by J. D. Robb
“Gee, fresh out.”
Clothes – a shirt, a couple of thongs – his and hers, Eve supposed, and a very skimpy black dress littered the floor. Knee-high black boots, and mile-high glittery heels lumped together in another pile.
“I take it you weren’t sleeping alone,” Eve said.
The smirk reappeared as he tugged on the pants. “Don’t usually.” Then he yawned, managed to look sexy doing so. “I need a Vitasmooth.”
So saying, he sort of glided off through an opening framed in wavy glass block. Eve heard kitchen rummaging.
“Asshole,” McNab muttered, and Peabody only cleared her throat and gulped again.
He came back with a jumbo tube filled with spinach-green liquid. “Sorry, last one.” And took three big gulps. “Wow, head rush. Nice. So what’s this about?”
“Jayla Campbell.”
“Jay-jay?” He shrugged, glided again to one of the two chairs in the big space, slumped down, drank again. “What about her? Last I heard dancing with somebody wasn’t a cop deal. She’s pissed, fine. No reason to call in the cops.”
“She’s missing.”
“Missing what?”
Eve strode over, slapped her hands on the arms of the chair and leaned in. “Listen carefully.”
“Sure. You’ve got mag eyes. Anybody ever tell you? You could model with those eyes, your build. I’ve got connections.”
“Shut up and listen. Jayla Campbell left the party she attended with you last night and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.”
“She’s probably just sulking somewhere. She’s moody.”
“We have reason to believe otherwise. You were one of the last people to see her. When did you last see or speak with her?”
“I don’t know, at the party, when she got the bug up her ass about Misty. We were just dancing.” His gaze shifted toward another opening covered by a gauzy black curtain.
“And you and Misty danced back here?”
The smirk came back, as if it couldn’t help itself. “No crime there.”
“What time?”
“Jesus, I don’t know, exactly. We partied till about two, I guess. Then we walked back here – couldn’t get a damn cab – and we had a lot of sex.” He smiled now, full, showing perfect white teeth. “Jayla said we were done so, you know, free agent. She’s just sulking somewhere,” he repeated. “Wouldn’t want to go home where her bitch of a roommate would rub her nose in it, right? That one took it way wrong when I said how maybe the three of us could get it together.”
“You really are a fuckhead.”
“Hey!”
Eve shoved back. “Consider this, I could get a warrant, come through here and turn the place inside out. That would turn up all the illegals you didn’t already consume.”
“I don’t use! You can’t prove it.”
“Yes, I could, but you’re not worth it. Listen up, dickwad, the woman you’ve been involved with for several months, the one who helped put that face you’re so proud of out there, is missing. She may be hurt, she may be dead. Pretend to care.”
“It’s not my fault she got a bug up her ass. What do you mean ‘dead’?”
For the first time he looked concerned. Eve merely turned, signaled to Peabody and McNab.
“What do you mean ‘dead’?” he repeated, as she walked out.
“Let him stew on that,” she said.
“He’s really, really pretty,” Peabody said, “and he’s really, really a fuckhead.”
“The pretty fuckhead didn’t have anything to do with Campbell going missing – other than piss her off so she was out alone. I’d give him a couple weeks in a cage for that, if I could.”
“He wouldn’t last a couple,” McNab muttered.
“Exactly.”
“You were staring.” He scowled at Peabody as they trooped downstairs. “When he was naked.”
“Well, duh. Naked. And built. If he’d been a girl, you’d have been staring.”
Eve cast her eyes to the ceiling, quickened her pace from a walk to a jog down the steps. But she could still hear them.
“I bet he bought that body.”
“He got a really sweet deal if he did. But I like yours, right down to your bony ass.”
Eve didn’t have to see – thank God – to know Peabody gave that bony ass a squeeze to highlight her point.
“Total skeeze.” Apparently McNab couldn’t give it up. “And he totally hit on you, Dallas. Roarke would squash him into skeeze juice.”
