The In Death Collection, Books 21-25

by J. D. Robb

  “Nothing much keeps him out.”

  “It took time, even for him. Place is like the frigging Pentagon or something. Then we had to get through the next level on the basement.”

  “How long was I in there?”

  “Twenty minutes, half an hour, maybe.”

  “Not too bad.”

  “I’ll take her from here,” Roarke said.

  “Don’t—aw, no picking me up.” But she was already cradled in his arms.

  “I have to, for a minute anyway.” He simply buried his face against the side of her neck as cops and techs swarmed by. “I couldn’t get to you.”

  “Yeah, you did. Besides, I told you I could handle myself.”

  “So you did, so you always do. Are you hurt?”

  “No. Feel like I guzzled a bottle of wine, and not the good stuff. But it’s passing some. Gee, your hair smells good.” She sniffed at it, caught herself, and winced. “Damn tranqs. You gotta put me down. This is undermining my rep and authority.”

  He eased her onto her feet, but kept his arm around her waist for support. “You need to lie down.”

  “Really don’t. You lie down and everything starts spinning around. Just need to walk it off.”

  “Lieutenant?” Newkirk walked up with her coat. “Ms. Greenfeld asked that this get back to you.”

  “Thanks. Where is she?”

  “MTs are working on her, in the hall—the foyer, I guess it is.”

  “All right. Officer Newkirk? You did good work.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. Right now it feels like good work.”

  “I want to take a look at her before they transport her,” Eve said to Roarke, and let him help her to the foyer.

  Ariel was on a stretcher, covered with a blanket, a pair of MTs preparing to roll her out.

  “Give me a minute. Hey,” she said to Ariel, “how you doing?”

  “They gave me some really mag drugs. I feel sooooo good. You saved my life.” Ariel reached up to grip Eve’s hand.

  “I had a part in it. So did the cops crowding into this place, and this civilian here, too. But mostly, Ariel? You saved yourself. We’re going to need to talk to you some more, when you’re feeling a little better.”

  “So he pays.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Anytime, anyplace.”

  “Okay. One more second,” she told the MTs, and held out a hand to Roarke. “Let me have your pocket ’link.” She took it, keyed in a number. “Hey, Erik. Hey,” she repeated when he began to spew out questions. “Quiet down. I’ve got someone here who wants to talk to you.” She put the ’link into Ariel’s hand. “Say hi, Ariel.”

  “Erik? Erik?” She began to cry, to laugh, and beamed up at Eve with drug-hazed eyes. “He’s crying. Don’t cry, Erik. I’m okay now. Everything’s okay.”

  “Go ahead,” Eve said to the MTs, “and tell the guy on the ’link where you’re taking her. He’ll want to be there.”

  “Nice job, Lieutenant,” Roarke murmured as they wheeled Ariel out.

  “Yeah. And you can always get another ’link. I have to go in, finish this up.”

  “We have to go in, finish this up,” Roarke corrected.

  She was steadier when she got to Central, and forced down some of the Eatery’s fake eggs in the hopes of smoothing out her system. She forked them up in the war room, chasing them with all the water she could stand.

  She wanted a shower, she wanted a bed. But more than she wanted anything, she wanted a turn with Lowell in the box.

  She set the food aside, rose, and walked over to stare at all the names on the board. “For all of them,” she said quietly. “What we did, what we do now, it’s for all of them. That’s the point that has to be made. In the box, in the courts, in the media. It’s important.”

  “No one who worked in this room these last days will forget them,” Roarke told her.

  She nodded. “This is going to take some time. I know you’re not leaving until it’s done, so I won’t bother suggesting it. You can stand in Observation, or be more comfortable and watch from one of the monitors.”

  “I like Observation.”

  “Okay then. I’m going to have him brought up, so go pick your spot. I need to talk to Peabody.”

  She headed toward the bullpen. It was buzzing, and as she stepped inside, applause broke out. Eve held up a hand. “Save it,” she ordered. “It’s not done yet. Peabody.”

