by J. D. Robb
“Me, too.”
“Got a mother and a sister in the city,” Peabody told Eve. “Father’s remarried and lives in Chicago. No spouse. Never married. No kids.”
“Let’s take the apartment, then the mother.”
It was a small place—dramatic and messy, as Eve thought was often the case with single women. Playbills and theater posters were her decorator’s choice. A playback of her ’link transmissions turned up several in just the last twenty-four hours of her life.
“Chatty girl,” Eve commented. “We’ve got the mother, the sister, coworkers, gal pals, and a guy called Lucas who’s apparently her romantic interest. All this chatter tells us she went to see a play at the Trinity last night, then out for supper and drinks with friends. Let’s run the friends, and see if we can ID this Lucas.”
“I’ll see what I can get from the neighbors.”
When Peabody went out, Eve continued to look around. Lived alone, she decided, but entertained men—or a man—from time to time. Date underwear in the drawers, along with a few standard sex toys. There were a few photos and holos, and two of them showed the victim with the same man.
Coffee-light skin, dark hair, neat goatee with soul patch, big smile with lots of teeth. Nice-looking guy, she thought, and she’d bet the bank his name was Lucas.
She took the photo into evidence. If they didn’t get a last name, she’d run the picture for an ID match.
A gregarious, sociable woman who liked the theater, Eve mused. Kept up a friendly relationship with her mother and sister, had several pals, and from the conversations on the ’link had a monogamous romantic relationship with a man named Lucas.
And was dead because she cut through the park to save herself three blocks.
No, Eve corrected. She was dead because someone selected her, stalked her, and killed her. If she hadn’t cut through the park last night, there’d have been another time or another way.
She’d been a target. Mission accomplished.
“Lucas Grande.” Peabody came back in. “Songwriter and session musician. They’ve been seeing each other for a while. Neighbor said six months, or a little more. She saw the vic on her way out last night, about seven. Just waved at each other, but the neighbor thinks she was wearing jeans and a blue sweater, short black jacket.”
“Get an address for Grande. We’ll take him after we see her mother.”
Eve wasn’t sure which was worse, telling a mother her daughter was dead and watching her shatter, or telling a man his woman was dead and watching him dissolve.
They’d woken him. He’d come to the door sleepy-eyed, rumpled, and mildly annoyed.
“Look, I turned the music down. I don’t play it loud after ten o’clock. Nobody complains on this floor. I don’t know what bug’s up the ass of that guy upstairs. He’s so freaking hyped, he can spring for soundproofing.”
“This isn’t about a disturbance or complaint, Mr. Grande. We’re going to need to come in.”
“Well, shit.” He backed up, gestured impatiently. “If Bird got busted for Zoner again, it’s got nothing to do with me. We do sessions together. We’re not joined at the damn hip.”
“We’re here about Annalisa Sommers.”
“Annalisa?” His mouth quirked. “Did she and her girlfriends get polluted and do something stupid last night? I gotta bail her out or something?”
“Mr. Grande, I’m sorry to tell you, Ms. Sommers was killed last night.”
The tickled smile dropped off his face. “That’s not funny. What the hell’s wrong with you to say something like that?”
“Mr. Grande, her body was found this morning, in Greenpeace Park.”
“Come on. Come on.” He retreated as he said it, his hands coming up as if begging her to stop.
“Let’s sit down.”
“Annalisa?” Tears flooded his eyes. “Are you sure it’s Annalisa? It could be somebody else.”
Anybody else, he’d be thinking, Eve knew. Anybody but mine.
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Grande. There’s no mistake. We need to ask you some questions now.”
“I just saw her yesterday. Grabbed lunch with her yesterday. We’ve got a date Saturday. How can she be dead?”
“We’re going to sit down now.” Peabody took his arm, led him to a chair.
The room was crowded with instruments. Some sort of keyboard, a music comp, a couple of guitars, sound boxes. Eve snaked between them to sit across from him. “You and Annalisa were seeing each other.”
