Echoes in Death

by J. D. Robb

  Anger slashed through the grief-thickened voice. “I had to get help, but I couldn’t stop shaking. I dropped my ’link because my hands were shaking, then I made myself stop, and I called for help. The person who answered said help would come, and she’d stay with me. She kept talking to me even when I couldn’t stop crying. And when the police came she told me to let them in, so I did. I—I have to call her mother. I have to tell his parents.”

  “We’re going to take care of that.” Eve glanced over when Peabody came in. “This is Detective Peabody. She’ll contact someone if you want someone to come, be with you.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “Think about it. Give me just a minute.”

  She gestured Peabody, stepped out of the room. “She holds up, and so does her timeline. She thought they were at work, didn’t come in yesterday as the female vic told her not to because of the snow. They were tight. A couple of things missing from down here. She cleared off the steps this morning.”

  “Might be some missing items from the second floor. Third floor’s like a media room/lounge deal. It looks like the vics settled in up there, watched a couple of vids, used some dishes—looks like movie snacks. A glass—I think juice. Only one wineglass. Maybe the killer had some wine.”

  “No, more likely the male vic. Female was pregnant.”

  “Oh hell. Goddamn it.” Peabody hissed out a breath. “The paint. Probably going to make that the nursery, the room right across from the master.”

  Peabody shook it off, but her jaw stayed hard. “McNab and Feeney just got here. They’re on the door.”

  “Stick with the witness.”

  She walked out, found McNab and Feeney running a diagnostic on the alarms. “Didn’t expect the boss.”

  Feeney, his magic coat open to reveal his rumpled shit-brown suit, scrubbed a hand over his wiry silver-threaded ginger hair. “I was going stir-crazy.” EDD’s captain and Eve’s former partner turned his basset-hound eyes to her. “Took out both of them this time?”

  “Both, and did a lot more damage first. Did he jam the system?”

  “He did that.” McNab jiggled his skinny, plaid-covered hips while he worked. “Slick job, too. It’s a solid system, not the best, but solid. One of the troubles is, for convenience, the owner or tenant can set or turn off the system remotely. From in or out of the house. That’s the kind of gap, unless it’s extreme top line, a good B and E man juices over.”

  “How many times do we tell people that?” Feeney said to McNab.

  “Infinity, boss. Infinity.”

  “Well, let’s see the setup. Where is it?”

  “I haven’t gotten there,” Eve told Feeney. “Kitchen area has a utility room off it from my quick glance. Maybe there. Peabody’s in there with the housekeeper. She found them.”

  “Tough luck all around.”

  He nodded when Eve opened the door for the morgue team, directed them upstairs.

  “Yeah, tough luck all around. Here come your sweepers.”

  In minutes, cops and techs were spread over the crime scene. The uniforms completed the canvass of the neighbors, reported no one—who was now home—had seen anyone or anything.

  Hardly surprising, Eve thought as she watched the morgue team bring down the bagged bodies. People hunkered down in a snowstorm, drank, had sex, watched vids, read books, whatever.

  Then again, some couldn’t resist heading out in it, playing around in a city gone white and still. Maybe, just maybe, they’d still find some of those. Just one witness who’d seen someone around this house.

  Once the morgue team left, Eve went back to the dining area, sat again.

  “Nina’s just given me her brother’s contact information.” Peabody nudged the glass of water closer to Nina’s hand. “I’m going to have him come and pick her up, or stay with her until she can go.”

  “Good. You can go pretty soon. I have something I need to ask you to do. A hard thing for you to do, but it will help us.”

  “It’ll help you find the son of a bitch who hurt my kids?”

  “I think so.”

  “Nothing’s too hard, not for that. I’ll do anything.”

  “I need you to come upstairs with me.” Eve kept her gaze steady as the color drained out of Nina’s face. “I need you to look at Nina’s clothes. Her closet. Her cocktail dresses and outfits especially. Would you know if one of them is missing?”

  “I know her clothes. I’d know. I’d know. Is she—are they still up there?”

