by J. D. Robb
“Smart,” Eve told her. “Seriously smart.”
“But my daddy—”
“Your mom was trapped in the basement. Hurt, cold, scared. She couldn’t get help. You could, and you did. It would help now if you took Detective Peabody up to your room, and showed her how you did it. It would help.”
“I don’t want to leave Mom.”
“I’m going to stay with your mom.”
“My daddy didn’t want to wear the bomb.”
“I know. I think he’d want you to help us now, as much as you can.”
“Go on, Melly.” Cecily kissed the top of her head. “Be brave for Daddy.”
“Don’t take Mom away.”
“Never going to happen,” Eve promised.
She waited as Peabody led Melody out. If anyone could get more out of the kid, Peabody could.
“Ms.—”
“Could I have a minute? I think I want to get some tea after all.”
“Sure.”
Eve watched her walk into the kitchen area with the careful, stiff-bodied movement of the injured.
“I’ve been knocked around a few times,” Eve began. “I hate hospitals, but sometimes you need them.”
“I can’t and won’t leave Melly. We can’t stay here, I know that. We won’t be able to live in this house.”
She began to weep. “I know it’s just a house, but it’s home. Our home, and they killed that, too. My husband, my baby’s father, the home we made together.”
She fought the tears back, swiped at her face. “I need to talk to my mother. She and my stepfather live in New Rochelle. We can stay with them until we decide what to do. Once I know Melly’s with my parents, I can see a doctor there.”
“We’ll arrange to get you to your mother’s.”
Cecily nodded as she programmed tea. “I have to keep going. I have to think of Melly first and last. Paul . . . I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m going to do without him, but I can’t think about that yet. I can’t think.”
“Can you describe the men?”
“They wore black, all black, with hoods like skullcaps. Tight over their heads, high on the neck. Thin black gloves. And the masks were white, they almost glowed in the dark. No features, slits for eyes.”
“Height, weight, build?”
“Not tall or short. Paul’s six feet exactly. Maybe about his height. Fit. Not bulky, but fit. One slimmer than the other. The one who hit me had more muscle. I . . .”
“Keep going.”
“It’s just an impression, but I think the one who hit me liked it. He liked hitting me, and watching Paul react. The other one didn’t—as much. He slapped me, but he never punched me, and it seemed like it was more because the other one was watching.”
The cup and saucer rattled in her hand when Detective Callendar walked in.
“This is Detective Callendar, with our E division,” Eve said. “We’re going to need to go through your electronics. Did your husband have a home office?”
“Yes. Second floor, directly across from the master bedroom. I can show you.”
“We’ll find it. We’d like your permission to examine any and all electronics and security systems, communication devices. We may need to take them in for further analysis.”
“Yes, anything.”
Eve moved to Callendar. “Check the security first, then the home office.”
“On it.”
“Ms. Greenspan, was there anything about their voices? Accents, syntax, colloquialisms?”
“They kept their voices low, often in whispers.”
“Okay.” Change directions, Eve thought. “How did your husband get along at work? Was he happy in his job?”
“He loved his work. He loved the company. He worked hard, but he enjoyed it. He ran the marketing department, and thought of his team like family.”
She walked back to the couch, sat with that same stiff-bodied care. “Lieutenant, please, please tell me what happened. Please tell me what they made him do.”
“Are you aware of the meeting this morning?”
“The merger with Econo. It’s the biggest campaign Paul’s worked on in years. It’s taken months for the deal to get approved and pushed forward. He and his team have been working on the marketing for the expansion. I don’t understand.”
“This morning your husband went into the meeting wearing a suicide vest.”
“Oh God, oh God. How many? How many?”
“Eleven dead, nine injured at this time.”
She set the tea down, covered her face with her hands. Sobbed. “They made him a killer. They made my Paul a killer. Why? Why would they do this? Why would they force him to do this?”
“Did he have any enemies?”
“No, no, no.”
“How did he feel about this merger?”
