The In Death Collection, Books 16-20

by J. D. Robb

  “Single full-contact, full-power shot with hand laser, as evaled on scene. Time of death, ten-fifteen yesterday morning. No forced entry. CSU believes a master was used. Powell’s ID, his vehicle code, his employee pass were all missing from the premises. He’d made no transmissions from his home ’link since the previous afternoon when he ordered pizza from a local place. But he did receive one at just after eight A.M. on the morning of his death. The caller cut transmission after Powell answered, groggily. We traced it to a public ’link at a subway station three blocks away from the scene. Conclusion: The killer verified Powell was home, and in bed. Gave him enough time to fall back to sleep, then entered the premises and killed him.”

  “Sweepers?”

  “Only the prelim, but they haven’t identified any prints other than the victim’s, no DNA, no trace. But I do have a neighbor, Mrs. Lance, who was coming back home from the deli. She saw a man coming out of the building at about ten-thirty. Description matches the one Sibresky gave us of this Angelo.”

  “How about the artist’s rendering? We got that?”

  “Working on it. When I checked I was told Sibresky isn’t being particularly cooperative or open-minded. I promised the artist a backstage pass to the next Mavis Freestone concert in the city if he got us something this afternoon.”

  “Good bribe. I’m so proud.”

  “I had an excellent trainer.”

  “Suck up later. Have you been in to see McNab?”

  Peabody pokered up. “I only stopped by the lab to check on the progress of their work.”

  “Yeah, and to give his bony ass a pat.”

  “Unfortunately, he was sitting on said bony ass at the time of my visit, so I was unable to complete that part of my mission.”

  “Because, despite all my efforts, the image of that bony ass is starting to form in my fevered mind, tell me about the rest of the mission. How’s it going in there?”

  Peabody wanted to ask why Eve hadn’t been in to see for herself, but from the snags of tension around her and Roarke, she thought she knew.

  “Well, there’s a lot of techno-talk, some pretty creative cursing. I like how Roarke says ‘bugger.’ Tokimoto stays iced, and Reva’s like a woman on a religious quest. McNab’s in heaven, hacking away. But what tipped me was Feeney. There’s this gleam in his eyes. I think they’re getting close.”

  “While they’re making the world safe for democracy, let’s see if we can solve a few murders.”

  “Excuse me, Lieutenant,” she said when her communicator signaled. “I’ll get on that little task as soon as I take this. Detective Peabody,” she announced. “Hey, Lamar, you got something for us?”

  “You got my backstage pass?”

  “My word’s my bond.”

  “Then I got your face. How do you want me to send it?”

  “Laser fax,” Eve ordered from her desk. “And a file to my unit here. I want a hard copy, and I want one on my computer.”

  Peabody relayed, then walked over to retrieve the fax herself. “Lamar’s good. Could probably make a better living doing portraits than detailing bad guys. Not the prettiest petal on the flower,” she added, passing the printout to Eve. “But not as ugly as Sibresky said. The scar just messes up the face.”

  “Yeah, it draws the eye, too, doesn’t it? You’re going to think scar when you see this face. Big, nasty scar, so maybe you don’t look too close, because, gee, that’s rude.”

  “Sibresky doesn’t seem to have had that problem.”

  “I get the feeling Sibresky’s not too big on sensitivity and etiquette. Let’s play a game, Peabody.”

  “Really? Okay.”

  “We’ll start by you going in the kitchen, getting a pot of coffee and . . . something. There’s gotta be something to eat.”

  “You want food?”

  “No, my stomach’s still shaky. You get food.”

  “Hey, so far I like this game.”

  “Don’t come back in until I tell you.”

  “No problem.”

  Eve turned to her computer, rubbed her hands together. “Okay, let’s play.”

  It didn’t take long because the process and the possibility had been brewing in her brain for some time. She used the imaging program, shooting the visuals on the wall screens as she worked the details.

  “Okay, Peabody, you’re up, and bring me coffee.”

  “You should have some of this apple-cranberry cobbler.” She came in with a bowl of it, and a mug for Eve. “It’s really mag.”

