by J. D. Robb
“Did you see or speak with anyone between those scenes?”
“I’m sure I did.” Eliza lifted her fingers, making a little steeple. Then collapsed them. “A number of the technical crew would have been backstage, and I might have exchanged a word or two. Carly and I passed each other.”
“Passed each other?”
“Yes. As I was coming out of my dressing room, she was going toward hers. Hurriedly, as our cue was coming up shortly. Did we speak?”
She paused, pursing her lips, searching the ceiling as if for the memory. “I believe we did. She made some offhand complaint about Richard. I think she said he’d given her ass a bit of a pinch or pat. It annoyed her, as well it should, given his treatment of her.”
She continued to sit, regally, her eyes bright and fixed on Eve’s. “I find it hard to sympathize, as she’s smart enough to know better than to get involved with a man of his nature. I believe I made just that sort of comment to Kenneth before I started up to the second level of the set to take my mark.”
“You saw him as well.”
“Yes, pacing about, muttering to himself. He often does so before a scene. I couldn’t tell you if he heard me or noticed. Kenneth tries to stay in character and he works very hard to ignore Nurse Plimsoll.”
“Anyone else?”
“Well, I . . . Yes, I saw Michael Proctor. He was in the wings. I’m sure he was dreaming of the night when he might have his chance to play Vole. Not that I believe for a moment he arranged to do so. He has such a helpless air, doesn’t he? I can see this business devouring him whole in another year or so.”
“And Areena Mansfield. Did you see her as well?”
“Certainly. She made the dash to her dressing room. She had a full costume and makeup change between those scenes. She raced right past me. But honestly, Lieutenant, if you want the positions and activities of the cast between scenes, you don’t want to talk to one of us. You want Quim. He’s head stagehand, a rumpled little man with sneaky eyes that miss little to nothing. He’s everywhere.”
“Not anymore,” Eve said quietly. “Linus Quim was found hanged this morning in the theater. Lower level.”
For the first time, Eliza’s polished veneer cracked. Her hand went to her heart, trembled there. “Hanged?” The well-trained voice was husky on the single word. “Hanged?” she repeated. “There must be a mistake. Who would kill a harmless little toad like Quim?”
“It appeared to be self-termination.”
“Nonsense.” Eliza got to her feet. “Why, that’s nonsense. It takes great bravery or great cowardice to end your own life. He had neither. He was just an irritating little man, one who did his job well and never seemed to enjoy it. If he’s dead, someone killed him. That’s two,” she said almost to herself. “Two deaths in the theater. Tragedies come in threes. Who’s next?”
She shuddered, lowered herself to her chair again. “Someone’s killing us.” The avid interest in her eyes was gone, the play of amusement around her mouth turned down to worry. “There’s another play, Lieutenant Dallas, by the late Dame Christie. And Then There Were None. Ten people, subtly linked, who are murdered one at a time. I don’t intend to have a role in it. You have to stop this.”
“I intend to. Is there a reason anyone would wish you harm, Ms. Rothchild?”
“No. No. I have no enemies on the scope that leads to murder. But there will be at least one more. It’s theater, and we’re a superstitious lot. If there’s two, there must be three. There will be three,” she said. “Unless you do something about it.”
She jolted when her security beeped. The lobby clerk’s face came cheerfully on-screen. “Ms. Landsdowne is here to see you, Ms. Rothchild. Shall I send her up?”
“I’m engaged at the moment,” she began, but Eve held up a hand.
“Please, have her come up.”
“I—” Eliza lifted a hand to her hair, patted it. “Yes, yes, please send her up.”
“Does Carly often drop by?” Eve asked.
“Not really. She’s been here, of course. I enjoy entertaining. I don’t recall her simply popping in this way. I’m really not up to chatting with her at the moment.”
“That’s all right. I am. I’ll get the door,” Eve said when the buzzer sounded.
Eve took a moment to study Carly’s face on the security screen. Frantic would have been her description. She watched it change to shock, then smooth out quickly to careless curiosity after she opened the door.
