by J. D. Robb
It was time to visit Clarissa Price.
She’d barely cleared the garage when she got the call.
Absolute Purity had been achieved.
The new homicide delayed her so that she arrived at Child Services minutes before the doors shut for the day. She bullied her way past the receptionist and strode straight into Clarissa Price’s office.
There was blood on Eve’s trousers. It barely showed against the black, but she could still smell it.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant, I can’t make time for you.” Neat and pretty, Price sat at her desk. Deliberately, she shielded the data on her screen, glanced at her wrist unit. “I have to finish this report, then I have a late appointment.”
“You’ll make time.”
Price’s lips firmed, and she folded her hands. “Lieutenant, you’ve already broken faith by intruding on the Dukes family this morning, and setting a cycle in motion that will bring more grief, and almost certainly litigation, which may involve this facility and me. The very last thing I’m inclined to do is make time for you, or to tolerate you bursting into my office at the end of a very trying day.”
“Breaking faith? Is that what you call it?” Eve planted her palms on the desk, leaned in. “And what do you call what Purity’s doing? Keeping the faith? I’ve just come from another of their executions, Ms. Price. The name Nick Greene ring a bell with you? Maybe you heard about him in the course of one of your trying days. Dealt in illegals, porn vids, sex brokering, party favors that aren’t in what you’d call the mainstream. A client wanted it, Nick provided. Some of those clients’ taste ran to minors. Most of us wouldn’t call Nick Greene a real swell guy, but I can guarantee he had a couple of trying days himself just lately.”
“If that’s your way of telling me someone else has died, that’s no business of this office. And if this person has ever come up in the course of the duties performed by Child Services, until I’m served with the proper papers, I can neither confirm nor deny.”
“Sooner or later, I’m going to roll over whoever’s blocking the warrants. That’s a promise. Here’s another name that might ring a bell with you. Hannah Wade. Sixteen-year-old mixed race female. Recurrent runaway. Parents gave up the last time she took a walk. My information is she’d been on the street this time about three months. Did some unlicensed hooking, petty dealing, petty theft. Hannah’s been in trouble on and off since she was twelve. But she’s not going to cause any trouble now. She’s dead.”
Eve pulled three fresh still photos out of her evidence bag, tossed them on the desk. “She was a lovely girl, according to her ID photo, according to witnesses who’d seen her. Can’t tell by these, can you? Nobody looks lovely after they’ve been stabbed fifty, sixty times.”
Her face sickly white, Price shoved at the photos. “I don’t know her. You’ve got no right—”
“Tough looking at the results, isn’t it? Not so fucking pure when you look it in the face. I just waded through her blood. That’s tough, too. There’s a lot of blood in a teenaged girl, Clarissa. A lot of blood to splash and splatter while she tries to run away from a guy with a knife whose brain’s trying to burst out of his skull. A lot of blood to pour and pool when she falls because she can’t get away from him.”
“She . . . Greene did this to her?”
“No. Purity did this to her.” Eve shoved the photos closer to Price. “Take a good look at what they did to her. Their research obviously didn’t clue in that she’d shacked with Greene the last week or two. It didn’t identify a teenaged runaway who was flopping at his place. Sleeping in his bed while the infection started to cook in his brain. Maybe in hers, too. Autopsy will check for that.”
“I don’t believe you. I want you to leave.”
“Nothing’s pure, Price, don’t you get it? Nothing comes in or goes out of the world without a blemish. No system’s foolproof. Only when this one fails, innocent people die. She was a child. You were supposed to protect her. But you can’t protect them all. Nobody can protect them all.
“Was it your idea?” Eve asked. “Or were you recruited? Who’s in charge of Purity?”
“I don’t have to talk to you.” Price was white around the lips now, and her voice far from steady. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Dukes helped create the virus. Who else? Did Dwier pull you into it, or did you pull him?”
Price shoved back from her desk, pushed to her feet. Eve could see her hands were trembling. “Get out.”
