by J. D. Robb
“Sir,” Peabody said, with feeling, “I really don’t think you should tease the animals.”
“The rats can handle it.”
Eve turned down the next tunnel as the insulted flasher shouted inventive suggestions about what Eve might do with his pride and joy.
“Gotta give him points for originality,” Baxter commented.
“And optimism,” Trueheart added, and made his partner hoot with laughter.
Despite herself, Eve tossed a grin over her shoulder. His young, handsome face might have been pale and just a little clammy, but Trueheart was game.
The shouts echoed away as they reached Bloodbath. It was locked down tight.
She used the number Dorian had given her. With the video blocked, he answered in a slurred and sleepy voice.
“ Dallas, official police business. Open up.”
“Of course. One moment.”
It took a bit longer than one, but the locks clicked, the security lights blinked to green. And the barred doors slid slowly open.
Eve saw the extra minutes had given Dorian time to set the stage.
Inside the lights were a dim and smoky blue with pulsing red undertones. The screen behind the stage flickered on, filled with images in black and white of women being attacked or willingly baring their necks for fangs. The blood that ran down flesh was black as pitch.
Dressed in black, his shirt open to the waist, Dorian stood above the screen on one of the open balconies. He seemed to float there on a thin river of fog, as if he could, at any moment, simply lift his arms and rise into the air. His face was ghost pale, his eyes and hair black as ink.
“I see you brought company.” His voice flowed, echoed. “Please…” He gestured toward the steps. “Come up.”
“That’s a spider to the fly invite,” Baxter murmured, glanced at Eve. “You go first.”
She hated that her heart stuttered, that her blood ran cold under her skin. Though her stomach clenched in protest, she crossed the club floor where more fog was beginning to curl and snake, and her bootsteps echoed on the iron steps as she climbed.
Smiling, slowly smiling, Dorian stepped back. And vanished in the mist.
She drew her weapon. An instant later she had to fight not to jolt as he seemed to materialize directly in front of her. His eyes were so dark she couldn’t tell pupil from iris. In them, if she let herself look, were all the horrors of her childhood.
“Nice trick,” she said casually. “And a good way to get stunned.”
“I trust your reflexes. My home.” He gestured again, then led the way through an open door.
Black and red and silver. He’d played up the gothic touches, Eve noted, but didn’t lack for plush. Iron chandeliers held white candles, wall niches showcased statuary of demons or nudes in pornographic poses.
There were curved black divans and black high-backed chairs studded with metal, and a single life-sized painting of a woman in a diaphanous white gown, bent limply over the arm of a black-caped man. Her eyes were wide with terror, her mouth open in a scream, as he bent toward her neck with fangs exposed.
“My humble home,” Dorian said. “I hope you approve.”
“A little too theatrical for my taste.” She turned and looked him directly in the eyes. Eyes that triggered memories and fears she couldn’t completely bury. “I’m going to need another sample, Dorian. I’ll need you to come in for this one.”
“Really? I’d think I gave you more than enough blood…for police purposes. A drink for you or your companions?”
“No.”
“Excuse me while I get one. I’m not used to being up so early in the day.” He moved to a bar, opened the minifridge behind it. He took out a squat black bottle, poured red and thick liquid into a silver cup.
“We’ll arrange your transport, have you back for your morning nap.”
“I’d like to oblige you, but it’s just not possible.” He gestured an apology with one hand. “I’m under no legal obligation, after all.”
“We’ll discuss that at Central.”
“I don’t think so.” Carrying his cup, he walked to a desk. “I have here a document that lists me-quite legally-as unable to tolerate sunlight. Religious reasons.” He passed the document to her. “As to the sample, I’m afraid you’ll need a warrant this time. I did cooperate.”
He sat on the sofa, arranged himself in a lazy sprawl. “If this is about Tiara Kent, I have witnesses putting me here in the club at the time she was killed. You spoke with one yourself just last night.”
Studying the paper, Eve answered without looking up. “Your alibi was killed early this morning.”
