The In Death Collection, Books 26-29

by J. D. Robb

  “You suppose correctly.”

  14

  SHE HAD TO APPRECIATE BEING MARRIED TO A man who could call up one of his own private jets in a fingersnap and pilot it if he had a mind to.

  In this case, he did, which was a big advantage. She could sit, continue doing runs, argue with Peabody, bounce theories off her personal pilot, and basically ignore the view out the windscreen.

  “I’d’ve been ready in five minutes,” Peabody complained. Her face sulked on screen while in the background McNab continued his e-work in incomprehensible geek.

  “It would’ve taken you thirty minimum to get to the transpo. He’s not going to be there, Peabody. You’re not going to miss the collar, for Christ’s sake. And I need you right where you are, digging down to find a New York address or contact for Darrin Pauley. Employment, driver’s license, criminal, finances, medical. Each and every fucking thing.”

  “I could do that while—”

  “You can have a plane ride another time.”

  Peabody’s pout perked, just a little. “When?”

  “God. Dig. Now.”

  “I will. Am.”

  “And work the shoes and the outfit angle. Check to see if he has a credit or debit under that name. If not, we’re going to cross the data you have with males with the initials DP. He used Darian Powders’s ID. Stick with the familiar, so maybe he has other aliases with those initials.”

  “That’s good. I’ll—”

  “That’s it. Bank a few hours’ sleep because we’re briefing a full team at seven hundred. Book the conference room. I’m out,” Eve said and broke transmission.

  “While I find myself, as always, excited by your commanding demeanor,” Roarke said, “this member of the team isn’t available at seven tomorrow.”

  She suppressed the urge to swear, because damn it, she could’ve used him. “Civilians get a pass.”

  “I can reorder a few things if Feeney can use me, and be available to him about the same time I managed it today.”

  “If it works for you. He’s not going to be in Alabama. He needs the payoff of seeing, firsthand, MacMasters devastated. And he’s been in New York for some time. Maybe not for five years, maybe not the whole time since his stint at Columbia, but for a while now. Keeping an eye on things, spinning his web. He’s going to come to the memorial, so I can’t release the sketch to the media and tip him off. Which I may do by pushing at his father.”

  “Then why are you? Wait until after the memorial.”

  “Calculated risk.” She wanted to stand up, pace, but the size of the plane, the expanse of the night, the emptiness outside the windshield kept her in place. “Off chance he is there. Very off chance, but it can’t be ignored. Better chance, his father knows where he is, and I can get it out of him. Then shut the father’s communications down until we take the bastard down. The other end of it is, I get nothing, the father tips Pauley off, and he’s in the wind. But . . .”

  “You don’t think so.”

  “Family man, long marriage, another kid. No criminal other than a minor bust for disturbing the peace when he was in his twenties. Solid employment record, mid-level salary, small house in the ’burbs, mortgage. Is this guy going to risk his wife and daughter, that little house, the job, the life, to dodge a police investigation into the rape-murder of a girl? Risk charges of obstruction, accessory after the fact, and anything else I can use to pressure him?”

  “Depends, I’d say, on how much he loves his son, and how far he’d go to protect him.”

  “I wouldn’t understand that kind of love, the kind that shields monsters. I don’t think it is love. If he does love this sick, son of a bitch, I’ll use that. He needs help. Help us to help him. If I don’t find him, someone else might. He killed a cop’s kid, and someone else might put that above the law.”

  She drummed her fingers on her thigh, tried to ignore the shimmy of the plane as they started to descend. “I’ve got to take another risk.” She tagged Baxter at home. “Take the sketch,” she ordered without preamble. “Get Trueheart and canvass the coffeehouses, clubs, hangouts around the university, and on campus.”

  “Now?”

  “No, gee, whenever you feel like it. Jamie worked an imaging program at Columbia. Check in with him, let him know you’re in the field. And, if it isn’t too much trouble, if it doesn’t interfere with your plans for the evening—”

  “Jesus, Dallas, bust my balls.”

  “Your balls have never interested me, Baxter.”

  “Again, ouch.”

