The In Death Collection, Books 21-25

by J. D. Robb

  “Lovely young woman,” Roarke stated. “Extremely lovely.”

  “And she poofs. Early graduation. Computer, search for any missing persons report on Flavia, Deena. International search.”

  Working . . .

  “Side task. Are her parents still living? If so, where, and under what employment?”

  Acknowledged. Working . . .

  “Her address was listed at the college, not a residence. No criminal, no marriage, no cohab, and she goes into the wind before her twentieth birthday.”

  “And surfaces,” Roarke put in, “a dozen years later to kill the Icoves.”

  “Couple years younger than Avril, but they’d have been at school at the same time. Exclusive boarding school, they’d have brushed up against each other.”

  “A long way from school chums to partners in crime.”

  “Yeah, but it connects them. She saw the image from the center, and didn’t say, ‘Hey, that’s Deena from Brookhollow. Haven’t seen her in years.’ And yeah,” she said, holding up a hand, “a defense attorney’s going to say Avril’s not required to remember everyone she went to school with. That it’s been a dozen years since she got out of college, which coincidentally coincides with Deena’s vanishing act. But it puts her in the same place, at the same time, with the suspect.”

  Secondary task complete. Flavia, Dimitri, and Trevani, Anna, reside in Rome, Italy. Both are employed on staff at The Children’s Institute in that city . . .

  “Cross-check the Children’s Institute for association with Icove, Wilfred B., Sr. and/or Wilfred B., Jr., also association with Wilson, Jonah Delecourt.”

  Added task. Working . . .

  “I can save you the time,” Roarke told her. “I’ve contributed to that institution through my Italian companies. I know that, at least at one time, Icove Sr. served on the advisory board.”

  “Better and better. So he connects with the Flavias, who connect with Deena, aka Dolores, who connects with Avril, who connects with Brookhollow. I’ve got me a fucking diagram.”

  Primary task complete. No missing person’s report was filed to any known authority on Flavia, Deena . . .

  “They don’t file because either they know where she is or because they don’t want the cops nosing around. If it’s the second, they hired private. Either way she’s under data radar for a decade. And—”

  Additional task complete. Icove, Wilfred B., Sr., served on advisory board and as guest surgeon, guest lecturer, for the Children’s Institute from its creation in 2025 to his death. Wilson, Jonah Delecourt, served on advisory board from 2025 to 2048.

  “Okay, now we’ve got—”

  Question . . .

  “What,” Eve snapped.

  Do you wish to end task involving images from Brookhollow at this time?

  “What other images are there?”

  Secondary match, current enrollment Brookhollow Academy correlating to Flavia, Deena.

  “You said singular match. Display, damn it.”

  Affirmative . . .

  The image that came on was rounder, softer than Deena Flavia. And it was a child.

  Eve’s heart fluttered into her throat. “Identify current image.”

  Rodriguez, Diana, DOB March 17, 2047, Argentina. Parents, Hector, laboratory technician, and Cruz, Magdalene, physical therapist.

  “Places of employment.”

  Working. . . Rodriguez, Hector, employed Genedyne Research. Cruz, Magdalene, employed St. Catherine’s Reconstructive and Rehabilitation Center.

  “Association of both places of employment to Icove, Wilfred B., Sr.; Icove, Wilfred B., Jr.; Wilson, Jonah; and Samuels, Eva or Evelyn.”

  “She’s not their child,” Roarke put in. “Not biologically. She’s the image of Deena Flavia.”

  “Breed them and sell them. Breed and sell. Sons of bitches. Manipulate the genes—make them perfect, made to order. Train, educate, program them. Then sell them.”

  He reached out, instinctively rubbing her shoulders. “Would she have wanted the child, do you think? Or just revenge.”

  “I don’t know. Depends on what drives her harder. Maybe she figures on getting both.”

  The computer came back, listing all four names with connections to the locations in Argentina.

