The In Death Collection, Books 21-25

by J. D. Robb

  “It’s a thought. I did some research,” she added as she strapped on her weapon harness. “Not a whole lot of detail about it, that I’ve found so far anyway. But there were other facilities that used that same basic method. A handful here in New York.”

  “Where he started this.”

  “I’m thinking,” she agreed with a nod. “Something here in particular that matters. He starts here, he comes back here. There’s a wide, wide world out there and he’s used some of it. But now he repeats location.”

  “Not just location. You and Feeney. Morris, Whitney, Mira. There are others as well.”

  “Yeah, and I’m mulling on that. More usually if a repeat killer has a thing about cops, he likes to thumb his nose at us. Send us messages, leave cryptic clues so he can feel superior. We’re not getting that. But I’m mulling it.”

  She took one last, life-affirming glug of coffee. “I’ve got to get started, or I won’t have myself lined up for the briefing.”

  “Oh, I’m to tell you Brian’s waiting for you with open arms when you’re done with me.”

  “Huh? Brian? Irish Brian?”

  “That would be the one. I contacted him, asked him to look for torturers. He has connections,” Roarke continued. “And knows how to ferret out information.”

  “Huh.” It struck her she’d married a man with a lot of unusual associates. Came in handy now and then. “Okay. I’ll see you later.”

  He moved to her, ran a hand over her hair again. “Take care of my cop.”

  “That’s the plan.” She met his lips with hers, stepped back. “I’ll be in touch.”

  In briefing the team, Eve had everyone give their own orals on progress or lack of same. She listened to theories, arguments for or against, ideas for approaching different angles, or for pursuing old ones from a new perspective.

  “If the Urbans are an angle,” Baxter put in, “and we look at it like this fucker was a medical, or he got his torture training back then, we could be looking for a guy pushing eighty, or better. That gives him a half-century or more on his vics. How’s a guy starting to creak pull this off?”

  “Horny Dog’s missing the fact that a lot of guys past middle age keep up.” Jenkinson pointed a finger at Baxter. “Eighty’s the new sixty.”

  “Sick Bastard has a point,” Baxter acknowledged. “And as a borderline creaker himself, he’s got some insight on it. But I’m saying it takes some muscle and agility to bag a thirty-year-old woman—especially since he goes for the physically tuned ones—off the street.”

  “He could’ve been a kid during the Urbans.” As if in apology for speaking out, Trueheart cleared his throat. “Not that eighty’s old, but—”

  “You shave yet, Baby Face?” Jenkinson asked.

  “While it’s sad and true that Officer Baby Face doesn’t have as much hair on his chin as Sick Bastard does in his ears, there were a lot of kids kicked around, orphaned, beat to shit during the Urbans. Or so I hear,” Baxter added with a wide grin for Jenkinson. “Before my time.”

  She accepted the bullshit and insults cops tossed around with other cops. She let it go for another few minutes. And when she deemed all current data had been relayed, all ideas explored and the stress relieved, she handed out the day’s assignments and dismissed.

  “Peabody, locate York’s ex. We need to have a word. I’m taking Mira into my office for a few minutes. Doctor?”

  “So many avenues,” Mira commented as they started out.

  “One of them will lead us to him.” Eventually, Eve thought.

  “His consistency is both his advantage and disadvantage. It’ll be a step on the avenue that leads you to him. His inflexibility is going to undermine him at some point.”

  “Inflexibility.”

  “His refusal to deviate,” Mira confirmed. “Or his inability to deviate from a set pattern allows you to know a great deal about him. So you can anticipate.”

  “I anticipated he’d have taken number two. That isn’t helping Gia Rossi.”

  Mira shook her head. “That’s not relevant. You couldn’t have helped Rossi as she was already taken before you knew, or could know, he was back in business.”

  “That’s what it is?” Eve led the way to her office, gestured toward the visitor’s chair while she sat on the corner of her desk. “Business.”

  “His pattern is businesslike, a kind of perfected routine. Or ritual, as I said before. He’s very proud of his work, which is why he shares it. Displays it, but only when it’s completed.”

