by J. D. Robb
“He’s on his way. Cleaning crew?”
“He uses our in-house service, twice weekly. Wednesdays and Saturdays.”
“How do they access?”
“I clear them. They don’t have the codes, and have to be cleared by the desk and/or the resident.”
“Did anyone inquire about Mr. Banks, were there any deliveries made or attempted to this apartment in the last twenty-four hours?”
“Not on my shift, and there aren’t any notes in the log on that.”
“But other deliveries, to other units?”
“Certainly, several. Each would be cleared individually. No one’s sent into the residences without clearance. If a resident isn’t at home for a delivery, we hold the package at the desk. Visitors are also cleared. No one can access the elevators or stairs without their key card or clearance.”
“A lot of visitors in a building this size.”
“Yes. But the safety, security, privacy, and comfort of our residents are our priorities.”
“Once they’re cleared, anything to stop them from accessing another floor?”
“They’d need a key card. If I clear someone for level twenty, they’re restricted to that level.”
“But the residents aren’t restricted.”
“No.”
“In the event of fire or another emergency?”
“All elevators and exits are automatically opened. That didn’t happen. It would have been logged. So would any anomaly lasting five seconds. If the feed had a glitch, the glitch—type, time, duration—would be recorded. We’re a Five Lock building, Lieutenant, the highest security rating given.”
She linked her hands together as she looked around the bedroom. “I’m at a loss.”
“No building’s a hundred percent secure,” Eve commented. “Somebody gets their pocket picked, somebody makes a copy of their key card for their newest lover, whatever. Do you know every person who lives here, by sight and name?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
Eve stopped, turned, interested. “Seriously?”
“It’s my job. We’re currently at ninety-three percent occupancy with six hundred and thirty-four units occupied, eighteen hundred and sixteen residents—including live-in staff. We employ more than three hundred full- and part-time staff to serve and service the building. Not including outside marketing and seasonal workers and subcontractors on our call list.”
“Huh. Who lives in the unit across the hall from this one?”
“Ms. Yuri and Mr. Simston, and Ms. Yuri’s mother, Mrs. Yuri—a widow—and Georgie, their Yorkie. They’re currently in Aruba, but are expected back by late afternoon tomorrow.”
“Unit 3100.”
The first glimmer of a smile dawned in Rhoda’s eyes. “Ms. Karlin, Mr. Howard. Newlyweds. They were married last fall. Ms. Karlin divorced Mr. Olsen shortly after I began work here four years ago. He was granted custody of their Persian cat, Yasmine. Unit 3100 hosted a dinner party last night. Catered.”
“How many guests?”
Rhoda closed her eyes a moment, nodded to herself. “Dinner for twenty. Cocktails at seven-thirty. Catered by Jacko’s, arrival at six. Florist delivery, that’s Urban Gardens … four-thirty. That’s approximate.”
“Roarke knows how to pick them.”
“I do,” he said from the doorway.
“Sir.” Rhoda turned to him. “I’m so sorry.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for. I’d like you to review the overnight feed, mark anyone you don’t know. The lieutenant will need a list of residents, staff, logged guests, delivery companies, and so on. You know what to do.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll have a copy of the feed ready for you and the police.”
“I have it. Do you need more from Rhoda at the moment?” he asked Eve.
“Just one more thing. Other than the newlyweds, any other parties here last night?”
“Six catered, and three others. And a number of drop-bys. I can have all of that for you.”
“Okay. I’ll let you get to it.”
“Sir. We could lose a lock on our rating.”
“One thing at a time,” Roarke told Rhoda, giving her shoulder a pat to move her along.
When she left, Roarke watched Eve continue to search.
“I think he had almost as many clothes as you do,” she commented. “Just the one safe, in here, I came across on my sweep. It’s open. I can’t tell if they had the code or broke in.”
Roarke slipped inside, crouched down to examine the safe. He took out one of his toys, ran some sort of scan.
