Echoes in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “Perhaps not, but by living in a space that surrounds them with care in those details, they may be more inclined to care how they live, to take care of where they live.”

  He brushed his hand over hers. “And some,” he continued, “might make the connection that someone cared enough about them to add the little details.”

  “That’s a point. It’s a good point,” she decided. “I can guarantee they are going to care about the size of the screen in the community room, and what vid games they’re allowed to play.” She smiled as she bit into pizza. “And they’ll bitch about the classes, the assignments, the chores.”

  “Which would make them normal, wouldn’t it?”

  “That’s exactly right. And that’s what you’re doing. Giving them a chance for normal. It’s big, Roarke. I’d like a walk-through.”

  “Good, we’ll set it up. I want, very much, for you to see what it’s becoming.”

  She thought of the girls they’d found there—those long-dead girls. And knew he’d always think of them, too. “When do you figure you’ll open?”

  “We’re planning for spring. May, if all continues to go well. We’ve already contracted some of the key staff, and we’re interviewing and vetting others.”

  “You move fast, ace.”

  “If I didn’t, we might not be sitting here now, having pizza and wine.”

  “Sure we would.” She ate another bite. “You’d have caught up with me eventually.”

  He laughed, took a second slice. “Your headache’s gone.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  And because it was, because of all she had—right here—she added another dollop of wine to her glass and embraced the moment.

  After the meal, she went straight to coffee. The work, the job, the hours ahead would be long and tedious. The conclusions her instincts pointed her to had to be set to the side.

  Facts and evidence, she reminded herself. The gut wasn’t enough.

  “What’s my assignment?” Roarke asked her.

  “We’ve culled out names from the gala’s guest and staff lists. Males that fit the elements of Mira’s profile, with a little refining. The probability, given current evidence and statements, runs more than ninety percent he was there. It’s possible he crashed, isn’t on either list, but that’s where we start.”

  She ordered the list Peabody’d sent her on her wall screen. “This is my share. I’ve cut down Mira’s age bracket. I’m reasonably sure he’s closer to thirty than fifty, otherwise these individuals run on what she profiled. We’re going to dig down, every name. Family, education, travel, finances, any criminal however small—including traffic violations. Medical that we can get—and for now, no hacking.”

  “Lieutenant,” he said with sorrow. “You spoil my fun.”

  “For now,” she said again. “We get this list down, I’ll wrestle out a warrant for deeper, for any sealed files, for the works. Connections to theater or screen—anything involving the level of makeup and costuming the UNSUB uses, that’s a big bonus if found. Same with any major interest in e-work.”

  “As both of those may simply be a hobby, something that wouldn’t show in the data.”

  “That’s it. I’m going to give you the first five.”

  “It seems a lot of names for the profile.”

  “Some of them were married or cohabbed at the time of the gala, and now aren’t. We’re checking them. Some are staff who, while not assigned specifically to the gala, would have easy access. Peabody added those, and she’s not wrong.”

  “I’ll start in my office. I need to multitask for the next hour or so. Then I may join you in here.”

  Eve settled into it. It was routine—tedious, but routine—with a rhythm she knew well. Within thirty minutes, she’d eliminated two names, one as she could confirm he’d been in Rio on the night the Patricks had been assaulted, and the second who’d been involved in a vehicular accident the day of the Strazzas’ attack, and was still recovering from a fractured ankle and other injuries.

  She moved on, discarding, earmarking for a yet deeper search.

  When Roarke came in, she’d just programmed more coffee as she studied the next subject.

  “This guy went to clown school. Why is there a school for clowns? Why are there clowns?”

  “Someone has to make ’em laugh.”

  She slid her gaze to his face. “Seriously?”

  He shrugged. “While some fear the clown, many more are vastly entertained.”

  “This guy supplements his income in food services by dressing up in weird getups for parties and benefits. Or his income in food services supplements his clown gigs. Hard to tell. But there you have makeup and costumes and a propensity to scare the shit out of people.”

  “Some people.”

