by J. D. Robb
It was going to be a kick in the face, Eve knew. It was always a kick in the face. “I’m sorry to tell you, but Sarifina is dead.”
“She’s…what? What did you say?”
“You should sit down, Zela.” Taking her arm, Roarke nudged her gently into a chair.
“You said…she’s dead? There was an accident? How…” Those pale gold eyes gleamed with wet and shock.
“She was murdered. I’m sorry. You were friends?”
“Oh, God. Oh, God. When? How? I don’t understand.”
“We’re looking into that, Ms. Wood.” Eve let her gaze drift briefly to Roarke as he walked to a wall panel, and opening it chose a bottle of brandy from the selection of liquors. “Can you tell me if anyone bothered her or seemed unusually interested in her?”
“No. No. I mean, a lot of people were interested in her. She’s the sort of person who interests people. I don’t understand.”
“Did she complain about anyone bothering her, or making her uncomfortable?”
“No.”
“Drink a bit of this.” Roarke pressed a glass of brandy into Zela’s hand.
“Has anyone come in, asking questions about her?”
“Just tonight, a few hours ago, a police detective. He said, he told me that Sari’s sister had reported her missing. And I thought…” Tears spilled now. “I honestly thought Sari’s sister was overreacting. I was a little worried, a little, because I thought she’d gone back to the ex, and he’d talked her into blowing off this job. That was the problem,” Zela continued as she rubbed a tear from her cheek. “He didn’t like her working here because it took up most of her nights.”
Now those damp eyes widened. “Did he hurt her? Oh, my God.”
“Did he strike you as the type who would?”
“No. No, no. A whiner, that’s what I thought. Passive-aggressive, and kind of a jerk. I’d never have believed he’d hurt her. Not like this.”
“We have no reason to believe he has, at this time. Can you give me his name, his address?”
“Yes. All right.”
“Would you still have your security discs from Monday?”
“Yes. Yes, we keep them for a week.”
“I’m going to need those. I’ll take the discs from last Saturday and Sunday as well. On Monday, did she leave alone?”
“I didn’t see her leave. What I mean is, I came in here at about quarter to eight, and she was just putting on her coat. I said something like, ‘So you can’t get enough of this place?’ and she laughed. Just wanted to finish up some paperwork. We talked for a few minutes, just shop talk mostly. She said she’d see me Wednesday, and I said…I said, ‘Have a good day off.’ Then she went out of the office, and I sat down to do a quick check on the late reservations. As I assumed, she’d gone straight out. She never mentioned being with anyone.”
“All right. I’d appreciate it if you could get me those discs, and that information on the man she’d been seeing.”
“Yes.” Zela got to her feet. “Is there something I can do? I don’t know what I should do. Her sister? Should I contact her sister?”
“We’ll be taking care of that.”
When there was a knock on the door in the middle of the night, most people knew, in the gut, it wasn’t going to be good news.
When Jaycee York opened her door, Eve could already see the dread. Even as she stared into Eve’s eyes, before a word was spoken, Eve saw grief rise up through that dread.
“Sari. Oh, no. Oh, no.”
“Ms. York, may we come in?”
“You found her. But…”
“We should go inside, Ms. York.” Peabody took Jaycee’s arm, eased her around. “We should go sit down.”
“It’s going to be bad. It’s going to be very, very bad. Will you please say it quickly? Would you please tell me fast?”
“Your sister’s dead, Ms. York.” With her hand still on Jaycee’s arm, Peabody felt the shudder. “We’re very sorry for your loss.”
“I knew, I think. I knew as soon as they called from the club. I knew something awful had happened to her.”
Peabody guided Jaycee to a chair in the living area. Lots of clutter, Eve noted, the kind that shouted a family lived there. There were photographs of young boys, of a laughing man, of the victim.
There were several colorful throws, a lot of big floor pillows that looked as if they’d had a great deal of use.
