by J. D. Robb
It would be simple enough for him to throw some of his business her way as support for Nixie. Money had its uses, after all.
The firm had a strong reputation—he’d checked on that, as well. And while the nature of his business was unknown, he was given what he recognized as the VIP treatment as he was met in the black and silver lobby by Corday’s assistant, whisked across the marble floor, and into a private elevator.
The assistant—young, male, in a conservative gray suit—offered him coffee, tea, beverages of any nature. Roarke imagined he’d been primed to arrange to have a trio of LCs deliver it—and anything else—should it be requested.
It was the sort of brown-nosing that irritated him.
Corday’s office level was done in strong reds and frothy creams. Lots of translucent automatic doors and a single massive workstation manned by five more assistants.
He was shown through a set of doors into what he recognized as one of the power centers. Corday hadn’t yet climbed to the corner office, but she was next in line.
And waiting for him, standing—strategic position—behind her L-shaped black desk, the city’s skyline behind her.
Her ID photo had been a good one, reflective of the woman. He knew her to be thirty-eight. He knew where she had her hair styled and where she’d bought the black pinstriped suit she was wearing.
He knew she’d be financially able to hire good child care providers, to afford good schools. And if she needed a bit of incentive, he would offer to set up a trust fund for Nixie’s care and education.
He was willing to negotiate.
She had an attractive, soft-featured face, which she sharpened with enhancements—discreet ones. Her hair was a quiet brown worn short, with a kind of triangle at the nape.
The suit showed off a good body as she came around the desk to offer her hand and a welcoming smile. “Mr. Roarke. I hope your trip in was uneventful.”
“It was.”
“What can we offer you? Coffee?”
“Thanks, if you’re having some.”
“David?” She turned away from the assistant, obviously expecting him to jump into action.
A point in her favor, in Roarke’s opinion.
She gestured to a seating area, waited until he chose one of the wide, black chairs.
“I appreciate you seeing me on such short notice,” he began.
“It’s my pleasure. Do you have other business in Philadelphia?”
“Not today.”
The assistant hurried over with a tray, the coffeepot, cups and saucers, a little bowl of sugar cubes, and a small pitcher of what might have been actual cream.
“Thank you, David. Hold my calls. Now, how would you like your coffee?”
“Just black, thanks. Ms. Corday, I’m aware your time is valuable.”
Her smile was easy as she crossed her legs. “I’m happy to invest as much of it as you need.”
“Appreciated.” He accepted the coffee, and cut through the ameni-ties. “I’m actually here on a personal matter. I’m here on behalf of your niece.”
Her eyes, as quiet a brown as her hair, met his. The brows above them lifted in puzzlement. “My niece? I don’t have a niece.”
“Nixie, your stepbrother’s daughter.”
“My stepbrother? I assume you’re speaking of . . .” He could almost see her flip through her files for a name. “Grant. My father was married to his mother for a short time. I’m afraid I don’t consider him my stepbrother.”
“Are you aware that he and his wife, and his son, were recently murdered?”
“No.” She set her coffee down. “No. God, that’s horrible. How?”
“In a home invasion. They were killed, along with a young girl who was spending the night with their daughter, with Nixie. Nixie wasn’t in her bedroom, but in another part of the house, and survived.”
“I’m very, very sorry to hear this. Tremendously sorry. I did hear something in the media about these murders. I’m afraid I didn’t put it together. I haven’t seen or had contact with Grant in years. This is shocking.”
“I’m sorry to tell you this way, but my concern now is for Nixie.”
“I’m a little confused.” She shook her head, touched her fingers to the seed pearls at her throat. “Did you know Grant?”
“I didn’t, no. My involvement in all this happened after the murders.”
“I see.” Those quiet eyes sharpened. “Your wife is with the NYPSD, isn’t she?”
“She is, yes. This is her case.” He waited a beat, but she failed to ask what the status of that case might be. “At the moment, Nixie is in an undisclosed location, in protective custody. She can’t stay there indefinitely.”
