by J. D. Robb
GOOD EVENING, ROARKE. WELCOME. HOW MAY I ASSIST YOU THIS EVENING?
“We’ll be going up to the twenty-second floor. Release the elevators.”
YES, SIR. ELEVATORS ARE RELEASED. PLEASE ENJOY YOUR VISIT AND THE REST OF YOUR EVENING.
PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF I CAN BE OF ANY FURTHER ASSISTANCE.
“Don’t you get tired of everything and everyone sucking up to you?” Eve demanded.
“Why, no. Why should I?” He gestured her into the elevator as the mirrored doors opened soundlessly. “Twenty-second floor,” he ordered. “Young could very well be out, you know.”
“I’ll see for myself. There’s a reasonable chance he’s Julianna’s supplier or knows who is. I don’t walk away until I talk to him.”
She stepped off on twenty-two, turned down the hall to the second door on the right. She rang the bell, kept her badge up so it could be seen through the apartment’s security screen.
DOCTOR YOUNG IS NOT IN RESIDENCE AND HAS AUTHORIZED NO GUESTS TO ENTER HIS HOME IN HIS ABSENCE. MAY I TAKE A MESSAGE?
The second computerized response had Eve agitated. Without comment, she turned around and buzzed the apartment across the hall.
It was opened by a woman wearing a red lounging robe, holding a cocktail glass filled with some pale blue liquid. An entertainment screen roared out of the room behind her. “Police? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, ma’am. I’m sorry to disturb you. Do you know where I can find Eli Young this evening?”
“Doctor Young?” She blinked, then looked over her shoulder. “Marty, the police are here. She wants to see Doctor Young.”
“Across the hall.” The voice boomed out, over the shouted on-screen argument.
“I know he lives across the hall,” Eve said with straining patience. “He doesn’t answer his door. Can you tell me when you last saw him?”
“Oh, several days ago, I suppose.” She lifted the glass, sipped. From the glow on her face, she’d been sipping steadily for some time. “Oh, wait a minute, he’s gone out of town. Could be gone a couple weeks.”
“Did he mention where he was going?”
“No. Actually he didn’t tell me. His niece did.”
“Niece,” Eve repeated as her mind went on alert.
“Yes, she was coming out of his apartment the other day as I was coming in from shopping. A very nice young woman, too. She said that she’d just been visiting her uncle, and how pleased she was that he was going to travel back to visit her parents with her. In Ohio. Or Indiana. Or maybe it was Idaho.” She slipped again. “A nice long visit, she said.”
“What did she look like?”
“Oh, young and pretty. Brunette, short, very chic do.”
Eve pulled out her PPC, called up Julianna’s picture as Janet Drake. “Does she look familiar?”
The woman angled her head, then beamed. “Why yes! That’s Dr. Young’s niece. I was caught by surprise as I didn’t realize he had any family at all.”
“Thanks.” Eve stuck the PPC back in her pocket. “Do you ever watch the news media, ma’am?”
“News? With Marty it’s thrillers and sports, sports and thrillers. I’m lucky if I get the screen for ten minutes a day to watch the fashion report.”
“You might want to take a look at it tonight. Thanks for your help.”
Eve turned away from the woman’s puzzled look, and switched on her recorder. “I have positive ID that prime suspect, Julianna Dunne had contact with Eli Young at this location. Subject Young does not answer, and there is suspicion of foul play. I have probable cause to enter this residence and determine the well-being of Young and/or his complicity with Julianna Dunne. With me is Roarke, owner of the building. He has agreed to this procedure, and will witness same.”
“That should cover it,” Roarke commented.
Eve stepped to the door, used her master to uncode the locks. “Recorder on,” she said as she drew her weapon, a subtle warning in case Roarke had armed himself without her knowledge.
She pushed open the door to the dark.
But she didn’t need the lights to smell death.
“Christ.” She hissed it between her teeth as her mouth filled with the rank air. “We’ve got a bloater. Stay in the hall. There’s nothing you can do. Lights on full,” she ordered.
