by J. D. Robb
He looked up again. “I’ll tell you something, ma’am, when we got out, it’s the first time I could ever remember my ma going a full week without being hit. How can you blame somebody for wanting to go a week without being hit?”
“I don’t know. I think for some, violence becomes a way of life. It becomes the normal.”
“I guess that’s true. Anyway, he got in more trouble when he got out, and I guess he took on somebody meaner than he was, and that was the end of it. Katie blamed us both—blame, I guess that was her normal, too. She got into trouble at school, stole things, got drunk whenever she could, started smoking zoner, and whatever else she could get. And when she could, she lit out for California. Ma had changed our names legal, but Katie took his back. That shows you something.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
“It helps me to know her. Whatever she was, whatever she did. It helps me know her. And knowing her will help me find who killed her.”
His eyes watered up, and he struggled in silence a moment for composure. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. My ma’s grieving, but I can’t. I can’t grieve for my sister.”
“You came here, all this way, to take your sister home. That shows me something.”
“For my ma.” A single tear spilled out. “Not for Katie.”
“It doesn’t matter. You came, and you’ll take her home.”
He closed his eyes, sighed. “When my wife was carrying our first, I was so afraid. I was afraid I’d be what he was, that I’d do what he did. That it was in me—in the blood—like in Katie’s. Then I had my boy.” He turned his palms up, as if cradling an infant. “And I couldn’t understand how, how a father could—I’d cut my arm off first. I swear to God. But Katie, it was like she couldn’t be any other way. Now someone killed her, like someone killed him. Was it supposed to be like that, right from the start?”
“No. I don’t believe that. No one had the right to take her life. She made bad choices, and it’s hard for you to reconcile that. Murder’s a choice, too. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure the person who made that choice pays for it.”
“I guess that’s what I needed to hear. I guess that’s why I came to see you. I can tell my ma that, and I think it’ll comfort her some.”
“I hope it does.”
He sighed again. “I guess I better figure out what to do with myself until I leave tomorrow.”
“You’ve got two kids, right?”
“One of each, and we’re having another.”
She pulled out a card—her last—made a note to dig out more. “There’s this kid. Tiko,” she said, scribbling on the back of the card. “He sells scarves and whatever else, on this corner in Midtown I’m writing down. He’s a good kid. Go buy your wife and mother a scarf. Tell Tiko I sent you, and he’ll make you a deal. And ask him where to get your kids some souvenirs from New York at a good price. He’ll know.”
“Thank you. I’ll do that.”
“You can contact me if you need to. The information’s on the card.”
“People oughtn’t say New Yorkers are cold and rude. You’ve been kind and friendly.”
“Don’t spread that around. We New Yorkers have a rep to uphold.”
When Eve walked back into the bullpen, Peabody got up from her desk to meet her. “How’d it go?”
“He’s having a rough time. Guilty because he thinks he’s not grieving, but he is. He couldn’t be more different than Harris—like a big sturdy tree, and she’s that itchy vine that climbs up it. He gave me some insights into her.”
“Speaking of insights, Mira’s in your office.”
“Shit. I forgot about the consult.”
“She’s only been here a few minutes. She said she had an appointment in this sector, and just came by.”
“All right. Stay on top of the forensic guys. Maybe the killer got sloppy with Asner’s car. And I want the search team on the apartment to let me know if they find a drop of dried spit that wasn’t Asner’s.”
“Will do. Meanwhile, I dug on the boat angle. None of them has a boat in New York.”
“Crap.”
“But. Roundtree and Steinburger both had one back in New LA—and Julian and Matthew are both experienced sailors, as is Andrea Smythe. She and her husband have a sporting yacht in the Hamptons. So I was thinking, maybe one of them has a friend with a boat docked at the marina, and borrowed it. Or just stole one to do the dump.”
“That’s good thinking. A good angle. Work it.”
“Can I use McNab?”
“I’ve told you I don’t want to hear about your sex life.”
“Ha ha. This is going to take a lot of search and cross-referencing. He’s got skills. Oops, I forgot not to mention my sex life.”
“And again, ha ha. Ask Feeney if you want him before end of shift. Once you’re both off, it’s your party. And that’s the end of allusions to your sex life.”
She walked to her office, saw Mira standing at her skinny window.
“A dreary kind of rain,” Mira commented. “It’s going to make traffic a little slice of hell going home.”
“That balances out the easy, stress-free drive I had in this morning. I’m sorry about the delay. I’d have come to you.”
“I was nearby anyway, and Peabody told me you were talking with K.T. Harris’s brother.” She turned, pretty in her rosy suit and favored pearls. “That sort of thing is rarely easy or stress-free.”
“He’s a very decent sort of man beating himself up some because his sister wasn’t a very decent sort of woman. His father tuned the mother up regularly. Harris not only sided with him but passed on info—often false—so he had an excuse to smack the mother around, and reward the daughter for her loyalty. When the son finally got old enough to try to stop him, he ended up in the hospital. The mother finally called the cops and had the fucker put in a cage. Harris wasn’t pleased, claimed it didn’t happen even though her brother’s pissing blood in the hospital. Then claimed the brother tried to molest her, and the father protected her.”