“Is your husband at home, Ms. York?” Eve asked. “Would you like us to get him for you?”
“He’s not…Clint took the boys to Arizona. To…to Sedona. A week. It’s a school camp.” Jaycee looked around the room as if expecting to see them. “They went to camp, and I didn’t. I didn’t want to camp, and I had work. And wouldn’t it be nice, I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to have a week at home by myself. I didn’t call them. I didn’t tell them because they’d worry. Why worry them when everything’s going to be fine? I kept telling myself everything was going to be fine.
“But it’s not. It’s not.”
She covered her face with her hands and began to weep.
Eve put her at a decade older than her sister. Her hair was short and blond, her devastated eyes a summer blue.
“I called the police.” She sobbed out the words. “When they said she hadn’t come into work, I called the police. I went to her apartment, but she wasn’t there, so I called. And they said to file a report. A missing person’s report.”
She closed her eyes. “What happened to Sari? What happened to my sister?”
There was an ottoman in front of the chair. Eve sat on it so they would be face-to-face. “I’m sorry. She was murdered.”
The splotchy color weeping painted in her cheeks died away to shock-white. “They said—I heard—they said there was a woman found tonight, in East River Park. Identification withheld, they said, until notification of next of kin. I’m next of kin.”
Jaycee pressed a hand to her lips. “I thought, ‘No, no, that’s not Sari. Sari doesn’t live on the East Side.’ But I kept waiting for someone to knock on the door. And you did.”
“You were close, you and your sister.”
“I…I can’t. I can’t.”
“I’m going to get you some water, Ms. York.” Peabody touched a hand to Jaycee’s shoulder. “Is it all right if I go into the kitchen and get you some water?”
Jaycee only nodded as she stared at Eve. “She was my babydoll. My mother died when I was little, and a few years later, my father remarried. They had Sari. Sarifina. She was so pretty, like a doll. I loved her.”
“Would she have told you if anyone was bothering her? If she was disturbed or uneasy about anything?”
“Yes. We talked all the time. She loved her job. She was so good at it, and it made her so happy. But it was a problem for Cal. The man she’d been seeing for the last few months. The fact that she worked at night and couldn’t spend that time with him. She was angry and hurt that he’d given her an ultimatum. That she had to quit her job or he’d break things off. So they broke up. She was better off.”
“Because?”
“He isn’t good enough for her. That’s not just sister talk.” She paused, took the water Peabody offered her. “Thank you. Thanks. He just wasn’t good enough—selfish streak, and he didn’t like the fact she was making more money that he was. She knew it, recognized it, and was ready to move on. Still, she was sad about it. Sari doesn’t like to lose. You don’t think…Do you think Cal hurt her?”
“Do you?”
“No.” Jaycee drank, breathed carefully, took another small sip. “I wouldn’t have thought it. It never crossed my mind. Why would he? He didn’t love her,” Jaycee said dully. “And he was much too interested in himself to get worked up enough to…I need to see her. I need to see Sari.”
“We’ll arrange for that. When did you see her last?”
“Last Sunday afternoon. Before Clint and the boys left. She came by to say good-bye. She was so full of life, of energy. We m
ade plans to shop on Saturday—tomorrow. My guys aren’t coming home until Sunday, they’re taking a play day before they come home. Sari and I are going shopping, and out for lunch. Oh, God. Oh, God. How did she die? How did my baby die?”
“We’re still investigating, Ms. York. As soon as I can give you details, I will.” She would not, Eve thought, tell this poor woman, not while there was no one to lean on, what had happened to her sister. “We can contact your husband. You want him and your sons home now?”
“Yes. Yes, I want them to come home. I want them home.”
“Meanwhile is there someone we can call, a neighbor, a friend, to stay with you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t…”
“Ms. York.” Peabody spoke gently. “You don’t have to be alone now. Let us call a friend to come be with you.”
“Lib. Could you call Lib? She’ll come.”