“Lieutenant. I didn’t realize you were here. Apparently I’ve chosen a bad time to pay a call on Eliza.”
“Saves me tracking you down for a follow-up interview.”
“Too bad I don’t have my lawyer in my pocket.” She stepped inside. “I was just out shopping and decided to drop by.” She caught Eve’s speculative look at her empty hands. “I had a few things sent on to my apartment. I do hate lugging parcels. Eliza.”
Carly swept in, arms spread, and met Eliza in the center of the living area. They exchanged light hugs and double-cheeked air kisses. “I didn’t realize you were entertaining the NYPSD. Shall I leave you alone?”
“No.” Eliza gripped her arm. “Carly, the lieutenant’s just told me Quim’s dead. Linus Quim.”
“I know.” Turning, she linked arms with Eliza. “I caught the news on-screen.”
“I thought you were shopping.”
“I was.” Carly nodded at Eve. “There was a young man entertaining himself with a palm unit while his young woman tried on half the wardrobe in sportswear and separates. I heard the name.”
She lifted a hand, appeared to struggle with herself briefly. “It upset me—panicked me, frankly. I didn’t know what to think when I heard the report. I was just a few blocks away, and I came here. I wanted to tell someone who’d understand.”
“Understand what?” Eve prompted.
“The report said it’s believed his death is linked to Richard’s. I don’t see how it could be. Richard never took notice of techs or crew. As far as he was concerned, the sets were dressed and changed by magic. Unless there was a problem. Then he’d abuse them verbally or physically. Quim never missed a cue, so Richard wouldn’t have known he existed. How could there be a link?”
“But you noticed him?”
“Of course. Creepy little man.” She gave a delicate shudder. “Eliza, I hate to impose, but I could really use a drink.”
“I could use one myself,” she decided and rang for a serving droid.
“Did you notice Quim on opening night?” Eve asked.
“Just that he was doing what he did in his usual silent, scowling way.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“I may have. I don’t recall. I’d like a vodka, rocks,” Carly added when the droid appeared. “A double.”
“You didn’t appear this upset when Draco was killed, and in front of your eyes.”
“I can think of a dozen reasons any number of people would want to kill Richard,” Carly snapped back.
“Including yourself.”
“Yes.” She took the glass from the droid, took one quick sip. “Most definitely including myself. But Quim changes everything. If their deaths are connected, I want to know. Because the idea scares me.”
“Tragedies happen in threes,” Eliza stated, her voice round and full and passionate.
“Oh, thanks, darling. Just what I needed to hear.” Carly lifted her glass, drained the contents.
“Weird. These people are fucking weird.” Eve got in her vehicle and headed back to Central. “One of their associates gets stuck in the heart basically at their feet, and they’re like—my goodness, would you look at that. A tech is hanged, and they fall apart.”
She flipped on her car link and contacted Feeney.
“No home ’link calls in or out in a forty-eight-hour period,” he reported. “No calls to anyone on your list, period. He had biweekly contact with a bookie for bets on arena ball, kept it under the legal limit.”
“Tell me so
mething interesting, I’m dozing off here.”
“He put a hold on a royal-class ticket to Tahiti but didn’t book it. One way, heading out a week from Tuesday. Also put a hold on a VIP suite at the Island Pleasure Resort. A full month’s stay. Made some inquiries about real estate, looking into some cliff-side house in the neighborhood of two mil. The guy’s financials add up to about a quarter of that. The ticket and the suite would have gobbled most of that up.”
“So he was looking to come into a nice pile.”
“Or he was a hell of a dreamer. Can’t find anything on his unit to indicate he did previous scans, you know, like a hobby.”
“Blackmailing a murderer might net you a nice pile.”
“Or a noose,” Feeney added.
“Yeah. I’m heading by the morgue to nag Morse.”
“Nobody does it better,” Feeney said before Eve cut him off.
chapter nine
“Ah, Lieutenant Dallas.” Chief Medical Examiner Morse’s dark eyes glittered behind his microgoggles. Above the serviceable lenses, his eyebrows arched in two long, slim triangles. At the peak of the left was a small, shiny silver hoop.
