The In Death Collection, Books 21-25

by J. D. Robb

  “Then she has to . . .” Eve leaned over until her face and Peabody’s were nearly on a level. And with the pen she’d palmed gave her partner a light jab at the heart.

  “Jeez!” Peabody jerked back. “No poking. I thought, for a really weird minute, you were going to kiss me or something. Then you . . . Oh.”

  “Yeah. The angle of the wound. She standing, he’s sitting, but with her height factored in, his seated height calculated, she leaned over him. She came from this angle, he turned in the chair—automatically—just like you did. Got the weapon palmed. He never saw it. He’s watching her face.

  “She shoves it in him, and it’s done. He knew her, Peabody. One of his placements, I give you odds. Maybe he even helped her get the fake ID, maybe that’s part of the service. She could still be a pro, but it feels less and less like a work for hire.”

  “The son didn’t know her. I’d give you odds on that.”

  “Didn’t recognize is different from didn’t know.”

  Frowning now, Eve circled the room. “Why doesn’t he have any data here? Here, where he works two or three days a week. Why doesn’t he have any of those coded files in his office, in his power seat?”

  “If it’s a sideline, maybe he wanted to keep it on the side.”

  “Yeah.” But Eve studied the desk, the file drawers in it had been locked. She had those files now, but that didn’t mean they were complete.

  The door opened. Will Icove strode in. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “Our job. This is a crime scene. What are you doing here?”

  “This is my father’s office. I don’t know what you’re looking for here, or why you seem more interested in smearing my father’s good name than apprehending his killer, but—”

  “Apprehending his killer is the goal,” Eve countered. “To do that we have to look at and for things that may not please you. Was the woman who called herself Dolores Nocho-Alverez your father’s patient?”

  “You’ve looked through his records. Have you found her?”

  “I don’t believe we’ve seen all of his records.” Eve opened Peabody’s file case, removed the photo of Dolores. “Take another look.”

  “I’ve never seen her before.” But he didn’t look at the still Eve held out. “I don’t know why she killed my father, or why you seem bent on blaming him for his own death.”

  “You’re wrong. I blame the person who put the knife in him for his death.” Eve replaced the picture. “It’s the why I question, and if he and his killer had a history, that speaks to the why. What was he working on? What had he been working on, privately, for so long?”

  “My father’s work was revolutionary. And it’s documented. Whoever this woman was she was unbalanced, obviously unbalanced. If you find her, which I’ve come to doubt you will, she’ll be found to be mentally defective. In the meantime, my family and I are in mourning. My wife and children have gone to our home in the Hamptons, and I’ll join them tomorrow. We need privacy, a time to retreat and finalize plans for my father’s memorial.”

  He paused, seemed to struggle with his emotions. “I don’t know anything about your sort of work. I’m told you’re very competent. Trusting that, I’m going to wait until we come back to the city. If at that time, there’s been no progress, and you’ve continued to investigate my father rather than his death, I intend to use whatever influence I have to have this matter transferred to another investigator.”

  “That’s your privilege.”

  He nodded, moved back to the door. With his hand on the knob, he drew a breath. “He was a great man,” he said, and left the room.

  “He’s nervous,” Peabody observed. “Grieving—I don’t think he’s faking that—but nervous, too. We’ve pushed on a sensitive spot.”

  “Sent the wife and kiddies away,” Eve mused. “Good time to clean out anything incriminating. We’re not going to get that search order in time to stop him, not if he moves right away.”

  “He wipes data, EDD will dig it out.”

  “Spoken like an e-groupie.” But Eve nodded. “We’ll push for the warrant.”

  She was still waiting for it at end of shift, and as a last resort hauled Nadine’s bakery box into the cell-like office of an assistant prosecuting attorney.

  APAs, Eve noted, didn’t fare much better than cops when it came to work environment.

  Cher Reo had a rep for being hungry. Eve earmarked her because if the brownies didn’t turn the tide, the prospect of having part in a scandal that would generate days of screen time should.