“I’m bringing this down, and you’ll go under with it. You and Dwier. Who the hell do you think you are? Standing in judgment, executing by remote control. Then brushing off the bystanders’ deaths as victims of the blight on society. You’re the fucking blight, Clarissa. All of you self-righteous, self-appointed guardians.”
Eve snatched up Hannah Wade’s death photos. “You killed this child. And you’ll pay for it.”
“I’m—I’m calling a lawyer.” But tears were swimming in her eyes, gathering in the corners, ready to spill. “This is harassment.”
“You call this harassment?” There was no humor in Eve’s smile. It sliced like a thin-bladed axe. “Don’t get me started. You’ve got twenty-four hours to turn yourself in. You come in, you turn evidence, and I’ll push for an on planet rehabilitation facility. I come after you in twenty-four hours and one minute, you go into a concrete cage off planet. You’ll never see real daylight again.”
Eve looked at the time. “Five-twelve tomorrow. Not a minute more.”
Chapter 17
Eve knew she’d shaken Clarissa Price, and shaken her hard. She also knew Price wouldn’t be calling any lawyer unless he was Purity approved. But she would call Dwier.
She’d seen the horror on Price’s face when Price had looked at the crime scene photos of Hannah Wade. There had been shock and disbelief along with it, but it was the horror that would continue to surface. That would eat at Price until she woke screaming in the night.
To keep herself from doing the same, Eve knew she had to do what came next, take the next steps. Focus on the work. That’s what she told herself when she pinned the latest photos to the case board in her office.
She couldn’t allow her own horror to surface again, to have it slam into her belly as it had when she’d stepped into Greene’s Park Avenue condo. The horror that had taken her back, for an instant, to a small, freezing room in Dallas, where the blood had reeked and the knife, covered with it, was clutched in her hand.
Roarke came in, closed the door. Locked it.
“I need the whole team in here, except for Jamie, to update them on the latest homicides.”
“In a minute.” He crossed to her, took her shoulders, turned her to face him. Her eyes were shadowed. Some was fatigue, he knew. But most of it was the nightmare.
“I can see it in you.” He pressed his lips to her brow. “The pain from it.”
“It’s not getting in my way.”
“No, can’t have that, can we? Hold on for a minute, Eve. Just for a minute.”
His arms were already around her, and now hers wrapped around him in turn. “It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t anything like the same. But . . . it shoved me back. It shoved me right back there. I stood there, looking down at her, at him. I was so cold. I’ve seen that kind of thing before, and he hasn’t pushed me back there.”
“This was a girl. A young girl.”
“Older than I was. Twice as old as I was. She could have been me.” She let out a long breath after she said it. “That’s what I thought when I stood there. When I stood over her. If I hadn’t killed him first. If I hadn’t gotten away from him, she could’ve been me.”
Steadier, she turned her head on his shoulder, looked back at the board with clear eyes. “Do you see what they did to her?”
As much as he’d seen, as much as he’d done in his life, the image of Hannah Wade still made his blood run cold.
The girl had been hacked to pieces. The shirt and shorts she’d been wearing wer
e in tatters, and soaked red with her own blood.
“You can,” he said quietly. “You see it time and time again, and no matter how often you do, it still matters. That’s what makes you.”
“I need to do this now.” Take the step, she thought. Do the work. “I want Jamie kept busy somewhere. He’s not going to see this. I’ll take the stills of her down between briefings.”
“I’ll send him off to the pool or the game room, have Summerset monitor him to make sure he stays well away from here until you’re done.”
She nodded, stepped back. “One thing. Did I coerce, bribe, or threaten you into opening sealed files?”
“No. You asked, with some reluctance and teeth gnashing.”
She nearly managed a smile. “Except for the teeth gnashing, that’s how I saw it. If ‘requested’ had been on the list, I still would’ve said no in the IAB query. I’d’ve lied. I don’t like knowing that, but I can live with it.”
She looked back at Hannah Wade’s photo. “Yeah, I can live with it.”
When her team was assembled she ran the details for them.