  “Computer, start search and match images. Any graduate of Brookhollow Academy or College with current students. List all data on all results.”

  Working . . .

  “Let it task,” Roarke said softly. “Let’s get some sleep. You’ll need a clear head tomorrow. I assume you’re going to New Hampshire.”

  “Damn right I am.”

  She was up at dawn, and still Roarke was up and dressed ahead of her. With a grunted greeting she trudged into the shower, ordered jets on full at one-oh-one degrees, and boiled herself awake. She hit the drying tube, gulped down the first cup of coffee, and felt nearly human.

  “Eat something,” Roarke ordered, and switched from the financial reports on-screen to the morning media cast.

  “Something,” she repeated from inside her closet.

  When she stepped out, he glanced at the clothes she’d grabbed and said, “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “Not that outfit.”

  If the term aggrieved had an image beside its definition, it would have been her face. “Oh, come on.”

  “You plan to pay an official visit to an exclusive boarding school. You want to look authoritative.”

  She tapped the weapon holster she’d hung over the back of the chair. “Here’s my authority, Ace.”

  “A suit.”

  “A what?”

  He sighed, rose. “You do know the concept, and you happen to own several. You want power, prestige, simplicity. You want to look important.”

  “I want to cover my naked ass.”

  “Which is a shame, I grant you, but you may as well cover it well. This. Clean lines, and the dull copper color adds punch. Wear it with this.” He added a scooped-neck top in a kind of muddy blue. And go crazy, Eve. Wear a bit of jewelry.”

  “It’s not a fricking party.” But she pulled on the pants. “You know what you need? You need a droid, a dress-up droid. Maybe I’ll buy you one for Christmas.”

  “Why settle when I already have the real thing?” He opened the jewelry vault in her closet and selected etched gold hoops for her ears and a sapphire cabochon pendant.

  To save time and aggravation, she dressed as ordered. But she balked when Roarke made a little circle in the air with his finger.

  “Pushing your luck, pal.”

  “It was worth a try. You still look like a cop, Lieutenant. Just a very well tailored one.”

  “Yeah, the bad guys will be awed by my fashion sense.”

  “You’d be surprised,” he replied.

  “I’ve got work.”

  “You can call up the search results right here and eat some breakfast. If a machine can multitask, so can you.”

  It didn’t feel quite right, but then neither did the suit. But since he was already giving the order, she programmed a bagel from the AutoChef.

  “You can do better than that.”

  “I’m stoked.” Her office wasn’t the only place she could pace, she reminded herself, and began to do so while biting into the bagel. “Something’s going to come.”

  “Data on-screen then.”

  Acknowledged. Match one of fifty-six . . .

  “Fifty-six?” Eve stopped pacing. “That can’t be right. Even figuring the amount of time, number of students, you wouldn’t have so many visual matches. You can’t . . . wait.”

  She stared at match one.

  Delaney, Brianne, DOB February 16, 2024, Boston, Massachusetts. Parents Brian and Myra Delaney née Copley. No siblings. Married Alistar, George, June 18, 2046. Offspring: Peter, September 12, 2048; Laura, March 14, 2050. Resides Athens, Greece.

  Matched with O’Brian, Bridget, DOB August 9, 2039, Ennis, Ireland. Parents Seamus and Margaret O’Brian née Ryan. Both
deceased. No siblings. Legal guardianship to Samuels, Eva, and upon her death Samuels, Evelyn. Currently enrolled and residing Brookhollow College, New Hampshire.

  “Computer, pause. She had a kid at twelve?” Eve asked.

  “It happens,” Roarke said, “but—”

  “Yeah, but. Computer images only, split screen, magnify fifty percent.”

  Working . . .

  As they came on, Eve stepped closer. “Same coloring, that’s fine. The red hair, the white skin, freckles, green eyes. I’d say the odds are reasonable for those inherited traits. Same nose, same mouth, same shape of the eyes, the face. I bet you could count the fricking freckles and get the same number for each. Kid’s like a miniature of the woman. Like a . . .”