  “No. They’re not upstairs now. They’re going to someone who’s going to take care of them. He’s the best.”

  “Can I go where they are and see them? After? Miko’s mom, especially, Miko’s mom, she’ll need me with her.”

  “Yes. We’ll let you know when you can do that.”

  “Okay. Okay.” She squeezed her eyes shut, then rose. “I can go up with you and look.”

  They started up the back stairs.

  “I want you to do what I tell you. I want you to look down, keep looking down when we go in. I don’t want you to look at the room. There’s no need for that.”

  “I’ll see it in my head until the day I die.”

  “Just look down,” Eve repeated, taking Nina’s arm to steer her inside and into the closet. “Okay, now take your time, take a good look through.”

  “I don’t have to. Her new red cocktail dress is gone. She hasn’t even worn it yet. She bought it special for a Valentine’s Day party, and it was right here—you see? She said I should take this other red one for my girl. They’re near the same size. And the one that was on the other side of it, the dark pink one? It’s crooked on the hanger, like somebody hit it, knocked it some when they pulled the new one out.”

  “Red cocktail dress. Short?”

  “Short—she has beautiful legs. With a sweetheart neckline.” Nina drew the top of a heart in the air. “Three layers of flounces on the skirt, and a little silver bow in the back at the waist. Shoes are missing, too. Silver evening shoes with tiny red metallic bows on the backs.”

  She moved deeper into the closet, a woman on a mission now. “He took her jewelry, from the safe back here. That evil bastard took their things from the safe. She had her great-grandmother’s ruby pendant in there. She was going to wear it with the dress, and the earrings Xavier gave her for Christmas, just this past Christmas. Diamond drops with ruby hearts. Xavier’s grandfather’s watch. Xavier’s grandfather gave it to Xavier’s father when he turned twenty-one, and he passed it to Xavier. Xavier prized that watch.”

  It was pure rage flooding Nina’s face now. “That evil bastard can’t have it, you hear?”

  “I hear.”

  Nina swiped at tears that fell despite her anger. “Miko’s favorite evening bag’s gone. It’s silver with a red bird flying over it. She likes red.”

  “Okay. Nina, when we go back out, I’d like if you can look through the other rooms, see if you find anything else missing. Then we can sit down and you can try to describe them for me, in detail.”

  “He might try to sell them or pawn them, and that’ll help you find them.” She turned to Eve, face ravaged, eyes hard. “I can look in their bedroom. I’d know if anything was gone. I can do it. Let me do it.”

  “Okay. If it’s too much, we stop. You’re going to see people out there, in white protective suits. They’re looking for evidence.”

  “I watch screen. I know about sweepers and such. I can do this.”

  She could, and did, though her color was gray by the time they left the room. Still, she went with Eve through the rest of the house, sat and gave descriptive details on every missing item.

  “Nina, I want you to know that you’re about the best witness I’ve ever dealt with.”

  “You’re going to find him, stop him.”

  “We’re going after him with everything we’ve got. What you did gives us more. I’m going to have an officer stay with you until your brother gets here.”

  Eve ste
pped out, and Peabody stepped up.

  “Feeney and McNab are loading up the electronics. They’ll go through all the ’links, the comps, and tablets. The killer took the hard drives, the discs, smashed the hell out of everything he left, but they’ll take what’s left, try to piece something together.”

  “We need to work this. Contact Baxter and Olsen, pass the rest of the names to them.”

  “Already did. I let them know the situation.”

  “Good.” Eve rubbed the center of her forehead.

  “You okay?”

  “Headache. Sometimes it’s harder to go through this with somebody who’s holding on instead of someone who falls apart.”

  Peabody pulled an energy bar out of her pocket. “Emergency food. May help.”

  “That is in no way food.”

  “It’s crap, but it helps.” Peabody broke it in half, held a portion out to Eve.

  “Fine. Thanks. Let’s see what Morris can tell us.” As they headed out, Eve took a bite. “It’s terrible. What is it?”