  Peabody shoved up from her desk, turned, and took a quick bow before going out after Eve. “We’re pumped.”

  “Yeah, I know. Peabody, I have to ask you for a solid.”

  “Sure.”

  “You earned a turn in Interview with this bastard, and you’re secondary on the investigation. It’s your right. I need to ask you to step aside for Feeney on this.”

  “Can I stand in Observation and give Lowell the finger?”

  “Absolutely. I owe you.”

  “No. Not on this one. Nobody owes anybody on this one.”

  “Okay. Bring him up for us, will you? Interview A.”

  “Oh, my sincere pleasure. Dallas? I’ve just gotta dance.” And she did so, a kind of tap/shuffle as she walked away.

  Eve went into her office, tagged Feeney. “Interview A, he’s coming up.”

  “Burn his ass.”

  “Then get yours down here and help me fry him, ace.”

  “Peabody—”

  “Is observing, like half the cops in this place. Come on, Feeney, this one’s ours. Let’s wrap it up.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  When it was time, she walked into Interview A with Feeney. Lowell sat quietly alone, an ordinary-looking man past middle age with a pleasant if somewhat quizzical smile on his face.

  “Lieutenant Dallas, this is very unexpected.”

  “Record on, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Feeney, Captain Ryan, in interview with subject Lowell, Robert.” She fed in the case numbers—all of them, then read off the Revised Miranda. “Robert Lowell do you understand your rights and obligations in this matter?”

  “Of course. You were very clear.”

  “You understand you’re being charged with the abductions, assaults, forced imprisonments, and murders of six women, the abduction and forced imprisonment of Ariel Greenfeld, and will subsequently be questioned by Global authorities on the abductions, assaults, illegal captivity, and murders of others.”

  “Yes, I do.” He continued to smile genially, folded his plump hands. “Should we save time by my acknowledging all those charges. Confessing to them? Or would that be anticlimactic?”

  “You’re awful damn chipper,” Feeney commented, “for a man who’s going to spend the rest of his miserable, murdering life in a cement cage.”

  “Well, actually, I won’t be. I will be quietly ending my time within the next twenty-four hours as per my requested and granted self-termination contract. It will stand,” he said pleasantly, “as my doctors have certified my terminal condition and my application. My lawyers have assured me that the certification will override even criminal charges. Neither the State nor Global will supersede an individual’s right to die. And, of course, it saves considerable expense. So…” He lifted his shoulders.

  “You think you can get off, get out, by swallowing a few pills?” Feeney demanded.

  “Indeed I do. It’s not what I hoped for, believe me. I haven’t finished my work, not completely. You were to be my ultimate,” he said to Eve. “The culmination of everything. When you were finished, then I would have approached my own death with all fully realized. Still, I have accomplished a great deal.”

  “Well.” Eve leaned back in her chair, nodded. “You sure covered the bases. I have to say—Bob—you thought of everything. I admire that. It’s not nearly as satisfying to pull in a sloppy killer.”

  “Order is one of my bywords.”

  “Yeah, I noticed. I appreciate you saving us time by being willing to confess to everything, but after all the work we put in, we’d really li
ke the details. You could call it our culmination. So…this is going to take a while,” she said with an easy smile. “You want something to drink? I’m still a little off from the tranq you got into me. I’m going to go get myself some cold caffeine. You want?”

  “That’s very nice of you. I wouldn’t mind a soft drink.”

  “You got it. Feeney, why don’t you step out while I hit Vending. Pause record.”

  “What the hell,” Feeney began when they were outside Interview.

  Everything about her hardened: face, eyes, voice. “I’ve got a way around this. I don’t want you to ask me about it. Ever. When we go back in, we play along. We get the details, and we sew him up. Give me your ’link, will you? I haven’t replaced mine yet. And wait for me.”

