by J. D. Robb
Every cop under her command had been briefed and rebriefed on operation procedure.
Nothing to do, she thought, but to do it.
20
THIRTY MINUTES BEFORE THE MEMORIAL, THE team in place, Eve watched the MacMasterses and a small group of others file off the elevator. She moved aside as Cates led them toward the suite for their private viewing.
But Carol MacMasters shook off her husband’s supporting arm and whirled on her.
“Why are you here?” she demanded. “Why aren’t you out there doing your job? Do you think we want you here, want your condolences? My baby is dead, and the monster who killed her is still out there. What good are you to us? What good are you?”
“Carol, stop. Stop now.”
“I won’t stop. I’ll never stop. It’s just another case to you, isn’t it? Just another file. What good are you? It’s all over the media that you have nothing. Nothing. What good are you?”
As she began to weep, the older man beside her pulled her to him. “Come on now, Carol, come on now. You need to sit down, you need to come with me.”
When he led her away, the others followed while MacMasters looked helplessly after them. “I apologize, Lieutenant.”
“Don’t.”
“She wouldn’t take a soother. She wouldn’t take anything to help her get through. I didn’t know she’d been watching the media reports until it was too late to stop her, and she’s too . . . too upset to understand. It’s partially my fault. In trying to comfort her I told her you’d have him before today. I know better. I hoped you would, but I . . .” He shook his head, turned into the room.
A moment later, Cates closed the double doors. Carol’s weeping battered against them like fists.
“She was wrong, Dallas,” Peabody said. “She was unfair.”
“Wrong maybe. Unfair’s a different thing.”
“But—”
“Focus on why we’re here.” She walked away from the door and the sound of weeping. “Feeney? Eyes on?”
“Eyes on,” he said through her earpiece. “Peabody’s right, you’re wrong. That’s all on that. Your man’s coming in. Whitney and his missus, the commissioner, some brass from Illegals. We’re getting deliveries, north side, pretty regular. Flowers, messengers, what I take are blowups of dead people. Couple stiffs carted into the basement.”
“Copy that. Keep me updated.” She waited until the elevator opened. “Commissioner Tibble, Commander, Mrs. Whitney. The MacMasterses are inside the suite for the family viewing.”
“We’ll wait.” Dark eyes hard, Tibble nodded. “Anything to report?”
“Not at this time, sir.”
“I hope your strategy justifies the beating we’re taking in the media.” He looked toward the closed doors. “And results in some closure for the captain and his wife.”
“We’ll take him if he shows, Commissioner, and I believe he will. Alternate plans are being formulated to apprehend him tomorrow if—”
“I don’t want to hear about alternate plans, Lieutenant. Your suspect is in custody this afternoon or the sketch is released.”
He turned and walked to the window at the end of the corridor.
“Your plan to make the investigation appear stalled has worked better than we could have anticipated,” Whitney told her. “We’re under a lot of pressure, Lieutenant.”
“Understood, sir.”
Whitney and his wife stepped away to speak to other arrivals.
“That’s not—”
Eve cut Peabody’s mutter off with a look. “Don’t say it’s unfair. I’m primary. I take the knock if there’s a knock coming. Check in with the rest of the team. We’re going to start filling up out here soon. I didn’t expect you to make it for this,” she said to Roarke.
“I adjusted a few things.” He glanced toward her commander, and the city’s top cop. “I’m glad I did, and might have some part in helping you finish this.”
“He’ll show. The probabilities say it, Mira says it, my gut says it. He’ll show, and we’ll box him in, take him down. Then while the department takes a short round of applause from the media god, I’ll have him in my box. And then . . .”
She stopped, took a couple of quiet breaths. “Okay. Okay. I’m a little pissed off.”
Roarke trailed a hand down her arm. “It looks good on you.”
“No room for that. No room. One set of prints on the playbill, no match in any database. We get him, we’ll match them, but it doesn’t help us get him.” She jammed her hands into the pockets of her black jacket. “Nadine and her amazing research team haven’t hit on any likelies on the security system clients.”
