Indulgence in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “Aye. Well, I could live my life easy with never having to break a mother’s heart again. But the rest . . .”

  “Felt good.”

  “It did, yes. And does. Does it still for you when you’ve done it?”

  “If it didn’t, I don’t think I could knock on another mother’s door.”

  He sat another moment, nodding to himself. “All right then.” He rose, held out a hand. “Thank you for all your help.”

  “You’re welcome.” She shook.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll just go out the back and not disturb your family again. Would you tell them good night for me?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “It was fine meeting you, Lieutenant, even under the circumstances.”

  He went out the back, and Eve shoved aside the tea she had no desire for. Like Leary she sat for a moment in silence. Then she pushed to her feet and went back to where the family gathered. The music stopped.

  She walked to Sean, waited while he stood up.

  “His name is Kevin Donahue. They’d come this way to go to a party, and had a fight. In the car after they’d left, they had a bigger fight and he killed her in what he claims and probably was what we call a moment of passion.”

  “Just . . . just because he was mad at her?”

  “More or less, yes. Then he got scared and sorry, but it was too late for sorry. Too late for I didn’t mean to or I wish I hadn’t. He’s weak and stupid and selfish, so he took her into the woods and left her there, and ran away. You found her less than twelve hours after he’d done that. Because you did, the police were able to find him, arrest him. He’ll be punished for what he did.”

  “They’ll put him in a cage.”

  “He’s in one now.”

  “For how long?”

  Jesus, Eve thought, kids were merciless. “I don’t know. Sometimes it doesn’t seem long enough, but it’s what we’ve got.”

  “I hope they coshed him first, good and proper.”

  Eve struggled back a grin. “Kid, if you want to be a cop, you have to learn not to say that out loud. Bad guy’s in a cage. Case closed. Have some cake or something.”

  “A fine idea.” Sinead moved in to take Sean’s hand. “Help me slice up what’s left of it, that’s a good lad.” She sent Eve a quick smile. “Eemon, get that fiddle going. Our Yank will think we don’t know how to have a ceili.”

  Eve started to sit as the music flew out again, but Brian grabbed her, gave her a swing. “I’ll have a dance, Lieutenant darling.”

  “I don’t do that. The dance thing.”

  “You do tonight.”

  Apparently she did. And so did everyone else until the middle of the night, when her legs were rubber and barely carried her to bed.

  Where the rooster woke her at dawn.

  They said some good-byes over breakfast. Good-byes included a great many hugs, a lot of kissing. Or, in the case of Brian, being lifted right off her feet.

  “I’ll come courting the minute you’re done with that one.”

  What the hell, she thought, and kissed him back. “Okay, but he’s got some miles in him yet.”

  He laughed, turned to slap hands with Roarke. “Lucky bastard. Take care of yourself, and her.”

  “The best I can.”

  “I’m walking you to the car.” Sinead took Roarke’s hand. “I’m going to miss you.” She smiled at Eve as they walked through misting rain. “Both of you.”

  “Come for Thanksgiving.” Roarke squeezed her hand.

  “Oh . . .”

  “We’d like all of you to come again, as you did last year. I can make the arrangements.”

  “I know you can. I would love it. I think I’d be safe in saying we’d all love it.” She sighed, just leaned into Roarke for a moment. Then she drew back, kissed his cheek. “From your mother,” she murmured, then kissed the other. “From me.” Then laid her lips lightly to his. “And from all of us.”

  She repeated the benediction on Eve before blinking her damp eyes.

  “Go on now, go enjoy your holiday. Safe journey.” She grabbed Roarke’s hand another moment, spoke in Irish, then backed up, waving them away.

  “What did she say?” Eve asked when they got into the car.

  “Here’s love, she said, to hold until next we meet and I give you more.”

  He watched her in the rearview until they’d turned out of sight.

  In the silence Eve stretched out her legs. “I guess you are a pretty lucky bastard.”

  It made him smile; he sent her a quick, cocky look. “As they come,” he agreed.

  “Eyes on the road, Lucky Bastard.”

  She tried not to hold her breath all the way to the airport.

