by J. D. Robb
“Goddamn it.” Eve thumped both fists on the table. “You should have given me a list the minute I told you about Brennen. You should have trusted me.”
“It wasn’t a matter of trust.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“No.” He grabbed her hand before she could shove away. “No, it wasn’t. It was a matter of hoping I was wrong. And a matter of trying not to put you in the very position I’ve just put you in.”
“You thought you could handle it without me.”
“I’d hoped I could. But as Summerset’s being set up, that’s no longer an option. We need your help.”
“You need my help.” She said it slowly as she tugged her hand free of his. “You need my help. That’s great, that’s fine.” She rose. “Do you think anything you’ve just told me takes the heat off of him? If I use it, you’ll both go into a cage. Murder, first degree, multiple charges.”
“Summerset didn’t murder anyone,” Roarke said with characteristic cool. “I did.”
“That hardly takes the pressure off.”
“You believe him then?”
He’s what I have left. She let Summerset’s words, the passion behind them, play back in her head. “I believe him. He’d never involve you. He loves you.”
Roarke started to speak, closed his mouth, and stared thoughtfully at his own hands. The simple statement, the simple truth behind it rocked him.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do.” She said it more to herself, just to hear the words out loud. “I have to pursue the evidence, and I have to go carefully by the book. Officially. If that comes down to me charging you,” she aimed a level look at Summerset, “then that’s what I’m going to do. The only way you’re going to help yourself is to give me everything. You hold back, it works against you. I’m going into this with both hands tied behind my back. I’m going to need yours,” she said to Roarke.
“You have them. Always.”
“Do I?” She smiled humorlessly. “The evidence points to the contrary. And I’m hell on evidence, Roarke.” She walked to the door but didn’t yet disengage the locks. “I’ll clear your bony ass, Summerset. Because that’s my job. Because not all cops turn their backs. And because this cop keeps her eyes and ears open.” She shot one last fulminating look at Roarke. “Always.”
She opened the locks and stalked out.
chapter six
Peabody knew when to keep her mouth shut and her thoughts to herself. Whatever had been said in the interview room off record hadn’t put her lieutenant in a cheerful state of mind. The lieutenant’s eyes were hot and broody, her mouth grim, and her shoulders stiff as a board of black market oak.
Since Eve was currently driving uptown behind the wheel of a not entirely reliable vehicle—and Peabody was in the passenger seat—the lieutenant’s aide chose the better part of valor.
“Idiots,” Eve muttered, and Peabody was dead certain she wasn’t referring to the stream of jaywalking tourists who barely missed being mowed down by a maxi-bus.
“Trust, my ass.”
At this, Peabody merely cleared her throat and frowned sternly at the smoke-obscured corner of Tenth and Forty-first where a pair of glide-carts were dueling over territorial rights. Peabody winced as the operators rammed their carts together. Metal sang against metal once, twice. At the third butt, a funnel of flame shot skyward. Pedestrians scattered like ants.
“Oops” was Peabody’s comment, and she resigned herself when Eve swung her vehicle to the curb.
Eve stepped out into the smoke, caught the scent of scorched meat. The operators were too busy screaming at each other to notice her until she elbowed one of them aside to reach the regulation extinguisher hanging on the corner of the nearest cart.
There was a fifty-fifty shot that it would contain anything but air, but luck fell on her side. She coated both carts with foam, snuffing out the fire and eliciting a stream of furious Italian from one operator and what might have been Mandarin Chinese from the other.
They might have joined forces and jumped her, but Peabody stepped through the stink and smoke. The sight of a uniformed cop had both operators satisfying themselves with threatening curses and vicious glares.
Peabody scanned the crowd that had gathered to watch the show, and furrowed her brow. “Move along,” she ordered. “There’s nothing more to see here. I always wanted to say that,” she murmured to Eve, but got no quick, answering grin in response.
“Make their day perfect and write them up for creating a public hazard.”
“Yes, sir.” Peabody sighed when Eve walked back to the car.