“If he was worth being squashed, I’d have squashed him myself.” She stopped at the bottom of the stairs, bringing both of them up short. “A skeeze (she kind of liked the word), a fuckhead, a dickwad. He’s all of that and a bag of rice cakes.”
“Chips. It’s a bag of chips,” Peabody told her.
“Chips are good. Rice cakes are crap. He doesn’t get chips.”
“Oh.” Peabody frowned over it before she nodded. “That makes sense.”
“And the point is he doesn’t know or care where Jayla Campbell is. We don’t know, either, but we do care. Forget him. We’ve got about a three-block hike to where I’m parked. Considering the weather, I’m going to pull in some beat droids, shoot them Jayla’s ID shot, have them canvass the area between the party and her apartment, using the most likely route that would take her through where she texted her roommate.”
“I can do that.”
“Then do it,” she told Peabody. “And you, put the locations together. The first snatch, the first dump, and the last known location of Campbell.”
She pulled out her ’link when it signaled, saw Baxter’s ID, and pushed her way out into the world of snow. “Dallas.”
“Hey. You’ve got a Deputy William T. Banner out of someplace called Silby’s Pond, Arkansas, in here. He wants to talk to you about our spree killers. I checked, and he’s legit – been with the sheriff’s office there for five years. I put him in the lounge since he’s pretty firm about talking to you first.”
“Silby’s Pond?” She tried to remember if she knew the name, but there had been so many on the choices of routes. “I’m on my way in from Greenwich Village. We’ve got another missing. Take this data, get the wheels turning.”
“Shoot it at me.”
“Jayla Campbell,” she began, and filled him in.
She drove through abominable traffic with the scent of McNab and Peabody’s roasted chestnuts and the hot chocolate they helped themselves to from the backseat AutoChef.
Snow and homey scents were one thing during the holidays, she thought, but those were over. Why couldn’t they be done with it all now?
By the time she pulled into her slot at Central, she felt as if she’d trekked across the Arctic Circle.
“Why are they even out there?” she demanded. “The people, especially the people who can’t drive? NY tag number Echo-Charlie-Charlie-eight-seven-three. Issue an auto ticket.”
“An ‘auto ticket’?” Peabody repeated as they all climbed out.
“That’s what I said. Didn’t you see that idiot woman? Creeping along at twelve miles an hour?”
“Um. Well, it sort of pays to be cautious when —”
“While she was slapping on lip dye with her vanity mirror down, so she’s looking at herself instead of the damn road – and babbling on her ’link while she’s at it. Could’ve put it on auto if she needed to admire herself instead of fucking drive, but no, she’s creeping and weaving and doing her christing makeup.”
“Oh. Well. Do you really want to fine her? I always felt sort of crappy issuing autos when I worked Traffic.”
“Get over it. Slap her with driving while stupid.”
With McNab giving her butt a pat for support, Peabody issued an auto-citation while they took the elevator up.
“They don’t stalk the vics,” Eve said, shifting gears. “There’s not enough time for that. It’s luck of the draw. It doesn’t matter who – rich, poor, young, old, male, female. If the pattern holds we’ve got
two days to find them before they finish Jayla Campbell.”
“The weather’s helping them now,” McNab commented. “Cold, wind, snow, sleet. People spring for a cab or take public. Or stick close to home. They’ve just got to find a solo walker in a relatively quiet spot.”
“Right now they’re two for two in New York.”
As the elevator began to stop and start floor-by-floor with cops and civilians piling in, Eve pushed out.
“Odds are they boosted this dark all-terrain or van they’re using. Peabody, run a search for stolen vehicles fitting that, try New Jersey and Pennsylvania. And, yeah, it’s a general type in a big area,” she said before Peabody could point it out. “But we start, and maybe whittle it down before they decide to switch again. They may have taken it from another victim.”
She wove her way through people on the glides, moving up and up.
“McNab, get me that triangulation. They’re downtown somewhere. They have to have a place to live, to take the vics. Low security – can’t have cams picking them up carting in a vic. Nothing popped yet on the canvass of abandoned, so either we haven’t hit there yet, or they’ve found somewhere private.”