“We’re going to get married. As soon as I ask her. I was going to ask her at Christmas. Wait until Christmas, make it special. What happened to her?”
“Mr. Grande, tell us where you were last night.”
He had his hands to his face, and the tears were trickling through his fingers. “You think I could hurt her? I couldn’t ever hurt her. I love her.”
“No, I don’t think that, but I need to ask.”
“I had a session, ran until midnight, maybe later. After we hung around the studio, had some brews, some pizza, jammed. Got home, I don’t know, around three. Jesus, did somebody hurt her?”
“Yes, somebody hurt her.”
His face was already splotchy from weeping, but now it went white under the stain. “You said the park. Oh, my Jesus Christ. You said the park. Those other women. It was like those other women? Annalisa?”
“Tell me where you had your session, and who was there, and we’ll get that out of the way.”
“Tunes, on Prince. Um. Bird. God, God.” His hands were all over his face, into his hair, fingers trembling. “John Bird, and Katelee Poder and I can’t think straight. Her mother, have you told her mother?”
“We’ve just come from there.”
“They’re tight. Really tight. Gave me the once-over about five times. But she’s okay. We get along good. I gotta go over there.”
“Mr. Grande, do you know if anyone was bothering Annalisa? Someone you noticed, someone she mentioned.”
“No. She’ll mention if her nose itches, so she’d say if there was. I’ve gotta go see her mom. I’ve gotta go be with her family. We need to go see Annalisa together. We need to do that together.”
She’d had a solid seven hours’ sleep, Eve thought, and had ended the previous day with a nice dinner with friends, and very satisfying sex. Despite all that, she carried a vicious headache with her into Mira’s section.
Mira’s admin informed her, with more amiability than usual, that the doctor was in session with Ms. Sanchez, but she would let them know Lieutenant Dallas had arrived.
“Let them finish,” Eve told her. “It’s better I’m not in there anyway. I’ve got some things I can take care of while I wait.”
She checked her messages first, and found one from Berenski in the lab, gleefully relating that he’d nailed her shoe from the imprint.
“My genius knows no borders or boundaries. Took your pathetic imprint on grass, worked my magic, and reconstructed the tread. Matched the tread. Big foot was in a size fifteen Mikon, style called Avalanche. It’s a modified hiking boot, and there’s not a lot of wear on this one. Retails at about three-seven-five. Eleven outlets in the city deal with that brand and carry it in that size. Got your list attached. You can come in and plant a big, wet one on me later.”
“Yeah, that’ll happen.”
But she appreciated the magic, and scanned the attachment. After highlighting the outlets inside or bordering her downtown parameter, she spent the rest of her wait time writing her preliminary report.
She glanced up when the door opened.
“Dallas.” Celina hurried out. Her eyes were swollen from a recent crying jag.
“Eve, why don’t you come in.” Mira gestured. “Celina, why don’t you both come back in for a moment.”
“I let you down.” Celina closed a hand over Eve’s arm as they walked toward Mira’s office. “I let myself down.”
“You didn’t.”
Eve sat, prepared to accept flowery tea, then
sniffed like a hound when she smelled coffee.
“I knew you’d want it, and probably need it,” Mira said as she offered a cup. “It’s station house, but it’s coffee.”
“Thanks.”
“I didn’t check the media reports this morning. Thank you,” Celina said to Mira, and took the tea. “I wanted to hear it from you. I’ve cried all over Dr. Mira and gotten the worst of it out. I won’t break down again. But first, I want to tell you. I never even considered that he’d be out . . . that he’d hurt anyone last night. I was so damn tired, Dallas, and I wanted to get a good night’s sleep before my appointment this morning. I just wanted to close everything out, so I took a couple of tranqs.”
“That sort of thing block visions?”
“It can.” Celina glanced toward Mira, got a nod. “The drug suppresses. I might have seen something, but I’d have been under so deep I wouldn’t know. Hypnosis could bring it out. Just as it could lower the blocks on the others, so I would see in more detail. See what I hadn’t allowed myself to see.”
