by J. D. Robb
“It was the best I could do. I’m going to get grief for commandeering this at the scene, but my unit’s trash.”
“Nah.” Peabody yawned again, rubbed her eyes. “The uniform you snagged it from’s too much in awe. He’ll probably put a plaque in this thing. Eve Dallas sat here.”
“Give me a break.” But the idea made her snicker as they climbed out. “I want you to contact Maintenance. They don’t hate you as much as me. Yet. Get them to put my unit back in shape.”
“It’ll go quicker if I lie and put in the request under another badge number.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Use Baxter’s. You’re punchy,” she added when Peabody yawned again. “When we’re done here, take an hour’s down time, or pop some Wake-Up, whatever. I need you focused.”
“I’ll get my second wind.”
The guard at the door looked as if he’d missed his second wind altogether and was sliding under his third. His eyes were half closed, his uniform wrinkled, and he had a sleep crease deep into his right cheek.
“You’re coded in,” was all he said and lumbered back to his station.
“This place is like a tomb at night.” Peabody gave a little shudder. “Worse than the morgue.”
“We’ll liven things up.”
She didn’t expect Dickie to be happy to see her. But then again, she hadn’t expected to once again hear Mavis’s voice blasting into the air when she stepped into the main lab.
Chief Lab Tech Berenski, not so affectionately known as Dickhead, was hunched over a compu-scope, his skinny butt twitching as he sang tunelessly along.
At that moment, Eve knew she could ask for the moon and the stars. She had a solid-gold bargaining chip.
“Hey, Dickie.”
“That’s Mister Dickie to you.” He lifted his head and she saw she’d been right. Happy, he was not. His eyes were puffy, his oversized lips snarling. And, she noted, his shirt was on inside out. “Get me out of bed middle of the night. Everything’s always an emergency with you, Dallas. Everything’s priority one. Just keep off my ass. You’ll get results when I got results and not a minute before. Go somewhere and stop breathing down my neck.”
“But I get off just being near you.”
He slid his eyes up and over, studied her dubiously. Usually she came in with both feet poised to kick him in the ass. You just couldn’t trust her when she was smiling and joking around.
“You’re in a pretty chipper mood for somebody who’s got bodies piling up and the brass ready to crawl down your drawers.”
“What can I say? This music just gives me happy feet. You know Mavis has a gig coming up here next week. I heard it was sold out. Did you hear it was sold out, Peabody?”
“Yeah.” She might have been tired, but Peabody clued in quickly. “A one-night-only, too. She’s pretty hot.”
“She’s beyond hot,” Dickie said. “I got me two tickets. Pulled a few strings. Second balcony.”
“Those kind of strings make your nose bleed.” Eve examined her fingernails. “I can get two in the orchestra, with backstage passes. If I had a pal, that is.”
His head shot up, and his clever spider’s fingers gripped her arm. “Is that straight shit?”
“The straightest. If I had a pal,” she repeated, “and that pal was busting his ass to get me data I needed, I’d get him those tickets and those passes.”
Dickie’s puffy eyes went moist. “I’m your new best friend.”
“That’s so sweet. Start feeding me results, Dickie, within the hour, and those tickets are in your greedy little hands. You find me something, anything that gives me a line on this guy, and I’ll see to it Mavis plants a big, wet kiss right on your mouth.”
She patted his head, started out. At the door she glanced back saw him standing, staring, his mouth still hanging slack. “Fifty-nine minutes, Dickie. Ticktock.”
He all but leapt at his scope.
“Slick,” Peabody said as they headed out. “You are so slick.”
When they got back to Central, Eve sent Peabody off to write the initial report from the record and notes on-scene. And Eve made the miserable call to the next of kin.
It took longer than she had to spare, did little more than depress her. Bayliss’s wife had no answers for her, and if there were any buried in the shock, it would take too long to dig them out.
The widow declined the option of making a video identification of the deceased, became increasingly hysterical, until her sister took over the ’link.
Eve could hear the woman sobbing in the background as a pretty, pale-cheeked brunette came on-screen. “There’s no mistake?”
“No, there’s no mistake. I can arrange for a counselor from the local police department to come by your hotel.”
“No, no, she’ll do better with me. She’ll do better with family. Strangers only make it worse. She bought him cuff links this afternoon. God.”
The brunette shut her eyes, took a breath. She seemed to steady, which did a great deal for Eve’s peace of mind. “We’ll arrange to come back immediately. I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of my sister.”
“Contact me as soon as possible. I’ll need to speak with Ms. Bayliss again. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Eve sat back, stared at the blank screen.
Kohli, Mills, Bayliss. She took a mental step away from the evidence and tried to see the people. Cops. Though they’d all carried badges, each one had carried his differently. All, she was certain, had known their killer. The first two had known him well enough to trust him.
Especially Kohli. A late-night chat over drinks in an empty club. That was something you did with a friend. Still, he’d talked of a meeting with his wife. If he meant that literally, perhaps it had been more an associate than a friend. One he’d respected. Someone he’d felt he could ask advice. Informally. Over a beer.
Someone, she thought, from his own house. Someone, she suspected, who had some link to Ricker.
