by J. D. Robb
“Nah. You love me because I’m so damn good looking.”
“Asshole.”
“ ’Fraidy cat.”
“ ’Fraidy cat.” Her lips twitched into a reluctant smile. “Jeez. Okay, set up another one. Make it tough. And when I nail it, I not only get the chips, but . . .” Her smile widened. “You wear the hat.”
“You’re on.”
She rose to pace and clear out her head while he programmed the sim. She’d been afraid, she admitted. Afraid she wanted it too much. So she hadn’t used the hunger, but had let it eat away at her confidence. That had to stop. Even if her palms were damp and her stomach in knots it had to stop.
Dallas never let nerves get in the way, she thought. And she had them, nerves and something deeper, darker. It had peeked through on the Gregg scene, for just a moment that afternoon. Now and again on a sexual homicide, it peeked through. It turned her lieutenant’s cheeks pale. Took her back, Peabody was sure, to something horrible. Something personal.
Rape, Peabody was sure, just as she was sure it had to have been brutal. And she’d have been young. Before the job. Peabody had studied Eve’s career with the NYPSD like a template, but there’d been no report of a sexual assault on Dallas.
So it had been before, before the Academy. When she was a teenager, or possibly younger. In automatic sympathy, Peabody’s stomach roiled. It would take guts, and balls, to face that, to revisit whatever had happened every time you walked into a scene that reverberated with sexual violence.
But to use it, instead of being used by it, that took more, Peabody determined. It took what she could only define as valor.
“Ready here,” McNab told her. “And it’s a doozy.”
She sucked in a breath, squared her shoulders. “I’m ready, too. Go in the bedroom or something, okay? I want to do it on my own.”
He looked at her face, saw what he’d hoped to see, and nodded. “Sure. Nail the bad guy, She-Body.”
“Damn right.”
She sweated through it, but stayed focused. She stopped asking herself what Dallas would want her to do, even after a point what Dallas would do, and just concentrated on what needed to be done. Preserve and observe, collect and identify. Question, report, investigate. It began to click for her, the pattern emerging. She waded her way through conflicting witness statements, shaky memories, facts and lies, forensics and procedure.
She built, she realized with rising excitement, a case.
Though she wanted to hesitate on the final stage, the arrest, she bore down and selected. And was rewarded with the graphic of a prosecuting attorney.
Pick him up. Murder One.
“Yes!” She popped up from the chair, did her little victory dance. “I got an arrest. Nailed the murdering bastard. Hey, McNab, bring me those damn potato chips.”
“Sure.” He stepped out, grinning. He carried the bag in one hand, and was naked but for her summer straw hat. Since it was perched jauntily at his crotch, she assumed her success made him as happy as it made her.
She laughed until she thought her ribs would crack. “You’re such a moron,” she managed, and jumped him.
For Eve it was a matter of merging bare facts with educated speculation. “He had to know their routines, which means he knew them. Doesn’t mean they knew him, doesn’t connect them, but he knew. He’s too cocky for them to have been random. He trolled first.”
“That’s the usual pattern, isn’t it?” Roarke cocked his head at her look. “If my one true love was a dentist, I’d study up a bit on the latest thoughts on dental hygiene and treatments.”
“Don’t say dentist,” Eve warned, automatically running her tongue warily over her teeth.
“By all means let’s stick with bloody murder.” And knowing there was no talking her out of another cup of coffee at midnight, had another himself. “The trolling, the selecting, the stalking, the planning. They are all essential parts of the whole for the typical, if the word can be used, serial killer.”
“There’s a rush in it, the control, the power, the details. She’s alive now because I allow it, she’ll be dead because I want it. It’s clear he admires the serial killers who made names for themselves. Jack the Ripper, the Boston Strangler, so he emulates them. But he’s very much his own man. Better than they were, because he’s versatile.”
“And he wants you pursuing him because he admires you.”
