by J. D. Robb
“Hold the rest of the personal. What’s Starline?”
Peabody keyed in the request for data. “They publish discs, books too, e-mags, holo-journals, the whole shot of written and electronic material.” Peabody read on, then cleared her throat and lowered her PPC. “They were established in 2015, then purchased in 2051 by Roarke Industries.”
“Closer,” Eve murmured and felt the chill dance up her spine. “Taking a step closer. He took him in here. This guy’s no hundred-pound girl, but he still didn’t put up much of a fight.”
Gently, she lifted one of Talbot’s hands, saw the raw and broken skin of his knuckles. “Got a few hits in. Why not more? He’s not as big as Yost, but he’s in good shape. We’ve got one table turned over. Two guys like this square off, they’d tear up the room.”
She had reason to know, as not long before she’d had the experience of watching two furious and well-toned men try to pound each other into meat in her home office.
“We’ve got enough on record from this angle. Let’s turn him.”
She sat back on her heels as Peabody bent down to help with the job. As they turned him, Eve felt the jags and swelling of broken ribs.
“He waited awhile to kill him,” she said when she lifted the shirt and examined the vicious discolorations over the torso. “And he fights dirty, the son of a bitch. Goggles.”
Peabody handed over the microgoggles. Through their powerful lenses, Eve studied the body. “Just here, just under the left armpit. Pressure syringe. He pulled a tranq when he got too much resistance. When Talbot went down, he wailed on him awhile. Did he wait until he was coming out of it to rape him? I bet he did. What’s the point in rape if the victim doesn’t know the violation, the humiliation?”
Her father had done that, she remembered. If he’d hit her just a little too hard and knocked her out, he’d waited. He’d always waited until she knew, until she could feel, until she broke enough to beg.
“Yeah, wake up,” she whispered. “Wake up. How’s a guy supposed to get off if you just lie there, little bitch?”
“Sir?”
“He waited,” she said, shaking it off. “Kept him alive long enough for the blood to gather into bruises, long enough for him to struggle with whatever energy he had left. Then he slips the wire over the head, finishes the job.”
She pushed the goggles back. “I’ll take over the record. Check with Feeney and McNab. See what they’ve got off the security cameras.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You got some hits in,” she murmured, carefully sealing the injured hand.
So had Darlene French, she remembered. And the others? Was that cut or bruise Yost took away from the job another kind of souvenir? A war wound? Something to admire later?
What little trinket did he take from Jonah Talbot?
With the microgoggles back in place, she examined the body for any sign of piercing. She found what she was looking for on the left scrotum.
She shuddered, remembering the quick shocking sting of her recent ear piercing. “Jesus, what’s up with people? For the record, piercing mark in left scrotum indicates victim wore or had worn some body ornamentation in this area.”
She took off the goggles, rose, and standing over the dead began to slowly scan the room.
When she heard the footsteps, she spoke with her back to the door. “Peabody, tell the sweepers to keep an eye out for a small body ornament. The kind guys hook on their balls, for reasons I don’t care to explore. Our guy likes souvenirs, and the victim’s missing his genital bauble.”
“I can’t help you with that, Lieutenant.”
She turned, looked at Roarke. Instinctively she moved forward, stepping between him and the body. “I don’t want you in here.”
“You can’t always have what you want.”
They both stepped forward, and she lifted a hand, pressed it firmly to his chest. “This is my crime scene.”
“I’m fully aware of what it is. Move aside, I won’t go any farther.”
The tone of his voice answered the question she’d yet to ask. With a little jerk around her heart she stepped to the side. “You knew him.”
“Yes.” Anger stirred with pity as he studied the body. “You have his data by now, but I’ll tell you he was a smart, ambitious man who moved up the publishing ranks quickly. He liked books. Real books. The kind you hold in your hand so you can turn the pages.”
She said nothing, but knew Roarke also liked real books. That would have been a link between him and the dead. That enjoyment of turning the page.