  Sincerely shocked, she gaped at him. “You like clowns?”

  “Like is a strong word in this context.” He helped himself to her coffee. “I assume the clown goes on the suspect list.”

  “You bet your ass.”

  “I have one out of my five that bears a deeper look. The others I’ve eliminated, for reasons I’ve detailed in my memo back to you.”

  “Good. I’ve got three out of nine.”

  Roarke lifted an eyebrow. “You’re quicker at this.”

  “I’m the cop.” And a human being, she thought, who could use a little smugness. “Want another set?”

  “All right.” He sat at the auxiliary, hair tied back, sleeves rolled up.

  She sent him five more, settled back into the rhythm.

  At one point, she sat back. “I don’t think this guy’s a killer—or not ours anyway—but he’s sure as hell into something hinky.”

  “Hinky as in supporting a sidepiece, travel and gifts for same—I’ve had a few of those—or hinky as in criminal?”

  “Both actually. But I think the sidepiece is also a partner. A lot of travel for her, a lot of suspicious deposits—smallish, that added together aren’t smallish. Sixty to eighty large every six weeks, when she travels to Argentina—no relatives or business there on record. The deposits disappear, except for an exact ten percent.”

  “Or end up in another account,” Roarke said. “Money laundering, and the ten’s her fee.”

  “I get that. I don’t have time for that.” But she earmarked the name to send to those who would, and should. Caught Roarke’s grin.

  “What?”

  “The poor bastard has no idea of the good news/bad news heading his way. ‘Sir, you’re clear of any suspicion of murder, and are now under investigation for money laundering, probable fraud, and so on’.”

  “He should’ve thought of that before he got so greedy.”

  She moved on, frowned when her ’link signaled.

  “Dallas.”

  “Hey.” McNab’s pretty face came on screen.

  “You’re still at it?”

  “Got sucked into the puzzle, you know? She-Body’s up here in the lab working on her stuff, so it’s all smooth. Got pizza and fizzies. But we’re calling it pretty soon, so I wanted to let you know I’ve got some pieces. Man, you would not believe what people throw in a recycler, and in that ritz neighborhood.”

  “Pieces of the ’link?”

  “Yeah. Only some of it got shredded—we lucked out. It’s crushed to shit, so it’s going to take a while. I can’t say a hundred percent, but what I’m putting together, I’m going to say it looks homemade. It looks like somebody made it out of spare parts. It’s not all from one manufacturer or from the same model—that I can say for a hundred.”

  “That’s good. That’s good work. Put Peabody on.”

  “Hang a mo. She-Body, Dallas wants a jaw.”

  “I don’t want a jaw,” she muttered. Roarke shook his head, made a talking gesture with his hand. “Why doesn’t he say talk?”

  The screen bobbled as McNab passed the ’link. Peabody came on.

  “We’re making some progress—McNab told you his. I’ve got one good possible out of
the first eight.”

  “Good. Send it. We’ve got…” Roarke held up a finger, signaling he had another. “Nine out of the first twenty-nine. I’ll copy you.”

  “How’d you get through twenty-nine? I’ve been at this since—”

  “Roarke’s working some.”

  “Oh. Okay, that’s better. He’s really fast with comp work.”

  “I’m beating his total,” Eve said before she could stop herself. “Doesn’t matter. Stop at ten, go home. Both of you.”

  “Twenty,” Peabody said. “I’ve got twenty in me.”

  “Twenty. Send me all potentials before you leave. We’ll pick this up tomorrow.”

  Eve clicked off, pressed her fingers to her eyes.

  “You can take a break,” Roarke pointed out.

  “No, not yet.”

  “A pick-me-up then. Milk and cookies.”

  “I’m not drinking milk. Do you know where it comes from?” The idea made her shudder.

  “As does the cheese on the pizza you’re so fond of.”

  “Entirely different. Cookies, maybe. After I do another five.”

  “What about soy milk?”

  “Soy milk, soy milk. Say that a few times running and tell me it doesn’t sound revolting.”

