by J. D. Robb
“What did you see?”
“World going to hell in a handbasket.” She dipped her chin, unfolded one of her bony arms to slap a gnarled hand on the arm of the chair. “Sex and violence, sex and violence. Won’t be any pillar of salt this time out. Whole place, and everything in it, is going to burn. Get what you ask for. Reap what you sow.”
“Okay. Can you tell me if you heard or saw anything unusual on the night the Swishers were killed?”
“Got my ears fixed, got my eyes tuned. I see and hear fine.” She leaned forward, the tuned-up eyes avid. “I know who killed those people.”
“Who killed them?”
“The French.”
“How do you know that, Mrs. Grentz?”
“Because they’re French.” To emphasize her point, she slapped a hand on her leg. “Got their der-re-airs kicked the last time they made trouble, didn’t they? And believe me, they’ve been planning a payback ever since. If somebody’s murdered in their own bed, it was the French who did it. You can take that to the bank.”
Eve wasn’t sure the little sound Peabody made was a snicker or a sigh, but she ignored it. “I appreciate the information,” Eve began, and started to rise.
“Did you hear someone speaking French on the night of the murders?”
At Peabody’s question, Eve sent her a pitying look.
“You don’t hear them, girl. Quiet as snakes, that’s the French for you.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Grentz, you’ve been very helpful.” Eve got to her feet.
“Can’t trust people who eat snails.”
“No, ma’am. We’ll let ourselves out.”
Hildy stood just outside the doorway, grinning. “Buggy, but somehow fascinating, right? Mrs. Grentz?” She lifted her voice, moved into the doorway. “I’m going on down.”
“You get my bagels?”
“All put away. See you. Keep walking,” she instructed Eve, “and don’t look back. You never know what else is going to pop into her head.”
“You got a few minutes to talk with us, Hildy?”
“Sure.” Still carrying the market bag, Hildy led the way out, down the stairs, and around to her own entrance. “She’s actually my great-great-aunt—through marriage—but she likes to be called Mrs. Grentz. The mister’s been dead thirty years. Never made the acquaintance myself.”
Though below street level, the apartment was bright and cheerful with a lot of unframed posters tacked to the walls and a rainbow scatter of rugs on the floor. “I rent from her—well, her son pays the rent. I’m a kind of unofficial caretaker—her and the place. You saw upstairs? That’s nothing. She’s loaded. Wanna sit?”
“Thanks.”
“Seriously loaded, like millions, so I’m here to make sure the security’s always on, and that she doesn’t lie around helpless if she trips over some of that furniture and breaks her leg. She’s got this alarm deal on.” Hildy pulled a small receiver out of her pocket. “She falls, or if her vitals get wonky, this beeps. I do some of the marketing for her, listen to her crab sometimes. It’s a pretty good deal for the digs. And she’s okay, mostly, sort of funny.”
“How long have you had the place?”
“Six months, almost seven now. I’m a writer—well, working on that—so this is a good setup for me. You guys want something to drink or anything?”
“No, but thanks. You knew the Swishers?”
“Sort of, the way you do when you see the same people all the time. I knew the parents to nod to, like that. We weren’t really on the same wave.”
“Meaning?”
“They were totally linear, you know. Put the con in conservative. Nice. Really nice. If they’d see me out, they’d always ask about Mrs. Grentz, and if I was doing okay. Not everybody bothers with that. I knew the kids a little more.”
She held up a hand, shut her eyes a minute. “I’m trying to put it in its place, to get to ‘they’re where their destiny took them to,’ that place. But Jesus!” Her eyes opened again, swam a moment. “They were just kids. And Coyle? I think he had a little crush on me. It was really sweet.”
“So you saw them around the neighborhood.”
“Sure. Coyle mostly. They didn’t let the little girl run around as much. He’d volunteer to run to the market, or walk with me there. Or I’d see him out boarding with some friends, and wave, or go out to talk.”
“Did you ever see him with somebody you didn’t recognize from around the neighborhood?”