  Despite the sunny sweep of silky hair, the baby-doll blue eyes and curvy pink lips, Cher was known to be a piranha. She was wearing a stone-gray skirt—demurely to her knees—and a simple white shirt. The matching jacket was draped neatly over the back of her chair.

  Her desk was covered with files, discs, notes. She drank coffee out of a super-sized to-go cup.

  Eve waltzed in, dropped the candy-pink box on the desk. And watched Cher’s nostrils flare.

  “What?” She had a little Southern in her voice, like a dusting of sugar. Eve had yet to decide if it was genuine.

  “Brownies.”

  Cher leaned a little closer to the box, sniffed. Shut her eyes. “I’m on a diet.”

  “Triple chocolate.”

  “Whore.” Lifting the box a fraction, Cher peeked, groaned. “Filthy whore. What do I have to do for them?”

  “I’m still waiting for the warrant on Icove Jr.’s residence.”

  “You’ll be lucky if you get it at all. You’re poking pointy sticks in the eye of a saint, Dallas.” Cher sat back, swiveled. Eve saw she had airskids on her feet. And dignified gray heels tucked into the corner of the room. “My boss doesn’t want to give you the go to jam it in. He’s going to want more.”

  Eve leaned a hip on the edge of the desk. “Convince him otherwise. The surviving son knows something, Reo. While your boss is playing politics instead of throwing his weight with mine—and Mira’s—to a judge, data may very well be lost. Does the PA’s office want to hinder the investigation into the murder of a man of Icove’s stature?”

  “Nope. And it sure doesn’t want to toss shit into his grave either.”

  “Push for the warrant, Reo. If I get what I’m after, it’s going to be big. And I’ll remember who helped me get it.”

  “If you turn up nothing? Nobody’s going to forget who helped you screw this up either.”

  “I’ll turn up something.” She pushed off the desk. “If you can’t trust me, Reo, trust the brownies.”

  Reo blew out a breath. “It’ll take a while. Even saying I can convince my boss—and that’s going to take some doing—we’ve got to convince a judge to sign off.”

  “Then why don’t you get started?”

  This time when she got home, Summerset was where she expected him to be. Lurking in the foyer like some prune-faced gargoyle. She decided to let him take the first shot. She preferred retaliation, because it usually gave her the last word.

  She stripped off her coat while they eyed each other. And decided it made even more of a statement draped over the newel post than her usual jacket did.

  “Lieutenant. I need a moment of your time.”

  Her brow knit. He wasn’t supposed to say that, and in a polite, inoffensive tone. “What for?”

  “It regards Wilfred Icove.”

  “What about him?”

  Summerset, a brittle stick of a man in a stiff black suit, kept his dark eyes on hers. His face, usually grim in Eve’s mind, seemed even more strained than usual. “I’d like to offer any assistance I can in the matter of your investigation.”

  “Well, that’ll be the day,” she began, then narrowed her eyes. “You knew him. How’s that?”

  “I knew him, slightly. I served as a medic—somewhat unofficially—during the Urban Wars.”

  She glanced up as Roarke came down the steps. “Did you already know this?”

  “Just shortly ago. Why don’t we go sit
down?” Before she could protest, Roarke took her arm, led her into the parlor. “Summerset tells me he met Icove in London, and worked with him at one of the clinics there during the wars.”

  “For him is more accurate,” Summerset corrected. “He came to London to help establish more clinics, and the mobile medical units that eventually transformed into Unilab. He had been a part of the team that had established them here in New York, where the outbreaks started before they bled into Europe. Some forty years ago now,” he added. “Before either of you were born. Before my daughter was born.”

  “How long was he in London?” Eve asked.