“He—he wasn’t sold on it initially. Quantum’s luxury travel, high end, all the amenities, and Econo’s cut rate. But Derrick—Derrick Pearson—wanted the expansion, liked the idea of adding levels, and more hubs. Econo has hubs everywhere. Paul got on board, looked at his end of it as a challenge. He’s a company man, Lieutenant. His loyalty is always to Derrick and to Quantum.”
Her eyes widened. “Derrick. Is Derrick all right?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh my God, Derrick was practically a father to Paul.”
She reached out for Eve, gripped Eve’s arm with a hand that shook. “I swear to you, I swear on my life Paul loved Derrick. Loved, respected, admired him. There isn’t a violent bone in Paul’s body. Oh God, God, God, Rozilyn, Derrick’s wife. They’ve been married for nearly forty years. What will she do? What will she do?”
“Have you noticed anyone in the neighborhood who doesn’t belong? Did Paul mention anyone who made him uncomfortable?”
“No. Just no. He’s been working long hours these past few weeks especially. On this campaign. He’s been tired and distracted, but excited. It was coming together, and today was the day. Friday, when he finally came to bed, he snuggled in with me, promised as soon as this deal went through, the three of us were going to take a long weekend anywhere I wanted to go. He fell asleep with a smile on his face. And then, then they were here.
“They were here,” she repeated. “And nothing will ever be the same again.”
“Your security. Who has your codes?”
“Paul, Melody, and I, of course. Iris. Iris Kelly, our parent’s helper. She’s been with us for nine years. We hired her while I was pregnant. She’s like family.”
“I’ll need her contact information.”
“Yes, but Iris would never have given away our codes, would never have had a part in this. Oh God, I have to tell her what happened. Tell her about Paul.”
“She doesn’t work on Mondays?” Eve asked. “On weekends?”
“Not unless we need her. With Melly in school full time, and since Iris got married last year, she generally comes in on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Lieutenant, I trust her with my child, and that’s trusting her with my life.”
“No one else has the codes?”
“No, just—Oh, I’m sorry. My mother, my stepfather. They have them. Paul’s parents live in Sedona, so . . . Oh God, oh God, Paul’s parents. I have to—”
“We’ll do the notification. How often do you change the security codes?”
“I guess maybe once a year or so. We never had any trouble here. We never had anything bad happen until . . . Paul. When can I see Paul?”
What there is to see, Eve thought, you just don’t need to see. “I’ll give you the information on contacting the medical examiner. Ms. Greenspan, I’m going to have one of the officers go upstairs with you. You can contact your mother. You should pack what you and your daughter need. We’ll have you taken to New Rochelle. I need a contact number for you.”
“What will you do?”
“I’ll do my job.”
“My husband isn’t a murderer, Lieutenant.”
“Ms. Greenspan, I’m s
itting here and telling you, your husband was a victim. I’ll do my job, and do everything possible to find the men who hurt you, terrorized your daughter, and killed your husband.”
* * *
Eve tracked Callendar down in the home office.
“Nothing hinky on his devices with a standard pass,” Callendar told her. “A lot of work shit—a lot especially over the last six, eight weeks. Personal shit, reminders, basic correspondence. He mostly played word games to unwind it looks like. We’ll take a deeper look in the lab.”
“House security?”
“That’s the hink in the hinky.” Callendar pulled a little wrapped square of gum out of one of the multitude of pockets in her cherry-red baggies. “Want?”
“Pass.”
“So, it’s a good system,” she began as she unwrapped and popped the gum in her mouth. “Seriously mega good. They didn’t stint. You don’t compromise a security cover like this one like butter, right? And they didn’t. They’ve been working on getting through for a couple months.”
“‘Months’?”
“We’ll check it at the house, but what I get on site with portables? A good thirty flicks and pushes at it, starting back end of December. Every flick and push between two and three in the A.M. Flicks get longer and deeper, pushes harder. What they did, see, is go a layer, then take that data back, work it, come back again, go down a layer, and like that.”
