The In Death Collection, Books 26-29

by J. D. Robb

  “How hard would it be to set up a search for minor variations like this?” She brought up Inga’s ID photo, splitting the screen. “Adding in a five-year age span, the initials.”

  “Setting it up, easy enough. The results? They’ll be all over the bloody place. She’s a very attractive woman in her early to mid-twenties with a certain set of initials, and features with a slight variance. Have you any idea how many there might be in the world who fit that basic description?”

  “Stick with the U.S. And I’m thinking him. Darrin/David/Damien.”

  “And still.”

  “I’ll wade through the results. All you have to do is get them.”

  “I’ll set it up, then we’re going to bed.”

  “That’s a deal.”

  She woke just after five to the blessed scent of coffee. Opening one eye, she saw Roarke by the AutoChef, sipping a tall mug and watch ing her.

  “I thought the timing worked,” he said as he lifted a second mug and brought it to her.

  “Thanks. Have you already started today’s quest for world economic domination?”

  “That’s not scheduled till six, which I calculated was about the time you’d start today’s quest for truth, justice, and ass-kicking.”

  “Sounds about right. I’ve got a good feeling. With what we’ve got, what we’re getting, we may be able to pin him down today. I can put together enough to haul him in. If EDD gets me the image of him walking into the house, I’ve got more. Motive, means, opportunity. It’s all there. Circumstantial, but strong.”

  “I like an optimistic cop.”

  She felt more so after she’d showered, dressed, had a second cup of coffee and a waffle.

  In her office, she checked for incoming on the wild hope that someone on the graveyard shift at Chicago PD decided to do a good deed. No luck there, she noted, but she’d push that again and soon. She checked the results of the search Roarke had run at her request, and felt that optimism drop several notches.

  “Three hundred and thirty-three thousand possibles? Shit.” She noted he’d run a secondary search adding a current New York address. That cut it down to slightly more than thirteen thousand.

  And he’d run those results against people who’d purchased the security system. The man thought like a cop, she decided, even if the result came up goose egg.

  There had to be another angle, another way to whittle down those possibles. Back burner, she decided, until she’d updated her reports and prepped for the briefing.

  It took her most of the hour, and restored most of her earlier optimism. Just before seven, she contacted Whitney.

  “Commander, I’ve just sent you an updated report.”

  “Yes, it’s coming in now. Highlight it.”

  She did so, smothering the urge to get to her feet, to stand as she preferred when giving orals.

  “I feel,” she continued, “we’re stacking the building blocks of a solid case, and refining our search for the suspect. It’s my belief Captain MacMasters may be able to provide more details, and more insights into the matter of the arrest, interrogation, and sentencing of Irene Schultz, and that will further assist us in apprehending Darrin Pauley.”

  “When do you brief your team?”

  “They’re arriving now, sir.” She signaled Peabody, McNab, and Jamie to silence as they came in chattering.

  “I’ll have the captain in my office at nine. He’s agreed to issue a short statement to the media at noon. We’ll need to do the same, and to stand with him. He will not take questions, but you will. Five-minute duration.”

  Crap. Crap. Crap, she thought. “Yes, sir.”

  “Brief your team, Lieutenant. I’ll contact Chicago from here, give them a push on the information you need.”

  “Thank you, Commander.”

  She ended the conversation just as Summerset wheeled in a long buffet table, and Trueheart came through the door pushing the other end.

  “God, doesn’t anybody think about anything but food?” she demanded.

  “Thinking is often clearer when the body is properly attended.” Summerset stepped ably out of the way of the stampede. Eve saw his gaze track to the murder board, and knew it lingered on the crime scene photos of Deena. He looked back at Eve. “I wish you all the clearest of thoughts.”

  When he left the room, she rose, got coffee. “Settle down, people. This is a briefing not a stuff-your-face contest. Screens on,” she ordered. “This is our suspect,” she began. “Born Darrin Pauley, age twenty-three. And this is what we know or believe we know about him.”

  She moved from the suspect to the man believed to be his father, and from there to the woman who’d been his mother.