“He would have been editing today,” Roarke told her, and now guilt, sneaky and slick, slid in with the anger and pity. “He took one day a week at home for editing, though he could easily have passed that job on to his admin or any number of editors. As I recall, he liked to sail, and kept a small boat in a marina on Long Island. He talked of buying a weekend place there. He was seeing someone recently.”
“The girlfriend found him. I have her in another room with a uniform.”
“None of the things I’ve just told you have anything to do with why he’s dead. He’s dead because he worked for me.”
His eyes shifted back to Eve’s, and the heat in them was brutal. “That’s a line of inquiry I intend to pursue.” Below the range of the recorder, she put a hand on his. And under her fingers she could feel the vibration of violence, ruthlessly restrained.
“I need you to wait outside. I need you to let me take care of him.”
There was a moment, a bad one, where she feared he would do something, say something she would have to expunge from the record. Then his eyes cooled, a change so abrupt it brought a chill. He stepped back.
“I’ll wait” was all he said, and left her.
It was a relief that Talbot’s current girlfriend, Dana, had apparently cried herself out by the time Eve sat down to get her statement. Her eyes were red, and she continually sipped water as if the bout of tears had dehydrated her. But she was steady enough, and she was clear.
“We were supposed to have a late lunch date. He said he’d be ready for a break about two. It was Jonah’s turn to pay.”
Her lips quivered, and she bit down on the bottom one hard. “We took turns with who paid for lunch. There’s a restaurant, Polo’s, just over on Eighty-second, we both like. I don’t live far from there, and we both take Wednesdays to work at home. I’m a literary agent with Creative Outlet. That’s how we met, at an industry function a few months ago. I was late. Didn’t get there until about twenty after.”
She paused, sipped, closed her eyes briefly. She had a strong face, with more character than beauty. “Long ’link call from a client who needed some stroking. Jonah always jokes about me being late for everything. He calls it Dana time. So when I got there, and he hadn’t shown up, I was feeling pretty smug. Planned to rib him about it. Oh, God, just a minute, okay?”
“Take your time.”
This time she pressed the glass to her forehead, rolled it slowly back and forth. “About two-thirty, I thought I should give him a call, see what was going on. He didn’t answer, so I waited another fifteen minutes. He could walk from here to there in five. I was half-pissed off and half-worried. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yeah, yeah, I do.”
“I decided to walk over to his place. Kept thinking we’d run into each other on the way, and he’d be running, have all these excuses. I was deciding whether I’d be mad or let him weasel out. Then when I got here . . .”
“Did you have a key to the door?”
“What?”
Her swollen eyes had glazed. Now they focused again. Good, Eve thought. You’re doing good. You’ll get through.
“Did you have a key or code to the door?”
“No. No, I didn’t have his key or code. We hadn’t taken it quite that far yet. We both wanted to keep it loose. The modern American dating couple, each cautiously guarding his own space.”
A tear leaked out now, and she ignored it, let i
t trail down her cheek. “The door wasn’t closed, not all the way. That’s when I was more worried than pissed. I pushed the door open and called out. I kept telling myself he’d gotten involved in the book he was editing and lost track, but I started feeling scared. I nearly turned around and walked out, but I couldn’t seem to do it. I kept calling, kept going back toward his office. Then I was at the door, and I saw him. Saw Jonah. I saw him on the floor, and the blood around his head. Sorry,” she said, and quickly lowered her own between her knees.
As the dizziness passed, she saw the book on the floor. With a choked sound she picked up the battered paperback, and straightening again, smoothed the covers.
“Jonah was a story junkie. Any form. Books, discs, audio, visual. You’d find them all over his house and office, even on his boat. Can I . . . do you think I could keep this?”
“We’re going to need to keep everything on the premises, for now. When we’re done, I’ll see that it gets to you.”