  “What do you see?”

  Peabody eased a hip onto the edge of the desk, spooned up cobbler. “The artist’s rendering of the suspect known only as Angelo.”

  “Okay. Computer split screen, keep current image and display image CB-1.”

  Working . . . Images displayed.

  “Now what do you see?”

  “Carter Bissel, split screen with Angelo.” She frowned, and though she understood immediately what direction Eve was taking, she shook her head. “I’ll go with the Angelo person being a disguise. I don’t see Carter Bissel in there. There’s no data on him being an expert on disguise. Buy a wig, slap on a mustache, sure. Even maybe manage the scar. But the line of the jaw’s off—an implant for the bucked teeth would change the shape of the mouth, but not the jaw. He’d need more for that, and even if Kade was working him, or with him for a few months, how’d he get so skilled in disguise?”

  She scooped up more cobbler and continued to study and compare the two images. “And Carter Bissel’s ears are bigger. That’s the tip. Ears are a good giveaway. He could make them bigger for Angelo, but not smaller.”

  “You’ve got a good eye, Peabody. But watch and learn.”

  18 PEABODY ATE COBBLER and watched as Eve and the computer added the hair from image one onto the head of image two.

  “You know, you can do it all with one command if you—”

  “I know I can do it all with one command,” Eve said irritably. “It doesn’t make the same damn point that way. Who’s running this game?”

  “You know, getting shot at with a short-range missile makes you really testy.”

  “Keep it up, and the next short-range missile’s going straight up your ass.”

  “Dallas, you know how I love that sweet talk.” Shifting to a more comfortable position, Peabody licked her spoon, then waved it at the screen. “Okay, you add the bad hair, but it doesn’t change jaw structure or ear size and shape. Also, the witness makes Angelo slimmer, considerably slimmer than Carter Bissel. Fifteen pounds, easy. Bissel carried some extra weight according to his ID stats. The witness said Angelo was trim, in good physical shape. Again, you can add weight in a disguise, but you can’t shave off fifteen pounds overnight. If you could, I’d be signed up for the program.”

  “If you don’t want to play, take your cobbler and scram. Computer, replicate facial scar from image one onto image two.”

  “The entry into Powell’s apartment, as in the Bissel home, was slick.” Peabody scraped at the bowl, looking for any escaping cobbler as the computer complied with the command. “Has to be someone with experience or training. And all the murders in this case have been particularly cold, even the first ones, which were staged to look hot-blooded. It’s the very staging that makes them cold.”

  “Nobody’s arguing that. Give me motive. Computer, assume front top teeth of image one is an implant. Calculate and replicate same on image two.”

  “Covert organization screwup—either one. Or, I’ve been thinking about this—a kind of gang war. The worm is complete so Doomsday must want to utilize. They know a shield’s being created. HSO and its associates create havoc to slow technos down or circumvent, or destroy the worm. Doomsday creates havoc to scatter resources, create havoc, which is what terrorists do anyway, and circumvent the creation of the shield until they get some use out of all the time, trouble, and expense they’ve gone to. One side murders a couple of operatives, the other snips off a potential loose thread—McCoy. One
side grabs operative’s brother. The other steals dead operative’s body, and does the overkill attack on the primary investigator. Escalated espionage,” Peabody said with a shrug. “Not as iced as Bond, but plenty convoluted. It seems to me spies convolute everything.”

  “Look at the images, Peabody.”

  Peabody complied, and tapped the spoon gently on her teeth. “I see a resemblance, largely superficial, between the two images. Dallas, you put my image up there and do computer composites, you could make me look like Angelo. But don’t, okay, ’cause I just ate.”

  “Still hung up on the variation of jawline and the ears?”

  “If you tried to take this into court, they’d throw you out.”

  “Guess you’re right. Computer, remove image two and replace with image three.”

  Peabody’s brows knit when the split screen showed two images of Angelo. “I don’t get it.”

  “Don’t get what?”

  “Why are you projecting two images of the same guy?”

  “Am I? You sure they’re the same guy? Maybe getting tossed around earlier’s messed up my vision.”

