by J. D. Robb
McNab leaned down, pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Want me to take this for a while?”
“No. We talked to that old man today. Well, not that old, really, but it seemed like he was older than Moses in that bed, with the breather on. And then I read this, and think how he’d been so young, and he’d loved this girl. Then…she’s too young.”
“I know it’s tough, baby, but—”
“No, no. I mean, yeah, it’s tough, but she’s too young to be the source of the pattern.” Tears—and some still clung to her lashes—were forgotten. “She was only twenty, and the youngest vic was twenty-eight. Twenty-eight to thirty-three, that’s been his span. So Therese Pella died too young, it most likely eliminates Pella as a suspect.”
“You were seriously looking at this guy?”
“He’s the right age, the basic type, connection with the Urbans, private home—and can you spell bitter? Got a tumor—or he says—Dallas is checking that. Lost his bride—bride and groom—who was a pretty brunette. But after that it doesn’t follow.”
Peabody sat back, shaking her head at the data on screen. “Doesn’t follow pattern. She’s hit by sniper fire, not tortured. She’s eight years younger than his youngest vic when she was killed. Misses the profile. But there was something. A tingle, Dallas called it. There was a tingle when we talked to him.”
“Maybe he knows something. Maybe he’s connected.”
“Yeah, maybe. I need to get this to Dallas, then try for deeper data on Pella.”
“I’ll give you a hand.” McNab gave her shoulders another rub, then toyed with the ends of her hair. “Okay now?”
“Yeah. I guess it’s not enough sleep and too much on the brain.”
“You need to take a break.”
“Maybe I do.” She knuckled her eyes again, but this time to clear fatigue instead of tears. “If it wasn’t so cold out, I’d take a walk, get some air, some exercise.”
“I don’t know about the air,” he said as she rose. “But I can help with the exercise.” Grinning, he laid a hand on her ass, gave it a squeeze.
“Yeah?” Her eyes danced; her libido boogied. “You wanna?”
“Let me answer that question by ripping your clothes off.”
She let out a laughing squeal as they tumbled to the floor. “I thought, you know, you weren’t feeling the bloom and spark.”
“Something’s blooming just fine,” he said as he dragged off her sweater.
She tugged his pants down over his hips to check for herself. Looking down, she said, “I’ll say.”
“And as for sparkage.” He crushed his mouth to hers in a kiss hot enough she envisioned smoke coming out of her ears. “Any more, and we’d torch the place.”
She saw his eyes go dreamy when his hand cupped her breast, felt her stomach muscles tighten in response.
“Mmmm, She-body, the most female of females. Let’s see what we can light up.”
Later, considerably later, Eve studied the data Peabody had sent to her office unit. “She’s right,” Eve mumbled. “Too young, wrong method. Dobbins hits me as just too sloppy, just too disinterested. Klok’s coming across as straight and narrow. But there’s something here. I just can’t see it yet.”
“Maybe you would if you got a decent night’s sleep.”
Instead, she walked around her boards again. “Opera. What about the opera-tickets angle?”
“I’ve got the list for season ticket holders for the Met. Nothing on the first cross-check. I’ll try others.”
“He jumps names, jumps names and ID data. Covert stuff. Smooth, under radar. Where’d he learn how? Torture methods. Covert operations have been known to employ torture methods.”
“I can tell you my sources on the matter of torturers isn’t popping anyone of this generation still living and in business, or anyone who moonlights by targeting young brunettes.”
“It was worth a shot,” Eve mused. “Covert might change that. Someone who was in military ops, or paramilitary at one time. He learned the methods somewhere, and developed the skill to manipulate his data.”
“Or has the connections or the funds to hire someone to manipulate it,” Roarke reminded her.
“Yeah, there’s that. So. Why do we torture someone?”
“For information.”
“Yeah, at least ostensibly. Why else do you torture? Kicks, sexual deviation, ritual sacrifice.”
“Experimentation. Another tried and true rationale for inflicting pain.”
