by J. D. Robb
“I heard you screwed up on that one.” He smiled now, panicked enough to challenge her.
“Know Bowers, do you?” She smiled back, so fiercely he began to sweat again.
“She ain’t no fan of yours.”
“Now, that hurts, Rosswell. It really hurts my feelings. And when my feelings get hurt, I like to take it out on somebody.” She leaned down. “Want it to be you?”
He licked his lips. If they’d been alone, he could have backed down easily. But there were two more cops in the room. Two more mouths that could flap. “If you lay hands on me, I’ll file a complaint. Just like Bowers. Being Whitney’s pet won’t save you from an IAB investigation then.”
Her hand curled into a fist. And, oh, she yearned to use it. But she only kept her eyes steady on his. “Hear that, Feeney? Rosswell here’s going to tell teacher on me.”
“I can see you’re shaking in your boots over that, Dallas.” Cheerfully, Feeney moved forward. “Let me punch this fat-assed fucker for you.”
“That’s real nice of you, Feeney, but let’s try to handle this like mature adults first. Rosswell, you make me sick. Maybe you earned that badge years ago, but you don’t deserve it now. You don’t deserve to work the shit and piss detail on body removal. And that’s just what it’s going to say in my report. Meanwhile, you’re relieved as primary on the Spindler case. You’ll turn over all data and reports to my aide.”
“I don’t do that unless I get it straight from my boss.” Saving face was paramount now, but even his valiant attempt to sound disdainful fell far short. “I don’t work for you, Dallas, and your rank, your rep, and all your husband’s money don’t mean squat to me.”
“So noted,” Eve said levelly. “Peabody, contact Captain Desevres at the one six-two.”
“Yes, sir.”
She held her temper, but it cost her. The headache turned up from simmer to boil, and the knots in her stomach grew teeth. It helped a little to watch Rosswell sweat while she meticulously outlined the details, tore his investigation into tattered shreds, and requested the transfer of the case, with all data and reports, to her.
Desevres asked for an hour to review the matter, but everyone knew that was for form’s sake. Rosswell was out, and very likely soon to receive a much pithier dressing down from his own division head.
When she ended transmission, Eve gathered up files and discs. “You’re dismissed, Detective.”
His face bone white with fury and frustration, he got to his feet. “Bowers had it right. I hope she buries you.”
Eve glanced in his direction. “Detective Rosswell, you are dismissed. Peabody, contact Morris at the ME’s office. He needs to be made aware of this connecting homicide. Feeney, can we light a fire under McNab? See what he’s come up with?”
The embarrassment of being ignored washed color, ugly and red, back into Rosswell’s face. When the door slammed behind him, Feeney flashed Eve a grin.
“You sure are making lots of new friends these days.”
“It’s my sparkling personality and wit. They can’t resist it. God, what an ass.” But she sat, struggling to shrug off annoyance. “I’m going to check out the Canal Street Clinic. Spindler used it for her health checks over the last twelve years. Maybe Snooks hit it a couple times. It’s a place to start. Peabody, you’re with me.”
She took the elevator straight down to the garage level and had just stepped through the doors when Feeney tagged her by communicator. “What have you got?”
“McNab hit on a chemi-head named Jasper Mott. Another heart theft, three months back.”
“Three months? Who’s the primary? What are the leads?”
“It wasn’t NYPSD’s deal, Dallas. It was Chicago.”
“What?” The cold came shimmering back to her skin, the image of the long spider crack in window glass.
“Chicago,” he repeated, eyes narrowing. “You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah.” But she stared down the long tube of the garage to where Peabody waited patiently at their vehicle. “Can you get Peabody the name of the primary on it, the necessary data? I’ll have her contact CPSD for the files and status.”
“Sure, no problem. Maybe you should eat something, kid. You look sick.”
“I’m fine. Tell McNab I said good work, and keep at it.”
“Trouble, sir?”
