The In Death Collection, Books 26-29

by J. D. Robb

Her eyes stayed narrowed as she watched him leave the room. “That’s it? That’s all? Is he sick or something?”

  “He knows why you’re late,” Roarke said. “That you’re investigating the murder of a fellow officer. Give him some credit.”

  She frowned into her wine, drank some. “Do I have to?”

  Since it was obvious she couldn’t head straight up to work, she sat on the arm of Roarke’s chair. “Anyway, I left you a message about being late. I remembered to do that. I get credit, too.”

  “So noted.” Roarke rubbed a hand on her thigh. “Progress?”

  “Not much. It’s hard enough when it’s another cop. But having to tell Morris, seeing his face . . .”

  “Morris?”

  “They had a thing, Morris and Coltraine—the vic. A serious thing.”

  “Oh. No.” Mavis clutched Belle tighter. “This was Ammy? The woman he’s been seeing? We never turned the screen on today, never heard. Roarke just told us you’d caught a case, a cop killer. We didn’t know it was . . . Oh, Leonardo.”

  He put his arm around her, drew both his girls closer. “This is . . . horrible. We ran into them at a club one night, sat down with them. You could see how much they . . . It was there between them,” Leonardo said with sorrow in his gilted eyes. “I’m so sorry, so sorry. Is there anything we can do for him?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “We only met her that one time.” A tear slid down Mavis’s cheek before she pressed it to the top of Belle’s head. “She seemed so up, and they were so into each other. Total vibe, total sparkage. Remember, honey-pot, how I said after they were just gone squared over each other.”

  “I remember.”

  “It’s good it’s you.” Mavis firmed her chin, patted Belle’s back. “You’ll find the bastard who did it. Morris knows that. We’re going to leave so you can do the cop stuff. If there’s anything—you know, stuff I know how to do—you just tag me. I’m there.”

  They began to transfer Belle into her carrier as Summerset walked in with a tray. “You’re leaving.”

  “Bellissimo needs to go night-night.” Mavis rose on her rainbow tip-toes to kiss Summerset’s cheek. “We’ll be back—us girls—for the big bash. A bridal shower and all that girl stuff’s just what we all need. And you guys.” She elbowed her husband. “Zipping off to Vegas for the man party.”

  “Vegas?” Eve blinked. “Huh?”

  “My duties as best man,” Roarke told her. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  When she was alone with Roarke, the wine, and an elegantly arranged plate of food, she frowned. “Why do you have to go all the way to Las Vegas—shit, you do mean Las Vegas, right? You’re not going off planet to Vegas II.”

  “No, we’re going to the original.”

  “But, what if I need help with all those women? I don’t even know what they’re planning because Peabody and Nadine are doing all that, so what if—”

  “You could easily find out the plans instead of pretending it won’t actually happen. And you’ll be just fine. They’re your friends.” He tapped her chin with a fingertip. “Eat your dinner before it gets cold.”

  “I’m going to take it up, eat at my desk.”

  “Fine. Then you can tell me what happened to Morris’s lady, and what I can do to help you find her killer. He’s my friend, too,” Roarke added.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.” She gave in for a moment, moved into him, dropped her forehead on his shoulder. “God. Oh, God, it was horrible. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. It made me sick inside, just sick to knock on his door. To know I was about to break a friend in two. I have to find the answers for him. It’s more than the job.”

  “It is, yes.” He held her close and tight, and as Mavis had with Belle, rested his cheek on her head. Battled back his own fears. “Whatever you need from me.”

  She nodded, drew back. “Let’s take it upstairs. It always helps me see things clearer, or from other angles, when I run the case by you.”

  They started up. “Tell me a little about her first. Did you know her well?”

  “No. I ran into her a couple of times at the morgue. She transferred here a few months ago. From Atlanta. Mavis had it—the vibe thing. He was in love with her, Roarke, and with everything I’ve learned since this morning, she felt the same about him. I get that she was a good cop, detail-oriented. She didn’t live the job.” She glanced over at him. “I guess you get what I mean by that.”