“I’ve got some ideas there I’m still working,” Roarke told her.
“Time’s running. It needs to be today.” She spotted Cates coming out of the adjoining parlor to speak to Whitney and his wife, then lead them, along with Tibble, inside.
“We’re green,” she announced.
She’d expected a large crowd—a lot of cops stopping to pay respects, and neighbors, Deena’s school friends, their families. But there were more than she’d anticipated.
She saw Jo Jennings and her family, the neighbor she’d spoken to on the morning of Deena’s murder. She saw cops she recognized, and many more she didn’t, but simply made as cops. Young, old, all in between. Dozens of teenagers mingled among the dress blues, the soft clothes.
More than one burst into tears and had to be led away while images of Deena played over the wall screen. Eve exchanged a look with Nadine across the room, but kept her distance.
She circled the room, again and again, studying faces, builds from different angles.
“Got another group approaching the main entrance,” Feeney said in her ear. “Eight—no nine—mixed male, female, age range about sixteen to eighteen. Hold on, hold on, another one’s moving in with them. Male, ball cap, shades, dark hair, right build. It’s . . . No, it’s not him.”
Whitney moved up beside her. “Students from Deena’s school were given permission to attend.” He answered Eve’s frustrated look with one of his own. “Jonah wasn’t aware Carol had arranged for it.”
“He hasn’t come in any of the entrances. We’d have made him. We’re only into the first hour.”
She watched Mira come in, then make her way through the crowd toward the grieving parents.
Too many cops, she thought, too many kids. She tracked staff as they offered little cups of water, thimble-sized cups of coffee or tea, or brought in yet more flowers.
The air in the room was overripe, a garden of grief.
People spilled onto the terrace, into both parlors, and their voices ebbed and flowed into a sea of sound. Through it she listened to team members report status through her earbud.
She started toward the terrace as much for some air as to do another sweep.
As she reached the doorway a crash had her whirling around. Screams, shouts exploded as the sea of sound became a sea of panic. She pushed, shoved her way through, shouting for status, status, and yanked out her communicator. In front of her, people went down in an avalanche of flailing bodies. A shove from behind pitched her violently forward, slam ming her down to her hands and knees. The communicator shot out of her fingers on impact, crunched under stampeding feet as she swore.
She took a blow to the eye, to the nose as she went down, another to the small of the back as she fought her way back to her feet in a tidal wave of people rushing for the exits.
Through the gaps she saw a couple of uniforms muscling a male to the floor. The ball cap he wore fell off, and his shaggy brown hair flopped forward.
Swiping blood off her face, she pushed forward again.
And she saw him, standing at the edge of the chaos, looking across the tumult of panic to the glossy white coffin blanketed with pink and purple flowers. She saw the man who’d put Deena MacMasters in that cold white coffin smile as he stared at the man who held his weeping wife beside it.
In seconds, the wall
of people surged again, blocking both her view and her forward progress.
“Second-floor suite entrance. Main. Confirmed sighting.” A woman fell into her. Eve simply pushed her aside, plowed on. “Suspect is wearing a black suit, white shirt, staff ID. Goddamn it, goddamn it, move in.”
Only static sounded through her earpiece. And ahead of her, the doorway filled with fleeing people, forming a human barricade that cut her off.
She pushed, dragged, bulled while behind her she heard Whitney’s commanding voice demand order. Too late, she thought, too fucking late. When she made the corridor, she searched right, left, spotted Trueheart helping an elderly woman into a chair.
She reached over, grabbed him. “Suspect is wearing a black suit, white shirt, black tie, staff ID. Hair’s short, medium blond. Send it out. Now. Now. I want this building shut down. Nobody out.”
“Yes, sir.”
She rushed for the stairs, all but leaping down them, bursting into the foyer.
“Oh, your nose is bleeding, let me—”
“Did a male, early twenties, short hair, medium blond, staff suit and ID, come through here?”