  “Two months. Perhaps three.” Summerset spread his bony hands. “It blurs. He saved countless lives during that period, worked tirelessly. Risked his own life more than once. He implemented some of his innovations in reconstructive surgery on that battlefield. That’s what the cities were then. Battlefields. You’ve seen images from that period, but it was nothing compared to being there, living through it. Victims who would have lost limbs, or gone through their lives scarred, were spared that due to his work.”

  “Would you say he experimented?”

  “He innovated. He created. The media reports that this might have been a professional assassination. I have contacts still, in certain circles.”

  “If you want to use them, fine. Poke around. Carefully. How well did you know him, personally?”

  “Not well. People who come together in war often bond quickly, even intimately. But when they have nothing else in common that bond fades. And he was . . . aloof.”

  “Superior.”

  Disapproval covered Summerset’s face, but he nodded. “That term wouldn’t be inaccurate. We worked together, ate and drank together, but he maintained distance from those who worked under him.”

  “Give me a personality rundown, deleting the sainthood level.”

  “It’s difficult to say with any accuracy. It was war. Personalities cope, or shine, or shatter during war.”

  “You had an opinion of him, as a man.”

  “He was brilliant.” Summerset glanced over, with some surprise, as Roarke offered him a short glass of whiskey. “Thank you.”

  “Brilliant’s on record,” Eve said. “I’m not looking for brilliant.”

  “You want flaws.” Summerset sipped the whiskey. “I don’t consider them flaws when a young, brilliant doctor is impatient and frustrated with the circumstances, with the equipment and the poor facilities where we worked. He demanded a great deal, and because he gave a great deal, accomplished a great deal, he usually got it.”

  “You said aloof. Just to other doctors, medics, volunteers, or to patients, too?”

  “Initially, he made a point of learning the names of every patient he tended, and I would say he suffered at each loss. And losses were . . . horrendous. He then implemented a system assigning numbers rather than names.”

  “Numbers,” Eve murmured.

  “Essential objectivity, I believe he called it. They were bodies that needed tending, or reconstruction. Bodies that needed to be kept breathing, or terminated. He was hard, but circumstances demanded it. Those who couldn’t step back from the horror were useless to those who suffered from that horror.”

  “His wife was killed during that period.”

  “I was working in another part of the city at that time. As I remember, he left London immediately upon being notified of her death, and went to his son, who was being kept safe in the country.”

  “No contact since.”

  “No. I can’t imagine he would have remembered me. I’ve followed his work, and was pleased that so much of what he’d hoped to do came to be.”

  “He talked about that? What he hoped to do.”

  “To me? No.” What might have been a smile passed over Summerset’s face. “But I heard him speak to other doctors. He wanted to heal, to help, to improve the quality of life.”

  “He was a perfectionist.”

  “There’s no perfection during war.”

  “That must have frustrated him.”

  “It frustrated us all. People were dying all around us. No matter how many we saved, there were more we couldn’t reach, couldn’t help. A man might be shot down in the street because he had decent shoes. Another might have his throat cut because he had none at all. Frustration is a small word.”

  Eve chased through her mind. “So his kid’s tucked away in the countryside, and his wife’s working beside him.”

  “Not beside, no. She volunteered in a hospital that had been set up to treat injured children, and to house those lost or orphaned.”

  “He fool around?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s war, he’s away from his family. His life’s on the line. Did he sleep with anybody?”

  “I don’t see the purpose in so crude a question, but no, not that I was aware of. He was devoted to his family and his work.”

  “Okay. I’ll get back to you.” She got to her feet. “Roarke?”

  She moved out of the room, heard Roarke murmur something before he followed her. She waited until they were upstairs before she spoke. “You didn’t tell him anything about the data we found.”

  “No. And it’s an uncomfortable position.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to be uncomfortable for a while. I don’t know if his murder had its roots back as far as the Urban Wars, but it’s something I want to think about. Unless his killer was able to shed a good decade surgically or through enhancements, she wasn’t born during that time either. But . . .”

  “She had a mother, a father. And they would have been.”