The lights flashed on, revealing a lavishly appointed living area, its privacy screens shut tight over a wall of windows. Young was on the sofa, and the fabric would never be the same.
He wore what might have been a robe, but as the gases inside him had expanded, and the bodily fluids leaked, it was hard to tell.
There was a bottle of brandy and a wineglass on the coffee table, and a snifter on the rug where his fingers, fat as sausages now, had dropped it.
“You’ll want your field kit,” Roarke said.
“Yeah.”
“And here.” He handed her a handkerchief so she could cover her mouth and nose. “Best I can do for now.”
“Thanks.” She used it, staying at the doorway until he could return with her sealant, recording the scene. She pulled her communicator out of her pocket, and called it in.
She’d had sex with him first. Perhaps they’d been lovers before, but Eve thought not. Julianna had simply used her most effective method to distract a man, and then had killed him with the very poison he’d procured for her.
It was logical, clean, cold. It was Julianna.
They would find her on the building’s security discs. Once at least before Pettibone’s murder when she’d bought her initial supply. She’d been a redhead then, Eve mused.
Then once again, a brunette, coming back to tie off the loose end.
Very likely, they would find transmissions on the victim’s ’link from her, to her. But she wouldn’t be foolish enough to have taken them at home, or on a personal ’link. They would follow it up, of course, but find the chats were made on public ’links.
He’d been dead four days. Four very nasty days. She’d strolled in, fresh from one kill, and topped herself off with another.
The body was gone now, but the air would reek of its decomposition for quite some time. Even after crews came in to clean the air, it would be there, a thin, evil underlayer.
“Lieutenant.” Peabody came up behind her. “I have the security discs.”
Absently, Eve took them. “I’ll have copies in the file. I’ll take a look at them tonight, but I don’t imagine there will be any surprises.
“She came up the day after she killed Pettibone. Sporting her new hairdo, feeling fine and frisky. He let her in. Maybe they could do more business. She told him about the kill. Who better to share it with than the man who’d sold her the weapon, a man who’d be dead before she left the apartment? It would’ve amused her to tell him. Then she seduced him.”
She stepped toward the bedroom. The linens had been stripped away, sent to the lab, but her scope had found traces of semen. “Easy enough. I’m so wired up, so energized. All those years in prison, those lonely years. I need someone to touch me. You’re the only one I can be with, the only one who knows what I’m feeling right now.”
“He should’ve known,” Peabody murmured. “Of all people, he should’ve known.”
“Her eyes would be shining, all those lies in them. He’s old enough to be her grandfather, and there she is. Young and beautiful, with that tight, smooth body. He likes them young. Younger even than she, but she’s here. She lets him do whatever he wants to her, take all the time he needs. It doesn’t matter to her. He’s already dead. Her mind’s on the next, even as she groans and writhes and pretends to get off. Afterwards, she’ll flatter him. It was wonderful. Amazing. She knows what to say, how to say it to make him feel like the fuck king of the world. She’d have researched him, too.”
She turned back into the living area. “She knows he likes brandy. She poisoned the bottle while he was in the shower, or taking a piss. Doesn’t take long. Doesn’t matter if he drinks it now, or later, but she’
d rather now so she can watch. Cozy up to him on the couch, tell him all about what and who she’s doing next. Can she have some wine? Can she stay awhile? It’s so good to have someone to talk to, to be with.
“He pours the wine, he pours the brandy. It’s his wine, his brandy. He’s not worried. She probably drinks first, while she chats, just bubbling over with energy and enthusiasm. He’d smile at her while he drinks, caught up in her, sated from the sex, wondering if he’ll be able to get it up for a second round. When he feels the poison in him, it’s too late. He’s shocked, horrified. Not him. It can’t be. But he’d see it on her face then. She’d let him see it. That cold pleasure. Tidy herself up, secure the apartment. Run into the neighbor and have a friendly conversation. Uncle Eli’s going out of town for several weeks, isn’t that nice?”
“And she walks away,” Peabody finished.
