The In Death Collection, Books 21-25

by J. D. Robb

  Can’t you hear us screaming?

  “And he knows it’s on him.”

  “How can you say that?” Roarke demanded. “He did everything that could be done.”

  “No, because there’s always something else. You missed it, or you didn’t look at it from just the right angle, or ask just the right question at exactly the right time. And maybe someone else would have. Doesn’t make them better or mean they worked harder at it. It just means they…” She lifted a hand, swiveled it like a door. “Means they turned something, opened something, and you didn’t. He was in command, so it’s on him.”

  “And now it’s on you?”

  “Now it’s on me. And that hurts him because, well, he brought me up. As far as being a cop goes, he brought me up. I didn’t want to bring him into this,” she said and sat again. “And I couldn’t leave him out.”

  “He’s tough and he’s hardheaded,” Roarke reminded her. “Just like the cop he brought up. He’ll handle it, Eve.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed, looked back at the wall screen. “How does he pick them? We know, this time, part of his requirement is that they work for you in some capacity. He’s so fucking smart he had to figure we’d click to that. So he wants us to know that much. He gives us the information he wants us to have. The type he prefers, how long he worked on them. He doesn’t mind if we know what products he used to clean them up. But this time, he’s given us a little more. Here’s a new piece, what do you make of that?”

  She looked back at Roarke. “Does he know you? Personally, professionally? Has he done business with you? Did you buy him out, and maybe he didn’t want to be bought out? Did you underbid him on some contract? Did you fire him, or overlook him for promotion? Nothing’s random with him, so his choice here is deliberate.”

  He’d inched all those same questions through his mind, turning them over from every angle. “If he works for me, I can find out. The travel,” Roarke said. “Whether it was business-related or personal time, I can search files for employees who were sent to the locations of the other murders in that time period, or who took personal leave.”

  “How many employees would you figure you have?”

  His lips curved again. “I honestly couldn’t say.”

  “Exactly. But using Mira’s profile—and we’ll have an updated one tomorrow—we can cut that back considerably.”

  Following the usual arrangement when he dealt with the meal, Eve rose to clear the dishes. “I’ll run a probability, but I think there’s a low percentage he works for you. He doesn’t strike me as a disgruntled employee.”

  “Agreed. I can check the same information on major competitors and subcontractors. Using my private equipment.”

  She said nothing at first, just carted the dishes into the kitchen, loaded them into the machine. His private office, with its unregistered equipment, would allow him to evade CompuGuard and the privacy laws.

  Whatever he found, she couldn’t use it in court, couldn’t reveal where she’d gotten the data. Illegal means, she thought, crossing the line. Such maneuvers gave a defense attorney that flea-ass opening.

  Can’t you hear us screaming?

  She walked back into the office. “Run it.”

  “All right. It’ll take considerable time.”

  “Then you’d better get started.”

  Alone, she began to set up her murder board while her computer read off the progress reports from her team.

  Board’s too small, she thought. Too small to hold all the faces, all the data. All the death.

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Computer pause,” she ordered, then turned to Summerset. “What? I’m working.”

  “As I can see. Roarke asked I bring you this data.” He held out a disc. “The employee search he asked I run.”

  “Good.” She took it, walked over to put it on her desk. Glanced back. “You still here? Go away.”

  Ignoring her, he stood in his funereal black suit, his back stiff as a poker. “I remember this. I remember the media reports on these women. But there was nothing about these numbers carved into them.”

  “Civilians don’t need to know everything.”

  “He takes great care in how he forms them, each number, each letter so precise. I’ve seen this before.”

  Her eyes sharpened. “What do you mean?”

  “Not this, not exactly this, but something similar. During the Urban Wars.”

  “The torture methods?”

  “No, no. Though, of course, there was plenty of that. Torture’s a classic means of eliciting information or dealing out punishment. Though it’s rarely so…tidy as this.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  He looked over at her. “You’re too young to have experienced the Urbans, or to remember the dregs of them that settled in some parts of Europe after they ended here. In any case, there were elements there, too, that civilians—so to speak—didn’t need to know.”

  He had her full attention now. “Such as?”

  “When I served as a medic, the injured and the dead would be brought in. Sometimes in piles, in pieces. We’d hold the dead, or those who succumbed to their injuries—for family members if such existed, and if the body could be identified. Or for burial or cremation. Those who didn’t have identification, or were beyond being identified, would be listed by number until disposal. We kept logs, listing them by any description possible, any personal effects, the location where they’d been killed, and so on. And we would write the number on them, and the date of their death, or as close as we could come to it.”

  “Was that SOP?”

  “It was what we did when I worked in London. There were other methods in other areas, and in some of the worst areas only mass burials and cremations without any record.”

  She walked back over to the board, studied the carving. It wasn’t the same, she thought. But it was an angle.

  “He knows their names,” she said. “The name’s not an issue. But the data’s important. It has to be recorded. The data’s what identifies them. The time is what names them for him. I need another board.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I need another board. I don’t have enough room with one. We got anything around here that’ll work?”