  “Clone,” Roarke finished quietly. “Christ Jesus.”

  Eve took a breath, then another. “Computer, run the next match.”

  It took an hour, and the sickness came into the center of her belly and lay there like a tumor.

  “They’ve been cloning girls. Not just messing with DNA to boost intellect or appearance. Not just designing babies or tuning them up physically, intellectually, to enhance. But creating them. Flipping off international law and creating them. Selling them. Some into marriage,” Eve continued, staring at the screen. “Some into the marketplace. Some created to continue to work. Doctors, teachers, lab techs. I thought they were designing babies, training LCs. But it’s worse, worse than both.”

  “There are rumbles now and then about underground reproductive cloning research, even the occasional claim of success. But the laws are so strict, so onerous and universal, no one’s come out and proved it.”

  “How does it work? Do you know?”

  “Not precisely. Not remotely, actually. We do some research cloning—well within the parameters of the law. For tissue, organs. A cell implanted in a simulated female egg, triggered electrically. If it’s privatized, as ours would be, the cells are donated by the clients, who pay handsomely for the generated replacement tissues, which would have no risk of being rejected after transplant. I’d have to gather that in reproductive cloning, you’d have cells, and actual eggs—once merged—would be implanted in a womb.”

  “Whose?”

  “Well, that’s a question.”

  “I’ve got to get this to the commander, get the go-ahead and get to the school. You can fill Louise in on this.”

  “I can.”

  “He’d have made billions on this,” Eve added.

  “Grossed.”

  “I’ll say it’s gross.”

  “No, no.” It was a relief to laugh. “Gross income. It would cost—has to cost enormously to run the labs, develop the technology, the school, the network. The net income would be substantial, I’d think, but Eve, the cost, the risk? I think you’re looking at a labor of love.”

  “You think?” She shook her head. “We’ve got nearly sixty on record now attending the Academy. There must be hundreds more, already graduated. What happened to the ones that didn’t come out exactly right? How much do you think he loved the ones that weren’t perfect?”

  “That’s a hideous thought.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got a million of them.”

  She took time to put it together into a report, to contact Whitney and request an early briefing. She tagged Peabody on the way to Central and arranged to pick up her partner.

  Peabody hopped into the car, tossed her hair. It was longer by a good four inches and did a kind of flip at the tips.

  “McNab truly spiked on my hair. I’ve got to remember to shake things up more often.”

  Eve gave her a cautious sidelong glance. “It makes you look girly.”

  “I know!” Obviously pleased with the comment, Peabody snuggled back in her seat. “And it was great being a girl after I got home last night. He went ape shit over the papaya boob cream.”

  “Stop now, save us both. We’ve got a situation.”

  “Figured you didn’t offer to pick me up to save me a fight with the subway.”

  “I’m going to brief you on the way, then the commander. We’ll have a full briefing—EDD included—at ten hundred.”

  Peabody said nothing as Eve ran through the data she’d gathered overnight. Her silence carried through into the garage at Central.

  “No questions, no observations?”

  “I’m just . . . absorbing, I guess. It’s so contrary to my makeup. My DNA, I guess you could say. The way I was raised, taught. Creating life is the job of a higher power. It’s our job, our duty and our joy, to nurture life, protect and respect it. I know that sounds Free-Agey, but—”

  “It’s not so far off from what I think. But personal sensibilities aside, human reproductive cloning is illegal under the laws of New York, the laws of the country, and the laws governing science and commerce on and off planet. Evidence indicates the Icoves broke those laws. And their murders, which is our domain, were a direct result of that.”

  “Are we going to have to turn this over to the—Who handles this kind of thing? The FBI? Global? Interplanetary?”

  Eve’s face was set as she slammed out of the vehicle. “Not if I can help it. I want you to hit research mode. Get everything you can on human cloning. Technical areas, legal areas, equipment, techniques, debates, claims, histories, myths. We want to know what we’re talking about when we get to Brookhollow.”

