The In Death Collection, Books 16-20

by J. D. Robb

  “Skin? Is he black?”

  “No . . . I. No, I don’t think. I see his hands when he strikes at her. They’re white. Glossy and white and big. Very big. He struck her in the face. There was horrible pain. Horrible, and she fell, and the pain went away. She . . . passed out. I think. He hit her, kept hitting her even when she was unconscious. In the face, in the body.

  “ ‘See how you like it. See how you like it.’ ”

  Celina’s eyes went glassy, the pale, pale green of the irises nearly translucent. “ ‘Who’s the boss now? Who’s in charge now, you bitch?’ But he stops, he stops beating her, slaps her cheeks lightly with those big hands. Bringing her around. She needs to be awake for the rest. There’s such pain! I don’t know, don’t know if it’s his or hers, there’s so much pain.”

  “It’s not your pain,” Peabody said quietly and shook her head before Eve could speak. “You’re a witness, and you can tell us what you see. It’s not your pain.”

  “Not mine.” Celina breathed in deep. “He tears her clothes. She can’t fight, barely struggles. And when she tries to push at him, he yanks her hand away. Something in her breaks. She’s confused, the way an animal’s confused when it’s caught in a trap. He rapes her, and it hurts. It hurts deep inside. She can’t see him. It’s too dark and the pain is overwhelming. She goes under again. It’s safer there, there’s no pain there. She doesn’t feel when he kills her. Her body reacts, convulsing. And that . . . there’s a thrill in that for him. Her death throes bring him to orgasm.

  “I’m sick.” Celina pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m sick. I need to—”

  “Here, come on.” Peabody was up, drawing Celina to her feet. “Come with me.”

  As Peabody helped her out of the room, Eve pushed away from the table. She walked to one of the windows, shoved it open so she could lean out. Lean out and breathe.

  She understood the nausea all too well. What it was like to see, again and again. To feel, over and over. And the sickness that came with it.

  She let the air and the noise, the life of the city, push it out of her again. She watched an airtram crammed with commuters streak by, and an ad blimp hover, spewing out its announcements for sales, events, tourist packages.

  Her legs felt watery yet, so she stayed where she was, listening to the click of chopper blades, the blast of horns from the street below, the rattle of an airbus.

  It all teemed together, a cacophony that was a kind of music to her. A song she understood, and one that gave her a sense of place.

  She was never really alone in the city. Never helpless with her badge.

  Remembering pain, knowing its source, could make her stronger. It was good to know that.

  Steadier, she closed the window, walked back to the table, and poured more coffee.

  Some of the color had seeped back into Celina’s cheeks when Peabody brought her back in. She’d fussed with her face a little—bright lip dye, eye gunk to cover the worst of the damage. Women, in Eve’s opinion, could worry about the strangest things at the strangest times.

  Once Celina was seated, Peabody went over to get a bottle of water.

  “You’re better off with this than the coffee,” she said, setting it on the table.

  “Yes, you’re right. Thanks.” She held out a hand, gave Peabody’s a squeeze. “Thank you for staying with me, helping me pull myself back together.”

  “No problem.”

  “You must think me very weak,” she said to Eve.

  “You’re wrong. I don’t think anything of the kind. I . . . We . . .” she amended. “We come to them after it’s done, and we see, day after day, the results of what people can do to each other. The blood, the gore, the waste. It’s not easy. It should never be easy. But we don’t see it happening—how it happens. We don’t feel what the victim feels and have to take it in.”

  “Yes, you do.” Celina wiped her fingers under her eyes. “You’ve just found a way to handle it. Now, I have to.”

  She steadied herself with more water.

  “He undressed her after. I think. There was a part of me, by now, resisting the vision. Fighting it. But I think he took her clothes; they were torn from the rape. He carried her . . . Not her—damn it.”

  She sipped water, took three long breaths. “What I mean is she’s someone else to him. He sees someone else, and he’s punishing someone else. Someone who punished him. In the dark. He’s afraid of the dark.”

