by J. D. Robb
“There wasn’t any indication the vic had been in a fight.”
“Exactly.” When the elevator stopped, more cops lumbered on, Eve got off. “Blow from behind—a strong and heavy one, and pretty precise. The other scrapes and bruises are minor,” she added as she jumped on a glide. “Might have happened when the vic was dumped in the tub, might have happened when the vic seized during the OD. If he suffered this blow, if it knocked him out or even dazed him, it would give the killer—should there be one—time to inject the lethal dose. Vic’s flying now, helpless. Dump him in the tub, set up the rest of the works. Now it looks like the vic was hallucinating, as you would in the early stages of Fuck Me Up, and decided to take a nice bath.”
“Why not leave him on the mattress?”
“The tub’s more humiliating, and that says the vic and killer were previously acquainted. It’s a kind of flourish,” Eve decided, “and flourishes are always a mistake in murder.”
She got off the glide, made the turn to take the next. And spotted Webster strolling toward her. “Goddamn it,” she said under her breath.
“Lieutenant, Detective. How’s it going?”
“Well enough, up until now.”
“Always pleasant. We’re heading in the same direction.” He stepped on the glide with her.
She channeled her irritation. “If the rat squad’s going to chew at Homicide, I expect to be informed.”
“Not Homicide, so relax.” But he stepped off the glide with her.
“For Christ’s sake, Webster,” she said under her breath.
“Relax,” he said again, in the same undertone. “I’ve got some business on this level, then a meet with the commander. I heard you took some time off recently.”
She stopped at Vending. “It’s nice IAB’s got time to chat.”
“As much as murder cops do. Keep it clean, Dallas.” He started to back up, then his face changed as he stared down the corridor. For a moment he looked . . . reverent, Eve thought.
And he said—reverently, “Oh, yeah.”
She followed his direction and spotted Darcia Angelo. She wore a summer dress, a breezy one covered with hot pink flowers that showed strong golden shoulders and a lot of smooth skin. Her mass of black hair tumbled to those golden shoulders, curling wildly around her face. Dark, sultry eyes warmed when she saw Eve, and the wide, bottom-heavy mouth curved in a smile.
Eve supposed it was the high, needle-thin heels adding to the already statuesque figure that caused the hips to sway as if to an internal rhythm.
Or maybe not.
“Dallas! It’s so good to see you again. And Peabody—Detective Peabody since I saw you last. Congratulations.”
“Thanks. I didn’t know you were on planet, much less in the city, Chief Angelo.”
“A little holiday, a little business.” She turned that smile, those eyes onto Webster, who simply stood staring as if he’d just witnessed a miracle. “Hello.”
“Yeah, Chief Angelo, Olympus PD; Lieutenant Webster, IAB,” Eve supplied.
“Internal Affairs?” Darcia offered a hand. “Are there many?”
“Enough to keep us busy. Is this your first time in New York?”
“The first with any vacation time. I had lunch with your husband,” she told Eve. “And since I was downtown, I couldn’t resist coming in and seeing how things are done here. It’s an impressive facility, from what I’ve seen.”
A couple of cops perp-walked a skinny, struggling man down the corridor.
“I was just trying to get his attention!” the man protested at the top of his lungs. “If he’da listened, I wouldn’ta had to bash him.”
“And full of such interesting people,” Darcia added.
“Yeah, we’re loaded. My office is down this way,” Eve began.
“Yo, LT!” Jacobson hailed her from the bullpen doorway. “Got a minute?”
She signaled an affirmative. “I’ll show you around,” she told Darcia.
“I’d love it. Go ahead and speak to your man. I’m just going to get something cold to drink. It’s awfully hot out there. I’ll be right along.”
“Good enough. Peabody, make that tag. I want that data asap.”
“Yes, sir. Nice seeing you, Chief. Enjoy New York.”
“I intend to.” Darcia gave her hair a little toss when Eve and Peabody walked away, then turned to study the offerings. “Hmmm.”