He snapped his fingers, held out his sealed hand, palm up. A grumbling assistant flipped a twenty-dollar credit into it. “Dallas, you never disappoint me. You see, Rochinsky, never bet against the house.”
The credit disappeared into one of the pockets of his puke-green protective jumpsuit.
“Win a bet?” Eve asked.
“Oh, yes indeed. A small wager with my associate that you would show up in our happy home before five P.M.”
“It’s nice to be predicable.” She looked down at the middle-aged, mixed-race woman currently stretched out under Morse’s laser scalpel. The Y cut had already been made.
“That’s not my dead guy.”
“Very observant. Meet Allyanne Preen, Detective Harrison’s dead gal, who was several slots ahead of yours. Licensed companion, street level. She was found stretched out in an abandoned ’49 Lexus coupe, in the great automotive morgue we call long-term parking, La Guardia.”
“Trouble with a john?”
“No outward signs of violence, no recent sexual encounters.” He scooped out her liver, weighed and logged it.
“She’s got a faint blue tinge to her skin.” Eve bent down to examine the hands. “Most noticeable under the nails. Looks like an OD, probably Exotica and Jumper.”
“Very good. Any time you want to switch to my side of the slab, just let me know. I can promise, we have a lot more fun around here.”
“Yeah, word’s out on you party animals.”
“The reports of the Saint Patrick’s Day celebration in the ice room were . . .” His eyes laughed behind his goggles. “Accurate.”
“Sorry I missed it. Where’s my guy? I need his tox report.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Morse poked at a kidney before removing it. His hands were quick and skilled and seemed to keep time to the beat of the rebel rock music playing over the speakers. “I assumed you’d be in a hurry. I gave your guy to young Finestein. He just started here last month. Has potential.”
“You gave mine to some rookie?”
“We were all rookies once, Dallas. Speaking of which, where’s the stalwart Peabody?”
“She’s outside, doing some runs. Listen, Morse, this is a tricky one.”
“So they say, all the time, every time.”
“I’m betting on homicide, but it was set up to look like self-termination. I need good hands and eyes on my guy.”
“I don’t take on anyone without them. Relax, Dallas. Stress can kill you.” Unruffled, he strolled over to a ’link, put out a call for Herbert Finestein. “He’ll be right along. Rochinsky, run this young lady’s internals to the lab. Start the blood work.”
“Morse, I’ve got two bodies, and the probability is that they’re linked.”
“Yes, yes, but that’s your area.” He wandered to a detox bowl, washed the soiled sealant from his hands, ran them under the radiant heat in the drying hood. “I’ll look over the boy’s work, Dallas, but give him a chance.”
“Yeah, yeah, fine.”
Morse pulled off his goggles and mask, smiled. His black hair was intricately braided to hang down to the middle of his back. He disposed of his protective suit to reveal the stunning pink of his shirt and electric blue of his trousers.
“Nice threads,” Eve said dryly. “Going to another party?”
“I’m telling you, every day’s a party around here.”
She imagined he habitually chose snazzy clothes to distance himself from the starkness of his job, the brutality of it. Whatever works, Eve thought. Wading through blood and gore and the misery human beings inflicted on each other on a daily basis wore on you. Without an escape valve, you’d explode.
And what was hers?
“And how’s Roarke?” Morse asked.
“Good. Fine.” Roarke. Yes, he was hers. Before him there had just been work. Only been work. And would she have, one day, reached the limit, felt her own soul shatter?
Hell of a thought.
“Ah, here’s Finestein. Be nice,” Morse murmured to Eve.
“What am I?”
“An ass-kicker,” Morse said pleasantly and laid a friendly hand on her shoulder. “Herbert, Lieutenant Dallas would like an update on the DOS I assigned to you this afternoon.”
“Yes, the Dead on-Scene. Quim, Linus, white male, fifty-six years. Cause of death strangulation by hanging.” Finestein, a skinny mixed race with black skin and pale eyes, spoke in quick, piping tones and fiddled nervously with a small forest of pencils tucked in a breast pocket protector.