  “He kills at night,” Eve pointed out.

  “He has to. He has to overcome it?”

  “Possibly. What else?”

  “I broke out of the vision. I broke out because I couldn’t stand it. And I called you. I know I should have let it run its course. I might have seen something that could help. I was panicked, and I fought it until I broke out.”

  “We got to her, to the scene, quicker because you contacted me. We were able to preserve the scene because we were able to get there so fast. That matters.”

  “I hope to God it does. Are you any closer to him?”

  “I think we are.”

  Celina closed her eyes. “Thank God. If you have anything of his, I can try to see him.”

  “We have the murder weapon.”

  Celina shook her head. “I’ll try, but it’s bound to be like it was before, so what I see—feel—is the act itself, and the emotions raging through it. I need something he’s touched with his bare hands. Something he’s worn or held to really see him, to add to what you already know.”

  Eve laid the cord on the table. “Try anyway.”

  Celina wet her lips, then reached out, touched the ribbon.

  Her head snapped back, and her eyes rolled up so only a slice of green showed in the white. As she started to slide out of the chair, her fingers went limp and released the ribbon.

  Eve leaped up, caught her before she hit the ground.

  “All him. Nothing of her. She’s gone. Hidden away when he puts it around her neck. There’s just his rage and fear and excitement. It’s all over me like—like insects biting at my skin. Horrible.”

  “What does he do when he’s done with her?”

  “Goes back to the light. He can go back to the light. I don’t know what it means. My head. My head’s splitting.”

  “We’ll get you something for it, and have you taken home. Peabody?”

  “Let’s get you a blocker. Do you want to rest before you go home?”

  “No.” She leaned against Peabody. “I just want to go.”

  “Celina.” Eve covered the red ribbon with her hand so when the woman turned she didn’t see it. “You might want to talk to Dr. Mira, a little counseling.”

  “I appreciate the thought, I really do, but counseling—”

  “Her daughter is Wiccan, and a sensitive.”

  “Ah.”

  “Charlotte Mira. She’s the best, and it might help you to talk to someone who’d understand your . . . situation.”

  “It might. Thanks.”

  When she was alone, Eve lifted the red cord, studied it. She didn’t need to hold it to see, or to feel. Gift? she wondered. Or curse?

  Neither, she decided, and sealed the ribbon again. It was a tool, nothing more or less.

  She was trying to find the energy just to stand when the door opened, and Commander Whitney came in.

  She rose immediately. “Sir. I’ve just finished interviewing Sanchez, and was on my way to your office.”

  “Sit. Where’s that coffee from?”

  “My office, Commander.”

  “Then it’ll be well worth it.” He got himself a mug, poured, then sat across from her. Saying nothing, he scanned her face while he drank. “How much sleep you bank?”

  “A couple hours.” Less, but who was counting?

  “Looks it. And the fact of that occurred to me when I came in and read your report. You’ve been eleven years, give or take a few months, under my command, haven’t you, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sir.
”

  “That length of time, and your rank, and you don’t feel it would be justified—even reasonable—to inform me that you’re not only running on fumes but have a vital interview scheduled for eight hundred hours when I ordered you to report to my office at nine hundred?”

  Since he seemed to want an honest answer, she took a moment to consider the question. “No, sir.”

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I thought as much. You eat any of those?” He jerked his chin toward the bagels.

  “No, sir, but they’re fresh from vending. Well, as fresh as we get from vending.”

  “Eat one now.”

  “Sir?”

  “Eat, Dallas. Indulge me. You look like hell.”

  She picked one up. “Matches how I feel.”

  “I spoke with the mayor, and have a meeting with him and Chief Tibble in about thirty. Your presence was requested.”

  “At the mayor’s office, sir, or The Tower?”

  “Mayor’s office. But I will inform His Honor and the Chief that you’re unable to attend as you are in the field.”