“Thanks. Thanks for that. Okay.” She took a breath, and held onto the book as if it steadied her. “After I found him, I ran outside. I think I was going to keep running, but I saw one of the patrol droids, and I called it. I sat down on the steps and started to cry.”
“Did Jonah always take Wednesdays off to work at home?”
“Yes, except when he was traveling or there was a meeting scheduled he couldn’t miss.”
“Did you routinely have lunch with him on Wednesdays?”
“In the last two, two and a half months, we tried for a late afternoon lunch. I guess it was a routine. We both pretended we weren’t in any sort of routine. Keeping it loose,” she said again, and pressed tears out of her eyes.
“You were intimate?”
“We had sex, routinely.” She nearly managed a smile. “We shied away from words like intimate. But neither one of us was seeing anyone else. Not for weeks now.”
“I know it’s very personal, but could you tell me if Mr. Talbot was in the habit of wearing body ornamentation?”
“A little silver hoop, left ball. Very silly, very sexy.”
At the end of the interview, Dana had drained a second glass of water. When she got to her feet, she swayed, and Eve reached out to take her arm. “Why don’t you sit down until you’re steadier?”
“I’m all right. I really want to go home. I just want to go home.”
“A uniformed officer will take you.”
“I’d rather walk, if it’s allowed. It’s only a few blocks, and I . . . I need to walk.”
“That’s fine. We may have to talk to you again.”
“Just no more today. Please.” She walked to the door, stopped. “I think I might have been falling in love with him. I’ll never know. I’ll just never know now. That makes me so sad. Over this horrible wrench of what happened to Jonah, that makes me so sad.”
Eve sat for a moment, just sat. There was too much going on inside her head, and she needed to streamline. She had a body on its way to the morgue, a killer methodically working his way through a job, two FBI agents who wanted to snag her case. A houseguest she couldn’t quite trust and a husband who could very well be in severe jeopardy and was certainly going to cause her considerable trouble.
When Feeney walked in she was still sitting, her eyes half-closed, and her mouth in a grim line. Judging her mood, he pursed his lips, then walked over to sit on the low table in front of her. He pulled out a bag of nuts, offered it.
“You want the good news or the bad news?”
“Start with the bad. Why change the rhythm now?”
“Bad is he walked right in the front door. Guy’s got himself a master and that ain’t good.”
“A police master?”
“That, or a good simulation. We can enhance that sector of the disc back at EDD, see if we can clean it up enough to tell for sure. Point is, Dallas, he walked right up to the door like he belonged here. Slid in a master code, and strolled inside. No question it was Yost, even without the DNA the sweepers’ll pick up. Dressed spiffy—new wig, dark hair long enough to tie back in a stub at the nape. Sort of an arty look. Guess it fits in with the neighborhood.”
“He knows how to blend.”
“Carried a briefcase. Took the time to put the master into an outside pocket, secure it. Knew the house, too, walked right back to the office.”
Eve leaned forward. “Feeney, are you telling me the house cams were activated?”
“Yeah, that’s my good news.” He gave her a fierce smile. “Either Yost didn’t consider that or didn’t give a rat’s ass, but the house cams were up. I gotta figure the victim didn’t remember to shut them down when he got up this morning. We got a lot of him poking around doing usual morning stuff before he settled down to work. Audio, too. It’s a solid system.”
She got to her feet. “He didn’t think of it. Nobody keeps inside security on when they’re working at home. Who wants their every fart and scratch on record? Yost missed a step, Feeney.”
“Yeah, could be he did. We got the murder on disc, Dallas. All of it.”
“Where are you set up? I want to—” She broke off, remembering Roarke. She made some sound that might have been frustration, might have been pity, or a combination of both. “I’ll look at it at Central. Can you set us up in a conference room? I got something to take care of before I head in.”
“Yeah, he’s outside.” Feeney shifted his feet, rattled the bag of nuts, stuffed it in his pocket. “I don’t like to poke my nose in.”