  “Take the sketch around MacMasters’s neighborhood. Anything pops, tag me. Otherwise, briefing at seven hundred, Central, confer ence room.”

  “Fine. fine. Where the hell are you?”

  “I’m about to be in Alabama.” Her stomach flipped. “I hope, sincerely, in one piece. Peabody has the details if you need them. Move it, Baxter.”

  “Moving it.”

  Lieutenant Dallas, who would charge through a firefight to do the job, closed her eyes with her stomach quivering as they dipped toward touchdown.

  She was better when they were zipping along the roads in some spiffy, topless rental with the heavy Southern air whipping around her head.

  “A little late for a cop call to a family man,” she said. “Good, it gives us another advantage.”

  “It’s not that late. We’re on Central time,” he told her. “We’re an hour earlier here.”

  She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “So we’re here before we left. How does anyone keep their brain from frizzing over stuff like this?”

  Unable to resist, Roarke gave her a poke and a grin. “And when we go back, we’ll lose an hour.”

  “See? It’s senseless. How can you lose an hour? Where does it go? Can someone else find it? Does it get reported to the Lost Time Division?”

  “Darling Eve, I have to inform you the world is not flat, nor is New York its center.”

  “The first part, okay, but the second? Maybe it should be. Things would be simpler.”

  He slowed, sliding onto a suburban street where the trees were plentiful and the houses jammed so close Eve wondered why the occupants didn’t just live in apartments. They’d probably have more privacy.

  Tiny yards spread until the wash of street and security lights, and the scent of grass along with something deep and sweet, wound through the air.

  Following the vehicle’s navigational assistant, Roarke turned left at a corner, then stopped at a house—much like all the other houses—in the middle of the block.

  Eve frowned at the house. Had she become spoiled and jaded living in the enormity of what Roarke had built, or was the house the size of your average shoe box? Two little cars sat, nose to butt, in the narrow driveway. Low-growing flowers crawled along its verge.

  Lights beamed against the window glass. In their glow, she saw a bike parked beside the front stoop.

  “These people couldn’t afford to send a kid to Columbia. Unless he bagged a scholarship—and that’s out of profile—how could they pay that kind of freight?”

  “Well, the wise and foresighted often begin saving and investing for college educations while the child is still in the womb. Even then, yes, it would take considerable.”

  She got out, started toward the house. Stopped dead with her hand resting on the butt of her weapon. “Do you hear that?” she demanded as she cocked her head at the repetitive basso belch that rose into the steamy air.

  “Of course I hear it. I’m standing right here.”

  “What the hell is it?”

  “I’m not entirely sure, but I think it may be some sort of frog.”

  “Frog? Seriously? The green hopping things?” She scanned the dark and the streams of streetlights. “It sounds really big. Like alien-frog big.”

  “I don’t have much personal experience with frogs, but I don’t believe they have alien frogs in Alabama. At least not the sort that require stunning with a police-issue.”

  “We’ll see ab
out that.” Just in case, she kept her hand on her weapon.

  Through the front window she saw the movement on the entertainment screen, and the man kicked back in a recliner, the woman with her feet curled up on the sofa.

  “Quiet evening at home in front of the screen,” Eve murmured. “Could they, would they, if they had any part in . . . what’s she doing? The woman? What’s she doing with those sticks and the fuzzy thread?”

  “I have no idea. Why should I have the answers to these things?”

  “Because,” she said and made him laugh.

  “Well, at a guess again, it appears to be some sort of . . . craft.”

  She continued toward the door, studying the sticks, the yarn, the woman. It popped out of some file of buried facts. “Knitting!” Eve punched Roarke’s shoulder. “I got one. She’s knitting.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I saw that stuff—the sticks, the thread, somewhere, some case. She’s knitting, he’s watching the screen and having a beer, and the girl’s bike is parked by the door—and not chained down. These aren’t master criminals who helped plan the murder of a teenager, and if they’re involved in hacking or identity fraud, I’ll take up knitting.”

  “All that from a glance through the living room window?”