  He smiled a little. “I do.”

  “Organized, feminine. She had eight years on the job. No big flash in her jacket, no big lows. Steady. People liked her, a lot. Her squad, her main weasel, hell, the woman who owns the Chinese place where she ordered her takeout. I can’t figure out what she did, who she twisted, to be targeted like this.”

  “It was target specific?”

  “Yeah.” In her office, she sat behind her desk, told him the details while she ate.

  “The locks were checked for tampering?”

  “Yeah, and they say no. Could’ve used a master, could be another tenant in the same building. Could have managed to dupe her key card, or someone else’s in the building. Or he could be as good as you, and didn’t leave a trace.”

  “She was taken down with a stunner,” Roarke mused. “They’re not easy to come by, and very pricey. Could he have disarmed her first and used her own weapon both times?”

  “It doesn’t play. No defensive wounds, and other than the kill burns, and the bumps on the back of her head, her shoulder blades, no offensive wounds. No cop turns over her weapon like that, not even to someone she knows.”

  “You’d give yours to me,” he pointed out. “If I asked to see it for a moment, you’d give it to me.”

  Eve considered that. “Okay, maybe she would, to someone she was really tight with. But it still doesn’t stream that way for me. She was heading out, sidearm and clutch piece. Taking the stairs, because she always did. That’s a setup. And it had to be done fast and smooth. No time to ask her nice if she’d let you hold her stunner.”

  She pushed up, began to pace. After, Roarke noted, she’d eaten only half her meal. “We ran all the tenants. Got a few criminal pops, but nothing major. We’ll interview everyone again who came up with any sort of a sheet, but I have to ask myself why she’d be going out, armed, to meet one of her neighbors.”

  “She might have been using the stairs simply to get to one of the other floors rather than the exit.”

  Eve stopped, frowned. “Okay, that’s a thought. She arms herself first, though, so it’s not a neighborly visit. It wouldn’t be smart, going to another apartment for a meet when it’s on the shady. Then why did the killer, if he’s inside, need to jam the rear door security camera? Maybe to throw us off,” she said, answering herself. “So we’re looking outside the building.”

  She paced again. “Unnecessary complication. But we’ll interview the tenants again. It just feels like an extra step to take, when SOP would be to run and interview everyone anyway.”

  “I can help with the electronics.”

  “That’s Feeney’s call. He’s always happy to have the uber e-geek on board, but he may have it well under control. I’ve got a lot of case files to wade through. I need to study her currents, her closed, her open, and what I got from Atlanta. You can—yeah, yeah, it’s an insult to you—but you can think like a cop. Maybe you can take a look at Atlanta while I do New York. Plus, they need to be cross-referenced. I need to know if anything from before connects with now.”

  “And I can do that faster than you.”

  “Yeah, you can.” She angled her head. “You can also think like a criminal, which is handy. Would you have sent her weapons to the primary? Why or why not?”

  “I wouldn’t have taken them in the first place. A smart criminal takes nothing—unless it’s straight thievery, which this wasn’t—and leaves nothing of himself behind. Otherwise, there’s that connection.”

  “But he did take them. And I don’t
think he’s stupid.”

  “They must have served a purpose. Leaving them—especially if he used one to kill her—would be, in my opinion, more of an insult to her. And you, or whoever caught the case. So taking them served another purpose, even if it was just the jab to you by sending them back. He’s not a pro.”

  “Because?”

  “A pro does the job, walks away, moves on. He doesn’t taunt the police.”

  “Agreed. He might be a professional criminal, but it wasn’t a professional hit. It looks simple, on the surface, but it was actually much too elaborate—and too personal—for a straight hit. A straight hit, you don’t take her in a populated building, but lure her out of it, maybe to a meet. Take her there, or along the way. He wanted something, information or something she might have taken with her we can’t know about. Or he wanted to give her a message before he finished her. And he wanted her found without much delay.

  “I want to set up my board here, and run some probabilities before I start on the case files.” She dug out a disc. “Here’s Atlanta. All data’s on my office unit, which I know you can access.”