“I know. I like that about you, Feeney.”
“Yeah, well. I just want to say, he’s going to be feeling some weight. Got to. You can tell him he shouldn’t, but it won’t matter. After a bit, he’s going to find his mad. Probably be pretty hot at first, then he’s the type to chill it down. Seems to me that’s not such a bad thing all around. We might be able to use Roarke in a cold temper.”
“You’re a regular philosopher today, Feeney.”
“I’m just saying, is all. Maybe you’re thinking it’d be better to keep him out of the loop.” He nodded, seeing those exact thoughts mirrored in her eyes. “That would be from the gut, and not the head. You use your head you’re going to figure out sometimes the target’s the best weapon. You can try to stand in front of this particular target, Dallas, but this one’ll knock you out of the way anyhow.”
“Is this your roundabout way of suggesting I bring him in on this? Officially?”
“It’s your case. Maybe I’m saying you should think about using all the resources available. That’s all I’m saying.”
Deciding that was more than enough, Feeney gave a little shrug and left her alone.
She started out, selecting uniforms to do a neighborhood canvass and knock on doors. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Roarke. He leaned against the rear fender of a sharp-looking sedan. Watching me, she thought. Waiting. But there was nothing of patience in the stance.
“Give me a minute here,” Eve murmured to Peabody, then crossed to him.
“I thought you were going to use the limo and driver.”
“I was. Have been. I didn’t choose to wait for them when I got the call about Jonah.”
“Who informed you?”
“I have sources. Are we going into Interview, Lieutenant?” When she said nothing, he swore softly, viciously, under his breath. “Sorry.”
“Do yourself a favor and go home for a while. Kick something down in the gym.”
He nearly smiled. “That’s your way.”
“It usually works.”
“I need to go into the office. I have a meeting. Will you be informing next of kin?”
“Yes.”
He looked away from her, toward the lovely little brownstone. And thought about what had been done inside. “I want to talk to his family myself.”
“I’ll make sure you’re contacted after the official notification.”
His eyes shifted back to hers. Feeney had been right, she thought. He was carrying the weight, but
he was also finding his mad. She could see both in his eyes.
“Tell me what you know of this, Eve. Don’t make me go around you for it.”
“I’m going into Central. After notification of next of kin and my prelim report, I will, together with my team, study and analyze all available evidence. Meanwhile, the ME and the lab will do their jobs. Dr. Mira is working up a profile. Other leads, which I’m not prepared to stand here outside a crime scene and talk about, are being actively pursued. While all this is going on, I’m fending off an FBI takeover attempt and will no doubt be ordered to release a statement to the media.”
“What leads?”
He would, she thought, latch onto that one statement. “I said I’m not prepared to discuss them at this time. Give me some space here. Give me time to think. I’m not as good as you are at balancing worry over somebody I love and the work.”
“Then I’ll answer that with something that should sound very familiar to you as it’s forever coming out of your mouth. I can take care of myself.”
She expected to feel anger, resentment, or at the least, impatience. Instead, there was only concern. He, a man who rarely lost control, was on the edge of rage. And mired in grief.
She did something she had never done in public, never done while on the job with other cops looking on. She put her arms around him, drew him close, and held him with her cheek pressed gently to his.
“I’m sorry.” She murmured it, wishing she knew more of the art of comforting. “I’m so damn sorry.”
The rage that had been spitting into his throat, the burn scorching the rim of his heart eased. He closed his eyes and let himself lean.
Through all the other miseries in his life there’d been no one to offer him the simple soothing of understanding. It swamped him, washed away the worst edge of grief, and left him steadier for it.
“I can’t get a handle on it,” he said quietly. “And I can’t see through the murk of it to any answers.”
“You will.” She eased back, skimmed her fingers through his hair. “Try to put it aside for a little while, and you will.”
“I need you with me tonight.”
“I’ll be with you tonight.”