“Lie, blame, lie to shift blame and protect your status quo.”
“Whatever it takes. She also wasn’t pleased when the mother relocated herself and the kids. It seems she made it her mission to follow in Daddy’s footsteps.”
“Taking his name professionally and legally makes a statement,” Mira agreed. “She saw her mother as weak, her father as the one with the power. She sided with power and enjoyed being rewarded. When her mother ended that cycle, it wasn’t just seen as punishment, but again, as taking her power away.”
“And she spent the rest of her life finding ways to have it and keep it. Lies, blackmail, threats. Everyone says she had talent, and she must have enjoyed the work. But that was secondary to taking control of the people around her. And I think making them fear her. Fear and respect? The same thing to her.”
“I agree. She compensated with drugs and alcohol, which probably made her feel more powerful. Did the brother indicate there was any sexual component between father and daughter?”
“No. But I’d say her father was her first obsession.”
“Young girls often fantasize about marrying their father. A benign fantasy, nonsexual, normally outgrown. Harris’s may have been more complicated. She took her power from him, from the bond of violence and betrayal. The men she became involved with later—like Matthew—became obsessions, yes, but not substitutes. She wanted to take more power from the men she involved herself with, wanted to take her father’s role and have the control. Her mother severed her father’s power by leaving him. This couldn’t happen to her. It couldn’t be accepted.”
Eve turned to the board, to the face that, oddly enough, brought nothing of Peabody to mind any longer. “The more we lay her out, the more she sounds like killer rather than victim.”
“Had she lived, she might have escalated to that. Your killer’s escalated with the second victim. More violence, more complicated planning.
The first murder was passive. This, with multiple blows, shows a rage he hadn’t felt, or perhaps admitted with Harris. There’s a pattern—taking her ’link, taking Asner’s electronics. The attempt to make Harris’s death look like an accident or misadventure, and the attempt to make Asner’s look like burglary.”
“Crappy attempts both times.”
“Also a pattern. Your killer believes himself—or herself—clever, careful, believes he can create this deception—and with Asner went to considerable time and trouble. He’s intelligent, organized, focused. There was a purpose to the killings, making the motive of this recording feel weak.”
“Oh boy, do I agree with that.”
“It could hold up with Harris’s murder if we theorize an impulsive, angry act, then a hurried cover-up. Asner’s takes this to another level.”
“I think Harris hired Asner for at least one other job, and that he found something more damaging than a couple of Hollywood types in an offscreen sex scene. It may be Marlo and Matthew used that recording as a blind—gave me that so I don’t look under it. Or, if they’re not involved in the murders, something damaging to the killer. Something the rich and famous would risk killing for.”
“You may be right. We know it fits Harris’s pathology. You’ve already discovered she held threats over several heads.”
“And again, like Marlo and Matthew, nothing worth killing Asner over, since the individuals had related those threats on record. Asner gave her something else, or the killer feared he would. Something that didn’t come out in the interviews.”
She glanced at the board. “I need to look at it all again. I told her brother she didn’t deserve to be killed.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I believe she needed to be stopped. You’d say she needed help—therapy, counseling. I lean toward she needed to be punished. No, it’s not a lean,” Eve realized, “it’s a solid stand. Bullies need to pay, but murder’s not the price. So I take that solid stand on punishment, and still stand for her.”
“I think she needed help, and punishment. She had an abusive childhood. I know you don’t see it that way,” Mira continued at Eve’s instinctive shrug, “but she did.”
“Maybe, but she found a way to make it work for her. I wonder …”
“What?”
“Sometimes I wonder what kind of family or environment Stella came from. Was she born bent—selfish, violent, heartless? Or did she get caught up in the cycle? I don’t excuse what she did or was either way. Cycles have to be broken.”
“I’m sure you know Roarke could find out.”
“What I’m not sure of is if I really want to know. Maybe. Eventually. He’s worried about me. I know he wants me to talk to you.”
“Should he be worried?”
“I don’t want him to worry.”
“That didn’t answer the question.”
Eve sighed. She found, for once, she didn’t want coffee, and got them both a bottle of water. “I dream about her. Not nightmares, not really. But strange, lucid dreams. She blames me, which would fit with the way she thought, was.”
“Do you blame you?”
Eve took a moment before answering. “Harris’s brother? Part of him feels guilty because he couldn’t love his sister, and part of him grieves for her. I don’t know if it’s guilt or just acknowledgment that part of me feels. There’s no grief. I told you that before, and it hasn’t changed. I know I’m not responsible for what happened to her. She is. McQueen is. Even my father holds more of the blame than me. But I started the chain when I took her down in Dallas, before I ever knew who she was.”
Eve studied her water bottle even as that moment flashed through her mind. That defining moment when she’d yanked a suspect around, and looked into her mother’s face.
“I started the chain when I pushed her to flip on McQueen. The chain McQueen broke when he slit her throat. I can’t and won’t pretend otherwise. I was doing my job. And other lives, innocent lives were on the line. But doing my job was a factor in her death.”
“Doing your job saved those innocent lives. The choices she made ended hers.”