  “Then I’ll get started.”

  “Roarke.” It had niggled at her all day, and still she hadn’t meant to ask. Hadn’t meant to bring it up. “Morris . . . when I was with him today, he said that being involved with a cop, being in a relationship with one . . . He said every day you have to block out the worry. Fear,” she corrected. “He said fear. Is that how it is?”

  He slipped the disc into his pocket to take her hands, and rubbed his thumb along her wedding ring. The design he’d had etched into it was an ancient charm. For protection. “I fell in love with who you are, with what you are. I took on the whole package.”

  “That’s not answering the question. Or, I guess, it is.”

  His gaze lifted from her ring, met hers. Held hers. “How can I love you and not be afraid? You’re my life, Eve, my heart. You’re asking, you’re wondering if I ever worry, if I ever fear, that one day Peabody or Feeney, your commander—a cop who’s become a friend—will knock on my door? Of course I do.”

  “I’m sorry. I wish—”

  He cut her off by brushing his mouth over hers—once, then twice. “I wouldn’t change a thing. Morris is right, you have to block it out, and live your life. If I didn’t, couldn’t, I’d never let you leave the house.” He brought her hands to his lips now. “Then where would we be?”

  “I’m careful.”

  He gave her a look filled with a mix of amusement and frustration. “You’re smart,” he corrected, “you’re skilled. But not always as careful as you might be. I married a cop.”

  “I told you not to.”

  Now he laughed, and kissed her again where her brow had furrowed. “And would I listen? I’m damn good at being married to a cop.”

  “Best I ever saw.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Well now, that’s quite the compliment.”

  “I don’t take it for granted. I know it seems maybe like I do, but I don’t. I don’t take for granted that when I walk in two hours—or maybe it was three—late like tonight, forget we had plans, you don’t get mad. Or all the other things. I don’t take it for granted.”

  “That’s good to know.” Odd, he realized, that she would need reassurance here. Or not so odd, really. The death of another cop, and one a friend had loved, brought it home. “We made promises to each other, nearly two years ago now. I’d say we’ve done a damn fine job at keeping them so far.”

  “I guess we have. Listen, if sometimes you can’t block it, you should say it. Even if we fight about it, you’ve got a right to say it.”

  He traced his finger down the dent in her chin. “Go to work, Lieutenant. There’s no worries tonight.”

  Sure there were, she thought when he went into his office. But it seemed like they were handling them okay.

  She had told him not to marry her, she remembered. Thank God he hadn’t listened.

  She set up her board, pinning up Coltraine, her squad, the names of any tenant in her building with a sheet, the names of the particulars in her most current cases. She added a photo of the shipping box, the weapons, the note, the badge. Lab reports, the established time line. She had a description of the ring the victim should have been wearing, and a close-up of it she’d extracted from a photo in Coltraine’s apartment.

  Why had the killer returned the gun, but kept the ring?

  She studied the board, angled it so she could study it from her desk. Armed with a fresh cup of coffee, she sat to run a series of probabilities.

  The computer calculated an eighty-two-point-six percent that the victim and her killer had known each other or had some previous contact. A ninety-eight-point-eight percent that the victim was a specific target.

  So far, she thought, she and the machine were in accord.

  She decided to leave it there, and start on the case files.

  Neither case contained any actual violence, she noted. The threat of it in the Chinatown case, but no execution of violence. Two males, wearing masks, rush into a market at closing, grabbing the female owner as she wheeled in one of the sidewalk carts, and holding a knife to her throat. Demand all cash and credits on the premises, and the security discs. Get both. Order both the owners—husband and wife—to lie on the floor. Apparently grab a few snack packs and book.

  Less than three hundred netted—small change for armed robbery, she mused.

  The vics had been shaken up, but unharmed. Though they’d turned over the discs, the husband had noticed a tattoo on the wrist of the knifeman—a small red dragon—and both had stated they believed the robbers had been young. Teens to early twenties.

  The snack pack snitch told Eve the same.

