by J. D. Robb
She rubbed the ache in the center of her forehead, then straightened up. “Bag and tag. Morris has already been notified. McNab.”
He turned back, his face still stony. “Sir.”
“We’ll need all electronics. The consultant has already determined the security equipment was compromised, as with the other incidents. They took the hard drive. But I want all the comps taken apart, and any communications devices you find. Send for assistance.”
She turned back, blew out a breath. “Our sweepers will take the scene, and local PSD will secure. Peabody, we’ll go through Easterday’s belongings on the second floor. Let’s see if there’s anything in there that will lead us to where they took him.”
When she went up, Roarke walked over to McNab.
“Don’t think she doesn’t feel it, that there isn’t a rage in her as you feel yourself.”
“I know it. It’s just . . .” He shoved off his winter cap, stuffed it in one of his pockets. “I saw a lot of bad shit when I was on Vice, okay? And rape is bad enough. Gang rape’s beyond. Then you add sticking Whore into her? Like it’s not enough you’re going to rape her, but you’ve got to make her part of it? And it can come back on the vic, you know? If she’s dosed wrong or too much, she can have flashbacks so she wants anybody to do her, then and there. I saw a lot of it. Too much of it.”
“So has she.” He gave McNab’s shoulder a squeeze.
McNab stood a moment as if gathering himself, with the striped tail of his cap dangling out of a pocket of his bright green coat. A crescent moon of sparkling hoops adorned his ear. The long-dead Elvis rocked on the front of his sweater.
The deep green eyes in his pretty face were all cop. “I’m not saying what they did to him was right. It’s not right. But it’s hard seeing it as wrong. Easier to say it’s not right than to say it’s wrong.”
“It is, isn’t it? I may not believe it as truly as Eve, or you, or Peabody, but I see the value of the belief you hold that you’d rather have him alive, alive so he could suffer the humiliation and the loss of his freedom for a lifetime, than dead on the ground like this. However much he suffered first.”
“There are times it’s harder to believe than others, but yeah, I do believe it. Thanks for reminding me.”
“All in a day’s. I’ll give you a hand until your help arrives, or the lieutenant needs me elsewhere.”
—
Roarke waited for her, busying himself with electronics. He knew worrying about her state of mind was fruitless, but couldn’t stop the worry.
She wouldn’t stop, he knew, no matter what it cost her.
When she came down—eyes flat as McNab’s had been, the shadows dogging them only accentuating her pallor—he had to bite back a demand that she take a break, get some rest. Because together they watched the morgue team take the bagged body away.
“If Easterday brought anything relevant with him, they’ve got it. And the cash I know he took from his house is gone. His passport’s in the suitcase, so he was prepared to get gone, too.”
She shifted aside to make room for the sweepers as they began their work.
“It’s clear enough, he decided to leave—his life, his wife. Better that than face what was coming.”
“Because, start to end,” Roarke said, “he’s a sodding coward.”
“Yeah. Yeah, start to end. I pushed enough buttons he knew what was coming. He came here because he figured it would be safe until he could make arrangements to get out of the country. Probably had a little pity party, like you said, with booze—poor me—maybe he came down after a while. Get more booze, maybe get some food.”
She walked back to the blood, the overturned table, the broken glass.
“When they come in, he’s not prepared, and maybe a little drunk. They’ve got Betz, carting him in. That’s got to take two of them, at least, but there are four of them. Younger, faster, and plenty determined. Easy enough to run down a guy pushing seventy, one who’s been drinking. He tries to get away, but they gang up on him—tit for tat, right? Whatever the hell that means. Struggle, knock the table over, and the glass vase thing on it breaks. He goes down hard. That’s probably a head wound—maybe some cuts from the broken glass, too. He’s dazed or knocked out, and they’ve got him.”
She looked back to where the sweepers worked on the light, the rope. “Easy to restrain him, even wait for him to come around while they put the noose around Betz. Now they’ve got two—and make Easterday watch while they raise the light, while the noose tightens, while Betz claws at his own throat, legs kicking, body convulsing.”
She drew a breath. “And they’re thinking, You watched while your brothers raped us. They watched while you raped us. Now you’ll watch your brother die, and know this is what we’ll do to you.”
“They could’ve ended it all here.” Peabody hunched her shoulders as Eve’s rundown brought the scene into her head too clearly. “Killed both of them, and gone into the wind.”
“That’s not the plan. Easterday has to suffer first. They have things to say to him, things to do to him. He has to beg, the way they begged. He has to know, the way they knew, begging won’t stop what’s coming.
“Hold here a second.”
She moved over to where Uniform Carmichael stepped in.
“Sorry to pull you back,” she began.
“It’s how it goes, Lieutenant.”
“It’s how this is going. I want you to supervise the canvass. We need to wake up the whole fucking block, Carmichael, dig down for any information. They had transportation, most likely a van, light colored, on the new side. Make sure every uniform has copies of Yancy’s sketches of the suspects. You’re going to need to coordinate with and work with the local PSD.”