Not only a rookie, Eve thought with frustration, a nerd rookie.
“Did you want to review the body?”
“I’m standing here, aren’t I?” Eve began, then relented with a quick gnashing of teeth when Morse’s long fingers squeezed her shoulder. “Yes, thank you, I’d like to review the body and your report. Please.”
“Just this way.”
Eve rolled her eyes at Morse as Finestein hurried across the room. “He’s fucking twelve years old.”
“He’s twenty-six. Patience, Dallas.”
“I hate patience. Slows everything down.” But she walked over to the floor-to-ceiling line of drawers, waited while Finestein uncoded one, pulled it open with a frigid puff of cold gas.
“As you can see . . .” Finestein cleared his throat. “There are no marks of violence on the body other than those caused by the strangulation. No offensive or defensive wounds. There were microscopic fibers of the rope found under the subject’s nails, indicating he secured the rope personally. By all appearances, the subject willingly hanged himself.”
“You’re handing me self-termination?” Eve demanded. “Just like that? Where’s the tox report, the blood work?”
“I’m—I’m getting to that, Lieutenant. There were traces of ageloxite and—”
“Give her the street names, Herbert,” Morse said mildly. “She’s a cop, not a scientist.”
“Oh, yes, sir. Sorry. Traces of um . . . Ease-Up were found in the victim’s system, along with a small amount of home brew. This mix is quite commonly ingested by self-terminators to calm any nerves.”
“This guy didn’t pull his own plug, damn it.”
“Yes, sir, I agree.” Finestein’s quiet agreement cut off Eve’s tirade before it could begin.
“You agree?”
“Yes. The victim also ingested a large pretzel with considerable mustard less than an hour before death. Prior to this, he enjoyed a breakfast of wheat wafers, powdered eggs, and the equivalent of three cups of coffee.”
“So?”
“If the subject knew enough to mix a cocktail of Ease-Up and alcohol before termination, he would have known that coffee can potentially counteract and cause anxiety. This, and the fact that the alcohol consumed was in very small proportion to the drug casts some doubt on self-termination.”
“So, you’re rul
ing homicide.”
“I’m ruling suspicious death—undetermined.” He swallowed as Eve’s eyes bored into him. “Until more evidence weighs in on either side, I feel it’s impossible to make the call.”
“Just so. Well done, Herbert.” Morse nodded. “The lieutenant will feed you details as she finds them.”
Finestein looked relieved, and he fled.
“You give me nothing,” Eve complained.
“On the contrary. Herbert’s given you a window. Most MEs would have slammed it shut, ruling ST. Instead, he’s cautious, exacting, and thorough, and he considers the attitude of the victim rather than only the cold facts. Medically, undetermined was the best you were going to get.”
“Undetermined,” Eve muttered as she slid behind the wheel.
“Well, it gives us a window.” Peabody glanced up from her palm unit, caught the coldly narrowed stare Eve aimed at her. “What? What did I say?”
“Next person says that, I’m throwing them out the goddamn window.” She started the car. “Peabody, am I an ass-kicker?”
“Are you asking to see my scars, or is that a trick question?”
“Shut up, Peabody,” Eve suggested, and headed back to Central.
“Quim had a hundred on tonight’s arena ball game.” Peabody’s smile was thin and self-satisfied. “McNab just relayed the data. A hundred’s his top bet. Odd he’d place a bet a few hours before offing himself, then not even wait around to see if he won. I’ve got the name and address of his bookie here. Oh, but I’m supposed to shut up. Sorry, sir.”
“You want more scars?”
“I really don’t. Now that I have a sex life, they’re embarrassing. Maylou Jorgensen. She’s got a hole in the West Village.”
Peabody loved the West Village. She loved the way it ran from bohemian chic to pinstriped drones who wanted to be bohemian chic. She liked to watch the street traffic stroll by in ankle dusters or buttoned-up jumpsuits. The shaved heads, the wild tangles of multicolored curls. She liked watching the sidewalk artists pretend they were too cool to worry about selling their work.
Even the street thieves had a veneer of polish.