She blew an impressive pink bubble, snapped it back.
“I’m getting the vics didn’t change any codes over that period, and these guys just steadily hacked through. Couldn’t manage a slide, couldn’t just jam-o-rama. They had to chip and hack by layers. Took time and patience, some reasonable skill, and damn good equipment.”
“So they targeted these people, this location, back before the first of the year,” Eve concluded. “They didn’t have the codes, didn’t have the skills to compromise the system straight off. They didn’t have the skills to compromise in a few attempts.”
“Exactamundo.”
“And the residents didn’t notice the flicks and pushes?”
Callendar shoved at the hair she wore short, spiky, and deeply purple. “They would have if they’d paid real attention. Most don’t, Dallas. You set and forget.”
“Take everything in. We’ll want to go deep on all the devices, including the wife’s, the kid’s. Who’s on the Quantum location?”
“Feeney and McNab. It’s a big one. The cap shuffled to cover it.”
Eve nodded. Having Feeney, captain of EDD, on the case meant the e-geeks would analyze every byte.
“Everything, Callendar, down to the memo cubes. We’ll be in the field.”
“You got it. Dallas, you get a good sense of a person when you pry open their personal e’s. This dude loved his work. Seriously got into it. But his family? Number one, all the way.”
Eve stepped out, called in the sweepers. She wanted every inch of the house covered. To give Cecily and Melody time to pack and be transported, she went down to the basement.
Another family area, sprawling and casual with a big screen and a gaming area, a mini-kitchen setup, a big dollhouse that made her think of Bella, some puzzles, some toys, a half bath.
The maintenance area was behind a thick door—broken by the first on scene. Pipes, an old iron sink, the guts of the house where Cecily had been imprisoned. Some blood on the pipes where she’d struggled. No windows to let in even a sliver of light. Thick brick walls to absorb sound.
Eve imagined being trapped there in the dark—cold, terrified, not knowing what happened or was happening to her husband and daughter.
She searched the room, found fresh scrapes in the dust where she concluded the captors had secured a camera. One angled to show Paul Rogan his bruised, battered, helpless wife.
She turned when Peabody came to the doorway.
“The uniforms are taking the wife and kid to the wife’s parents. They’re wrecked, Dallas. Greenspan’s holding on by a thread for the kid, but it’s a really thin thread.”
Like Eve, she scanned the room. “Jesus,” she murmured. “I don’t know how she grips that thread.”
“They targeted these people specifically,” Eve said. “That means they had to know enough to believe, to be all but certain, Paul Rogan would press the button to save his family. They stalked them, spent—according to Callendar—about two months working to compromise security and get in clean.”
She shook her head as she walked out, circled the family area. “If the target had been Derrick Pearson, they’d have spent their time on him. All of this to blow up a meeting, and at least some of the people in it. To kill the merger?”
With a shake of her head, she started up the stairs. “There have to be better ways to kill a deal. Easier ways. Did you get any more out of the kid?”
“She thinks maybe they had a cam in her room, too. And she said the one who stayed with her more made her cry into the ’link a couple of times. He made her say: ‘Please, Daddy, help me.’”
“Yeah, into a ’link. That’s for recording. They had the poor bastard wear an earbud, had his kid crying in his head. Probably recorded the wife, too. And I’m betting they put a recorder on him so they could watch. He makes a move to contact the police, he wavers, his amazing girls scream in his head.”
“From the way Melody talks, I lean toward the one who spent more time with her father, instead of the one with her, being in charge.”
Eve continued up to the bedroom level. “Why leave them alive? Once Rogan did what they wanted, why not finish the wife and kid? No wits then. Nobody left to give us an accounting.”
She walked into the master. Blood-spotted, rumpled sheets, clipped zip-tie restraints littered the floor. More blood on a chair where she imagined Rogan struggled.