  She didn’t speak, but something must have run over her face. Something that made him smile. “Tell me what just went through your mind. And don’t clean it up. That’s an order.”

  “I wasn’t thinking anything, actually, sir. But I was mentally kissing your feet.”

  He laughed, picked up half a bagel, broke that in half, and bit in. “You’ll miss some fireworks. Shutting down a public park.”

  “I need the scene preserved while the sweepers comb it.”

  “And the mayor will counter, after all the political malarkey, that according to all reports, this perpetrator seals, and therefore you’re wasting public funds, police man-hours, and denying the citizens of New York access to public grounds while you chase the wild goose.”

  Politics weren’t her forte, but she’d already gotten there on her own. “The timing. In all probability he was still inside the park, very likely still with the victim at the dump site, when the first officers on scene arrived. He had to have her blood on him. If the timing was that close, he might not have had the time or the inclination to clean up. I know he didn’t. We found blood trails already. From kill site to dump site, and from there heading east. If I can mark his trail, his movements—”

  “Do you think because I’ve sat at a desk I don’t remember how it works in the thick? Every piece you find is another piece, simple as that. And while the mayor may not understand that, Tibble will. We’ll handle it.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “What’s your next move?”

  “I want to bring in EDD. I’ve been compiling a list, residents in a sector that rays out from the craft shop that each of the vics frequented, and a couple of gyms I need to check out that may apply. I need to juggle it down, cross-check. We find names. We find matches—residents, members, customers. We match and we eliminate and we find him. Feeney can cut through it faster, faster than I can, and then I can stay in the field instead of at a comp.”

  “Get it started.”

  She walked out with him, and parted ways to go back to her office.

  It was easy to brief Feeney. He understood her shorthand, her direction.

  “Won’t be quick,” he warned her. “But we’ll get on it as soon as you get us the data.”

  “I’m going to pressure the customer lists from the craft shop. Actually, two of them. One’s out of the parameter, but not by much. I’ll do the same at the gyms for membership lists. I’ll feed you what I get as I get it, and shoot the data we gathered last night to your office unit.”

  “Works for me.”

  “I’ve been running eye banks. Donors and receivers. I think it’s a time waster, but it has to be factored in. I’m going to give you what I’ve got on that, so you can add it to the mix.”

  “Give me all you got. You’re looking pretty peaky there, Dallas.”

  “Peaky? Jeez.”

  She cut transmission. She zipped files, lists, even her work notes to Feeney. Despite the peaky remark, she thought, he had a cop’s brain. Maybe outside of the e-work, he’d see something she’d missed.

  She grabbed the jacket she’d forgotten to put back on after her shower. Striding into the bull pen, she gave Peabody a come-ahead.

  “Let’s roll out.”

  Chapter 12

  “What does peaky mean?”

  Peabody wrinkled her brow. “I dunno. Ah, a little look-see—you know, peekaboo?”

  “No.” Eve idled at a light. “As applies to someone’s appearance. They look peaky.”

  “Beats me, but it doesn’t sound good. Want me to try to look it up?”

  “No. I asked Feeney to do the matches, looking for names that come up residentially, and in consumer and/or employee lists from the area we’ve outlined, the shops and fitness facilities within. We need to get the lists.”

  “Feeney will find matches quicker than either of us. But it’s still going to take time, considering the size of the area and the number of people we’re dealing with. Then there’s the number of matches to wade through. People tend to do at least some of their shopping and business in their own neighborhoods.”

  “Then we profile them. Unmarried males to start.”

  “I can follow the detecting dots. He likely lives alone, is between thirty and fifty.”

  “Closer to thirty,” Eve interrupted. “Close, I think, to the ages of his victims.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, just feels right. It could be a kind of trigger, couldn’t it? The age. The age he is himself, the age he sees her—the one he’s really killing. He’s grown up, he’s on equal ground now. He can punish her.” Eve jerked a shoulder. “I sound like Mira.”