“In his own sick way. He wants the buzz. It isn’t enough to kill. That doesn’t heat the blood enough. The hunt, being both hunter and prey, that does it for him. He hunted these women.”
She turned to the board she’d set up in her home office, with pictures of Jacie Wooton and Lois Gregg, alive and dead. “He watched them, learned their routines and patterns. He needed a prostitute for the Ripper imitation, and a certain type of LC. She fit the mold. He expected her to walk along that street at that time. It wasn’t chance. Just as Lois Gregg fit his need for a Strangler vic, just as he knew she’d be home alone on a Sunday morning.”
“And knew someone would find her before the end of the day?”
“Yeah.” Sipping coffee, she nodded. “Quicker gratification that way. More and more likely he called in the anonymous nine-one-one. Wanted Wooton found as soon as possible so the adulation and horror could begin.”
“Which tells me he feels very safe.”
“Very safe,” Eve agreed. “Very superior. If Gregg hadn’t had family or friends who were bound to check on her in a few hours, he’d have to wait to get the next kick, or risk another nine-one-one. So he targeted these women specifically, just as he’s targeted the next.”
She sat, rubbed her eyes. “He’ll imitate someone else. But it’ll be someone who created a stir, and who left bodies where they could and would be found. We eliminate historic serial killers who buried, destroyed, or consumed their victims.”
“Such a fun group, too.”
“Oh yeah. He’s not going to copy someone like Chef Jourard, that French guy in the twenties, this century.”
“Kept his victims in a large freezer, didn’t he?”
“Where he carved them up, cooked them up, and served them to unsuspecting patrons of his fancy bistro in Paris. Took them nearly two years to catch him.”
“And he was famed for his sweetbreads.”
She gave a quick shudder. “Anybody who eats internal organs of any species baffles me. And I’m off the track.”
He trailed a hand down her arm. “Because you’re tired.”
“Maybe. He’ll stay more straightforward, won’t go for a play on someone like Jourard, or Dahmer, or that Russian maniac Ivan the Butcher. But people being what they are, he’s got plenty of others to work with. He’ll stick with women.”
She walked back to the board. “When you kill women the way he did these two, you’ve got a problem with them. But he’s not connected to the actual victims. I’ll go back and push the paper—the note. See if anyone on the list has a particular interest in celebrity killers.”
“There’s another you might want to speak with,” Roarke suggested. “Thomas A. Breen. He’s written what some consider the definitive book on twentieth-century serial killers, another on mass murderers throughout history. I’ve actually read some of his work, as the subject matter is of some interest to my wife.”
“Breen, Thomas A. I might’ve read some of his stuff. Sounds vaguely familiar.”
“He lives here in the city. I looked up the particulars when you were at Central, as I thought you might want a word with him.”
“Smart guy.”
This time when she reached for the coffeepot, he laid a hand over hers to stop her. “Smart enough to know you’ve had over your quota of coffee for the day, and despite it you’re starting to droop.”
“I just want to run a couple of probabilities.”
“Set them up then, and they can run while you’re sleeping. You’ll have the results in the morning.”
She’d have argued, but she was too damn tired. I
nstead, she did as he suggested, and still her gaze was drawn back to the board. Back to Lois Gregg.
She could hear the way the woman’s son, a grown man, had sobbed. She could see the utter devastation on his face when he’d pleaded with her to tell him what he should do.
“Mom,” he’d said, the way she imagined a child would. Though over thirty he’d said “Mom” with a little boy’s helpless loss.
She knew Roarke had felt some of that same helplessness, that young boy’s lost grief, when he’d learned the mother he’d never known had been murdered. Dead for three decades. Still he grieved.
And just that afternoon, a grown woman had studied her with suspicion and resentment over a relationship with her mother.
What was it that bound the child, so inexorably, with the mother? Was it blood, she wondered, as she stripped down for bed? Was it imprinted in the womb or something learned and developed after birth?