When she turned into Homicide, Baxter signaled from his desk. “Alerts on Campbell are out, Loo. The media’s already doing bulletins.”
“Okay.” She saw his gaze flick up to her snowflake hat. Eve yanked it off, stuffed it in her pocket. “What’s the deal with this Arkansas badge?”
“Well, he’s mannerly, but he was pretty firm he needed to talk to you.”
She pulled off her gloves, scarf. “Still in the lounge?”
“Last I checked.”
With a nod, she shoved the gloves in one pocket, the scarf in another, and headed out still wearing her coat.
She wanted coffee like she wanted to live. She wanted to sit down in the quiet, write everything up. Update, analyze, think.
In her head a clock was ticking, and there were less than forty-eight hours left.
She paused at the door to the lounge with its lines of vending, its tiny tables and hard chairs. She spotted him quickly.
A half mile of leg stretched out under the table. Long, narrow hands worked a PPC while a vending cup of something sat neglected in front of him.
A lot of wavy hair the color of a wheat field, a long narrow face to match the hands. He either hadn’t shaved recently or wore the scruff on purpose.
He wore jeans, boots that had seen a lot of miles, a flannel shirt that made her think of lumberjacks even though she wasn’t entirely sure what a lumberjack was.
A black parka hung over his chair back, and a duffel bag was under the table.
He looked up when she started toward the table. Blue eyes, she noted. Not Roarke-blue, but few were. His hinted at gray, showed smudges of fatigue under them, and a cop alertness in them.
“Deputy Banner.”
“Yes, ma’am. Will Banner.” He shifted his long legs, rose. Unfolded was more like it, she thought. He was an easy six-five with a build like a beanpole.
“Lieutenant. Lieutenant Dallas.”
He took the hand she extended in one with a rough, hard palm. “I sure do appreciate you meeting with me, Lieutenant.”
“You’re a long way from home, Deputy Banner.”
“That’s the God’s truth. Farthest I’ve ever been.”
“Where’s Silby’s Pond?”
“We’re in the Ozarks, ma’am, not —”
“Lieutenant. Sir if you want. Dallas will do.”
“Sorry. Y’all do things different here. We’re in the north of Arkansas, Lieutenant, not far from the Missouri border. Prettiest country you could ask for.”
His voice was caught somewhere between drawl and twang – leaning toward the drawl.
“What brings you here?”
“I’m hunting the same two you are. The same who killed this Dorian Kuper. He’s their latest. You did a search last night through IRCCA on missings and homicides in my area.”
“How do you know that?”
“I get alerted whenever there’s another victim, whenever there’s an official search through for more.” Though he shifted his feet his eyes stayed steady on hers. “Lieutenant Dallas, I understand you’re working with the feds, and they’ve given you their profiles and data and whatnot, but they don’t have all of it.”
“And you do?”
“If I did, your victim would likely still be playing his cello. But I believe – I know I have more. If you could just spare me fifteen minutes. I understand you’re busy, and you’re on an active investigation, but I’m asking you for fifteen minutes. I’ve come a hell of a long way.”
“Let’s take it in my office.”
She could all but see relief slide through him before he bent down for his duffel. “I’m grateful.”
“We don’t usually shove fellow law enforcement out the door.”
“You do hear things about New York City.”
“I bet. When did you get in?”
“That’s a story.”
She imagined that easy, heading toward lazy, drawl worked well on stories.
“I didn’t get the alert about your victim until into the afternoon. I talked to Special Agent Zweck, like I did with the one right before, and before that. They’ve been working their way to you, Lieutenant, for months now. It seemed to me with the search you started last night you’re leaning that way.”
“It’s an angle.”
“It’s the right angle, and because I saw how it seemed you might be leaning, and – I hope you’ll understand – after I did some research on you – I figured you might be open to a face-to-face with me.”
He paused just inside the bull pen, looked around. “You sure are busy around here. Back home, there’s the chief, me and two other deputies and our dispatcher.”