  “She’s the key in his lock,” Eve said. “Whitney is reinforcing my overnight request to Chicago for the files on her murder, and the request to speak directly with the primary and other investigators on that case.”

  “I can get media reports,” Jamie suggested. “It’s, like, twenty years back, but I could dig up any media coverage of the murder.”

  “All right. The data from IRCCA states she was both raped and sodomized repeatedly, possibly by more than one attacker. She was not bound, which explains why this didn’t pop on like crimes. She was beaten, more severely than our vic, and also showed signs of illegals use.”

  She gestured to the board where she’d noted the similarities between the murders of Deena MacMasters and Illya Schooner. “Evidence indicates she was partially smothered with a pillow found on scene, and was strangled with the bedsheets. She was found in a mid-level LC flop by maid service, and had been dead according to the report for eight hours. No witnesses came forward, none who were interviewed gave the police any salient information.”

  “Shock and amazement,” Baxter muttered.

  “She was not a licensed companion,” Eve continued. “However, when interviewed, Victor Patterson stated that they were experiencing some family difficulties as she had begun to prostitute herself to finance a growing drug problem. He was alibied for the time in question.”

  “He could’ve had it done,” Baxter speculated. “If she’d gone on the junk, was a liability to the game, he might have wanted to get rid of her.”

  “Possible, but unlikely. Look at the background.” She brought his sheet up on screen. “Bust, bust, trouble, trouble, right up until he got out of prison and ran off with her. Then nothing. He’s skimmed under the surface since. And on her? Nothing, not a damn thing before she took the fall for the fraud. Did he get that smart in prison? My money says she was the brains, she was the smarts. But something changed once she did the time. That’s the turn. Peabody, get data from her stretch in Rikers, find somebody who remembers her.”

  “Can do. Maybe it was just the time in itself,” Peabody suggested. “It’s like you said, she had nothing prior. Free as a bird, doing things her way. Then bam, she’s in a cage for a year and a half.”

  “Soured her,” Eve considered. “Shook her confidence. And if she’d gotten a taste for illegals on the outside, that could be fed inside. Expanded, exploited.”

  “She’s not the same person coming out as she was going in.” Peabody studied the mug shot. “She looks pretty rough on the going in.”

  “Yeah, she does. Not the beautiful, vibrant type Vinnie Pauley remembered just a couple years before.”

  “The wrong guy.” Trueheart blinked when all eyes shifted to him. “Um. I mean to say, the, ah, longer-term exposure to Pauley, the wrong guy. His influence maybe started her on a downturn.”

  “It could fit. The timing, the changes. What we know,” Eve added, “is between the Inga Vinnie Pauley knew and the Illya who died bad in a Chicago sex flop, there was a big slide. And it would appear that for a chunk of that, and for years after, Vance Pauley had influence over Darrin Pauley. How about the security imaging on the victim’s house?”

  “I’ve got that.” McNab rose, held up a disc. “Okay if I plug it in?”

  “Go ahead.”

  He w
ent to her desk. “Display, screen three. You can see there’s more definition,” he began.

  “I can?”

  “It’s slow. It’s not like a routine clean and enhance, and can’t work at that pace. We were able to capture and lock the image, but it’s severely corrupted. The pixels have to be repaired every level, every step. Feeney and I captured and locked two more last night, using the same procedure we worked out. And we’ve got those in process. I think that’s all we’re going to retrieve.”

  “We’re going to work on a way to speed the process,” Feeney put in. “We’re on that, but no promises.”

  “I’m meeting with Whitney and MacMasters at nine, and hope to pick through MacMasters’s memory of the arrest of Irene Schultz, any other data he might have. Peabody will pursue the shoes/ wardrobe angle. Baxter and Trueheart will recanvass the area around the crime scene with the sketch. At noon MacMasters will issue a statement to the media, as will I. I will briefly take questions. I’ve initiated another search, with the current results over thirteen thousand possibles.”

  When she explained it, Trueheart cleared his throat. “Maybe, if they own the security system, the father bought it. Used one of his aliases.”