“Nick Greene provided services. His employment is listed as an entertainment consultant. While he did have some straight clientele, the bulk of it ran below the surface. Illegals, vids that push code as they tend to involve minors, authentic violence, and bestiality. He also provided unlicensed companions, either sex, for those looking for a little more than the law allows or who just like the thrill of breaking it. He’s got a sheet, which indicates he often auditioned these companions personally.
“He’d been picked up for questioning a total of eight times, but never charged. His business apparently paid well. His digs were Park Avenue smooth.”
“Is he linked to Price or Dwier?” Baxter asked.
“I don’t find their names on any of the data. I have no doubt he was known to Child Services. Of the eight times he was hauled in for questioning, two involved complaints involving a minor. One of those complaints is sealed. And under that seal we’ll find one or more members of Purity.”
“Lieutenant.” Trueheart raised his hand like a kid at a school desk. “Isn’t it possible Greene was infected because of what he was alone, without any other connection to the group?”
“It’s too early for them to target that way. The first wave involves personal agendas.”
“Gotta be,” Feeney agreed. “You start up a group like this, people are risking a hell of a lot. Most aren’t going to do it just on a principle. They need some payback first. Have to have incentive for the rank and file. You’ll have some raving fanatics, too. Sociopaths who just like the idea of taking somebody out without getting bloody.”
“Disciples,” Roarke continued, “eager to follow the path. Frustrated cops, city officials, social workers, and the like who’ve seen the guilty walk away free once too often. And some, I’d think, who are simply intrigued, intellectually, at the idea of this sort of man-made selection.”
“They’ve got their first wave in place.” Eve gestured to the board. “Working quickly. My opinion is they’ve infected or set to infect their entire first wave by this time. Give their membership bulk gratification, quick and multiple successes, and keep the media hot on the story. Focusing on targets who have, in some way, victimized children is very deliberate. Even cops have a different attitude when the victims are children.”
She looked at the board again.
“According to statements from the knock-on-doors, Hannah Wade was first seen in the building ten days ago. It’s possible she was there longer as her parents haven’t seen or heard from her in three months. They didn’t bother filing a police or CS report on her this time. She was a habitual runaway. McNab, you’ll review the building’s security discs and pin down the exact date she took up residence with Greene.”
“On that.”
“I want to know how often she came and went, and who else visited Greene in the last two weeks. We have a list of her known associates from her parents. Peabody and I will run those. Baxter, see if any of the cops of record who questioned Greene will reach out. Feeney, Roarke, and the kid will continue to work to extract data from the units we’ve impounded.”
“We’re eking it out,” Feeney told her. “We should have enough to dupe the virus in another eight, ten man-hours.”
“Keep me up on that. The Green/Wade hit follows the basic pattern. Greene was holed up in his place for the last five days. Building has live doormen on eight to midnight, in three shifts. Droid handles the graveyard. None of them saw Greene come or go in that space of time. Statements indicate this was unusual for him. He generally went out most days, and at least five nights out of seven. Third shift man verifies Greene brought a girl matching Wade’s description home with him ten days ago, and that she appeared to come and go freely from that time. No one recalls seeing her exit or enter yesterday.”
She turned. “Crime scene record, screen one.”
The image that popped on was stark and grisly. The white-on-white living area was splashed with blood. Broken glass sparkled in thin rivers of it that had snaked and spurted their way over carpet. Overturned tables, a smashed entertainment screen, lush tropical plants that had provided a contrast to the white but were now uprooted set the stage for the girl’s body.
She had been flung facedown, arms and legs spread. Her hair was long and curly and had once been blonde with sapphire highlights. Some of that gold and blue still showed through the matted blood.
Eve heard her own voice detailing the scene, saw herself step into view, and crouch by the body.
“You can see the illegals scattered over the rug. What appears to have been a hospitality bowl was found, broken, in this living area. Traces of substances identified as Jazz and Erotica were still in the damaged bowl. Switch to bedroom record.”
