The In Death Collection, Books 16-20

by J. D. Robb

  “We’re going back to the U.N., to Renquist, and not risking federal imprisonment?”

  “We’re going back to apologize, grovel, and eat massive portions of crow.”

  “You don’t know how to do those things.” Peabody looked mournful. “We’re going to the pen.”

  “Just get the data. If I don’t know how to apologize, grovel, and eat crow, it’s because it’s rarely appropriate for me to do so. You have to be wrong first.”

  When there was silence, Eve glanced over. “No smart-ass comment?”

  “My grandmother always says, if you can’t say something positive about someone, keep your trap shut.”

  “Yeah, like you listen to her. Renquist is pissed, his wife is pissed, and they’re in the position to crimp the investigation. Nobody knows how to tie up red tape like a politician. And since my impression of them is that they are pompous assholes, I figured slathering on the ‘I’m just a public servant, ergo a bonehead’ line might get me in.”

  “You said ergo.”

  “It goes with pompous.”

  “Sophia DiCarlo, twenty-six and single. Citizen of Italy with green card and work permit. Parents and two sibs reside in Rome. Aha, parents are domestics, employed by Angela Dysert. Bet it’s a relation to Mrs. Pompous Asshole. Sophia’s been employed by the Renquists as domestic, child-care position, for the past six years. No criminal on record.”

  “Okay, the girl—Renquist’s girl, she’s old enough for school, right? See what you can find on that.”

  “It’s touchy getting data on minors, Dallas, especially foreign nationals, without more clearance.”

  “Get what you can.”

  Peabody went to work while Eve drove across town. Overhead in the hazy sky, ad blimps and tourist trams moved sluggishly. Inside the relative cool, Eve practiced groveling in her head. Even telling herself it was for the greater good, it rankled.

  “They’ve got the kid’s privacy blocked. That’s pretty standard,” Peabody told her. “Especially with more upscale family types. You don’t want kidnappers and unsavory types knowing stuff about your kids. You’re not going to get anything without clearance.”

  “Can’t ask for clearance. I don’t want the Renquists to know I’m looking at them. Doesn’t matter. The au pair’s bound to take the kid out sometime, or better, go out on her own. Has to have a day off.”

  Eve tucked her thoughts away as they approached the U.N., and prepared to go through the multiple security checks.

  It took twenty minutes to get through to Renquist’s outer office. It was his admin who greeted them, and invited them to wait.

  Eve figured the extra twenty Renquist kept them cooling their heels was just his way to show who was in charge. Crow was already sticking in her throat when they were admitted.

  “Please make it brief,” Renquist said immediately. “I’ve made time for you out of a very busy day only due to the direct request of your chief of police. You’ve already infringed on my time here, and my wife’s.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m very sorry to have intruded on you, and on Mrs. Renquist. In my zeal to further my investigation, I overstepped. I hope neither you nor Mrs. Renquist will take this offense personally, nor let it reflect on the department.”

  He arched his brow, and the surprise—the satisfaction—was obvious in his eyes. “Being considered a suspect in a murder is hardly usual for me, and could hardly be anything but personally offensive.”

  “I regret that I gave the impression you were a suspect. Investigative procedure demands that I pursue any and all possible connections. I . . .” She tried a little fumble, wished she could work up a flush. “I can only apologize again, sir, and tell you frankly that my own frustration in being unable to clear this case may have made my demeanor less than courteous to both you and Mrs. Renquist. In actuality, I’m only seeking to remove your name from any list as applies to this investigation. My interview with Mrs. Renquist, however ill-advised, did serve to confirm your whereabouts at the time of the murders.”

  “My wife was very distressed that the subject came up in our home, with guests on the point of arriving.”

  “I realize that. I apologize again for the inconvenience.”

  You schmuck.

  “I hardly see why my name should be on any sort of a list merely because I may have some writing paper in my possession.”

  She lowered her eyes. “It’s the only lead I have. The killer has taunted me with these notes. It’s very upsetting. But that doesn’t excuse my disturbing your wife at home. Please convey my apologies to Mrs. Renquist.”

