by J. D. Robb
“That’s not a proper dressing.”
“I’ll get one. I was on my way to give you my report, so—”
Again, he held up a finger, turned to his com to tag his admin. “Send a medic in here for the lieutenant. She has an injury, left forearm. Knife wound.”
“Sir, I really don’t need—”
“Report.”
“Sir.” Damn it.
She reviewed the facts, the steps taken, the various avenues of investigation addressed.
“You’ve yet to find any connection between the victims.”
“No, sir, we’ve found nothing that intersects them other than the killer.”
“And you believe both victims were killed by the same individual.”
“Detective Peabody and I have just completed first interviews with Winston Dudley and Sylvester Moriarity. I believe the result of those interviews opened another avenue of investigation. I consulted with Doctor Mira on the—”
She broke off at the knock on the door.
“Come,” Whitney ordered.
Eve eyed the medic with instinctive distrust. “Commander, if I could conclude before—”
“Sit down. You can give me the rest while he works on you.”
“Carver, sir,” the medic said cheerfully. “Let’s have a look-see.”
She didn’t care for the idea of a medic named Carver, but under direct orders sat.
“Good field dressing,” Carver told her as he removed it. “Nasty little slice. We’ll fix it up.”
Several sarcastic remarks came to mind, and she swallowed them as Carver began to clean the wound she’d already damn well cleaned in the bathroom.
“There’s a connection between Dudley and Moriarity,” she began. “They’re friends, of the same social strata, and both head large corporations that came down to them through birth. Each has a—shit.”
She jerked a little, and aimed a hard glare at Carver as he replaced the pressure syringe in his kit.
“Always a little sting, but it’s better than an infection.”
“Each,” Eve said through her teeth, “has a strong alibi for the night his employee’s ID was used to lure the victim. And each has no alibi for the alternate night and time.”
“You think they’re working together? For what reason?”
“Motive may come to light as we shift angles, take a closer look at the vics with the alternate company, company head, both personally and professionally. Or it may be exactly what it appears to be on the surface. Thrill kills.”
She did her best to ignore the faint buzz of the suture wand, the vague and persistent discomfort of her skin drawing back together.
“The pattern comes through,” she continued. “The victims represent wealth, position, indulgence, the weapons unusual and showy, the kill sites public and risky. In both cases false ID was utilized, and sprang from one of the companies run by these men. An outside hack is, of course, possible, but it feels like an inside job. It plays as one.”
“And Mira’s profile?”
“They both fit. The interviews, sir? It felt like theater, in both cases. Rehearsed, with each taking a specific type of role. They’re arrogant and smug, and enjoying the fact that they’re in the middle of this. We have an additional piece of evidence from a partial image EDD was able to enhance from the Coney Island security. From it, we can estimate the height of the killer, and we were able to identify the designer and model of his shoes, and the approximate size. It’s made by Emilio Stefani—”
As he bandaged, Carver let out a low whistle. “Those’ll cost ya.”
“They retail for three thousand, to confirm Carver’s statement. Dudley bought a pair of that shoe, in the color and the size we have, in March. Only one other pair was purchased in the city, in that color and the size Detective McNab ascertained from the security image. That individual is currently in New Zealand, and at the time of the murder was on a location shoot for a major vid. That leaves Dudley.”
“That’s good, but it won’t get you an arrest warrant much less a conviction. If you’re set on this line of investigation, get more.”
“I intend to, sir.”
“You’re all set.” Carver rose. “Want a pain pop?”
“No, I don’t want a pain pop.”
“Your choice, but it’s gonna ache for a while. I can take a look at it for you tomorrow, change the dressing. You should only need me to slap some NuSkin on it by then.”
“I’m fine. It’s fine.” Relieved it was done, Eve got to her feet.
“Thank you, Carver.” Whitney sat back as the medic tapped a finger to his temple as salute and left.
“If the bayonet was military, and you’ve got the era, check to see if either of your suspects had an ancestor who served, and would have been issued the weapon, and push on the crossbow. One or both of them could be licensed.”
“If Moriarity used the bow, as I believe, he’s practiced. Even at that distance, he had to be confident in his shot, first time. The second killing runs the same. It was dead in the heart, which kept the bleeding light, reduced the spatter. They took time to work on their skills, or already had those skills.”
“Get more,” Whitney repeated. “And take care of that arm.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Recognizing the dismissal, Eve walked out.
As she made her way back to her office, she started the search on her PPC for the military connection. That was a line she’d missed, she admitted, and shouldn’t have. It might have something to do with being up for around forty hours, but reasons weren’t excuses.
Once again, the shift was changing as she passed through the bullpen. She spotted Baxter just pushing back from his desk.
“Here early, here late. What have you done with Baxter?”
“Ha ha. Just finished the case from this morning. PA dealt it down to Man One, but it’s closed. Report’s on its way to you.”
“Good enough.”
“Sent the boy home. He’s still dating the cutie in Records. But we’re clear if you need more hands on your double.”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Heard you took a little slice,” he said with a nod toward her arm.
“Word travels.”