  “Dallas, with what you found out, we’re going to find them up there. Some of them are just kids. They’re just kids.”

  “We’ll deal with it when we come to it.”

  Whitney wasn’t as reticent as Peabody, and peppered Eve with questions throughout her report.

  “This is a Nobel Prize winner, Lieutenant, whose memorial service, scheduled for fourteen hundred this afternoon, will be attended by heads of state, worldwide. His son, whose reputation and acclaim were rising to match his father’s, will be similarly honored next week. New York will hold both these events, and the security, the media—the fucking traffic details are already a nightmare. If a whiff of this leaks, it could go beyond nightmare into the realm of international clusterfuck.”

  “It won’t leak.”

  “You better be damn sure of that, and damn sure of your facts.”

  “Fifty-six matches, sir, through Brookhollow Academy alone. I believe many if not all of these correspond to the coded files Icove Sr. kept in his apartment—his currents, so to speak. He worked closely with a geneticist, and was, at one time, a vocal proponent of genetic manipulation.”

  “Genetic manipulation is a thorny area. Human cloning is a dark, dank forest. The ramifications—”

  “Commander, the ramifications already involve two deaths.”

  “The ramifications will echo beyond your two homicides. Political, moral, religious, medical. If your allegations are fact, there are existing clones, many of them minor. For some, they’ll become the monster, for others the victims.” He rubbed his eyes. “We’ll need some expert legal opinions on this. Every agency from Global to Homeland is going to jump on this.”

  “If you notify them of the recent findings, they’ll take it from us. They’ll shut down the investigation.”

  “They will. What’s your objection?”

  “They’re my homicides, Commander.”

  He was silent a moment, watching her face. “What’s your objection, Lieutenant?”

  “Beyond that, and that is my primary objection, sir. It’s . . . It needs to be stopped. Government—any government puts their finger in this pie, they’re going to want to pull out a plum. More hidden research, more experimentation. They’ll sweep all this under the rug, and put everything we’ve found under the microscope. They’ll Code Blue it, and block the media, block the information. The Icoves will be memorialized with all honors, and the work they did in the dark will never come to light. The . . . the subjects,” she said for lack of a better term, “created will be rounded up and examined, debriefed, confined, and questioned. They were manufactured, sir, but they’re
blood and bone, like the rest of us. They won’t be treated like the rest of us. Maybe there’s no stopping that, no way to prevent that from happening, but I want to follow this through. Until I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

  He laid his palms on the desk. “I’ll need to bring Tibble into this.”

  Eve nodded. “Yes, sir.” They could hardly circumvent channels without the knowledge of the chief of police. “I think APA Reo could be useful, in the legal areas. She’s smart, and ambitious enough to keep the lid on until it’s time to take it off. I’ve used both Dr. Mira and Dr. Dimatto as medical experts thus far in the investigation. Their input could also be useful. I’ll need a warrant for records at the school and would like to take Feeney or his pick with me to go through data on-site.”

  He nodded. “Consider this investigation as Code Blue status. Need-to-know only, full media block. Put your team together.” He glanced at his wrist unit. “Brief in twenty.”

  14

  SHE’D ALTERED HER APPEARANCE. SHE WAS GOOD at it. Over the past twelve years she’d been many people. And no one. Her credentials were impeccable—meticulously generated, flawlessly forged. They had to be.

  Brookhollow Academy was red brick and ivy—no contemporary glass domes or steel towers, but dignity and blue-blooded tradition. It was expansive grounds, sturdy trees, lovely gardens, thriving orchards. There were tennis courts and an equestrian center, two of the sports deemed suitable for Brookhollow students. One of her classmates had won Olympic gold in dressage at the tender age of sixteen. Three years before she’d been sent away to marry a young British aristocrat as keen on horses as she.

  They were created for a purpose, and they served that purpose. Still she’d been happy to go, Deena remembered. Most of them were.