  “I fear I can’t.” He glanced at his wrist unit when it beeped. “That’s Tokyo. I need to deal with this, then I’ll be back. For cookies and something other than milk of any kind.”

  She went through the next five, painstakingly. Moved on to another three before she pushed away from the command center, moved around the room, circled the board.

  Her gut wasn’t wrong, she thought, and her head was in line with it now. But she still had work to do, the routine, the eliminations.

  She went back, brought up the names of the possibles the other team members had sent her. And lined them up.

  Seventeen so far. Seventeen who had enough in their backgrounds, histories, routines, lives to be considered potential rapists, murderers.

  Eighty more eliminated, by herself and people she trusted to do the job right.

  Another forty-plus yet to be put through the intrusion of a police search.

  And every inch of the cop she was knew what he hid behind his mask.

  She went back, set aside the current work, pushed down the avenue where her gut, her head told her to go.

  “Took longer than I’d hoped,” Roarke said as he came back. “You really should take that break. Five minutes to rest your eyes, your brain.”

  He paused when he glanced at the wall screen, at the list of names.

  “You have more.”

  “I put up what the other team members sent. We’re more than halfway done with this first pass. We’ll need those deeper runs on what we cull out. I’m going to want to take a look at the ones the others have listed, but if they pulled them out, there’s something.”

  He looked back at her. “You’re a cop to the bone.”

  “No surprise there.”

  “And the love of my life. I know all sides of you. You found something. Someone.”

  “I can’t say that. More than one someone up there.”

  “What did you find?” he persisted.

  “Cheats, liars, some shady dealings, embarrassments, mistakes, good deeds, broken hearts.”

  “Eve.”

  “Life’s full of all of that.” Then she sighed. “You have a respected, high-skilled doctor—not much liked on a personal level, but respected. A BFD in his world. His bad luck isn’t just being dead, but that the investigation into his murder will expose him as an abuser, possibly a sadist. A cruel, domineering son of a bitch who preyed on a vulnerable, much younger woman and essentially made her a prisoner of his will.

  “I might say she was old enough to get out, she had people to run to, but she didn’t. And we may never know how he managed to wrap the chains around her that kept her with him.”

  She got up now, let herself move.

  “That woman, cowed, fragile already, is brutally, viciously attacked, raped, beaten, choked by an assailant that uses staging to terrify his prey. Who humiliates her—and this woman had already suffered, no question, constant humiliation. During the long, brutal, and humiliating assault, her husband’s struck down, and in turn, she is struck down. Blow to the back of the head. When she recovers, she’s in such deep shock she ends up wandering the streets naked in the middle of a frigid night.”

  She looked toward the board and Daphne’s battered face.

  “She wanders outside because the assailant released her, as he had with previous targets. Other couples, with similar lifestyles, social and financial standings. A pattern. Murder changed the pattern, expanded it, so the assailant pushes his escalation, in time frame, in violence.”

  She could see it—God, she could feel it. All of it. All sides of it.

  “It was always going there,” she said. “Always. From the first time he tried to intimidate a woman, to push himself on her, and was rejected. From the first time he fantasized about a woman he couldn’t have, it was going there. This?” She gestured to the board. “This was always in him, no matter what mask he wore to hide it. He couldn’t have this woman. Might have made some overture, was rejected. Maybe simply kept it to fantasy, but the fantasy kept cycling, deepening, darkening.”

  She walked back to her comp, opened a file, ordered an image on screen.

  The man and woman stood with their arms around each other’s waists, laughing. An ocean flowed behind them. She wore a short, billowing dress that the breeze blew high on her thighs. Her hair lifted in it, swirling dark, wildly curling around a singularly beautiful face.

  While the man was handsome, fit, appealing—leaning toward distinguished—she dominated the image.

  “This was taken about twenty years ago, for a profile on the couple, published in some glossy mag.”

  “Who are they?”

  Eve held up a finger, called up another image.

  Now two couples stood together, formal wear, jewels, glamour. Along with the glamour was an ease, a look of enjoyment.