“Surely Child Protection—”
“Your stepbrother and his wife named legal guardians, but circumstances prevent those guardians from fulfilling the agreement. As a result, this child has no one who knew her family, no one who had a connection with them, with her, to care for her. I’m here to ask you to consider doing so.”
“Me?” Her head snapped back as if he’d slapped her. “That’s impossible. Out of the question.”
“Ms. Corday, you’re the closest thing she has to family on planet.”
“Hardly family.”
“All right, then. A connection to family. And her family was murdered, all but in front of her eyes. She’s a child, grieving and frightened, and innocent.”
“And I’m sorry, truly sorry for what happened. But it’s not my responsibility. She’s not my responsibility.”
“Then whose?”
“There’s a system in place for circumstances like this for a reason. Frankly, I don’t understand your involvement, or why you’d come here expecting me to take on a child I’ve never even met.”
He knew when a deal had gone south, and when it was best to let it go. But he couldn’t quite make himself. “Your stepbrother—”
“Why do you insist on calling him that?” Irritation snapped in her voice. “My father was hooked up with his mother for less than two years. I barely knew the man. I wasn’t interested in knowing him, or his family.”
“She has no one.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“No. It’s the fault of the men who walked into her home, slit the throats of her parents, her brother, her young friend. So now she has no home.”
“Which is a tragedy,” Corday agreed, with no emotion. “However, I’m not interested in stepping in to save the day—even for the possibility of Roarke Industries as a client, and I resent you coming here, pushing this on me.”
“So I see. You didn’t even ask if she’d been hurt.”
“I don’t care.” Anger, or perhaps just a hint of embarrassment colored her cheeks. “I have my life, I have my career. If I wanted children, I’d have my own. I have no intention of fostering someone else’s.”
“Then I’ve made a mistake.” He got to his feet. “I’ve taken up too much of your time, and wasted my own.”
“Grant’s mother booted my father out when I was ten, and she was just one of many. What possible reason would I have to take responsibility for his daughter?”
“Apparently none at all.”
He walked out, more angry with himself than with her.
Eve stepped out of the dojo, surveyed the street, eyes tracking over parked vehicles, pedestrians, street traffic.
“Odds are low they’d have been able to trail us here,” Peabody said from behind her. “Even if they had the equipment, and the man power, to keep round-the-clock surveillance on Central, they’d have to be really good or really lucky to make our unit.”
“So far they’ve been really good and really lucky. We don’t play the odds on this one.” She drew the scanner out of her pocket.
“That’s not standard issue.”
“No, it’s Roarke issue. Cop issue would be what they’d expect, and they could have planted any number of devices with that in mind.”
“Dallas, you make me feel
all safe and snuggled. And hungry. There’s a deli right next door.”
“I’m off delis for a while. I’ll always wonder if somebody’s getting a blow job in the back room, with the extra veggie hash.”
“Oh, well, thanks. Now I’m off delis, and I didn’t have waffles this morning. Chinese place across the street. How about an egg roll?”
“Fine, just make it fast.”
She ran the scan for explosives, homing devices, while Peabody hotfooted it. She gave a shoulder roll—the light body armor irritated her—then slid into the car as Peabody dashed back across.
“Didn’t have Pepsi.”
“What?” Eve stared at the take-out bag. “Is this America? Have I crossed over into some dark continent, some alternate universe?”
“Sorry. Got you a lemon fizz.”
“It’s just not right.” Eve pulled away from the curb. “It should be illegal to run a food-service operation and not offer Pepsi.”
“Speaking of food-service operations, you know what Ophelia told me she’s going to do with the reward?”
“If she gets it.”
“If. Anyway, she and the deli guy talked about going in together if she ever got enough scratch. So, with the reward, she’d be solid. They want to open a sex club.”
“Oh, like New York doesn’t have enough of those.”