  “Security? Minimal, and right now it’s not even activated. No curtains drawn, nothing to hide here.” She stepped to the door, knocked. In a moment, the woman opened the door, without checking and asking who was there.

  Her easy smile shifted to surprise, but didn’t lose any of its welcome. “Well, hi, what can I do for y’all?”

  The voice was as warm and sweet as the air. She brushed back at her honey blonde hair the way some women did when caught unawares.

  “We’re looking for Darrin Pauley.”

  “Oh goodness, I think he lives up in Chicago or something. We haven’t seen him in—”

  “Who is it, Mimi?”

  “They’re looking for Darrin, honey. I don’t mean to have you standing here in the doorway, but—”

  Eve pulled out her badge, watched Mimi’s eyes widen on it even as Vincent Pauley stepped to the door. “What’s all this about? Police? New York police? He’s in trouble? Darrin’s in trouble? Well, hell.” He said it on a sigh, something resigned, sad, unsurprised all at once. “We’d better talk inside.”

  He gestured them in while his wife rubbed his arm in comfort. “Why don’t I get us all some tea? It’s a warm night, and I bet you could use something cold.”

  “Mama?” A little girl looked down over the banister from the top of the stairs to the right.

  “You go on back to bed, Jennie. It’s just some people to talk to Daddy. Go on now, you’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

  The girl blinked sleepy eyes at Eve, then slipped back upstairs.

  “We’re all going to Play World tomorrow, along with Jennie’s best friend and her parents. Two days of amusement and water parks. Lord help us. And I’m babbling. Let me get that tea.”

  She scooted away. Eve wondered if her hurry was to get away, or to get back quickly. Either case, she and Roarke were left with Vincent Pauley of the handsome face and sorrowful eyes.

  “Let’s have a seat. Screen off,” he ordered, and the comedy chuck-ling away shut down. “I guess I always wondered if I’d get police at the door sometime or other about Darrin. It’s been years since I even laid eyes on him. I can’t tell you where he is. He doesn’t keep in touch.”

  “When did you last see your son, Mr. Pauley?”

  He smiled, but there was bitter around the edges. “I don’t know that he is my son.” He rubbed his eyes. “God, some things never stop coming up behind you, do they? I was with his mother when he was born, and had been with her for months before. I put my name on the records. I thought he was mine. But I didn’t know she’d been with someone else before she was with me, while she was with me. I wasn’t yet twenty, green as grass and dirt stupid with it.”

  “Don’t say that, Vinnie!” Mimi came in carrying a tray with a big pitcher, several glasses full of half-moon slices of ice.

  Roarke rose. “Let me help you with that, Mrs. Pauley.”

  “Oh, thank you. Don’t you have a nice accent. Are you from England?”

  “Ireland, a long while ago.”

  “My grandmother’s grandmother, on my father’s side, she was from Ireland. From somewhere called Ennis.”

  She pronounced it wrong, with a long I at the start, but Roarke smiled. “A lovely little town. I have people not far from there.”

  “And you came all the way to America to be a policeman.”

  “He’s a consultant,” Eve said, firmly, as Roarke smothered a laugh. “Darrin’s mother is listed as Inga Sorenson, deceased.”

  “That’s the name she was using when I was with her, and I left it that way on the records. I don’t know if it was her name. I don’t know if she’s alive or dead. I’m told she’s dead, but . . .”

  “Why don’t you tell me when you last saw him or spoke with him?”

  “I guess maybe six years ago, or seven.”

  “Seven,” Mimi confirmed. “Early spring because I was putting in the bedding plants out back, and Jennie was in kindergarten. Vinnie was at work, and I was alone here. I was afraid to let them in so I called Vinnie and he came right home.”

  “Them?” Eve repeated, and saw Mimi slide her gaze toward her husband.

  “Darrin, and the man who may be his father,” Vinnie said. “The man he considers his father, and the one Inga was with before me, and maybe during me for all I know. My brother.”

  “There’s no brother listed on your records, Mr. Pauley.”

  “No. I had him taken off. It cost me a lot of money, and it’s illegal, I guess, but I needed to do it. I needed it before I could ask Mimi to marry me.”

