by J. D. Robb
She shook her head. “Not until I do a search for the father. Maybe he wanted payback after all these years. Maybe he got enough money for some sort of hit, or . . . I have to cross it off.”
“All right. I’ll look into the money on the little bastard.”
It made her laugh. “Thanks.”
She did the grunt work, sorted through runs, sieved the data, ran probabilities until a low-grade headache brewed behind her eyes.
“I can’t find one person in the mix with a hunting connection, at least not that shows. No permits, no licenses, no purchases of that nature. I tried crossing with sporting—people do the damnedest things, and there’s competitions for archery and shit. Legal ones. Nothing there, either.”
“Well, I had better luck.”
“I knew it.” Eve slapped a fist on her desk. “I knew that little bastard was wrong. What did you find?”
“An account he’d buried under a few layers. Not a bad job of it, really, and it would likely have remained buried if no one had a reason to dig. You’ll note, as I did,” Roarke continued, “he’s been careful not to give anyone a reason to dig. Clean record, bills paid in a timely fashion, taxes all right and tight. I transferred the account data to your machine. Computer,” he ordered, “display Mitchell Sykes’s financials on screen two.”
Acknowledged . . .
When the data flashed on, Eve picked up her coffee, narrowed her eyes. “That’s a nice chunk. Heading toward half a million.” But she frowned. “Am I reading this right? Deposits in increments over—what?—a two-year period.”
“Nearly three, actually.”
“Doesn’t smell like payoff for a murder, unfortunately. The last deposit was a little over a week ago, in the amount of twenty-three-thousand dollars and fifty-three cents. That’s a weird number.”
“All the deposits are uneven amounts, and all under twenty-five thousand.”
“Blackmail, maybe, and he deposits odd amounts to try to stay under the radar, which he has.”
“Possibly.”
“Or some corporate espionage, selling Dudley data to competitors. He’s PA for one of the top security guys, so he’d have some access there.”
“Another possibility.”
“They’re pretty regular, aren’t they?” Hands in pockets, eyes narrowed, she studied the figures. “Every four or six weeks, another little bump in the nest egg. Withdrawals are few and far between, and pretty light. Living within his means, using a little extra here and there no one would blink at. Still, the amounts are . . . Wait, he’s got a cohab, double the amount of deposits and it makes more sense.” She glanced over. “And you’ve already gone there.”
“As it happens. Computer, secondary financials, split screen.”
“Karolea Prinz, nearly the same amounts, nearly the same dates. Now we’ve got something. She works for Dudley,” Eve added. “I ran her. Pharmaceutical rep.” She sipped her coffee. “So, I’ll tell you what you’ve already figured out. They’re skimming drug supplies, which she’d have access to, and selling them on the street or to a supplier. Every month or so.”
“It reads that way to me.”
“Nothing to do with Houston. In fact, this bumps them down below bottom, unless I find out Houston or someone connected was a customer. But the fact is, using his boss’s data would bring just this sort of attention. Why go there when you’ve got such a nice sideline? You don’t want to shine any lights.”
“They’ve been successful, so I’d agree, bringing the cops to their own doorstep would be monumentally stupid.”
“Too bad, but it’ll be fun to get him in the box and sweat the snot out of him.” In fact, remembering his curled lip and down-the-nose smirk, it gave her a warm little thrill.
“Between this and the use of Sweet’s data, it doesn’t look like that arm of Dudley’s is as secure as it should be.” And that, she thought, was interesting, too. “Where there’s one hole, there’s probably another. Houston’s killer’s in one of those holes.”
“Nothing on the victim’s family connections?” Roarke asked her.
“The father’s dead. Beat some neighbor kid, got a stretch in the Tombs. Picked the wrong con to mess with inside, and ended up bleeding out in the showers, thanks to the shiv in his gut. The mother moved back to Tennessee where her family’s from. There’s nothing there.”
She puffed out her cheeks, blew out the breath. “I’ve run the partner, the partner’s wife, the vic’s wife, even the vic’s kids back, forth, sideways. There’s no buzz, no pop. The wife gets Houston’s share of the business, but essentially she already had it. This killing just wasn’t about Houston particularly. And nothing about the company, so far, brings up any questions. If there’s a connection, Dudley’s the most likely source. Even then . . .”
She shook her head.
“Even then?”
“It’s playing more and more like it was for the thrill. Just for the rush. And if that’s the way it is, he’s already looking for the next thrill.”
The scream ripped out of the shadows, high and wild. Behind it chased a gurgle of maniacal laughter. For a moment, Ava Crampton caught a glimpse of her reflection in a smoky mirror before the ghoul burst out of the false glass, claws dripping blood.
Her squeal was quick and unplanned, but her pivot toward her date, the urgent press of her body to his, was calculated.
She knew her job.
At thirty-three she’d clocked over twelve years’ experience as a licensed companion, and had worked her way steadily up the levels to the pinnacle.
She invested in herself, folding her profits back into her face, her body, her education, her style. She could speak conversationally in three languages, and was diligently working on a fourth. She kept her five foot six inch frame rigorously toned, was, in fact, an advanced yogini—the practice not only kept her centered but gave her a superb flexibility that pleased her clients.