“Really?” He sipped negligently. “That’s a great pity. She was an excellent bartender.”
“Where were you between two and four A.M. this morning?”
“Here, of course. I have a business to run and patrons to entertain.”
Now her eyes flashed to his. Let him see, she told herself. Let him see that I know. That I won’t back down. “And witnesses to intimidate?”
“As you like.” He shrugged a shoulder, and there was a laugh on his face now, a gleeful amusement smeared with viciousness. “I find religious prejudice tedious, but understandably…human. Those outside the cult often fear it, or smirk at it. For myself, I enjoy it and find it profitable. And there are other, more intimate benefits.”
He rose again, moved across the room, opened a door. “Kendra, would you come out for a moment?”
She was covered in a robe so thin it might’ve been air, and it showed a generously curved body. Her hair was tumbled, her eyes blurry with sleep, and-Eve was certain-chemicals.
She recognized the blonde that had approached and pawed over Dorian the night before. She moved to him now, wrapped her arms around his neck, rubbed her body suggestively to his. “Come back to bed.”
“Soon. This is Lieutenant Dallas, and her associates. Kendra Lake, a friend of mine. Kendra, the lieutenant would like to know where I was this morning, between two and four.”
She turned her head, aimed eyes with pupils big enough to swim in toward Eve. “Dorian was with me, in bed, having sex. Lots of sex. We’d be having sex now if you’d go away. Unless you want to stay and watch.”
“What are you on, Kendra?” Eve asked.
“I don’t need to be on anything but Dorian.” She rose on her toes, whispered something in Dorian’s ear. He laughed, a low rumble, then shook his head.
“That’s rude. Why don’t you go back in, wait for me. I won’t be long.”
“Kendra,” Eve said as the blonde started back toward the bedroom. “Did he promise you’d live forever?”
Kendra looked over her shoulder, smiled. Then shut the bedroom door behind her.
“Was there something else, Lieutenant?” Dorian asked. “I hate to keep a beautiful woman waiting.”
“This might hold up.” She set the document down. “Or it may not. Either way, we’re not done. You shouldn’t have used Gregor Pensky’s DNA, because I’m going to link you to him.” She stepped closer, ignoring the tickle at the back of her throat as those dark eyes pierced hers. “We’ll talk again real soon, Dorian.”
He grabbed her hand, brought it to his lips. She told herself she hadn’t yanked it away to prove a point. But she wasn’t entirely sure.
“I’ll look forward to it.”
Watching him, she dipped a finger in his cup, sucked the liquid off her finger. “Tasty,” she said as his eyes blurred with what she recognized as excitement.
She walked out, down the stairs. With an effort she kept her expression cool as he once again materialized in front of her, in the mists that now clouded the club.
“I always escort my guests to the door. Safe travels, Lieutenant. Until we meet again.”
“How’d he do that?” Even as her eyes tracked the tunnels, Peabody stuttered out the question. “How’d he do that?”
“Elevator, false doors. Smoke and fucking mirrors.” It irritated Eve that he’d n
early made her jump, disturbed her so that her skin crawled as if he’d run his fingers over it.
She had to remind herself she’d bearded him in his own den, and she hadn’t cracked. Her pulse wasn’t steady, but she hadn’t cracked.
“Damn good trick though,” Baxter commented from the rear. “Did you get a load of the blonde? I might try a little blood sucking if you score that kind of action.”
“She’s an idiot, and a lucky one,” Eve tossed back. “He needs to keep her alive, unless he’s bone stupid.”
“She was using. You were right on that one, Lieutenant.” Trueheart’s voice was just a little breathy. “I saw plenty of zoners and chemi-heads when I did sidewalk sleeper detail. She was zoned to the eyeballs.”
“Okay, so he likes his women toked, and plays magic tricks. Not so scary,” Peabody decided. “And the stuff he was drinking? Syrup, right? Just red syrup.”
“No.” Eve avoided a smear of some unidentifiable substance on the tunnel floor and aimed for the dim light ahead. “That was blood.”