  “Yeah. Another possibility. War orphans. Could’ve started experimenting, treating, placing.” She paced the bedroom. “It isn’t tidy, is it, just to leave kids scavenging around on the streets, during a war, after the madness of war? Some of them won’t survive, and you’re in the business of survival. You’re interested in improving that quality of life. But also appearance. See a lot of carnage during a war. Maybe it twisted him up.”

  She checked her wrist unit. “Where the hell’s my warrant?”

  She dropped down on the sofa, studied Roarke thoughtfully. “How’d you feel back then, when Summerset took you in off the streets?”

  “I got fed, got to sleep in a bed. And nobody was beating the bloody hell out of me on a daily basis.” The man who’d seen to that, Roarke thought, had given him a great deal more than clean sheets and food for his belly. “I was half dead anyway when he took me in. By the time I was able to think clearly, get out of bed, I was over my shock at my luck. Considered that he might be a mark, which he disabused me of the first time I tried to pick his pocket. And I learned to be grateful, for the first time in my life.”

  “So when he told you what to do, when he educated you, housed you, set rules, you went along.”

  “He didn’t put shackles on me. I’d’ve slipped the locks and run. But yes.”

  “Yeah.” She leaned her head back, stared at the ceiling. “And then he becomes family. Father, mother, teacher, doctor, priest. The ball of it.”

  “In essence. Ah, speaking of family. Several members of mine will be coming over from Clare. Now that I’ve done the thing, I don’t know quite what to expect.”

  She looked back at him. “Well, that makes a pair of us.”

  8

  TICK-TOCK, EVE THOUGHT, AND SCOWLED AT THE ’link she’d set on the dining room table. There was a cheery fire in the hearth and some sort of fancy pig meat on her plate.

  “Don’t you know a watched ’link never beeps.” She shifted her gaze to Roarke as he stabbed some meat from her plate onto his fork and held it out to her. “Be a good girl and eat your dinner.”

  “I know how to feed myself.” But because it was there, she took the offering. Damn good pig. “He’ll have wiped documents by now.”

  “Anything you can do about that?”

  “No.”

  “Then you might as well enjoy your dinner.”


  There were some sort of fancy potatoes to go with the fancy pig. She gave them a try. “They’ve got to have money hidden somewhere. You interested in finding it?”

  Roarke sipped his wine, cocked his head. “Lieutenant, I’m always interested in finding money.”

  “Whether or not this warrant comes through, I’m going to want the money trail. Funding for whatever this project is, fees or profit generated from it.”

  “All right. Plans are to have the meal in here.”

  She frowned at him. “We are having the meal in here.” She stabbed some pork, held it up. “See?”

  “Thanksgiving, Eve.” And he could admit he was a bit wound up about it as he was so completely unsure of his steps.

  He knew how to handle people, parties, meetings, his very complicated wife. He knew how to run an interplanetary empire, and still carve out time to dabble in murder cases. But how the hell was he going to handle family?

  “Oh, right. Turkey, sure.” Eve looked vaguely around the room with its huge table, stunning art, glints of silver, and warm, glowing wood. “Well, this would be the place for it. So this assignment? It would be official. No slippery stuff.”

  “Well, you take the fun out of it, don’t you?”

  “I can get authorization for a full-level financial search. Icove’s murder, the several working theories. Blackmail, whacked-out former patient, the possibility it was a professional and/or terrorist hit.”

  “None of which you subscribe to.”

  “I don’t eliminate them,” Eve said. “But they’re bottom of my list. I’ve also got the secured and encoded discs to add weight to the authorization. I can argue that whatever this project was, it led to the murder. Push all that together, and I can get authorization without offending any sensibilities. Not saying Icove was dirty, but that something to do with his work—and income from same—led to his murder.”

  “Clever of you.”

  “I’m a clever gal. Until I have more, I don’t make noises about possible human hybridization or sex slavery or companion training. Get me the money, so I can.”