“Not really. He was a good kid. Old-fashioned, at least from the way I was raised. Really polite, a little shy, at least with me. Way into sports.”
“How about the comings and goings? Writers notice things, don’t they?”
“It’s important to observe stuff, file it away. You never know.” Hildy twirled a hunk of her colorful hair around her finger. “And I did think of something I didn’t remember before, when the other cops came by to ask stuff. It’s just—I couldn’t keep anything in my head when I heard about it. You know?”
“Sure. What do you remember now?”
“I don’t know if it’s anything, but I started thinking about it this morning. That night . . .” She shifted, gave Eve a weak smile. “Listen, if I tell you something I did that’s not a hundred percent legal, am I going to get in trouble?”
“We’re not here to hassle you, Hildy. We’re here about five people who were murdered in their beds.”
“Okay.” She drew a long breath. “Okay. Sometimes, if I’m up writing late, or if Mrs. Grentz has been a particular pain—I mean, you got a load right? She’s funny, but sometimes she wears.”
“All right.”
“Sometimes, I go up on the roof.” She pointed a finger at the ceiling. “There’s a nice little spot up there, and it’s a place to hang out, look around, sit and think. Sometimes I go up there to, you know, smoke a little Zoner. I can’t do that in here. If Mrs. Grentz was to come down—and she does sometimes—and smell it—she’s got a nose like a bloodhound—she’d wig. So if I’m in the mood for a toke, not like every night or anything . . .”
“We’re not Illegals, and we’re not concerned if you had a little recreational Zoner.”
“Right. So I was up there. It was late because the book had been chugging. I was just hanging up there, about ready to go down, because the long night plus the Zoner made me sleepy. I just sort of looked around, like you do, and I see these two guys. Nice builds—that’s what I thought, you know. Prime meat. I didn’t think anything much of it, even when the cops came by and I heard about the Swishers, but I was thinking back, and I remembered.”
“Did you see what they looked like?”
“Not so much. Except they were white guys, both of them. I could see their hands, and a little bit of their faces, and they were white. I didn’t really see faces, couldn’t from the angle up there. But I remembered how I thought, ‘Look at the beef,’ and how they walked, side-by-side, almost like they were marching. Not talking or anything, like you do if you’re out walking with a pal late at night. Just one, two, three, four, all the way to the corner.”
“Which corner?”
“Um, west, toward Riverside.”
“What were they wearing?”
“Okay, I’ve thought about this, really hard. Black, top to toe, with—what do they call those wooly hats you pull down on your head?”
“Watch cap?”
“Yeah, yeah! Like that. And they each had a bag, long strap, cross-body. I like to watch people, especially if they don’t know. And they really were built.”
“How old were they?”
“I don’t know. Honest. I didn’t see their faces. They had those caps pulled down, and hell, I was checking the bods. But the other thing I thought later? I never heard them. I mean, they didn’t just not talk, I didn’t hear their footsteps. If I hadn’t gone over to the rail just as they were passing below, I’d never have known they were down there.”
“Let’s go up to the roof, Hildy.” Eve got to her feet. �
�Take us through it again.”
It’s a break,” Peabody said when they were out on the sidewalk again. Eve was staring up at the roof. “Not much of one, but a break.”
“It’s details. And details count.” She walked back down to the Swisher house, looked up toward the roof where they’d recently stood with Hildy. “Probably would have seen her, if they’d looked. Seen her standing up there, or the silhouette of her, when they got closer. But they were done, confident. Maybe scanned the street, yet careful to keep out of the brightest beams of the security lights. Walked—marched. No hurry, but disciplined—to the corner of Riverside. Had a ride somewhere, you bet they did. Legally parked, street or lot. Street’s better, no paperwork of any kind if you snag a street spot, but you can’t count on finding a space, so maybe a lot.”
“Stolen ride?” Peabody suggested.