The disc shifted, showed a large, sun-washed room done in blacks and reds. The sheets on the bed were torn off. The desk unit’s monitor faced the recorder, and read:
ABSOLUTE PURITY ACHIEVED
“A smaller bowl, undamaged, can be seen here on the dresser. Various illegal substances are still in it, and others are on the floor. It appears Greene continued to use while the symptoms of the infection manifested. There were traces of blood on the sheets, probably from a nosebleed, and traces of semen indicating he was capable of masturbating or engaging in sexual relations with Wade prior to death. Autopsy will tell us which. Wade’s body showed no evidence of recent sexual activity.”
“Where the hell is he?” Baxter asked.
“We’ll get there. Reconstruct tells me, he probably spent some time closed up in the bedroom, popping illegals, jerking off, while in the last hours, Wade entertained herself in the living area. Ate junk food, got buzzed, watched some screen. Greene wouldn’t have been good company, but hanging in a Park Avenue condo with easy access to illegals, plenty of food, lots of alcohol, was a better deal than picking up a few tricks on the street, maybe getting busted. She’d tough it out until he came around.”
Trueheart raised his hands again. Baxter simply kicked him lightly, shook his head. “Uh-uh,” he whispered. “She’s in the zone.”
“Eight transmissions came in during the last three days. Neither of them answered. They were all for Greene. She wouldn’t be interested in playing his admin. At some point this afternoon, she gets up. Maybe she wants to go out, look for some action. Maybe she goes to the bedroom, but he’s locked the door. Asshole. Her clothes are in there. How she’s supposed to go out if she can’t get her clothes, slick up some? She wants him to open the door, open the goddamn door, but he doesn’t. She kicks at it, bruises her toes. Pisses her off. Bumps it a couple times with her left hip, bruises that some, too. Fuck him.”
She could see it, almost feel the girl’s edgy frustration. All buzzed up and nowhere to go. “She heads into the kitchen, looking for something sweet. You get a sweet attack with Jazz. Gets herself some ice cream, and feeling put out, writes ASSHOLE on the counter in chocolate sa
uce.
“She turns around, and there he is. He looks bad, really bad. His nose is bleeding, his eyes are red. His breath is horrible, and the rest of him smells like a sewer. Doesn’t look like he’s changed out of his underwear in days. If he thinks she’s going to do him now, he is so wrong.”
She brought the kitchen of the condo back into her head. White and silver and red from the blood. “She says something, something a teenager thinks is clever and cutting. He hits her, hits a good one across the face. Knocks her back so she bangs her head on the AutoChef, drops her bowl of ice cream. It hurts. She hit her head hard enough to break the skin, enough to leave some skin and hair on the door of the AutoChef. It blurs her vision for a second and scares her. But not as much as seeing Greene take the knife, the big silver knife, out of the block.
“He slashes at her. She throws her hands up, and the knife slices across both her palms. She tries to run, and the blood from her hands splatters on the white wall. Then from her shoulder, probably her shoulder as he swipes at her again. He doesn’t hack. No down strokes in that room. Just those long, sweeping slashes. Left to right, right to left.
“She’s screaming, begging, crying, trying to run. Get away. But those swipes keep catching her. The back, the buttocks, the shoulders again. Through the dining alcove. He opens her up good there, hits an artery and the blood starts spurting. She’s dead then. She doesn’t know it. She still thinks she can get away. She makes it to the living area before she goes down on that white rug. Crawls a few inches. Then he starts hacking.”
“Jesus,” McNab said softly, prayerlike.
“He doesn’t know who she is, doesn’t care.” Eve’s face was stone-cold as she stared at the screen. “She’s stopped screaming, but his head won’t. He throws the goodie bowl, smashes the screen, shoves at tables, stabs the sofa a few times. He has to stop the pain. He goes back in the bedroom, but he can’t stand it. He shoves open the terrace doors. He’s still got the knife, and he looks like he’s been painted red. He screams, and screams. At the air traffic, at the street below, at his neighbor who comes out on her terrace two apartments down. She runs back in, locks herself in, and calls the cops. By then it’s all over. Bedroom terrace view,” she ordered.