The In Death Collection, Books 16-20

by J. D. Robb

  “Grandparent. One on the father’s side who lives off planet. Maternal grandparents are dead. No siblings on either side.”

  “Kid can’t catch a break, can she?” Whitney muttered.

  She caught one, Eve thought. She lived. “Detective Peabody? You spoke with the grandmother.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant. I notified next of kin. At that time, I was told the paternal grandmother was not legal guardian in case of parental death or disability. And, to be frank, while shocked and upset, she made no statement to indicate she intended to come here and attempt custody of the minor.”

  “All right then. Dallas, speak with the Dysons at the first opportunity, and tidy this up. Keep me updated.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When they were walking back toward the elevator, Peabody shook her head. “I don’t think now’s the best time—for the Dysons. I’d let that slide another twenty-four anyway.”

  The longer the better, Eve thought.

  5

  SECURITY AND STREETLIGHTS WERE POPPING ON by the time Eve headed back uptown from Central. Normally, the vicious traffic would have given her plenty of reason to snarl and bitch, but tonight she was grateful for the distraction, and the extra drive time.

  It was gelling for her.

  She could see the method, the type of killers. She could walk through the scene over and over in her mind and follow the steps. But she couldn’t find motive.

  She sat in stalled traffic behind a flatulent maxibus and circled around the case again. Violence without passion. Murder without rage.

  Where was the kick? The profit? The reason?

  Going with instinct, she called up Roarke’s personal ’link on her dash unit.

  “Lieutenant.”

  “What’s your status?” she asked him.

  “Healthy, wealthy, and wise. What’s yours?”

  “Ha. Mean, crafty, and rude.”

  His laugh filled her vehicle, and made her feel slightly less irritable. “Just the way I like you best.”

  “Location, Roarke?”

  “Maneuvering through this sodding traffic toward hearth and home. I hope you’re doing the same.”

  “As it happens. How about a detour?”

  “Will it involve food and sex?” His smile was slow, and just a little wicked. “I’m really hoping for both.”

  Odd, damn odd, she thought, that after nearly two years of him that smile could still give her heart a jolt. “It might later, but first on our lineup is multiple murder.”

  “Teach me to marry a cop.”

  “What did I tell you? Hold on a minute.” She leaned out the window, shouted at the messenger who’d nearly sideswiped her vehicle with his jet-board. “Police property, asshole. If I had time I’d hunt you down and use that board to beat your balls black.”

  “Darling Eve, you know how that kind of talk thrills and excites me. How can I keep my mind off sex now?”

  Eve pulled her head back in, eyed the screen. “Think pure thoughts. I need to do another walk-through of the crime scene. I wouldn’t mind having another pair of eyes.”

  “A cop’s work is never done, and neither is the man’s who’s lucky enough to call her his own. What’s the address?”

  She gave it to him. “See you there. And if you beat me to the scene, for God’s sake don’t tamper with the seal. Just wait. Oh, shit, parking. You need a permit. I’ll—”

  “Please” was all he said, and signed off.

  “Right,” she said to dead air. “Forgot who I was talking to for a minute.”

  She didn’t know how Roarke dispensed with such pesky details as parking permits, and didn’t really want to. He was just stepping onto the sidewalk when she arrived. She pulled up behind his vehicle, flipped on her on-duty light.

  “Pretty street,” he said. “Especially this time of year with the leaves scattered about.” He nodded toward the Swisher house. “Prime property. If they had any equity in it, at least the child won’t be penniless as well as orphaned.”

  “They had a chunk, plus standard life policies, some savings, investments. She’ll be okay. That’s one of the deals, actually. She’ll be set pretty well, coming into the bulk of it when she hits twenty-one. They both had wills. Trust-fund deal for the kids, supervised by legal guardians and a financial firm. It’s not mega-dough, but people kill for subway credits.”

  “Did they make contingencies for alternate beneficiaries should something happen to the children as well?”

