The In Death Collection, Books 16-20

by J. D. Robb

  “I told him I knew he’d killed her, and he shocked me again. And again and again. I begged, I screamed, I pleaded, for myself, for my baby. He left me there, I don’t know how long, then he came back and did it all again.”

  “He had her over twelve hours.” Turnbill sucked in breath, ignored the tears on his face. “The police—you can’t file a report, a missing person’s, that soon. I tried, but they said it wasn’t enough time, when I called. But it was a lifetime, for both of us. It was a miracle she didn’t miscarry. When he was done with her, he dumped her on the sidewalk in Times Square.”

  “He believed me, finally. He must have known that I would’ve told him anything just to stop the pain. So he believed me, and before he knocked me out again, he told me if I went to the police—if I implicated him in any way—he would find me again. He would cut the brat out of my belly and slit its throat.”

  “Roxanne.” Peabody spoke quietly. “I know this is very hard for you to speak about. But I need to know: Was Kirkendall alone when he held you?”

  “No. He had that bastard with him. They were joined at the hip, claimed to be brothers. Isaac, Isaac Clinton. They were in the army together. He . . . he sat at some sort of console, controls. I don’t know. I think he was studying some kind of readout. They had some sort of hookup on me, like in a hospital. He sat, the whole time Roger tortured me, and he never spoke. Not one word. At least not when I was conscious.”

  “Was there anyone else?”

  “I’m not sure. Sometimes I thought I heard voices, maybe a woman’s. But I was out of my mind. I didn’t see anyone else, and I was unconscious when they took me out, when they tossed me onto the street.”

  “You didn’t tell the police that you knew your abductors?”

  “When I . . . when I came out of it, I was in the hospital. I was afraid for my life, for my baby’s life. So I said nothing. I told them I couldn’t remember anything.”

  “What do you expect—” Turnbill began, but Peabody sent him a look of such sympathy his voice broke.

  “I expect I would have done exactly the same,” she told him. “I expect my only clear thought would be to protect my child, my husband, myself.”

  “We said nothing,” Roxanne continued, her voice a little stronger. “We left New York, we left our lives there, and came here. My parents live nearby. I realized she’d run—Dian—but I thought he’d find her. Kill her. Two years, I was sure she was gone. Then I answered the ’link. She’d blocked the video, but she said my name. She said my name and we’re safe. That’s all. She broke the connection. I get those calls every few months, sometimes more than a year between. That’s all she ever says.”

  “When was the last time she contacted you?”

  “Three weeks ago. I don’t know where she is, and if I did I wouldn’t tell you, for the same reasons I said nothing after the abduction. We’ve made a life here. We have two sons now, and they’re happy. This is their home. And still, we live in a prison because of this one man. I’m afraid every day, every single day.”

  “We’re going to find him, Roxanne, and when we do, you won’t have to be afraid again. Tell me about the room where they held you,” Peabody said. “Every detail you remember.”

  19

  EVE WAS BACK AT HER DESK WHEN ROARKE CAME into her office. He immediately sniffed the air.

  “You had a burger?”

  “What? No. Baxter, Trueheart. Let cops loose near food, it’s a free-for-all. They’d want a place in the city, wouldn’t they?”

  “Baxter and Trueheart? Is there something about their relationship I’ve missed?”

  “What?”

  “You keep saying that. You need to eat.”

  Her mind cleared slightly as he moved into the kitchen. “I’m not talking about Baxter and Trueheart.”

  “I’m perfectly aware of that. And yes, I agree. Kirkendall and associates would want a place in the city. Why risk running into pesky commuter traffic, or pesky commuter traffic cops?”

  “I bet it’s Upper West.”

  “We agree again.” He came back in with two plates, and this time Eve sniffed the air. “What is that?”

  “Lasagna.” Veggie lasagna, he thought. One of the easiest ways to get something green in her system that wasn’t a gumdrop was to disguise it in pasta.

  “Why do you agree? About the Upper West?”