  “You got Angelo up there side by side.” Concerned, Peabody shifted to study Eve’s face. “Look, if you don’t want to go to the hospital, maybe you could call Louise. She’d make a house call for you.”

  “I don’t want to bother the busy Dr. Dimatto. Let’s just see what I . . . oh yeah, that’s right. Here’s what I meant to do. Computer, remove all replications from image three and display original.”

  Eve sat back with a very satisfied grin as Peabody dropped the spoon. “That’s Bissel. That’s Blair Bissel.”

  “It sure is, isn’t it? You know, I’m thinking reports of his death have been largely exaggerated.”

  “I know you ran that theory, but I never thought you put real weight on it. The DNA, the prints, were Blair Bissel’s. His own wife ID’d him.”

  “HSO training, several years on the job, even at a lower operative level, should give a guy the skills to doctor records, change his to his brother’s. Add overkill, the blood, the gore, the fact that Ewing was shocked, and the fact that in all probability Carter Bissel had undergone some recent surgery to enhance his fairly strong family resemblance to his brother. Body weight was high for Blair’s records, but not more than a lot of people lie about on official documents anyway. Nobody pays any attention to an extra ten or fifteen pounds.”

  “I skim ten off mine. I don’t know why. It’s a compulsion.”

  “We expect to see Blair Bissel, so we see him. Why should we question the identity of the victim?”

  “But why would he go along with it? Carter? There wasn’t any sign of force, no ligatures. How do you induce somebody to undergo surgery, change appearance?”

  “Could’ve paid him. Money, sex—probably both. Let’s screw with big brother and screw his girlfriend while we’re at it. No love lost between the brothers.”

  “There’s a wide gulf between no love lost and deliberately, coldly murdering your brother and your lover. If Kade was helping to set Carter up—”

  “Then Blair planned to do her all along. Yeah, that’s what I think. You want to fake your own death, do it in a big way. A vicious way that tosses the blood in your wife’s face, at least initially, and gets rid of the monkey on your back and one of the people who knew you intimately enough to muck the deal. They’ll say you were a cheat, a liar, a bastard. What do you care, you’re dead.”

  “I have to think about this.” Peabody pushed away from the desk to pace. “With this theory, Blair and Kade did a number on Carter outside the HSO directive.”

  “Maybe they started inside, probably did, but I figure they started coloring outside the lines at some point.”

  “As a solution for the blackmail.”

  “Partially. It’s money, it’s adventure, it’s risk. All those fit their profiles. But they had bigger goals. Keep going.”

  “Crap. Blair was a liaison, doubling under HSO directive, as a liaison for Doomsday. Feeding them selected data for payment, and establishing himself as a source, a traitor, a free agent. Part of this cloak was his marriage to Reva Ewing, blueprinted by the HSO.”

  “Corporate espionage on one hand—a lucrative game, and with so much privatization of intel- and data-gathering sources over the last couple of decades, the HSO has to compete with civilian companies for revenue.”

  “Like Securecomp.”

  “Like that, and the dozens of others on and off planet they arranged for Blair to plant his listening posts. And think about this, Peabody. You always have to have a backup plan. You require plausible deniability. What contingency plan do you suppose the architects of this blueprint drew up in the event one of the sculptures was detected?”

  Peabody stopped in front of the screens, studied the faces. “Blair Bissel, fall guy.”

  “You bet, and by association, Reva would fall with him and Securecomp is compromised. It could—and I think would—have been said that they’d worked together. After all, they were husband and wife.”

  “So they were building a frame after all.”

  “Contingencies. Blair’d been in the organization long enough for this to occur to him. And if not him, it occurred to Kade.”

  “So he took steps to protect himself?” Peabody shook her head. “Really big steps.”

  “Not only protection. Factor in the satisfaction of getting back at his blackmailing brother, Homeland—the people, the government who’d use and discard him if things went wrong. Then add a big shit-pile of money.”

  “From the technos? He makes a deal with them. Unauthorized information. Something big.”

