotic face set in stone.

  He often played music while he worked, but today the room was silent but for the quiet hum of machines and the spooky whirl of his laser scalpel.

  “Every now and then,” he said without looking up, “I see something in here that goes beyond. Beyond the human. And we know, don’t we, Dallas, that the human has an amazing capacity for cruelty to its own species? But every once in a while, I see something that takes even that one hideous step beyond.”

  “The throat wound killed her.”

  “Small mercy.” Understanding, he lifted his head. His eyes behind his goggles didn’t smile, as they usually did, nor did they show any spark of fascination with his work. “She wouldn’t have felt the rest that was done to her, wouldn’t have known. She was comfortably dead before he butchered her.”

  “Was it butchery?”

  “How would you define it?” He tossed the scalpel in a tray, gestured with one bloody hand over the mutilated body. “How the hell would you define this?”

  “I don’t have the words. I don’t think there are any. Vicious isn’t enough. Evil doesn’t cover it, not really. I can’t get philosophical now, Morris. That won’t help her. I need to know, did he know what he was doing, or was it a hack job?”

  He was breathing too fast. To steady himself, Morris yanked off his goggles, his cap, then strode over to wash the sealant and blood from his hands.

  “He knew. The cuts were precise. No hesitation, no wasted motions.” He stepped to a friggie, took out two bottles of water. After tossing one to Eve, he drank deeply. “Our killer knows how to color inside the lines.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Your deprived childhood continues to fascinate me. I need to sit a minute.” He did so, scrubbed the heel of one hand between his eyebrows, up to his hairline. “This one got to me. You can’t predict when or how it might happen. With all that comes through here, day after day, this forty-one-year-old woman with h
er home-job pedicure and the bunion on her left foot got to me.”

  She wasn’t sure how to handle him in this mood. Going with instinct, Eve dragged over a chair, sat beside him, sipped water. He hadn’t turned the recorder off, she thought. It would be up to him whether he edited it or not.

  “You need a vacation, Morris.”

  “I hear that.” He laughed a little. “I was due to leave tomorrow. Two weeks in Aruba. Sun, sea, naked women—the sort who’re still breathing—and a great deal of alcohol consumed out of coconut shells.”

  “Go.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve postponed. I want to see this one through.” He looked over at her now. “There are some you have to see through. I knew as soon as I saw her, what had been done to her, I wouldn’t be sitting on a beach tomorrow.”

  “I could tell you you’ve got good people working for you here. People who’d take good care of her, and whoever else comes in over the next couple of weeks.”

  She sipped the water as she studied the husk of Jacie Wooton, laid bare on a slab in a cold room. “I could tell you that I’m going to find the son of a bitch who did this to her, and build a case that ensures he’ll pay for it. I could tell you all that, and all of it would be true. But I wouldn’t go either.” She rested her head back against the wall. “I wouldn’t go.”

  He mirrored her position, head resting on the wall, legs kicked out. With Jacie Wooton’s butchered body on the table a few feet in front of them.

  And their silence, after a moment, became companionable.

  “What the hell’s wrong with us, Dallas?”

  “Beats me.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, knowing he was settling down again. “We love the dead.” When she snorted, he grinned, eyes still closed. “And not in a sick, boink the corpse sort of way, gutterbrain. Despite whoever they were when they were alive, we love them because they were cheated and misused. The ultimate underdogs.”

  “I guess we’re getting philosophical anyway.”