“How well did they know the house before Saturday night?” she wondered. “Had one or both of them been in here before, as a guest, as a repairman. Deliveries, some maintenance deal? Not necessarily,” she continued as she moved around the room. “They gave themselves two full days with the family. Time to pick their spots, to find the master and the kid’s room. They didn’t tear things up,” she added. “Didn’t take valuables—didn’t compromise or take electronics. Cecily had a wedding set thing on. Not a real flashy diamond, but it looked like an easy few thousand, but they didn’t take it.”
She stepped into the walk-in closet—a large his and hers—found, as she’d expected, a small wall safe.
“Safe’s locked, and I’m betting whatever was in it still is.”
She tapped her fingers on the lock pad.
“Wow, you’re getting really good at that.”
Eve spared Peabody a glance. “Not that good.” Not Roarke good, she thought. “I got the combo from Cecily. And here we have some cash, some decent if not flashy jewelry, and a couple of high-end, dressy wrist units, passports, and so on.”
She shut the safe again. “They didn’t care about a few thousand here and there, however easy the pickings. Or what they could get fencing the art and e’s. Focused, one purpose. Patient.”
She wandered into the master bath, out again.
“Patient, focused, purposeful.” As she spoke, she went out, found her way to Melody’s room. Girlie, but not obsessively, Eve thought. Neat—except for the broken glass, the scattered solar system—but not regimented.
“Did he forget to strap her back to the bed, to bind her ankles, or did he want her to be able to get up? Kept her hands tied,” Eve mused.
“Just a kid. He wasn’t worried about her, that’s how I see it. Once they had what they wanted, this one just wasn’t worried about the kid. Not in charge.”
Nodding, Eve turned to Peabody again. “I agree. The one in charge of her wasn’t and isn’t the leader. This one left a loose thread. He loosened her ties—maybe a soft spot for kids. Only a kid, but not an idiot, and strong and smart enough to figure out how to get attention. Maybe it didn’t matter to them we found them so fast. We’d have
found them in short order anyway. But it might’ve taken another hour. Didn’t matter.”
She walked over to the broken window. “Really didn’t. Long gone by then. Off to Fat City.”
“Which is not an overweight urban area,” Peabody put in.
“How does blowing up a marketing exec, a meeting, a merger, and/or the head of Quantum lead to Fat City?”
“Sounds like a Roarke question.”
“Yeah, it does. Here come the sweepers,” Eve said as she saw two vans pull up. “Let’s get them started.”
3
As the domestic lived in a building within easy walking distance of the Rogan/Greenspan home, Eve decided to have a talk with Iris Kelly before moving on to the injured. Eve mastered them inside, stepped across the small lobby.
One of the two elevators let out a pair of women speaking rapid Spanish, both carting handbags the size of baby elephants. The younger pushed a thumb-sucking baby in a stroller with little animals dangling—including a baby elephant. The kid’s eyes looked glassy with pleasure as it snacked on its own thumb.
“What do they get out of that?” Eve wondered as they stepped into the vacated elevator. “How good could your own thumb taste?”
“It’s not the taste, it’s the sucking action. Oral satisfaction and comfort.”
“So, basically, they’re giving themselves a blow job?”
For a couple of seconds, Peabody’s mouth worked silently. “I . . . I can’t possibly answer that without feeling really dirty and weirded.”
With a shrug, Eve rode up to the fourth floor. Decent building, Eve thought, decent security. Solid working class with residents who took enough pride of place not to litter up the lobby, elevators, hallways.
She pressed the buzzer on Kelly’s door, waited.
The intercom hummed as it engaged. “Yes?”
“Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody.” Eve held up her badge. “NYPSD. We’d like to speak to you, ma’am.”
Locks clicked, the door opened, and Eve saw Iris had already gotten the news. Sky-blue eyes, swollen and red-rimmed, dominated a face the color of Irish cream. Sunshine hair was sleeked back in a long tail. She wore straight-legged black pants, a shirt shades quieter than her eyes and a simple black cardigan.