She looked at him. “We eliminate the need or desire for information, and the sexual deviation. No doubt in my mind he gets personal gratification from inflicting pain, but it has to be more. Ritual’s part of it, but this isn’t some sick religious deal or cult. So, experimentation,” she repeated. “Fits. Factor in that he’s very good at it. Torture skills are specialized. He isn’t messy about it, he’s precise. Again, where did he learn?”
“And you’re back to the Urbans.”
“It keeps crossing there. Someone taught him, or he studied. Experimented before the experimentation. But not here, not in New York.”
Circling her board, she studied, considered angles. “We ran searches for others before. I did a Missing Persons run on the victim type. But what if he experimented elsewhere? If he purposefully mutilated the bodies to eliminate the correlation, or disposed of them altogether?”
“You’re going to do a global search on mutilations and missing persons involving the victim type.”
“He might not have been as careful. If we find something…he might have left something behind.” She stopped, stared at the sketch of the man she hunted. “Still honing his craft, still finding his way. We did globals, but maybe we didn’t go back far enough.”
“I’ll set it up. I can do it faster,” he said before she could argue. “Then it’ll take a good long while for any results you can actually work with. I’ll set it up, then we’re getting some sleep.”
“All right. Okay.”
The dreams came in blurry spurts, as if she were swimming through fog that tore and re-formed, tore and re-formed. The clock ticked incessantly.
Over that endless, echoing tick, she heard the sounds of a battle raging. A firefight, she thought. Blasts and bullets and the wild shouts and calls of the men and women who fought.
She could smell the blood, the smoke, the burning flesh before she could see it. Carnage carried a sickly sweet aroma.
As vision cleared, focused, she saw the battle was on a stage, and the stage was dressed to depict the city in a strange, stylized form. Buildings, all black and silver, were tipped and tilted above hard white streets that jagged into impossible angles or inexplicable dead ends.
And the players on stage were dressed in bright, elaborate costumes that flowed through bloody pools and swirled in dirty smoke as they murdered each other.
She looked down on it all with interest, from her gilded box seat. Below, in a pit where bodies lay twisted, she could see the orchestra madly playing their instruments. Their fingers ran with blood from razor-sharp strings.
On stage, the shouts and calls were songs, she realized, fierce, violent. Vicious.
War could never be otherwise.
“The third act is nearly over.”
She turned, looked into the face of the killer as he took a huge stopwatch out of the pocket of his formal black.
“I don’t understand. It’s all death. Who writes these things?”
“Death, yes. Passion and strength and life. Everything leads to death, doesn’t it? Who would know that better than you?”
“Murder’s different.”
“Oh, yes, it’s artful and it’s deliberate. It takes it out of the hands of fate and puts the power into the one who creates death. Who makes a gift of it.”
“What gift? How is murder a gift?”
“This…” He gestured to the stage as a woman, brown hair bloody, face and body battered, was borne in on a stretcher. “This is about immortality.”
“Immortality’s for the dead. Who was she when she was alive?”
He only smiled. “Time’s up.” He clicked the stopwatch, and the stage went black.
Eve came rearing up in bed, sucking for air. Caught between the dream and reality, she closed her hands over her ears to muffle the ticking. “Why won’t it stop?”
“Eve. Eve. It’s your ’link.” Roarke curled his fingers over her wrists, gently tugged her hands down. “It’s your ’link.”
“Jesus. Wait.” She shook her head, pulled herself into the now. “Block video,” she ordered, then answered. “Dallas.”
Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. Report to Union Square Park off Park Avenue. Body of unidentified female, evidence of torture.
Eve turned her head, met Roarke’s eyes. “Acknowledged. Notify Peabody, Detective Delia, request Medical Examiner Morris. As per procedure on this matter, relay notification to Commander Whitney and Dr. Mira. I’m on my way. Dallas out.”
“I’ll be going with you. I know,” Roarke said as he rose, “you don’t make prime bait with me along, but that’ll be Gia Rossi left on the ground. And I’m going with you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Ah, Eve.” His tone changed, softened. “So am I.”