  He smiled now, thinly. “I will do so. However, Lieutenant, I have the impression that you wouldn’t be here, offering this apology, had your superiors not insisted you do so.”

  She lifted her gaze, met his, and let a hint of the resentment show through. “I was doing my job as best I know how. I don’t play politics well. I’m just a cop. And I follow orders, Mr. Renquist.”

  He nodded. “I can respect someone who follows orders, and give some leeway to a public servant who allows her zeal for duty to cloud her judgment somewhat. I hope you weren’t reprimanded too harshly.”

  “No more than my actions warranted.”

  “And you remain as primary in this investigation?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “Then I’ll wish you luck with it.” He rose and offered a hand. “And hope that you identify and arrest the person responsible quickly.”

  “Thank you.” Eve took his hand, held it and his eyes. “I intend to put him into a cage, personally, very soon.”

  He cocked his head. “Confidence, Lieutenant, or arrogance?”

  “Whatever works. Thank you again, sir, for your time and your understanding.”

  “I take it back,” Peabody said when they were clear of the building. “You’re good. Frustrated apology, with just a hint of resentment. The foot soldier who’d tried to do her job, and got shafted by her superiors. Forced to eat that crow, and swallowing it down stoically. You really sold it.”

  “Wasn’t that far off. He could turn up a lot of heat under the department. He’s got both political and media connections. Nobody ordered me to apologize, but nobody’s going to be sorry I did, either. Fucking politics.”

  “You make rank, you’ve got to play them sometimes.”

  Eve merely shrugged and climbed back into the car. “Don’t have to like it. Don’t have to like him, either. In fact, every time I see him, I like him less.”

  “It’s the snooty factor,” Peabody explained. “It’s really hard to like somebody who has a high snooty factor, and his is top of the scale.”

  She looked back at the glossy white building, the shining tower, the waving flags. “I guess dealing with diplomats and ambassadors and heads of state every day makes a high snooty factor a prerequisite.”

  “Diplomats, ambassadors, and heads of state are supposed to represent the people, which makes them no different than us. Renquist can take his snooty factor and shove it.”

  She drove away from the white walls and flags, toward the heart of the city. “Wouldn’t hurt my feelings a bit if it turns out to be him. I’m going to lock the cage on this son of a bitch personally. I meant that. And I wouldn’t mind seeing Renquist’s snotty face on the other side of the bars when I do.”

  She hunkered down at Central and used the exercise of clearing her desk to let her thoughts brew. She forwarded a dozen messages and demands from reporters to the media liaison, and happily forgot about them. She imagined there was a press conference in her future, but she didn’t have to think about it now.

  She caught up on paperwork as much as she ever caught up on paperwork, then made some calls of her own.

  She took out the notes, reread them, searching for a rhythm, phrasing, word uses, anything that clicked with the speech patterns of the people on her list.

  It wasn’t his voice, she thought again. Deliberately not his voice. He assumes and mimics and becomes. Who did he be
come when he wrote the notes?

  Her desk ’link signaled an incoming, and wanting to avoid reporters she waited for the transmission location to flash on. When she read Feeney, Captain Ryan, EDD, she answered.

  “You work fast,” she said.

  “Kid, I’m a frigging rocket. Got a pop might be your guy. Case is cold. Vic was a fifty-three-year-old female. Schoolteacher. Found strangled in her apartment by a sister. Cooked for a few days first. Raped with a piece of statuary, which he also used to bash her over the head. Strangled with a pair of those panty hose you people wear. Tied in a bow under the chin.”

  “Bingo. How cold and where?”

  “Went down June of last year, Boston. I’ll send you all the particulars. No note with this one, and he smashed her head and face pretty good with the statue. ME report says she was already on the way out when he strangled her.”

  “Practice makes perfect.”

  “Could be. I got another with enough clicks to make me wonder. Six months before Boston, out in New L.A. Fifty-six-year-old vic. This one was a squatter though, and that doesn’t fit. But somebody did her in her flop, raped her with a ball bat, smashed her up with it before he strangled her with her own scarf. Got a bow there, too, which is what pulled it.”