“Buy you a drink?” Webster offered, and she smiled.
“Yes, please.”
“So, Chief Angelo ...”
“Darcia. I’m off duty.”
“Darcia. I should’ve known the name would suit. What’ll you have?”
“Surprise me.”
In the bullpen Eve listened as Jacobson ran through the angles he’d come up with through juggling. She did some juggling of her own, keeping the balls of murder, Renee, Darcia Angelo, and now Jacobson’s brainstorm in the air.
When she’d finished with Jacobson, she was half inclined to go out and see if Darcia had gotten lost on the short walk to Homicide.
Then Olympus’s chief of police glided in.
Eve distinctly heard Baxter’s—the words were reverent again—“Oh, Mama,” as she passed his desk.
“Don’t drool on those fives,” Eve muttered, and walked over to Darcia. “Our bullpen. The way the unit’s set now, the detectives work with a regular partner or a permanent aide—whom they’re responsible for training—or they can snag one of the uniforms assigned to the unit. Case board, closed in red, open in green. There’s an excuse for a break room in the back. I don’t go there unless I have to. Occasionally somebody may take a wit back there if they want serious privacy, but it’s more usual to interview right at the desk if the wit comes in, or in the lounge—a communal break room for the level. Lockers and showers through that way.”
“An efficient space,” Darcia commented. “And a busy one.”
Eve noted Baxter easing up from his chair. She sent him a warning look that had him sighing and sitting again. “Meaning crowded and overworked, and yeah, we are. It’s a good unit. My office is down here.”
She made the turn, let Darcia in.
“It’s separate?”
“That’s the setup, and I prefer it. When the LT’s space is attached, window, door through to the bullpen, it’s like the boss is watching their every move. A guy can’t even scratch his balls in comfort. Door’s open unless I need it shut. They know where to find me.”
“You prefer a small space, too, or you’d have bigger. And it suits you,” Darcia decided, doing a tight circle. “Spare, lean, unsentimental.” She lifted a chin to the murder board. “And you’re working on something now.”
“Caught it this morning. Vic’s a longtime chemi-head—and the weasel of an Illegals lieutenant. Found in a broken bathtub in an abandoned building—not his personal flop. Looks like he OD’d on a massive dose of what the street calls Fuck You Up.”
“I’ve heard of it.” She might have been dressed like a fashion plate, but Olympus’s chief gave the death photos a thorough, cool-eyed study. “And since you say ‘looks like,’ you don’t think he OD’d of his own volition.”
“There are extenuatings.”
She watched Darcia sip from what looked like a lemon fizzie and scan the board. “Ugly. Hard and ugly. There was so much of that when I was on the job in Colombia.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m enjoying the shiny and new of Olympus.” Darcia moved to Eve’s window. “But this, this city. It’s so layered and varied, so exciting, so full of energies, passions. I’m going to treat myself and wander, and buy myself several frivolous things.”
“How far can you wander in those shoes before you cry like a baby?”
Darcia laughed, turned back. “I’m tougher than that, and I liked putting on a pretty dress to have lunch with your very handsome, very charming husband. Maybe before I go back home, you and I could have a drink, talk shop.”
“I’d like that,�
� Eve said, realizing she actually would.
“Then we’ll make it happen. I’m going to let you get back to work, and I’m going to go find something frivolous to waste my money on.”
“There’s this place.” Eve wound the location through her head, relayed the simple directions. “Stupidly expensive handbags and shoes. Like that.”
“Sounds perfect—and not at all your style.”
“I broke up a catfight there when two women tumbled out onto the street at my feet. They were ready to kill each other over some purse.”
“That sounds like your style—and it’s going to be my first stop. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Have a good time—and watch out for the hair-pullers.”
With a laugh, Darcia strolled out.
Eve checked the time, then began to gather the files, the photos, the reports she’d copied to take home. By the time she’d finished, her incoming signaled. She nodded in satisfaction at the name of the file and the brisk accompanying message.