  “Yeah.” Her mind had gone there, too. Wipe out the family, rake in some easy money. “Charities. Shelters, pediatric centers. Spread it out, too. Nobody gets an overly big slice of the pie. And no individual gets much above jack.”

  “The law firm?”

  “Rangle, the partner, gets the shot there. His alibi is solid. And if he has the connections, or the stomach, to order a hit like this, I’ll toast my badge for breakfast. This family wasn’t erased for money. Not that I can see.”

  He stood on the sidewalk, studying the house as she did. The old tree in front, busily shedding its leaves onto the stamp-sized courtyard, the attractive urban lines, the sturdy pot filled with what he thought were geraniums beside the door.

  It looked quiet, settled, and comfortable. Until you saw the small red eyes of the police seal, the harsh yellow strip of it marring the front doors.

  “If it were money,” he added, “one would think it would take a fat vat of it to push anyone to do what was done here. The erasing, as you put it, of an entire family.”

  He walked with her to the main entrance. “Put my ear to the ground, as requested. There’s no buzz about a contract on these people.”

  Eve shook her head. “No. They weren’t connected. But it’s good to cross that off the list, at least the probability of it. They didn’t have ties to any level of the underworld. Or government agencies. I played around with the idea that one of them had a double life going, thinking of what Reva dealt with a couple months ago.” Reva Ewing, one of Roarke’s employees, had had the misfortune of being married to a double agent who’d framed her for a double murder. “Just doesn’t slide. No excessive travel; not much travel at all without the kids. Nothing that sends up a flag on their ’links or comps. These people lived on schedules. Work, home, family, friends. They didn’t have time to mess around. Plus . . .”

  She stopped, shook her head. “No. I’ll let you make your own impressions.”

  “All right. By the way, I’ve arranged to have my ride picked up. That way I can have my lovely wife drive me home.”

  “We’re ten minutes from our own gate.”

  “Every minute with you, Darling Eve, is a minute to treasure.”

  She slid a glance toward him as she uncoded the seal. “You really do want sex.”

  “I’m still breathing, so that would be yes.”

  He stepped inside with her, scanning when she called for lights. “Homey,” he decided. “Tastefully so. Thoughtfully. Nice colors, nice space. Urban family style.”

  “They came in this door.”

  He nodded. “It’s a damn good system. Took some skill to bypass without tripping the backups and auto alarms.”

  “Is it one of yours?”

  “It is, yes. How long did it take them to get in?”

  “Minutes. Feeney figures about four.”

  “They knew the system, possibly the codes, but certainly the system. And what they were about,” he added, studying the alarm panel. “It’s a tricky one, and would take good, cool hands, and just the right equipment. You see, the backups are designed to engage almost instantly if there’s any sort of tampering. They had to know they were there, and deal with them simultaneously, even before they read or input the codes.”

  “Pros then.”

  “Well, it certainly wasn’t their first day on the job. Likely they had an identical system to work with. That would take time, money, planning.” He stepped back from the panel, trying to ignore the outrage he felt that one of his designs
had failed to serve. “But you never supposed this was random.”

  “No. What I put together from the scene and the witness report is that one went upstairs—or at least stayed back—while the other went through here.”

  She led the way, moving directly to the kitchen. “It was dark—some glow from security and streetlights through the windows—but they had night vision. Had to. Plus the witness described blank, shiny eyes.”

  “Which could be a child’s imagination. Monster eyes. But,” he said with another nod, “more likely night vision. Where was she?”

  “Over there, lying on the bench.” Eve gestured. “If he’d looked, taken enough time to do a sweep through the kitchen, he’d have seen her. The way she tells it, he just walked straight to the domestic’s door.”

  “So he knew where he was going. Knew the layout, or had been here at some time.”