The woman who’d greeted her on arrival stared at the blood on Eve’s face. “Ah, yes, I believe I just saw one of our assistants just—”
“Where did he go?”
“He just left. He looked as if he was in a hurry.”
Eve charged outside, scanned in every direction. She caught sight of the two cops she’d assigned to the main doors giving chase. Cursing, she leaped down to the sidewalk, kicking into a full-out sprint as she yanked out her ’link, patched through to Dispatch.
“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, in foot pursuit of murder suspect heading north on Fifth at Fifty-eighth. White male, twenty-three, slim build, blond hair, wearing black suit, white shirt, black tie.”
She couldn’t see him, not through the wide stream of pedestrians flooding the sidewalk. She dodged, wove, eating up one block, then a second.
Even as she gained ground on the two cops, she knew it was fruitless. When she caught them at the cross street she didn’t need to hear their report. It was clear on their faces.
“We lost him, Lieutenant. He had a solid block on us when we got the alert, and he was moving fast. We barely caught sight of him. He just poofed in the crowd.”
“How’d he get by you?” she demanded. “How the hell did he get by you?”
“Lieutenant, we were on watch for incomings. Wired into the EDD guys keeping us up on any possibles heading in. This guy walked out with a small group of staff. We’d just gotten an alert there was a ruckus upstairs, that we’d taken the suspect down. There was a lag between that and the notification the suspect was posing as staff and on the loose. We pursued as soon as we got it. We were lucky to even catch sight of him before—”
She cut it off with a lift of her hand. “We’ll debrief this clusterfuck at Central. Report back to your unit and await orders.”
She clipped back, furious, her face throbbing, and only shook her head when she saw Roarke moving quickly north toward her.
“We lost him. Goddamn it.”
Roarke took a handkerchief out of his pocket, handed it to her. “Your nose is bleeding.”
“I got clocked twice, maybe more in that riot. Knocked out my com, trampled my communicator. And he walks right out, right under the noses of two cops. He did exactly what he’d come to do, and had the extra benefit of watching us act like morons. What the fuck happened?”
“I don’t know.” He took her elbow to steer her through the Fifth Avenue throng. “I saw you go down, but by the time I was able to get through that mass of panic, you were gone. I came after you when Trueheart said you’d gone in pursuit.”
“A lot of good it did me. He was lost before I hit the sidewalk.”
As she approached the building, arrowing through the people congregating on the sidewalk, Peabody came down the main stairs.
“Gone,” Eve said.
“Damn it.” Peabody hissed out a breath, then winced at Eve’s face. “I thought I took a knock,” she said, tapping ginger fingers to the bruise on her cheek. “You took harder.”
“Let’s go clean this mess up. What do you know?” Eve demanded as they went back in.
“The best I can get is some hair-trigger tackled some kid, and another cop helped him wrestle the kid to the ground and restrain him. Panic ensued. We’ve got all parties in one of the private parlors upstairs. Baxter’s riding herd there. Whitney’s with the MacMasterses, and is to be advised when you’re back on site. We had to call in MTs. People got bruised and bloodied. We’ve got a really big mess, Dallas.”
“Clean up what you can on the periphery, and inform Whitney I’m talking to the officers and the civilian involved. My communicator’s toast.”
“Why don’t I speak to whoever manages this place,” Roarke suggested. “Smooth over what I can.”
“Couldn’t hurt. But I’m going to speak to him later. Son of a bitch.” Eve squared her shoulders and went up to the second level.
The scent of lilies and roses was stronger now, probably because so many of them lay trampled. She skirted around broken glass, puddles of water, to where Trueheart stood outside a door.
“We got the word on the suspect, Lieutenant. Sorry. Ah, Baxter has the two officers involved here, and the kid. We brought in an MT to look at the kid. He’s got some bruises.”
“Perfect. Just perfect.”
She stepped inside, closed the door at her back.
A male of about eighteen sat in a blinding-white chair while a grizzled MT checked his pupils.
