by J. D. Robb
“God, that feels good. I need everything you’ve got.”
“Already copied to your unit.”
She spun on her heel, went back to the desk. “We’ll get this out. It’s probably been painted, but that’s another avenue there. And she’ll have switched the tags, but it’s good. I’m going to nudge the feds to verify, have somebody interview God-fearing Jerimiah.”
“I’m still working on the money. McQueen’s covered himself well in that area.”
“He’s good,” she said as she sent out the new data. “You’re better.”
“Yes, of course, but thanks all the same.”
“We’re on a nice roll here. Let’s keep it going. Let’s go harass some apartment-dwelling Texans.”
Roarke toasted her with his coffee. “Yee-ha.”
The building showed some wear, squatting in the lowering light. The patch of parking on the side apparently doubled as a playground as a bunch of kids ran between and around cars, shouting the way kids always seemed to at play.
Security was just shy of adequate, but as several windows were wide open to the nonexistent breeze—just inviting a visit from thieves—she assumed nobody cared.
As she got out of the car one of the kids barreled straight into her.
“Tag! You’re It!”
“No, I’m not.”
He grinned, showing a wide gap where, hopefully, his two front teeth would grow in at some point. “We’re playing Tag. Who are you?”
“I’m the police.”
“We play Cops ’n’ Robbers, too. I like being a robber. You can arrest me.”
“Get back to me in about ten years.”
She eyed the entrance, eyed the kid. What the hell, you had to start somewhere. She pulled out the ID of Sarajo Whitehead. “Do you know her?”
“She don’t live here anymore.”
“But she did.”
“Yep. Uh-huh. I gotta go tag.”
“Wait a minute. Did she live by herself?”
“I guess. She slept a lot. She used to yell out the window for us to stop all that noise ’cause people are trying to sleep. But my ma said that was just too bad ’cause it’s the middle of the day and kids get to play loud as they want outside.”
“Who’s your ma?”
“She’s Becky Robbins and my pa’s Jake. I’m Chip. We live on the fourth floor, and I’ve got a turtle named Butch. You wanna see?”
“Is your mother home?”
“Course she’s home. Where else? Ma!”
He shouted, loud and high-pitched so Eve’s ears rang.
“Jesus, kid.”
“You shouldn’t oughta say ‘Jesus.’ You should say ‘Jeez it.’ ”
“You really think zzz makes a difference?”
“Ma says so. Ma!”
“Christ!”
“Nuh-uh.” Gap-toothed Chip shook his head. “ ‘Cripes’ is okay, though.”
“Chip Robbins, how many times have I told you not to yell out for me unless you’re being stabbed with a pitchfork?”
The woman who stuck her head out the window had her son’s curly dark hair and an aggrieved scowl.
“But Ma, the police want to talk to you. See?” He grabbed Eve’s hand, waved it with his.
Eve took hers back, resisted wiping off whatever sticky substance his had transferred. She held up her badge. “Can we come up, Mrs. Robbins?”
“What’s this about? My boy’s a pain in the behind, but he’s good as gold.”
“It’s about a former neighbor. If we could come up—”
“I’ll come down.”
“Ma doesn’t like to let people she don’t know in the house when my pa’s not home. He’s working late.”
“Okay.”
“He drives an airtram, and Ma works at my school. I’m in second grade.”
“Good for you.” Eve looked to Roarke for help, but he just smiled at her.
“Are you gonna arrest a robber?”
“Know any?”
“My friend Everet stoled a candy bar from the store, but his ma found out and made him go pay for it out of his ’lowance, and he couldn’t have candy or nothing for a whole month. You could arrest him. He’s over there.”
He pointed, cheerfully ratting out his pal.
“It sounds like he’s paid his debt to society.”
Jesus—jeez it—where was the kid’s mother?
“Talk to him,” Eve suggested, desperately sacrificing Roarke.