  “Checking on household repairs, deliveries, but that doesn’t feel like it. How do you get the layout of the whole house if you, what, install a new AutoChef or fix a toilet? How do you know the layout of the domestic’s quarters?”

  “Someone involved with the domestic?”

  “She wasn’t seeing anyone, hadn’t been for several months. A few friends outside the family, but they pan out. So far.”

  “You don’t think she was the primary target.”

  “Can’t rule it out, but no. He moved straight in,” she repeated, and did so. “Sealed all the way. Had to be. Sweepers didn’t find a fricking skin cell that wasn’t accounted for. Witness said he didn’t make any noise, so I’m thinking stealth shoes. Went directly to the bed, gave the head a quick yank up by the hair, sliced down, right-handed.”

  Roarke watched her mime the moves, quick and sure, cop’s eyes flat.

  “Combat knife from Morris’s report—lab should be able to reconstruct. Then he lets her drop, turns, walks out. Witness is there, just outside the doorway, down on the floor, back to the wall. If he looks, he sees. But he doesn’t.”

  “Confident or careless?” Roarke asked.

  “I’d go with the first. Added to it, he’s not looking because he doesn’t expect to see anything.” She paused a moment. “Why doesn’t he expect to see anything?”

  “Why would he?”

  “People don’t always stay tucked in through the night. They get up to whiz, or because they’re worried about their work and can’t sleep. Or because they want a damn Orange Fizzy. How come you’re this thorough, this much a pro, but you don’t sweep an area when you enter?”

  Frowning, Roarke considered, studied the layout again. Yes, he thought as he pictured himself moving through the house in the dark. He would have. Yes, and he had on those occasions when he’d lifted locks and helped himself to what was behind them.

  “Good question, now that you pose it. He—they—expect everything, everyone in their proper place because that’s how it works in their world?”

  “It’s a theory. Goes out,” she continued, “goes back to the main stairs and up. Why? Why, when there are back stairs right over there.”

  She gestured to a door. “That’s how the witness got up to the second floor. Back stairs. Peabody’s take was that the front steps were closer to the adults’ room, and it’s not implausible. But you know what, it’s a waste of time, steps, and effort.”

  “And they wasted nothing. They didn’t know there was a second set of steps.”

  “Yeah. But how did they miss that detail when they knew everything else?”

  Roarke walked over to the door, ran a hand over the jamb, examined the steps. “Well, they’re not original.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The house is late nineteenth century, with considerable rehab work. But these are newer. This rail here, it’s manmade material. Twenty-first-century material.” He crouched down. “So are the treads. And the workmanship’s a bit shoddy. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a home job—something they added themselves without all the permits and what have you. Without filing the work, so it wouldn’t show on any record, any blueprint your killers might have studied.”

  “How smart are you? You’re right. They’re not on the on-file blueprints. I checked. Still, that doesn’t mean one or both of the killers wasn’t in the house, wasn’t even a friend or neighbor. This is the domestic’s room, and her stairs.”

  “That would, however, go further to eliminating the housekeeper as primary target. And it would be less likely the killers were close acquaintances of hers, or privy to her quarters.”

  “She was excess. It was the family that mattered.”

  “Not one of them,” he put in, “but all.”

  “If it wasn’t all, why kill all?”

  She took him back through, following the assumed path of the known killer. “Blood trail from domestic’s, through here, up the right side of the steps. More concentrated blood pattern here, see?”

  “And none coming back down the stairs. Removing protective gear here, before going down.”

  “Another point for the civilian.”

  “I think you should have another term for me. Civilian’s so ordinary, and just a bit snarky when you say it. Something like ‘nonpolice specialist on all things’.”

  “Yeah, sure, my personal NPS. Focus in, ace. They’d done the adults before the witness got up to this level. She saw them walking away from this room, then split off. One in each of the other bedrooms. Two more rooms up here—one a home office, the other a playroom deal. Kids’ bathroom, end of hall. But they went straight for the bedrooms. You couldn’t be a hundred percent from a blueprint which room was which up here.”