  “When he’s finished with them, he wants to show them off, wants to claim them. That’s why he arranges them on a white sheet. That’s the ring he puts on them. I get that. During the Urbans—if we head down that avenue—bodies were laid out, piled up, stacked up, depending on the facilities. And covered. Sheet, drop cloth, plastic, whatever was available. Usually, their clothes, shoes, personal effects were taken. Mostly these were recycled to other people. It’s ‘waste not and want not’ in wartime. So he takes their clothes, their personal effects, but he reverses, leaving them uncovered.”

  “Pride. I believe, to him, they’re beautiful. In death, they’re beautiful to him.” Mira shifted, crossed her legs. She’d pinned her hair up into a soft roll at the nape of her neck, and wore a pale, pale yellow suit that seemed to whisper a promise of spring. “His choice of victim type indicates, as I said in the briefing, some prior connection with a woman of this basic age and coloring. She symbolizes something to him. Mother, lover, sister, unattained love.”

  “Unattained.”

  “He couldn’t control this person, couldn’t make her see him as he wanted to be seen, not in her life or in her death. Now he does, again and again.”

  “He doesn’t rape or molest them sexually. If it was a lover, wouldn’t he see her as sexual?”

  “Love, not lover. Women are Madonnas or whores to him, so he fears and respects them.”

  “Punishes and kills the whore,” Eve considered, “and creates the Madonna, who he cleanses and displays.”

  “Yes. It’s their womanhood, not their sexuality, he’s obsessed with. He may be impotent. In fact, I believe we’ll find this to be the case when you catch him. But sex isn’t important to him. It doesn’t drive him or, again if impotent, he would mutilate the genitals or sexually abuse them with objects. This hasn’t been the case in any of the victims.

  “It’s possible he gains sexual release or satisfaction from their pain,” Mira added. “But it’s secondary, we could say a by-product. It’s the pain that drives him, and the endurance of the subject, and the result. The death.”

  Eve pushed up, wandered to the AutoChef, absently programmed coffee for both of them. “You said ‘businesslike,’ and I don’t disagree. But it seems like a kind of science to me. Regular and specific experiments. Artful science, I guess.”

  “We don’t disagree.” Mira accepted the coffee. “He’s focused and he’s dedicated. Control—his own, and his ability to control others—is vital to him. His ability to step away, to step outside of the active work for long periods, indicates great control and willpower. I don’t believe, even with this, it’s possible for him to maintain personal or intimate relationships for any length of time. Most certainly not with women. Business relationships? I believe he could maintain those to some extent. He must have income. He invests in his victims.”

  “The high-end products, the silver rings. The travel to select them from different locations. The cost of obtaining or maintaining the place where he works on them.”

  “Yes, and given the nature of the products, he’s used to a certain level of lifestyle. Cleansing them is part of the ritual, yes, but he could do so with more ordinary means. More mainstream products.”

  “Nothing but the best,” Eve agreed. “But it also leads me down the avenue that he may be a competitor of Roarke’s, or an employee in a top-level position.”

  “Both would be logical.” Mira drank her coffee, quietly pleased Eve remembered how she p
referred it. “He’s chosen to make this connection. Just as he chose to come back to New York to work at this time. But there was a connection for him to make, Eve.”

  She set her cup aside now, and her gaze was sober when she looked at Eve. “There was you. These women are, in a sense, Roarke’s. You are his in every sense.”

  Testing the idea, Eve frowned. “So he opts for this specific pattern because of me? I wasn’t primary on the initial investigation.”

  “You were a female on the initial investigation, a brunette. Too young at that time to meet his requirements. You aren’t now.”

  “You’re looking at me as a target?”

  “I am. Yes, I am.”

  “Huh.” Drinking coffee, Eve considered it more carefully. Mira’s theories weren’t to be casually dismissed. “Usually goes for long hair.”

  “There have been exceptions.”

  “Yeah, yeah, a couple of them. He’s been smart. This wouldn’t be smart.” Eve tipped the angle of it in her mind, shifted the pattern. “It’s a lot tougher to take down a cop than it is a civilian.”