  She took Feeney’s ’link, wandered down to Vending. And beeped Peabody on privacy mode. “Tell Roarke—quietly—to step out for a minute. Don’t say anything to me. We haven’t spoken.” She clicked off, then stared at the machine.

  Moments later, Roarke walked up behind her. “Lieutenant?”

  “Get me a Pepsi, a ginger ale, and a cream soda. I need you to make this go away,” she said under her breath. “Can you make his self-termination clearance disappear? No trace of it, anywhere?”

  “Yes,” he said simply as he ordered the tubes.

  “It crosses the line, what I’m asking you. I gave her my word he’d pay. And in the war room before I came out, I gave them all my word. So I’m crossing the line.”

  He retrieved the tubes, passed them to her. His eyes, meeting hers, spoke volumes. “I have to get on,” he said in a clear voice. “I wish I could stay, wait for you, but I’m expecting some calls and transmissions, and you gave Ariel my ’link. I’ll try to come back once I’ve taken care of this. Otherwise, I’ll see you at home.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Thanks.”

  They parted ways with her heading back to Feeney. “I got you cream soda.”

  “For Christ’s sake—”

  “Hey, if you wanted something else you should’ve said so. It’s going away,” she whispered. “Don’t ask me about it, just take my word. He’s not going out the way he wants. We’ll let him think he is, until we have everything we need.”

  Feeney stared into her eyes for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay, let’s get it down.”

  It took hours, but Lowell never requested a break. He was, Eve realized, basking. After all the time, all the effort, he was finally able to share his obsession.

  He gave them meticulous details on every murder.

  Eve and Feeney worked in tandem, an old and easy rhythm.

  “You got yourself a good memory,” Feeney commented.

  “I do. You’ll find every project documented—keeping records, and we could say amending them, was one of my tasks during the wars. I’m sure you’ve collected all the records from my lab and office. I’d hoped, before I learned I was dying, to arrange for my work to be published. It will have to be posthumously, but I believe that’s appropriate.”

  “So, your work,” Eve began, “what got you started? We understand the women—”

  “Partners. I considered them partners.”

  “I bet they didn’t see it your way, but fine. Your partners represented to you your stepmother.”

  “They became her, which is entirely different. She was the first, you see. The Eve.” He smiled brilliantly. “So you can see why I knew you were to be the last.”

  “Yeah, too bad about your luck on that.”

  “I always knew I could fail, but if I succeeded it would have been perfection. As she was. She was magnificent. You’ll also find many recording discs of her performances. She gave up a great career for me.”

  “For you?”

  “Yes. We were, well, the term would be ‘soul mates.’ While I could never play—she was an accomplished pianist—nor did I have a voice to offer, it was through her I gained my great love and admiration for music. It was by her I was saved.”

  “How so?”

  “My father considered me imperfect. Some difficulties with my birth, which caused, well, you could call it a defect. I had some trouble with controlling my impulses, and there were mood swings. He institutionalized me briefly, over my grandfather’s objections, when I was quite young. Then Edwina came into my life. She was patient and loving, and used music to help me remain calm or entertained. She was my mother and my partner, and my great love.”

  “She was killed during the Urbans,” Eve prompted.

  “Her time came during the Urbans. The human cycle is about time, you see, and will and individual acceptance.”

  “But you turned her in,” Eve said. “You heard her talking with the man, the soldier she was in love with. Heard that she was planning to leave you. You couldn’t let her go, could you?”

  Irritation flickered over his face. “How do you know anything about that?”

  “You’re a smart guy, Bob. We’re smart guys, too. What did you do when you found out she was going to leave you?”

  “She couldn’t leave me, she had no right. We belonged together. It was a terrible betrayal, unforgivable. There was no choice, none at all, in what had to be done.”

  “What had to be done?” Feeney asked him.

  “I had to go to my father, and my grandfather, and tell them that she’d betrayed us. That I’d overheard her planning betrayals with one of the men. That she was a traitor.”