  “I imagine I can find what you need.”

  “Good. Go do that.”

  When he left, she went to her desk, added the Urban Wars data to her notes, then continued to jot down her speculations.

  Soldier, medic, doctor. Maybe someone who lost a family member or lover…No, no, she didn’t like that one. Why would he torture and desecrate the symbol, you could say, of anyone who’d mattered to him? Then again, if a loved one had been tortured, killed, identified in that manner, this just might be payback or some twisted re-creation.

  Maybe he’d been tortured, survived it. Tortured by a female with brown hair, within the age span.

  Or maybe he’d been the torturer.

  She rose, paced. Then why wait decades to re-create? Did some event trigger it? Or had he been experimenting all along, until he found the method that suited him?

  And maybe he was just a fucking lunatic.

  But the Urbans were an angle, yes they were. Mira’s profile had indicated he was mature, even nine years back. Male, likely Caucasian, she remembered, between the ages of thirty-five and sixty.

  So go high-end, and yeah, he could’ve seen some of the wars as a young man.

  She sat again and, adding in new speculations, ran probabilities.

  While they ran, she plugged in the disc Summerset had brought in. “Computer, display results, wall screen two.”

  Acknowledged. Working…

  As they began to scroll, her jaw simply dropped. “Well, Jesus. Jesus.” There were hundreds of names. Maybe hundreds of hundreds.

  She couldn’t complain that Summerset wasn’t efficient. The names were grouped according to where they worked, where they lived. Apparently, there were just one hell of a lot of women
with brown hair between twenty-eight and thirty-three who worked in some capacity for Roarke Enterprises.

  “Talk about a big, honking octopus.”

  She was going to need a whole bunch of coffee.

  Roarke’s private office was streamlined and spacious, with a dazzling view of the city through privacy screens. The wide U-shaped console commanded equipment as sophisticated and extensive as any the government could claim.

  He should know, he held several government contracts.

  And he knew, however artful the equipment, successful hacking depended on the operator’s skill. And patience.

  He ran his own employee files first. However numerous they were, it was still a simple matter. As was the search he implemented to locate any male employees who worked or had worked for him who had traveled to the other murder locations or taken personal leave during that time frame.

  As it ran he generated a list of major competitors. He would, subsequently, search through those companies he didn’t consider genuine competition. But he’d start at the top.

  Any company, organization, or individual who was, in actuality, competitive would have—as he did—layers and layers of security on their internal files. And each would need to be peeled back with considerable care.

  He sat at the console where the controls shimmered or flashed like jewels. His sleeves were pushed up, his hair tied back.

  He started with companies with offices or interests in one or more of the locations.

  And began to peel.

  As he worked, he talked to himself, to the machines, to the layers that tried to foil him. As time passed, his curses became more Irish, his accent more pronounced, and layers melted away.

  He took a break for coffee and to scan the results of his initial search.

  He had no employee who fit all the requirements. But, he noted, there were some who’d been in at least two of the locations or on leave during the time of the murders.

  They’d be worth a closer look.

  He shifted back and forth between tasks, to keep himself sharp. He wormed his way through security blocks, picked his way through data. Ordered search, cross match, analysis so his equipment hummed in a dozen voices.

  At some point he got up for yet another pot of coffee, and glanced at the time.

  Four-sixteen a.m.

  Cursing, he sat back, scrubbed his hands over his face. Hardly a wonder he was losing his edge. And Eve, he knew, would be asleep at her desk. If she’d decided to call it a night, she would have come by to check his progress first.

  Instead, she’d work herself into the ground, and as he was doing exactly the same, he had no room to fight with her about it.

  Nearly half-four, he thought. Gia Rossi might already be dead, or praying to all the gods death would come soon.

  Roarke closed his eyes a moment, and though he knew the guilt was useless, let it run through him. He was too tired for the anger.

  “Copy document C to disc, save all data. Ah, continue current run, copy and save when complete. Operator will be off-line.”

  Acknowledged.

  Before he left, he put in a call to Dublin.

  “Good morning to you, Brian.”

  His old mate’s wide face creased with a surprised smile. “Well now, if it isn’t the man himself. Which side of the pond would you be on?”

  “The Yank side. It’s a bit early on your side of it for me to be calling a publican. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “You didn’t, no. I’m just having my tea. How is our Lieutenant Darling?”

  “She’s well, thanks. Would you be alone there?”

  “I would be, more’s the pity. I’ve no enchanting woman to warm the sheets with me at the moment, as you do.”

  “I’m sorry for that. Brian, I’m looking for a torturer.”

  “Is that so?” Only the mildest surprise showed in Brian’s eyes. “And are you too delicate these days to be after taking care of such matters yourself?”

  “I was always too delicate for this, and so were you. He’s done over twenty women in the last decade, late twenties, early thirties, all of them. And all of them with brown hair, light skin. The last was found only yesterday. She worked for me.”

