by J. D. Robb
Instead, she rounded on Peabody like a panther. “What have you done?”
“I was . . . it was just I was thinking about maybe doing something with my hair, and I was talking to Mavis.”
“Oh. Oh. You bitch. I’ll kill you. Rip out your internal organs with my bare hands then strangle you with your own large intestine.”
“Can I get my hair extensions first?” Peabody tried a game smile.
“I’ll give you hair extensions.” She might have leaped, but Roarke wrapped his arms around her from the back, held her in place. “Better run,” he warned Peabody, but she was already heading out the door at a trot.
“You could always kill Trina,” Roarke suggested.
“I don’t think she can be killed.” Eve thought of the hair and skin specialist, and possibly the only entity on or off planet that terrified her. “Let go. I won’t murder Peabody—yet—because I need her.”
He turned her around, gave her a squeeze. “Anything else I can do for you, Lieutenant?”
“I’ll let you know.”
On the street there was no sign of Peabody. Waving Roarke off, she sat down on the steps to wait for the sweepers. Since her day was already ruined with the prospect of an evening beauty treatment, she called the lab and had a round with the chief tech, Dick Berenski, not-so-affectionately known as Dickhead.
“Fruit was clean—and delicious.” His skinny face oiled onto her screen. “Cheese, crackers, tea, the whole shot. Cheese from cows and goats. Prime stuff. Too bad for his bad luck on dying before he ate.”
“Did you consume my evidence?”
“Sampled. Ain’t evidence as it ain’t tampered with. Got a couple strands of blond hair—natural blond. One off his sweater, two off the sofa. Nada on the murder weapon. Sealed tight. No prints on the snack tray either. Nothing on the food, plate, napkin, utensils. Nothing nowhere.”
No prints, she thought after she broke connection. If Icove had gotten the tray, odds are he’d have left prints on something. So that added weight to her theory.
“Uh, sir?”
Peabody stood a safe distance away on the sidewalk. She rolled to the balls of her feet like a woman prepared to run. “I spoke with another neighbor. Same tone. I did verify the domestic’s statement regarding family routine and schedule.”
“Dandy. Why don’t you come over here and sit down, Peabody.”
“No, thanks. Stretching my legs.”
“Coward.”
“No question about it.” Her face worked itself into an expression of mournful apology. “I didn’t really do anything. It’s not really my fault. I just ran into Mavis and said how I was thinking about new hair, and she grabbed that ball and sprinted for the touchdown.”
“You couldn’t intercept from a pregnant woman?”
“She’s fat, but she’s spry. Don’t kill me.”
“I’ve got too much on my mind right now to plan your murder. You’d better hope I stay busy.”
Back at Central, she set Peabody up with the masses of data Nadine had unearthed. Let her read until her eyes bleed, Eve thought, nearly satisfied.
She whipped around from Peabody’s desk and grabbed Baxter by the collar. “You sniffing at me?”
“The coat. I was sniffing at the coat.”
“Cut it out.” She released him. “Sick bastard.”
“Jenkinson is Sick Bastard.”
“Yo,” Jenkinson called from across the room.
“If you can’t keep your squad straight, Dallas, I worry about your command abilities.”
She angled her head at Baxter’s winning smile. “You ever had face or body work, Baxter?”
“My intense good looks are a product of exceptional genes. Why? Something wrong with my face and body?”
“I want you to go through the Wilfred B. Icove Center. Soft clothes. You want a consult with their top face guy.”
“What’s wrong with my face? Women melt when I use the power of my smile upon them.”
“The top face guy,” Eve repeated. “I want to know exactly what process you go through for the consult. I want the fee schedule, the vibe. I want to know what kind of shape they’re in with both Icoves in the morgue.”
“Happy to help, Dallas, but let’s consider this. Who’d believe I’d want something done to this face.” He turned his head, lifted his chin. “Check the profile, if you dare. It’s a killer.”
“Use it to snuggle up to some of the female staff. Get me the what. You want a tour of the place before you put your face in their hands, and like that. Got it?”
“Sure. What about my boy?”