“No.” Eve crossed to her car, uncoded, and climbed in. “We got another one in Chicago. Feeney’s going to send you the details. Put out a request to the primary and his division head for a copy of appropriate data. Copy to the commander. Do it by the book, but do it fast.”
“Unlike some,” Peabody said primly, “I know all the pages. How come a jerk like Rosswell makes detective?”
“Because life,” Eve said with feeling, “often sucks.”
Life definitely sucked for the patients at the Canal Street Clinic. The place was jammed with the suffering, the hopeless, and the dying.
A woman with a battered face breast-fed an infant while a toddler sat at her feet and wailed. Someone hacked wetly, monotonously. A half dozen street LCs sat glassy-eyed and bored, waiting for their regulation checkup to clear them for the night’s work.
Eve waded her way through to the window where the nurse on duty manned a desk. “Enter your data on the proper form,” she began, the edge of tedium flattening her voice. “Don’t forget your medical card number, personal ID, and current address.”
For an answer, Eve took out her badge and held it up to the reinforced glass. “Who’s in charge?”
The nurse’s eyes, gray and bored, flicked over the badge. “That would be Dr. Dimatto today. She’s with a patient.”
“Is there an office back there, a private room?”
“If you want to call it that.” When Eve simply angled her head, the nurse, annoyed, released the coded lock on the door.
With obvious reluctance, she shuffled in the lead down a short hallway. As they slipped through the door, Peabody glanced over her shoulder. “I’ve never been in a place like this before.”
“Consider yourself lucky.” Eve had spent plenty of time in such places. A ward of the state didn’t rate private health care or upscale clinics.
At the nurse’s gesture, she stepped into a box-sized room the doctors on rotation used for an office. Two chairs, a desk barely bigger than a packing crate, and equipment, Eve mused, glancing at the computer system, even worse than what she was reduced to using at Central.
The office didn’t boast a window, but someone had tried to brighten it up with a couple of art posters and a struggling green vine in a chipped pot.
And there, on a wall shelf, tucked between a teetering stack of medical discs and a model of the human body, was a small bouquet of paper flowers.
“Snooks,” Eve murmured. “He used this place.”
“Sir?”
“His flowers.” Eve picked them from the shelf. “He liked someone here enough to give them, and someone cared enough to keep them. Peabody, we just got our connection.”
She was still holding the flowers when the door burst open. The woman who strode in was young, tiny, with the white coat of her profession slung over a baggy sweater and faded jeans. Her hair was short and even more ragged that Eve’s. Still, its honeycomb color set off the pretty rose-and-cream face.
Her eyes were the color of storms, and her voice was just as threatening.
“You’ve got three minutes. I’ve got patients waiting, and a badge doesn’t mean dick in here.”
Eve arched a brow. The opening would have irritated her under most circumstances, but she noted the shadows of fatigue under the gray eyes and the stiffness of posture that was a defense against it.
She’d worked until exhaustion often enough to recognize the signs and sympathize with them.
“We sure are popular these days, Peabody. Dallas,” she said briefly. “Lieutenant, Eve. I need data on a couple of patients.”
“Dimatto, Dr. Louise, and I don’t give data out on patients. No
t to cops, not to anyone. So if that’s all—”
“Dead patients,” Eve said as Louise spun toward the door again. “Murdered patients. I’m Homicide.”
Turning back, Louise took a more careful look at Eve. She saw a lean body, a tough face, and tired eyes. “You’re investigating a murder?”
“Murders. Two.” Watching Louise, she held out the paper flowers. “Yours?”
“Yes. So . . .” She trailed off and concern washed over her face. “Oh, not Snooks! Who would kill Snooks? He couldn’t have been more harmless.”
“He was your patient?”
“He wasn’t anyone’s patient, really.” She moved over to an ancient AutoChef and programmed coffee. “We take a medi-van out once a week, do on-site treatments.” The machine made a hissing sound, and swearing, Louise yanked the door open. Inside was a puddle of what appeared to be some offensive body fluid. “Out of cups again,” she muttered and left the door swinging open as she turned back. “They keep cutting our budget.”