“No problem. I’ve got a cousin on the job here. Already gave her a tag, let her know. She’ll help smooth the way if I need it.”
“Good. Let the locals secure the scene. But keep an eye. I don’t know them.”
She walked back to Roarke, Peabody, McNab.
“We’ve done a first pass on the electronics,” McNab told her. “Nothing that hits on this. I’ve got an EDD team taking everything in. You want me on that?”
“No. We’re going to hit Blake’s residence and office. You and Peabody will take the office, and the civilian and I the residence. That way we’ve each got an e-man. Anyplace to land the damn copter near Blake’s office?”
Since she would have objected, perhaps physically, to an ass pat, Roarke patted her shoulder instead. “There’s always a place.”
“Then you’ll fly back with us, and get there from wherever that place is.”
“Copter ride. Woo!” Peabody shrugged. “You had to know it was coming.”
“Reo’s working on the warrant for the electronics. Stickier when it’s a law office, but we’ve got more than enough to get it now. Until we do, turn the place inside out, but don’t touch the electronics or files.”
“Got that.”
“We’re done here for now.” She gave the hallway a last glance. “Let’s move on.”
—
On the short flight back to Manhattan, Eve kept in touch with Reo via ’link texts, read what she could of Baxter’s and Trueheart’s and Peabody’s runs on MacKensie and Downing.
“You can see it now, knowing where to look. They all travel on the same shuttle to Elsi Adderman’s memorial—coming and going. They all made annual contributions to a women’s crisis or rape center—not the same amounts, not the same center, but every one of them put some money where their issues are. None of them are in relationships. All but Downing went to Yale, and we’ll find her connection. All but Blake either dropped out or hit some skid during college. She hit hers later, that’s how it reads to me.”
“Lipski at the crisis center recognized Su, Downing, and MacKensie,” Peabody added.
“And
we now know Blake served as legal consultant there. We show Adderman’s sketch to Lipski, she’ll recognize it, too. They had their convergence there, or through the support group either before or after the memories came tumbling back.”
She turned around as Roarke touched down on a rooftop.
“This is only a block or two from the office, and another two from the apartment.”
“It’ll do.” Eve got out, reminding herself she only had to get back in once more.
She turned to Peabody and McNab as the wind buffeted around them, and Roarke bypassed security on the roof access door.
“Wait for the warrant before you hit the electronics. By the book. However you feel about it, these women are serial killers, and the last vic they can get to is already in their hands.”
“Sorry about before,” McNab began.
“Before what?” Eve said, making him smile a little as they went in and started down the stairs.
“Anything to be found, we’ll find it—and send up a signal if and when.”
After they parted ways, she hunched against the wind, rubbed her tired eyes. “I can’t figure if they’ll do him fast or draw it out. They didn’t expect to come on him like they did—that’s a bonus for them. Will they kill him quick, or savor it? Because if they do him fast, we’re not going to have time to stop them.”
“If fast was the goal, you’d have found his body with Betz.”
“Yeah, I tell myself that, then I think—in their place? I’d start calculating how much time, how much risk. If they want to get away with it, they’ve got to get it done and blow.”
“Have you considered they don’t care about getting away?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I have. And that’s a bigger problem.”
She studied the building as they approached. Nothing fancy, but solid. No doorman, but what looked like decent security from her take on it. A Thai restaurant and a discount shoe store on street level.
Eve moved to the door of the apartments, let Roarke pop the locks. Then turned on her recorder.
“Until the amended warrant comes through, it’s just straight search. Unless, of course, she’s here eating soy chips and watching screen.”
She ignored the skinny elevator, took the stairs. “She’s on four.”
“I’m aware.”
“She’s going to be the one with the second place—the torture chamber. Not here—this isn’t set up for that—but she’ll have something. We’ve got to dig deeper there. None of the others have enough scratch to buy or rent another property. I couldn’t find anything that indicated any of them inherited a place—or enough scratch to buy or rent.”
A clean, well-lighted stairwell, she thought. And a pretty quiet building. Not fully soundproofed, as she caught the mutter of voices from within an apartment on the second floor. And the backbeat of a party going on when they climbed to three.
On four, she rapped smartly on Blake’s door. Gave it a minute, rapped again, added: “Grace Carter Blake, this is the police.”
That resulted in the door across the hall opening a crack.
“She’s not home.”
Eve turned, studied the slice of dark face, the suspicious dark eye. She held up her badge.
“Do you know where she is?”
“Nope, but she hasn’t been home all day. Don’t think she was home last night, either. Maybe took a trip.”
“A trip.”
“Had some suitcases yesterday—and took some stuff out a couple days ago. Maybe three. Closed down her office is what Ms. Kolo said. She’s on two, and she said how the office was closed yesterday. Today, too. She in trouble?”
“I need to speak with her.”