  4

  IT WAS GOOD TO BE HOME. DRIVING DOWNTOWN to Cop Central through ugly traffic, blasting horns, hyping ad blimps, belching maxibuses just put her in a cheerful mood.

  Vacations were great, but to Eve’s mind New York had it all and a bag of soy chips.

  The temperature might have been as brutal as a tax audit, with sweaty waves of heat bouncing off concrete and steel, but she wouldn’t trade her city for any place on or off planet.

  She was rested, revved, and ready for work.

  She rode the elevator up from the garage, shuffling over as more cops squeezed in on every floor. When she felt the oxygen supply depleting, she pried her way out to take the glides the rest of the way up.

  It smelled like home, she thought—cop, criminal, the pissed off, the unhappy, the resigned. Sweat and bad coffee merged together in an aroma she wasn’t sure could be found anywhere but a cop shop.

  And that was fine with her.

  She listened to a beanpole of a man in restraints mutter his mantra as a pair of uniforms muscled him up the glide.

  Fucking cops, fucking cops, fucking cops.

  It was music to her ears.

  She stepped off, angled toward Homicide, and spotted Jenkinson, one of her detectives, studying the offerings at Vending with a hopeless expression.

  “Detective.”

  He brightened slightly. “Hey, Lieutenant, good to see you.”

  He looked as if he’d slept in his clothes for a couple days.

  “You pull a double?”

  “Caught one late, me and Reineke.” He settled on something that looked like a cheese Danish if you were blind in one eye. “Just wrapping it up. Vic’s in a titty bar over on Avenue A, getting himself a lap dance. Asshole comes in, starts it up. The titty doing the lap dance is his ex. Gives her a couple smacks. The guy with the hard-on clocks him. Asshole gets hauled out. He goes home, gets his souvenir Yankees baseball bat, lays in wait. Vic comes out, and the asshole jumps him. Beat the holy shit out of him and left his brains on the sidewalk.”

  “High price for a lap dance.”

  “You’re telling me. Asshole’s stupid, but slippery.” Jenkinson ripped the wrapping off the sad-looking Danish, took a resigned bite. “Leaves the bat and runs. We got wits falling out of our pockets, got his prints, got his name, his address. Slam-fucking-dunk. He doesn’t go home and make our lives easier, but what he does, a couple hours after, is go to the ex’s. Brings her freaking flowers he dug up out of a sidewalk planter deal. Dirt’s still falling off the roots.”

  “Classy guy,” Eve observed.

  “Oh, yeah.” He downed the rest of the Danish. “She won’t let him in—stripper’s got more sense—but calls it in while he’s crying and banging on the door, and dumping flower dirt all over the hallway. We get there to pick him up, and what does he do? He jumps out the freaking window end of the hall. Four flights up. Still holding the damn flowers and trailing dirt all the way.”

  He shifted to order coffee with two hits of fake sugar. “Got the luck of God ’cause he lands on a couple chemi-heads doing a deal down below—killed one of them dead, other’s smashed up good. But they broke his fall.”

  Deeply entertained, Eve shook her head. “You can’t make this shit up.”

  “Get
s better,” Jenkinson told her, slurping coffee. “Now we got to chase his ass. I go down the fire escape—and let me tell you smashed chemi-heads make one hell of a mess—Reineke goes out the front. He spots him. Asshole runs through the kitchen of an all-night Chinese place, and people are yelling and tumbling like dice. This fucker is throwing shit at us, pots and food and Christ knows. Reineke slips on some moo goo something, goes down. Hell no, you can’t make this shit up, LT.”

  He grinned now, slurped more coffee. “He heads for this sex joint, but the bouncer sees this freaking blood-covered maniac coming and blocks the door. The bouncer’s built like a tank—so the asshole just bounces off him like a basketball off the rim, goes airborne for a minute and plows right into me. Jesus. Now I’ve got blood and chemi-head brains on me, and Reineke’s hauling ass over, and he’s covered with moo goo. And this asshole starts yelling police brutality. Took some restraint not to give him some.

  “Anyway.” He blew out a breath. “We’re wrapping it up.”

  Was it any wonder she loved New York?

  “Good work. Do you want me to take you off the roll?”

