by J. D. Robb
“An interesting theory.” Eve had had enough. A headache was beginning to brew behind her eyes, and the pasta wasn’t going to sit well. She rose, then leaned over the table close to Nadine. “I’ll give you another one, formulated by a cop. Do you want to know who your source is, Nadine?”
Her eyes glittered. “Damn right.”
“Your source is the killer.” Eve paused, watching the light go out of Nadine’s eyes. “I’d watch my step if I were you, friend.”
Eve strode off, heading around behind the stage. She hoped Mavis was in the narrow cubicle that served as a dressing room. Just then, she needed a pal.
Eve found her, huddled under a blanket and sneezing into a tattered tissue.
“Got a fucking cold.” Mavis glared out of puffy eyes and blew like a bullhorn. “I had to be crazy, wearing nothing but goddamn paint for twelve hours in goddamn lousy February.”
Warily, Eve kept her distance. “Are you taking anything?”
“I’m taking everything.” She gestured to a tabletop littered with over-the-counter drugs and touch-up cosmetics. “It’s a fucking pharmaceutical conspiracy, Eve. We’ve wiped out just about every known plague, disease, and infection. Oh, we come up with a new one every now and again, to give the researchers something to do. But none of these bright-eyed medical types, none of the medi-computers can figure out how to cure the common fucking cold. You know why?”
Even couldn’t stop the smile. She waited patiently until Mavis finished another bout of explosive sneezing. “Why?”
“Because the pharmaceutical companies need to sell drugs. You know what a damn sinus tab costs? You can get anticancer injections cheaper. I swear it.”
“You can go to the doctor, get a prescription to eradicate the symptoms.”
“I got that, too. Damn stuff’s only good for eight hours, and I’ve got a performance tonight. I have to wait until seven o’clock to take it.”
“You should be home in bed.”
“They’re exterminating the building. Some wise guy said he saw a cockroach.” She sneezed again, then peered owlishly at Eve from under unpainted lashes. “What are you doing here?”
“I had some business. Look, get some rest. I’ll see you later.”
“No, stick around. I’m boring myself.” She reached for a bottle of some nasty looking pink liquid and glugged it down. “Hey, nice shirt. You get a bonus or something?”
“Or something.”
“So, sit down. I was going to call you, but I’ve been too busy hacking up my lungs. That was Roarke who came in our fine establishment last night, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was Roarke.”
“I almost passed out when he walked up to your table. What’s the story? You helping him with some security or something?”
“I slept with him,” Eve blurted out, and Mavis responded with a fit of helpless choking.
“You—Roarke.” Eyes watering, she reached for more tissue. “Jesus, Eve. Jesus Christ, you never sleep with anybody. And you’re telling me you slept with Roarke?”
“That’s not precisely accurate. We didn’t sleep.”
Mavis let out a moan. “You didn’t sleep. How long?”
Eve jerked a shoulder. “I don’t know. I stayed the night. Eight, nine hours, I guess.”
“Hours.” Mavis shuddered delicately. “And you just kept going.”
“Pretty much.”
“Is he good? Stupid question,” she said quickly. “You wouldn’t have stayed otherwise. Wow, Eve, what got into you? Besides his incredibly energetic cock?”
“I don’t know. It was stupid.” She dragged her hands through her hair. “It’s never been like that for me before. I didn’t think it could—that I could. It’s just never been important, then all of a sudden—shit.”
“Honey.” Mavis snaked a hand from under her blanket and took Eve’s tensed fingers. “You’ve been blocking off normal needs all your life because of things you barely remember. Somebody just found a way to get through. You should be happy.”
“It puts him in the pilot’s seat, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, that’s bullshit,” Mavis interrupted before Eve could go on. “Sex doesn’t have to be a power trip. It sure as hell doesn’t have to be a punishment. It’s supposed to be fun. And now and again, if you’re lucky, it gets to be special.”