When they were outside, Roarke took a long breath. “I often wonder how you do what you do, standing over death, looking so unflinchingly into the minds of those who bring it. But I think of all you do, taking what’s been done to those left behind, feeling—as you’d have to—their pain—is more wrenching than all the rest of it.”
He brushed his hand over Eve’s. “You didn’t tell her what happened to her sister. You’re giving her time to get through the first of the pain.”
“I don’t know if I did her any favors. It’s going to break her to pieces. Might’ve been better to do it now when she’s already broken.”
“You did it right,” Peabody said. “She’s got her friend, but she’ll need her family. They’re going to need each other to get through that end of it.”
“Well. We’ll go see what Morris can tell us. Listen.” She turned to Roarke. “I’ll get in touch as soon as I can.”
“I’d like to go with you.”
“It’s already, what, after four in the morning. You don’t want to go to the morgue.”
“A moment,” he murmured to Peabody, and taking Eve’s hand drew her aside. “I’d like to see this through. I’d like you to let me.”
“I can tell you whatever we get from Morris, and you can grab some sleep. But,” she continued before he could speak, “that’s not the same thing. I want you to tell me you don’t feel responsible for this.”
He looked back toward the sister’s apartment, thought of the grief that lived there now. “She’s not dead because I hired her. I’m not quite that egotistical. All the same, I want to see it through.”
“Okay. You drive. We’re going to need to make a stop on the way. I need to talk to Feeney.”
He’d been her trainer, her teacher, her partner. He was, though neither of them spoke of it, the man who stood as her father in the ways that mattered.
He had plucked her out of the pack when she’d still been in uniform, and made her his. She’d never asked Feeney what he’d seen that persuaded him to take on a green uniform. She’d only known that by doing so, he’d made all the difference.
She’d have been a good cop without him. She’d have made detective through her own need, dedication, and aptitude. And maybe, eventually, she’d have held the rank she held now.
But she wouldn’t have been the same cop without him.
When he’d earned his bars, he’d requested EDD. E-work had always been his specialty, and his passion, so his request for the Electronic Detective Division was a natural.
She remembered she’d been just a little annoyed he’d moved out of Homicide. And for the first few months, she’d missed him, seeing him, working with him, talking to him every day, like she might’ve missed her own hand.
She could’ve left this for morning—at least a decent hour of the morning. But she knew, had their positions been reversed, she’d want this knock on the door.
She’d have been damn pissed if she didn’t get the knock.
When he answered his face was sleep rumpled, making it more lived-in than usual. His hair, a gingery scrubbing brush mixed with silver, was standing straight out. As if the air around him had been suddenly ionized.
And while he might’ve been wearing a tattered robe in the surprising color choice of purple, his eyes were all cop.
“Who died?”
“Need to talk to you about that,” Eve told him. “But more how than who.”
“Well.” He scratched his jaw, and Eve could hear the rasp of his fingers on the night’s growth of beard. “Better come on in. Wife’s asleep. Let’s go on in the kitchen. Need coffee.”
It was a homey place. Lived in, Eve thought, like Jaycee’s had been, if you added another decade or two. Feeney’s kids had grown up, and there were grandkids now. Eve was never quite sure of the number. But there was a good-sized eating area off the kitchen, with a long table to accommodate the lot of them at family dinners.
Feeney brought in coffee, scuffing along in slippers Eve would bet a month’s pay were a Christmas gift.
On the middle of the table was a strangely shaped vase in streaky colors of red and orange. Mrs. Feeney’s work, Eve determined. The wife had a penchant for hobbies and crafts, and was always making things. Often unidentifiable things.
“Caught a case,” Eve began. “Vic is female, brunette, late twenties, found naked in East River Park.”
“Yeah, I caught the report on screen.”
“Found nude. She’d been tortured. Burns, bruising, cuts, punctures. Her wrists were slashed.”
“Fuck.”
Yeah, he had it already, Eve noted. “Vic was wearing a silver band on the third finger of her left hand.”