Eve looked over where Officer Troy Trueheart, Baxter’s aide, sat in his cube doing paperwork. He was still as fresh as spring grass, but Baxter was fertilizing. “How’s his lying coming along?”
“Better.”
Maybe, but he was young, built, and pretty. Better to send in a seasoned cop—self-described killer profile or not. “Give him a pass on this. It should only take you a couple hours.”
She tagged Feeney, offered to buy him what passed for lunch at Central’s eatery.
They squeezed into a booth and both ordered fake pastrami on marginally fresh rye. Eve disguised hers by drowning it in mustard the unfortunate color of infected urine.
“First Icove,” Feeney began, slopping a soy fry through a puddle of anemic ketchup. “No transmissions in or out the night before the murder on his desk ’link, home office. Got copies of transmissions in and out on his office ’link, his pocket. Nothing to, from, or pertaining to the suspect.”
He chewed, swallowed, tried the stringy substance masquerading as pastrami. “Took a look at Dr. Will’s ’links. Wife tagged him from her personal from the Hamptons about fifteen hundred the day of.”
“She didn’t mention that.”
“Quick check-in. Kids’re fine, had ice cream, friends coming over for drinks later. Wanted to know if he’d eaten anything, if he was getting any rest. Domestic stuff.”
“I bet he told her he was going home, locking down.”
“Yeah.” Feeney drowned another fry. “Told her he was going to try to get some work done, then close it down. He was tired, had a headache, and he’d had another round with you. Nothing on there anybody could call wonky.”
“But she knew his plans for the rest of the day. What else you get on Senior?”
“Patient records and charts are pretty extensive. I’ve got one of my boys with some med training weeding through those. But here’s the thing.” He washed down the sandwich with truly horrible fake coffee. “Got a memo book, separate from the appointment calendar his admin turned over. Personal reminder stuff—grandkid’s playdate, flowers for daughter-in-law, consult with one of the doctors on his staff, board meeting. He had the appointment with her in there. Just her first initial, just D, the time, the date. Every other, if he was meeting another doctor, talking to a patient, he used first and last name, the time, the date, and a little buzzword pertaining to the purpose. Every single time, except for this one. And there’s another ping.”
“What?”
“Memo book holds a year. We’re in November, so that’s eleven months. For eleven months, except when he’s out of town on business or pleasure, he’s got Monday and Thursday evenings and Wednesday afternoons clear. Not one booking. No dates, no appointments, nothing.”
“I saw that in his other book, but it didn’t go back the full year.” Yeah, that was a ping, all right. “Regular activity he doesn’t note down.”
“Regular like you never miss your daily portion of fiber.” Feeney wagged a soy chip. “Maybe you’re into something, and you’re organized, you manage to keep a night open regular. But two nights and an afternoon, every week for eleven months? That’s pretty damned focused.”
“I’m going to need you to spread it out, go back further. Do the same on Icove Two. See if they took any of the same nights off. And I’m interested in any mention of Brookhollow Academy and/or College. Any mention of Jonah D. Wils
on or Eva Hannson Samuels.”
Feeney took out his own memo book to key in the names. “Going to tell me why?”
She filled him in while they worked their way through lunch.
“How bad could the pie be?” he wondered, and punched a selection into the table menu, along with requests for two more coffees.
“Okay, Dr. Will,” he said. “Anybody tampered with locks or security, they had invisible hands. Nothing shows.”
“They had to pass the voice print. Can you pull out the voice?”
“Can’t.” He shook his head. “System doesn’t hold it. Security. Doesn’t leave room for somebody to pull it out, record it, clone it. I gotta say whoever came in was let in or was authorized, or is a freaking genius.”
“She’s smart, but not a genius. Smart enough not to make it look like a break-in. More confusing,” she said when Feeney raised his brows. “The wife’s solid in the Hamptons. According to her, to the domestics, nobody outside the household had the codes or was authorized. So that leaves us with a ghost. We gotta look at the wife. Look again, but she’s got several independent witnesses who put her miles away while her husband was getting his heart cut open. We’re looking for an accomplice, for a connect between her and Dolores. And so far, there’s zip.