“Oh.” Peabody gripped the cross at her neck. “Well.”
On the street, Eve snapped out orders as she moved to her vehicle. “Baxter, I want you and Trueheart to find me a connection, any connection between Vadim and Pensky. Use EDD, if necessary, and see if you can pin Vadim in the area Pensky was killed. I’ll get you the data I have. Peabody, push harder on the jewelry from the first vic. Turning the glitters liquid may be too hard to resist. We need to run this Kendra moron. My money says she’s got a deep well. His pattern is to bilk rich women. However he’s escalated, whatever the game, that’s his base.”
She shoved her way into traffic. “I’m going to the PA. I need a damn warrant, and I want to shatter his religious shield into a lot of tiny pieces.”
But an hour later, Eve stood, stunned and furious, in APA Cher Reo’s office.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’m giving it to you straight.” Reo was smart, savvy, and ambitious, a small blonde dynamo. And she tossed up her hands. “I’m not saying we couldn’t have the order overturned, I’m saying it’s a tricky business, and one that would take time and a lot of taxpayer dollars. The boss won’t move on it, not with what you have. Bring us evidence, even a real glimmer of probable cause on the homicides, and we’ll start the war. And war is the word. The courts don’t like to mess with religious objections and predilections, even when they’re obvious bullshit.”
“This guy bled two women to death.”
“Maybe he did. You say he did, I’m going to agree with you. But I can’t give you a warrant for his residence, his place of business, on what you’ve got. I can’t break down his objection to daylight hours with what you’ve got. Worse, the DNA you took-the vial with your initials on it, doesn’t match.”
“He switched them.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how.” She kicked Reo’s desk.
“Hey!”
“Reo, this guy’s just getting started. He’s pumped. He’s using God knows what to keep pumped, and the killing’s got him flying on his own importance. He’s got a club full of opportunities every damn night. Like a damn all-you-can-eat buffet.”
“Bring me something. I’ll go to the wall for you, you know that. Bring me something I can use. Until you do, I’ll do some research on precedents for breaking through a religious objection. If you can wiggle something that rings on the use or possession of illegals, I’ll get you a warrant to search and seize on those grounds. It’s the best I can do, Dallas.”
“Okay. Okay.” Eve raked her hands through her hair. “I’ll get something.” She thought of Allesseria’s ex. Illegals passed around like party favors, he’d said. Add three cops and another civilian who had been in the club and they’d all swear they’d witnessed illegals bought, sold, and consumed. “Yeah, I can get something for an illegals raid.”
“Make it work. And you know,” Reo cast a glance at her office window, “I think I’m going to be damn sure I’m home and behind a locked door before sunset.”
Nine
Eve hunted up Feeney and Roarke in a lab in EDD. She could see them both standing, hands in pockets, as they studied a screen-in the same way she’d noted men often studied motors or other gadgets.
Physically, they couldn’t have been less alike with Feeney nearly a head shorter even with the explosion of the mixed ginger and silver bush of his hair. Feeney habitually slouched, just as he was habitually rumpled and wrinkled. Roarke may have ditched his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt, but the contrast remained very broad.
Inside, she knew they often ran on the same path, particularly when it came to e-work. Geeks born of the same motherboard, she thought.
It was a relief to see them, and not so hard to admit. A relief to see these two men-so essential to the life she’d made-after coming from her confrontation with Dorian, and the demons he woke in her.
She stepped in. “Did you clean up the transmission?”
Feeney turned to her, droopy eyes, mournful expression. Roarke shifted, eyes of an almost savage blue. There was a click here, too, but a good solid one, one that made her smile.
Roarke angled his head. “Lieutenant?”
“Nothing.” But she thought: Who needs crosses and holy water to fight demons when you have two men like this? Dorian would never have understood that bright and brilliant human link. Her father had never understood it.
“So.” She crossed to them, and because it amused her, slid her hands into her pockets to mirror their stances. “What’s the word?”
