by J. D. Robb
“Bad as it is,” Ricchio said, “it’s a good day.”
But it wasn’t over, Eve thought. Not nearly over. “I’m Homicide. I’ll take the body if you have no objections.”
“I’d appreciate it. We’ll inform the ME. Do you want an aide or assistant?”
“Roarke’s done it before.”
“Then I’ll leave it to you.” His glance at the body, the blood, held no pity. “It looks pretty straightforward.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it does.” She stepped over to the body again. “I’ll need a field kit,” she said to Roarke, then looked at him, held his eyes when he said nothing. She reached up, switched off her recorder. “Please. I need to do this. It’ll be easier if you help me do it.”
“Then I will. But Eve, there’s a great deal to say when this is done.”
“I know it.”
“I’ll get the kit.”
The room buzzed with cops, but she was alone, very much alone when she crouched by the body, the toes of her boots at the edge of a river of blood.
What should she feel, she asked herself. She didn’t know, only knew what to do.
Routine.
She switched on her recorder.
“The victim is female, Caucasian, approximately fifty-five. Facial bruises and contusions were incurred in a vehicular accident earlier on this date, and treated at Dallas City Hospital. Other injuries so incurred are on record. Initial visual shows a single deep gash across the throat, which severed the jugular. Blood-spatter patterns consistent with same.”
She sat back on her heels, let her gaze scan the floor, the walls, the sofa.
Work the scene, she ordered herself.
“She was sitting on the sofa, facing out into the room. Pressure syringe on the cushion. Needed a hit. He gave her a hit. Tox screen hereby ordered to determine substance and amount. Talking to her, taking time to talk to her, placate her, until she told him what she’d spilled, what we knew. Already packed, ready to go. Sure, all packed and ready because she’d tagged him from the stolen car. Note to check the in-dash ’link in the vehicle stolen from hospital lot for communications from vic to McQueen.”
She tagged him, Eve thought. Warned him, gave him time to pack up, plan, and plot. She set up her own murder.
While she waited for Roarke and the kit, Eve imagined it. The frantic rush in the stolen car from the hospital, after she’d done murder. After she’d killed in the same way she’d be killed so soon after. By the man she ran to.
Was that irony? she wondered. Some sort of brutal poetic justice.
She’d have been hurting, Eve thought. Head, ribs, chest.
Eve let her eyes track over the body. Badly swollen left ankle. That had to give her pain. Limping, trying to run, jonesing, sweating, heart racing, head pounding. Sick and hurt, a cop’s blood on her hands, and thinking only of getting back to the man who’d kill her.
Thinking, too, no doubt, of another cop. Thinking of payback and paydays, of causing pain, spilling blood.
Was it more irony that her mother’s last thoughts had revolved around her? Hateful, violent, murderous thoughts.
She straightened when Roarke came back with the kit.
“Easy enough to see how it played out,” she began, and kept her eyes on his face. Kept them on him until she felt centered again.
“We’re going to find she contacted him from the stolen car. That gave him time to pack up what he wanted or needed to take with him. There aren’t enough electronics in here, not for McQueen. He’s got what he wanted there with him. Clothes, personal items, cash, alternate IDs. He had time. Most likely he already had a go bag stashed with the essentials.”
“He’d want the flexibility of being able to leave, move quickly, at any time,” Roarke agreed.
“I bet he kept that suit, the sharp one from the bank. He doesn’t know you found the accounts. He doesn’t know that yet. Can you trace any transactions he makes?”
“I can.”
“Set that up, okay? But I’ve got to play the team deal. Nikos! I need a minute.”
“You need help with her?”
“No. Roarke found McQueen’s primary accounts. We’ve got his money.”
“That’s good work.” Nikos gave Roarke a considering look. “Our guys are still bouncing around. I need that data. We can freeze the funds, block him out, make him sweat.”
“You could,” Eve said, “or you could track any activity, and maybe lock his new location.”