“Computer, compile roster from Precinct One two-eight, this city, including any retirees within the last two, no correction, within the last three years. Run a search and scan for any cases or investigations connected to any police officer of said precinct regarding Max Ricker. Secondary search and scan, same parameters regarding . . . what was his name, the son. Alex. Alex Ricker. Final search and scan, include any investigation wherein Canarde acted as representative during interview or court appearance.”
Working . . . multitask request of this nature will require minimum of four hours-twenty minutes to complete . . .
“Then you’d better get your ass in gear.”
Command unknown. Please rephrase command . . .
“Christ. Begin task.”
She fueled up on coffee and let the computer hum while she ducked out and into the conference room. On that unit, she brought up all the current data on Vernon. She should’ve been able to run the data on her machine while the search and scan was in progress. It was a new one, a gem compared to the whining, stuttering heap she’d been stuck with before.
But she didn’t trust her luck.
She spent an hour going over Vernon’s data. She’d be pulling him into interview shortly. She intended to hit him and hit him hard.
The coffee was wearing off and the words beginning to blur when her communicator beeped.
“Dallas?”
“I’m going to get me a big sloppy tongue kiss.”
“I never said anything about tongues,” Eve said, and made a mental note to warn Mavis to keep her mouth locked tight when Dickhead was backstage. “What have you got, Dickie?”
“Something that should make even your cold, cold heart pitty-patter. I got a little swab of Seal-It off the edge of the tub.”
“Jesus, tell me you got a print, I’ll kiss you myself.”
“Cops always want a miracle.” He hissed out a breath, deflated. “What I got is Seal-It. My guess is he used it to protect his hands and feet, but he got a little carried away with it. You know what
happens if you hit it too thick?”
“Yeah it glops some. You can knock or scrape it on something and end up leaving some behind. Damn it, Dickie, what the hell does a swab of Seal-It give me?”
“You want to hear this, or you want to mouth off? He knocked some of the seal off, probably when he was getting your guy thrust up for the last spin in the bubble tub. That’s why it’s pretty damn likely this little piece of fingernail I got, which my diligence and sharp skills located, is your killer’s.”
She held herself level. “Have you checked the DNA against Bayliss’s?”
“What do I look like? A moron?”
She opened her mouth, reminded herself she needed him, and virtuously shut it again. “Sorry, Dickie, it’s been a long night.”
“Tell me. It doesn’t match Bayliss. I got it—and I mean it’s barely a sliver, the little darling—off the underside of the tape. Got Bayliss’s hair with it. You figure that came off his arm, as that’s the location label on the evidence bag, but you don’t figure to get a piece of the dead guy’s nail on the under side of the tape, do you?”
“No, no, you don’t. Goddamn, Dickie, that’s good. That’s beautiful. I think I’m falling in love with you.”
“They all do, in the end. Got the prelim data coming through now.” He shot across the room on his favored rolling chair. “Male. Caucasian male. Can’t give you much more than that right now. You want me to try to pin down approximate age and heritage and all that happy stuff, it’s going to take time. And I ain’t got a lot of this sucker to work with. Could be I’ll find more. He broke the seal one place, might be he broke it another. So far, the only hair is from Bayliss.”
“Keep on it. Good work, Dickie.”
“Yeah. You know what, Dallas? You bring this guy in, we’ll nail him in court. Get it? Nail him.”
“Yeah, I get it. That’s a real knee-slapper.”
She cut transmission, sat back.
A sliver of a fingernail, she thought. Sometimes a man could hang for nothing more than that.
A sliver of a fingernail. Carelessness. The first small chink of it.
Thirty pieces of silver. Symbolism. Religious symbolism. If the victims were Judas, who was the Christ figure? Not the murderer, she decided as her mind drifted. Christ was the sacrifice, he was the pure. The Son. What was the phrase?
The only begotten Son.
A personal message to the primary. Conscience. The killer had a conscience, and his mistake with Kohli troubled him enough that he needed to soothe it by explaining, by justifying. And by setting up an ultimatum.
Bring down Ricker. It circled back to Ricker.
Ricker. The Son. Purgatory.
Roarke.
Business, she thought. Old business.
She was in bed, in the dark, but she wasn’t sleeping. It wasn’t safe to sleep, to let herself hide in dreams.
He was drinking, and he wasn’t alone.
She could hear words when their voices raised, and they raised often. It was her father’s voice she focused on, because he was the one who might slide into the dark with her if he didn’t drink enough. Just enough. He would come in, make a shadow in the doorway with the light hard and bright behind him.
If he was angry with the man, and not drunk enough, he would hurt her. Maybe just slaps, maybe. If she was lucky.
But if she wasn’t lucky, his hands would bruise and squeeze—and his breath, candy-scented—would begin to come fast and hard. The ragged T-shirt she wore to sleep in would be no defense. Her pleas and struggles would only make him mad, make him mad so his breathing got faster, faster, like a big engine.
Then he would put his hand over her mouth, cutting off her air, cutting off her screams as he pushed his thing into her.
“Daddy’s got something for you, little girl. Little bitch.”
In her bed she shuddered and listened.
She was not yet eight.