  “No.” To satisfy his curiosity, he walked over, glanced into one of the rooms. Home office—work station, minifriggie, shelves holding equipment, dust catchers, family photos. A small daybed, all coated now with the sweepers’ residue.

  “This is certainly large enough to be used as a bedroom.”

  She let him wander, watched him step to the doorway of the boy’s room and saw his face harden. Blood spatter on sports posters, she thought, blood staining the mattress.

  “How old was the boy?” he asked.

  “Twelve.”

  “Where were we at that age, Eve? Not in a nice room, surrounded by our little treasures, that’s for bloody sure. But Christ Jesus, what does it take to walk into a room like this and end some sleeping boy?”

  “I’m going to find out.”

  “You will, yes. Well.” He stepped back. He’d seen blood before, had shed it. He’d stood and studied murder when it was chilled. But this, standing in this house where a family had lived their ordinary lives, seeing a young boy’s room where such a tender life had been taken, left him sickened and shaken.

  So he turned away from it. “The office has as much space as this bedroom. The boy could easily have been across the hall.”

  “So they had to surveil the house—or know it from the inside, enough to know who slept where. If they cased it from outside, they’d need to watch the patterns. Which lights went on, what time. Night vision and surveillance equipment, and they could see through the curtains easy enough.”

  She moved to the master bedroom. “Morris tells me the same hand that did the domestic did both males. The other took the females. So they had their individual targets worked out in advance. No conversations, no chatter, no excess movements. Thought about droids, assassin droids.”

  “Very costly,” Roarke told her. “And unreliable in a situation like this. And why have two—double the cost and detail of programming, when one could do it all? That’s if you had the wherewithal and the skill to access an illegal droid, and program it to bypass security and terminate multiple subjects.”

  “I don’t think it was droids.” She walked out, into the little girl’s bedroom. “I think human hands did this. And no matter how it looks on the surface, no matter how cold and efficient, it was personal. It was fucking personal. You don’t slice a child’s throat without it being personal.”


  “Very personal.” He put a hand on her back, rubbed it gently up and down. “Sleeping children were no threat to them.” There were demons in this house now, he thought. Brutal ghosts of them with children’s blood staining their hands. Lurking ones in him, and in her, that muttered, constantly muttered, of the horrors they’d survived.

  “Maybe the kids were the targets. Or there’s the possibility one or more of the household had some information that was a threat, so they all had to go in case that information had been shared.”

  “No.”

  “No.” She sighed, shook her head. “If the killers were afraid of information or knowledge, they would need to ascertain, by intimidation, threat, or torture, that the information hadn’t been passed outside of the household. They would need to check the data centers, the whole fricking house, to be certain such information wasn’t logged somewhere. The tight timing—entrance, murders, exit, doesn’t leave room for them to have searched for anything. It’s made to look like business. But it’s personal.”

  “Not as smart as they think,” Roarke commented.

  “Because?”

  “Smarter to have taken the valuables, to have torn the house up a bit. The entire horror would point more to burglary. Or to have hacked away at the victims, to make it seem like a psychopath, or a burglary gone very wrong.”

  She let out a half laugh. “You know, you’re right. You’re damn right. And why didn’t they? Pride. Pride in the work. That’s good, that’s good, because it’s something, and I’ve got nothing. Fucking bupkus. I knew there was a reason I liked having you around.”

  “Any little thing I can do.” He took her hand as they started downstairs. “And it’s not true you have nothing. You have your instincts, your skill, your determination. And a witness.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She didn’t want to think about her witness quite yet. “Why would you wipe out an entire family? Not you you, but hypothetically.”

  “I appreciate the qualification. Because they’d messed with mine, had been or were a threat to what’s mine.”

  “Swisher was a lawyer. Family law.”

  Roarke tilted his head as they went out the front door. “That’s interesting, isn’t it?”