To Lieutenant Dallas, Homicide
From Lieutenant Oberman, Illegals
Confidential data re Keener, Rickie
As requested.
I bet that hurt,” Eve murmured, then copied and saved the file.
Peabody was already getting up from her desk when Eve came out. “I was just coming in to check if—”
“Got it. Let’s move.”
“Hey, hey, hey!” Baxter leaped up. “You’ve got to tell me about the amazing skirt.”
“She’s out of orbit, Baxter. Literally.”
“I’ll say—in the best of all ways. Who—”
She kept walking. “And she outranks you.”
“Do you think women like that are born like that?” Peabody began. “Chief Angelo. I mean, so they pump out hot and sexy with every breath, but in a really classy way?”
“There are probably training courses.”
“Sign me up.”
“If you wouldn’t mind putting your hot and sexy aspirations on hold, we could actually focus on our current investigation. Just for the hell of it.”
“I think everybody has hot and sexy aspirations,” Peabody considered, “except those that already are. But I am totally focused on our current investigation. I assume Lieutenant Oberman sent you the required data.”
“She did.”
“I don’t think she was too happy about it.” Peabody shrugged. “I guess some handlers are pretty territorial about their weasels, even when the weasel’s dead.”
“Maybe even more so. Did the lab ID that lock?”
“I’ve got the make and model. The report says it hadn’t been installed more than a couple of days. It’s actually an interior lockset—cheap and available in pretty much any place that deals in locks. It hadn’t been picked or tampered with,” Peabody continued. “I’ve got the full report.”
“Sweepers, interior?”
“Not in yet. You asked for a second level.”
“Right. How pissed was Renee?” Eve asked when they got in the vehicle.
“I’m going to say controlled fury. She didn’t like getting the nudge, and my take is liked it less getting it from your subordinate. What she really didn’t like was my very courteous—as directed—statement that you had copied and informed the commander.”
“Good.” Perfect, in fact. “She’ll be stewing over that for a while.”
Pleased with the idea, Eve drove through thickening traffic to the ugly slab of a building squatting between a low-rent sex club and a windowless bar.
“Not much better than the hole he died in,” she decided. “And less than three blocks away. Not a bright bulb, our Juicy, even when he was breathing.”
The lock on the entrance of the building was still intact. No point busting it, she thought. Who’d want to break into a place where nobody had anything anyway?
She mastered it open, started up the stairs directly across from the door.
The tags on the walls were all sex or drug related, and the scent hanging in the overheated air reeked of both, with a sticky thread of old garbage weaving through. Someone’s choice of music banged on the walls like hammers against someone else’s choice of a screaming game show. On the second level a rail-thin cat hardly bigger than a rat sprawled.
“Oh, poor little kitty.” Even as Peabody reached out a hand, the cat leaped to its feet, arched its back, bared its teeth with a throaty hiss.
Peabody missed having her hand raked open to the bone by inches.
“Jesus. Vicious little bastard.”
“That’ll teach you to be so soft-hearted and friendly.”
Eve moved up to the third level, down the grimy corridor—taking her time for the benefit of anyone peering through a peep.
“Record on.” She bypassed Keener’s locks.
His flop was a few shaky steps up from his final resting place. But even that was a vast improvement. It stank of sweat, rolled with heat, and carried the added perfume from the mostly empty takeout cartons and boxes.
“Chinese, Thai, pizza, and what I think used to be a gyro. A regular U.N. of disgusting, undiscarded food. Juicy was a pig.” She eyed the unmade daybed. “Still that looks more comfortable than the ratty mattress in his hole, so he definitely made a few sacrifices to hide out.”
Single room, Eve thought, no bigger than her office. No AutoChef, no Friggie, no bathroom attached—which meant the flop and all or most of the others on the level shared one, likely at the end of the hall.
Still he had eight locks and bolts on his door, another set on the single window.
“Okay, let’s toss it.”
“Yuck” was Peabody’s opinion.
“I bet you’re not the first cop in here today with that sentiment.”