Ten minutes later, and in silence, they pulled up in front of the Luxury Towers. The droid was on duty at the door and only nodded respectfully when Eve flashed her badge and walked by him. She headed straight to the elevator and stood dead center of the glass tube as it shot them up to the twelfth floor.
Peabody remained silent as Eve pressed the bell at Audrey Morrell’s snowy white door. A moment later it was opened by a tidy brunette with mild green eyes and a cautious smile.
“Yes, can I help you?”
“Audrey Morrell?”
“That’s correct.” The woman focused on Peabody, the uniform, and lifted a hand to the single strand of white stones around her neck. “Is there a problem?”
“We’d like to ask you a few questions.” Eve took out her badge, held it up. “It shouldn’t take long.”
“Of course. Please come in.”
She stepped back into a lofty living area made cozy with soft pastel hues and the clever grouping of conversation areas. The walls were crowded with paintings in dreamy, bleeding colors.
She led them to a trio of U-shaped chairs covered in Easter-egg blue.
“May I offer you anything? Coffee perhaps?”
“No, nothing.”
“Well then.” With an uncertain smile, Audrey sat.
This would be Summerset’s type was Eve’s first thought. This slim, pretty woman wearing a classically simple pale green sheath. Her hair was neatly arranged in smooth waves.
Age was difficult to gauge. Her complexion was creamy and smooth, her hands long and narrow, her voice quiet and cultured. Midforties was Eve’s best guess, with plenty of bucks spent on body maintenance.
“Ms. Morrell, are you acquainted with a man named Summerset?”
“Lawrence.” Instantly the green eyes took on a sparkle, and the smile grew wider and more relaxed. “Yes, of course.”
“How do you know him?”
“He attends my watercolor class. I teach painting on Tuesday nights at the Culture Exchange. Lawrence is one of my students.”
“He paints?”
“Quite well, too. He’s working on a lovely still life series right now, and I . . .” She trailed off, and her hand went back to twist her strand of rocks. “Is he in trouble? Is he all right? I was annoyed when he missed our engagement on Saturday, but it never occurred to me that—”
“Saturday? You had an appointment with him on Saturday?”
“A date, really.” Audrey shifted and brushed at her hair. “We . . . well, we have common interests.”
“Your date wasn’t for Friday?”
“Saturday afternoon. Lunch and a matinee.” She let out a breath, worked up a smile again. “I suppose I can confess, as we’re all women. I’d gone to quite a bit of time and trouble with my appearance. And I was terribly nervous. Lawrence and I have seen each other outside of class a few times, but always with art as a buffer. This would have been our first actual date. I haven’t dated in some time, you see. I’m a widow. I lost my husband five years ago, and . . . well. I was crushed when he stood me up. But I see he must have had a good reason. Can’t you tell me what this is about?”
“Where were you on Friday afternoon, Ms. Morrell?”
“Shopping for my outfit for Saturday. It took me most of the day to find just the right dress, shoes, the bag. Then I went to the salon for a manicure, a body polish.” She lifted her hand
to her hair again. “A little highlighting.”
“Summerset claims your engagement was for Friday noon.”
“Friday.” Audrey frowned, shook her head. “That can’t be. Can it? Oh, did I mix the dates?” Obviously distracted, she got up quickly and hurried into another room. She came back moments later with a slim silver-toned datebook. As she coded in, she continued to shake her head. “I’m certain we said Saturday. Yes, that’s what I have here. Saturday, twelve noon, lunch and theater with Lawrence. Oh dear.” She looked at Eve again, her face comically distressed. “Did he come on Friday, when I was out? He must have thought I stood him up, just as I—”
She started to laugh then, sitting down, crossing her legs. “How absurd, and the two of us with our pride and feelings crushed just because we didn’t have the good sense to call and verify. Why in the world didn’t he at least leave a message at the door?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Pride again, I suppose. And shyness. It’s so difficult for two shy people to manage.” Her smile faded slowly as she studied Eve’s face. “But surely this isn’t a police matter.”
“Summerset is involved in an investigation. It would be helpful if we could verify his movements on Friday.”