  He set one of the plates in front of her, the other across the desk. Then went to get a chair, and two glasses of wine. When a man wanted to eat a meal with his wife, and his wife was Eve, Roarke thought, the man learned to make adjustments.

  “Considerable time and effort went into casing out the Swisher property. Not only the electronics, but lifestyle. They knew where to go and when to go. So—”

  He set her wine down, tapped his glass against it, then sat. “More efficient to have a location near the target point. You can do drive-bys, walk-bys, test your jammers and so on against their system. And you’d want to watch them.”

  She watched him as she cut into the lasagna. “Because you’d want to see them alive before you saw them dead.”

  “Oh yes. It’s personal. So though the kill is clean and quick, you’d want the rush beforehand. Look at them, they don’t know I have the power to end them. When and how I like.”

  “It’s a little strange being hooked up with someone who can think that much like a killer.”

  He lifted his glass to her. “I’ll say precisely the same. And make a considerable wager that your thoughts ran parallel to mine.”

  “Yeah, you win.” She sampled the lasagna. Something in there tasted like spinach. But it wasn’t half bad. “You come up with anything for me?”

  “I’m a little hurt you’d have to ask. Eat first. You’ve heard from Peabody?”

  “They’re on their way back. Want to hear the roundup?”

  “Of course.”

  She told him while they ate.

  “Torturing a pregnant woman,” Roarke commented. “Lower and lower. But he should’ve killed her, in hindsight. It seems his long-suffering wife learned enough from him to keep her location—more likely locations, as she’d be smarter to move every few months at least—from everyone. He kept the sister alive assuming that his wife would, at some point, run to her family.”

  “Then they’d all be dispensable. I really want this guy.”

  This time Roarke reached over, laid a hand on hers. “I know.”

  “Do you? He’s not like my father. There’s a world of difference, but somehow they’re exactly the same.”

  “Brutalizing his children, day after day. Training them in his own sick fashion. Breaking their spirit, destroying their innocence, driving a young boy to contemplate suicide. The difference between him and your father, Eve, is Kirkendall has more skill, more training, and a sharper brain. But inside, they couldn’t be more alike.”

  It helped that he saw that, and understood why her mind kept circling around it. “I have to get past it, or I’ll mess up. Location.” She nodded toward the map on her screen. “Lots of prime property Upper West. Have to be solo occupants. He can afford it. All those hefty fees, combined with his brother’s hefty fees—and possibly Isenberry’s. Investments like the dojo show me he likes business, making money from money. Yeah, he’s plush. You have any luck with the money?”

  “Again, my sensitive feelings are bruised.”

  “You can take a punch, ace. Let me have it.”

  He merely sent a meaningful glance at the food still on her plate.

  “Jeez.” She forked up a huge bite, stuffed it in. “Spill.”

  “He has what we’ll call his dumping account, which coordinates with the profits from the dojo. Hefty, but not enough to finance this sort of operation.”

  “So he’s got other accounts.”

  “Has to. He doesn’t dip into this one, just dumps the funds, and his personal data on it leads to a law firm out of Eden.”

  “Eden? Like the garden thereof?”


  “Based on. A manmade island in the South Pacific created ostensibly for recreation and in reality for tax evasion, money laundering. It takes considerable doing to get past the legal blocks there to gain information. And it takes considerable funds to open accounts there, or utilize any of their legal protection.”

  “You’ve used it.”

  “Actually, I helped create it. Before I saw the light of truth and justice.” He grinned when she just stared at him. “I sold out my interests there before we were married. However, since I did have some part in the design, I have ways of getting to information. Kirkendall’s covered himself very well. His law firm there leads to an off-planet financial firm, which leads—Do you want to hear all this?”

  “Bottom-line it for now.”

  “It all circles back to other numbered accounts. Five. All very plush indeed, and all under various aliases. The most interesting is one with a single deposit of just under twenty million.”

  “That’s million? Two-oh.”

  “A tad under. But doing the math, that’s well over and above any of the recorded fees I’ve found so far—that is, including the other accounts, which jibe with those fees, and expenses.”