  “Ah,” Brian said. “Well.”

  “Another is missing—that’s part of his method—and she was mine as well.”

  Brian sucked air through his nose. “Were you diddling with them, on the side, like?”

  “No. He’d be older than we are, that’s how they’re profiling him. At least a decade older if not more. He’s very skilled. He travels. He must have enough of the ready to afford a place, a private place, to do this work. If he’s a professional, he takes this busman’s holiday every year or two. There’s no sex involved. No rape. He takes, binds, tortures, kills, cleanses. And he times how long each lasts under it.”

  “I haven’t heard of anyone like this. Nasty business.” Brian pulled on his ear. “I can make some inquiries, tap a few shoulders.”

  “I’d be grateful if you would.”

  “I’ll be in touch if and when,” Brian told him. “Meanwhile, give Lieutenant Darling a sweet kiss from me, and tell her I’m only waiting for her to throw your worthless ass aside and come into my waiting embrace.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that.”

  After he’d ended the transmission, Roarke took the discs he’d generated and, with the machines still humming, left the office.

  He found Eve where he’d expected to. Her head was on her desk, pillowed on her forearm. He noted the murder boards, the pair of them, the discs, the handwritten notes, the comp-generated ones.

  The half cup of coffee, not quite cold—and the cat curled in her sleep chair.

  He moved to Eve, lifted her out of the chair. She muttered some complaint, stirred, and shifted.

  “What?”

  “Bed,” he said as he carried her toward the elevator.

  “Time is it? Jeez.” She rubbed at her eyes. “I must’ve conked.”

  “Not for long, your coffee was still warm. We need to shut down, both of us.”

  “Briefing at eight.” Her voice slurred with fatigue. “Need to be up by six. Need to organize first. I didn’t—”

  “Fine, fine.” He stepped out of the elevator into the bedroom. “Go back to sleep, six will come soon enough.”

  “You get anything?”

  “Still running.” He set her on the bed, seeing no reason she couldn’t sleep in her sweats. Apparently neither did she as she crawled under the duvet as she was.

  “Is there any data I can use? Anything I can work in?”

  “We’ll see in the morning.” He stripped off his shirt, his pants, slid into bed with her.

  “If there’s any—”

  “Quiet.” He drew her against him, brushed her lips with his. “Sleep.”

  He heard her sigh once—it might’ve been annoyance. But by the time the sigh was done, she was under.

  7

  IT WAS SO UNUSUAL FOR HIM NOT TO BE UP before her that Eve just stared into the Celtic blue eyes when he woke her by stroking her hair.

  “You think of something?”

  “Apparently, I inevitably think of something when I’m in bed with my wife.”

  “Being a man—and you—you probably think of sex when you’re crossing the street.”

  “And aren’t you lucky that’s true?” He kissed the tip of her nose. “But thinking’s as far as we’ll get this morning. You wanted to be up at six.”

  “Oh, yeah. Shit. Okay.” She rolled onto her back and willed her body clock to accept morning. “Can’t you invent something that pours coffee into the system just by the power of mind?”

  “I’ll get right on that.”

  She climbed out of bed, stumbled her way over to the AutoChef. “I’m going to go down, swim a few laps. I think that’ll wake me up and work out the kinks.”

  “Good idea. I’ll do the same. Give me some of that.”

  She thought, cranki
ly, he could easily get his own damn coffee, but she passed the mug to him, along with a scowl. “No water polo.”

  “If that’s a euphemism for pool sex, you’re safe. All I want’s a swim.” He passed her back the coffee.

  They rode down together, she bleary-eyed, him thoughtful.

  The pool house was lush with plants, sparkling with blue water. Tropical blooms scented the warm, moist air. She would have liked to indulge herself with a strong twenty-minute swim, followed by more coffee and a soak in the bubbling curve of the hot tub.

  And hell, since he was there, maybe just one quick match of water polo.

  But it wasn’t the time for indulgence. She dove in, surfaced, then pushed off in a full-out freestyle. The dullness in her brain and body began to fade with the effort, the cool water, the simple repetition.

  After ten minutes, she felt loose again, reasonably alert. She might have thought wistfully about lounging for just a couple of minutes in the hot, jetting water of the hot tub, but acknowledged the comfort of it might put her back to sleep.

  Instead, she pulled on a robe. “Do you want to go downtown with me, or work from here?”

  He considered as he scooped back his dripping hair. “I think I’ll stick with the unregistered, at least for the time being. If I manage to finish or find anything, I’ll contact you or just come down on my own.”

  “Works.” She crossed to the elevator with him. “Any progress?”

  “Considerable, but as of four a.m., nothing really useful.”

  “Is that when we finished up?”

  “A bit later, actually. And darling Eve, you haven’t had enough rest.” He touched her cheek. “You get so pale.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “And did you find anything useful?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  She told him about Summerset’s observation while they readied for the day.

  “So you think it’s possible he was in one of the medical centers, in some capacity, during the Urbans.”