  “Honey Nougat Cluster Pop.”

  “Now it’s somehow even worse.”

  But thinking of what lay ahead, Eve choked down the rest.

  16

  Eve found Morris completing his Y-cut on Miko Carver, while a voice that sounded like an angel soared through the room.

  Xavier Carver lay on a second slab, cleaned and prepped for autopsy.

  “I’m sorry to see you again so soon.” Morris, his midnight-blue suit protected by his cloak, deftly spread Miko’s ribs.

  Eve heard Peabody swallow hard, snapped, “Suck it up.”

  More tolerant of the reaction, Morris gestured to the friggie tucked away near the cold drawers reserved for the dead. “Water, fizzies, and our lieutenant’s Pepsi. Have something cool. Music volume decrease to three.”

  As Peabody gratefully headed to the friggie, her gaze averted from the slab, for now, the angel’s voice lowered to a loving murmur.

  “I know I’m pushing it,” Eve said, “but I wanted to see what, if anything, you have before I go into Central.”

  “I’ll be able to tell you more in an hour or two. My initial exam on the female confirms she was pregnant at the time of her death. Five to six weeks. The cuts along her torso are shallow, most likely inflicted by a thin, sharp blade.”

  “Like the others.”

  “Yes, like the others. She was raped, multiple times. Sodomized. I need to complete my examination to confirm, but I believe the sodomy was a single incident. And postmortem.”

  “He sodomized her after he killed her?”

  “I need to confirm, but that’s my preliminary opinion. We could consider it a blessing she had passed before that final, ugly act, but I also believe her death was slow and painful. I’ll need to confirm your on-scene evaluation of strangulation as COD, but at this point I agree with it.”

  He gestured her forward. Peabody stepped up, offered Eve a tube of Pepsi.

  Distracted, Eve stuck the tube in her coat pocket, leaned closer to examine the neck wounds as Morris did.

  “Even without the goggles or the comp enhancement, you can see several wounds that are distinct and of varying degrees.”

  “Choked her, let her revive, choked her, let her revive. Repeat.”

  “Yes, until he increased the pressure and the length of time, depriving her of air, and crushed her windpipe.”

  “He’s good at it.” Peabody sipped from her tube of ginger ale, bearing down on the queasiness. “Good and controlled enough not to go too far, to keep her coming back until he decided to finish it.”

  “It’s part of the rape,” Eve said. “Her body convulses, she struggles for air, her eyes roll back. It’s an orgasm to him. The postmortem anal rape, that’s new. Maybe he wanted to try the new, or maybe he wanted another bump, or maybe it had something to do with the show.”

  “Show?” Morris repeated.

  “Whatever stage he’d set, whatever costume he’d chosen. She fought, struggled, tore her wrists up fighting the restraints. She’d have told him she was pregnant. It would be at the top of her mind. ‘Please, don’t. I’m pregnant.’ What did he think of that?”

  She looked over at the male victim. “Can you confirm he died first?”

  “Yes. About ten minutes before. And, again from a visual exam, there were gaps in time between several of the injuries, on both victims. It appears—I stress appears for now—the male victim suffered a blow to the right temple, the initial attack. The rug burns on the heels appear to have been incurred around the same time. And this?” Morris laid a sealed finger, gently, on the bruising beside Miko’s left eye. “Again, in that same time frame. This isn’t as violent, this blow, but would have disoriented, debilitated.”

  And hurt like hell, Eve thought.

  “His hands next?”

  “If you want opinion rather than confirmation, yes.”

  “Okay.” It all jibed with what she’d seen, felt, observed on scene.

  Give pain, create terror—the terror was every bit as important as the pain. Control, perform, humiliate.

  “We’ll get out of your way. Anything that jumps out—whether you can confirm or not—let me know. Anything.”

  As she walked out, she heard Morris order the volume up. And the angel sang.

  She thought about detouring to the lab, but accepted it was far too soon, a waste of time. Instead she checked addresses, then drove to do the notifications of the next of kin, and shatter more lives.