“Tell me about it,” Eve said dryly.
With a half laugh, Louise ran her hands up over her face and into her hair. “I used to see Snooks around when it was my rotation on the medi-van. I bribed him into a street exam one night about a month ago. It cost me ten credits to find out he’d be dead of cancer in about six months without treatment. I tried to explain it all to him, but he just didn’t care. He gave me the flowers and told me I was a nice girl.”
She let out a long sigh. “I don’t think anything was wrong with his mind—though I couldn’t bribe him into a psych. He just didn’t give a damn.”
“You have the records of the exam.”
“I can dig them up, but what’s the point? If he was murdered, cancer didn’t get him.”
“I’d like them for my files,” Eve said. “And any records you have on Erin Spindler. She got her health checks here.”
“Spindler?” Louise shook her head. “I don’t know if she was one of mine. But if you want patient records, Lieutenant, you’re going to have to give me more data. How did they die?”
“During surgery, so to speak,” Eve said, and told her.
After the first shock leaped into Louise’s eyes, they went cool and flat. She waited, considered, then shook her head. “I don’t know about Spindler, but I can tell you that there was nothing in Snooks worth harvesting, not even for black market use.”
“Somebody took his heart, and they did a superior job of it. Who’s your top surgical consult?”
“We don’t have outside consults,” Louise said wearily. “I’m it. So if you want to take me in for interview or to charge me, you’ll just have to wait until I finish with my patients.”
Eve nearly smiled. “I’m not charging you, Doctor, at this time. Unless you’d like to confess. To this.” From her bag, Eve took two stills, one of each victim, offered them.
Lips pursed, Louise studied them, breathed out slow. “Someone has magic hands,” she murmured. “I’m good, but I’m not even close to this level of skill. To manage this in a sleeper’s crib, for God’s sake. Under those conditions.” She shook her head, handed the stills back. “I can hate what those hands did, Lieutenant, but I admire their ability.”
“Any opinion on whose hands they might be?”
“I don’t mingle with the gods professionally, and that’s what you’re looking for here. One of the gods. I’ll have Jan get you what you need. I have to get back to my patients.”
But she paused, studying the flowers again. Something came into her eyes that was more than fatigue. It might have been grief. “We’ve eradicated or learned to cure nearly every natural killer of human beings but one. Some suffer and die before their time anyway because they’re too poor, too afraid, or too stubborn to seek help. But we keep chipping away at that. Eventually, we’ll win.”
She looked back over at Eve. “I believe that. We’ll win on this front, but on yours, Lieutenant, there’ll never be full victory. The natural predator of man will always be man. So I’ll keep treating the bodies that others have sliced or hacked or pummelled, and you’ll keep cleaning up the waste.”
“I get my victories, Doctor. Every time I put a predator in a cage, I get my victory. And I’ll get one for Snooks and Spindler. You can count on it.”
“I don’t count on anything anymore.” Louise walked out to where the hurt and the hopeless waited.
I am . . . amused. Great work must be balanced by periods of rest and entertainment, after all. In the midst of mine, I find myself pitted against a woman with a reputation for tenacity. A clever woman, by all accounts, and a determined one with great skill in her chosen field.
But however tenacious, clever, and determined Eve Dallas might be, she remains a cop. I’ve dealt with cops before, and they are easily dispatched in one manner or another.
How absurd that those who impose laws—laws that change as easily and often as the wind—should believe they have any jurisdiction over me.
They choose to call what I do murder. The removal—the humane removal, I should add—of the damaged, the useless, the unproductive is no more murder than the removal of lice from a human body is murder. Indeed, the units I have selected are no less than vermin. Diseased and dying vermin at that.
Contagious, corrupted, and condemned by the very society whose laws would now avenge them. Where were the laws and the cries for justice when these pathetic creatures huddled in their boxes and lay in their own waste? While they lived, they were held in disgust, ignored, or vilified.