  “You made them think she was a spy. Betraying the cause.”

  He spread his hands, all reason. “It was all the same, and a great tragedy for us all. She was taken, as the soldier was, down to my grandfather’s laboratory.”

  “In the house where you took the women, here in New York. Down where you worked, where your grandfather tortured prisoners during the Urbans.”

  “I learned a great deal from my grandfather. I watched as he worked with Edwina—he insisted on it. I understood so much as I watched. It made me strong and aware. Days, it took. Longer than it took for the soldier.”

  He moistened his lips, took a small, tidy drink. “Men are weaker, my grandfather taught me. So often weaker than women. In the end, she asked for death. I looked into her eyes, and I saw all the answers, all the love, all the beauty that comes when the body and mind are stripped down to the core. I stopped time for her myself, my gift to her. She was my first, and all who’ve come after have only been reflections of her.”

  “Why did you wait so long to look for those reflections?”

  “The medication. My father was very insistent about my medication, and monitored me quite closely. The understanding, the clarity of mind needed for the work dulls with the medication.”

  “But Corrine Dagby, here in New York nine years ago, she wasn’t your first.” Eve shook her head. “Not nearly. You had to practice, to perfect. How many were there before Corrine?”

  “I learned from my grandfather, continued my education, and worked in the family business. I practiced on the dead under my grandfather’s tutelage. And I traveled. I first began serious practice nearly twenty years ago, after my father’s death. I had a great deal to learn and experience first. It took me another decade before I felt ready to begin the projects. I did document all the others, the failures, the near successes. You’ll find all that in my records.”

  “Handy.” Eve glanced over at the knock on the door. Peabody poked her head in.

  “Excuse me, Lieutenant. Can I see you just for a minute?”

  “Yeah. Keep going,” she said to Feeney, then stepped outside.

  “Roarke just tagged me. He asked if I’d tell you that he was able to finish the work he needed to deal with, and since it’s cleaned up, he was heading back down. He said he hoped to see you finish the interview.”

  “Okay. I need you and McNab to check on this bastard’s ST. No point in taking his word that he’s got the go to clock out. Check all his personal data taken from the scene, wake up his lawyers in London. His doctors, if you find their data. I want confirmatio
n he’s not stringing us on it.”

  “Why would he—”

  “Just get me confirmation, Peabody.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Eve went back in, slid into a chair as Feeney pried more details out of Lowell.

  “I meant to ask you,” she inserted, “how long Edwina Spring lasted. Her time.”

  “My grandfather employed different methods, with longer rest periods than I’ve found necessary. Regardless, she was very strong, and had a high survival instinct. It was ninety-seven hours, forty-one minutes, and eight seconds. No one has ever reached her capacity. I believe you may have done so, which is why I wanted to end with you as I’d begun with her.”

  “I wonder how long you’d last,” Eve commented, and rose as Peabody appeared at the door again.

  Eve stepped out and eased the door closed behind them. “And?”

  “I don’t get it. There’s no documentation supporting his claim. Nothing in his records, nothing in the official data banks, and McNab searched through them twice. I contacted the London lawyer—head of the firm, who was not pleased to be disturbed at home.”

  “Aw.”

  “Yeah. He did the privacy dance. I explained that his client was under arrest for multiple murders, and hauling out this ST claim to avoid trial and incarceration. Pulled the commander into it. Legal guy claimed Lowell had secured certification, but he couldn’t produce the documentation either. Went a little nuts about it. He’s spouting about holding interviews and so on, but he doesn’t have any pull in the U.S. of A.”

  “That’s all I need.”

  “But—”

  “Going to wrap this up now, Peabody. Good job.”

  Eve walked back in, closed the door in Peabody’s face. “Just to summarize,” Eve began. “You have confessed, with full understanding of your rights and obligations, having waived any counsel or representation, to the crimes heretofore documented?”

  “‘Crimes’ is your word, but yes, I have.”