by J. D. Robb
Look at them. Pretending to be so good, so clean, so righteous. But he knew better. He’d seen, and he knew. Underneath they were cheap and vicious. Weak and vile.
He was stronger. Look at him now. Just look.
He did, turning to one of the walls of mirrors to admire his body. The sheer shape and strength. The perfection he’d worked so hard to achieve. He was a man.
“Do you see? Do you see what I am?”
He turned, holding out his arms, and a dozen pairs of eyes stared back at him as they floated in their jars.
They could see him now. She could see him. She had no choice but to look at him. Forever.
“What do you think now, Mother? Who’s in charge now?”
They were all hers. All those staring eyes. But she was still out there, judging him, ready with her punishing hand, her slashing belt. Ready to lock him in the dark so he couldn’t see. So he wouldn’t know.
He’d take care of that. Oh, yes, he would. He’d fix her little red wagon. He’d show her who was boss. He’d show all of them.
They’d pay. This mother’s son would make them pay, he thought as he stared back at the screen. He’d show them what he could do.
These three. He moved closer to the screen, gritting his teeth as he looked at Eve, at Peabody, at Nadine. They’d have to be punished. Sometimes you had to deviate from the plan, that’s all. So they’d have to be punished. You were punished when you were bad. You were punished when you were good.
He’d save the top bitch for last, that’s what he’d do. He smiled fiercely at Eve.
It was always smart to save the best for last.
It was a good meal, with good company. For nearly two hours, murder didn’t play in her head. She enjoyed, particularly, watching Roarke relate. The way he slid, so smoothly, between Charles’s urbane sophisticate and McNab’s street-smart wiseass. How he mixed with the women, flattering without being oily, flirting without being obnoxious.
Effortlessly. Or it seemed effortless. But wouldn’t he have things on his mind, too? The big wheels and complex deals that made up his work and a large part of his life. He would’ve spent the day buying and selling God knew what, coordinating and supervising projects she couldn’t begin to imagine. Taking meetings, making decisions, contemplating the enormous chessboard of his empire.
Then he could sit, over coffee and dessert, telling a story about some bar fight from his youth to make McNab roll with laughter, or exchanging opinions about great art with Charles.
On the way home, he reached over, brushed a hand over hers. “That was a very nice evening.”
“It didn’t even nearly suck.”
“High praise indeed.”
She laughed at herself, stretched out her legs. Somewhere along the line she’d taken his advice. She’d relaxed. And after she’d relaxed, damn if she hadn’t enjoyed. “I mean it.”
“Darling Eve, I know you do.”
“You’re a layered guy, Roarke.”
“I’m nothing if not.”
“I don’t know why I’m surrounded by smart-asses.”
“Birds of a feather.”
“Anyway,” she said after a beat. “It was educational to watch you schmooze.”
“I wasn’t schmoozing. Schmoozing is business, or business-related. This was personal and friendly conversation.”
“Ha. The things you learn.” She leaned her head back. She was tired, but she realized she wasn’t weighed down by fatigue. “There was a lot of conversation. And it wasn’t even boring or irritating.”
“God.” He picked up her hand, pressed it to his lips as he drove through the gates. “I adore you.”
“Lot of that going around tonight, too.”
“It was pleasant to spend time with two couples so obviously in love.”
“Hard to miss it with all the gooey looks and pats and strokes. Sex sizzling in the air and all that. You ever think how it’d be if you switched them around?”
“Sizzling looks, gooey sex? I think of little else.”
She snickered as they got out of the car to walk to the door. “No. The people. You put Peabody with Charles and McNab with Louise. It’d be totally screwed up.”
“You could put Peabody with Louise.”
“Sick. You’re a sick man.”
“Just playing the game.” He took her hand as they walked upstairs to the bedroom. “You seem to have your second wind, Lieutenant.”
