The In Death Collection, Books 11-15

by J. D. Robb

  “Yes, sir. We have a medical supervising him—” Though she wasn’t sure how she’d explain Summerset if pressed. “We felt he’d be more comfortable in familiar surroundings rather than the hospital.”

  “And his status this afternoon?”

  “There’s been no change at this time.”

  “I see.” Tibble remained seated at his desk. “You’ll keep this office informed in that area.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And the status of your investigation.”

  “I’m pursuing possible connections to the victims that may lead to the identity of members of the group calling themselves The Purity Seekers. Captain Feeney and his e-team are working on devising a shield so that the infected units can be examined and analyzed with reasonable safety. Medical and laboratory tests continue to be run on the victims in an attempt to ascertain the nature and cause of the brain damage that resulted in their deaths.”

  “ ‘Reasonable safety.’ ” Jenna Franco lifted a hand—not like someone asking permission to speak, but as one accustomed to being heard. “What, precisely, does that mean?”

  “I’m not an e-man, Ms. Franco. That leg of this investigation is in Captain Feeney’s hands. All efforts are concentrated on devising a shield for maximum safety to the operator.”

  “Lieutenant, we can’t have another New York City police officer implode, and potentially kill or injure fellow officers or civilians. I can’t go back to the mayor or the media with the term ‘reasonable safety.’ ”

  “Ms. Franco, police officers go on shift every morning with no more than reasonable safety.”

  “They don’t usually fire on their squad room and take their commanding officer hostage.”

  “No, ma’am, and Detective Halloway’s commanding officer is in charge of the team who is working with all possible speed to ensure that doesn’t reoccur.”

  “If I may.” Chang’s hands remained neatly folded; his face continued to hold a warm and pleasant expression. “It could be said that the police are utilizing all resources in this investigation to identify the source of the alleged electronic infection. The media will, of course, consult electronic experts to help them formulate their questions and to generate discussion and debate on-screen. We will, naturally, do the same.”

  “And when we discuss and debate on-screen,” Eve said tightly, “we give this terrorist group exactly what they want. Attention, screen time. Legitimacy.”

  “The discussion and debate and questions will take place regardless,” Chang told her. “It’s essential that we control the tone.”

  “What’s essential is that Purity be stopped.”

  “That, Lieutenant, we can happily agree is your job, not mine.”

  “Lieutenant.” Whitney didn’t raise his voice, but the steel tone of command in it stopped whatever comment Eve was about to make. “The media machine is already rolling. We get on board, or it runs us down.”

  “Understood, Commander. My team and I will follow the departmental directives for media contact. We’ll adhere to the official statement.”

  “That’s not going to be enough,” Franco put in. “You’re a high-profile cop, Lieutenant, on a high-profile case. The head of EDD and another of your team members were directly involved in the debacle at Central yesterday.”

  “Deputy Mayor Franco, my lieutenant put her life on the line to defuse that situation.”

  “Exactly my point, Commander. And due to her key involvement, the public interest in her personal and professional life, we need her on-screen as often as can be managed.”

  “No.”

  “Lieutenant.”

  She forced herself to speak calmly when she turned at Tibble’s voice. “No, sir, I will not take my time and energies away from an investigation to play department mouthpiece. I will not play a part in giving a group responsible for the death of a fellow officer and the possible paralysis of another the attention they seek. I should be out in the field now, not standing here debating the ramifications of the term ‘reasonable safety.’ ”

  “You’ve used the media when it’s suited you, Lieutenant Dallas.”

  “Yes, sir. And when I have I’ve done so using my own words, not spouting off scripted pap. And my personal life is just that, and has nothing to do with this investigation.”

  “The expert civilian consultant on your team has a great deal to do with your personal life. Lieutenant,” Tibble continued, “I sympathize with your position, and with your desire for privacy. But if we don’t play this game well, Purity will not only get their media attention, but will continue to build support. Mr. Chang has the results of polls.”