  “He hired out to more than sanctioned U.S. agencies.”

  “There will be other accounts, I haven’t swept them all up yet. It’s going to take some time. But this account is interesting for a couple of reasons. The lump-sum deposit, for one. Have a look at this.”

  He drew a disc out of his pocket, plugged it in her unit himself. “Data on-screen.”

  Eve skimmed the data—another CIA file on Kirkendall. “Subject is considered nonsecure. Get them,” she muttered. “Train yourself a killer, then oops, he’s no longer secure. Last psych eval, eighteen months ago. Sociopathic tendencies—another huge surprise. Suspected ties to Doomsday—and the big surprises keep rolling. Suspected ties to . . . Cassandra.”

  Doomsday Group, she thought. Techno-terrorist organization she’d brushed up against, by default, on a recent case. But Cassandra, they’d been more flexible in the terrorist game, and her involvement with them the year before much more personal.

  They’d nearly killed her, and Roarke, in their quest to destroy New York’s landmarks. Took out a couple, too, she remembered with some bitterness, before she’d put the hurt on the ring leaders.

  “And the bell rings. They were keeping him active as much to watch him as to utilize his skills. Look at the dates.” Roarke gestured with his fork. “When they lost him. When he went rogue according to both this file and the one I dug out of Homeland—which also coordinates with the same entries on his brother’s file and Isenberry’s.”

  “September of last year. Just a few months before we got the first Cassandra letter. Before things started blowing up in the city.”

  “And the date of the hefty deposit.”

  “After we broke their back. We got most of them—figured we got most of them, but you never get all the rats crawling off the sinking ship. We got to most of the money, too, but they were a well-financed terrorist organization.”

  “And it appears Kirkendall scooped up a chunk of the funds, or was given them for safekeeping.”

  “One more reason to take him down. I don’t like leaving rats outside the cage.”

  “He went rogue,” Roarke pointed out. “All three of them are on various agencies’ lists. Though, again, you can see by the file that the status was lowered after Cassandra scattered. And there’s no indication he’s had any facial surgery.”

  “We had doctors on Cassandra. I’ll pop up that file, start looking at them. He’s left a trail. Everyone does.” When Roarke gently cleared his throat, she slid her gaze in his direction. “Even you, ace. If I wanted to find yours, I’d just put you on as consultant.”

  It made him laugh. “I imagine I could find myself, if I tried hard enough. I’ll get back to it. I have to say the ins and outs are fairly fascinating.”

  “You find any connection to a building in the city—especially Upper West—to any of those aliases or blinds, you get a big bonus.”

  Those blue eyes went wicked. “Of my choosing.”

  “Pervert.” She swung back to her computer.

  “I got the meal, you deal with the dishes.” He rose, then waited when her communicator beeped.

  “Dallas.”

  Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. The body of a woman identified as Newman, Meredith, has been discovered. Report Broadway and Fordham as primary. Scene is being secured.

  “Acknowledged. Dallas out. Up to eleven—twelve if we add Jaynene Brenegan,” she said as she rose. “That’s nearly to the Bronx.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No. She’s found because he wanted her found. Takes manpower away from the Swisher case. No big if we make that connect, because it doesn’t connect him with Moss and Duberry or Brenegan. So he thinks. I need you here doing that thing you do. I’ll take Trueheart. It’s good training for him. I’d rather have Baxter here on the kid.”

  “He knows they’ll pull you in on this. Primary on Swisher, she’s the caseworker on Nixie. He could be waiting for you.”

  She walked to the closet, pulled out a vest. She stripped off her shirt, put it on. “I hope so. I won’t be going in blind,” she added as she tugged the shirt back in place.

  She moved to her desk, took out her clutch piece and strapped on her ankle holster. “I know he’s hoping to get a shot at me.”

  “Then make sure he doesn’t get one.” He walked over, buttoned her shirt himself. “And make sure you come home.”