“And if he uses the money, manages to get someplace we don’t have extradition, he’s gone.”
“It’s a chance. He’s not finished, Nikos. He didn’t get what he wants, what he’s been working toward, planning. You better believe no matter how he rolls on this, under it he’s pissed. He’s furious. He wants another shot.”
“At you, maybe. Or he’s smart enough to cut his losses. Look, I’ll run this by my superiors—both ways. We’ll make a decision, but I need the data.”
“I’ll send you the files,” Roarke said. “It’s actually three accounts. He’s not an eggs-in-one-basket sort.”
“Thanks.” Nikos pulled out her ’link, turned, and walked away.
“I can delay the data transfer, maybe an hour with a bit of a glitch in the routing.”
“Do that.” Eve nodded. “Yeah, do that. I’ll push harder if the feds opt for the freeze, because it’s the wrong move. For now, we set it up—you should get Feeney in on that.” She took the field kit. “I have to finish this.”
He laid a hand over hers on the handle. “I can do this. You could assist with the search. You’ve a better sense of McQueen than anyone here.”
“You know I can’t. She’s mine now, whether I want it or not.”
She opened the kit, hunkered down again. And taking her mother’s hand, checked prints. “Victim is identified as Sylvia Prentiss, which has been determined to be falsified ID. Victim will be listed as Jane Doe until true identification can be verified.”
She fit on microgoggles, said nothing when Roarke stooped down beside her, took out gauges. Instead, she examined the fatal wound.
“ME to confirm. However, primary investigator’s on-scene examination indicates a single cut, left to right with a sharp, smooth-edged blade. Both the angle and the blood-spatter pattern indicate the attack came from behind. He yanks her head back, slices. She slides down. He’d get some blood on him, on that shirt he tossed down there. Note to the sweepers to check all drains. He’d have washed up.”
She sat back on her heels again when Roarke read off the time of death. “That’s less than thirty—closer to twenty—before we had cops on the building. Yeah, like Laurence said, he had to hurry. TOD’s about twenty-five minutes after she broke out of the hospital. So she was dead before we knew she was out. But . . . can you run a program, determine travel time from the hospital to here?”
“All right.”
She pulled out an evidence bag, sealed the syringe for evidence.
“Factoring in the most usual traffic patterns for that time of day, it would take about fifteen minutes.”
“Couple less,” Eve decided. “She’d be driving fast, taking chances. But you have to factor in the time it took her to steal the car, the time it took her to get into the building from the lot—and on that bum ankle. We’ll know more when we look at the ’link in the stolen car, get the time and location of her transmission to him. But putting it together, even though he’s got to move, he takes at least four or five minutes with her. He doesn’t just do her when she walks in. He lets her sit down, he gives her a fix. He talks to her.”
She fit the microgoggles on again, studied what she could of the face, the hands and wrists. “I’d like to roll her, but I’d better wait for the ME. But the way it looks, he doesn’t hurt her. He doesn’t give her a good belt for fucking things up. He’s going to kill her, and that’s enough. He’s got that strange sense of proportion, and he’s got the control. He could have loaded that syringe with enough to kill he
r, but see, that’s not enough.”
“It’s too impersonal, too simple for her.”
“Yeah, exactly. When he kills, and he kills selectively, he wants to feel it. He likes the blade, the way it feels cutting flesh, the way the blood spurts. He doesn’t mutilate. It’s too messy, and it lacks the class he believes he has.”
She looked toward the room where he’d held Melinda and Darlie. “With the girls, he likes to torture. It’s part of that control and power game, part of the training. He’ll take a lot of time with them—they matter. But with the partner? It’s like taking out the garbage. You just get rid of it.”
“You have enough now,” Roarke said quietly. “You know how, when, who, even why. It’s enough now, Eve.”
“We need the ME to confirm, and to run the tox. Because if McQueen gave her more than a little buzz, if he gave her enough to put her under before he killed her it means something different.”
“Lieutenant Dallas?”