  When they finished, Peabody put her head back, shut her eyes. “It’s always harder than you tell yourself it will be. It’s always harder.”

  “You helped Miko’s mother.”

  “I hope. Some. It’ll help more when Nina goes to her. And maybe, when the shock wears off some for her, for Xavier’s parents, they’ll remember something. Some details that adds to this.”

  “Have the bartender brought in,” Eve ordered as she pulled into Central’s garage. “I want a look at him, and I want him to have a look at me. In the box.”

  “How about I send Uniform Carmichael and whoever he picks? He can be smooth and persuasive.”

  “Do that. Then check with Baxter and Olsen, see how far they’ve gotten on the list. Anything buzzes, we need to know.”

  They started up in an elevator that quickly grew crowded. “I’ve got to make a stop. Get this started.” Eve shoved off, switched to glide, and aimed for Mira’s office.

  Mira’s admin, her personal dragon, sat in the outer office busily keyboarding.

  “I need to see her.”

  “Dr. Mira is in a session.”

  “Don’t fuck with me on this.” Eve felt all the anger and frustration she’d shoved down through the day rising fast, like hot vomit in the throat. “This directly concerns her.”

  “Is Mr. Mira—”

  “No, it’s not that.” Reading the genuine fear in the admin’s eyes, Eve fought to throttle back. “But it concerns both of them, and it’s important.”

  “She is in a session, and specifically asked not to be interrupted barring emergency. She’ll be done in forty minutes. I can get you in directly after and shift her next appointment.”

  “I’ll get back if I can. She doesn’t leave here today without seeing or speaking to me. Clear?”

  “Absolutely.”

  With a curt nod, Eve strode out. She chose glides again to give herself time to settle down, then pulled out her ’link.

  Another admin answered, but Roarke’s sort of magnificent Caro usually proved more flexible.

  “Good afternoon, Lieutenant. What can I do for you?”

  “Hey, sorry, but is there any way I can speak to him, or that he can tag me back as soon as possible?”

  “Give me a minute.” So saying, the screen went to a waiting blue.

  It took that minute, and a little more, but Roarke’s face came on screen.

  She heard a babble of voices in the background, and a number of whooshes, thuds.

&nbs
p; “Lieutenant?”

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “At An Didean, just outside what will be the recreation center.”

  She thought of the shelter he was creating for disenfranchised kids—and the dead girls they’d found sealed inside the walls of the building the previous year.

  “I need a favor.”

  “All right.”

  “Can you work in a stop by the Miras’ sometime today?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, and I just want to keep it that way.” Stupid, she told herself. Overreacting. But she couldn’t stop it. “I thought you could take a good look at their security, maybe do what you do to beef it up, or add a couple layers. He hit again last night, killed both of them this time. I know the Miras aren’t on the list—she’s outside his age preference, and they’re not seriously wealthy, exactly, but—”

  “I’ll pick up a few things, go by before I come home tonight. Will that work?”

  “Yeah.” Ridiculous relief flooded her. “Thanks. Mavis and Leonardo and the kid are in New L.A. for a couple of days. Some fashion thing for him, some gig for her. They’re not really in the pattern, either, but I don’t have to think about them right now. The Miras … I just don’t want to risk it.”

  “Then we won’t.”

  “I’ll let her know you’re doing this. I … I can’t talk now, but thanks for this.”

  “They’re mine as they’re yours. Tag me if you’re going to be delayed, more than usual, getting home.”

  “I will.”

  She clicked off as she turned into Homicide.

  “Carmichael’s on the way with the new uniform to scoop up Anson Wright,” Peabody told her. “I just got off with Baxter. He and the other detectives are coordinating, and they can handle the rest of the list. One of the couples he and Trueheart talked to are friends of the Patricks, and were at their table the night of the gala. No connection to the vendors, but the wife’s done numerous vid ads, and is currently one of the stars in one of On Screen’s projects in development. Baxter says she’s ‘Ooh-la-la.’”