Killers of women, lust killers, were often bred due to their unhealthy feelings or relationships with a mother figure. Just as she supposed saints were bred from healthy ones. Or all the normality of the human race between the extremes.
Had this killer hated his mother? Abused or been abused by her? Was he killing her now?
And thinking of mothers, she slipped into sleep to dream of her own.
It was the hair, golden hair, so shiny and pretty, so long and curly. She liked to touch it, though she knew she wasn’t supposed to. She liked to pet it, as she’d seen a boy pet a puppy dog once.
Nobody was home, and it was all quiet, the way she liked it best. When they were gone, the mommy and the daddy, nobody yelled or made scary noises or told her not to do everything she wanted to do.
Nobody slapped or hit.
She wasn’t supposed to go into the room where the mommy and daddy slept, or where the mommy sometimes brought other daddies to play on the bed without their clothes.
But there were so many things in there. Like the long golden hair, or the bright red hair, and the bottles that smelled like flowers.
She tiptoed toward the dresser, a thin girl in jeans that bagged and a yellow T-shirt that was stained with grape juice. Her ears were keen, as the ears of prey often were, and she listened carefully, prepared to dart out of the room at any moment.
Her fingers reached out and stroked the yellow curls of the wig. The pressure syringe tossed carelessly beside it didn’t interest her. She knew the mommy took medicine every day, sometimes more than once a day. Sometimes the medicine made her sleepy, sometimes it made her want to dance and dance. She was nicer when she wanted to dance; even though her laughing was scary, it was better than the yelling or the slapping.
There was a mirror over the dresser and she could just see the top half of her own face if she strained up high on her toes. Her hair was ugly brown and straight and short. It wasn’t pretty like the mommy’s play hair.
Unable to resist, she put the wig over her own hair. It fell all the way to her waist and made her feel pretty, made her feel happy.
There were all sorts of toys on the dresser, for painting faces with color. Once when the mommy had been in a good mood, she’d painted her lips and cheeks and said she’d looked like a little doll.
If she looked like a doll, maybe the mommy and daddy would like her better. They wouldn’t yell and hit, and she could go outside and play.
Humming to herself, she painted on lip dye, rubbing her lips together as she’d seen the mommy do. She brushed on cheek color and clumsily fit her feet inside the high-heeled shoes that were in front of the dresser. She teetered on them, but was able to see even more of her face.
“Like a little doll,” she said, pleased with the golden curls and the smears of color.
She began to use more, with enthusiasm, and was so intent on the game, on the fun, she failed to listen.
“You stupid little bitch!”
The scream had her stumbling back, tripping out of the shoes. She was already falling when the hand slapped across her face. It hurt where she banged her elbow, but even as the tears spurted out in response, the mommy was grabbing her by her sore arm and yanking her to her feet.
“I told you never to come in here. I told you never to touch my things.”
The mommy’s hands were white, so white, and painted red on the nails like they were bleeding. She used one to slap, and it stung the little painted cheek.
The girl opened her mouth to wail as the hand raised up to strike again.
“Goddamn it, Stel.” The daddy burst in, grabbing the mommy, shoving her away and onto the bed. “The soundproofing in here’s next to nothing. You want to bring the fucking social workers down on us again?”
“The little shit’s been into my things.” The mommy jumped off the bed, curling those bloody fingertips into claws. “Look at the mess she made! I’m sick and tired of having to clean up after her and listening to her whine.”
On the floor, curled up tight with her arms over her head, the child struggled not to make a sound. Not any sound at all so they’d forget she was there, so she’d be invisible.
“I never wanted the brat in the first place.” There was a bite in the mommy’s voice, like sharp teeth snapping. The child imagined them snapping down on her fingers, her toes. Terror made her mewl like a cornered kitten and press her hands to her ears to block the sound.
“Having her was your idea. You deal with her.”
“I’ll deal with her.” He scooped the child up, and though she feared him, feared him on a deep and instinctual level, at the moment she feared the mommy more with her words that bit and her white hands that slapped.