  “He’s a bad man. A very bad man. Vinnie’s nothing like him, Officer.”

  “Lieutenant. Dallas. How is he a bad man?” Eve asked.

  “He does what he wants, takes what he wants, hurts who he wants,” Vinnie told her. “He always did, even when we were kids. He took off when we were sixteen.”

  “We were?” Roarke repeated. “You’re twins then?”

  “Fraternal, not identical.” The distinction seemed an important point for Vinnie. “But we look a lot alike.”

  “I’d never mistake them. There’s something scary in his eyes.” Mimi shivered. “Something mean, just not right in them. And I’m sorry, Vinnie, it’s in that boy’s eyes, too. No matter how sweet he smiles or how polite he talks, it’s in his eyes.”

  “Maybe it is. Anyway, they weren’t here long. They wanted to stay a few days. God knows why, or what they’d done they needed to put up here. I said Darrin could stay, but Vance had to go. He wouldn’t stay without Vance. I asked him about his mother, why wasn’t his mother with him. He’s the one who said she was dead. He said she’d been dead for years. Murdered he said.”

  “How?”

  “He didn’t tell me. I was shocked, and I asked him, how, when, who? All he said was he knew who was responsible. And he had plans. Mimi’s right. Something not right in his eyes, when he said that I could see it. He had plans. I wanted them both away from my family.”

  Vinnie glanced toward the stairs. “I wanted them away from Mimi and Jennie. Even if he’s mine, I didn’t want him near my girls. That’s the hard part, you know? Even if he’s mine.”

  “We’re yours,” Mimi whispered. “That’s what matters.”

  Vinnie nodded, took a long drink from the frosty glass. “I wasn’t twenty when Inga . . . she was beautiful. Sorry, sweetie.”

  “That’s all right.” Mimi took his hand, gave it a hard squeeze. “So am I.”

  He brought their joined hands to his lips, pressed them hard to her knuckles. “You sure are. You sure are.”

  “Go on and tell them about it,” Mimi prompted. “Stop worrying yourself and tell them.”

  “All right. I fell for her, for Inga. For
who I thought she was. I don’t know if she’d run away from my brother, or if they planned it all together, to dupe me, to use me so she’d have somewhere safe to stay while she was nesting. It was hard not knowing. Not so much anymore, but back then, when it happened, it was hard. And so I paid to have Vance’s name taken off my data.”

  “Nobody’s going to give you grief over that, Mr. Pauley,” Eve assured him.

  He nodded. “Well, that’s good to know. Anyways, Inga left when Darrin was a couple months old. Took whatever wasn’t nailed down in my place, my car, cleaned out the savings I had, even the little account I started for the boy before he was even born. All there was was this video cube from my brother, laughing, telling me thanks for filling in for him. I found out he’d been arrested near to a year before. For some kind of fraud or something. I guess maybe he sent Inga to me, so I’d . . . fill in. And when he got out, he took them. Just like that.

  “I never saw her again, never saw Vance or the boy again until that day Mimi called me home. I hired a private investigator to try to find them, but I couldn’t afford him for very long. Never came to nothing, but I wanted to try. I don’t know if he was mine, the boy, but back then, he felt like mine.”

  “You did the best you could.”

  He smiled at Mimi, but his eyes were damp. “It felt like giving up. I guess it was. I was mad a long time, and then, well, I met Mimi. I put it behind me, until they showed up here a few years back. And I don’t know where they went from here. We got an e-mail from Darrin about three years ago. He said he was in college, in Chicago. How he was making something of himself, studying hard. He sounded . . .”

  “Sincere,” Mimi put in.

  “I guess he did,” Vinnie said with a sigh. “He asked if we could maybe help him out a little. Money. Knowing Vance, I checked it out. And he was registered at the college like he said. So I sent him a thousand dollars.”

  “And never heard a word back,” Mimi finished. “But right after that? Somebody accessed our bank account. That was just our emergency account, thank the Lord, where Vinnie got the money he sent Darrin. It only had another five thousand in it. He took four of it. He did it, Vinnie,” she said when her husband looked ready to protest.