  “I’ll be back.” She hitched on her weapon harness, motioned toward her desk. “Your bad luck. You’re stuck with the dishes.”

  You’ve got good eyes,” Eve said to Trueheart. “Use them. Suspects may be observing the scene. They may be mixed with the lookie-loos, or based farther away using long-range. You spot anything that gives you a tingle, I hear about it.”

  She stepped out of her vehicle, looked at him over the roof. “At this point, Baxter would add, ‘Especially if the tingle comes from seeing a hot skirt loitering in the vicinity who looks like she’d put out for a couple of overworked cops.’ ”

  She waited a beat while Trueheart’s face reddened.

  “I, however, am not interested in that kind of tingle.”

  “Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir.”

  She saw the scene was secured with police barricades. And that, as expected, the usual gang of gawkers had gathered. It was the sort of area, she thought as she scanned street, sidewalk, windows, roofs, where a good percentage of the gawkers would be pickpockets, and another good percentage would go home with those pockets handily emptied.

  Their problem.

  She hooked her badge to her waistband, headed in.

  “Suit’s here,” one of the uniforms called out, and she stopped in her tracks.

  She turned, very slowly, caught him in the crosshairs of her cold gaze. “Don’t ever call me a suit.”

  She left him, withered, and moved toward the crumpled body of Meredith Newman. “First on scene?” she asked the uniform standing by.

  “Yes, sir. My partner and I responded to a call from this location, reporting a body in the alley between the buildings. One of the owners of the restaurant stepped out in the alley on her break, and observed what appeared to be a body. Upon responding, we—”

  “I got it. Have you secured the witness?”

  “Yes, sir, along with other kitchen staff who also entered the scene in response to the first witness’s screams.”

  Eve puffed out her cheeks as she looked around the alley. “How many people have tromped around on my scene?”

  “At least six, Lieutenant. I’m sorry, they’d already come out, looked around—and moved the body—by the time we arrived. We moved the civilians back into the restaurant and secured the scene.”

  “All right.” She did another study of the alley. Short and narrow, dead-ending into the graffiti-laced wall of another. Confi
dence, arrogance again, she decided. They could have dumped her anywhere, or simply destroyed the body.

  Still, there was no security here. No cams on any of the exit doors. Pull in, dump, pull out. And wait for somebody to trip over what’s left of her.

  “Seal up, Trueheart,” she ordered, and continued to examine the body as she drew out her own can of Seal-It. “Record on. What do you see?”

  “Female, early thirties, clothes removed.”

  “You can say naked, Trueheart. You’re of age.”

  “Yes, sir. Ligature marks, wrists, ankles. What appear to be burn marks on shoulders, torso, arms, legs, indicate torture. The throat’s been deeply cut. There’s no blood. She wasn’t cut here, but killed elsewhere and put here.”

  Eve crouched, turned one of the dead hands at the wrist. “She’s cold. Like meat you put in a friggie to keep it fresh. They had her stowed. She’s been dead since the day they grabbed her.”

  But she got out her gauge to estimate the time of death and confirmed. “Burn marks on her back and buttocks as well. Bruising might be from the grab. Abrasions are consistent with the body hitting the pavement, rolling. Way postmortem.”

  She fit on her goggles, examined the area around the mouth and eyes. “It looks like they taped her up. Skin’s reddened here, shows a pattern that would match tape, but there’s no residue.”

  She sat back on her heels.

  “What else do you see, Trueheart?”

  “The location—”

  “No, the body. Focus on her. She’s been dead for days now. There’s evidence of considerable torture. She had her throat cut, and going with previous pattern, she was alive when the knife went in. What do you see?”

  Concentration settled over his face. Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “She’s clean, Trueheart. What do you do when somebody inflicts burns on your body strong enough to singe flesh? You don’t just scream your lungs out and beg for mercy. You piss yourself, you soil yourself, you puke. Your body erupts, and it voids. But she’s clean. Somebody washed her down, even to removing the residue from whatever they used to blindfold and gag her. We won’t find any trace on her.”