The In Death Collection, Books 16-20

by J. D. Robb

  “There’s a thought.”

  Several people pushed their way off when the doors opened. Eve glanced up, noted she had three levels to go. “Why don’t we see if we can set up the interview later today?”

  “At Central?”

  “Yeah. Central Park. At last.” Eve all but leaped out of the doors when they hit the garage.

  “Dallas, wait!” Peabody grabbed her arm, dug in her heels. “I have something to tell you.”

  “Make it snappy.”

  “I want to say first, that in just a few moments, you’re going to be overcome with a powerful urge to kiss me on the lips. I won’t think less of you for it.”

  “Peabody, why, even in your wild, perverted dreams—dreams I want no part in or of—would I ever have the least compunction to kiss you on the lips?”

  “Close your eyes.”

  Eve spoke quietly, almost casually. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

  “Okay, okay.” Peabody pouted a little. “You’re no fun.” She crossed over to Eve’s parking slot, spread her arms with a flourish and said: “Voilà!”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “That, Lieutenant, is your replacement vehicle. Pucker up.”

  Eve goggled. It was a rare thing to see the lieutenant goggle, and Peabody celebrated the moment with a snappy little tap dance.

  Slowly, Eve walked around the sleek, navy blue sedan. It shone under the hard garage lights like a dignified jewel. The tires were big, black, and clean. The glass and chrome sparkled.

  “This is not my vehicle.”

  “Is too.”

  “This is my vehicle?”

  “Uh-huh.” Peabody bobbed her head like a puppet on a happy string.

  “Get out.” Eve smacked her in the shoulder. “How’d you pull this off?”

  “A little fast talk, some slight exaggeration, a lot of prevarication, and a little assistance from an e-fairy who knows how to hack.”

  “You got it through unethical and possibly illegal means.”

  “Damn straight.”

  Eve set her hands on her hips, looked Peabody square in the eyes. “This is such a proud moment for me. A proud, proud moment.”

  “Are you going to kiss me on the lips?”

  “Not that proud.”

  “How about a peck on the cheek?”

  “Get in the car.”

  “Your codes, Lieutenant.” She handed them over, strolled around to the passenger side. “And you know what, Dallas? This bitch is loaded.”

  “Oh yeah?” Eve slid into a seat, grinned when she didn’t get the sensation of sitting on bumpy rock. “Well, let’s see what she can do.”

  Chapter 8

  It rocked. Not only was everything operational, but it moved. She could zip into vertical and down again, stream instead of muscle her way through traffic.

  All comp systems were go, as she was told, politely, by a computerized voice before she even thought to ask. The voice addressed her as Lieutenant Dallas, informed her the outside temp was a pleasant seventy-eight degrees with winds from the south, southwest, at a mild twelve per hour.

  It offered to calculate the most convenient route to her destination, or destinations, with projected traffic patterns and ETAs.

  It was a fricking miracle.

  “You love this car,” Peabody said with a smug little smile on her face.

  “I do not love a vehicle. I appreciate and expect efficient machines and tools, machines and tools that assist me in doing my job rather than inconveniencing and hampering me.”

  She whipped around a trudging maxibus, threaded through a mired mass of Rapid Cabs and, for the hell of it, executed a quick vertical maneuver that shot them east.

  “Okay. I love this car!”

  “Knew you would.” Peabody all but sang it.

  “If they try to take it from me, I’ll fight them. To the death. To the bloody death.”

  She smiled all the way to her destination.

  Since Polinski was out on personal time, she dealt with Silk, a stubby fireplug of a man who sat at his desk munching on no-fat soy chips while he gave her background on the Missing Person’s investigation.

  Breen Merriweather had been reported missing by her neighbor and childcare provider on June tenth. She’d left the studio between midnight and twelve-fifteen. And vanished without a trace.

  No serious romantic relationships, no known enemies. She’d been in good health and good spirits and had been looking forward to an upcoming vacation—she’d planned to take her son to Disney World East.

  Eve took copies of files and notes.