“Yeah, but a sex club deli. It’s pretty innovative. Get your salami hard, get your hard salami, all in one venue.”
“Christ, I’m never eating in a deli again.”
“I think it might be interesting. Anyway.” Peabody popped a mini eggroll. “You want me to tag Feeney, have him start trying to trace the transmissions?”
“No. I’ll take that. Tag Baxter, tell him to prioritize the Brenegan case. And contact the commander, see if he’s had any luck cutting through the red tape. Let him know Kirkendall is now prime, and we’ve got Baxter looking into a closed case that may connect. No, not the ’link,” she added. “Let’s mix up the communication devices. Use your personal for this. Then do a check with the rest of the team, using your communicator.”
“You think they might try to triangulate our location through communication?”
“I think we’ll be careful.” Eve used the dash unit for Sade Tully’s home address. Her next stop.
It was a modest building, easy walking distance to the law firm. No doorman, Eve noted. Average security. A scan of her badge got them through—and she imagined a couple of buzzes on various apartment intercoms would have done the same. In the narrow lobby, she pushed the button for Sade’s floor and studied the setup.
Dual security cams—that may or may not have been working. Fire-door leading to stair access. There was another cam in the single elevator, and the standard set of them on opposite sides of Sade’s floor.
The apartment door was fitted with an electronic peep and a sturdy police lock. Eve buzzed, saw the peep engage a few moments later. Locks snicked, and Sade opened the door.
“Has something happened? Oh, Jesus, did something happen to Dave?”
“No. Sorry to alarm you. Can we come in?”
“Yeah, yeah.” She pushed a hand through her hair. “I guess I’m on edge. Getting myself together for Linnie’s funeral. I’ve never been to one for a kid. You should never have to go to one for a kid. We closed the office for the day. Dave’s going to pick me up soon.”
The apartment was pretty and bright, the trendy gel sofa done in shimmering shades of blue and green with a small eating area set up in front of a pair of windows framed with fabric. Inexpensive posters of some of the city’s highlights decorated the walls.
“Dave says you’ve got a good memory for names, for details.”
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks. You want to sit? Do you want . . . God, I don’t know what I have. I haven’t been to the market since . . .”
“It’s all right, we’re fine.” Peabody went into comfort mode. “This is a nice place. Great sofa.”
“I like it. I mean the whole shot. It’s a quiet building, close to work. And when I want to play, I can scoot half a block to the subway and head toward the action.”
“Full apartment in this neighborhood doesn’t come cheap,” Eve commented.
“No. I have a roommate. Had,” she corrected. “Jilly’s a flight attendant—handles the New York to Vegas II route, mostly. She’s gone so much we don’t get in each other’s way, or on each other’s nerves.”
“Had?” Eve prompted.
“She got in touch a couple of days ago. She’s going to base on Vegas II now, so . . .” Sade shrugged. “No big for me. I can handle the rent now on my salary. Grant and Dave—hell. Dave’s not stingy. I’ve gotten raises along the way.”
She looked down at herself. “Do you think this is the right thing to wear? Maybe it’s too morbid. Black suit. I mean, a funeral’s morbid, but maybe—”
“I think it’s very appropriate,” Peabody told her. “Respectful.”
“Okay. Okay. I know it’s a stupid thing to worry about. Why the hell should they care what I’m wearing when . . . I’m going to get some water. Do you want any water?”
“No, go ahead.” But Eve rose, wandered toward the trim galley kitchen. “Sade, do you remember a case Grant worked on? Kirkendall. His client was Dian.”
“Give me a sec.” She got a bottle of water from a minifriggie, leaned back on the lipstick-red counter. “Divorce and custody deal. Guy used to knock her around. Army guy—well, he was retired army by then. But one mean son of a bitch. They had a couple of kids—boy and girl. Dian finally got her butt in gear when he started on the kids. Well, not straight off.”