“Maybe.” She closed her eyes. “Oh God, Mavis, my career’s on the line.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Roarke’s involved in a case I’m working on.”
“Oh shit.” She had to break off and blow again. “You’re not going to have to bust him for something, are you?”
“No.” Then more emphatically. “No. But if I don’t tie it all up fast, with a nice, tidy bow, I’ll be out. I’ll be finished. Somebody’s using me, Mavis.” Her eyes sharpened again. “They’re clearing the path in one direction, tossing roadblocks in the other. I don’t know why. If I don’t find out, it’s going to cost me everything I have.”
“Then you’re going to have to find out, aren’t you?” Mavis squeezed Eve’s fingers.
She would find out, Eve promised herself. It was after ten P.M. when she let herself into the lobby of her building. If she didn’t want to think just then, it wasn’t a crime. She’d had to swallow a reprimand from the chief’s office for veering from the official statement during the press conference.
The commander’s unofficial support didn’t quite ease the sting.
Once she was inside her apartment she checked her E-mail. She knew it was foolish, this nagging hope that she’d find a message from Roarke.
There wasn’t one. But what she found had her flesh crawling with ice.
The video message was unnamed, sent from a public access. The little girl. Her dead father. The blood.
Eve recognized the angles of the official department record, the one taken to document the site of murder and justified termination.
The audio came over it. A playback of her auto-record of the child’s screams. Her beating on the door. The warning, and all the horror that followed.
“You bastard,” she whispered. “You’re not going to get to me with this. You’re not going to use that baby to get to me.”
But her fingers shook as she ejected the disc. And she jolted when her intercom rang.
“Who is it?”
“Hennessy from apartment two-D.” The pale, earnest face of her downstairs neighbor flicked on screen. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant Dallas. I didn’t know what to do exactly. We’ve got trouble down here in the Finestein apartment.”
Eve sighed and let the image of the elderly couple flip into her mind. Quiet, friendly, television addicts. “What’s the problem?”
“Mr. Finestein’s dead, lieutenant. Keeled over in the kitchen while his wife was out playing mah-jongg with friends. I thought maybe you could come down.”
“Yeah.” She sighed again. “I’ll be there. Don’t touch anything, Mr. Hennessy, and try to keep people out of the way.” Out of habit she called dispatch, reported an unattended death and her presence on the scene.
She found the apartment quiet, with Mrs. Finestein sitting on the living room sofa with her tiny white hands folded in her lap. Her hair was white as well, a snowfall around a face that was beginning to line despite antiaging creams and treatments.
The old woman smiled gently at Eve.
“I’m so sorry to trouble you, dear.”
“It’s okay. Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” Her soft blue eyes stayed on Eve’s. “It was our weekly game, the girls and mine. When I got home, I found him in the kitchen. He’d been eating a custard pie. Joe was overly fond of sweets.”
She looked over at Hennessy, who stood, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I didn’t know quite what to do, and went knocking on Mr. Hennessy’s door.”
“That’s fine. If you’d stay with her for a minute please,” she said to Mr. Hennessy.
The apartment wa
s set up similarly to her own. It was meticulously neat, despite the abundance of knickknacks and memorabilia.
At the kitchen table with its centerpiece of china flowers, Joe Finestein had lost his life, and considerable dignity.
His head was slumped, half in, half out of a fluffy custard pie. Eve checked for a pulse, found none. His skin had cooled considerably. At a guess, she put his death at one-fifteen, give or take a couple of hours.
“Joseph Finestein,” she recited dutifully. “Male, approximately one hundred and fifteen years of age. No signs of forced entry, no signs of violence. There are no marks on the body.”
She leaned closer, looked into Joe’s surprised and staring eyes, sniffed the pie. After finishing her prelim notes, she went back to relieve Hennessy and interview the deceased’s widow.
It was midnight before she was able to crawl into bed. Exhaustion snatched at her like a cross and greedy child. Oblivion was what she wanted, what she prayed for.