  “Tag Nadine,” Eve told Peabody. “Let’s do this setup at the castle. In an hour. Make it ninety minutes.”

  They met Royce Cabel at his apartment. He opened the door before they knocked, and looked at them with what Eve recognized as terrified hope.

  “You found out something about Marjie.”

  “Mr. Cabel, as I told you when I contacted you, we’re conducting a follow-up. I’m Lieutenant Dallas. This is my partner, Detective Peabody. Can we come in?”

  “Yeah, sure. Yeah.” He dragged a hand through his long, wavy brown hair. “I just thought—I wanted to meet you here instead of at work because I thought maybe you’d found something. Found her. And didn’t want to tell me over the ’link.”

  He glanced around the room, blankly, then shook his head. “Sorry. I guess we should sit down. Ah, aren’t Detectives Lansing and Jones still working?”

  “They are. We’re pursuing another angle. It would help us if you’d tell us what you know.”

  “What I know.” He sat on a deep green sofa heaped with pretty pillows.

  The apartment was painted a dull gold, and struck Eve as being female—the pillows, the soft, fancy throws, the sudden splashes of reds and dark blues.

  “I feel like I don’t know anything,” he said after a moment. “She was working nights. That was going to change in June, when she took over as day manager. We’d be on the same schedule again.”

  “How long had she been working nights?”

  “For about eight months.” He rubbed his hands on his thighs as if he didn’t know what else to do with them. “It was okay. She liked the work, and the restaurant’s only a couple blocks away. I’d go in and have dinner at least once a week. And having her days free gave her lots of time to handle the wedding stuff. She was doing almost everything herself. Marjie loves planning.”

  “Did the two of you have any problems?”

  “We didn’t. I mean we did—everybody does—but we were in a real up phase. The wedding. Hell, I didn’t have to do anything but show up because she had everything organized. We talked about starting a family.”

  His voice shook, and he cleared his throat, stared hard at the wall.

  “Did she ever mention anyone coming into the restaurant who disturbed her? Anyone coming by here, or anywhere else?”

  “No. I told the other detectives. If somebody’d been bothering Marjie, she’d have told me. If somebody’d pissed her off at work, she’d have told me. We talked all the time. I always waited up for her, and we’d hash out the day. She just didn’t come home.”

  “Mr. Cabel—”

  “I wish she’d just walked off.” Emotions pitched into his voice. Traces of anger now, anger circling around the fear. “I wish she’d gotten freaked or fallen out of love with me or found somebody else or just got a goddamn wild hair. But she didn’t. It’s not Marjie. Something happened to her, something terrible. And I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Mr. Cabel, do you or Marjie belong to a health club or gym?”

  “Huh?” He blinked, sucked in a breath. “Yeah, who doesn’t? We, ah, we go to Able Bodies. We try to make it two, three times a week. Sundays for sure since we’re both off. We’d do a couple hours, maybe, then have brunch in their juice bar.”

  Brunch in the juice bar didn’t fit, Eve thought, and decided on another tack. Before she could speak, Peabody lifted
one of the couch pillows.

  “These are really beautiful. Unique. They look handcrafted.”

  “Marjie made them. She was always making something.” He ran his hand over one of the pillows. “Used to call herself a craft addict.”

  Pop, Eve thought. “Would you know where she bought her supplies?”

  “Her supplies? I don’t get it.”

  “It’s details, Mr. Cabel,” Peabody told him. “Details help.”

  “It was one of the things we didn’t do together.” He mustered up a smile. “She’d dragged me along a few times, on her hunts, but I made her feel rushed, she said, because I was so obviously bored. She’s got a little studio set up in the second bedroom. There’s probably some record of where some of the stuff came from.”

  Eve rose. “Can we take a look?”

  “Sure.” He got up quickly, the enthusiasm for the new angle clear on his face. “It’s right in here.”

  He led them into a small room, full of material and threads and ribbons. Fringes and framing and objects Eve couldn’t begin to identify. It all appeared to be meticulously organized into groups. There were a couple of small machines, and a mini data and communication center.