  “Good thought. Run that. We brief at Central at sixteen hundred, at which time I’ll have selected the other members of the team to cover the memorial. We’ll rebrief—unless we have this fucker by then—at seven hundred tomorrow, full team. Now get out there and find this bastard. Baxter, one minute.”

  She walked into the kitchen, came back with a bag, which she tossed to him.

  When he looked inside his face beamed like the sun. “Holy shit, we got us some Alabama barbecue. I love this woman.”

  “Save the love for Roarke. He dealt with it. Move out. Peabody, with me.”

  Peabody waited until they were out of the house, in the car, and Eve sped down toward the gates. “Okay, I know we’re in deep investigative mode, and we have a lot of threads to tug, then tie together. But everyone has their specific thread or threads. I’ll be all over the retail outlets asap.”

  “And?”

  “And so, I thought we could take just a few minutes to talk about the wedding.”

  “Louise has a handle on that. I know because I went by and talked to her about it. I did that duty.”

  “You really did, and more. She filled me in, totally,” Peabody said with a happy gleam in her eyes. “Inviting her to stay Friday night, and have the rest of us was abso mag of you, Dallas.”

  “It was a moment of weakness.” One Eve prayed she wouldn’t regret as she swung downtown. “What is, exactly, ‘the rest’?”

  “You know, the usual. Me, Mavis, Nadine, Trina. Maybe Reo if she can make it,” she added, thinking of the APA. “And, ah, Trina’s bringing another consultant so we’ll all get beautified. But the best part is, we’ll all be there for Louise. With her. So I was wondering if we could set up a kind of bridal suite for her.”

  “What does that mean? I’m not going to have her camp on the lawn. She’ll have a room. A suite. Whatever.”

  “Yeah, yeah, but can we sort of bride it up? Flowers, champagne, candles—I’ve got some my cousin made that are really soothing—girl food, music. Set the mood.”

  Eve said nothing for a moment. “I should have thought of that, right?”

  “No. That’s what I’m here for. It’s all going to be mag, and this is just like a bonus round for her.”

  “It’s fine. All fine.”

  “Okay! I thought we could—”

  “No, that was the few minutes. I want Jenkinson and Reineke on the memorial detail. Make sure they get the details on the time and place of the briefings. I’m going to ask MacMasters for recommendations on two of his detectives for that duty as well. And we’ll want half a dozen uniforms, at least half of them from MacMasters’s division.”

  “Getting cops from MacMasters’s division’s a good move.”

  “Any cop who can make it will be there anyway. I want that place covered, but we need to keep the watch for the suspect tight. The more cops who know his face, the better chance one of them will try for him, tip him off, or scare him off.”

  “He has to know the place will be packed with cops there to pay respects. That might scare him off anyway.”

  “I don’t think so.” Eve wormed through a gap between a maxibus and a Rapid Cab. “He’ll like it. Like the idea of being able to walk right in. Another needle in the eye. As far as he knows, we’ve got nothing.”

  “After the media conference today . . .”

  “He’ll still think we’ve got nothing.” Eve intended to make sure of it.

  The minute she walked into Homicide, Eve smelled doughnuts. And thought: Nadine.

  She gave the detectives and uniforms in the bullpen one long, steely stare, then strode to her office. As she expected, the star reporter sat in the visitor’s chair. Nadine sipped coffee, no doubt caged from Eve’s own AutoChef. She shot Eve a fluttery look out of amused green eyes, and fluffed her streaky blonde, always camera-ready hair.

  “Nearly nine o’clock,” Nadine said, “late for you to be checking in.”

  “Not too late for me to boot you out.”

  “Come on, Dallas, I’ve laid back off the MacMasters story.” Amusement faded. “I’ve reported it, respectfully, and stuck with the statements from the department liaison. I know MacMasters. I work the crime beat. I’d hoped, for a lot of reasons, you’d be able to close this one quickly. That’s not happening.”

  Eve stepped over to get coffee for herself. “There’s a media conference scheduled for noon.”

  “I’m aware, and I’ll be there. Give me a jump.”

  “I can’t do it. Can’t and won’t,” she added before Nadine could speak.

