by J. D. Robb
To soothe herself, she sent a quick text as soon as she’d pulled into her spot at Central’s garage.
Can’t talk, can’t explain. Just stay home until I contact you.
Then she thought of her city, the millions inside it. Going into bars, restaurants, shops, museums, theaters. Using the subways, the buses, the trains.
No way to protect them all, and there never had been. But unless one of the bodies in Morris’s house had caused more than eighty deaths, more people would die.
Anywhere. Anytime.
3
She went straight up to her office, ignoring everything else—and did what she rarely did. She shut the door.
Inside the small space with its single skinny window, she dropped down at her desk. And ignored her flashing message light on her desk ’link.
For the next fifteen minutes, if she could manage it, she wanted to concentrate on putting everything she knew, had seen, had confirmed, every detail, every conversation, every speculation into words.
Narrowing her focus, she worked. She backtracked, changed angles, rechecked timing. She scanned a text from Peabody—her partner was on her way.
No time to dump grunt work off, so she printed out stills from her record of the crime scene, of individual victims. She checked her incomings only to add to her list of names: victims and survivors.
Notification of next of kin, she thought briefly, would be a nightmare. One, due to the number, she’d have to share.
She didn’t glance up at the knock on the door, but started to snap out when it opened. Swallowed the harsh words as Roarke stepped in.
He looked as tense and pissed off as she felt.
“Word was you were back,” he said briefly. “I need some bloody coffee, and not that slop they have up in EDD.” He went straight to her AutoChef and programmed two cups as she didn’t have one on her desk.
He knew she stocked the blend he supplied her with. And had wooed her with.
“You’re busy, I know.” He set her cup down by her computer.
“We all are.”
“We’re not going to be able to tell you much more than you already know.” He glanced down at the stills she’d started to organize, sighed once. “Confirming the time it began, how long it lasted, and the fact all of it was concentrated inside the place. You hear them screaming,” he said quietly. “You hear a lot of them screaming.”
“I could tell you you don’t have to do this, any of this.”
“You could.”
“I won’t.”
“It’d be better that way. The fact I own the place is a small part of it. Too small to matter.”
“I don’t know that yet. It may be you were the target, some kind of revenge or grievance.”
He passed an absent hand over her hair. “You don’t think that. If it were, why not select a place where I might be? Some restaurant where I’m holding a meeting, or even the lobby area of my head-quarters?” He walked to the window, stared out at the busy world of New York. “It’s not me. It’s nothing to do with me, really.”
“Odds are slim, but I can’t discount it yet. I can’t discount any single one of the vics was the reason. Or that none of them were. Not that much time’s passed. Someone, or some group, may take credit for it yet. Send us a message, or more likely send one to the media.”
“You hope for that.” He turned back to her. “Once credit’s taken, you’ll have a line to tug, a direction.”
“Yeah. Even better will be if we find some screwed-up suicide note on one of the vics, or at their residence, their work.”
He knew her face, her tones, her inflections. “But you don’t think that either.”
“I can’t discount it, yet. It would be the best answer.”
“And you and I, cynics as we are, don’t believe in answers handed to us on a platter.”
She could say to him what she’d say to few. “It’s not done. I felt it as soon as I understood what happened in that place. Maybe before when I talked to a couple of the survivors. Those who lived through this will carry it with them every day. It’s pretty fucking likely each of them killed someone they know, someone they liked. Maybe someone they loved. If and when they fully understand that, how do they cope?”
The cruelty here, she thought, was so bright, so ugly.
“Killing because you have to, to protect a life, to save your own or others? It’s hard enough to live with that. We have to start notifications after the briefing. A lot of families will be grieving by morning. So, I think, for whoever’s responsible, that’s a goddamn blazing success.”
He came back to her because she needed it, whether or not she knew it.
“Did Feeney start facial recognition on the people picked up going out, going in?”
“He’d put someone on that when I left. It shouldn’t be difficult to ID the two women going in, their faces are clear. Those going out will take a bit of time, I think, as the camera only caught partials.”
