by J. D. Robb
“She was like a mother to me.” The sobbing woman lifted her head. “I’m getting married in October, and she was helping me with so much of it. We were having the best time with all the plans, and now, now she won’t be there.”
“I know this is hard, but I need to ask you some questions.”
“We want to help. Don’t we, Addy?”
“Anything.” The woman got her sobbing under control. “Absolutely anything.”
Eve took them through the usual questions, wound her way around to the man Vincenti had described.
“I don’t remember anyone like that coming in recently. Addy?”
“No, at least not by himself. We get men who come in with their wives or girlfriends, and the occasional solo. But nobody like that in the past few weeks. No one Lois helped or talked to while I was working.”
“How about someone who came in, asked about her?”
“There was that man last week, no, the week before. Remember, Myra? He had on a totally mag suit, carried a Mark Cross briefcase.”
“Yes, I remember. He said Lois had helped him the month before on some gifts for his wife, and they were such a big hit he’d stopped by to thank her.”
“What did he look like?”
“Mmm. Late thirties, tall, nicely built, neat little goatee and wavy brown hair on the long side. He wore it tied back. He never took off his sunshades.”
“Pradas, Continental style.” Addy added. “I bought my fiancé a pair for his birthday. They cost a mint. He smelled like money, and had a clipped Yankee accent. Ivy League type, I thought. I tried to steer him to accessories because he looked like he could afford to drop a bundle, and we’ve got some terrific new handbags, but he wasn’t biting. Just said he’d hoped to give his thanks and regards to Mrs. Gregg. I said I was sorry she wasn’t working today, because she’d have appreciated that. If he wanted to stop by again, he should shoot for Tuesday, Wednesday, or Saturday, and gave him her hours. Oh God.”
Her face went sheet-white. “Was that wrong?”
“No. This is just routine. Do you remember anything else?”
“No, he just said he’d try to come by again if he was in the area, and left. I just thought how nice that was, because customers don’t usually bother, and the men sure don’t.”
They followed Leah’s list and found that at every point there was someone who remembered a man, of subtly varied descriptions, who’d made some casual inquiry about Lois Gregg.
“He stalked her,” Eve said. “Gathering data, taking his time. Had a couple of weeks for it anyway. He was going to do Wooton first, and she was easy. All you have to do to pick an LC at her level is wander around and watch the stroll, zero in on one who fits your requirements. You don’t have to worry about getting her alone because that’s her job, but with Lois, it had to be in her place to fit the imitation. She had to be home, she had to be alone, and not expecting anyone.”
“He had to have plenty of time,” Peabody pointed out. “Had to be able to hit the market on Friday, the boutique, the day care, the fitness center—all on weekdays, all during regular work hours. Doesn’t sound like he’s a nine-to-fiver.”
“No, and if we go back to our own list, anyone on it so far has the flexibility.”
She’d tugged Baxter and Trueheart out to do the neighborhood canvass, and was hoping to get a call any minute telling her they’d found someone who’d seen the killer with his souvenir basket of peaches.
Meanwhile, she had to keep it moving. He’d killed twice, and she was certain he’d already selected his next victim.
She left Peabody to do the deeper runs on Breen and his wife, and headed out to beg or bribe a short consult with Mira.
She had to wait, and pace the outer office, and ask herself, yet again, who their deadly mimic might imitate next.
So far he’d picked two notorious and deceased killers, and she was willing to bet he’d stick to pattern. No one, she thought, who was still among the living. The Ripper had never been caught, DeSalvo had died in prison. So capture and incarceration were okay. That left the field pretty wide, even excluding anyone who’d destroyed or hidden or consumed their victims.
Her communicator beeped as she was staring holes through Mira’s door and willing it to open.
“Dallas.”
“Baxter. I think we’ve got one for you, Dallas. A witness from the neighboring building who was heading out to church and saw a guy in a city maintenance uniform—or so she believes—walking out of the vic’s building carrying a toolbox and a plastic fruit basket.”