  They’d given the police a very decent—and unusually consistent—idea of height, weight, build, coloring, clothing. Two witnesses saw two young men matching the description running away from the direction of the market.

  Penny-ante, Eve mused. A couple of stupid kids. Confirmed, as the investigating officers had tracked down the tattoo parlor, and were ready to hunt up and pick up one seventeen-year-old Denny Su who’d had the ink on his right wrist.

  No idiot teenager, and his as-yet-unidentified dumb friend, had the smarts to access Coltraine’s building and get the drop on a cop.

  The break-in—literally, as a window had been smashed to access—netted a bigger profit. But a guy who could finesse the solid security at Coltraine’s building had the skills to finesse the less solid on the electronics shop. Plus, the glass had been broken from the inside, leading the investigators to conclude—ta-da—inside job. They’d begun to lean on one of the employees. From the notes Eve read, she’d say they were leaning in the right direction.

  In this case, the suspect was again young, fairly stupid, and had a short sheet of shoplifting charges. Guy liked to steal, simple as that, Eve mused. He didn’t score for her as a cop killer.

  She took the time to run both through probability, and in each case the machine agreed with her, with both percentages under eighteen percent.

  Eve sat back, studied the board. “Do I run your squad through my comp, Coltraine? It’s an ugly business, cops running cops. The comp’s going to favor them. Nothing in their data to hint at the dirty. Why does a clean cop, at least clean on record, kill another cop? The machine’s not going to find that logical.

  “Neither do I. But I have to run it.”

  “Eve.”

  “What?” She glanced over, saw Roarke in the doorway that adjoined their home offices. “Sorry, talking to myself. You found something interesting in Atlanta.”

  “I found something. A case she worked about three years ago. You haven’t gone through these files yet?”

  “No. I just got them in this afternoon. What about the case she worked three years ago?”

  “A robbery. An upscale antique shop. The manager was beaten, several thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise taken, nearly that much destroyed. They also forced
him to open the safe and turn over all the cash, credits, and receipts—which carried the credit and debit card data. One of the other employees found him when he went in to work, notified the police and the MTs. Coltraine was assigned.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “During the investigation she interviewed the owner of the shop, and according to her case file, spoke with him on the matter several times. His name’s Ricker. Alex Ricker.”

  6

  “RICKER.” THE NAME RAMMED INTO EVE LIKE a bare-knuckled jab. Sucker punch. “Max Ricker’s son?” “Yes. I checked to be sure.”

  She took one long breath to regain her balance. “So Alex Ricker has property and business in Atlanta. Wasn’t he in Germany or something?”

  “He was raised there, and his father kept him insulated. When Ricker and I had . . . business together, Alex was kept back. I never met him. I’m not sure any of Ricker’s associates did—not then.”

  Yes, she had her balance back now, and walked it through. “You worked with Ricker, back in the bad old days. Went out on your own, did a hell of a lot better. Years later, you help me take Ricker down, way down, so he’s spending the rest of his miserable life in a concrete cage off-planet. I wonder what his baby boy thinks of that.”

  “I don’t know anything of their relationship, but I do know that Ricker’s connected to me—to my father, to yours. I know he went to a lot of trouble to take me down, and failed. And to end you, and failed. Now his son may very well be connected to your victim.”

  Eve sat back, tapped her fingers on her thighs. Thinking, thinking. “Max Ricker had a lot of cops in his pocket. A lot of officials, a lot of politicians. We dug some of them out last year, but it’s unlikely we dug them all. Would Ricker have passed them to his son?”

  “I can’t say for sure—yet. But who else?”

  “Yeah. And his businesses, too—what we didn’t find and shut down. Certainly, his contacts, his power points, and there’d be finances. Coltraine meets the son of a notorious criminal, now doing life—well, several terms of life—she’d have run him. She’d run the owner of the business that got hit. It’s routine. Make sure it doesn’t come up an insurance fraud, at the very least. When she did, she’d have made the connection to his father. She’d ask him about it. Have to.”