“The women going in didn’t come out. They’re either dead or in the hospital. So they’re not going to be hard to ID.”
He touched her hand, just the lightest of contacts. “Do you know how it was done?”
“Parts of it. I’ll get into it in the briefing.”
“All right.” He moved to her window again, stared out at the air traffic, the buildings, and down to the street. “When I was a boy in Dublin there were still some pockets of fighting, holdouts from the Urban Wars. Those who were too angry or entrenched to stop. Now and again there’d be a bomb, homemade boomers, that were unreliable at best. In a car, a shop, tossed through someone’s window. It was a fear you learned to live with so you could go on with your day-to-day.”
He turned back. “This is more. Bigger place, more people, and a more terrible threat even than a well-placed bomb.”
“We’re not calling it terrorism yet.”
A shade or two of the rage she’d seen earlier slid back across his face. “It’s nothing but terrorism. Even if it turns out to be a one-off, it’s nothing but. If there’s another, or possibly even if not, you’re going to have Homeland coming in on you.”
She met his eyes levelly, and thought he had two levels of rage going. “I’ll deal with that when the time comes. They don’t worry me.”
He came to her, took her hand. “Then don’t let me worry you either, when it comes to that.”
She thought of what he’d done for her, for only her, by subjugating his need for revenge against those from Homeland. The agents who’d ignored her cries as a young girl in Dallas, her pleas for help as her father had beaten her, raped her. He’d let it go because she’d needed him to.
“I won’t. I wasn’t.” She gripped his hand tight. “Don’t let me worry you either.”
“You’ve still hurt places from going back there, from everything that happened only weeks ago. They may not show, darling Eve, but I see them well enough. A bit of worry’s my job. Look that up in your famous Marriage Rules.”
“Then we’ll deal with that, too. But now I’ve got to get to the conference room. We’ve got a hell of a mess on our hands.”
“I’ll help you set it up.”
When they got to the conference room, Peabody had already started.
“Your door was closed,” Peabody told her, “so I got going on this. I’ve got the time line. And the list of vics. I’ll get ID photos and crime scene printed out.”
“Already done.”
“Oh.” For a second, Peabody look mildly put out. “Okay, I’ll match them up. They lost another. One of the ones in surgery didn’t make it. One looks good, another’s holding, but they don’t give her much of a shot. They’re working on the one they had in pre-op when you were there. The one in the coma’s still out. But I was able to talk to the one guy. Dennis Sherman. He lost an eye. He works at Copley Dynamics. That’s the same building, different floor from where CiCi Way works.”
“Small world,” Eve murmured.
“Big city, fu
ll of tight districts and neighborhoods. Yeah, small world.”
“I bet he used that bar a lot.”
“You win,” Peabody confirmed. “It’s his regular place. Tonight, he’d come in after work with a couple coworkers. They’d already left, and he was hanging a little longer, talking to the bartender. He’s a regular so they know each other, talk sports a lot. And one minute, the best he remembers, they’re bullshitting about post-season play, then next, the bartender slams a bottle down, and jabs the shard in Sherman’s cheek. He didn’t remember a hell of a lot after that, but I got it on record. He talked about the place filling up with water, and sharks everywhere, circling him, drawn to the blood from his face. How he had to beat them off, stab at them.”
“Did you get the names of the coworkers?”
“Yes, sir. I got all I could, but they wouldn’t let me talk to him long. The one who didn’t make it? The bartender.” She glanced at Roarke. “Sorry.”
“So am I.”
“Let’s get these stills up, and I want to be able to pull any I’ve printed off the disc and on screen.”
“I’ll see to that,” Roarke told her.
“Did you get anything from Morris?” Peabody asked as she and Eve finished with the boards.
“They breathed in a nasty stew of psychotic drugs and illegals.”
Peabody’s hands stilled. “It was in the air?”