“Okay. Are you the police, too?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You talk different,” Chip commented. “Are you from French? The lady at the market is, and she don’t talk like us either. I know a word.”
“What word?”
“Bunjore. It means hello.”
“I know a word.”
Chip’s grin widened. “What word?”
“Dia dhuit. It’s hello where I was born.”
“Deea-gwit,” Chip repeated, mangling it a bit.
“Well done.”
“Chip, stop pestering the police and go play.”
Becky Robbins had taken time to tame back her hair. She hurried now, her flip-flops flapping as she reached out to tuck an arm around her son’s shoulders. After a quick hug, she made a shooing motion.
“Okay. Bye!” He raced off, and was immediately absorbed into the running and shouting.
“What’s going on?” Becky demanded. “A couple of the neighbors said the FBI was here before when we were out. Now the police.”
“Do you know a woman calling herself Sarajo Whitehead?”
“Yeah, the neighbors said the FBI asked about her. She used to live here. Second floor. She moved out a while back. Eight, ten months, maybe. Why? She did something, didn’t she?” Becky continued before Eve could speak. “The FBI people didn’t really say, but Earleen—my neighbor—she could tell. And now you’re here, too. I never liked that woman—Sarajo, I mean, not Earleen.”
Chip came by his talkative nature honestly, Eve decided. “Why is that?”
“She could barely be bothered to say a friendly hello. I know she worked nights, mostly, but I don’t appreciate anybody yelling at my kid—all the kids.”
Becky put her hands on her hips as she looked over the racing, shouting kids with the mother’s version of the beady eye.
“They got a right to play out here in good weather, and in broad daylight for heaven’s sake. Told her that myself, after she yelled and used swears at those kids one too many times. Told her she ought to get herself some earplugs or whatever.”
Becky looked back at Eve. “What did she do?”
“We’ll know more about that when we locate her. Did she have any visitors?”
“The only person I ever saw go in or out of there except her was another woman. Young, pretty.”
“This woman?” Eve showed her Melinda’s photo.
“Yeah, that’s the one. She’s not in trouble with the police, is she? She seemed so nice.”
“No, she’s not. You don’t remember seeing anyone else?”
“Well, yeah, a man came once. A really fat man. Said she worked for him, and he was looking for her. But she’d already gone by then. Just left one day. Left the furniture, too. Turned out it was rented. She paid it up-to-date though, rent, too. The landlady told me. Anyway, I wasn’t sorry to see her gone.”
Eve waited a moment. “There’s something else.”
Becky glanced around, shifted. “It’s just something I think. I can’t swear to it.”
“Anything you know, think, saw, heard. It’s all helpful.”
“I don’t like accusing anybody—even her—of something, but the FBI, for heaven’s sake. Now the police. Well . . . I think she was on something. At least sometimes.”
“Illegals.”
“Yeah. I think. I had a cousin who got sucked into that scene, so I know the signs. Her eyes, the jittery moves. I know I smelled zoner on her, more than once. When we got into it about the kids, I said sh
e oughta take a little more of whatever she was popping or smoking so she’d pass out and wouldn’t hear them. I shouldn’t have said it, but I was riled up.
“She gave me such a look. I have to say, it scared me some. She shut the door in my face, and I went home. The next morning, I go out to my car to go to work. My husband’s rig’s parked next to me. Every one of his tires is slashed. I know she did it. I know I’m accusing her again, but I just know it. But how’re you going to prove that? Besides I’m the one had words with her, not Jake. He doesn’t get riled up like I do. If she’d slashed my tires maybe I could’ve gotten the cops on her.
“Jake, he needs that rig to get to work. He lost a whole day getting new tires.”
“Did you report it?”
“Sure. You’ve got to for the insurance, though it didn’t cover it all. Jake didn’t want me to say anything about her, so I didn’t. She’d have denied it anyway, and maybe done something worse. I stayed clear of her the best I could after that. So I wasn’t sorry when she took off.”