“I think it’s my third, maybe fourth of the day. I actually feel pretty good.” She booted the door shut behind her. “In fact, sitting around in all that sizzle’s got me hyped. How about some gooey sex?”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
Hooking an arm around his neck, she jumped so he could catch her in his arms. She calculated her weight, his, narrowed her eyes. “How far do you figure you can carry me?”
“To the bed would be my first guess.”
“No, I mean how far do you think you could haul me like this? Especially if I’m . . .” She went limp, dropped her weight, let her arms dangle.
She felt him shift and adjust, not quite stagger. “Tougher this way, right?”
“I still think I can manage the bed, where I certainly hope you plan to revive a bit.”
“You’re in good shape, but I bet you’d feel it if you had to carry me, say, twenty, thirty yards like this.”
“Since I haven’t strangled you, yet, I won’t have to.”
She boosted back up as he climbed the platform with her. “Sorry. No murder in the bedroom tonight.”
She kept her arms locked around his neck when he lowered her to the bed. “You touch me.”
Obviously amused, he nipped at her chin and that wonderful hair brushed her cheeks like strands of silk. “That’s definitely on the agenda.”
“No.” She laughed again, then rolled over on top of him. “When we’re just hanging out, when you don’t even think about it. I like it.”
She leaned down to rub her lips over his and, linking fingers, stretching sinuously down, slid his arms over his head. “I like this.”
“Enjoy yourself,” he invited.
“Probably should make it fairly quick, in case I lose this third, fourth wind.” She closed her teeth over his jaw, nipping lightly.
Keeping his hands locked with hers, she ran her lips down his throat, traced them back to his. Then she curled back like a cat to unbutton his shirt.
“Yeah.” She rubbed her hands over his chest. “You’re in shape.” Then her lips.
She could feel his heartbeat pick up, drum lightly under her hands and lips. He wanted. Wasn’t it amazing he always wanted her?
The muscles of his belly quivered when she tasted there, and jumped when she ran her tongue under his waistband. She slid down the zipper, freed him. Tormented him.
Then uncurling, she watched him as she peeled off her shirt, as she took his hands and pressed them to her breasts.
On a low hum of pleasure her head fell back. His hands were hard and smooth and skilled. The long, liquid tugs began, from heart to belly, from belly to loins, when he used them on her.
“Let me. Let me have—” He reared up, clamped his mouth on her, and the hum became a sob, the tugs a burn.
Now it could be desperate, now it could be urgent. Slick body straining to slick body, hands and mouths greedy for more. The sharp nip of teeth, the quick bite of nails, the hot slide of tongues.
She was trembling when she straddled him. Once again their hands and eyes locked. She took him in, took him deep. And cried out.
Breathless, she lowered her brow to his, fought for breath, for sanity. “A minute,” she managed. “It’s too much. Wait a minute.”
“It’s not too much.” His mouth seared over hers. “It’s never too much.”
Never would be. She rose up, and rode.
Chapter 15
While Eve was curled in dreamless sleep against Roarke, a woman named Annalisa Sommers split her part of the check and said good night
to a few friends.
Her monthly post-theater club had broken up a little later than usual as everyone had a lot of news to share. The club was just an excuse, really, for her to get together with some of her friends and have a bite to eat, a few drinks—and talk about men, work—men.
But it also gave her the benefit of several opinions on whatever play they’d seen. She used them, as well as her own, for her weekly column in Stage Right Magazine.
She loved the theater, and had since she’d played a yam in her first-grade Thanksgiving Day pageant. Since she couldn’t act—though she’d pulled the yam off well enough to have her mother cry a little—had no skill for design or direction, she’d turned hobby into career by writing observations, rather than straight reviews, on plays on and off—and way, way off—Broadway.
The pay was lousy, but the benefits included free seats and regular backstage passes as well as the buzz of being able to make a semblance of a living doing something she enjoyed.
And she had a good feeling that the pay was going to improve, very soon. Her column was growing in popularity for the very reasons she’d hyped when talking herself into a job with Stage Right. Regular people wanted to know what other regular people thought about a play. Critics weren’t regular people. They were critics.