“That, and some contact, some trace on the skin. We don’t have all the details. The lab’s on it. That’s the next stop when we’re done here.”
It was a long process, pinning the faces to the names, papering the board with scenes of blood and death. She’d nearly finished when the door opened.
And she came to attention for her commander.
“Sir. We’re nearly finished setting up.”
“Lieutenant. Your report was brief, but impactful.”
“I wanted to get you as much salient data as quickly as possible. We still have—”
He held up a hand, silenced her, then moved to the boards.
She saw the tension in his stance, a big man with a powerful build. And read the controlled stress on his wide, dark face. Silver threaded though his close-cropped hair. As he scanned the boards, the lines bracketing his mouth seemed to dig deeper.
Every inch of Commander Jack Whitney said command, and every inch carried the weight of it.
“This, all this in under fifteen minutes?”
“Closer to twelve, sir. Yes.”
“Eighty-two confirmed dead.”
“Eighty-three. Another died after surgery, Commander.”
He continued to study the board in silence as Mira came in. Perfectly groomed in a suit of quiet blue, she crossed the room to join Whitney at the board.
“Thank you for coming in, Doctor Mira.”
Mira only shook her head. “I read your brief, preliminary report.” She shifted her gaze to Eve. “I appreciate you calling me in.”
They began to filter into the room now. Feeney, McNab, and Detective Callendar from EDD; Trueheart, Baxter, and the rest. Each one scanned the board before taking a seat. For once a room full of cops remained almost silent.
Get it started, she told herself, and walked to the front of the room.
“Shortly after seventeen-thirty this evening eighty-nine people were infected with an airborne substance we must believe was deliberately released inside On the Rocks, a bar on the Lower West Side. Data and witness reports give us a time line for the length of the incident. It lasted from approximately seventeen-thirty-three to approximately seventeen-forty-five—the last TOD, on scene, of any victim so far processed.”
Cops did the math, and there were murmurs as the narrow window of time made its impact.
“As of now we have no confirmation on when the substance was released,” Eve continued. “We know that this substance caused those eighty-nine people to hallucinate; it drove them to murderously violent behavior. Under its influence these eighty-nine people attacked each other. Eighty-three of those people are dead. Of the six survivors, we have been able to interview three. All their statements bear certain similarities. A sudden headache followed by extreme delusion. Preliminary reports from the medical examiner conclude this substance was most probably inhaled.”
She ran through the mix, using street names, watched the faces of her cops darken.
“Most of you have seen the result of that exposure, on scene. But to keep it in the forefront. Screen One on, display in turn crime scene stills one through eight.”
She waited and she watched as each still flashed on, held, flashed to the next.
“EDD has spliced together some transmissions from pocket ’links recovered on scene. Captain Feeney?”
He puffed out his cheeks, pushed to his feet. “Some of the vics were on their ’links prior to exposure. We got eleven ’links with some form of transmission, and seven of those continuing transmission during the incident. In all but two of those cases, the other party had already disconnected or the transmission went straight to voice mail. One transmission was made to Freeport, and we’ve contacted the other party to request a copy of the transmission from their end. As the other party was stoned out of his mind during the transmission and after, we’re currently working with the local Freeport PD to obtain. The other was made to an individual in Brooklyn. Detective Callendar was dispatched to speak with the individual, and has just obtained the ’link.”
He glanced at her.
Callendar, in tight red skin-pants and a scooped yellow shirt that showed off her considerable assets, shifted in her seat. “Schultz, Jacob J., age twenty-four. Single. He was cooperative, and also, if not stoned, considerably under the influence. He believed the transmission, which he replayed for me at his residence, was a practical joke played by his friend. I did not disabuse him of that belief.”
She shifted again so her black hair, done in a mushroom cloud of curls, bounced. “He was toasted, Lieutenant. You’d have to be seriously toasted to hear and see what’s on that ’link and think it was somebody’s idea of a big yuck.”
“Can you put it up?”