“I’m okay,” the boy said. “Mostly just got the shit and the wind knocked out of me. I’m okay.”
“I get called to take a look atcha, I take a look atcha.”
The MT ran a wand over the bruise on the boy’s jaw.
Eve spared a glance toward the two cops slumped on a sofa of the same blinding white, flicked one to Baxter who rolled his eyes heavenward.
Yeah, she thought, call on that higher power. We’re going to need it.
“I’m Lieutenant Dallas,” she told the boy.
“Ah, yeah, hi. I’m Zach. Can I just get out of here now? I need to find Kelly. I came with Kelly. She went to school with the dead girl. I just came with Kelly because she was freaked about seeing the dead girl.”
“What’s Kelly’s full name?”
“Kelly Nims. Everything went whacked in there, and I don’t know if she’s okay.”
“Detective Baxter, have someone find Ms. Nims.”
“Yes, sir, right away.”
“Thanks. I’ll feel better once I know she’s frosted. We’re tight, and like I said, she was already freaked.”
He bore a surface resemblance to Pauley, she noted. The basic build, coloring, the shaggy hair. She noted the ball cap in his lap.
“Zach, I’d like to apologize for the unfortunate occurrences, and any inconvenience you’ve experienced. And also to assure you, I’ll look into this thoroughly and personally.”
“I was just standing there, then it’s like I got hit by a maxibus and I’m chewing carpet, and everybody’s yelling and running. I think somebody stepped on me. These guys, they put cuffs on me, and I could hear Kelly screaming. But the air’s knocked out of me, you know? I couldn’t do anything. It was weird, but . . .” He smiled a little. “Kind of iced, too. They said stuff about my rights and all. Am I supposed to call a lawyer?”
She hoped to hell he didn’t. Any lawyer worth a single billable hour would snatch him for a client and sue the department up the ass and out again.
“You’re not in any trouble, Zach. It was a mistake, a very regrettable one. Again, I hope you’ll accept my personal apology.”
“Sure. No big really.”
Baxter slipped back in. “Kelly’s fine, Zach. She’s waiting for you right outside.”
“Straight. So, can I go?”
“Is he clear?” Eve asked the MT.
“Got a co
uple knocks, that’s all.” The MT turned his gimlet eye on Eve. “You got worse.”
“If you’d give Detective Baxter your full name and contact information,” Eve told Zach, “the officer on the door will take you down to Kelly. If you have any questions, or any problems, you can reach me at Cop Central.”
“That’s a major.” He put his cap back on, rose. “It’s all been totally Dali.”
“At least. Baxter, lend me your recorder. Mine was damaged.” She took his, pinned it on.
“Want me to take a look at that face?” the MT asked.
“Not now.”
“Well.” He pulled a cold wrap out of his case, tossed it to her. “Get that on there anyway.”
She waited until both Zach and the MT left, then turned to the two cops.
“Engage recorder. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, in interview with two hotheaded fuckups who have managed to completely undermine a precisely organized operation and allow a murder suspect to stroll away.”
“Lieutenant—”
“You do not speak until so ordered.” Deliberately, she turned to the one who’d kept silent. “Name, rank, house, division.”
“Officer Glen Harrison, out of the One-Two-Five, assigned to Illegals under Captain MacMasters.”
“You, same data.”
“Officer Kyle Cunningham, out of the One-Two-Five, assigned to Illegals under Captain MacMasters.”
“And you two clowns decided to do my job for me today?”
“We came to pay our respects, offer our support to the captain and his wife. It’s all over how the investigation’s stalled.”
“Is it?” Eve said pleasantly while Harrison shut his eyes at his companion’s comment.
“That’s the word,” Cunningham said.
“And you decided to give the investigation a little momentum by manhandling a civilian, disrupting a memorial service, and causing general panic. During which time the actual suspect was able to elude those of us who are actually working the investigation.”
“The kid looked like him.”
Her eyes went to slits. “And how do you know that, Officer Cunningham? Just how have you come by any descriptive data on the suspect?”