“How many people in Silby’s Pond?”
“Right about thirty-two hundred.”
“There’s more than that in this sector of this building.”
She gestured him toward her office. He stopped again inside it, studied her board as she shrugged out of her coat.
“You know there’s more. Half again more maybe.”
“It hasn’t been updated since I left yesterday. I’m late getting in because we have another missing person.”
“Jayla Campbell. I was reading the bulletin,” he said when she narrowed her eyes, “when you came in. The timing’s right, I see you know that, too. They’ve got her. They’d’ve started right in on her last night, too. Excited to have another. They’d’ve already started hurting her.”
“There’s no official victim in Silby’s Pond. I’d remember.”
“No, ma’am. Sir. Lieutenant. Sorry.” He scrubbed at his eyes a moment. “I was saying how I figured you’d be willing to talk with me, so I drove up to Branson, as it’d be the best place to get a shuttle through to New York. I got the last one heading out, figured I’d hit lucky. Until they dumped us in Cleveland ’cause of the weather. So I rented a truck, and drove the rest.”
“From Cleveland, in this weather.”
“The only way to catch them is to catch up to them. I haven’t managed that yet.”
“Have a seat. You want coffee?”
“All I can get. Black would be just fine, thanks.”
She got two from the AutoChef.
“Who do you think they killed in your town?”
“Melvin Little. He’s what you might call a fixture around those parts. He served in the Urban Wars, and he never could get through that, if you know what I mean. He came home, to his parents, a younger brother and a sweetheart. What my own daddy tells me, is Little Mel – as he was called, being small in stature – used about any substance he could get his hands on to muffle the nightmares, the voices, the memories. I know this doesn’t matter, but I want you to know him.”
“You’re getting your fifteen,” she told him.
Nodding, Banner took a hit of caffeine. His eyes went wide and glassy.
“Sweet Baby Jesus, what is this? Is this New York coffee?”
“Not exactly. It’s real coffee. I’ve got a connection.”
“Real coffee.” He said it like a prayer, with awe and reverence.
Remembering her first taste of Roarke’s coffee, she smiled. “Need a minute?”
“It could take days.” He smiled back, and she saw, beneath the fatigue, a great deal of charm. “Wait till I tell the boys back home.” Then he sighed. “Little Mel, he couldn’t adjust back. They tried what they try, but he was just one of the lost. There were too many, I guess. He didn’t like being indoors much, so he took to sleeping out in the hills, in the woods. You have what you call here sidewalk sleepers.”
“Yeah.”
“And they, some of them, they make a kind of home for themselves out of what they scavenge. He did that. His family took him food and supplies, but after some time, it was clear enough he wasn’t coming back. Most times he was drunk or high. He never hurt anybody but himself.”
She could see Melvin Little – Banner painted him well. And she sensed more. “What was he to you?”
“His sweetheart? That’s my grandmother. She loved him, loved the boy he’d been, but she couldn’t reach the man who’d come back. She married my grandfather, but she still went out to see Little Mel from time to time, take him food and fresh clothes. I got in the habit of going out to check on him every week or two.”
“So you looked out for him.”
“We did what we could. It’s true he might go rifling through a car or a cabin or shed now and then if it wasn’t locked up, take what caught his eye. More often in the last couple of years. Not when anyone was in them, you understand, and he never did a break-in. If it was locked, he left it be. Otherwise, he’d just go on in, poke around, take something to add to what he called his collection. Might be a fork or a doorknob, a broken clock.”
“You considered him harmless.”
“He was harmless.” Banner took a moment, another hit of coffee. “We had a boy go missing once. The family had gone camping, and the boy wandered off. We were putting the search team together when Little Mel comes walking into the campsite with the boy riding on his shoulders. The boy said how he’d been chasing a rabbit, and he got lost, and was crying and hurt his foot. And Little Mel came along, gave him a candy bar, wrapped up his foot in a handkerchief that was, truth be told, none too clean, and said how he’d give him a ride back to his mama. And he did. He never hurt anybody.”