Eve talked to a few more neighbors, but she had everything she needed from Becky Robbins.
“The ball’s still rolling,” she said to Roarke as they headed back to the hotel. “She could pull off the hardworking, no-trouble-here woman at work. But at home, well, that’s home.”
“Where you want to relax,” he commented. “And be more yourself.”
“Yeah. You’re entitled to some of your illegals of choice in your own home, entitled to some quiet when you want it, entitled to have your bitch of a neighbor leave you the hell alone. And when she gets in your face, you’re entitled to payback. You know how to get it, too. The best way. Go after the primary breadwinner’s ride to work. Fuck with that, fuck with the whole family where it hurts. In the money bag.”
“She has a temper,” Roarke added, “and a mean streak. No fondness for children, I’d say, and saw no need to foster any sort of relationship with the other people in the building.”
“She didn’t need them. But she’s also smart enough not to skip out on the bills. No point in having anybody looking for Sarajo, even when she stops being Sarajo.”
“You’ve confirmed she didn’t, while here, have personal transpo. So she walked or took public. No one visited but Melinda. No one came looking for her but her former employer.”
He latched on, Eve thought. She never had to refine the lines for Roarke. “So, whoever her dealer is, he or she didn’t do business at the apartment. No men—and one of the neighbors would’ve seen or heard—so she’s being true to McQueen. At least at home. Some dealers will trade junk for sex. But that’s business,” Eve mused. “That wouldn’t be cheating. Sex is business.”
“Well then, I love doing business with you.”
She leaned back. “And still . . . I didn’t get to strong-arm or flex the muscles with anybody. They’re all so damn cooperative. They just talk, talk, talk—especially that kid. It’s like being in a foreign country.”
“Like going to French?”
That got a laugh. “Maybe there’s something in the water down here. Maybe we shouldn’t drink the water, or we could start talking to everybody, telling complete strangers more than they could possibly want to know.”
“There’s water in coffee.”
“Yeah, but it’s, like, boiled, right? That kills the microbes that trigger all this cooperation and chattiness. It has to. It’s getting dark. I know we’re making progress, but it’s getting dark. He’s had her for more than twenty hours now.”
She took a long breath. “Getting dark,” she murmured. “He likes to hunt at night.”
10
Dark. He liked to keep them in the dark so they couldn’t know if it was day or night. So they couldn’t see each other, have even that horrible, small comfort.
Unless he blasted the lights, hours and hours and hours of bright lights. Then they could see too well. All those eyes, as empty and hopeless as the pit of her own stomach. The shackles and chains, like something out of an old vid—but real, so real, the weight and the bite of them on the wrists, the ankles.
But it was worse when he took them off. Worse when he took you out of the room, and into his.
She’d fight when he came again. Bree said they had to fight, no matter what. Bree was right, she knew Bree was right, but it was so hard. He hurt her so much.
But she’d try, she’d try to fight, try to hurt him if he came for her again.
In the dark she reached out, wanting her sister’s hand, the contact of skin.
And remembered.
It was dark, but she was alone. And she wasn’t a child this time. But he’d come back for her, as he had in every nightmare that plagued her.
He’d come back.
Melinda shifted, felt that weight, that bite on her ankles and wrists. In her head she screamed like a wounded animal, but she didn’t let the sound come out.
Stay calm, stay calm. Screaming won’t help. She had to think, to plan, to find a way out.
Bree would be looking for her, along with the entire force of the Dallas police.
But she didn’t know if she was in Dallas. She could be anywhere.
The hysteria wanted to froth up in her throat, vomit out in a scream.
Think.
Sarajo.
On the ’link, desperate, urgent, asking for help. What had she said? Important to remember every detail, to get through the fog of whatever they’d given her and remember.
She’d claimed she’d seen the man who’d raped her. Needed help. So scared. Couldn’t go to the police, couldn’t go through it again.