  “You would be a great prize, from his viewpoint. It would be a challenge, and a coup. And if he knows anything about you, which I promise you he does, he would be assured you would endure a long time.”

  “Tough to stalk me. First, I’d click to it. Second, I don’t have regular routines, not like the others. They clocked in and out at fairly uniform times, had regular haunts. I don’t.”

  “Which, again, would add to the challenge,” Mira argued, “and his ultimate satisfaction. You’re considering that he may have added Roarke as an element because he’s in competition with him. That may very well be true. But what he does isn’t payback, not on a conscious level. Everything he does is for a specific purpose. I believe, in this, you’re a specific purpose.”

  “It’d be helpful.”

  “Yes.” Mira sighed. “I imagined you’d see it that way.”

  Eyes narrowed, Eve tipped the angle again, explored the fresh pattern. “If we go with this, and I could find a way to bait him in—to nudge him into making a move on me before he grabs another one—we could shut him down. Shut him down, take him out.”

  “You won’t bait him.” Watching Eve, Mira picked up her coffee. “I can promise you he has his timetable already set. The only variable in it is the length of time his victims last. He has the third selected. Unless he planned only three—which would be less than he’s ever taken before—the next won’t be you.”

  “Then we have to find her first. Let’s keep your theory between us, just for now. I want to think about it.”

  “I want you to think about it,” Mira said as she got to her feet. “As a member of this team, as a profiler, and as someone who cares a great deal about you, I want you to think about it very carefully.”

  “I will.”

  “This is a hard one for you, for Feeney. For me, the commander. We’ve been here before, and in a very real sense, we failed. Failing again—”

  “Isn’t an option,” Eve finished. “Do me a favor. I know it’s a tough process, but take a look at the list Summerset generated. The female employees. Just see if any of them strike you as more his type. We can’t put eyes on all those women, but if there’s a way to whittle it down…”

  “I’ll start on that right away.”

  “I’ve got to get going.”

  “Yes.” Mira passed her empty cup to Eve, brushed her fingers lightly over the back of Eve’s hand. “Don’t just think carefully. Be careful.”

  Even as Mira left, Eve’s desk ’link beeped. Scanning the readout, she picked up. “Nadine.”

  “Dallas. Any word on Rossi?”

  “We’re looking. If you’re interrupting my day looking for an update—”

  “Actually, I’m interrupting mine to give you one. One of my eager little researchers plucked out an interesting nugget. From Romania.”

  Automatically Eve pulled up on her computer screen what she had on the Romanian investigation. “I should have the full case files from that investigation later today. What have you got?”

  “Tessa Bolvak, a Romany—gypsy? Had her own show on screen. Psychic hour—or twenty minutes, to be accurate.”

  “You’re interrupting both of our days with a psychic?”

  “A renowned one in Romanian circles during the time in question. She was a regularly consulted sensitive, often consulting for the police.”

  “Those wacky Romanians.”

  “Other police authorities make use of sensitives,” Nadine reminded her. “You did, not that long ago.”

  “Yeah, and look how well that worked out for everybody.”

  “However,” Nadine continued, “we’re not here to debate that issue. The amazing Tessa—as both she and her producers recognized the value of a big, juicy case—ran a special on the murders there, and her part in the investigation. She claimed your guy was a master of death, and its servant.”

  “Oh, jeez.”

  “And. That death sought him, provided for him. A pale man,” Nadine said, shifting to read off her own comp screen. “A black soul. Death is housed in him as he is housed in it. Music soars as the blood runs. It plays for her—diva and divine—who sang for him. He seeks them out, flowers for his bouquet, his bouquet for her altar.”

  “Nadine, give me a—”

  “Wait, wait. A pale man,” she continued, “who bears the tree of life and lives by death. Tessa got a lot of play out of the program.”

  “Did I mention wacky Romanians?”

  “And here’s more wacky for you. Two days after the program aired, her body was found—throat slit—floating in the Danube.”