  “Follows, doesn’t it? A squatter’s an easy hit. Not tough to get to, and nobody cares too much. It’d be a good place to perfect your technique.”

  “My thinking. I’ll send these to you. Haven’t got any hits on the mutilation. Plenty of slash and gash in the good old U.S. of A., but nothing that hums along with your guy. I’m widening to international.”

  “Thanks, Feeney. You got some vacation time coming, don’t you?”

  His mournful face drooped. “Wife’s nagging my ass red about putting in for a week. Frigging holiday brochures all over the damn house. Thinks we should rent some big beach house or some shit, take the whole damn family. Kids, grand-kids.”

  “How about Bimini?”

  “Who?”

  “Where, Feeney.”

  “Oh. Bimini. What about it?”

  “Roarke’s got a place there, big house, staffed. Beach, waterfall, blah blah. I can clear it with him, have your whole damn family fly down on one of his transports. Interested?”

  “Jesus Christ, I go home and tell the wife we’re taking the whole herd to Bimini for a week, she’ll keel over. Shit, yeah, I’m interested, but we don’t have to play payback.”

  “I’m not playing. Place is just sitting there. He flipped a deal to Peabody and McNab awhile back, so I figure I can flip one to you. Especially since I’m going to ask you to keep an eye on things when I do some out-of-town work.”

  “Sounds like I’m getting the shiny end of the deal. Data coming through.”

  She read it through, and felt that quick little buzz in the blood. A cop buzz. She was looking at his work. Practice strokes. Not that sort of thing that merited a signature, she thought, but a building of style and skill he preferred not to add to his credits.

  He’d have been sloppier, less cautious. There’d have been mistakes, and though the trail was cold, she might still find a shadow of them.

  She took the time to organize the data before taking it to Whitney for her pitch.

  With her commander’s go-ahead under her belt, she made tracks back to Homicide, already formulating her next pitch in her head. She breezed through the bull pen, giving Baxter a with-me signal when he called out her name.

  “So, you get a look at the guy she’s boinking on the side?”

  “She’s not boinking a guy on the side.”

  The rush Eve was still riding on drained. “Gotta be. Damn it, Baxter, she had big, secret affair written all over her. I could almost smell the sex.”

  “Please, you’re giving me a woody. I’m just going to have some of your coffee and calm myself down.”

  “If you couldn’t keep a tail on her—”

  “I kept a tail on her.” He ordered up an enormous mug, two sugars, splash of cream. Taking it, he leaned back against her filing cabinet to enjoy the first jolt. “Goddamn, this is coffee. Speaking of tails, which you were, the blonde had a superior one.”

  “Take your woody and your idiot brain out of my office. She’s screwing somebody on the side.”

  “Did I say she wasn’t?” He smiled, sipped again, and wiggled his eyebrows at Eve over the rim. “She just ain’t driving a stick.”

  “She’s . . . Oh. Well, well, well, this is interesting.” She lowered to the corner of her desk, thought it through. “Not just a side dish, a girl side dish. That has to be a real pisser for a guy.”

  “And the dish was prime. Tall, lanky, black, and beautiful. The kind you just want to start slurping on from the toes up. Waste from my point of view—two superior examples of the species, and they’re sliding all over each other. Of course, thinking about them sliding all over each other is entertaining. I had a good time with that, and have to thank you for the duty.”

  “You’re a sick perv.”

  “And proud of it.”

  “Do you think you could defer your lesbian fantasies until you give me a report?”

  “I’ve already had the fantasies, and plan to have them again, but I can postpone the next act. Your girl left the office, twelve forty-five, and caught a cab. Proceeded uptown to the Silby Hotel on Park. Went straight into the lobby, where her date was waiting. Hot side dish later identified as Serena Unger through detective’s charm, skill, and the fifty he passed the desk clerk.”

  “Fifty? Shit, Baxter.”