“Quite possibly,” Mira confirmed. “Just as it can take a witness to an event back to the event, and bring more details, focus them in, through the practitioner’s direction, to specifics. The things you see,” she continued, “that you don’t consciously recall.”
“I get that,” Eve said. “When can you do it?”
“We haven’t done the physical exam as yet. If I don’t find any problems, we could begin the sessions tomorrow.”
“Sessions? Tomorrow?”
“It will almost certainly take more than one, Eve. And I prefer to wait twenty-four hours, to make certain the drugs are completely out of Celina’s system, and that she’s settled emotionally.”
“Can’t we start sooner? I’ll meditate and cleanse. I’d like to start as soon as possible. I feel . . .”
“Responsible,” Mira finished. “You feel responsible for the woman who was killed last night. But you’re not.”
“If she clears the physical, does the meditation thing, can you go sooner?”
Mira looked at Eve, sighed, then rose to check her calendar. “We could begin at four-thirty today. You may not get your answers, Eve. It depends on how receptive Celina is to the technique, and how much she actually saw and can bring back.”
“Will you be here?” Celina asked her.
Don’t depend on me, Eve wanted to say. Don’t look at me as your anchor. “If I can. I’ve got a line I’ve got to follow, and a lot of routine to deal with on the latest victim.”
“If you can.”
“Anything I should know?” Mira came back to sit. “As applies to profile?”
“Close to the same pattern. It looks like this Annalisa Sommers was cutting through—”
She broke off as Celina’s tea cup shattered on the floor.
“Annalisa?” She pressed her hands down as if to push herself from the chair, then simply fell back again. “Annalisa Sommers? Oh, dear God.”
“You knew her.”
“Maybe it’s someone else, with the same name. Maybe it’s . . . of course, it’s not. This is why. This has to be why I’m linked to this.” She stared down at the broken china. “I’m sorry.”
“No, sit still. Don’t worry.” Mira crouched down, laid a comforting hand on Celina’s knee before picking up the shattered pieces. “Was she your friend?”
“No. I mean, not really.” She pressed her hands to her temples. “I knew her a little. I liked her. You had to like her, she was so bright and full of life.” She dropped her hands, and her eyes went huge and dark. “Lucas. Oh, my God, Lucas. He must be out of his mind. Does he know?” She reached out, grabbed Eve’s hand. “Does he know what happened?”
“I’ve talked to him.”
“I didn’t think it could get worse, but it can. It does when it’s someone you know. Why would she be in the park?” She thumped a fisted hand on her leg. “Why would any woman go near a park now? After what’s already happened?”
“Because people do what they do. How did you know her?” Eve asked.
“Through Lucas.” She accepted the tissue Mira gave her, stared at them as if unaware tears were sliding down her cheeks. “Lucas and I were involved. We lived together for a long time.”
“Right.” Eve nodded. “He’s your ex.”
“My ex-lover, yes, but not my ex-friend. It wasn’t a nasty breakup. We just drifted apart, and moved on. We cared about each other, very much, but we weren’t in love anymore.” Finally, she pressed the tissue to her eyes. “We’ve kept in touch. We even see each other now and again for lunch, for a drink.”
“For sex?”
She lowered her hands, slowly. “No. I suppose you have to ask something like that. No, we weren’t intimate anymore. And some months ago, almost a year ago, I think, he and Annalisa began seeing each other. I know, because I could see it, and because he told me, it was serious between them. They were happy together, and I was happy for them.”
“Broad-minded of you.”
“Oh, for—” She broke off, swallowed whatever angry remark she’d been about to make. Took a calming breath. “Haven’t you ever had someone in your life you loved, then you didn’t—not in the same way?”
“No.”
Celina gave a kind of sobbing laugh. “Well, people do, Dallas. And still manage to care about each other. Lucas is a good man. He must be devastated.”
“He is.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “Should I go see him? No, not now, not yet. My being part of this would only make it worse, for everyone. Can we start sooner?” She reached for Mira again. “Couldn’t we start right after the physical?”