  “Nah. We’ll flex a couple hours, grab some sleep up in the crib once the asshole’s processed. You look at the big picture, boss? All that, over a pair of tits.”

  “Love screws you up.”

  “Fucking A.”

  She turned into the bullpen, acknowledged “heys” from cops finishing up the night tour. She walked into her office, left the door open. Detective Sergeant Moynahan had, as she’d expected, left her desk pristine. Everything was exactly as it had been when she’d walked out her office door three weeks before, except cleaner. Even her skinny window sparkled, and the air smelled vaguely—not altogether unpleasantly—like the woods she’d walked through in Ireland.

  Minus the dead body.

  She programmed coffee from her AutoChef and, with a satisfied sigh, sat at her desk to read over the reports and logs generated during her absence.

  Murder hadn’t taken a holiday during hers, she noted, but her division had run pretty smooth. She moved through closed and open cases, requests for leave, overtime, personal time, reimbursements.

  She heard the muffled clump that was Peabody’s summer air boots, and glanced up as her partner stepped into the open doorway.

  “Welcome home! How was it? Was it just mag?”

  “It was good.”

  Peabody’s square face sported a little sun-kiss, which reminded Eve her partner had taken a week off with her squeeze, Electronic Detectives Division ace McNab. She had her dark hair pulled back in a short, but jaunty tail, and wore a thin, buff-colored jacket over cargo trousers a few shades darker. Her tank matched the air boots in a bright cherry red.

  “It looks like DS Moynahan kept things oiled while I was gone.”

  “Yeah. He sure dots every ‘i,’ but he’s easy to work with. He’s solid, and he knows how to ride a desk. He steers clear of field work, but he had a good sense of how to run the ship. So, what did you get?”

  “A pile of reports.”

  “No, come on, for your anniversary. I know Roarke had to come up with something total. Come on,” Peabody insisted when Eve just sat there. “I came in early just for this. I figure we’ve got nearly five before we’re officially on the clock.”

  True enough, Eve thought, and since Peabody’s brown eyes pleaded like a puppy’s, she held up her arm, displayed the new wrist unit she wore.

  “Oh.”

  The reaction, Eve thought, was perfect. Baffled surprise, severe disappointment, the heroic struggle to mask both.

  “Ah, that’s nice. It’s a nice wrist unit.”

  “Serviceable.” Eve turned her wrist to admire the simple band, the flat, silver-toned face.

  “Yeah, it looks it.”

  “It’s got a couple of nice features,” she added as she fiddled with it.

  “It’s nice,” Peabody said again, then drew her beeping communicator out of her pocket. “Give me a sec, I . . . hey, it’s you.” Mouth dropping, Peabody jerked her head up. “It’s got a micro-com in it? That’s pretty mag. Usually they’re all fuzzy, but this is really clean.”

  “Nano-com. You know how the vehicle he rigged up for me looks ordinary?”

  “Ordinary leaning toward ugly,” Peabody corrected. “But nobody gives it a second look or knows that it’s loaded, so . . . same deal?”

  Automatically Peabody dug out her ’link when it signaled, then paused. “Is that you? It’s got full communication capability? In a wrist unit that size?”

  “Not only that, it’s got navigation, full data capabilities. Total data and communications—he programmed it with all my stuff. If I had to, I could access my files on it. Waterproof, shatterproof, voice-command capabilities. Gives me the ambient temp. Plus it tells time.”

  Not to mention he’d given her a second with the exact same specs—only fired with diamonds. Something she’d wear when she suited up for fancy.

  “That is so utterly iced. How does it—”

  Eve snatched her wrist away. “No playing with it. I haven’t figured it all out myself yet.”

  “It’s just like the perfect thing for you. The abso perfect thing. He really gets it. And you got to go to Ireland and Italy and finish it up at that island he’s got. Nothing but romance and relaxation.”

  “That’s about it, except for the dead girl.”

  “Yeah, and McNab and I had a really good time—what? What dead girl?”

  “If I had more coffee I might be inclined to tell you.”

  Peabody sprang toward the AutoChef.

  Minutes later, she polished off her own cup and shook her head. “Even on vacation you investigated a homicide.”