No dreams, she ordered her subconscious. Take the night off.
Even as she closed her eyes, her bedside ’link blipped.
“Fry in hell, whoever you are,” she muttered, then dutifully wrapped the sheet around her naked shoulders and switched it on.
“Lieutenant.” Roarke’s image smiled at her. “Did I wake you?”
“You would have in another five minutes.” She shifted as the audio hissed with a bit of space interference. “I guess you got where you were going all right.”
“I did. There was only a slight delay in transport. I thought I might catch you before you turned in.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Because I like looking at you.” His smile faded as he stared at her. “What’s wrong, Eve?”
Where do you want me to start? she thought, but shrugged. “Long day—ending with one of your other tenants here croaking in his late night snack. He went facedown in a custard pie.”
“There are worse ways to go, I suppose.” He turned his head, murmured to someone nearby. Eve saw a woman move briskly behind Roarke and out of view. “I’ve just dismissed my assistant,” he explained. “I wanted to be alone when I asked if you’re wearing anything under that sheet.”
She glanced down, lifted a brow. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“Why don’t you take it off?”
“No way I’m going to satisfy your prurient urges by interspace transmission, Roarke. Use your imagination.”
“I am. I’m imagining what I’m going to do to you the next time I get my hands on you. I advise you to rest up, lieutenant.”
She wanted to smile and couldn’t. “Roarke, we’re going to have to talk when you get back.”
“We can do that as well. I’ve always found conversations with you stimulating, Eve. Get some sleep.”
“Yeah, I will. See you, Roarke.”
“Think of me, Eve.”
He ended the transmission, then sat alone, brooding at the blank monitor. There’d been something in her eyes, he thought. He knew the moods of them now, could see beyond the training into the emotion.
The something had been worry.
Turning his chair, he looked out at his view of star splattered space. She was too far away for him to do any more than wonder about her.
And to ask himself, again, why she mattered so much.
chapter thirteen
Eve studied the report of the bank search for Sharon DeBlass’s deposit box with frustration. No record, no record, no record.
Nothing in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. Nothing in East Washington or Virginia.
She had rented one somewhere, Eve thought. She’d had diaries, and had kept them tucked away someplace where she could get to them safely and quickly.
In those diaries, Eve was convinced, was a motive for murder.
Unwilling to tag Fenney for another, broader search, she began one herself, starting with Pennsylvania, working west and north toward the borders of Canada and Quebec. In slightly less than twice the time it would have taken Feeney, she came up blank again.
Then, working south, she struck out with Maryland, and down to Florida. Her machine began to chug noisily at the work. Eve issued a warning snarl and a sharp bump to the console. She swore she’d risk the morass of requisition for a new unit if this one just held out for one more case.
More from stubbornness than hope, she did a scan of the Midwest, heading toward the Rockies.
You were too smart, Sharon, Eve thought, as the negative results flickered by. Too smart for your own good. You wouldn’t have gone out of the country, or off planet where you’d have to go through a customs scan every trip. Why go far away, someplace where you’d need transport or travel docs? You might want immediate access.
If your mother knew you kept diaries, maybe other people knew it, too. You bragged about it because you liked to make people uncomfortable. And you knew they were safely tucked away.
But close, damn it, Eve thought, closing her eyes to bring the woman she was coming to know so well into full focus. Close enough so that you could feel the power, use it, toy with people.
But not so simple that just anyone could track it down, gain access, spoil the game. You used an alias. Rented your safe box under another name—just in case. And if you were smart enough to use an alias, you’d have used one that was basic, that was familiar. One you wouldn’t have to hassle over.
It was so simple, Eve realized as she keyed in Sharon Barrister. So simple both she and Feeney had overlooked it.
She hit pay dirt at the Brinkstone International Bank and Finance, Newark, New Jersey.
Sharon Barrister not only had a safe-deposit box, she had a brokerage account in the amount of $326,000.85.