They found ancient underwear, one of a pair of holey and amazingly smelly socks, several pounds of dust, enough dirt to plant roses, empty brew bottles, broken syringes, the torn empty baggies dealers used to store their wares.
“There’s nothing here.” Peabody mopped at sweat. “If he was getting ready to rabbit, he must’ve taken everything he had—except for dirty underwear—with him.”
“I’ll tell you what we found,” Eve corrected. “Rickie lived like a rabid rat. Lived with this smell rather than dumping his trash. Probably because he stayed high as much as possible. The locks inside the door aren’t new, so he probably kept some of his junk in here, whatever he made off dealing and weaseling. And he stuck to his territory. It’s also interesting what we didn’t find, here or at his hole.”
“A minimal level of hygiene?”
“That’s missing, and so is any kind of client book, memo book—nothing like that on his disposable ’link. He might’ve dealt on the lower levels, but he had contacts. He was a weasel, and a weasel’s useless without them. I’m not buying he kept names, locations, numbers in his rabid rat head.”
“Shit. I hate when I miss something like that. He’d have taken it with him.”
“More valuable to him than clean underwear, I guarantee. And Bix relieved him of it. He and Garnet had to come through here today, just to make sure Bix didn’t miss something after I put a little heat on the deal. We’re going to make that their mistake.”
“We are?”
“Let’s knock on doors.” She stepped out, rapped on the one directly across the hall. No answer, which wasn’t unexpected even if there’d been a crowd of twelve inside. But she heard no sound.
The music lover’s unit was a different matter. She pounded, then pounded and kicked, until she finally beat out the banging of drums.
The man who answered couldn’t have seen his twenty-fifth birthday. He carried the pasty-white complexion of a shut-in, or prison inmate, and that peppered with pox and acne scars. Stringy ropes of hair hung to the shoulders of a sleeveless tee that had perhaps once been white. With it he wore a pair of underwear not much more reputable than those discarded in Keener’s apartment.
“’Zup,” he said with the blissed-out smile an
d glassy eyes of the seriously stoned. Eve could smell the zoner smoke—hell, she could see it hanging in the air.
She held up her badge.
He smiled at it for a while, then some level of its meaning eked through. “Aw, c’mon. Just getting my buzz on. Not hurting anybody, check?”
“Is that what you told the other two cops who came by today?”
“Didn’t see no cops but you. Just hitting the music and buzzing. Too hot for else.”
“You know Juicy?”
“Sure, man, he’ll tell you I’m no deal.”
“When did you see him last?”
“Dunno. It’s hot, man. Every day’s hot. All the same.”
“Yeah.” It was when you were in a permanent state of stupidity.
She heard approaching footsteps and turned to see a man coming down the hall, head down, fingers snapping. At the door across from Keener’s he pulled out a set of keys.
She stepped his way. He saw her, made her in the flash of an instant. And turned to run.
Perfect, she thought, and sprinted after him. “Police! Halt!” She judged the distance, bent her knees, and jumping up took him in a mid-body tackle.
“You think I want to chase you in this heat?”
“I didn’t do nothing.” He humped under her. “Get off me!”
“Why’d you run?”
“I ... forgot something.”
“Right. I’m going to let you up so we can have a civilized conversation. When I do, if you run, I’ll catch you—and I’m going to be really unhappy when I do. Understand?”
“Yeah, yeah. I didn’t do anything. Cops can’t just go knocking people down.”
“File a complaint.” She eased off, nodding as Peabody positioned herself to block the stairs. “Name?”
“Jubie, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Peabody, in a ball-breaking contest between me and Jubie the asshole, who’s your money on?”
“You, sir, but I’ve seen your work and the many broken balls resulting from it.”
“True. Where you been, Jubie?”
“Look, I just went out to pick up a pack of herbals.” He continued to aim for insulted as he shoved the hair out of his eyes, but nerves jittered through the corners. “Herbals are still legal in a guy’s own place.”