  “Polls?” Eve couldn’t keep the furious disgust out of her voice. “We took polls?”

  “Two of the media services had polls generated before eleven this morning.” Chang took a memo book from his pocket. “The mayor’s office conducted its own, for internal purposes. When asked if they considered the group known as The Purity Seekers to be a terrorist organization, fifty-eight percent of the respondents said no. When asked if they were concerned for their personal safety, forty-three percent responded yes. Naturally, we would like to see both those numbers decrease.”

  “You amaze me,” Eve murmured.

  “The facts are these,” Tibble said. “A strong majority of the public perceive this group exactly as they wish to be perceived. Additional polls show little to no sympathy for Cogburn and Fitzhugh, nor regret for the manner of their deaths. It’s neither possible nor politically prudent to attempt to generate sympathy for those individuals. The system is what must be defended.”

  “And the system must have a face,” Chang added. “It must be personalized.”

  “This is a fine line, Lieutenant,” Tibble continued. “If this group is publicly damned with the wrong tone, there could be a panic. Businesses shutting down in fear of using their electronics. Individuals afraid to turn on their data centers. People flooding into health centers and emergency centers because they have a headache or a damn nosebleed.”

  “We need people and industry to remain calm and secure,” Franco put in. “It’s essential we show that we’re controlling this situation.”

  “Purity hasn’t, thus far, targeted anyone outside a specific profile,” Eve began.

  “Precisely.” Franco nodded. “And that, Lieutenant Dallas, is the key message the mayor, all of us, want to send. The family in the downtown loft has no cause for alarm. The midtown café can continue business as usual. Purity’s agenda does not include them.”

  “So far.”

  Franco’s eyebrows lifted. “Do you have reason to believe otherwise?”

  “I have reason to believe vigilantes grow to like their work. That power, unchecked, will corrupt its own agenda. That violence, given impunity and approval, breeds more.”

  “This is good,” Chang said, pulling out his notebook again. “With adjustments—”

  “Don’t mess with me, Chang, or you’ll be eating that book.”

  “Dallas.” Whitney got to his feet. “We’re all on the same side. Tools and methods may vary, but the end goal is the same for all of us. Forget the polls and the politics for a moment. You know enough about human nature to understand that without a solid spin, people will begin to see this group as heroes. They’ll see criminals, predators who slithered through the system’s fingers finally meeting justice. Tonight our children are safe because someone took a stand.”

  “Justice doesn’t hide behind anonymity. It doesn’t operate without rules of conduct.”

  “That, in a nutshell, is the point. Press conference at sixteen-thirty, Central’s media center. Be there at sixteen hundred to be briefed and prepped.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We all have our jobs, Lieutenant.” Franco reached down, picked up a sleek leather briefcase. “And portions of those jobs are distasteful or annoying. But at the core, it’s the safety of this city that concerns all of us.”

  “Agreed, ma’am. Fortunat
ely my concern isn’t contingent on polls or votes.”

  Franco’s lips curved. “I was told you were a hard-ass. Good. So am I. Chief Tibble, Commander Whitney.” She gestured to Chang, then strode out on her snazzy shoes.

  “Lieutenant.” Tibble remained in his position of power at the desk. “You will be required to work with Deputy Mayor Franco on this situation. I expect you to cooperate with her and the mayor’s office, and to afford her the respect that office deserves. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The potential for crisis here is layered. Public safety, public trust, financial and political ramifications. Those must all be addressed. The damage to city revenue, to individual businesses, to personal incomes could be serious if the tourist trade decreases because people are afraid to come into the city and use a public data center, if employees refuse to come into work, or use their home offices. If parents refuse to send their children to school or utilize their home-school options out of fear the educational units are infected. The media can swing this sort of thing on a dime. And if you believe this is an area beyond your concern, I’d suggest you ask your husband’s opinion.”

  “My husband’s opinion doesn’t affect how I carry out my duty, Chief Tibble, nor does it affect the thrust of my investigations.”