  “Too bad she didn’t see that one coming.”

  “Ha. The authorities deemed it a robbery-homicide. Her jewelry and purse were never found. But I wonder if those in charge of such things over there lack my sense of irony or your innate cynicism.”

  “How come you get the irony?” Eve complained. “I’ve got plenty of irony. Maybe, maybe she’s so busy looking through the crystal ball she doesn’t notice some guy who wants her baubles.”

  Just a little too much coincidence, Eve mused, to pass the bullshit barrier. “And maybe our guy took her out because something in the overdone woo-woo speak hit a little too close.”

  “It occurred to me,” Nadine agreed. “Doesn’t fit his pattern, but—”

  “He doesn’t give her the…status, we’ll say, he affords his chosen victims. She just annoyed him, so he took her out. You got a copy of the program she did?”

  “I do.”

  “Send me a copy. I’ll reach out to Romania again, see if they’ll get me the juice on her case. You got anything else?”

  “A lot of screaming tabloid headlines, screen and print. My busy bees will pick through them, see if there’s anything worth looking at twice.”

  “Let me know.”

  When she clicked off, Eve noted down: Pale man. Music. Tree of life. Death house.

  Then she went to snag Peabody.

  I think it’s getting warmer.” Peabody hunched her shoulders and tried to lever her body so the wild March wind didn’t blow straight into her marrow.

  “Are you standing on the same side of the equator as I am?”

  “No, really. I think it’s a couple of degrees up from yesterday. And seeing as it’s March, it’s practically April. So it’s almost summer if you think about it.”

  “The frigid wind has obviously damaged your brain.” Eve pulled out her badge for the security scanner on Cal Marshall’s building. “That being the case, I need to rethink the fact that I was about to tell you to take the lead on this guy.”

  “No! I can do it. It’s freezing, okay. The wind’s so freaking cold it’s drilling right through my corneas into my retinas. But it hasn’t yet entered the brain.”

  When they were cleared, Peabody stepped in, yanked off her earflap cap. “Do I have hat hair? You can’t effectively interview with hat hair.”

&n
bsp; “You have hair. Be satisfied with that.”

  “Hat hair,” Peabody muttered, raking her hands through it, shaking her head, fluffing and pushing as they got in the elevator.

  “Stop! Stop being a girl. Jesus, that’s annoying. If I had a partner without tits, there would be no hair obsessing.”

  “Baxter would combat hat hair before an interview.”

  Because it was inarguably true, Eve only scowled. “He doesn’t count.”

  “And there’s Miniki. He—”

  “Keep it up, and I’ll tie you down and shave you bald. You won’t ever suffer the pain and embarrassment of hat hair again.”

  Eve strode out of the elevator, followed the numbers to Cal Marshall’s apartment.

  “Do I still take the lead?” Peabody asked, meekly.

  Eve sent her a withering look, then knocked. When the door opened, she shifted slightly to the side so that Peabody had the front ground.

  “Mr. Marshall? I’m Detective Peabody. We spoke earlier. This is my partner, Lieutenant Dallas. May we come in?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Yeah.”

  He was blond, tanned, fit, with eyes the blue of an arctic lake. They looked a little hollow now, a little dull, and his voice held the same tone. “About Sari. It’s about Sari.”

  “Why don’t we sit down?”

  “What? Yeah, we should sit.”

  Through an open door, Eve spotted the bed—made—with a large duffle tossed on it. There was a snowboard tipped against the wall. In the living area, a heavy ski coat was draped over a chair, the lift pass still clipped on it.

  On the molded black table in front of the dark blue gel sofa were several empty bottles of beer.

  Came in, Eve mused, tossed down his gear, checked his ’link messages. Got the word. Sat here and drank most of the night.

  “I heard. I got home and heard—” He rubbed at his eyes. “Um, Bale—he heard from Zela. She works with Sari at the club. She told him…he told me.”

  “It must’ve been a shock,” Peabody said. “That was the first you heard of her death? You didn’t have your pocket ’link, or see any reports while you were gone?”