18
AS EVE HAD SEEN THEIR HOME IN ITS SNOWY landscape as a painting, Roarke saw the crime scene as a play. A dark play with constant movement and great noise, all centered around the single focal character.
The white sheet on the white snow, the white body laid over it, with deep brown hair shining in the hard lights. He thought the wounds stood out against the pale flesh like screams.
And there his wife stood in her long black coat, gloveless, of course. They’d both forgotten her gloves this time around. Hatless and hard-eyed. The stage manager, he thought, and a major player as well. Director and author of this final act.
There would be pity in her, this he knew, and there would be anger, a ribbon of guilt to tie them all together. But that complicated emotional package was tucked deep inside, walled in behind that cool, calculating mind.
He watched her speak to the sweepers, to the uniforms, to the others who walked on and off that winter stage. Then Peabody, the dependable, in her turtle-shell of a coat and colorful scarf, crossed the stage on cue. Together, she and Eve lowered to that lifeless focal point that held the dispassionate spotlight of center stage.
“Not close enough,” McNab said from beside him.
Roarke shifted his attention, very briefly, from the scene to McNab. “What?”
“Just couldn’t get close enough.” McNab’s hands were deep in two of the many pockets of his bright green coat, with the long tails of a boldly striped scarf fluttering down his back. “Moving in on a dozen roads from a dozen damn directions. Moving in, you can feel we’re getting closer. But not close enough to help Gia Rossi. It’s hard. This one hits hard.”
“It does.”
Had he really believed, Roarke wondered, a lifetime ago, had he honestly assumed that the nature of the cop was to feel nothing? He’d learned different since Eve. He’d learned very different. And now, he stood silent, listening to the lines as the players played their parts.
“TOD oh-one-thirty. Early Monday morning,” Peabody said. “She’s been dead a little over twenty-six hours.”
“He kept her for a day.” Eve studied the carving in the torso. Thirty-nine hours, eight minutes, forty-five seconds. “Kept her a day after he was finished. She didn’t last for him. The wounds are less severe, less plentiful than on York. Something went wrong for him this time. He wasn’t able to sustain the work.”
Less severe, yes, Peabody could see that was true. And still the cuts, the burns and bruising spoke of terrible suffering. “Maybe he got impatient this time. Maybe he needed to go for the kill.”
“I don’t think so.” With her sealed fingers, Eve picked up the victim’s arm, turned it to study the ligature marks from the binding. Then turned it back to examine more closely the killing wounds on the wrist. “She didn’t fight like York, not as much damage from the ropes, wrists and ankles. And the killing strokes here? Just as clean and precise as all the others. He’s still in control. And he still wants them to last.”
She laid the arm down again, on the white, white sheet. “It’s a matter of pride in his skill—torture, create the pain, but keep them alive. Increasing the level of pain, fear, injury, all while keeping them breathing. But Rossi, she wound down on him ahead of his schedule, ahead of his goal.”
“Before he’d have been able to see the media bulletins with his image,” Peabody pointed out. “It’s not because he panicked, or took his anger out on her.”
Eve glanced up. “No. But if he had, she’d still be dead. If he had, we still did what we had to do. Put that away. He started on her Saturday morning, finished early Monday. York Friday night. So he had a little celebration, maybe, or just gets a good night’s sleep before he rewinds the clock for Rossi.”
Takes time out to shadow me, Eve thought. Another tried and true torture method. Rest and revisit. Time out again to lure and secure Greenfeld. Need your next vic in the goddamn bullpen.
“Cleans her up, takes his time. No rush, no hurry. Already got the dump spot picked out, already surveyed the area. Set up a canvass.”
From her crouched position, Eve surveyed the area. “This kind of weather, there aren’t going to be a lot of people hanging out in the park. Bides his time,” she continued. “Loads her up, transports her here. Carries her in.”