“Scan,” he told her. “Eight-digit code, and it was opened with a reader. It’s a simple lock. I expect someone like Banks would have had the code tucked somewhere so he wouldn’t have to remember it, but this was scanned. The bulletins haven’t disclosed cause of death.”
“Broken neck—manually. Dumped in the water. Made to look like a mugging—took his coat, shoes, valuables. No ’link on the body.”
“They didn’t bother to make this look like a burglary,” Roarke said. “He has jewelry in here, his passport, which is always worth a bit of something on the black market. And there’s art and other easily liquidated things throughout the place. Likely he had some cash in here, and that’s gone. But cash can’t be traced, so why not?”
“You’re pissed. Me, too. But it’s not that challenging to get into an apartment, even in a secure building, when you know the occupant’s dead or going to be. Can you take that toy, see if the locks were compromised, or if that’s a straight entry, too?”
“I can.”
He left her. By the time he came back, she’d moved on to the sports closet.
“Jammed and scanned—bedroom level.”
She stopped, eyes narrowed. “So they didn’t wait to do it the easy way, with his key card and codes off the body. Broke in before they killed him. Why is that? Because it’s easier to cross a lobby to an elevator before, say midnight, than it is at after three in the morning. A lot of people still coming and going at, like, ten, eleven at night. Parties, heading out for a drink, coming in from dinner and all that. Several parties happening in the building, and that’s going to be fairly routine. Caterers, deliveries, guests.”
“Dallas— Hey, Roarke.” Peabody stepped in. “Nothing in the guest room or home office. Not even a used memo cube.”
“Fast, sloppy, and so far thorough. Take the master bath.”
She dug into a ski jacket. “He left the building about nine, had them order a cab. From the contents of his stomach, he went to a high-end cocktail-type party. Had sex with a redhead.”
“That’s specific.”
“Stray pubic hair. We have him picked up by another cab—we’ve got the address and time—and dropped off near the JKO. TOD just after three, so he met his killer or, more likely, killers there. One of them has the skill to snap his neck, they team up, haul him over the fence into the reservoir, where he’s spotted about two hours later by a couple of underage drinking buddies who jump in to pull him out.”
She moved on to a wet suit.
“Meanwhile, they stripped anything valuable from the body, including his pocket e’s, so we have no way to trace who he talked with or when. They’re not stupid.”
“Got something!” Peabody walked back in with a memo book in a waterproof bag. “Inside the toilet tank—classic.”
“And for a reason,” Roarke agreed when Eve took it, opened the bag.
“Passcoded.”
Roarke held out a hand.
“Seal up first.”
He sighed, but obeyed. Then fiddled with the book for about twenty seconds. “Rudimentary block. Open now, and … ah. What you have here is an on-the-go sort of bookkeeping. The books for the laundering service is how it looks.”
“Any names?” Eve demanded.
“It doesn’t look like it. Numbers. What went in, and when, what came out and when. His fee, profit. It’s more a little pocket guide than actual accounting.”
> “If he kept those books here, they’re gone now,” Eve concluded. “Maybe the art gallery has records. And names.” She took the device back, resealed it, dropped it in an evidence bag, sealed and labeled.
“If they missed this, maybe they missed something else. Peabody, while we finish here, have Baxter and Trueheart hit the art gallery. Get the warrant, have them transfer the electronics to Central, and take a good look around the gallery. Interview any staff, and get the names and contact info for other employees.”
“I’ll be down with Rhoda and our security,” Roarke told her.
On their arrival, Eve sent the sweepers to the second level while she and Peabody went through the main.
She yanked out her comm when it signaled. “Dallas.”
“Baxter. Here at the Banks Gallery now. Banks had a run of bad luck, Loo. He got himself dead, had his apartment broken into. And it turns out, his art gallery, too.”
“Ah, fuck!”
“Yeah, I hear you. Cleared the d and c unit out of the office here, and all the other electronics. The hot artist chick in charge today says they don’t open until one on Tuesday, but when she heard about Banks being dead, she thought she should come in, check on things, maybe notify the other artists and all that. She’d just called in the break-in when we got here.”