  “He’s the bridge between points A and B, and he knows more about both points, in this aspect, than either point knows of each other. Because he’s the one passing the data. He’s in control of that. Heady stuff for a guy with his personality profile. Why not take more? More control, more power, more money, and get out? Only one way out. Go rogue, and they’ll hunt you down. Both sides.”

  “But they won’t hunt if they think you’re dead.”

  “There you go. Add to that the HSO busy trying to cover up the mess you left behind, the cops busy investigating a prime suspect handed them on a platter, and the death of the only person who had knowledge of your plans, and you’re in the cozy part of fat city.”

  “What went wrong? Why isn’t he sitting in the surf on some island paradise, slurping rum punch and counting his money?”

  “Maybe the payment wasn’t made. You don’t want to go putting all your eggs in a terrorist’s basket. They often end up scrambled. But he’d been trained well enough to have a contingency plan of his own. He gave McCoy something. He had to go back for it. She had to die for it.”

  “And meanwhile, the primary isn’t buying his served-on-a-platter prime suspect. With the cops taking a closer look, so’s everyone else.”

  “Yeah, things got screwed for him, almost from the start. Roarke’s into this Yeats guy who’s an old, dead Irish writer. He said something about things falling apart. The center doesn’t hold. The center hasn’t been holding for Blair Bissel.”

  “And it’s been falling apart since you walked into the first crime scene.”

  “He’s desperate, and he’s pissed, and he overthinks. He’s so worried about covering his ass, he keeps exposing it. He needs to stay dead, needs to collect his fee. Hard to do both. Killing Powell and destroying the body identified as his own was stupid. It prevents positive ID, but it also turns the trail around and heads it right back at him. He’s the only one who’d want that evidence destroyed.”

  “Then he tries to take you out.”

  “Like I said, he’s pissed. And he’s desperate. And you know what he is, under all this espionage, artsy, woman-sniffing bullshit, Peabody? He’s a screwup. The kind that keeps making bigger, splashier mistakes to cover up the last one. He thinks he’s a stone-cold killer, but he’s a selfish, spoiled little boy playing—what’s that guy’s name�
�James Bond—then having a tantrum when he doesn’t quite pull it off.”

  “He may not be stone-cold, but he’s killed four people, knocked you around pretty good, and put an assistant director of the HSO in the hospital.”

  “I didn’t say he wasn’t dangerous. Kids having temper tantrums are pretty damn dangerous. Scare the hell out of me.”

  “So, according to your theory, we have a cranky, immature, HSO-trained killer.”

  “Pretty much.”

  Peabody blew out a breath that fluttered her ruler-straight bangs. “That is pretty scary. How do we catch him?”

  “Working on that.” Eve started to prop her feet on the desk, had the twinge of revolting muscles shoot straight through her body. “Shit.”

  “You’d better work on those bruises.”

  “I don’t have bruises on my brain. I can still think. Let’s get the rest of the team in here, civilians included, and kick this ball around.”

  “You want Ewing in on this?”

  “She was married to him for two years. It might have been a convenience to him, but she still would’ve learned something about him. Habits, fantasies, hangouts. If Sparrow lives, regains consciousness, and opts to share information on Bissel, that may help, but right now, Reva Ewing’s our best source.”

  “You’re going to tell her that the husband she was accused of murdering is not only alive, in your opinion, but is the one who set her up?”

  “If she can’t deal with it, she’s no help and we’re no worse off. Let’s see if she inherited any of her mother’s spine.”

  Feeney came in muttering figures and command codes into a PPC. His chin was stubbled with ginger and gray and the bags under his eyes could’ve held a week’s marketing for a family of three—but there was a gleam in them.

  “Bad time to interrupt, kid,” he said to Eve. “We’re on the verge.”

  “There’s another prong to this investigation, and that may be on the verge, too. Where are the others?”

  “Roarke and Tokimoto are finishing up running a series. Don’t want to walk away in the middle of that, not after what it’s taken to get there. We got one of Kade’s units as clean as it’s going to get. McNab and Ewing are just about done reinstalling some . . .”