“And she walks away. Seal it up, Peabody. I’ll go in, file the report. Then I’m going home.”
Chapter 12
If the appeal of the suburbs baffled steadfast urbanite Eve Dallas, the appeal of the great flat stretches of Texas was foreign as a moonscape. Texas had cities, great, sprawling, crowded cities.
So why did anyone actually choose to live on the pancake grass of the prairie where you could see for miles, where you were surrounded by an endless spread of space?
Even so, there were towns, of course, with buildings that blocked that uneasy view, and straight-arrow roads that spilled into pretzel-curved freeways leading to and from civilization.
She could certainly understand people driving toward those towns and cities and buildings. But she’d never comprehend what pushed them to drive out into the nothingness.
“What do they get from this?” she asked Roarke as they zoomed down one of those roads. “There’s nothing here but grass and fences and four-legged animals. Really big four-legged animals,” she added as they traveled past a herd of horses with cautious suspicion.
“Yippee-ky-yay.”
She shifted that suspicious stare to Roarke only briefly. She preferred to keep close watch on the animals. Just in case.
“This guy’s loaded,” she went on, slightly mollified by the roaring clack of a helicopter that buzzed the near field. “He’s got a thriving, successful business in Dallas. But he chooses to live out here. Voluntarily. There’s something really sick about that.”
With a laugh, Roarke picked up her hand, the one that kept inching up toward her weapon, and kissed it. “There are all kinds of people in the world.”
“Yeah, and most of them are crazy. Jesus, are those cows? Cows shouldn’t be that big, should they? It’s unnatural.”
“Just think steaks, darling.”
“Uh-uh, that’s just creepy. Are you sure this is the right way? This can’t be right. There’s nothing out here.”
“May I point out the several houses we’re passing along this route?”
“Yeah, but I think the cows must live in them.” She had a flash of bovine activities inside the low-slung houses. Watching some screen, having cow parties, making cow love in four-poster beds. And shuddered. “God, that’s creepy, too. I hate the country.”
Roarke glanced down at the in-dash navigation screen. He’d worn jeans and a white T-shirt, and a pair of sleek, black sunshades. It was a casual look for him, even simple. But he still looked like city. Rich city, Eve mused.
“We should be there in a few minutes,” he told her. “There’s a bit of civilization up ahead.”
“Where?” She risked taking her attention away from the cows, looked through the windshield and saw the spread of a town. Buildings, fuel stations, shops, restaurants, more houses. Her gut loosened a little. “Okay, that’s good.”
“But we’re not going through there. We veer off here.” So saying, he turned off the wide ribbon of road onto a narrow offshoot. One that, in Eve’s opinion, brought them entirely too close for comfort to those strange, flat grassy fields.
“Those fences don’t look all that strong.”
“If there’s a stampede, we’ll outrun them.”
She moistened her lips, swallowed. “I bet you think that’s funny.”
But she was somewhat mollified as there were other vehicles on the road. Other cars, trucks, long sleek trailers, and a few topless power Jeeps.
Buildings began to spring up. Not houses, Eve thought. Farm buildings or ranch buildings. Whatever. Barns and sheds and animal shelters. Stables, she supposed. Granaries or whatever they were. Silos, and what kind of word was that? It looked like a painting with all that grass, the crops, the bored-faced cattle, and the strong reds and whites of the outbuildings.
“What’s that guy doing?” she demanded, inching up in the seat to stare beyond Roarke’s profile.
“He appears to be riding a horse.”
“Yeah, yeah, I can see that. But why?”
“I have no idea. Perhaps he wants to.”
“See?” To punctuate it, she slapped Roarke’s shoulder. “Sick. People are just sick.” She let out a little breath of relief when she spotted the ranch house.
It was enormous, sprawling all over hell and back on one story. Portions of it were painted that same bright white and others looked to be fashioned from stones cobbled all together on a whim. There were sections built of glass, and she nearly shuddered at the idea of standing there looking out at field after field. And having what was in those fields looking in at her.