“I see. No, I don’t,” Audrey corrected. “I don’t see at all.”
“I can’t give you a great deal of information at this time, Ms. Morrell. Did you know a Thomas Brennen?”
“No, I don’t believe so.”
You will, Eve thought. By the evening newscasts everyone would know of Thomas Brennen and Shawn Conroy. “Who else knew about your date with Summerset?”
Audrey’s fingers tangled with her necklace again. “I can’t think of anyone. We’re both rather . . . private people. I suppose I did mention to my beauty consultant when I made the appointment that it was for a special occasion.”
“What’s your salon?”
“Oh, I always use Classique on Madison.”
“I appreciate your time,” Eve said and rose.
“You’re welcome, of course. But—Lieutenant, was it?”
“Yes. Dallas.”
“Lieutenant Dallas, if Lawrence is in any sort of trouble . . . I’d like to help however I can. He’s a lovely man. A gentleman.”
“A lovely man,” Eve muttered as they headed back to the elevator. “A gentleman. Right. Penthouse floor,” she ordered as the tube closed them in. “I want to go over the scene again. Set your recorder.”
“Yes, sir.” Efficiently, Peabody clipped the minirecorder onto her starched lapel.
Eve used her master code to bypass the police block on Brennen’s door. The apartment was dim, the outside light blocked by security screens. She left them in place and ordered the lights to bright.
“It started right here.” She frowned down at the bloodstains on the carpet, the walls, and brought the gruesome image of a severed hand into her mind. “Why did Brennen let him in? Did he know him? And why did the attacker hack off his hand? Unless . . .”
She circled around, moved back to the door, eyed the direction of the bedroom. “Maybe it went this way: The killer’s an electronics whiz. He’s already messed up the cameras. Can’t take a chance that some bored security guard scans discs before he can do the job here then get back to them. So he’s taken care of that. He’s smart, he’s careful. He can get into this place easily enough. Bypass the codes, pop the locks. That’d give him a kick, wouldn’t it?”
“He likes to be in charge,” Peabody offered. “Could be he wouldn’t want to ask to come in.”
“Exactly. So he lets himself in. What a thrill. The game’s about to begin. Brennen comes out, from the kitchen most likely. He’s just had lunch. He’s caught off guard, and he’s a little sluggish from the tranq. But he grew up on the streets, he grew up rough. You don’t forget how to take care of yourself. He charges the intruder, but the intruder’s armed. The first injury, it could have been no more than a defensive move. Unplanned. But it stops Brennen, stops him cold. There’s blood everywhere. Most likely some of it splattered on the intruder. He’ll have to clean up, but he’ll worry about that later. Now he wants to do what he came for. He tranqs Brennen a little deeper, drags him into the bedroom.”
Eve followed the trail and puddles of dried blood, then stood in the bedroom, eyes keen. She lifted the statue of the Virgin from Eileen’s dresser, scissoring the head between her fingers to upend it and check the markings on the base. “The same. The same as at the Conroy scene. Bag this.”
“Seems kind of—I don’t know—disrespectful,” Peabody decided as she sealed the marble image.
“I’d think the Mother of God would find cold-blooded murder a bit more than disrespectful,” Eve said dryly.
“Yeah, I suppose.” Still, Peabody pushed the sealed statue into her bag where she didn’t have to think about it.
“Now, he’s got Brennen in here, on the bed. He doesn’t want his man to bleed to death. He wants to take his time. Gotta stop that bleeding. So he cauterizes the stump, crudely, but it does the job.”
She circled the bed, studying the grisly rust colored stains. “He gets to work. Secures his man to the bedpost, gets out his tools. He’s precise. Maybe he was nervous before, but now he’s just fine. Everything is going just as he wants. Now he puts his symbolic audience on the dresser so she has a good view. Maybe he says a prayer to her.”