“Time right?”
“It’s dead on. Our witness knew Gregg. She insists on coming downtown and talking to the primary personally.”
“Bring her on.”
“We’re heading back. I’ll meet you in the break room.”
“My office—”
“Break room,” he insisted. “Some of us haven’t eaten our lunch as yet.”
She opened her mouth to protest, and heard the click of Mira’s door. “Fine. I’m in a meeting. I’ll be there as soon as I’m clear.”
Before Mira’s assistant could repeat the fact that the doctor had only a scant ten minutes free, Mira was stepping out, gesturing Eve inside.
“I’m glad you found the time to come in. I’ve read all the available data.”
“I have more,” Eve told her.
“I need something cold. Cool enough in here,” Mira said as she went to the minifridge. “But just knowing what it’s like outside makes me feel hot. Mind over matter.”
She took out a container of juice, poured two glasses. “I know you live on caffeine, in one form or another, but this is better for you.”
“Thanks. The two vics are distinct types. Very distinct.”
“Yes.” Mira sat.
“The first, a recovering junkie LC, busted down to street level. A lifer, with no friends, family, or support group, though it appears her own choice. He wasn’t concerned about who she was, but what she was. A street whore, working the dingier section of Chinatown. But the second was a who and what.”
“Tell me about the second.”
“A single woman, living alone in a nice neighborhood. A woman who’d raised her family and kept close ties with them. Active in her community, friendly, well-liked by everyone. More well-liked than I think he understood, because he doesn’t get that.”
“He has no strong feelings for anyone, but himself, so he doesn’t relate to those who do. Doesn’t understand the circle.” Mira nodded. “It was her situation—living alone, age, neighborhood, and the fact that she would be found quickly. That’s what drew him to her.”
“But it was a mistake, because she had impact on everyone she was associated with. People liked her, loved her, and they’re not just willing to cooperate with the police, they’re eager to. She isn’t going to be forgotten like Wooton, not ever. Everyone I’ve spoken to had something specific to say about her, something personal and positive. It’s like what I imagine people would say about you when you . . .” She caught herself, coughed, but it was too late. “Jesus, that sounded creepy. I meant—”
“It didn’t.” Mira cocked her head and quite simply beamed. “What a nice thing to hear. Why do you say it?”
She wished to hell and back she hadn’t, but she was stuck now. “It’s just”—she downed the juice like medicine, in one huge gulp—“I—ah—interviewed Gregg’s daughter-in-law earlier, and it reminded me, that’s all, of the way your daughter talked about you. There was this real bright . . . connection. A total bond. And I got that same sort of thing from the guy at her market, the people she worked with, everybody. She left her mark. So do you. It’s that he wasn’t considering, the way people would rally for her. Stand for her.”
“You’re right. He’d have expected the event itself to be the big story. Meaning he’d be the story. She, beyond her convenience for him, was incidental. Though the first victim made her living through sex, and the second was sexually brutalized, th
e killings aren’t a sexual act but a rage against sex. Against women. And this act makes him powerful, and makes them nothing.”
“He stalked Gregg,” Eve said and led Mira through it.
“He’s very careful. Meticulous in his way despite the fact that both killings were messy. His preparation is precise, as his imitations are. Each time he succeeds, he proves not only that he’s more powerful, more important than the women he kills, but more than the men he emulates. He doesn’t have to stick with a pattern—or so he tells himself because, of course, there is a pattern. He believes himself capable of any sort of murder, and the getting away with it. The outwitting you—the female he’s chosen, deliberately chosen, to play against. He beats you, a woman, and proves you’re less than him every time he leaves you a note.”
“The notes, they’re not his voice. It doesn’t fit with everything else you’re saying. They’re broad and jokey. He’s not.”
“Another disguise,” Mira agreed. “Another persona.”
“He’s making himself sound different in them, the way he made himself sound different to the people he spoke with when stalking Gregg. Mr. Versatility again.”