There were smaller fenced areas, and while there were horses in them, there was also considerable human activity. That relieved her, even if those humans were all wearing cowboy hats.
She saw a helipad and a number of vehicles, many of which she couldn’t begin to identify. She had to assume they were used for some sort of rural labor.
They drove through enormous stone pillars topped by rearing horses.
“Okay, he knows we’re coming, and he’s not happy about it,” she began. “He’s bound to be hostile, defensive, and uncooperative. But he’s also smart enough to know I can complicate his life, dredge up the past, and press the local cops to add some pressure. He doesn’t want all this crap uncovered in his backyard. Doing this on his turf lets him feel more in control.”
“And how long are you going to let him feel that way?”
“We’ll see how it goes.” She stepped out of the car and nearly lost her breath in the heat.
A baking heat, she realized, very unlike the steambath of a New York City summer. She smelled grass and what had to be manure. “What’s that clacking sound?” she asked Roarke.
“I’m not altogether sure. I think it might be chickens.”
“Christ almighty. Chickens. If you tell me to think omelettes, I’ll have to hit you.”
“Understood.” He walked up the pathway beside her. He knew her well enough to be certain her preoccupation with the local scene helped to keep her mind off her fears and worries. She’d yet to say anything about heading into Dallas itself, or what she could or would do there.
The doors were ten feet wide and crowned by the bleached-out horns of some sort of animal. Roarke pondered it, and the type of personality that enjoyed decorating with dead animals, while Eve rang the bell.
Moments later, the image of the old American West yanked open the door.
He was weathered as leather, tall as a mountain, wide as a river. He wore boots with toes sharp as stilettos and crusted with dirt. His jeans were dark indigo and looked stiff enough to stand tall without him while his shirt was a faded red-and-white check. His hair was a dull silver, slicked back from a hard and ruddy face, mapped with lines, toughened in a scowl.
When he spoke, his voice rattled like loose gravel in a very deep bucket. “You the city cops?”
“Lieutenant Dallas.” Eve offered her badge. “This is my field assistant—”
“I know you.” He pointed a finger, thick as a soy dog on his ham of a hand, at Roarke. “Roarke. You’re Roarke, and you’re no cop.”
“Praise be,” Roa
rke acknowledged. “I happen to be married to one.”
“Yeah.” He nodded as he considered Eve. “Recognize you now, too. Big city New York cop.” He looked like he might spit, but restrained himself. “Jake T. Parker, and I don’t have to talk to you. Fact is, my lawyers advise against it.”
“You’re not now under any legal obligation to speak with me, Mr. Parker. But you can be put under that legal obligation, and I’m sure your lawyers advised you of that as well.”
He hooked his wide thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans. His scarred belt creaked at the movement. “Take you some little while to pull that off, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, it would. I wonder how many more people Julianna can kill before the lawyers wrangle that out? You care to speculate?”
“I’ve got nothing to do with her, haven’t in more than a dozen years. I made my peace there, and I don’t need some city-girl cop from New York coming here and throwing that dirt in my face.”
“I’m not here to throw dirt, Mr. Parker. I’m not here to judge you. I’m here to learn anything that might help me stop Julianna from taking more lives. One of them might be yours.”
“Shit. Pardon my French,” he added. “That girl’s nothing but a ghost to me, and I’m less than that to her.”
Eve pulled stills out of her field bag. “This is Walter Pettibone. He was nothing to her, either. And Henry Mouton. They had families, Mr. Parker. They had lives. She destroyed all that.”
He looked at the stills, looked away. “Never should’ve let her out of prison.”
“You won’t get an argument there from me. I helped put her in a cage once before. I’m asking you to help me do it again.”
“I got a life of my own. It took me a long time to get it back so I could wake up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror.”
He took a dirt-brown Stetson hat from a stand with pegs just inside the door, fit it on his head. Then he stepped out, shut the door at his back. “I don’t want this in my house. I’m sorry not to be hospitable, but I don’t want her in my house. We’ll talk outside. I want to take a look at the stock anyhow.”