So she curled herself into him, and shuddered when he stroked a hand over the wig that had fallen over her eyes, and down her back, over her rump.
“Have a hit, Stella,” he said. “You’ll feel better. I get this deal through, we’ll buy a droid to look after the kid.”
“Yeah, right. About the same time we’ll have that big house and the fleet of fancy cars and all the other shit you promised me. The only thing I got out of you so far, Rich, is that whiny brat.”
“An investment in the future. She’s going to pay off for us one day. Aren’t you, little girl? Have a hit, Stella,” he said again as he started out of the room with the child on his hip. “I’ll clean the kid up.”
The last thing the child saw as he left the room with her was the mommy’s face. And the eyes, brown eyes painted gold on the lids that were, like the words, full of teeth and hate.
Eve woke, not with the strangled panic of the nightmares that plagued her, but with a kind of cold, dull shock. The room was dark, and she realized she’d rolled herself to the far edge of the bed, as if she’d needed privacy for the dream.
Shaken, vaguely ill, she rolled back, curled herself against Roarke. His arm came around her, drawing her in. Circled in his warmth, she pretended to sleep again.
She said nothing to Roarke of the dream the next morning. Didn’t know if she should, or could. She wanted to lock it away, but she felt it pushing at her as she went through her morning routine.
It was a relief that Roarke had a morning full of meetings and she could slip around him and out of the house with little conversation.
He read her too well and too easily—a talent that was both a wonder and an irritation to her—and she wasn’t ready to explore what she’d remembered.
Her mother was a whore and a junkie, and had never wanted the child she’d made. More than not wanted. Had despised and abhorred.
What difference did it make? Eve asked herself as she drove downtown. Her father had been a monster. Was it any worse to know her mother had been the same? It changed nothing.
She parked at Central, made her way up to her office. With every step inside the busy hive of Central, she felt more herself. The weight of her weapon comforted her, as did the knowledge that her badge was in her pocket.
Roarke had called them her symbols once, and so they were. Symbols of who and what she was.
She walked through the bull pen where the morning shift was settling in. She detoured by Peabody’s cube just as her aide was knocking back the last of a glide-cart coffee.
“Thomas A. Breen,” Eve began, and rattled off an East Village address. “Contact him, set up a meeting ASAP. We’ll go to him.”
“Yes, sir. Rough night?” At Eve’s silent stare Peabody shrugged. “Don’t look like you got much sleep, that’s all. Neither did I. Cramming for the exam. It’s coming up soon.”
“You want regular eight straights, you don’t pick up the badge. Set up the interview. Then we’re doing follow-ups on the list, starting with Fortney.” She started to walk away, then turned back. “You can overstudy, you know.”
“I know, but I was really blowing the sims. I nailed two last night. That’s the first time I felt like I had a handle.”
“Good.” Eve stuck her thumbs in her pockets, drummed her fingers. “Good,” she repeated and headed to her office to nag the lab for updates on Gregg.
The bickering with Dickhead put her in a cheerier mood as she read over the ME’s reports. Morris was going with surgical grade on the weapons used on Wooton. Her tox screen confirmed that her system was clear of chemicals.
Since she wasn’t using, spending time trying to find her former dealer wasn’t priority.
The canvasses of Chinatown and the surrounding areas had come up zero, one more time.
“No trace of semen with Gregg,” Eve told Peabody as they headed to the Village. “ME findings indicate she was raped and sodomized, with the broomstick only. No prints on-scene other than hers, family members, and two neighbors who’re clear. Hair fibers, man-made. Dickhead thinks wig and mustache, but isn’t ready to commit.”
“So we think he wore a disguise.”
“In case he was seen around the neighborhood. He had to keep tabs on her, a few weeks, I’d say. Solidify her Sunday routine. How’d he pick her, though? Out of a fucking hat? How does he target this particular LC, this particular woman?”
“Maybe there’s some connection. A place they shopped, ate, did business. A doctor, a bank.”