“Sweepers have a lot of footprints to work with. The snow was pretty fresh and soft. They’ll make the treads, give us a size, a brand.”
“Yeah. But he’s not worried about that. Smart enough, he’s smart enough to wear something oversized, try to throw us off. To wear something common that’s next to impossible to pin. When we get him, we’ll find them, help hang him with them, but they won’t lead us to him.”
As dispassionate now as those harsh crime scene lights, Eve examined the body. “She was strong, in top shape.” Good specimen? she wondered. Had he thought he’d had a prime candidate for his nasty duet? “She struggled, but not as much as York. Not nearly as hard as York, not as long. Gave out, that’s what she did. Physically strong, but something in her shut down. Must’ve been a big disappointment to him.”
“I’m glad she didn’t suffer as much. I know,” Peabody said when Eve lifted her head. “But if we couldn’t save her, I’m glad she didn’t suffer as much.”
“If she could’ve held out longer, maybe we could’ve saved her. And either way you look at it, Peabody, doesn’t mean a fucking thing.”
She straightened as she spotted Morris coming toward them. In his eyes she saw something that was in her, some of what was in Peabody. She would, Eve thought, see that same complicated mix of anger, despair, guilt, and sorrow in the eyes of every cop involved.
“Gia Rossi,” was all Morris said.
“Yes. She’s been dead a little more than twenty-six hours by our gauge. A group of kids cutting through the park found her. Mucked up the scene some, but for the most part then just cut and ran. One of them called it in.
“Something went wrong for him with her.” Eve looked down at the body again. “He didn’t get a lot of time out of her. Maybe she just shut down, or maybe he used something—experimenting—some chemical that shut her down.”
“I’ll flag the tox as priority. She isn’t as damaged as the others.”
“No.”
“Can she be moved yet?”
“I was about to roll her.”
With a nod, he bent to help, and together they rolled the body.
“No injuries on her back,” Morris said.
“Most of them don’t. He likes face-to-face. It has to be personal. It has to be intimate.”
“Some bruising, lacerations, burns, punctures on the back of the shoulders, the calves. Less than the others.” Gently, he brushed the hair aside, examined the back of the neck, the s
calp, the ears. “In comparison, I’d say he barely got to stage two in this case. Yes, yes, something went wrong. I’ll take her in now.”
He straightened, met Eve’s eyes. “Will there be family?”
He never asked, or so rarely she’d never registered it. “She has a mother in Queens, a father and stepmother out in Illinois. We’ll be contacting them.”
“Let me know if and when they want to see her. I’ll take them through it personally.”
“All right.”
He looked away, past the lights into the cold dark. “I wish it were spring,” he said.
“Yeah, people still end up dead, but it’s a nicer atmosphere for the rest of us. And, you know, flowers. They’re a nice touch.”
He grinned, and some of the shadows around him seemed to lift. “I like daffodils myself. I always think of the trumpet as a really long mouth, and imagine they chatter away at each other in a language we can’t hear.”
“That’s a little scary,” she decided.
“Then you don’t want to get me started on pansies.”
“Really don’t. I’ll check in with you later. Peabody, get that canvass started.” She left Morris, heard him murmur, All right now, Gia, then stepped up to Roarke.
“I’m nearly done here,” she began. “You should—”
“I won’t be going home,” Roarke told her. “I’ll go in, start working in the war room. I’ll take care of getting myself there.”
“I’ll go on in with you.” McNab looked at Eve. “If that’s all right with you, Lieutenant.”
“Go ahead, and contact the rest of the team. No reason for them to lay around in bed when we’re not. This is a twenty-four/seven op now. I’ll work out subteams, twelve-hour shifts. The clock’s about to start on Ariel Greenfeld. We’re not going to find her like this.”
She looked back. “I’m goddamned if we’re going to find her like this.”
It was still shy of dawn when she got to Central. Before she went to her office, she walked into the war room. As the lights flicked on she looked around. It was quiet now, empty of people. It wouldn’t be so again, she thought. Not until they’d closed this down.