by J. D. Robb
His face was too thin, his mouth too full, his body too slight to be the man both Trina and Loni had spoken with.
“Mr. Dobbins.”
“That’s right. I want to see some identification, or you’re both turning right back around.”
He studied Eve’s badge, then Peabody’s, his mouth moving silently as he read. “All right then, what’s this about?”
“We’re investigating the murder of a woman in Chelsea,” Eve began.
“That Groom business.” Dobbins wagged a finger. “I read the papers, I watch the news, don’t I? If you people did your jobs and protected people you wouldn’t have to come around here asking me questions. Cops come around here years ago when that girl across the street was murdered.”
“Did you know her, Mr. Dobbins? The girl who was murdered nine years ago?”
“Saw her coming and going, didn’t I? Never spoke to her. Saw this new one’s picture on screen. Never spoke to her, either.”
“Did you ever see this new girl?” Eve asked.
“On the screen, didn’t I just say? Don’t get up to Chelsea. Got what I need right here, don’t I?”
“I’m sure you do. Mr. Dobbins, your father drove a morgue truck during the Urban Wars?”
“Dead wagon. I rode with him most days. Loaded up corpses right, left, and sideways. Got a live one now and again somebody took for dead. I want to sit down.”
He simply turned around and shuffled through the doorway to the right. After exchanging glances, Eve and Peabody followed.
The living area was stuffed with worn furniture. The walls might once have been some variation of white, but were now the dingy yellow of bad teeth.
Dobbins sat, took a cigarette from a tarnished silver tray, and lighted it. “A man can still smoke in his own damn house. You people haven’t taken that away. A man’s home is his damn castle.”
“You have a lovely home, Mr. Dobbins,” Peabody commented. “I love the brownstones in this area. We’re lucky so many of them survived the Urbans. That must’ve been a terrible time.”
“Not so bad. Got through it. Toughened me up, too.” He jabbed the air with the cigarette as if to prove it. “Seen more by the time I was twenty than most see in a hundred twenty.”
“I can’t even imagine. Is it true that there were so many dead in some areas, the only way to keep a record of them was to write an identification number right on the bodies?”
“That’s the way it was.” He blew out a stream of smoke, shook his finger. “Looters get to them first, they’d take everything, strip them right down. I’d write the sector we found them on the body so we could keep track. Haul them in, and the dead house doc would write the number after that, record it in a book. Waste of time mostly. Just meat by then anyway.”
“Do you keep in touch with anybody from back then? People who worked like you did, or the doctors, the medics?”
“What for? They find out you’ve got a little money, they just want a handout.” He shrugged it off. “Saw Earl Wallace a few years back. He’d ride shotgun on the wagon sometimes. Stirred myself to go to Doc Yumecki’s funeral, I guess five, six years back. Paid my respects. He was worth respecting, and there aren’t many. Gave him a nice send-off. Grandson did it. Waked him in the parlor instead of the main house, but it was a nice send-off all the same.”
“Would you know how to reach Mr. Wallace, or Dr. Yumecki’s grandson?”
“How the hell should I know? I check the obits. I see somebody I know who’s worth the time, I go to their send-off. Said we would back then, so I do.”
“What did you say back then?” Eve prompted.
“Dead everywhere.” His eyes blurred, and Eve imagined he could see it—still see it. “No send-off. Ya burned them up, or you buried them, and mostly with company, you could say. So, those of us that carted them in, ID’d and disposed, we said how when it was our time, we’d have a send-off, and those of us still living and able would come. So that’s what I do.”
“Who else does it? From the Urbans?”
Dobbins took one more drag. “Don’t remember names. See a few now and again.”
“How about this one?” Eve took out the sketch. “Have you seen this man?”
“No. Looks a little bit like Taker maybe. A little.”
“Taker?”
“We picked up the bodies, dropped them off. He took them, so he was Taker. Went to his send-off twenty years back, maybe more. Big one for Taker.” He sucked wetly on the cigarette. “Good food. Long time dead.”
Out in the car again, Eve sat a moment to think. “Could be an act—bitter, slightly tipped old man. But that’s reaching.”
“He could’ve worn a disguise when Trina saw him.”
“Could’ve,” Eve agreed, “but I’d say Trina would have spotted any major face work. It’s what she does. Let’s run down the two names he remembered.”
Her next stop was a Hugh Klok off Washington Square Park. The victim Dobbins had seen “coming and going” had been dumped there. Gil Newkirk’s notes stated that Klok had been questioned, as were the other neighbors. Klok was listed as an antiquities dealer who had purchased and renovated the property several years before the murders.
He was listed as cooperative and unilluminating.
Antiquities turned a good profit if you knew what you were doing. Eve assumed Klok did as the property was impressive. What had originally been a pair of town houses had been merged into one large home, set back from the street by a wide courtyard.
“Pretty spruce,” Peabody commented as they approached the courtyard’s ornamental iron gate.
Eve pressed the button on the gate and was momentarily ordered by a computerized voice to state her business.
“Police. We’d like to speak with Mr. Hugh Klok.” She held up her badge for scanning.