  “I didn’t investigate, the Irish cop did. I consulted—unofficially. Now my serviceable yet frosty wrist unit tells me we’re on duty. Scram.”

  “I’m scramming, but I want to tell you about how McNab and I took scuba lessons, and—”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, but I liked it. And how I did these interviews on Nadine’s book, which is still number one in case you haven’t been checking. If we don’t catch a case, maybe we can have lunch. I’ll buy.”

  “Maybe. I’ve got to catch up.”

  Alone, she considered it. She wouldn’t mind hanging for lunch, she realized. It would be a kind of bridge between vacation and the job, screwing around and the routine of work.

  She didn’t have any meetings scheduled, no actives on her plate. She’d need to go over some of the open cases with the teams assigned, touch base with Moynahan mostly to thank him for his service. Other than that—

  She scanned the next report, answering her ’link. “Lieutenant Dallas, Homicide.”

  Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve.

  So much, she thought, for bridges.

  Jamal Houston died with his chauffeur’s hat on behind the wheel of a limo of glittery gold, long and sleek as a snake. The limo had been tidily parked in a short-term slot at LaGuardia.

  Since the crossbow bolt angled through Jamal’s neck and into the command pad of the wheel, Eve assumed Jamal had done the parking.

  With her hands and boots sealed, Eve studied the entry wound. “Even if you’re pissed off you missed your transpo, this is a little over the top.”

  “A crossbow?” Peabody studied the body from the other side of the limo. “You’re sure?”

  “Roarke has a couple in his weapons collection. One of them fires these bolts like this. One question is just why someone had a loaded crossbow in a limo to begin with.”

  Houston, Jamal, she mused, going over the data they’d already accessed, black male, age forty-three, co-owner of Gold Star transportation service. Married, two offspring. No adult criminal. Sealed juvie. He’d been six feet one and one-ninety and wore a smart and crisp black suit, white shirt, red tie. His shoes were shined like mirrors.

  He wore a wrist unit as gold as the limo and a gold star lapel pin with a diamond winking
in the center.

  “From the angle, it looks like he was shot from the right rear.”

  “Passenger area is pristine,” Peabody commented. “No trash, no luggage, no used glasses or cups or bottles, and all the slots for the glassware are filled, so the killer and/or passenger didn’t take any with him. Everything gleams, and there are fresh—real—white roses in these little vases between the windows. A selection of viewing and audio and reading discs all organized by alpha and type in a compartment, and they don’t look like they’ve been touched. There are three full decanters of different types of alcohol, a fridge stocked with cold drinks, and a compact AutoChef. The log there says it was stocked about sixteen hundred, and it hasn’t been accessed since.”

  “The passenger must not have been thirsty, and didn’t want a snack while he didn’t listen to music, read, or catch some screen. We’ll have the sweepers go over it.”

  She circled the car, slid in beside the body. “Wedding ring, pricey wrist unit, gold star with diamond pin, single gold stud in his earlobe.” She worked her hand under the body, tugged out a wallet.

  “He’s got plastic, and about a hundred fifty cash, small bills. It sure as hell wasn’t robbery.” She tried to access the dash comp. “It’s passcoded.” She had better luck with the ’link, and listened to his last transmission, informing his dispatcher he’d arrived at LaGuardia with his passenger for the pickup, and suggesting the dispatcher call it a night.

  “He was supposed to pick up a second passenger.” Eve considered. “Picked up the first, second passenger coming in, transpo on time according to this communication. So he parks, and before he can get out to open the door for passenger one, he takes one in the neck. Time of death and the ’link log are only a few minutes apart.”

  “Why does somebody hire a driver to go to the airport, then kill him?”

  “There’s got to be a record of who hired the service, where they were picked up. One shot,” Eve murmured. “No muss, but a lot of fuss. Add in what you’d call an exotic weapon.”

  She took a memo book from his pocket, his personal ’link, breath mints, a cotton handkerchief. “He’s got a pickup listed here at the Chrysler Building, ten-twenty P.M. AS to LTC. Passenger initials. No full name, no full addy. This is just his backup. Let’s see if we can find anyone who saw anything—ha ha—get crime scene in here. We’ll go check in with the company first.”