She frowned, looked back at the dresser, put the statue back in place in her mind. “Then he gets down to it,” she continued. “He tells Brennen what he’s going to do to him, and he tells him why. He wants him to know, he wants him to piss himself with fear, he wants to be able to smell the pain. This is payback, and payback’s the big one. Passion, greed, power, they’re all part of it, but revenge drives it all. He’s waited a long time for this moment, and he’s going to enjoy it. Every time Brennen screams, every time he begs, this guy gets off. When it’s done, he’s flying. But he’s a mess, covered with blood and gore.”
She moved toward the adjoining bath. It sparkled like gems, the sapphire walls, the ruby insets in the tiles, the silver dials and faucets. “He’s come prepared. He had to be carrying a case of some kind, for the knives and rope. He’s got a change of clothes in there. He’d have thought of that. So he showers, scrubs himself like a fucking surgeon. He scrubs the bathroom too, every inch. He’s a goddamn domestic droid in here. He sterilizes it. He’s got plenty of time.”
“We didn’t find a single hair or skin cell in here,” Peabody agreed. “He was thorough.”
Eve turned away, walked back into the bedroom. “The ruined clothes go back in his case, along with all his nasty tools. He gets himself dressed, watching where he steps. Don’t want to get blood on our shiny shoes, do we? Maybe he stops back here for a last look at his work. Sure he does, he wants to take that image away with him. Does he say another prayer? Oh yeah, one for glory. Then he walks out, and he calls a cop.”
“We can review the lobby tapes, check out anyone with briefcases or satchels.”
“There are five floors of offices in this building. Every second person carts in a briefcase. There are fifty-two shops. Every third person has satchels.” Eve moved her shoulders. “We’ll look anyway. Summerset didn’t do this, Peabody.” When her aide remained silent, Eve turned impatiently. “Brennen was five-ten, but he was a hundred and ninety pounds—and a lot of that was muscle. Maybe, just maybe, a skinny, bone-ass fart like Summerset could take Brennen by surprise, but he doesn’t have the arm to have severed flesh and bone with one swipe. And one swipe was what it took. Say he got lucky and managed that—how do you figure he hauled dead weight from here to the bedroom, then managed to drag that nearly two hundred pounds of dead weight up two and a half feet onto the bed? He isn’t physical enough. He’s got strong hands,” she murmured, remembering well how those fingers had gripped her arm from time to time and bruised. “But he’s got no muscle, no arm, and he’s not used to lifting much more than a tea tray or his nose in the air.”
Now she sighed. “And you have to figure that if he’s smart enough to play electronic games with us, to fiddle with security discs, he’d have done better than to let himself get tagged walking into the lobby of the murder scene. Why didn’t he wipe those discs while he was at it?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Peabody admitted.
“Somebody’s setting him up, and they’re setting him up to get to Roarke.”
“Why?”
Eve stared into Peabody’s eyes for a long ten seconds. “Let’s seal up here.”
“Dallas, I’m no good to you if you stick blinders on me.”
“I know. Let’s seal it up.”
“I need air,” Eve said when they were outside again and Peabody’s recorder was tucked away. “And food. Any objections to getting both in Central Park?”
“No.”
“Don’t pout, Peabody,” Eve warned as they climbed back into the car. “It’s not attractive.”
They drove in silence, squeezed into a street level parking spot, and headed off into the denuded trees. The wind had enough kick to make Eve fasten her jacket as they crunched dead leaves under their feet. At the first glide-cart Eve debated between a veggie hash pocket and a scoop of soy fries. She opted for grease while Peabody ordered a single healthy fruit kabob.
“Your Free-Ager’s showing,” Eve commented.
“I don’t consider food a religious issue.” Peabody sniffed and bit into a pineapple spear. “Though my body is a temple.”
It made Eve smile. She was going to be forgiven. “I’m in possession of certain information that, as an officer of the law, I am duty bound to report to my superior. I have no intention of doing so.”
Peabody studied a slice of hothouse peach, slid it off the stick. “Would this information have relevance in a case currently under investigation?”
“It would. If I share this information with you, you would also be duty bound to report it. Not doing so would make you an accessory after the fact. You’d risk your badge, your career, and very likely some portion of your freedom.”