She considered her mixed-race heritage a gift that had provided her with dusky skin (which she tended as rigorously as she did her body), cut-glass cheekbones, full lips, and crystalline blue eyes. She kept her hair long, curled, artfully tumbled in a caramel brown that set off that skin, those eyes.
Her investment paid off. She was one of the highest-rated LCs on the East Coast, routinely commanding a cool ten thousand an evening—double that for an overnight. She’d trained and tested and was licensed for a menu of extras and specialties to suit the varied whims of her clients.
Her date tonight was a first-timer, but had passed her strict and scrupulous screening. He was wealthy, healthy, and boasted a clean criminal record. He’d been married for twelve years, divorced for eight months. His young daughter attended an excellent private school.
He owned a brownstone in the city and a vacation home in Aruba.
Though his looks struck her as dead average, he’d grown a trendy goatee since his last ID shot, had grown out his hair. He’d also put on a few pounds, but she considered him still in good shape.
Trying on a new look with the little beard and longer hair, she thought, as men often did after a divorce.
She could feel his nerves. He’d confessed, charmingly she thought, that he’d never dated a professional before.
At his request, she’d met him at Coney Island—he’d provided a limo. Since he’d steered her almost immediately to the House of Horrors, she assumed he wanted the adrenaline rush, and a female who’d gasp and cling.
So she gasped, and she clung, and remembered to tremble when he worked up the nerve to kiss her.
“It all seems so real!”
“It’s a favorite of mine,” he whispered in her ear.
Something howled in the dark, and with it, on a rattle of chains, something shambled closer.
“It’s coming!”
“This way.” He tugged her along, keeping her close as overhead came the flutter of bat wings. The wind from them stirred her hair.
A holo-image of a monster wielding a bloodied ax leaped forward and she
felt the air from the strike shiver by her shoulder. He yanked her through a door that clanged shut behind them. On a yelp of surprise and disgust, she swiped at cobwebs. Caught up, she spun to try to escape them, and came face-to-face with a severed head on a spike.
Her scream, completely genuine, ripped out as she stumbled back. She managed a nervous laugh.
“God, who thinks of this stuff?”
She thought fleetingly that her last date had been a romp on silk sheets with a follow-up in an indoor wave pool. But no one knew better than Ava that it took all kinds.
And this kind got his kicks in the torture chamber of an amusement park.
The light fluttered, a dozen guttering candles with the red glow of a fire where a hooded man, stripped to the waist, heated an iron spike.
The air stank, she thought. They’d made it just a little too real, so it reeked of sweat and piss and what she thought was blood. The scream and prayers of the tortured and the damned crowded the room where stones dripped and the eyes of rats glowed in the corners.
A woman begged for mercy as her body stretched horribly on the rack. A man shrieked at the lash of a barbed whip.
And her date for the evening watched her with avid eyes.
Okay, she thought, she got the drift.
“You want to hurt me? Do you want me to like it?”
He smiled a little shyly as he came toward her. But the pace of his breathing had increased. “Don’t fight.”
“You’re stronger. I’d never win.” Playing the game, she let him back her into a shadowy corner behind a figure moaning as it turned on a spit. “I’ll do anything you want.” She worked some fear into her voice. “Anything. I’m your prisoner.”
“I paid for you.”
“And your slave.” She watched pleasure darken his eyes, kept her voice low, throaty. “What do you want me to do?” Let her breath catch. “What are you going to do to me?”
“What I brought you here to do. Now be very still.”
He pressed against her as he reached in his pocket, into the sheath hugging his thigh.
He kissed her once, squeezed his free hand on her breast to feel her heart pump against his palm.
She heard something, a slide, a click. “What’s that?”
“Death,” he said, and stepping back drove the blade into that pumping heart.
7
WITH HER MIND CROWDED WITH DATA AND theories, Eve crawled into bed. Her body clock yearned to be wound down, turned off, and rebooted after a solid downtime. She curved into Roarke as his arm came around her, felt everything in her give in, relax.
She closed her eyes.
Her ’link signaled.
“Hell. Lights on, ten percent. Block video.” She shoved herself up, answered. “Dallas.”
Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. See the officer, Coney Island, House of Horrors, main entrance. Possible homicide.
“Acknowledged. Contact Peabody, Detective Delia. Probability of connection with Houston investigation?”
Unclear, but flagged.
“On my way. Shit,” she said as she cut transmission.
“I’ll drive.” Roarke stood, shook his head when she frowned. “I’ve a business interest in the park, as you know. I’ll be contacted—” He broke off when his ’link signaled. “Now, I’d say.”
She didn’t argue. He’d probably be handy.
She dressed, programmed a couple of coffees to go.
And said nothing when he chose one of his topless toys to zing them through the warm summer night. The wind and the caffeine would clear her brain and reboot the body clock a few hours ahead of schedule.
“What kind of security’s on that place?” she asked him.
“Minimal as it’s an amusement. Standard scanners at the entrances to the park, a network of cams and alarms throughout. Security personnel do routine sweeps.”
“A night like this, it’s probably packed.”