“It’s important to him that he not be pegged, labeled, pigeonholed. It’s very likely that he was, just that, during his upbringing, and by the female authority figure. He may maintain the illusion of the image she forced on him, but it’s not how he sees himself. It is the mother he kills, Eve. The mother as whore with Wooton, and now the mother as nurturer with Lois Gregg. Whoever he mimics next, the victim will be, in his mind, another form of mother.”
“I’ve run probabilities, but even if I narrow down who he’ll copy, I don’t know how that leads me to the next victim before he gets to her.”
“He’ll need some time to prepare, to assume the new face, the new method.”
“Not much,” Eve replied. “He won’t need much, because he’s already worked it all out. He didn’t start this last week.”
“Quite true. It began years ago. Some of his need would have manifested in childhood. The typical route of tormenting or killing small animals, secret bullying, sexual dysfunction. If his family or caregivers knew and were concerned, there may have been some therapy or counseling.”
“And if they didn’t?”
“If they did, or didn’t, we know his needs and his acts escalated. From the profile and your witness statements this man is in his mid to late thirties. He didn’t begin to kill at this age, didn’t begin with Jacie Wooton. There’ll be others. You’ll find them,” Mira said, “and they’ll create a path to him.”
“Yes, I’ll find them. Thanks.” Eve rose. “I know you were squeezed, and I’ve got a witness heading in.” She started to speak again, then changed gears. “And thanks for the invitation for Sunday. Sorry I had to duck out the way I did.”
“It was lovely to have you both there while you were.” Mira got to her feet as well. “I hope you’ll tell me what’s on your mind. There was a time you wouldn’t have—or wouldn’t have let me see there was something troubling you. I thought we were past that now.”
“My ten minutes are up.”
“Eve.” With that quiet word, Mira laid a hand on hers.
“I had a dream.” The words came out fast, as if they’d been waiting to be disgorged. “Sort of a dream. About my mother.”
“Sit.” Mira stepped to her desk, buzzed her assistant. “I’ll need another few minutes here,” she said and clicked off before her assistant could respond.
“I don’t want to hold you up. It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t a nightmare. Exactly.”
“You’ve had no real memory of your mother up until this.”
“No. You know. Just one time before, I remembered hearing her voice, yelling at him, bitching about me. But I saw her this time. I saw her face. I have her eyes. Fuck it.”
She sat now, just dropping down and pressing the heels of her hands against those eyes. “Why is that? Goddamn it.”
“The luck of the gene pool, Eve. You’re too smart to think the color of your eyes means anything.”
“Screw the science, I hate it. That’s all. I saw the way she looked at me with them. She hated me, gut-deep hate. I don’t get it, I just don’t get it. I was . . . I’m not good at judging ages of little kids. Three, four maybe. But she hated me the way you hate a lifelong enemy.”
Mira wanted to go over, to enfold. To mother. But knew it wasn’t the way. “And that hurt you.”
“I wondered, I guess.” She drew in air, let it out explosively. “I guess I wondered if—even though I knew from what I remembered—I wondered if maybe, somehow, he snatched me from her at some point. Beat the crap out of her maybe, and took off with me. I wondered if, even though she was on the junk, she had some feeling for me. I mean, you cart somebody around inside you for nine months, you ought to feel something.”
“Yes, you ought.” Mira spoke gently. “Some people aren’t capable of love. You know that, too.”
“Better than most. I had this fantasy. Didn’t even know I had it until it shattered on me. That she was looking for me, worried about me. Trying to find me all this time because . . . under everything she loved me. But she didn’t. There wasn’t anything but hate in her eyes when she looked at me. Looked at the child.”
“You know it wasn’t you she hated because she never knew you. Not really. And her lack of feeling wasn’t—isn’t—your fault. It was—and is—her lack. You’re a difficult woman, Eve.”
She laughed a little, jerked a shoulder. “Yeah. So?”
“A difficult woman, often abrasive, moody and demanding, and impatient.”
“Are you going to get to my good parts anytime soon?”