“And the art?”
“She doesn’t think anything’s missing, but she’s doing an inventory. They’ve got stuff in what she calls a holding room. She says she has to go by memory mostly, as the records were on the comp that’s gone. And that’s a little problem, as Banks had a habit of rotating.”
“The art?”
“He’d see something he liked, take it for his place, keep it awhile, rotate it back. He’d get bored, is what she told us. Have a couple of the artists hang stuff in his place, bring stuff he had in here, hang it, like that. He never bought anything—she tells us—for his personal collection. He called it marketing. How he’d hang it in his home for friends to admire. Still, she says, not everything came back, and as she’s done some of the hanging over there, not everything stayed in his place, either.
“She tried to keep her own list on her PPC, but she says it was hard to keep up.”
“Okay, get what you can, have the sweepers send in a team. Get contacts for the artists and anybody else who worked there. I want EDD checking the security.”
“Feed’s gone.”
“I figured. Have them nail down what time the security was compromised. And … when you’re done, bring her over here, to his apartment. I want her to look at the art, see if she can pin down anything that she thinks should be here and isn’t.”
When she clicked off, she circled the living area, studied the walls. The empty walls.
“Peabody!”
With rapid clumps, Peabody hurried in.
“What did they do in the turnover here that they didn’t do on the bedroom level?”
“Ah…”
“They didn’t pull the art off the walls upstairs like they did down here. You look down here, you might think they were looking for a safe or hidey-hole behind a painting. But if they did the same upstairs, they didn’t take the paintings down. Why is that?”
She wandered. “Why is that?” she repeated. “No holes or hooks in the walls, but lots of paintings.”
“You hang them from that fancy trim. It’s called a picture rail so you can hang art—either with invisible wire or decorative chains. Change it out when you want, shift it around without damaging the walls.”
“Right. So there’s no way for us to tell where this stuff was hung, if it’s all still here.”
“His insurance would have records.”
“Not the way he worked it. He’d take stuff from the gallery, use it until he got tired of looking at it, switch it out. And sold some of it under the table. Straight profit in his pocket.”
She crouched down for a better look at the figure studies dumped on the floor. “Did they take a painting or two? Why? He’s got expensive wrist units and cuff links in the safe they opened, but they left them. Did they take any paintings? Did they take one because they thought: Hey, that would look frosty over my mantel? Maybe. It’s worth finding out.”
Eve took one last look around. “Greed,” she said. “It’s all about greed. Let’s go see what Roarke and Ms. Memory Bank have for us.”
She found Roarke and Rhoda in the security hub. It was—no surprise—not just state of the art, but likely the state the art aspired to. A little mouse-faced man worked with them. Though he was dressed all in gray, she recognized the jiggle-bop of an e-geek.
“Rhoda has your copy,” Roarke said. “We’re going through the feed of your time frame, with Rhoda noting down residents, guests, staff, and so on for you.”
“That’s helpful.”
“Our man Bingley here is combing through for abnormalities in the system that might have gone undetected.”
“Elevators and stairwells are priority.”
“I got that. I got that. Got that.” Bingley murmured it like a chant as he jiggled in his chair.
Eve judged he topped out at about five-five, maybe a buck and a quarter. His straggly hair and wispy beard were as gray as his clothes. His knobby-knuckled fingers worked keyboard and swipe screens with an agility that would have made Feeney beam.
She shifted her attention to the monitors, noted the time stamp. Twenty-two-forty. Scanned the people coming, going. Spotted some of Jacko’s crew leaving. She’d met the caterer and his team on another investigation. Those she could eliminate. Also low on the list, the couple coming in—both wrapped in furs with twin looks in their eyes that said: Next stop, sex.
Then the teenager, boots, trendy flak jacket, earflap hat, with a mop-haired dog on a leash.
She studied the solo male—late thirties, grim-faced, flapping top coat, rolling overnighter. Maybe.