“Oh, and I sent you the monthly eval on Trueheart. He’s going to make a good detective. Needs a little more time, but if you give me the green light, I’m going to tell him to start boning up for the exam.”
“That’s a pretty fast track, Baxter.”
“He’s quick, unless you’re talking about with women.” He grinned at that. “He’s got good instincts, and he thinks things through. Plus, the kid’s got me for a trainer. How can he lose?”
“I’ll look over the eval, think about it.”
“He’s made for Homicide,” Baxter added as Eve turned away.
She stopped. “Because?”
“He looks at a DB and sees a person. We can forget that, just see the case. You know how it is. But he doesn’t, and not just because he’s still a little green. He’s wired that way. This is his place, that’s what I’m saying, even if you figure he needs more time in uniform.”
“I’ll think it over.”
She got what she needed from her office and joined the end-of-shifters on the exodus.
She set her vehicle on auto so she could let her mind drift.
Baxter and Trueheart, she thought. Some would have seen it as an odd pairing, the slick, often brass detective and the shy, sweet-natured rookie.
She hadn’t, and that was why she’d assigned Trueheart as Baxter’s aide. She’d believed they’d complement each other, and that Baxter’s style would ripen and toughen the rook.
It had, but the partnership had also . . . softened wasn’t the word, she thought. Maybe opened was better. It had opened Baxter. He’d always been a solid cop—smart, smart-mouthed, competitive. And, in her opinion, mostly out for number one.
Trueheart had changed that so that now they were much more partners than tra
iner and aide.
They understood each other, communicated with and without words. They trusted each other. A cop couldn’t go through the door with a partner unless there was absolute trust.
A man didn’t kill with a partner unless there was absolute trust. Trust, knowledge, understanding, and a common goal.
What was the common goal?
How had they developed the trust and understanding? How and when had they decided to kill?
Friendships, she thought, took all kinds of forms, and formed for all kinds of reasons. But they stuck, didn’t they, out of genuine affection, genuine need, or the solid base of common ground?
Considering, she used the dash ’link to contact Mavis Freestone.
“Dallas! Belle and I were just talking about you!”
Since Belle was about six months old and mostly said “ga!,” Eve figured it had been a short conversation. “Yeah? Listen, I—”
“I was just telling her all the things she could be when she grows up. You know like president or goddess of all she surveys, or a vid star like Mommy, a designer like Daddy. How she could be the total of totality like Roarke or a kick-ass supercop like you.”
“There you go. I was just . . . are you wearing a crown?”
Mavis lifted a hand to the sparkly gold crown perched on a mountain of hair—currently a bold grass green. “We were playing dress-up.”
“Mavis, you’re always playing dress-up.”
Mavis laughed, a bright, happy giggle. “Being a girl is the frostiest. Oh! Oh! Look. You’ve got to see!”
Eve blinked when Mavis swung the ’link screen—in that second or two the world was a swimming blur of color and shape. Then in the middle of it, the chubby blond baby motored across the floor on all fours toward some sort of red animal. A bear, a dog, a species of undetermined origin, Eve wondered. In any case, Belle zeroed in like a blaster stream, grabbed the animal, then plopped down on her butt and chewed on it vigorously.
“Is that mag or what?” Mavis demanded. “Our Bellamia is growing up so fast.”
“Don’t cry. Jesus, Mavis.”
“It just makes me go all fountain. She’s crawling already and see how she knows just what she wants and goes for it? This morning she crawled over and picked out her pink sandals with the stars all by herself.”
“Amazing.” Maybe it was—how would she know? One thing she did know, common ground wasn’t the base of her friendship with Mavis. The grifter and the cop hadn’t had anything in common, not on the surface. Eve supposed what had cemented them was a kind of recognition.
“Where’s Leonardo?”
“Oh, he had a fitting. He’s picking up some yums on the way home.”
“With who, a regular client?”
“Ah, yeah.” Mavis bent, scooped up Belle and the red mammal. “Carrie Grace, the screen queen. You need him?”
“No. But I’m working on a case—”
“Shockamundo! Right, Bella?” Bella giggled, much like her mother, and waved the red thing in the air by its drooled-on ear.
“The thing is somebody’s killing people who provide what we’ll call fancy or exclusive services. Expensive services, and at the top of their line.”
“I don’t—oh. Oh! Like my honey bear?”
“Yeah, like your honey bear, and like you, Mavis. Just do me a favor, and don’t take any solo appointments or meetings until I close this up. Same for your honey bear. No new clients.”
“You got that squared. Our Bellarina needs her mommy and her daddy. I’ve got that gig in London at the end of next week. We were kind of thinking about adding on some hoot time.”
“Hoot time?”
“Time for having a hoot. Fun. Vacation.”
“Why don’t you do that? Go have a hoot. Let me know one way or the other.”
“Hell, I’m packed five minutes from now. Do you really think somebody could try to hurt us?”
“Probably not. But I don’t take chances with you guys.”
“Aw, I love you, too.”
“Why is that? Why do we love each other?”
“Because we are what we are, and we’re both okay with it.”