  “Hey, classy joint, classy bribe. Unger had preregistered. Both subjects proceeded to an elevator, which was, to the detective’s great joy, glass-sided. In this way he was able to use his keen observation techniques to watch them exchange a big, sloppy wet one on the way up to the fourteenth floor. They entered room 1405, where they remained, engaged in activities the detective was sadly unable to witness, until fourteen hundred. At which time Julietta Gates exited the room, and the hotel, procuring another cab. She returned to her place of employment with what the detective believed was a satisfied smile on her face.”

  “You run Unger?”

  “Had Trueheart do it while we waited for the lunchtime quickie to run its course. She’s a fashion designer. Thirty-two, single. No criminal. Currently employed with Mirandi’s second label arm. They’re New York–based.”

  “Question: Your woman cheats on you with another woman. Better or worse than her diddling with a guy?”

  “Oh, worse. Bad enough she’s playing you, but she’s doing it without a dick, which means she doesn’t think too much of your equipment. It’s a guy, you can maybe rationalize it some. You know, he took advantage of her, or she had a moment of weakness.”

  “Took advantage of her.” Eve snorted. “Men are really sad and simple.”

  “Please, a boy needs his illusions. Anyway, it’s another skirt, she had to go looking, and she had to go looking for something you don’t have. Makes you a double loser.”

  “Yeah, that’s how I see it. It’s going to give you a real hard-on against women. So to speak. We’re going to want to find out how long Julietta’s been going girl-on-girl.”

  He set the empty mug down and linked his hands in a gesture of prayer. “Please, please, please, let me do it. I never get the fun stuff.”

  “I need subtle on this.”

  “My middle name.”

  “I thought your middle name was Hornydog.”

  “That’s my first middle name,” he said with some dignity. “Come on, Dallas, how about it?”

  “Play ring-around-a-rosie with Unger. Talk to the staff at the hotel and keep the bribes to a minimum. Budget’s not going to stretch if you keep slapping down fifties. Talk to her neighbors. Sniff around her place of employment. She’s going to get wind of it, so keep the reason for the look-see quiet. Subtle, Baxter, seriously. I’ve got to do an out-of-town. If I get lucky, I’ll be back in tomorrow. If not, it may take another day.”


  “You can leave this in my very capable hands. Oh, and I won’t put in for the fifty,” he said as he started out. “It was worth the price of the ticket.”

  He’d handle it, she thought. She couldn’t be in Boston, New L.A., and poking around Serena Unger in New York at the same time. Baxter could work that angle, Feeney the like-crimes area, and she’d pursue other potential leads.

  It appeared she’d put together a team without intending to.

  Now, she thought, she was about to add another member. And it would be her turn to play it subtle.

  She didn’t expect to get through to Roarke on the first try, but the great god of meetings must have decided to cut her a break. His admin passed her on to him, with the polite comment that he’d just returned from a business lunch.

  “So what’d you eat?” she asked when he came on.

  “Chef’s salad. How about you?”

  “I’m getting something in a minute. You got any business in Boston?”

  “I could have. Why?”

  “I’ve got to make a run up there, maybe out to the West Coast. Check out some things. I don’t want to take Peabody. She’s got the exam day after tomorrow. She needs to stay here, plus I can’t be a hundred percent I’ll be back on time for her to make it. Thought you might want to tag along.”

  “I might. When?”

  “ASAP.”

  “This wouldn’t be a maneuver to avoid Summerset’s return?”

  “No, but it’s a handy side benny. Look, you want to go or not?”

  “I have to do some shuffling.” He angled away, and she saw him dance his fingers over a small keyboard. “I need . . . two hours will do it.”

  “That works for me.” Now came the tricky part. “I’ll meet you at the Newark transpo center, say seventeen hundred. We’ll grab a shuttle there.”

  “Public transpo? And at five o’clock? I don’t think so.”

  She just loved the way he sneered. “Timing can’t be helped,” she began.

  “Accommodations can. We’ll take one of my shuttles.”

  Which was exactly what she’d expected him to say. Thank God. The last thing she wanted was to squeeze on to a commuter sweatbox and deal with the inevitable delays and poor hygiene. But she knew how to play the game, and gave him an obligatory scowl.