“I need more money. I’m the one taking the risks. I’m the one putting my ass out there.”
His voice was slurred, but not enough. Not yet enough.
“We made the deal. Do you know what happens to people who fuck with me? The last employee who tried to . . . renegotiate terms didn’t live long enough to regret it. They’re still finding small pieces of him in the East River.”
This voice was quiet; she had to strain to catch it. But he wasn’t drunk. No, no, she knew the sound of a man who’d been drinking, and this wasn’t it. Still, the tone had her shivering. There was a nasty undercurrent to the cultured voice.
“I’m not looking for trouble, Ricker.” There was a whine now, which had her cringing. If he was afraid, he’d hurt her. And he’d use his fists. “I got expenses. I got a daughter to raise.”
“I’m not interested in your personal life but in my merchandise. See that it’s delivered tomorrow night, at the appropriate time and place, you’ll get the rest of your fee.”
“It’ll be there.”
A chair scraped the floor. “For your sake—and your daughter’s—it better be. You’re a drunk. I dislike drunks. See that you’re sober tomorrow night.”
She heard footsteps, the door opening, closing. Then silence.
It was broken by the smashing of glass, of roaring oaths. In her bed she trembled and braced for the worst.
The walls shook. He was pounding his fists on them. Better than on her, was all she could think. Let him beat the walls, let him find another bottle. Please, please, let him go out to find more to drink, to find someone else to punish.
Please.
But the door of her room burst open. He stood, a shadow, big, dark, with the light bright and hard behind him.
“What’re you staring at? You been listening to my private conversations? You been poking your nose in my business.”
No. No. She didn’t speak, only shook her head fast and fierce.
“I ought to leave you here for the rats and the cops. Rats’ll chew your fingers off, and your toes. Then the cops’ll come. You know what they do to little girls who don’t mind their own?”
He lumbered to her, dragging her up by the hair so fire burst in her scalp and she cried out despite her efforts to stay quiet.
“They put them in dark holes in the ground and leave them there so bugs crawl into their ears. You wanna go into a little dark hole, little girl?”
She was crying now. She didn’t want to, but the tears simply spurted out. He slapped her. Once, twice, but it was almost absentminded, and she began to hope.
“Get your lazy ass out of bed and pack your junk. I got places to go, people to see. We’re heading south, little girl.”
He smiled then, a big, toothy grin that left his eyes wild. “Ricker thinks he scares me. Well, hell. I got the first half of his money and his goddamn drugs. We’ll see who has the last laugh. Mother fucking Max Ricker.”
As she scrambled to obey, stuffing what clothes she had into a bag, she could only think she was saved, for one night, she was saved. Thanks to a man named Max Ricker.
Eve shot out of sleep with her heart pounding, her throat dry.
Ricker. Oh God. Ricker and her father.
She gripped the arms of the chair to steady herself, to keep herself in the now. Had it been real or just a product of fatigue and imagination?
Real. When those little flashes of the past came to her, they were always real. She could see herself, a tangle of hair, huge eyes, skinny arms, huddled in the bed like an animal in a cave.
She could hear the voices.
Leaning forward, she pressed her fingers to her temples. Max Ricker had known her father. In New York. Yes, she was sure they’d been in New York that night. How long had it been before they’d landed in Dallas? How long before the night she’d found the knife in her hand when her father was raping her?
How long before the night when she’d killed him?
Long enough for the money to run low. Long enough, she realized, for Ricker to have been hunting, to have set wolves on the
trail of the man who’d stolen from him.
But she’d ended it first.
Rising, she paced the room. What had happened then didn’t apply now, and she couldn’t allow it to interfere with her investigation or influence her.
And yet, what sneering twist of fate had brought this circle around again? Ricker to her father. Ricker to Roarke.
And without question, Ricker to herself.
What choice did she have but to end it again?
chapter nineteen
She needed more coffee. She needed some sleep. Dreamless sleep. And she needed the rest of the data from the search and scan.
But something had rooted in her brain, something that had her leapfrogging over the current data and running yet another search.
She’d just begun when the summons came from The Towers.
“I don’t have time for this. Goddamn politics. I don’t have time to go running up to Tibble and giving him updates he can pass to the media.”
“Dallas, you to up to The Towers. I’ll finish the run for you,” Peabody said.
Eve wanted to do the run herself. It was personal. And that was the whole damn problem, she admitted. She’d let it get personal. “Vernon’s due in an hour. If he’s thirty seconds late, send uniforms, have him picked up. Familiarize yourself with his profile,” she added as she grabbed her jacket. “Contact Feeney. I want him and McNab in on the interview. I want the room full of cops.”
She hesitated, looked back at the computer. No point in wasting time, she reminded herself. No point in it. “Add the data I’m compiling to the file, and run a probability on our three homicides.”
“Yes, sir. On who?”
“You’ll know,” Eve said as she stalked out. “If you don’t, you’re in the wrong business.”
“I live for pressure,” Peabody muttered and sat down.
She was going to make it short, Eve told herself. And she was going to make it direct. Tibble might have to be concerned about departmental image, about politics, about the drooling and slathering in IAB, but she didn’t.