  “Some. And like Mira, it sounds plausible. So, we assume he’s around thirty. We know he’s strong, has big feet. According to our civilian consultant, he also has big hands and is well over six feet in height. But we can verify through evidence, the strength and the feet.”

  While negotiating traffic, Eve glanced at her partner. “Doesn’t sound like you’re convinced by our civilian consultant.”

  “I believe her, but her visions aren’t hard fact. We work with the facts, and consider the rest.”

  “Now that’s the kind of cynicism I like to hear.”

  “She isn’t making this stuff up, and she didn’t fake her reaction to the murder weapon. Dog-sick in the bathroom. Another couple of minutes I’d have called an MT. But visions can be tricky.”

  “Can they?”

  “You know, when it comes to sarcasm, you have perfect pitch. What I’m saying is, visions often twist around reality.”

  Interested, Eve glanced over. “For instance?”

  “For instance, Celina may see the killer as unusually big—tall, large hands, and so on—because he’s powerful. Not only physically, which we can determine by the MO, but in some other way. Professionally, say, or financially. Or she sees him this way because he kills, and that’s frightening to her. The boogie man’s a big guy.”

  “Okay.” Eve nodded as she began the hunt for parking. “Keep going.”

  “We know his shoe size, and that it’s considerably larger than average. From this we can extrapolate that he is probably taller than average for a man. We know he’s strong enough—powerful enough, you could say—to carry a woman, the dead weight of that woman, nearly fifty yards, and down a short but fairly steep cliff. It’s cop work that’s giving us the most likely picture of his physical type, not visions.”

  “Does the cop work confirm her visions, or do her visions confirm the cop work?”

  “It’s both, isn’t it?” Peabody held her breath when Eve utilized the vertical and lateral modes to squeeze into an empty slice of space at a curb. Then let it out when it actually worked. “Civilian consultants are tools, but we have to know how to use them.”

  Eve eyed the traffic, waiting for a break in it where she could get out of the car without being slammed i
nto the pavement. “She doesn’t see his face.”

  “Could be he wears a mask. Or it could be she’s too afraid to look, that she blocks it.”

  Eve stepped onto the sidewalk. “Can she do that?”

  “If she’s strong enough, and scared enough. And she’s plenty scared. She’s not a cop, Dallas,” Peabody continued as they walked. “She’s seeing murder, and it’s not her choice the way it is ours. We don’t want to see it, we don’t pick up the badge. We sure as hell don’t work in Homicide. I chose this because I wanted to live and work in New York, always did. I wanted to be a cop, and the kind of cop who found the big answers to the big questions. Who worked for people who’d been victimized, and against the ones who’d made them victims. You?”

  “Close enough.”

  “Okay, but Celina didn’t choose. She didn’t decide, hey, I want to be a psychic, that’d be frosty. But she took what was laid on her and made her life work with it.”

  “Gotta respect that.” Eve gave a brief glance at the sidewalk sleeper with his grimy license hung around his neck who was happily posing for tourists.

  “Now, this comes along,” Peabody added. “And I think one of her biggest fears is that this new deal isn’t a one-shot. That she’s afraid murder is going to be something she sees, even after this one’s over. It’s weighty.”

  “That must’ve been some puke session.”

  Peabody snorted out a laugh. “Gold metal status. But what I’m saying is she’s trying, and it’s costing her. She may help us, but in the end, it’s our job, not hers.”

  “Agreed.” Eve stopped outside the craft shop. “Using sensitives is problematic under the best of circumstances—the best being the sensitive is cop-trained and elects to be part of the investigative team. We’ve got neither of those things in this case. But she’s linked into this, locked in. So none of us has a choice. We’ll use her, ask the questions, follow up on her visions. And you hold her head when she barfs.”

  She reached for the door, stopped. “Why New York, Peabody?”

  “Big, bad city. Hey, you want to be a crime fighter, you want to fight big, bad crime.”