  “Are the women related? There’s a resemblance, though the one on the left is…”

  “Exceptional. Stunning. The object of his desire.”

  Roarke nodded, came to lean against the curve of the command center. “His mother?”

  “No. His mother’s on the right. His aunt’s on the left. He spent a lot of time with his aunt and her family. Visiting, spending school breaks.”

  She called up a picture of the woman, just the face, then split-screened it with another.

  “Do you see it?”

  Roarke glanced back at Eve, then looked more closely at the two images. “Both have dark, curling hair, both are extremely beautiful.”

  “It’s more,” she insisted. “The shape of the face, the shape of the mouth. Not exact, but very similar. The way their eyes are set—I did a comparison. They don’t resemble each other, but they do, on a kind of subliminal scale. It’s the balance of their features, the almost perfect symmetry. He may not have understood it, not consciously, but there, suddenly, the woman he’d fantasized about most of his life. There she was, young, beautiful, available. But—”

  Eve reached for her coffee. “She didn’t want him. She wanted his cousin.”

  “You believe…” He had to look at the board to read the name. “You believe Kyle Knightly attacked his cousin, beat and raped his cousin’s wife. Stole from them, tormented them, shattered them because he lusted for his cousin’s mother?”

  “I know it. I felt something off, just off, when I talked to him at the studio. Something about the way he talked about Rosa—not the words, so much. But he did say that he’d seen her first, like he was joking, but his eyes weren’t joking. He said he’d told his cousin to make a move, even though she was with someone else. But today, she told me she’d made the move. It’s a small thing, but it’s going to matter, I think. And I think when I talk to her alone, she’s going to tell me Kni
ghtly approached her, she’ll tell me she had to brush him off.”

  “Rejected him.”

  “She wouldn’t have seen it that way. She’d have barely seen him at all because she’d already seen Neville. She told me today that the minute she saw him, that was it.”

  Pausing, Eve turned to Roarke. “I know what she means. That’s another echo for me. The first time I saw you—that was in a crowd, too, the funeral for one of my dead—it hit, and hard. I didn’t like it one bit. It pissed me off, but it hit.”

  “On both sides. One look.” Without thinking, he slid a hand into his pocket, rubbed his fingers over the button he’d carried ever since, one that had fallen off her truly ugly suit the day they’d met. “So, she barely saw him because all she saw was his cousin.”

  “And, oh, that festered. He wants what he wants. He’s rich and powerful, actors and screenwriters and industry people come to him, and she says no? The others say no? His cousin thinks he can steal what should be his? First his cousin’s mother flaunts herself, makes him want, but won’t let him have. Now his cousin takes the fantasy that’s standing right in front of him, young and fresh. They have to pay for it, they all have to pay, these fucking people who remind him, over and over, of what he’s denied. Because he’s the best those bitches have ever had, and he can make them admit it.”

  She let out a breath. “His second victim—the female—writes screenplays, like his aunt. That fits, and it solves the puzzle for me of why Lori Brinkman when none of his other female targets had any kind of career. He’s never been married, never officially cohabbed, or unofficially that I can find. He has a rep as a ladies’ man: dating beautiful women, never sticking according to gossip rags. And—”

  She broke off, took another hit of coffee. “He’s got a sexual assault hit, charges dropped, right after his eighteenth birthday. And I went back, took a look, noted that right about the same time a cool mil was transferred from his parents’ financials to the complainant, the twenty-year-old woman who recanted.

  “I think I’m going to find more payoffs, from him, that didn’t get as far as formal charges first. He dabbled in school plays, but hit his stride performing in and producing vids, high school, college. One of his highlights—self-proclaimed in an interview—was the restaging of Dracula, in which he also starred, his freshman year in college. He said, in the interview, he saw Dracula as romantic as well as sexual, and that by seducing and taking his female victims, he was giving them sexual release during a time when repression was the rule. He … released them. Bound them by his power, then released them from their own inhibitions.”