Mr. Klok is not in residence at this time. You may leave your message at this security point or—if you choose—pass through and leave same with a member of the household staff.
“Option two. Might as well get a closer look,” she said to Peabody.
The gate chinked open. They crossed the bricked courtyard, climbed a short flight of steps to the main level. The door opened immediately. This, too, was a droid, but fashioned to represent a dignified middle-aged man.
“I’m authorized to take your message for Mr. Klok.”
“Where’s Mr. Klok?”
“Mr. Klok is away on business.”
“Where?”
“I’m not authorized to relay that information. If this is an emergency or the business you have with him of great import, I will contact Mr. Klok immediately so that he can, in turn, contact you. He is, however, expected home within the next day or two.”
Behind the dignified droid was a large, dignified entrance hall. And surrounding it Eve sensed a great deal of uninhabited space. “Tell Mr. Klok to contact Lieutenant Eve Dallas, NYPSD, Cop Central, upon his return.”
“Of course.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“Mr. Klok has been out of residence these past two weeks.”
“Does Mr. Klok live alone?”
“He does.”
“Any houseguests in his absence?”
“There are no guests in residence.”
“Okay.” She’d have preferred to get inside, snoop around a little. But without warrant or cause, there was no legal way past the threshold.
She left the Klok house for a bustling section of Little Italy.
One of the victims had been a waitress in a restaurant owned by Tomas Pella. Pella had served on the Home Force during the Urbans, and in them had lost a brother, a sister, and his bride of two months. His young, doomed wife had served as a medic.
He’d never remarried, had instead opened and owned three successful restaurants before selling out eight years before.
“Reclusive, according to Newkirk’s notes,” Eve said. “Also listed as hot-tempered and angry.”
He lived in a trim whitew
ashed home within shouting distance of bakeries, markets, cafés.
When she was greeted for the third time by a droid—female again, but of the comfortable domestic style—Eve concluded that men of that generation preferred electronic to human.
“Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody. We’d like to speak to Mr. Tomas Pella.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Pella is very ill.”
“Oh, yeah? How’s that?”
“I’m afraid I can’t discuss his medical condition with you without his authorization. Is there any other way I can be of help?”
“Is he lucid? Conscious? Able to speak?”
“Yes, but he requires rest and quiet.”
Droids were tougher than humans on some levels, but could still be bullied and intimidated. “I require an interview with him.” Eve tapped her badge, kept her eyes keen and level. “I think it would disturb his rest and quiet a great deal more if I had to get a warrant and bring police medicals in here to evaluate his condition. Is there a medical with him?”
“Yes. There’s a medical with him at all times.”
“Then inform the medical that if Mr. Pella is awake and lucid, we need to speak with him. Got that?”
“Yes, of course.” She stepped back, shutting the door behind them before going to a house ’link. “If Mr. Pella is able, there are two police officers here who insist on speaking to him. Yes, I’ll wait.”
The domestic glanced back at Eve and looked as intimidated as a droid could manage.
The entrance boasted soaring ceilings, and was elegantly if sparely furnished. The staircase was directly to the left, a straight, sleek line, the treads were highly polished wood with a faded red runner climbing their center. The chandelier was three tiers of blown glass in shades of pale, delicate blue.
She wandered a few feet farther to glance to the right, into a formal parlor. Photographs lined the creamy white mantel, and from the style of dress worn in them, she judged them to be a gallery of Pella’s dead. Parents, siblings, the pretty and forever young face of his wife.
Third man on the list, she thought, and it could be said—in this case—that Pella occupied a house of the dead.
“If you’d come with me?” The droid folded her hands neatly at her waist. “Mr. Pella will see you, but his medical requests you make your visit as brief as possible.”
When Eve didn’t answer, the droid simply turned and started up the steps. They creaked softly, Eve noted. Little moans and groans of age. At the top was a landing, which split right and left. The droid walked to the right, and stopped at the first door.
It would, Eve thought, overlook the street and the bustle of life outside.
It wasn’t life she sensed when they stepped inside. If this was a house of the dead, this was its master chamber.
The bed was enormous, canopied, with head-and footboards deeply carved with what she supposed were cherubs on the wing. The light was dim, drapes drawn fully across the tall windows.
The man in bed was ghostly pale, propped against white pillows. An oxygen breather was fixed over his face, and above it his eyes were almost colorless and full of bitter rage.
“What do you want?”
For a sick man, his voice was strong enough, though the breather made it raspy. Fueled, perhaps, by what Eve saw in his eyes.
“Sir.” The medical was female, sturdy and competent. “You mustn’t upset yourself.”
“Go to hell.” He tossed it off like a shrug. “And get out.”
“Sir.”
“Out. I’m still in charge around here. You get out. And you.” He pointed a finger that shook slightly at Eve. “What do you want?”
“We’re investigating the murder of a woman whose body was found in East River Park.”
“The Groom. Back again. I was a groom once.”
“So I hear.” She stepped closer to the bed. She couldn’t insist he remove the breather, and with that and the poor light, his features were difficult to distinguish. But she saw his hair was white, his face round. She would have said somewhat doughy—and thought: steroids. “You’re aware she was killed in the same way Anise Waters, who worked for you, was killed nine years ago.”