  “You’ve got something. I know you, and you’ve got something.” Eyes narrowed, Nadine jabbed a finger toward Eve. “Do you have a suspect? How close are you to making an arrest?”

  “And you know me well enough to know I’m not going to answer any of that.”

  “Off the record.” Nadine held up her hands to signal no recorder. “I might be able to help.”

  She had in the past, no question. But here, Eve thought, it couldn’t be done.

  “You’re going to say no. Before you do let me tell you that when you’ve worked the crime beat the way I have, you get to see how cops work—the good, the bad, the indifferent. You see what it is to do the job you’re doing. Now this kid, this cop’s kid is murdered this way, and it comes practically on the heels of Detective Coltraine’s murder. It’s hard to stand back from that. I can be objective, Dallas, because that’s my job. But it matters.”

  Eve contemplated her coffee. “Maybe you’d want to do a segment on your show on high-end security systems.”

  “Isn’t that odd? I was just considering doing a segment on Now! on high-end home security systems.”

  “Spooky.” Eve cocked her hip, slid a hand into her pocket as she drank. “A lot of experts feel the Interface Total Home 5500 is one of the best, if you can afford it. You know, as a cop, I have to wonder: Do people shell out for something like that because they want to be secure, or because they have something to hide?”

  Nadine gave her slow, feline smile. “That’s an interesting angle.”

  “Maybe. You know, thousands of people in New York bought that system, and pay for the regular updates and maintenance—Security Plus being a big and trusted service agent. Probably most of them are just careful law-abiding types. Then again, it only takes one.”

  “It would be hard to find that one who bought it for reasons other than law-abiding ones.”

  “A long, tedious process,” Eve agreed easily. “Even if you, say, decided to check out those customers with certain initials. Like D.P. or even V.P. That would narrow it down some, but odds are you’d have to wade through hundreds.”

  “True, but reporters and their research staffs are hardwired to wade through the tedious.”

  “Yeah. Cops
wouldn’t know anything about that.” Eve smiled thinly. “Go away, Nadine. I have a meeting.”

  “I’ll see you at noon.” Nadine rose, started for the door. “And I’m looking forward to the upcoming wedding festivities, including the slumber party.”

  “Shut up.”

  With a laugh, Nadine sauntered out, and finishing her coffee Eve thought at least she’d come up with a possible way to cut down on those possibles.

  16

  EVE WALKED INTO WHITNEY’S OFFICE TO find both men standing. Though MacMasters still looked pale, and there were lines dug deep around his eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there even at their last meeting, he seemed . . . straighter, she thought.

  And the cold, hard look in his eyes told her he was ready.

  “Detective Peabody is handling some assignments, and about to pursue a lead,” Eve began. “I thought it better for her to stay on top of that than to attend this meeting.”

  “Jack told me you . . . The commander informs me you have a possible lead that connects to an old case of mine.”

  “I do. We were able to identify an individual through image matching with the sketch Detective Yancy composited from the two witnesses. He’s identified as Darrin Pauley, with a residence listed in Alabama.”

  “Alabama.”

  “Captain, we believe this identification is falsified, and that this subject may be involved in fraud, cyber crime, and identity theft. I spoke with Vincent Pauley, who is listed as the subject’s father on this identification.”

  She ran through it briefly, watched MacMasters struggle to pinpoint the names, the details, the case.

  “Twenty years ago?”

  “I believe it was twenty-one years. We are accessing all data on the investigation, the individuals involved. You got the collar, Captain. You worked with a detective named Frisco, who went down in the line six years later.”

  “Frisco trained me. He was a good man, solid cop.”

  “I have a copy of the file. Looking through it might jump your memory.”

  “Use my desk,” Whitney told him, and plugged in the disc Eve offered. “Meanwhile, Lieutenant.” He gestured her a few feet away. “You’ll have the file on the Illya Schooner murder this morning. A Lieutenant Pulliti, retired, was primary on that investigation. He’ll contact you. I have the name and contact data for a Kim Sung, who was a guard assigned to Irene Schultz’s cell block during her incarceration.”