“No. You need this time, particularly now. If you want to help, you need to take this time.”
“I’m going to help.” She balled her hands again. “I’m going to see his face. I swear it. When I do. . . .” Her eyes burned as they lifted to Eve’s. “When I do, you’ll find him. You’ll stop him.”
“I’ll stop him.”
Chapter 16
“She knew the vic?” sympathy rippled over Peabody’s face. “Lucas, Lucas Grande, her ex. Didn’t click before. Man, that’s got to be rough. Especially rough. Must’ve been the trigger all along. It’s the kind of logic in paranormal elements.”
“You can’t use logic and paranormal in the same sentence.”
“Sure you can, oh stubbornly grounded one.”
They were going to check out shoes, Eve thought. That was logical.
“When can I drive the new ride?”
“When you learn that a yellow light means haul ass to get through it before it turns red instead of slowing down to a crawl a half a block away.”
“You force me to point out that you drive offensively rather than de-fensively.”
“Damn straight. You drive like one of those prissy ladies at lunch who won’t take the last cookie in case somebody else wants it. No, please, please,” Eve said in a high, satisfyingly prissy voice, “you go ahead. Hell with that. I want the cookie, I eat the cookie. Now, give me a for instance and stop sulking.”
“I get thirty seconds of sulk time when my driving abilities have been so brutally and unjustly insulted. Besides, taking the last cookie is rude.”
“And you and your prissy lady pals end up letting the waiter chow down on it after he takes the plate back to the kitchen.”
With a huff, Peabody folded her arms over her chest because she realized that was probably true. And there were many cookies she’d missed due to manners. “For instance what?”
“Say you’re shacked up with this guy.”
Her mood lifted instantly. “I am shacked up with a guy,” she said proudly.
“Peabody.”
“Yeah, yeah, this is a hypothetical.” She sulked a little more as Eve plowed through a yellow light. “Is he really cute and sexy, and does he bring me cookies and let me eat the last one to show his love and devotion?”
“Whatever. So you and this guy call it off.”
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“Aw. I don’t like this part.”
“Who does?”
“Was it because I ate all those cookies and my ass got fat?”
“Peabody!”
“Okay, okay. Sir. I’m just trying to understand the motivation. Like who called it off, and why, and . . . never mind,” she said when she saw Eve bare her teeth.
“You call it off, go your separate ways. You still pals?”
“Maybe. Depends. Don’t bite through my jugular or anything, because it really does. Did the breakup involve calling each other unflattering names and hurling small, breakable objects, or was it sad, yet reasonable, a mutual decision. See?”
Eve didn’t see it, but stayed the course. “No, but we’ll say, for this case, it was sad, yet reasonable. So later this guy hooks up with another skirt. How would you feel about that?”
“Depends again. Am I hooked up with a guy? Is the other woman thinner than me, or better looking, or rich or something? Does she have perkier boobs? These factors play in.”
“Goddamn it, why does it have to be so complicated?”
“Because it is.”
“No, you’re with the guy, then you’re not, then he’s with somebody else. Simple, straightforward. Are you all chummy?”
“Okay, let’s see. I was hot for this guy before I moved to New York. We weren’t cohabbing, but we were pretty involved. Stuck together, in every sense, for nearly a year. Then it fizzled. I wasn’t wrecked or anything, but I was pretty, well, moony for a while. You get over it, though. We stayed friendly, you could say, and I used to see him around.”
“Is this going to take much longer? Will I need a hit of Stay-Up to get through the rest?”
“You asked. Anyway, he hooked up with this skinny blonde with big tits. IQ of a rabbit, but hey, his choice, right? I felt a little pissy about it, but I got over that, too. Maybe, in some dark recesses of my soul, I wouldn’t mind so much if he got a mild case of genital warts, but his dick doesn’t have to actually fall off or anything. And if me and McNab ever take a spin out West, I can show him—McNab—off. And so there. No big.”
She waited a beat. “Still awake?”