Had to help, of course, even though she’d put in a long day and had hoped for an early night. Left the note for Bree, locked up. Always careful to lock up, to keep the doors on her car locked. Careful. Always careful.
And yet.
So sure, Melinda remembered now, that she’d be able to talk Sarajo Whitehead through the fear, convince her to go to the police with details. So confident she could help, she could handle.
Of course, she’d said again. Of course when Sarajo had dashed to the car when Melinda had pulled into the lot of the twenty-four-hour eatery. Of course we can go somewhere else, somewhere not so crowded and noisy.
Sympathy, empathy, eye contact, a touch of the hand. Reassurance. She’d let Sarajo into the car, sat for a moment, talking quietly, hoping to settle the nerves—what she took as nerves, she thought now.
The woman didn’t look well, no, didn’t look well at all, so she hadn’t hesitated to pull over when Sarajo claimed to be sick.
Reaching out again, to help. She hadn’t seen the syringe, but she’d felt the pressure on the side of her neck. Another bite.
Then, for just a moment as the gray rose, as it edged into black, she saw Sarajo smile.
Stupid bitch, she said. Stupid, know-it-all bitch.
And he was there, just there.
Going, going, fading, fading. Can’t scream, can’t fight. Just his voice, the sharp, ugly joy in it as they dragged her into the backseat.
Hi, Melinda! Just like old times.
Then nothing, just nothing, until the dark.
When he came, the lights came with him, stinging her eyes. Groggy, so groggy, and sick. But it was Bree on the ’link. Her face, her voice. She tried so hard to stay calm, to think clearly through the thick dregs of the drug.
Sarajo, she thought again. His partner. He always worked with a woman. Oh, she’d read and studied everything on Isaac McQueen. Made herself read it, watch it, know it.
And still, she’d walked right into his hands. Again.
He hadn’t raped her. But he wouldn’t be interested in her that way now. She wasn’t a young girl.
Thank God there were no young girls here. At least, she prayed there were none.
He wanted her for another reason. Revenge? But she’d been one of many. He couldn’t possibly plan or hope to collect all the survivors again.
No, no, too much time and risk, and for what?
She tried to find some comfort on the floor of the room, tried to clear the smear on her mind from the drug. There had to be a reason for taking her, specifically her. For God’s sake her sister was a cop now, sharing the apartment with her. Surely one of the others would have been easier prey.
Yet he’d targeted her, specifically, again. Sarajo had reported the rape months before. Nearly a year, yes, almost a year before. So he’d set the wheels in motion long before the abduction.
Why?
Something she’d done, something she was.
She and Bree had been his last? Was it as simple as that? Picking up somehow where he’d left off? It didn’t make any sense, she thought. Why waste time with her? Once he’d gotten out, why waste time?
So she served a purpose, he always had one. Or represented something. Was she bait to lure Bree, so he’d have them both?
Oh God, Bree. Bree, Bree.
This time the panic won, stealing her breath, pounding hard in her blood. The shackles cut into her skin as she fought against them in blind fear and rage.
Not her sister. Not again.
She heard the locks click and slide, and fought a bitter, painful war for control. Remembering, she closed her eyes an instant before the lights flared on. Still, the hot red haze burned against her lids.
The woman, she realized, hearing the click of heels, catching the scent of perfume.
She’d dressed for him, Melinda thought, groomed for him.
And I’m the stupid bitch, she thought, digging for some grit. She’s not smart enough to know she’s as disposable for him as an empty tube of Coke.
She opened her eyes slowly, looked into the face of the woman she’d thought wanted and needed her help.
Yes, groomed for him, with lip dye and blond hair freshly fluffed around her shoulders.
Older than McQueen, trying to be younger in the short, snug red dress and high heels.
Melinda buried the disdain.
Sarajo—think of her as Sarajo—carried a sandwich on a plate—disposable, just as she was—and a cup of water. Might be drugged, Melinda thought, but put gratitude on her face.
“He doesn’t want you to starve to death.”