  “Any married individual on or off planet knows that statement is bullshit, Lieutenant. At this point, you don’t have the luxury of ignoring the politics or the media. Welcome to my world.” He sat back studying her carefully blank face. “Sometimes, Dallas, you make me tired.”

  That cracked the mask enough to have her blink at him, once. Slowly. “I apologize, sir.”

  “No, you don’t.” He waved a hand at her, then rubbed it over his face. “Now, give me the details of your investigation you didn’t want to divulge in front of Franco and Chang.”

  She started to fill him in. He interrupted once. “A social worker and a cop? How many other ways do you intend to complicate my life?”

  “I’ve yet to speak with Detective Dwier, sir, and have no direct evidence linking him to the organization. But, as I suspect civilian parents of abused minors may also be involved, I’d say the complication level will rise fairly high.”

  “It’ll leak. One of your interviews will go to the media. We’ll need damage control.”

  “Chief Tibble—” When her communicator beeped, she had just enough control of her own to realize she’d just been saved by the bell. “With your permission, sir?”

  “Answer it.”

  “Dallas.”

  “Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, possible priority homicide, 5151 Riverside Drive. Victim identified as Mary Ellen George. See uniformed officer on-scene.”

  “Acknowledged.” Her face was blank again when she looked back at Tibble. “Things just got more complicated, or more simple, depending on your point of view.”

  He sighed. “Go.”

  Tibble pushed to his feet as she strode out. “Fifty that she uses this to ditch the press conference.”

  “I look like a sucker?” Whitney shook his head. “I’ll see she’s there. One way or another.”

  Chapter 10

  It had been a long time since Roarke had worked a con as basic as the coin toss. Still all it took was quick fingers and a bit of misdirection.

  That boyhood skill had come back to him, smoothly, when Feeney had called heads.

  A snatch, a light rub of the thumb over the engraving of the coin to determine which end you needed up, and tails slapped onto the back of his hand.

  It was all done fast, and if he did say so himself, very well indeed. Feeney might have been annoyed and suspicious at the results, but a deal was a deal.

  Even when the game was fixed.

  “We could give it another pass or two,” Feeney said when they all stood in the temporary lab with Roarke holding the filter disc. “Could be we’d—”

  “Don’t be such a mother,” Roarke said mildly.

  “My life won’t be worth piss something happens to you on my watch.”

  “Well now, cheer up. Had the toss gone the other way, I could say just the same. She’d have my bones for breakfast.”

  “About that toss. . .” Feeney hadn’t seen anything hinky about it, but you could never be sure with Roarke. “I say we do it again, but let Baxter here do the flip.”

  “I could take that to mean you’re calling me a cheat—though you examined the coin yourself, made the choice of heads without prompting. But, seeing as we’ve a long and friendly history between us, I’ll just take it as concern. The deed’s done, Feeney, and no Irishman welshes on a bet.”

  “Don’t put me in the middle of this.” Baxter kept his hands safely in his pockets. “Whatever the hell happens, Dallas is going to be pissed. So let’s do it before she starts busting our balls.”

  “We get the diagnostic run, we keep our balls.” Jamie was in heaven. Not only were they about to do something beyond chilled, but he was standing around talking the trash with cops. “Infected unit’s a snail, and the filter program’s complex. It’s going to take ninety-three seconds to download the shield,” he said to Roarke. “If you start the diagnostic while it’s loading, you’d—”

  “Jamie, are you under the impression that this is, so to speak, my first day on the job?”

  “No, but while the diagnostic’s running, you want to upload the results onto—”

  “Go away.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Jamie, lad.” Feeney laid a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll be monitoring from outside. You can badger the man from there. Ten minutes,” Feeney said to Roarke. “Not a second more.”

  “I’ll be running a time sequence.”

  “No, ten minutes, not a second more.” His jaw went firm as stone. “I want your word on it.”

  “All right. You have it.”