She opened the bottle, sipped thoughtfully. “Seems he ran the show like he was the general. More the tyrant. Schedules, orders, discipline. Had the three of them pretty well cowed. She went into a shelter, finally, and one of the people who ran it recommended our firm. Woman was terrified, seriously terrified. We see that sometimes. Too many times.”
“The court ruled in her favor.”
“All the way. Grant worked hard on that case.” Her eyes went shiny, and she paused to take a long drink, fight back the tears. “She’d screwed herself pretty good along the way, a lot of them do. Not calling the cops, or telling them that there was no trouble if somebody else called them. Going to various health clinics so she wouldn’t send up a red flag. But Grant, he put a lot of hours in—pro bono, too—finding doctors, health techs, getting psych evals. The guy had some slick lawyers. Tried to make it like Dian was unstable, that her injuries were both self-induced and a result of affairs with abusive men. It didn’t wash, especially when Grant put Jaynene on the stand.”
“Jaynene Brenegan?”
“Yeah.” Sade frowned. “You knew her?”
“Why was her testimony important?”
“Trauma expert—and she just blew the bastard’s lawyers out of the water. Made it clear that her exam of Dian showed consistent and long-term physical abuse, impossible to self-inflict. They couldn’t shake her, and it was one of the things that really turned the tide. She was killed two, no, must be three years ago now. Some goddamn junkie knifed her after her shift. Bastard claimed he found her dead, just helped himself to her money, but they slapped his ass away.”
“Dian Kirkendall got full custody.”
“Right, with him getting monthly supervised visits. He never got the chance to make one. She whiffed a day or two later. Grant was sick about it, we all were. Worried he might have gotten to her somehow.”
“You believed he might’ve done her violence.”
“Grant did. Cops never found a trace of her, or the kids.”
“Did Kirkendall make any threats to her, or to Grant?”
“He was too cool for that. Like arctic. Never broke a sweat, never said a word that you could construe as threatening. But believe me, you could see he had it in him.”
Eve nodded to Peabody who drew the sketches out of her bag. “Do you recognize these men?”
Sade set the bottle down, took a good long look. “No. And I’d remember if I’d seen them. Scary. Are these the men who—” She broke off. “Kirkendall? You think he had something to do with what happened to Grant and his family? That bastard son of a bitch!”
“We have questions we’d like to ask him.”
“He could have done it,” she said softly. “He’s capable. You know how you see someone, or brush up against them on the street, and everything in you freezes? That’s the thing with him. Makes your blood run cold. But, Jesus, it was so long ago. It was years ago. I’d just started with the firm, was living in this one-room box up on One Hundred and Seventh.”
“We’re checking several leads,” Eve said. “Thanks for the details on this. Oh, just curious. How’d you find this place, the roommate?”
“They found me, basically. I met Jilly at this club I used to hang at. Friend of a friend of a friend sort of thing. We hit it off. Then she told me she had this place, was looking for a roommate since she was away so much. Just wanted somebody there, you know, so it wasn’t empty half the time. I snapped it.”
“And this was after the trial?”
“Right after, now that you mention it. Just a couple of weeks.” Sade’s hand trembled a little as she reached for her water. “Why?”
“Did you ever talk with Jilly about work? About cases? Details.”
“Nothing confidential, but yeah. Oh shit, yeah. Just the broad strokes of something hot or funny. I talked about the Kirkendall case—no names. Just about how hard Grant worked on it, how much he’d wanted to get what was right for this poor woman and her kids. Oh God, oh God. But we lived here together, for six years. Almost six years.”
“I’d like her full name.”
“Jilly Isenberry,” Sade said dully. “She went with me to Grant’s place. I don’t know how many times. She went to parties there, to barbecues. She had dinner at their table. I got in touch with her when this happened, and she cried. She cried, but she’s not coming back. I took her into their home.”
“You’re not responsible. This may be nothing, but if it’s not, you’re still not responsible. What you’ve just told us may help us find the people who are.”