“I don’t have that much time.” But Mira smiled, pleased to hear the habitual sarcasm. “But your flaws, as some might see them, don’t prevent those who know you from loving you, respecting you, admiring you. Tell me what you remembered.”
Eve blew out a breath, and ran through it with the cool dispassion and attention to detail she’d use in a police report.
“I don’t know where we were. I mean what city. But I know she whored for money and drugs, and that was okay with him. I know she wanted to ditch me, and that wasn’t okay with him because he had other plans for me. For his investment.”
“They weren’t your parents.”
“I’m sorry?”
“They conceived you—egg and sperm. She incubated you, and expelled you from her body when it was time. But they weren’t your parents. There’s a difference. You know there is.”
“I guess I do.”
“You didn’t come from them. You overcame them. There’s another difference. Let me say one more thing before my assistant chews through my door and punishes me for ruining her schedule. You’ve also left your mark, and had an impact on more lives than either of us can count. Remember that when you look in the mirror, and into your own eyes.”
Chapter 11
When Eve walked into the break room, Baxter was chowing down on an enormous sandwich that smelled too good and looked too fresh to have come out of the facility’s AutoChef, any of the vending machines, or the take-out counter at the Eatery.
It looked civilian and delicious.
Beside him at the square table, the sweet-faced Trueheart was making neat work of a leafy salad topped with chunks of chicken. Across from them, a woman who looked to have seen the dawn and dusk of a couple of centuries beamed goodwill over them.
“There now,” she said in a reedy voice, “isn’t that better than anything you can get out of a machine?”
“Glump,” Baxter responded over bread and meat in what was obviously delirious agreement.
Trueheart, who was younger, nearly as green as his salad, and whose mouth wasn’t quite as full at the time, scraped back his chair when he spotted Eve. “Lieutenant.” He shot to attention as Baxter rolled his eyes in amusement over the rookie, and adoration over his sandwich.
He swallowed. “Jeez, Trueheart,
save the brownnosing until after I digest. Dallas, this is the amazing and wonderful Mrs. Elsa Parksy. Mrs. Parksy, ma’am, this is Lieutenant Dallas, the primary investigator you wanted to see.”
“Thanks for coming in, Mrs. Parksy.”
“My duty, isn’t it? As a citizen, not to mention as a friend and neighbor. Lois looked after me when I needed it, now I’ll look after her, best I can. Sit down, dearie. Have you had your lunch?”
Eve eyed the sandwich, the salad, and ignored the envy that swirled in her mostly empty stomach. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I told these boys I’d fix extra. Can’t abide food out of a machine. It’s not natural. Detective Baxter, you offer some of that sandwich to this girl. She’s too skinny.”
“I’m fine, really. Detective Baxter told me you saw a man leaving Mrs. Gregg’s apartment building on Sunday morning.”
“Did. I didn’t talk to the police before as I went straight on to my grandson’s after church and stayed overnight. Didn’t get back home until this morning. Heard about Lois on the news yesterday, of course.”
The countless wrinkles in her withered raisin of a face shifted in what Eve took for sorrow.
“I’ve never been so shocked and sad, even when my Fred, God rest him, fell under the Number Three train back in 2035. She was a good woman, and a good neighbor.”
“Yes, I know she was. What can you tell us about the man you saw?”
“Hardly paid him any attention. My eyes are pretty good yet. Got them fixed up again last March, but I wasn’t paying him much mind.”
Absently, she pulled a pack of nap-wipes out of a cavernous handbag, and passed them to Baxter.
“Thank you, Mrs. Parksy,” he said in a humbled, respectful voice.
“You’re a good boy.” She patted his hand, then turned her attention back to Eve. “Where was I? Oh yes. I was just coming out to wait for my grandson. He comes by every Sunday at nine-fifteen, to take me to church. You go to church?”
There was a quick and beady gleam in Mrs. Parksy’s eyes, causing Eve to hesitate between the truth and a convenient lie.