“Good news,” Feeney began. “We got her clean. Bad news, there’s not much of him.”
“I don’t need much.”
“Going to need more than what we’ve got. Computer, run enhanced transmission.”
Acknowledged…
Eve watched Allesseria’s face. It was crystal clear now, as was the night around her, as was her voice. A streetlight beamed over her. The movement-rather than the jerky bounce of her quick walk-had been smoothed out, slowed down.
There was a sound, a whoosh of air, a ripple of fabric on the breeze. Eve watched the gloved hand snake in, between the ’link and the victim’s face. There was an upward jerk, an instant of pain and terror in Allesseria’s eyes. Then the image flipped as the phone tumbled: sky, street, sidewalk. Black.
“Crap” was Eve’s comment, and her hands fisted in her pockets now. “Anything when you magnify and slow it down?”
“We can enhance so you can count the stitches in the seams of the glove,” Feeney told her. “Can use the scale program to get you the size of it. We can give you the attacker’s probable height calculated from the size, the angles. But we can’t put on screen what’s not there. Got some snatches of audio though, for what it’s worth.”
He set the comp again, made the adjustments, then played it back.
What she heard first was silence.
“We backed out her voice, her footsteps,” Roarke explained, “the ambient city noises. Now…”
She caught it. Feet on pavement, the faintest rustle, then the rush she identified as a run followed by a jump or leap. There was a breath, expelled in a kind of laugh as the hand shot out and clamped Allesseria’s throat. And as the images rolled and tumbled on screen, a single low word. You.
“Not enough for a voiceprint,” Feeney pointed out. “Never hold up in court even if we could match it on one syllable.”
“He doesn’t have to know that.” Eve narrowed her eyes at the screen. “Maybe what we’ve got is just enough to shake him, to make him think we have more.”
Feeney grinned at Roarke, tapped a finger to his temple. “She’s got something cooking up there.”
“Yeah, I do. This time, we con the con.”
Roarke stepped into Eve’s office, closed the door. “I don’t like it.”
She continued across the cramped little room to her AutoChef, programmed coffee. “It’s a good plan.
It’ll work.” She took the two mugs of hot black out, passed him one. “And I didn’t figure you’d like it. That’s one of the drawbacks of having you inside an investigation.”
“There are other ways to run him to ground, Eve.”
“This is the quickest. There’s no putting standard surveillance on him,” she began. “There are dozens of ways in and out of those tunnels. I can’t know what kind of escape hatch he might have in that club, up in his apartment. He decides he’s bored here, or there’s too much heat, he’d be in the wind before we got close.”
“Find a way to shut down the club. Illegals raid will put him out of business.”
“Sure, we could do that, we will do that. And if that’s all we do, he’ll be smoke. There are fronts to the business,” she pointed out. “You said so yourself. And it’d take time we don’t have to cut through them and dig down to him. By then he’s gone.”
He set the coffee down on her desk. “All right, even agreeing that all that’s true, or very likely, it doesn’t justify you going in alone. You’re setting it up this way because the DNA crashed on you, and you’re blaming yourself.”
“That’s not true.” Or not entirely, she amended silently. “Sure, it pisses me off he pulled that over on me, but I’m not doing this to even the score.” Or not entirely.
Logic, she decided, was the best way to lay it out. Not as satisfying as a fight, she thought, but quicker. “Okay, look. I go in there with troops or other badges, he’s not going to talk, even if he sticks around long enough for me to corner him. He doesn’t have to stick around at this point. I can’t even pry him aboveground and get him in the box for interview. It has to be on his turf, and it has to be between him and me.”
“Why-on the last point?”
“Why didn’t you like him, from the get?”
She could see irritation cross Roarke’s face before he picked up the coffee again. “Because he scoped my wife.”
“Yeah. He’d like to take a bite, not only because I’m the cop looking at him, but because I’m married to you. Be a big ego kick for him to score off you. And if he thinks he has a shot at that, he’ll take it, and I’ll be ready.”