“From a business standpoint, one hopes. We’ve had very little trouble since we opened, and that on the minor side.” He flicked a glance in her direction. “I’m no happier to have a dead body there than you are.”
“Dead body’s less happy than both of us.”
“No doubt.” But it troubled him on an elemental level, not only because it was primarily his, but because it was meant to be a place for fun, for families, for children to be dazzled and entertained.
It was meant to be safe and, of course, he knew no place was really safe. Not a pretty Irish wood, not an amusement park.
“Security’s duping the discs now,” he told her. “You’ll have the originals, and they’ll scan the copies. They’ll be enhanced, as the lighting in that amusement is deliberately low, and there are sections with fog or other effects. We use droids, anitrons, and holos,” he said before she could ask. “There’s no live performers.”
“The stuff runs on a timer?”
“No. It’s motion activated, programmed to follow the customer’s movements. As for timing, there’s a feature that funnels customers in their groups, or individually if they come in alone, into different areas to enhance and personalize the experience.”
“So the victim and killer, if they came in together, could and would have been alone—at least for a portion of the ride, or whatever it is.”
“Sensory experience. There are sections inaccessible to minors under fifteen to conform with codes.”
“You’ve been through it.”
“Yes, several times during the design and construction stages. It’s appropriately gruesome and terrifying.”
“Won’t scare me. I have the gruesome and the terrifying greet me at the door every freaking day.” She smiled to herself, thinking it was too bad Summerset wasn’t around to hear her get that one off.
The lights shimmered and sparkled against the night sky, and music vied with the happy screams of people zooming on the curves and loops of the coasters, spinning on wheels that flashed and boomed.
She didn’t much see the appeal of paying for something that tore screams out of your throat.
On the midway, people paid good money to try to win enormous stuffed animals or big-eyed dolls she considered less appealing than rides that tore screams out of the throat. They shot, tossed, blasted, and hammered with abandon or strolled around with soy dogs or cream cones or sleeves of fries and whopping drinks.
It smelled a little like candy-coated sweat.
The House of Horrors was just that, a huge, spooky-looking house with lights flickering in the windows where the occasional ghoul, ghost, or ax murderer would pop out to snarl or howl.
A big, burly uniform and a skinny civilian secured the entrance.
“Officer.”
“Lieutenant. We’ve got the building secured. One officer, one park security inside with the DB. We’ve got a guard on every egress. Did an e-scan. No civilians left inside.”
“Why is it still running?” she asked, studying the door knocker in the form of a bat with shivering, papery wings and glowing red eyes.
“I didn’t want to make the determination to shut down, considering you might have wanted to go through as the vic had.”
It was a reasonable call. “We’ll do a replay when and if. For now, shut it down.”
“I can do that from the box.” The skinny guy glanced at Eve, then sent Roarke a sorrowful look. “Sir. I have no idea how this could’ve happened.”
“We’ll want to find that out. For now, shut it down.”
“I need to go inside,” the civilian said to Eve. “Just inside to the box.”
“Show me.” She nodded to the uniform, who uncoded the door.
It creaked ominously.
Cobwebs draped the shadowy foyer like shawls over a body back. Light, such as it was, came from the flickering glow of ornate candelabras and a swaying chandelier where a very lifelike rat perched.
Something breathed heavily to the left, and made her fingers itch for her weapon. Shadows seemed to swoop and dive from the ce
iling. Up a long curve of steps a door groaned like a man in pain, then slammed.
The skinny guy moved to a panel on the wall, aimed his little handheld. The panel slid open to reveal a keypad. He coded something in.
Lights flashed on, movement and sound died.
Glancing around, she decided it was a little creepier in the bright and the still. Anitrons stood frozen on the floor, in the air, on the stairs. In a mirror a face held in mid-scream while a severed hand holding a two-bladed ax hung suspended.
“Where’s the body?”
“Subsection B. Torture Chamber,” the skinny guy told her.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Gumm. Ah, I’m Electronics and Effects.”
“Okay. Lead the way.”
“Do you want to go by the amusement route or employee?”
“The most direct.”
“This way.” He walked to a bookcase—why was it always a bookcase? Eve wondered—and engaging another hidden mechanism, opened the doorway.
“We have a series of connecting passages and monitoring stations throughout the amusement.” He guided them through a brightly lit, white-walled passage, past controls and screens.
“It’s all automated?”
“Yes, state of the art. To give the customers the full experience, we’re able to funnel them in various directions rather than have them all follow the same route and crowd together. It’s more personal. They can, if they choose, interact with the effects. Speak to them, ask questions, give chase or attempt to evade. There’s no danger, of course, though we have had some customers pass out. A loss of consciousness triggers an alarm in Medical.”
“How about death?”
“Well . . .” He made a turn, paused. “Technically, a loss of heartbeat should have triggered an alarm. There was a glitch, a kind of blip at twenty-three-fifty-two. A kind of blip. We’re looking into it, sir,” he said to Roarke.
He opened the door into the Torture Chamber. There was the faint memory of stench, as if something hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned. Over it smeared the smell of death.
The officer holding the scene came to attention. Eve gave him a nod.