“Be stupid. Stupid because it leaves a trail. You steal something, the owner gets pissy and reports it. Maybe take a vehicle out of long-term somewhere, put it back. But why? You’ve got all this equipment, expensive equipment. You’ve got money or backing. You’ve got a ride of your own. It won’t be anything flashy.” She rocked back and forth on her heels. “Nothing that catches the eye, and the driver obeys all traffic regs.”
She walked west as she visualized it. “Do the job, walk out, walk away. No hurry, no noise. Eyes tracking left and right—that’s training. Don’t think to look up, though, and that’s sloppy. Just a little sloppy, or cocky. Or under it, they were revved from the kill. Pro or not, you’ve got to get a little revved. Walk straight down, no conversation. Go straight to the ride, no detours. Stow the bags for later cleaning or destruction. Back to HQ.”
“Headquarters?”
“Bet that’s how they referred to it. Someplace to be debriefed, or to exchange their war stories, to practice, to clean up. And I’ll bet you it’s squared away.”
She had their scent. She knew it wasn’t a logical term, but it was the right term. She had their scent, and she would track it until she had them.
She stood on the corner of Eighty-first and Riverside, looking north, and south, and further west. How far had they walked? she wondered. How many people had seen them walking away from that death house, fresh blood in their bags?
Just a couple of guys heading home after a quick night’s work.
“Tag Baxter,” Eve ordered. “I want some names.”
Her name was Meredith Newman, and she was overworked and underpaid. She’d be happy to tell you so, given the opportunity. Though she liked to think of herself as a contemporary martyr, long suffering and sweating blood for the cause.
Once, in her younger days, she’d visualized herself as a crusader, and had worked and studied with the fervor of the converted. But then a year on the job had become two, and two had become five, and the caseloads, the misery and uselessness of them, took their toll.
In her private fantasies, she’d meet a handsome, sexy man, swimming in money. She’d quit. Never have to drag herself through the endless paperwork, the disheartening home checks. Never have to see another battered woman or child.
But until that fine day, it was business as usual.
Now she was heading toward a routine home check, where she fully expected to find the two kids filthy, the mother stoned or on her way toward oblivion. She’d lost hope that it would ever be any different. She’d lost the will to care. The number of people who eventually turned themselves around and became decent, contributing members of society was about one in fifty, in her estimation.
And she always seemed to pull the other forty-nine.
Her feet hurt because she’d been stupid enough to buy a pair of new shoes, which she couldn’t afford. Not on her salary. She was depressed because the man she’d been seeing on and off for five weeks had told her she depressed him, and had broken things off.
She was thirty-three years old, single, no boyfriend, a joke of a social life, and so sick and tired of her job she wanted to kill herself.
She walked with her head down, as was her habit, because she didn’t want to see the dirt, the grime, the people.
She hated Alphabet City, hated the men who loitered in doorways and rubbed their crotches when she passed by. She hated the smell of garbage—urban perfume—and the noise. Engines, horns, voices, machinery all pulsing against her ear drums.
Her vacation wasn’t scheduled for eight weeks, three days, twelve hours. She didn’t know if she could make it. Hell, her next day off was three days away, and she didn’t know if she could make that.
She wouldn’t.
She didn’t pay any attention to the squeal of brakes, just more of the cacophony of the city she’d come to loathe like a wasting disease.
The little shoulder bump was just another annoyance, just more of the innate rudeness that infected everyone who lived in this shit hole.
Then her head spun, and her vision went gray. She felt, as if in a dream, the sensation of being lifted off her feet and thrown. Even when she landed in the back of the van, with the tape slapped over her face and her eyes, it didn’t seem real. Her body had barely registered the need to scream when the faint nudge of a pressure syringe had her going under.
By midafternoon, Eve and Peabody had spoken with three of Keelie Swisher’s clients and two of her husband’s. They were working geographically and took another of Keelie’s next.
Jan Uger was a hefty woman who smoked three herbals during their twenty-minute interview. When she wasn’t puffing, she was sucking on one of the brightly colored candy drops in a dish beside her chair.