  “Can we turn this on?”

  “Sure. Let me get it for you.” He walked over to the d and c, booted it up.

  “Peabody.” Eve tipped her head toward the unit.

  “She could make anything,” Cabel continued, and wandered the room, touching fabrics. “The quilt on the bed, the folk art scattered around the apartment. The sofa out in the living area? She picked it up off the street, hauled it home, fixed it up, re-covered it. One day, she’s going to start her own business, do home decorating, or maybe run her own craft school. Something.”

  “Lieutenant? There’s a transaction here for supplies, February 27, another March 14. Total Crafts.”

  Eve nodded, continued to riffle through wide baskets, painted boxes. And lifted out three rolls of corded ribbon. One in navy, one in gold. And one in red.

  “He trolls the craft shops.” Again, Eve crossed the park, her focus on the castle. “Why does a guy like that troll the craft shops?”

  “He could have spotted them somewhere else, followed them there.”

  “No. Two women, their only known connection a hobby. One dead, one missing and presumed. I guarantee you when we finish with Nadine and go talk to Breen Merriweather’s baby-sitter, we’re going to find she did crafts. We’re going to find she bought supplies, at one time or another, from Total Crafts, or one of the other locations either Maplewood or Kates used. He sees them there, they fit his requirements. He stalks them, studies them.”

  She tucked her thumbs in her pockets. “Then he lays in wait and takes them. If he did Kates, he almost certainly had to have his own transpo. There’s nowhere between the restaurant and the apartment where he could have raped, murdered, mutilated her, then hid the body. He had to do a snatch and grab, then take her somewhere.”

  “If we’re right about Kates, then he changed his method for Maplewood.”

  Eve shook her head. “Not changed. Perfected. Kates was one of his trial runs. Might have been more before her. Sidewalk sleepers, runaways, junkies, whatever. Someone who wouldn’t get reported missing, or was reported months before the grab. He had it down to a science when he killed Elisa Maplewood. He might have been working up to that for years.”

  “Happy thought.”

  “They represent somebody: mother, sister, lover, a woman who rejected him, refused him, abused him. Dominant female figure.”

  Why, she wondered, did the twisted tree of a murderer so often go back to the mother root? Did the gestation and birthing process come with the power to nurture or destroy?

  “When we get him,” Eve continued, “it’s going to come out that she—this symbol—knocked him around or boo-hoo broke his heart or made him feel weak and helpless. So his defense lawyers will come along saying: Oh, he was damaged, poor sick son of a bitch. He’s not responsible. And that’s a pile of shit, that’s a big, smelly pile of bullshit. Because nobody’s responsible for choking the life out of Elisa Maplewood but him. Nobody.”

  Peabody let the rant run, waited until she was sure it was over. “Preaching to the choir.”

  Eve drew it back in. “Yeah. Where the hell is Nadine? She doesn’t show in five, we cancel. We need to follow up on Merriweather.”

  “We’re a couple minutes early.”

  “I guess we are.” Eve sat on the grass, drew her knees up, and studied the castle. “You ever skip around parks when you were a kid?”

  “Sure.” Glad the storm had passed, Peabody sat beside her. “Free-Agers, you know. I was a regular nature girl. You?”

  “No. Couple of stints in what you could call summer camp.” Run by state-hired Nazis, Eve thought, who regulated every breath. “This one’s not so bad. You know it’s still in the city, so it’s okay.”

  “Not looking to make nature girl?”

  “Nature’ll kill you, just for the hell of it.”

  Eve glanced over and watched Nadine and her camera operator crossing to them. “Why would she wear those skinny heels when she knew she’d be hiking over grass?”

  “Because they’re jazzed, and make her legs look mag.”

  Eve supposed everything about Nadine looked mag, from her sweep of streaky blonde hair to the toes of her jazzed shoes. She had a foxy, angular face, observant green eyes, and a slim body that curved appropriately in her on-camera suit of power red.

  She was smart, she was sneaky, she was cynical.

  And for reasons Eve imagined neither of them fully understood, they’d become friends.