“How long?” Feeney demanded. “How long did she last? What was the time he carved into her?”
“Eighty-five hours, twelve minutes, thirty-eight seconds.”
“Fuck,” he said again. “Motherfucker.” Feeney’s hand balled into a fist to rap, light and steady, on the table. “He’s not walking again, Dallas. He’s not walking away from us again. He’ll have number two already.”
“Yeah.” Eve nodded. “I figure he’s got number two.”
Feeney braced his elbows on the table, scooped his fingers through his hair. “We’ve got to go through everything we had nine years back, what data there is on him from the other times he went to work. Put a task force together now, at the get. We don’t wait for the second body to show up. You get anything from the scene?”
“So far, just the body, the ring, the sheet. I’ll get you a copy of the records. Right now, I’m heading to the morgue to see what Morris can tell us. You’re going to need to get dressed, unless you’re wearing purple terry cloth to work these days.”
He glanced down, shook his head. “If you saw the one the wife got me for Christmas, you’d understand why I’m still wearing this one.” He pushed to his feet. “Look, you go on, and I’ll meet you at the morgue. Going to need my own ride anyway.”
“All right.”
“Dallas.”
In that moment, Roarke realized neither he nor Peabody existed. They simply weren’t a part of the reality between the other two.
“We have to find what we missed,” Feeney said to Eve. “What everybody’s missed. There’s always something. One piece, one step, one thought. We can’t miss it this time.”
“We won’t.”
Roarke had been to the morgue before. He wondered if the white tiles through the tunnels of the place were meant to replace natural light. Or if they had merely been chosen as an acceptance of the stark.
There were echoes throughout as well—the repeat and repeat of bootsteps as they walked. More silence, he supposed, as the staff would be on graveyard shift. So to speak.
It was still shy of dawn, and he could see the long night was wearing on Peabody a bit, with a heaviness under her dark eyes. But not on Eve, not yet. The fatigue would rush up and choke her—it always did. But for now she was running on duty and purpose, and an underlying anger he wasn’t sure she recognized as vital fuel.
Eve paused outside the double doors of an autopsy room.
“Do you need to see her?” she asked him.
“I do. I want to be of some help in this, and if I’m to be of any help, I need to understand. I’ve seen death before.”
“Not like this.” She pushed through.
Morris was inside. He’d changed, she noted, into gray sweats and black and silver skids she imagined he kept on the premises for working out. He sat, and continued to sit for a moment, in a steel chair drinking something thick and brown out of a tall glass.
“Ah, company. Protein smoothy?”
“So absolutely not,” Eve said.
“Tastes marginally better than it looks. And does its job. Roarke, good to see you, even though.”
“And you.”
“Vic worked for Roarke,” Eve said.
“I’m very sorry.”
“I barely knew her. But…”
“Yes, but…” Morris set the smoothy aside before he pushed to his feet. “I regret that we’ll all come to know her quite well now.”
“She managed one of Roarke’s clubs. The Starlight down in Chelsea?”
“Is that yours?” Morris smiled a little. “I took a friend there a few weeks ago. It’s an entertaining trip back to an intriguing time.”
“Feeney’s on his way in.”
Morris shifted his gaze to Eve. “I see. It was the three of us over the first of them the last time. Do you remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Her name was Corrine, Corrine Dagby.”
“Age twenty-nine,” Eve confirmed. “Sold shoes in a boutique downtown. Liked to party. She lasted twenty-six hours, ten minutes, fifty-eight seconds.”
Morris nodded. “Do you remember what you said when we stood here then?”
“No, not exactly.”
“I do. You said: ‘He’ll want more than that.’ And you were right. We learned he wanted more than that. Should we wait for Feeney?”
“He’ll catch up.”
“All right.” Morris crossed the room.
Roarke looked over, then he stepped over.
He’d seen death, bloody, vicious, violent, useless, and terrible death. But he saw, once more, Eve was right.