After ten months on the job, she was beginning to get recognized on the street and enjoyed having people stop her to discuss, to agree or disagree, it didn’t matter.
She was having the time of her life.
Everything was going so well. With work, with Lucas. New York was her personal playground, and there was no place else on earth she’d rather be. When she and Lucas got married—and her friends agreed things were definitely heading in that direction—they’d find a mag apartment on the West Side, throw fun and quirky little parties, and be ridiculously happy.
Hell, she was ridiculously happy now.
She tossed back her hair, and hesitated at the northwest corner of Greenpeace Park. She always cut through the park, knew the route through like she knew the route from her own kitchen to her own bedroom.
A very short walk, she admitted, until that pay raise.
But two women had been killed in city parks in the last week, so a shortcut at one in the morning might not be a smart move.
That was ridiculous. Greenpeace was practically her backyard. She’d be through it in five minutes, and home safe, tucked into her own little bed and counting sheep before two.
She was a native New Yorker, for God’s sake, she reminded herself as she veered off the sidewalk and into the leafy shadows. She knew how to handle herself, how to stay aware. She’d taken self-defense courses, stayed in shape. And she had Anti-Mugger spray with panic alarm in her pocket.
She loved this park, day or night. The trees, the little play areas for kids, the co-op gardens for vegetables or flowers. It showed, to Annalisa, just how diverse the city was. Concrete and cucumbers, spreading within feet of each other.
The image made her laugh as she walked quickly along the path toward home.
She heard the kitten mewing before she saw it. It wasn’t unusual to find a stray cat, even a feral one in the park. But this one, she saw as she walked closer, wasn’t a cat. It was just a kitten, a little ball of gray fur, curled on the path and crying pitifully.
“Poor little thing. Where’s your mama, you poor little thing?”
She crouched down, picked it up. It was only when she held it she realized it was a droid. She thought: Weird.
The shadow fell over her. Her hand dived into her pocket for the spray even as she started to spring back to her feet.
But the blow to the back of her head sent her sprawling.
The droid continued to mew and cry as blows rained down on her.
At seven hundred and twenty hours the next morning, Eve stood over Annalisa Sommers. The park smelled green. Verdant—she thought that was the word. Sort of alive and burgeoning.
You could hear the morning traffic, on the street and overhead, but here, there was a small slice of countrified with a vegetable patch spread out in tidy rows behind a screen of pest and vandal fence. She didn’t know what the hell was growing in it. Leafy stuff and viney stuff and things that sprawled over small, neat hills.
Part of that verdant smell was probably fertilizer or manure or whatever the hell these people mixed in the dirt to grow things they’d eventually put in their mouths and call natural.
Well, come to think of it, there wasn’t anything much more natural than shit.
Except blood and death.
At the end of the patch, behind the odd little vertical triangles where vines grew, behind the screen to keep dogs and street people out, was a statue of a man and a woman. Each wore a hat. He carried some sort of hoe or rake, and she a basket loaded with what was meant to be the fruits of their labor. A harvest.
Harvest was the name of the statue, she knew, but everyone called it Ma and Pa Farmer. Or just Ma and Pa.
Annalisa lay at their feet, like an offering to the gods with her hands clasped between her naked breasts. Her face was bloody and ruined, her body covered with bruises.
“Crappy way to start the day,” Peabody commented.
“Yeah. A lot crappier for her.”
Eve fixed on her goggles, got out her gauges. “Get her ID.”
She began to recite what the recorder could already see.
“Victim is Caucasian female. Evidence of violence on face, torso, limbs. Broken clavicle. No defensive wounds evident. Red corded ribbon at the throat apparent murder weapon. Strangulation. There is evidence of sexual assault. Bruising and lacerations on the thighs and genitals.”
“ID’d as Annalisa Sommers, age thirty-two. Resides Fifteen West Thirty-first.”