“Yeah.”
One of the crime scene investigators offered her a memo cube. “McQueen left this for you. You’re going to want to hear it.”
“Thanks.”
She activated it.
Hello again, Eve. I hope I can call you Eve now, after all we’ve been through together. I’d planned to have a nice, long chat with you today, but plans change, and this will have to do.
Welcome to my home—former. I wish I could be there to offer you a glass of wine in person. I know you enjoy a glass now and again—the photographs of you in Italy sampling the local vintages were really quite fetching. Marriage agrees with you.
As you can see, I left a bit of a mess behind. But then I know you like tidying up those little misadventures, and I’m a bit rushed. I had hoped to entertain you here, to put you up for a few days. I so looked forward to some Isaac and Eve time. But we’ll do it very soon, just the two of us.
You’re probably wondering why I left the steadfast Melinda and the adorable Darlie alive. You know, I’m wondering that myself. Perhaps I like knowing how well they’ll remember me. No one likes to be forgotten, to be ignored. Don’t think for a minute I’ll do either with you.
You’re in my thoughts, day and night. I’ll see you soon.
“Cocky bastard, but you can hear it in his voice. All that fury, just barely restrained. He’s thinking that bitch got lucky again.” She carried the memo cube with her as she walked over to study the holding room.
“Only four sets of shackles,” she noted. “He wouldn’t need Melinda once he had me. He could eliminate her, start the tidying-up process. He’d keep the girl, and want another. He’d always want another. He’d need that rush. He could take his time with me, take two or three days with me. Maybe he was going to try to squeeze you for ransom. He’s too much a grifter not to look for a profit.”
“If he had you, stayed here, spent that much time and open communications for a ransom, he’d risk his primary goal for money.”
“Adds to the thrill. And he’s got everything covered so well—he thinks. He’s arrogant,” she added. “So fucking cocksure he’s the smartest one in the room.”
“What does that make you?” Roarke asked her. “The one who beat him?”
Eve shrugged. “Going down before, that was just a twist of fate, just a lucky break for a rookie cop. He’s not that wrong. He eluded authorities for years. Years. He’s absolutely certain he can do it again. Takes me,” she continued. “Kills Melinda. He’d want me to see him do it, want me to watch him kill someone I saved. He’d want me to see him kill his partner, then when he’d had enough from me, kill the girl—or girls. I’d be last. He’d want me to watch him kill the kid, to know I was helpless to stop it. When he was done, he’d drift away. Set up shop somewhere else, far away. Maybe Europe this time. Somewhere urban and cosmopolitan enough for his tastes, where he could start a new collection.”
“Now he has to regroup, rethink, replan.”
So, Eve acknowledged, did she. “He’s got a contingency operation. He’ll adjust, refine. He means it when he says it’ll be soon. That must be the ME. I need to work with her, and I want to check with Laurence.”
Her ’link signaled.
“Dallas.”
“Lieutenant,” Bree began, “sorry to interrupt.”
“What do you need, Detective?”
“Melinda—they’re hydrating her and treating her injuries. They want to keep her overnight for observation. Darlie . . . you know what they need to do with her.”
“Yes.”
“But they want to talk to you, both of them. They’ve given us a statement, answered some questions. It seems important to them. Ricchio and the doctors, and Darlie’s parents, have cleared it. If you could make the time, Lieutenant. We’re at Dallas City.”
“When I’m done here.”
“I’ll let them know.”
When she put the ’link away, Roarke reached up, switched off her recorder. “You need a break.”
“I don’t. The busier I am the better I am. I’ll deal with the rest of it when I have to. But not now, not yet, because once I start dealing with it I just don’t know. We don’t even have the DNA match, so . . .”
She trailed off when he simply took her hand. And saw it in his eyes.
“You got it done?”
“The results came in when I went out to get your kit.”
Something sick and sour lodged in her throat. “I was right.”
“Yes. It’s conclusive.”
“Better to know,” she said, and stared hard at the wall.