“Except there’s this project.”
“And the school.”
Eve nodded. “Yeah. I think I’m going to have to take a trip to New Hampshire. What do people do in New Hampshire?”
“Beats the hell out of me.” Feeney frowned at the plate that slid out of the order slot. On it was a mushy triangle on the brown side of orange.
“Is that supposed to be pumpkin pie?” Eve asked. “It looks more like a slice of—”
“Don’t say it.” Gamely, Feeney grabbed his fork. “I’m eating it.”
Figuring Peabody would be at it hours yet, Eve went from lunch to Whitney’s office to update him.
“You think a school with a reputation like Brookhollow is a front for what, sex slavery?”
“I think it pertains.”
Whitney dragged his fingers through his short crop of hair. “If memory serves, it was on my wife’s list of potential colleges for our daughter.”
“Did you apply?”
“Most of that process is, thankfully, a blur. Mrs. Whitney would remember.”
“Sir, speaking of Mrs. Whitney . . .” Touchy, touchy. “I’ve sent Baxter in on an informal recon, under, as a potential client. Get him in, tour the facilities, check out the system. However, I wondered, should it become necessary, would Mrs. Whitney agree to talk with me about her, um, experience?”
He looked, for a moment, as pained as Eve felt. “She won’t care for it, but she’s a cop’s wife. If you need a statement, she’ll give you one.”
“Thank you, Commander. I doubt I will. I hope I won’t.”
“So, Lieutenant, do I. More than you know.”
From there, she went to Mira’s office, wheedled her way past the admin between patients. She didn’t sit, though Mira gestured to a chair.
“You okay?” Eve asked her.
“A bit dented, actually. Both of them gone. I knew Will, enjoyed him and his family on the occasions we got together.”
“How would you characterize his relationship with his wife?”
“Affectionate, a bit old-fashioned, happy.”
“Old-fashioned in what sense?”
“My impression is that he very much headed the house. That it ran around his needs and routine, but my impression is also that the dynamic suited them. She’s a very loving and devoted mother, and enjoyed being a doctor’s wife. She has talent, but seemed happy to dabble with her art rather than passionately pursue it.”
“And if I told you she had a part in the murders?”
Mira’s eyes blinked, then widened. “On the basis of my professional evaluation of her character, I would disagree.”
“You saw them socially—now and then. You saw them as they wanted to be seen. Would you agree?”
“Yes, but . . . Eve, my profile of the killer indicates a cool-headed, efficient, highly controlled individual. My impressions of Avril Icove—and these come over years—is of a soft-hearted, mild-tempered woman who was not only content with her life but enjoyed living it.”
“He raised her for his son.”
“What?”
“I know it. Icove molded her, educated her, trained her, he all but fucking created her as the perfect mate for his son. He wasn’t a man to settle for less than perfect.”
She sat now, leaned forward. “He sent her to school—small, exclusive, private, where he had control. He, and his friend and associate, Jonah Wilson. A geneticist.”
“Wait.” Mira held up both hands. “Wait. Are you talking about gene manipulation? She was five or more when Wilfred took over her guardianship.”
“Maybe, or maybe there was an interest in her long before. There’s a relationship between her and Wilson’s wife. They share a family name, yet there’s no data on the connection. There had to be a relationship between her mother and Icove, who became her guardian. Wilson and his wife founded the school—Icove sent Avril there.”
“There may very well be some connection, which might very well be why he chose the school. The simple fact that he knew or had an association with a geneticist—”
“There are bans on gene manipulations that veer outside of disease and defect control. Put there because people, and science, always want more. If you can cure or fix an embryo, why not make it to order? I’ll have a girl, thanks, blonde, blue eyes, and give her a pert little nose while you’re at it. People pay a hell of a lot for perfection.”
“These are huge leaps, Eve.”
“Maybe. But you’ve got a geneticist, a reconstruct surgeon, a tony private school. With those building blocks I don’t have to leap too far to wonder. I know what it’s like to be trained.” She sat back now, gripped the arms of her chair.