“Well, she hasn’t been here much the last couple weeks.”
Eve took out the sketches. “How about any of these women?”
The dark eye narrowed, and the door opened another fraction. “Saw her with that one.” One bony finger poked through the crack to point at Su.
“Here?”
“Nope, down the market. Ginaro’s. Couple doors down.”
“When?”
“I don’t know, maybe last week. Probably last week because I was doing my marketing, and I’ve got to do it again tomorrow. They were buying a bunch of produce and such, but they didn’t bring it back here because what they did was haul it on down the street and around the corner.”
“They walked south to the corner, then . . . west?”
“That’s right. If she’s in trouble, she keeps quiet about it. Keeps to herself. Doesn’t party like that bunch downstairs. I can hear them howling and laughing right through the floor.”
“Ms. . . .”
“Jackson.”
“Ms. Jackson, I have a warrant to search Ms. Blake’s residence. We’re going to enter it now. If you want, you can verify that by contacting Dispatch at Cop Central.”
“You got the badge,” she said. “I know how to keep to myself, too.” So saying, she shut the door.
Eve used her master, bypassed the three locks—one standard, two additional police issue.
“She needed to feel safe when she was inside,” Eve murmured. “This is the police,” she repeated. “We’re coming in.”
As a matter of course, she drew her weapon, swept it as Roarke called for lights.
Modest, was Eve’s first thought. Uncluttered with a few nice pieces including a leather sofa she bet Blake bought in her corporate days.
But yeah, she’d taken a few things out.
“Took whatever art was on the wall there—you can see the variation in the tone of the paint, and the hanger’s still there. I’m putting it five to one it was one of Downing’s. Should be a table over there, right? Why have a chair sitting out there without a table? Nothing to put your drink on, and no light.”
“Easier for a woman to carry out a table than a chair.”
“Yeah, it is. No photos, good wall screen, no mess. Let’s clear it.”
They split up, with Eve taking the bedroom and bath off the living space.
They moved systematically: kitchen alcove, smaller room set up as an office—and now without computer or ’link.
“She took clothes,” Eve said as she holstered her weapon. “You can see spaces in the closet. Pretty much cleaned out the bath—no toiletries or enhancers.”
Idly, she opened the drawer in a night table. “Empty.”
Roarke repeated the process on the other side of the wide bed with its simple white duvet. “The same. And the AutoChef in the kitchen is the same as well. Not even a stray bagel.”
“She’s had time to plan, and a place to take what she wanted over time. So when she left, she took whatever she had left that suited her. It’ll be the same in her office. She’ll have cleared out the electronics. No chances taken. We’ll go through it, but it feels like she took her time, thought it through. When you do that, you don’t make mistakes.”
“If she has another place, we’ll find it.”
Eve nodded, began the search.
The warrant for the electronics came through, for all the good it did. When they left, they walked south, turned west at the corner.
“Parking lot over there. And not the kind that’s going to keep their surveillance feed for a damn week. We’ll check anyway.”
Dead ends, she thought, one after another, and connected with Peabody.
No electronics in the offices. No files.
“Go home,” Eve ordered. “Get some sleep. Have McNab set up a search on Su’s vehicle. Use variations of all their names for it, all five women. Use variations of all her family names. Set an alarm for any hits, and tag me if you get one.”
“I’m not playing mum.” Roarke put an arm around her as they walked back. “But it’s common sense to say you need some sleep.”
“What I want is coffee, a
nd something I can twist to bust through one of these dead ends. Maybe we got a hit on the searches while we’ve been in the field.”
“I’ve checked. Nothing yet. Some take more time than others.”
She didn’t have time. Easterday didn’t have time.
—
In the copter, she closed her eyes. If she could clear her mind, she thought, maybe something would slide in, something she’d missed or overlooked.
The next thing she knew, Roarke was unhooking her harness.
“Dropped off a minute.”
“Because however much you want to keep at this, your system needs sleep. So will they,” he reminded her as he slipped an arm around her waist.
“They can take shifts. But yeah, they need sleep, food, conversation.”
It felt like walking through water, getting to the door, moving into the warm.
“They won’t kill him tonight. I should’ve gotten to that. You were right. Fast would mean they’d have done it and left him. They’ve got him where they want him, and they need to sleep, to talk, to make him pay. The killing’s the easy part. Making him pay takes time.”
He led her to the elevator rather than the stairs, and went straight to the bedroom.
“Will you take a soother to ease my mind?”
“I haven’t had coffee in hours. I’m soothed enough. I get I need sleep or I’d have to take a booster, and I don’t want a booster. I’ll go down until five hundred hours. Where’s the cat?”
“I suspect with Summerset, as we were among the missing. Do you want him?”
She did, foolishly, but not enough to send Roarke to get him.
“Just wondered.”
She undressed, still in that underwater state. How long had she been up? She couldn’t figure it—didn’t matter. She’d go down now and start again before dawn. It was all she could do.