Her hair was done up in a huge glossy ball, as if someone had slicked it up, around, then sprayed it with silicone. She had long jowls, a trio of chins, sallow skin. And a pisser of an attitude.
“A quack.” She puffed, jabbed with her smoking herbal. “That’s what she was. Said she couldn’t help me if I didn’t keep up the regimen. What am I, in Christing boot camp?”
“You were, at one time,” Eve prompted.
“Did three years, regular Army. Where I met my Stu. He put in fifteen, serving our country. I spent those years being a good Army wife and raising two kids. Was the kids put the weight on me,” she claimed and chose another candy. “I tried diets, but I’ve got a condition.”
Which was, Eve decided, the inability to stop putting things in her mouth.
“Our insurance doesn’t cover body sculpting.” She worked the candy around in her mouth, gave it a couple of good crunches. “Cheapskates. Except on the provision you see a licensed nutritionist for six months, and they sign off for you. So, that’s what I did, went to that quack, listened to her bullshit. And what happened?”
She sucked so hard on the candy in her fury, Eve wondered it didn’t lodge in her throat and choke her to death.
“I’ll tell you what happened. I gained four pounds in two months. Not that Stu minds. More to love, is what he says. But I did the drill, and would she sign off? No, she would not!”
“You had a problem with that.”
“Damn right. She said I didn’t qualify. Who was she to say? What skin off her nose is it to sign the damn paper so my insurance will foot the bill? People like that make me sick.”
She lit another cigarette, scowled through smoke that smelled like burning mint.
“You argued with Mrs. Swisher?”
“Told her just what I thought of her and her Christing regimen, and said I was going to sue. Would have, but her husband’s a damn lawyer, so what’s the point? Everybody knows they stick together like a pile of shit. Sorry they’re dead, though,” she added as an afterthought.
“Your husband’s retired military now, and employed with . . .” Eve pretended to check her notes.
“He’s security at the Sky Mall. Hard to live on retirement, plus my Stu, he likes to get out and do a job. Better insurance there, too. He works there another eighteen months, and I can get the sculpting, on them.”
Keep eating, sister, and it’s going to take more tha
n sculpting. It’s going to take an airjack to whittle you down. “Meanwhile, you were both very dissatisfied with Mrs. Swisher.”
“Of course we were. She took our hard-earned money and did nothing for it.”
“That’s upsetting, and feeling unable to sue successfully, you must have wanted to be recompensed in some other way.”
“Told everybody I knew she was a Christing quack.” Her triple chins wagged with satisfaction. “I got plenty of friends, and so does Stu.”
“If it’d been me, I’d have wanted something more personal, more tangible. Maybe you and your husband went to Mr. or Mrs. Swisher to complain, to demand your money back.”
“No point.”
“Was your husband home last night? Between one and three a.m.?”
“Where else would he be at one o’clock in the morning?” she asked hotly. “What is this?”
“A homicide investigation. Your husband’s military records indicate he was an MP.”
“Eight years. So what?”
“I wonder, when he complained to his buddies about Mrs. Swisher’s treatment of you, they must have gotten heated up—on your account.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you? You’d think. But people don’t have much sympathy for a woman with my condition.”
“That’s a shame. You don’t have any friends, or relatives, who could front you the money for the body work?”
“Shit.” She blew out smoke, reached for another candy. “Who are we going to know with that kind of money? I was an Army brat, and my father died serving his country when I was sixteen. Stu’s family’s mostly factory workers out in Ohio. You know what sculpting costs?” she demanded. Then she swept her gaze over Eve, curled her lip. “How much did it cost you?”
Eve paused outside the building. “Do you think I should’ve been insulted?” she wondered. “The ‘how much did it cost you’ crack?”
“She probably meant it as a kind of compliment. But still, I’ve got a great-aunt who’s half French and I was sort of insulted with Mrs. Grentz’s French cracks.” She slid into the vehicle. “This one gets checked off.”