“You can’t imagine that a man like Wilfred would physically, sexually abuse a child.”
“Cruelty is only one training method. You can do it with kindness. Sometimes he brought me candy. Sometimes he gave me a present after he raped me. Like you give a dog a treat for doing a trick.”
“She was fond of him. Eve, I saw it. Avril thought of Wilfred as a father. She wasn’t locked away. If she’d wanted to leave, she could have done so.”
“You know better,” Eve replied. “The world’s full of people who are locked away without any bars. I’m asking you if he could have done something like this. Could the pull of it, the science, the thrill of perfecting have pushed him into manipulating a child, turning her into a wife for his son, a mother for his grandchildren.”
Mira closed her eyes a moment. “The science of it would, certainly, have intrigued him. Coupled with his perfectionist tendencies, it may have seduced him. If you’re right on any level, on any level at all, he would have seen what he was doing as being for the greater good.”
Yeah, Eve thought. Self-made gods always did.
12
WHEN EVE JUMPED ON THE GLIDE, BAXTER clomped on just behind her.
“That place is a racket.”
“Why? What have you got?”
“What I don’t have is an asymmetrical nose that unbalances the proportions of my jaw, chin, brow ratio. That’s crap.”
Frowning, she studied him. “I don’t see anything wrong with your nose.”
“There isn’t.”
“It’s right in the middle of your face where it belongs.” She got off the glide on their level, pointed to the soft drink machine, then passed him credits.
“Get me a tube of Pepsi.”
“You’re going to have to interact with the vending machines again sooner or later.”
“Why? Did they give you a hard sell?” she asked. “Pressure you, push you to sign a contract.”
“Depends on your point of view. I figured you wanted me to play some rich asshole, so I sprang for the ele
ctro-imaging analysis. Five bills, and I’m putting in for it.”
“Five? Five? Shit, Baxter.” She thought of her budget, grabbed her tube and the spare credits she’d given him. “Buy your own drink.”
“You wanted me in, getting a good look at the client areas and routine.” He pouted over the credits, then just plugged in his code and came up with a cream soda. “You’re lucky I didn’t go for phase two, and the full-body imaging program. That’s a grand. They put you up on-screen, magnified. My pores looked like moon craters, for crissake. And they’re drawing these lines over me, showing how my nose is off, and my ears should be closer to my head. My ears are fine. And talking about derma resurfacing. Nobody’s resurfacing my derma.”
Eve just leaned against the wall and let him go.
“And after they’re done destroying your self-esteem, they show you how you’d look after. I played like: Wow, I gotta have that, even though there was no difference. Hardly. Barely noticeable. It was a tribute to my prevarication skills. I sweet-talked the tech into showing me around, and the place is plush. Ought to be, for what they charge. The quote on the work they want to do on me? Twenty large. Two-oh, and look at me.” He threw out his arms. “I’m a damn good-looking son of a bitch.”
“Get over yourself, Baxter. Did you feel anything off?”
“Place was like a tomb. Penthouse of tombs if you get me. All the staff—everyone—wearing a black armband. I asked the tech what was up, and she got teary. Sincerely. She told me about the murders, at which time I pulled out my thespian skills. She thinks it’s a failed medical student turned serial killer targeting doctors out of professional jealousy.”
“I’ll be sure to put that one in the hat. Did you speak to one of the surgeons?”
“Being charming as well as a damned handsome son of a bitch, I got her to squeeze me into a Dr. Janis Petrie’s consult schedule. Or as I call her, Dr. Bombshell. She’s a walking ad for her trade, and touted to be one of their best. I got the murders into the conversation again, making like I was nervous to be there, or to consider treatment there, with what was going on.”
He took a slug of cream soda. “Damp eyes again. She assured me that the Icove Center was the finest reconstructive and sculpting facility in the country, and that even with the tragedies, the center was in good hands. My continued nerves got me a tour through security with two guards. It’s solid. Couldn’t talk my way into any of the staff or med areas. Absolutely no patients, clients or potentials, allowed.”