“Nine years. A fingersnap of time, or a life sentence. Depends, doesn’t it?”
“Time’s relative?” she asked, watching those eyes.
“Time’s a son of a bitch. You’ll find out.”
“Eventually.”
“You cops looked me over nine years ago. Now you’re back to do the same? Well, take a look.”
“When’s the last time you were out of bed?”
“I can get up whenever I damn well please.” There was frustrated insult in his voice as he shifted to sit up straighter. “Can’t get very far, but I can damn well get up. You thinking I got up and killed that girl. Grabbed myself a couple others?”
“You’re well informed, Mr. Pella.”
“What the hell else do I have to do all damn day but watch the screen.” He jerked his chin toward the one on the wall opposite the bed. “I know who you are. Roarke’s cop.”
“Is that a problem for you?”
He grinned, his teeth showing through the breather.
“How about him.” Eve pulled out the sketch. “Do you know who he is?”
He glanced toward the sketch in a way that told Eve he was ready to dismiss it all. Then she saw something come into his eyes, saw something pass in and out in that beat where he really looked at the face. “Who is he?”
“Guy who likes to kill women, be my guess.” That hard resistance was back on his face, the screw you expression. “From where I’m sitting, that would be your problem, not mine.”
“I can do a lot to make it your problem, too. Do you like brunettes, Mr. Pella?”
“I don’t have time for women. They don’t listen to you. Die on you.”
“You served on the Home Force during the Urbans.”
“Killed men, women, too. But they called it heroic. She was busy saving lives when they killed her. Somebody probably said that was heroic. None of it was. Killing’s killing, and you never get it out of your head.”
“Did you identify her body?”
“I’m not talking about that anymore. You don’t talk about Therese anymore.”
“Are you dying, Mr. Pella?”
“Everyone’s dying.” He grinned again. “Some of us are just closer to finishing it than others.”
“What’s finishing you?”
“Tumor. Beat it back, been beating it back for ten years. This time they say it’s going to beat me. We’ll see about that.”
“Any objection to my partner and me looking around while we’re here?”
“You want to run tame in my house?” He pushed himself up a little. “This isn’t the Urbans, Roarke’s Cop, where your kind can do as they damn please. And this is still the United States of goddamn America. You want to search my house? You get a warrant. Now get out.”
Eve stood outside, hands on hips, studying Pella’s house. In moments she saw the bedroom drapes twitch, then quickly settle.
“Tough son of a bitch,” Eve commented.
“Yeah, but is he tough enough?”
“I bet he is. If killing’s what he wanted, killing’s what he’d do. There’s the groom angle, the lost love. Why should these women live, be happy, young, when he lost his wife? Soldier during the Urbans. Knows how to kill, and he strikes me as a man with plenty of anger, and a lot of control—when he wants to use it.”
“The sick room, the breather,” Peabody considered. “Could be an act.”
“Could be, but he has to know we could find that out. Of course, if he is dying, that’s just one more check in the plus column. And no judge is going to give us a warrant with what we have to search the home of a dying, bedridden old man.
“Dallas, mute off. Feeney, you copy?”
“Read you.”
“Let’s put a couple of uniforms on this place. Surveillance goggles. Pella doesn’t give me
the full buzz, but there’s a minor tingle happening. He knows something about something, and the face in that sketch triggered it.”
“Done.”
“Shadow pick up on any tail?”
“Nada.”
“Yeah, me either. I’m going to drop Peabody by her place, head home myself. I’ll be working from there. Dallas out.”
“Home sweet home?”
“Home where you can start digging up data on Pella’s dead wife. Details, all you can find. I can wrangle clearance to search his medicals. Take a closer look at Dobbins, too.”
“Looks like I’m not getting laid again tonight.”
Eve ignored her. “I’ll take another glance at the currently unavailable Hugh Klok. Guy’s into antiquities and that says travel to me. Let’s see if any of these guys frequents the opera. Roarke can take a closer look at their real estate. Maybe the houses mean something. I want blueprints in any case.”
She pulled away from the curb, hoping to sense someone watching, someone sliding through the traffic behind her. But all she felt was the crowded streets, and the sluggish push of vehicles that had turned the earlier snow into dismal mush.
17
“LOCKED IN,” EVE SAID WHEN THE GATES OF home closed behind her. “Eyes and ears off. Dallas out.”
No ugly mush and slush here, she thought. The snow spread, pure and pristine, over the grounds, draped heavy as wet fur on the trees so that the great house rose like the powerful focal point of a winter painting. And like a painting, now that the frigid March wind had died, it all stood utterly still.
She left the car, and even moving through winter’s irritable bite, she had the thought that maybe Peabody was right. Maybe spring was edging closer.
As she entered the house Summerset oozed into the foyer with the fat Galahad shadowing him.
“I’m to tell you that Roarke will be somewhat late. It seems he has considerable business of his own to deal with as he’s been spending so much of his time entrenched in yours.”
“His choice, Scarecrow.” She tossed her coat over the newel.
“There’s blood on your pants.”
She glanced down. She’d nearly forgotten the bite. Little thieving bastard. “It’s dry.”