And that, Eve thought as she drove through the gates, pretty well nailed it.
When she opened the car door, the heat knocked her back on her heels. And when she had to brace a hand on the door because her head spun, she had to admit sleep had to be the first order of business. She steadied herself and walked inside to the blissful, quiet cool.
“Have you been brawling again?” Summerset wondered. “Or is this some kind of fashion statement?”
She remembered the bandage on her arm, and the lack of a jacket to conceal it. “Neither. I lost a bet and had to get your name tattooed on my arm. So I carved it out with a penknife.”
A little lame, she thought as she went upstairs, but the best she could do when her brain wanted so desperately to check out.
Two hours, she told herself. Two hours down to recharge, then she’d go at the whole thing fresh.
In the bedroom she didn’t bother to remove her weapon and harness but simply dropped facedown on the bed. She barely felt the thump on her ass when the cat landed there.
Forty minutes later, Roarke came home.
“The lieutenant’s sporting a bandage on her left forearm,” Summerset reported. “It doesn’t look serious.”
“Ah, well.”
“You need sleep.”
“I do. Block the ’links for the next couple of hours, would you? Unless it’s an emergency or her dispatch.”
“Already done.”
Roarke went up, found her crossways and facedown on the bed, a position that signaled exhaustion. From his perch on Eve’s ass, Galahad blinked.
“I’ll take over now if you’ve something else to do,” Roarke murmured. He peeled off his suit coat, his tie, his shoes. When he pulled Eve’s boots off, she didn’t budge an inch.
Much as he had that morning in her office, he lay down beside her, closed his eyes, and slept.
12
SHE HUNTED. WITH A BAYONET SHEATHED AT her side, a crossbow in her hands, she stalked her prey through richly appointed rooms, glittering light, velvet shadows.
The fragrance was drowning floral, so thick it felt like breathing blossoms. On the ornately carved desk she’d seen in Moriarity’s office, two men—hooded, stripped to the waist—turned a screaming woman on the rack.
“Can’t help you,” Eve told her. “You’re not real, anyway.”
The woman paused mid-scream to smile wearily. “Who is? What is?”
“I haven’t got time for philosophy. They’ve already picked out the next.”
“The next what? The next who? The next what?”
“Do you mind,” one of the hooded men said. “You’re interrupting the program.”
“Fine. Carry on.”
She moved into the next room, sweeping her weapon, right, left. In the sleek black-and-white drama, the bold red on the floor was blood, and on the blood floated a chauffeur’s cap.
Leaving signs, she thought. They liked leaving clues. Liked thinking they were too smart, too insulated, too rich to be caught.
She stood in the center of the room, studying it. What was missing? What had she missed?
She stepped through and into her own office at Central where her murder board dominated.
Was it there? Already there?
Limo driver, crossbow, transpo center.
LC, bayonet, amusement park.
Who, what, where.
But why?
She eased out the door, turned toward the bullpen.
But rather than the cops, the desks, the smell of bad coffee, she stepped into what she imagined to be a room in some exclusive club. Big leather chairs, a simmering fire though the heat was fierce, deep colors, paintings on the wall of high-class hunting.
Hounds and horses.
The two men sat, swirling amber-colored brandy in balloon glasses. Long, slim cigars smoked on the sil
ver tray on the table between them.
They turned to her as one, and their smiles were sneers.
“I’m sorry, you’re not a member. You’ll have to leave or face the consequences. It takes more than money to belong.”
“I know what you did, and I think I know how. But I don’t know why.”
“We don’t answer to you and your kind.”
It was Dudley who lifted the gun, an enormous silver weapon.
She heard the snap when it cocked.
She jerked, and her eyes flew open. She swore she heard—even smelled—the explosion of gunfire.
“Shh.” Beside her Roarke pulled her closer, wrapped her in. “Just a dream.”
“What’s it telling me?” she mumbled. When she tried to shift, an annoyed Galahad dug his claws into her butt. “Ow, damn it.” She maneuvered him off, and ended up face-to-face with Roarke. “Hi.”
“Again.” He trailed his fingers lightly over her wounded arm. “How?”
“Idiot with a plastic knife sharpened to a shiv, right in fucking Central. The worst was Whitney made me get a medic on it while I gave him my report.”
“Why the bastard, forcing one of his cops to have a wound tended.”
“I’d field-dressed it. Jacket’s toast.”
He snuggled her in on the remote chance they’d both just drift off again. “There’s more where that came from.”
“I don’t like Dudley or Moriarity.”
“Isn’t that handy? Neither do I, particularly.”
“Dudley comes up smarm and charm, with that ‘I just love women’ light in his eyes, and the other’s all ‘I’m a busy and important man so move this along, peon.’ And maybe that’s what they are, on top of it. Maybe it is. But under it they were smirking.”
He watched her face as she spoke, and decided that remote possibility didn’t exist. “I know that look,” he murmured. “You think they did this—together.”
“It’s a theory.” She scowled at nothing. “It’s the right theory. And not just because I don’t like them. I didn’t like that little bastard Sykes either, but I didn’t look at him for murder.”