These vessels serve a much grander purpose dead than they ever could have achieved alive.
But if murder is their term, then I accept. As I accept the challenge of the dogged lieutenant. Let her poke and prod, calculate and deduce. I believe I will enjoy the bout.
And if she becomes a nuisance, if by some stroke of luck she stumbles too close to me and my work?
She’ll be dealt with.
Even Lieutenant Dallas has her weaknesses.
chapter seven
McNab found another sidewalk sleeper dead in the alleyways of Paris. He’d been missing his liver, but his body had been so mutilated by the feral cats that roamed the slums that most of the physical evidence had been destroyed. Still, Eve put the name into her files.
She took them all home with her, opting to work there until Roarke got back from New L.A. Summerset didn’t disappoint this time, but slipped into the foyer moments after she came through the door.
His dark eyes skimmed over her, his elegant nose wrinkled. “Since you’re quite late, Lieutenant, and didn’t see fit to notify me of your plans, I assume you’ve already had your evening meal.”
She hadn’t eaten since the chewy bar she’d scavenged, but only jerked her shoulders as she shrugged out of her jacket. “I don’t need you to fix my dinner, ace.”
“That’s fortunate.” He watched her sling her jacket over the newel post. An act they both knew she repeated because it annoyed his rigid sense of order. “Because I have no intention of doing so since you refuse to keep me informed of your schedule.”
She cocked her head, giving his tall, skinny body the same once-over he’d given hers. “That’ll teach me.”
“You have an aide, Lieutenant. It would be a simple matter to have her notify me of your plans so the household could maintain some order.”
“Peabody’s got better things to do, and so do I.”
“Your job doesn’t concern me,” he said with a sneer. “This household does. I’ve added the AMA fund-raiser to your calendar. You will be expected to be ready and presentable . . .” He paused long enough to sniff at her scarred boots and wrinkled trousers. “If that’s possible, by seven-thirty on Friday.”
She took one meaningful step forward. “Keep your bony fingers out of my calendar.”
“Roarke requested I make the notation and remind you of the engagement.” Pleased, he smiled.
She decided she’d have a little chat with Roarke about foisting his personal Nazi o
n her. “And I’m telling you to keep out of my business.”
“I take my orders from Roarke, not you.”
“And I don’t take them from either of you,” she tossed back as she started upstairs. “So bite me.”
They separated, both of them fairly well satisfied with the encounter.
She went straight to the AutoChef in her office kitchen and would have been mortified if she’d known Summerset had planted the thought of dinner in her mind, knowing she would remember to eat out of spite if nothing else. Otherwise, she would most likely have forgotten.
There was a beef and dumpling stew at the top of the menu, and since it was one of her personal favorites, she programmed a bowl. The minute the machine beeped its acceptance of her order, the cat was winding through her legs.
“I know damn well you’ve already had yours,” she muttered. But as soon as she opened the door and the fragrant steam hit the air, Galahad sent up a screeching meow. As much in defense as affection, she spooned some into his dish. He pounced on it as if it were a lively mouse that might escape.
Eve carried the stew and coffee to her desk, eating absently as she engaged her machine and began to review data. She knew what her gut told her, what her instincts told her, but she would have to wait for the transfer of files and pictures to run a probability scan to verify her conclusions.
Her scan of Spindler’s medical records from the Canal Street Clinic had stated that the patient had a kidney disorder, a result of some childhood infection. Her kidneys had been functional but damaged and had required regular treatment.
A bum heart, she mused, and faulty kidneys. She’d bet a month’s pay when she got data on the hits in Chicago and Paris, those organs would prove to be damaged as well.
Specific, she thought. Specific victims for specifically flawed parts.
“You get around, don’t you, Dr. Death?”
New York, Chicago, Paris. Where else had he been, and where would he go next?
He might not be based in New York after all, she speculated. He could be anywhere, traveling the world and its satellites for his pickings. But someone knew him, would recognize his work.