“I know that. I believe that. But, I’m involved in the death of both my parents. Directly with my father as my hand held the knife. A child, self-defense, yes, all true, all logical. But …” She fisted her hand, as if around a hilt. “My hand held the knife. With her, I started the chain. It’s hard knowing that, no matter what they did to me, no matter what he’d have continued to do to me. It’s hard knowing I ended, or had a part in ending, the two people who made me.”
“They didn’t make you. They performed an act that resulted in conception, and did so with the purpose of investment and profit. They weren’t your parents, and were your mother and father only in the strictest biological terms.”
“I know that.”
“Do you? You’ve begun to call her Stella, that’s an emotional distance. But you continue to call him your father. Why is that?”
Eve stared, fumbled. “I … I don’t know.”
“It’s something to think about, something we might talk about again.” Mira rose from the visitor’s chair, laid a hand briefly on Eve’s shoulder. “Tell Roarke we talked. He may worry less.”
“Okay.”
Alone, Eve frowned at her board. Only her mother and father in the strictest biological terms. By that same benchmark, K.T. Harris was only a daughter, a sister in those same terms.
By choice, Eve decided, Harris had died no man’s child.
16
Return to the scene of the crime, Eve decided, and revisited all three locations on her way home. Where, she’d determined, she’d attack the case fresh.
At Asner’s apartment building, she talked to the gym buddy neighbor again. Shaken, but cooperative, the man couldn’t add anything relevant to his earlier statements.
She knocked on some doors. Everybody liked A, and nobody had seen anyone entering or exiting his apartment or skulking around the building the night before.
She toured his apartment, the search team’s report fresh in her mind. They hadn’t found so much as a stray data disc. Prints, yes. The victim’s, the gym buddy’s, another neighbor’s who checked out, and a licensed companion named Della McGrue. Eve intended to make another stop and have a chat with Della.
She imagined the apartment before it had been tossed.
Spare, she thought. Inexpensive furnishings, except for the monster wall screen. A guy thing, she noted. A couple of prints on the walls to spruce it up, average-looking landscapes.
Two sets of sheets, one that had been on the bed, she assumed before the killer yanked them off to check the mattress. Spare and simple wardrobe in the closet and drawers. A couple of suits—one black, one brown, a half-dozen shirts, some socks, some boxers. Three pair of shoes, four with what he’d worn when he’d had his head bashed in: one black dress, one casual scuff, and gym shoes.
Sweats, shorts, T-shirts, a couple of ties.
The same style in toiletries, nothing fancy. Nothing fancy in the goody section either, she decided. A sexual performance aid in pill form, one box of condoms—three missing.
She sat on the side of the bed. A simple guy who liked to gamble, who went to the gym in the morning, had a brew and watched his majorly big-ass screen in the evenings. Had an LC over occasionally.
A PI who didn’t mind blurring the line for work. She imagined he enjoyed it, the slightly shadowy areas. Dreamed of owning his own little casino bar somewhere warm and tropical.
A friendly sort. One who inspired grief in his neighbors at his death, genuine tears from an employee.
A. A. Asner. Had Harris picked him because his name came first in the listings? She imagined he’d gotten a lot of clients just that way.
“Should’ve taken a pass on this one,” she murmured.
As Della McGrue lived only three blocks away, Eve tried her next.
The buildings mirrored the same style, but when a puffy-eyed Della let her in,
Eve saw her apartment couldn’t be more different than Asner’s.
Color and clutter, the yippy bark of a little fluff-ball dog Della clutched to her ample breasts. A harem’s worth of pillows piled on the red sofa, fat candles, decorative bowls, sparkly glass animals covered tables.
Della stood, her blond hair a luxurious wave framing a face of tipped-up nose, baby-doll lips, and red-rimmed blue eyes. She cooed to the dog to soothe it.
“We’re both so upset,” she told Eve. “Frisky just loved A. Can we sit down? I haven’t felt good since I heard about A. I’m having a soother. Do you want one?”
“No, I’m good. Was your relationship with Mr. Asner professional?”
“Sort of, but not really.” Della cuddled the now quiet but trembling dog in one arm as she drank a pink soother from a tall glass. “If we had sex, I had to charge him. I’ve got to make a living, and A knew that. I always gave him a discount, though. But sometimes we’d just go out to dinner or a vid. Just to spend some time with a friend, without the sex. I liked him a lot.”
“I’m sorry you lost your friend.”
“He was in a risky business, I guess. I mean mostly it was insurance stuff, or divorce stuff. But detective work’s risky. But I never thought anyone would …”
“When did you last see or talk to him?”
“Just yesterday. He got a big payoff from a client, and he was going to buy into a game. He wanted a good-luck bang first. I don’t work that early in the day unless it’s a friend or a regular.”
“Did he tell you about the client?”
“Not really. Except he didn’t like her. He said she had a nasty streak, but her money was good. Oh, and she wasn’t who she said she was. Did she kill him?”
“No, but any information on or about her might help me find who did.”
“He didn’t say much. He was in such a good mood. He brought Frisky her favorite doggie treats, and he brought me chocolates. He was sweet that way.”
“Did he tell you why he was in a good mood?”