  As satisfied as he could get, Feeney nodded. “If we see anything worrying in the medical readouts, you’ll shut it down.”

  “If you’re thinking I’m willing to have my brains come spilling out my ears, let me reassure you.” Then he flashed a grin. “But if such a thing should happen, I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing Eve will be sending the lot of you to hell right behind me.”

  “She’ll go easy on me.” McNab worked up a smile. “I’m handicapped.”

  “Don’t count on it. Now if you’d all get out, we could get this done before we’re all old and gray.”

  “You’ll wait until I give you the go-ahead. I want a check of your medicals first.” Feeney stopped at the door, glanced back. “Slainte.”

  “You can say that again, over a couple of Guinness in just a bit.”

  When they’d gone out, Roarke engaged the door locks. He didn’t want his associates to panic and burst in on him again. Alone, he unbuttoned his shirt, then attached the sensors that would monitor him.

  Lost your mind, haven’t you? he thought. Not just working for cops, which is bad enough, but risking your bloody brains for them.

  Life was a damn strange business.

  He wouldn’t lose his brains, or his life, like a lab rat, if it came to that.

  He sat, faced Cogburn’s machine, and felt under the work counter, let his fingers play lightly over the weapon he’d secured there.

  He’d chosen the nine-millimeter Beretta semiautomatic from his collection. It had been his first gun, acquired at the age of nineteen from the man who’d been pointing it at his head. A banned weapon, of course, even then. But smugglers weren’t so picky about such things.

  It seemed to him, should things go wrong, a properly ironic cycle if he ended it all by doing himself with the very weapon that had started his collection, and had helped him on the road to riches.

  He didn’t anticipate anything going wrong. They’d taken all possible precautions, and those who had taken them were some of the best e-men—and boy—available. But there was always a chance, however slim.

  If push came to shove, he would decide
his own fate.

  Then he took his hand away from the cold steel, and put it out of his mind.

  “Going to run a check on your vital signs.”

  Roarke glanced up at the wall screen, nodded at Feeney. “Fine. Cut the audio in there when you’re done. I don’t want all of you nattering at me when I’m working.”

  He slid his hand into his pocket, rubbed a small gray button between his fingers for luck. For love. It had fallen off the jacket of the very unflattering suit Eve had worn the first time he’d seen her.

  “You’re good to go,” Feeney told him.

  “Booting up then. Start the clock.”

  Mary Ellen George had, thanks to the royalties on the book she’d written on her arrest, trial, and acquittal, and the speaking fees she commanded, lived a very comfortable life in her West Side apartment.

  She’d died there, as well, but it hadn’t been comfortable.

  Unlike Cogburn and Fitzhugh, the signs of her illness weren’t violent nor were they destructive. It was apparent she’d taken herself off to bed, dosed herself with over-the-counter medication for several days—then with strong, street versions—during which time she had blocked her ’link calls and had refused to answer her door.

  She’d taken a laptop unit into bed with her, essentially destroying herself, Eve thought, as she tried to heal.

  One of her last acts had been to place a hysterical transmission to a former lover, begging him for help, weeping about the screaming in her head.

  Her last act had been to fashion her silk sheets into a noose and hang herself.

  She wore only a white nightgown, obscenely soiled. Her hair was matted, her nails bitten down below the quick. There were tissues and washcloths, stained with blood, littering the bedside table.

  Trying to stop the nosebleeds, Eve concluded, and picked up a medication bottle with sealed fingers. Trying to treat a brain on the point of exploding with ten-dollar blockers.

  The laptop was still on the bed, its stark message filling the screen.

  ABSOLUTE PURITY ACHIEVED

  “Get this screen on record, Peabody. Victim: George, Mary Ellen, female, Caucasian, age forty-two. Body discovered in victim’s apartment at fourteen hundred hours, sixteen minutes by building manager, Officer Debrah Banker and Hippel, Jay, who placed the nine-eleven.”