Grinning at the screen, she hit her tie-in with the PA. “I need a warrant,” she announced.
• • •
Three hours later, she was back in Commander Whitney’s office, trying not to gnash her teeth. “She’s got another one somewhere,” Eve insisted. “And the diaries are in it.”
“Nobody’s stopping you from looking for it, Dallas.”
“Fine, that’s fine.” She whirled around the office as she spoke. Energy was pumping now, and she wanted action. “What are we going to do about this?”
She jerked a hand at the file on his desk.
“You’ve got the disc I took from the safe-deposit box and the print out I ran. It’s right there, commander. A blackmail list: names and amounts. And Simpson’s name is there, in tidy alphabetical order.”
“I can read, Dallas.” He resisted the urge to rub at the tension gathering at the base of his skull. “The chief isn’t the only person named Simpson in the city, much less the country.”
“It’s him.” She was fuming and there was no place to put the steam. “We both know it. There are a number of other interesting names there, too. A governor, a Catholic bishop, a respected leader of the International Organization of Women, two high-ranking cops, an ex-Vice President—”
“I’m aware of the names,” Whitney interrupted. “Are you aware of your position, Dallas, and the consequences?” He held up a hand to silence her. “A few neat columns of names and numbers don’t mean squat. This data gets out of this office, and it’s over. You’re finished and so’s the investigation. Is that what you want?”
“No, sir.”
“You get the diaries, Dallas, find the connection between Sharon DeBlass and Lola Starr, and we’ll see where we go from there.”
“Simpson’s dirty.” She leaned over the desk. “He knew Sharon DeBlass; he was being blackmailed. And he’s doing everything he can to undermine the investigation.”
“Then we’ll have to work around him, won’t we?” Whitney put the file in his lock box. “No one knows what we have in here, Dallas. Not even Feeney. Is that clear?
“Yes, sir.” Knowing she had to be satisfied with that, she started for the door. “Commander, I’d like to point out that there’s a name absent from that list. Roarke’s not on it.�
��
Whitney met her eyes, nodded. “As I said, Dallas. I can read.”
Her message light was blinking when she got back to her office. A check of her E-mail turned up two calls from the medical examiner. Impatiently, Eve put the hot lead aside and returned the call.
“Finished running the tests on your neighbor, Dallas. You hit the bull’s-eye.”
“Oh, hell.” She ran her hands over her face. “Send through the results. I’ll take it from here.”
Hetta Finestein opened her door with a puff of lavender sachet and the yeasty smell of homemade bread.
“Lieutenant Dallas.”
She smiled her quiet smile and stepped back in invitation. Inside, the viewing screen was tuned to a chatty talk show where interested members of the home audience could plug in and shoot their holographic images to the studio for fuller interaction. The topic seemed to be higher state salaries for professional mothers. Just now the screen was crowded with women and children of varying sizes and vocal opinions.
“How nice of you to come by. I’ve had so many visitors today. It’s a comfort. Would you like some cookies?”
“Sure,” Eve agreed, and felt like slime. “Thanks.” She sat on the couch, let her eyes scan the tidy little apartment. “You and Mr. Finestein used to run a bakery?”
“Oh, yes.” Hetta’s voice carried from the kitchen, along with her bustling movements. “Until just a few years ago. We did very well. People love real cooking, you know. And if I do say so myself, I have quite a hand with pies and cakes.”
“You do a lot of baking here, at home.”
Hetta came in with a tray of golden cookies. “One of my pleasures. Too many people never know the joy of a home-baked cookie. So many children never experience real sugar. It’s hideously expensive, of course, but worth it.”
Eve sampled a cookie and had to agree. “I guess you must have baked the pie your husband was eating when he died.”
“You won’t find store-bought or simulations in my house,” Hetta said proudly. “Of course, Joe would gobble everything up almost as soon as I took it out of the oven. There’s not an AutoChef on the market as reliable as a good baker’s instincts and creativity.”