“Is it?”
“I knew it—knew her—the minute we looked at each other. I thought I’d accepted it. Now . . . Hell, I just don’t know.” She rubbed a hand over her face, pressed her fingers to eyes that throbbed. “I need to work. I need to work and deal with this later.”
She walked to the medical examiner and the body. And Roarke stood for quite some time staring at the shackles fixed to the wall of the horrible little room.
17
Eve didn’t wait for the bag and tag. What was the point? Instead, she walked into the bedroom where Laurence headed up what looked to her like a thorough and meticulous search.
“Anything?”
“High-dollar sheets, towels, nice fluffy duvet. We can trace them. Some he took with him. He’s obsessively organized, everything in its place, so we can see some sheets and towels are missing. Some clothes, some shoes.”
He gestured toward the closet. “He’s got a dozen ties in there, and from the way he had them stored, took another dozen with him. Who needs two dozen ties?”
Eve crossed over to look for herself. “He likes clothes, likes to collect. But . . . some of these ties are exactly the same. Or is that just my crappy eye for fashion.”
“If it is, it’s mine, too. Same pattern, same designer.”
“That’s not like him. And there’s too much here, not just to leave behind but too much in the first place. This isn’t so much collecting as it is—”
“Hoarding,” Laurence finished. “That was my take. Could be he needed to hoard to compensate for a dozen years in prisonwear.”
“Could be. But it’s another break in pattern. That’s interesting.”
“Yeah, it is, isn’t it. So. We’ll take the laundry in for anal. The only toiletries left are the partner’s. Had to be a D-and-C there on that desk, so he took that. Had a monitor in the bathroom there so he could watch his holding room when he jerked fucking off. Sorry,” he said immediately. “The kid, she got to me.”
“Understood.”
“He left a supply of syringes in the bathroom, again some missing.”
“He doesn’t use, so he wouldn’t need as many of them. He’s not going to hook up with a partner yet.”
“Partner had a couple drawers, and it looked like he took a quick pass through, making sure she didn’t have anything that linked back to him. He didn’t check behind or under the drawers.” He gestured to the bags, sealed and tagged
for evidence. “She kept stashes—a freaking pharmacy.”
She’d done the same long ago, Eve thought, as quick, blurry flickers of memories ran through her head. “She’d need to know it was there, in case he ran low or tried to cut her off.”
“And she liked variety. What we’re finding, so far, is more of her than him. And we can judge where something was and isn’t now, and what it likely would’ve been. Forensic-wise, we’ll have enough to put the bastard away for twice as long as we already did, but nothing right yet to tell us where he’s running.”
“Maybe he said something to one of the vics,” Eve speculated. “Maybe he didn’t figure on them getting out, not alive, and he likes to show his intellect. I’m going in to talk with them, maybe I’ll get something.”
She walked out and up to Roarke who’d found a corner to work on his PPC.
“The feds should be getting the data about now,” he told her. “Feeney and I have a long jump on them, though I’ll do better when I’m back at the hotel office, using that equipment.”
“We’re done here, for now. You can go back, dig into it.”
He tracked his gaze to hers, held it. “I’m with you, Lieutenant. I’ve already made that clear. You need to stop at the hospital, talk with Melinda and Darlie.”
“Yeah, but I want to do something first.” She shook her head to hold off questions. “On the way.”
Outside, she took a scan of the street. The lookie-loos and bystanders had dispersed—by boredom, she expected. Cop work was long and tedious, and most civilians lost interest pretty fast.
But not her civilian.
“Did you pay off the kid, the airboard kid?”
“I did, yes, and someone named Ben for the loan of his truck.”
“Put in a chit for expenses. I’ll make it good.”
“One way or the other,” he said casually as they got in the car. “Where are we going?”
“I need to go back to her place. They’ll have done a search by now, taken the electronics, whatever other evidence they turned up. But people miss things, especially when they’re not sure what they’re looking for.”