“Who—”
“Look here, look here, pally!”
Roarke leaned over Bingley’s sloped shoulder at the man’s exclamation. And said: “Ah.”
“Ah what?” Eve demanded.
“Blip, blip, lights out, smooth ride.”
“What does that mean?”
“Reset,” Roarke ordered. “Roll. Pause. And yes, very bloody clever.”
“Got juice,” Bingley said. “No dope.”
“Yes, indeed. It wouldn’t register as a glitch or disruption.”
Eve resisted, barely, tearing at her hair or punching something. Maybe someone. “What wouldn’t, for fuck’s sake?”
“The blip. Just under three seconds.”
“Two-point-six,” Bingley said.
“Exactly. A shutdown of the elevator cam—elevator four. Then he shut the lights off in the car, unjammed the cam. Under three seconds isn’t long enough to register. The light? What have we there, Bingley?”
“Goes dark for nine-point-eight seconds.”
Roarke turned, worked another comp. “Short, singular event, logged twenty-two-nineteen. The system flagged it, but as it was of short duration, cited as on watch.”
“What floor? What floor did he get on?”
“Fifty, rode two floors up to Banks’s bedroom level. He had to turn the cams back, you see, or the system would alert. But the lights? That’s building maintenance, and as they resolved so quickly, it’s simply on watch.”
“What about getting back down? What time, what floor? He could have exited from the main level. Watch for both levels.”
“No blip. See, pally?” Bingley said to Roarke. “No blip, lights on.”
“I see, yes. We don’t have the same routine for an exit. In fact, what I’m seeing is no one accessed an elevator on that floor until eight sharp this morning.”
“Who? Where’s the feed?”
“She’s got the cranks,” Bingley commented to Roarke.
“Often.”
“Your deal, pally.” He cackled softly, brought up the feed.
“Rhoda?”
She swiveled o
ver. “That’s Mr. Clarke, 5203—two-level unit—and his two children, their nanny. He’d be leaving for work, the nanny would be walking the children to school.”
At Eve’s insistence, they checked the feed, both levels, elevators and stairways, until noon, with Rhoda providing names and apartment numbers.
“Everyone,” Rhoda concluded. “Everyone who exited belonged on their level. There’s no one out of place. I’m sorry.”
“We’ll run them all,” Eve said. But it didn’t fit, just didn’t fit. “Because how the hell did he get out and down?”
“Coulda flown,” Bingley said with a grin. “Flap, flap. Hey, pally?”
Rather than respond, Eve just narrowed her eyes. Then she turned on her heel. “Peabody!”
As she strode out, Bingley’s grin widened. “Plenty cranks, pally.”
“Not this time.”
Roarke caught up with her at the elevator. “Obviously he didn’t flap his way out, but.”
“But. We’re going to check the terraces, both levels. He could’ve been an ice-for-veins son of a bitch and rappelled down, at least a few floors.”
They got on the elevator. “What’s with the ‘pally’?”
“Bingley considers me bright enough, but young and with much left to learn. He’s a bit odd, but knows what he’s about.”
She thought it through on the ride up. “He doesn’t have to live on fifty or fifty-two, or live here period—though that would be handy. He could have blended in with guests or caterers, even faked a delivery. Get to the unit, resident says this isn’t my package. Sorry, will check with my dispatch, and you’re in. Slide out anywhere. We’ll go over the feed, and we’ll find him, but it won’t be quick.”
They got off, walked back to Banks’s apartment, straight out to the main floor terrace.
“This level makes more sense. Why add another floor?”
Though it made her stomach pitch to look down, she gritted through it, examined every inch of the terrace wall before calling out a sweeper.
“I’m looking for any sign some asshole rappelled down from here.”
She went to the second level, repeated the process.
In the end, with negative results on both, she circled the bedroom. “If he didn’t go over, he went through, and if he went through, he’d show on the elevator or stairwell feed. He doesn’t. Maybe … Could he get down to another level through the guts of the building?”