  “Dallas. Peabody. Don’t you two look relaxed and pastoral. Why don’t you set up there?” She gestured to the camera. “I want the castle in the background. You got any real juice,” she said to Eve, “I can take this live.”

  “No. And we’re keeping it short. We could even say pithy.”

  “Pithy it is.” Nadine took out a small compact to check her face, lifted a paper-thin sponge and dabbed her nose. “Who’s leading off?”

  “She is.” Eve jerked a thumb at Peabody.

  “I am?”

  “Let’s get to it.” Nadine nodded to the camera, angled her body. Gave her shoulders a roll, her hair a little shake. And her easy smile turned into a cool, serious look.

  “This is Nadine Furst, in Central Park with Lieutenant Eve Dallas and Detective Delia Peabody of the New York City Police and Security Department, Homicide Division. Behind us is Belvedere Castle, one of the city’s most unique landmarks, and the site of a recent, violent murder. Elisa Maplewood, a woman who worked and lived only a short distance from here, a single mother of a four-year-old child, was assaulted near the very spot where we’re standing. She was brutally raped and murdered. Detective Peabody, as a key member of the investigative team handling Elisa Maplewood’s murder, can you tell us what progress you’ve made in finding her killer?”

  “We are actively pursuing all leads and utilizing all the resources at our disposal.”

  “Are you confident you’ll make an arrest?”

  Don’t screw up, Peabody ordered herself. Don’t screw up. “The case remains open and active. Lieutenant Dallas and I will continue to work toward identifying Ms. Maplewood’s assailant, gathering evidence that will result in an arrest in order to bring this individual to justice.”

  “Can you tell us what specific leads you are pursuing?”

  “I’m unable to discuss specific details of this investigation as such might taint the case we’re building or affect the progress of said investigation.”

  “As a woman, Detective, do you feel this particular crime more personally?”

  Peabody started to deny, then remembered part of the purpose of the interview. “As a cop, it’s imperative to remain objective in every investigation. It’s impossible not to feel, on a personal level, compassion and outrage for any victim of any crime, but that compassion and outrage can
’t be allowed to overcome objectivity and interfere. Because the victim must be our priority. As a woman, I feel that compassion and outrage on Elisa Maplewood’s behalf. Like Lieutenant Dallas, I want the individual responsible for her suffering and pain—for the suffering and pain of her family, her friends—identified and punished.”

  “Do you agree, Lieutenant Dallas?”

  “Yes, I do. A woman stepped out of her home, intending to walk her dog in the city’s greatest park. Her life was taken from her, and that’s enough for outrage. But it was taken viciously, violently, deliberately. As a cop, as a woman, I will pursue the man who took Elisa Maplewood’s life, however long it takes, until he’s brought to justice.”

  “How was she mutilated?”

  “At this point, that detail of the crime and investigation is not for public consumption.”

  “Don’t you believe in the public’s right to know, Lieutenant?”

  “I don’t believe the public has a right to know everything. And I believe the media has the responsibility to respect the department’s decision to hold certain details back. We don’t do so to deprive or deny the public of their rights, but to preserve the integrity of an investigation.

  “Nadine,” she said, and had Nadine blinking. Eve never referred to her by her first name on-air. “We’re women in what could be considered high-powered professions. However much a crime like this disturbs us, a crime in this case specifically targeted at women, we have to maintain that professionalism in order to do the job we’ve signed up to do. And in this case, the case of Elisa Maplewood, it will be women who stand for her, and who work toward seeing that her killer is punished to the fullest extent of the law.”

  Nadine started to speak again, but Eve shook her head. “That’s it. Camera off.”

  “I have more questions.”

  “That’s it,” Eve repeated. “Let’s take a walk.”

  “But—” Nadine only sighed as Eve was already hiking away. “Slow it down. Heels here.”

  “Your choice, pal.”

  “You wear a weapon, I wear heels. Tools of our respective trades.” She hooked her arm through Eve’s to slow her down. “So, what was that last bit about? Eve.”