She nodded at Eve, rose. “We made a copy. The ’link’s sealed and logged.” Moving to the computer, she slid the disc in. “On screen, Lieutenant?”
“On screen.”
“Vic on screen is Lance Abrams, age twenty-four. Ah, he’s number twenty-nine.”
Callendar stepped back as the young, good-looking face came on screen.
“Yo, Jake! ’S on?”
“Decomp time. Might’ve had a half day, but the fucker was a day and a half. Brew’s going down easy.”
“I hear that. Stopped off for a couple, and I got a line on that sweet blonde I told you about.”
“Big Jugs? In your wet dreams, jerkoff.”
“I’m telling you, and she’s got a friend. How about it? I said we’d hit a couple of clubs, get some chow. She busted with her boyfriend, man, and she’s prime for it.”
There was a long slurping gulp as, Eve assumed, beer went down.
“You want me to come all the way in so you can get laid?”
“She’s got a friend.”
“How big are her tits?”
Abrams grimaced, pressed his fingers to his temple. “Fuck, need a blocker. You want to party or not?”
“I got brew, prime smoke, and I’m tapped till payday. Why don’t you bring them here? I’ll show you a party.”
“Asshole.” The attractive face became a mask of ugly rage. “You fucking prick.”
“Got my fucking prick here, too,” Jake said placidly, “and my good left hand.”
“Fuck up, fuck up, fuck everything up. I’m coming over there and fuck you up.”
“Yeah, yeah, you and what ninja army? Take a snap of the friend, yeah? Let me see if I want to get laid. What’s with the screaming, man? You at some sex club?”
“They’re coming.”
Behind Abrams, blood spattered. Someone ran by, fingers curled like talon
s, blood running down his face.
“They’re coming,” Abrams repeated in a scream, “for all of us.”
“Who’s that? Hey!” There was a moment of concern in Jake’s voice as the screen tilted, as flashes of people—mostly feet now, or those crawling, came in and out of view. “Hey, man, performance art? Chilly stuff. Where you at, bro, maybe I will come in. Yo, Lance! Nasty!” He laughed as a woman fell into view, clutching at the gash in her throat. Someone tripped over her and was beaten viciously with a broken chair leg.
“Shit man, gotta piss. Get me back.”
Jake clicked off, and the screen went blank.
Feeney cleared his throat. “We have the same transmission from the vic’s ’link, but this gives us the visual. We pieced together some of the others before they were aborted. What we’re going to do is dissect the audio, look for any key words, any patterns. But from what we have now, you’ve just seen the most comprehensive. I can run you the rest if you want it now.”
“It can wait. I want a copy of both. At this point we don’t know the method of dispersal, the motive. We don’t know if the individual or individuals who released this substance survived, or if survival was their intention.”
“You think this might’ve been some whacked-up suicide?” Baxter asked.
“Some people don’t want to die alone, or easy. But it’s low on the list. Think of Schultz’s reaction to it. Chilly, he thought. Yeah, he thought it was a show, a joke, but watching people kill each other, it’s entertaining. Whoever did this? I think they enjoyed it, enjoyed the punch of causing it. Possibly one or more of the victims was a specific target, but taking out a bar full of people in minutes? Had to be a rush. Doctor Mira, would you agree with that, or do you have another take?”
“I agree. To kill so many, so quickly, and more to manipulate them, like puppets. Very likely not getting his own hands dirty.”
Her gaze stayed calmly blue as she studied the death posted on the case board. “Ordinary people,” she added, “doing a routine, ordinary thing after the workday. It’s playing God—a vicious, vengeful God. Intelligent, organized, sociopathic. He, or they, likely have submerged violent tendencies. This was a play. Yes, performance art—the young man wasn’t far off. He observes, can’t connect. He’s unable to connect, except on the surface. He—or possibly she—plans and considers, but enjoys taking risks. He may be envious of the people who come together to enjoy a social hour after the workday. He may, certainly, have a specific target or a particular tie to or grudge against the bar.”