“Identification now on record. Victim’s eyes have been removed in a manner similar to previous victims Maplewood and Napier. Manner of assault, death, mutilation, location type, and position of body all in accordance with previous victims.”
“He doesn’t vary much from pattern,” Peabody said.
“Not much. Why mess with success? Got some hair fibers. On her right hand, adhering to the dried blood.”
She tweezed them off, bagged them. And sat back on her haunches.
“What was she doing in here, Dallas? Walking through here in the middle of the damn night. They four-walled the media conference. She had to know this guy trolls the parks.”
“Not going to happen to her. People always think it can’t happen to them, instead of thinking it’s going to happen to somebody, why not me.”
She studied the body. “She lives close. That fits with the others, too. Odds are she had a pattern, coming through here, on her way home, or away from home. She cuts through, knows her way around. Hair’s not right,” Eve muttered.
“A little shorter than the others, a little darker. But still in the ballpark.”
“Yeah.”
“He’d have to be a little flexible, wouldn’t he?”
“Apparently.”
With the scene on record, the body’s position logged, she turned the victim’s head, lifted it. “Took a blow to the back of the head. Hard blow. Maybe he comes up behind her, comes up, hits her, takes her down. She’s got some scrapes at the knees, grass and dirt in the cuts. She goes down, hands and knees.”
She lifted one of the hands, showed the abrasions on the heels. “Then he lays into her. Beating, kicking. Violence is escalating each time. More premortem violence. Losing it. Rapes her, carts her over, finishes the job.”
“We didn’t hear from Celina on this one.”
“Noticed that?” Eve pushed to her feet. “We’ll tag her in a few minutes. Let’s look at the kill site.”
It wasn’t far this time, just on the other end of the vegetable patch, along the path. Traces of blood were in splotches or sprinkles or smears, over grass and dirt.
Made it easier for him, Eve thought. He only had to carry this one about eight feet.
“Lieutenant?”
One of the sweepers held out an evidence bag. “Found this at point three there. Standard pocket-sized Anti-Mugger. Might be hers. Didn’t do her a lot of good.”
“We’ll check for prints.”
“Got some hair, too. Few strays on the path, point one. Gray, so they aren’t hers. Eyeballing, they don’t look human.”
“Thanks.”
“Probably squirrel again,” Peabody said.
“Maybe. What was her employment, Peabody?”
“Columnist, Stage Right Mag.”
Eve nodded. “Coming home then. Walking home. Oh-one hundred’s late for theater. A drink after, maybe, or dinner. A date. Shortcut it through the park. It’s her neighborhood. She’s got her spray in her pocket just in case, so no worries. Quick breeze through and you’re back on the street and almost at your own doorstep. He’s waiting for her. Got the spot picked out, knows she’ll walk right by. Takes her down from behind.”
She frowned at the slight impression on the grass one of the sweepers had already marked. “Carts her over to lay her under Ma and Pa. Finishes the job.” She shook her head again.
“Get what else you can on her. Next of kin, spouse, cohabit partner. I’m going to try Celina before we look at the vic’s residence.”
She moved away from the crime scene areas, put in the call.
Impatient, she jammed her hand into her pocket. The ’link had just switched to voice mail when Celina answered. “Cancel answering system.” Celina pushed at her hair. “Sorry, I was asleep. I barely heard the signal. Dallas? Shit, shit! Am I late for my appointment?”
“You got time. Get a good night’s sleep, Celina?”
“I did. Tranq’d the hell out of myself.” Her eyes were a little dopey, a little vague. “Still groggy. Look, can this wait until I get some coffee?”
“We had another one.”
“Another what?”
Eve saw the realization seep in, widen Celina’s heavy eyes. “Oh God. No.”
“I want some time with you. I’ll meet you at Mira’s office.”
“I’ll . . . I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“Just keep the nine o’clock. I can’t get there sooner.”
“I’ll meet you there. I’m sorry. Dallas, I’m sorry.”