by J. D. Robb
The second bedroom was larger, the sheets on the unmade bed twisted as if someone had wrapped and unwrapped themselves through a particularly long night.
Eve spotted the suit Nadine had been wearing on the night of Louise’s murder on the floor, kicked under a table where a vase of daisies wilted.
They were signs of pain, and they made her sorry. She walked to the closet and hit the button to open it. “Christ, how could you tell if she packed anything? She’s got enough clothes for a ten-woman model troupe.”
Still, she looked through them while Roarke moved to the bedside ’link and ran the record disc back to the beginning. Eve glanced over her shoulder, saw what he was up to. She only moved her shoulders.
“Might as well completely invade her privacy.”
Eve continued to search for some sign that Nadine had gone off on a trip while the calls and messages played back.
She listened with some amusement to some frank sexual byplay between Nadine and some man named Ralph. There were a lot of innuendos, overt suggestions, and laughter before the transmission ended with a promise to get together when he got into town.
Other calls breezed by: work-oriented, a call to a nearby restaurant for delivery. Ordinary, everyday calls. Then it changed.
Nadine was speaking to the Kirskis the day after the last murder. All of them were weeping. Maybe there was comfort in it, Eve thought as she walked toward the viewer. Maybe sharing tears and shock helped.
I don’t know if it matters right now, but the primary investigator, Dallas—Lieutenant Dallas—she won’t stop until she finds out who did this to Louise. She won’t stop.
“Oh, man.” Eve closed her eyes as the transmission ended. There was nothing more, just blank disc, and she opened her eyes again. “Where’s the call to the station?” she demanded. “Where’s the call? Morse said she called in and requested time off.”
“Could have done it from her car, from a portable. In person.”
“Let’s find out.” She whipped out her communicator. “Feeney. I need make, model, and ID number on Nadine Furst’s vehicle.”
It didn’t take long to access the data or to read the garage inventory and discover her car had been logged out the day before and hadn’t been returned.
“I don’t like it.” Eve fretted as she sat back in Roarke’s car. “She’d have left me a message. She’d have left word. I need to talk to some brass at the station, find out who took her call.” She started to key it into Roarke’s car ’link, then stopped. “One other thing.” Taking out her log, she requested a different number. “Kirski, Deborah and James, Portland, Maine.” The number beeped on, and she transferred it to the ’link. It was answered quickly by a pale-haired woman with exhausted eyes.
“Mrs. Kirski, this is Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD.”
“Yes, Lieutenant, I remember you. Is there any news?”
“There’s nothing I can tell you right now. I’m sorry.” Damn it, she had to give the woman something. “We’re pursuing some new information. We’re hopeful, Mrs. Kirski.”
“We said good-bye to Louise today.” She struggled to smile. “It was a comfort to see how many people cared for her. So many of her friends from school, and there were flowers, messages from everyone she worked with in New York.”
“She won’t be forgotten, Mrs. Kirski. Could you tell me if Nadine Furst attended the memorial today?”
“We expected her.” The swollen eyes looked lost a moment. “I’d spoken with her at her office only a few days ago to give her the date and time of the services. She said she would be here, but something must have come up.”
“She didn’t make it.” A sour feeling spread in Eve’s stomach. “You haven’t heard from her?”
“No, not for a few days. She’s a very busy woman, I know. She has to get on with her life, of course. What else can she do?”
Eve could offer no comfort without adding worry. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Kirski. If you have any questions or need to speak with me, please call. Anytime.”
“You’re very kind. Nadine said you wouldn’t stop until you’d found the man who did this to my girl. You won’t stop, will you, Lieutenant Dallas?”
“No, ma’am, I won’t.” She broke transmission, let her head fall back, closed her eyes. “I’m not kind. I didn’t call her to say I was sorry, but because she might have given me an answer.”
“But you were sorry.” Roarke closed his hand gently over hers. “And you were kind.”
“I can count the people who mean something to me without coming close to double digits. The same with the people I mean something to. If he’d have come after me, like the bastard was supposed to, I would have dealt with him. And if I hadn’t—”
“Shut up.” His hand vised over hers with a force that had her muffling a yelp, and his eyes were fierce and angry. “Just shut up.”
Absently, she nursed her hand as he raced along the street. “You’re right, I’m doing it wrong. I’m taking it in, and that doesn’t help anything. Too much emotion on the case,” she murmured, remembering the chief’s warning. “I started out today thinking clean, and that’s what I’ve got to keep doing. Next step is to find Nadine.”
She called Dispatch and ordered an all points on the woman and her vehicle.
Calmer, with the twist of her earlier words unraveling in his gut, he slowed, glanced at her. “How many homicide victims have you stood for in your illustrious career, Lieutenant?”
“Stood for? That’s an odd way of putting it.” She moved her shoulders, trying to focus her mind on a man in a long, dark coat with a shiny new car. “I don’t know. Hundreds. Murder never goes out of style.”
“Then I’d say you’re well past the double digits, on both sides. You need to eat.”
She was too hungry to argue with him.
“The trouble with the cross-check is Metcalf’s diary,” Feeney explained. “It’s full of cutesy little codes and symbols. And she changes them, so we can’t work a pattern. We’ve got names like Sweet Face, Hot Buns, Dumb Ass. We got initials, we got stars, hearts, little smiley faces or scowly faces. It’ll take time, and lots of it, to cross it with the copy of Nadine’s or the prosecutor’s.”
“So what you’re telling me is you can’t do it.”
“I didn’t say can’t.” He looked insulted.
“Okay, sorry. I know you’re busting your computer chips on this, but I don’t know how much time we’ve got. He’s got to go for somebody else. Until we find Nadine . . .”
“You think he snatched her.” Feeney scratched his nose, his chin, reached for his bag of little candied nuts. “That breaks pattern, Dallas. And all three bodies he hit he left where someone was going to stumble over them pretty quick.”
“So he’s got a new pattern.” She sat on the edge of the desk and immediately shifted off, too edgy for stillness. “Listen, he’s pissed. He missed his target. It was all going his way, then he fucks up, downloads the wrong woman. If we go with Mira, he got plenty of attention, hours of airtime, but he failed. It’s a power thing.”
She wandered to her stingy window, stared out, watched as an airbus rumbled past at eye level like an awkward, overweight bird. Below, people were scattered like ants, rushing on the sidewalks, the ramps, the handy-glides to wherever their pressing business took them.
There were so many of them, Eve thought. So many targets.
“It’s a power thing,” Eve repeated, frowning down at the pedestrian traffic. “This woman’s been getting all the attention, all the glory. His attention, his glory. When he takes them out, he gets the kick of the kill, all the publicity. The woman’s gone, and that’s good. She was trying to run everything her way. Now the public is focused on him. Who is he, what is he, where is he?”
“You’re sounding like Mira,” Feeney commented. “Without the thousand-credit words.”
“Maybe she’s nailed him. The what is he, anyway. She thinks male, she thinks unattached. Because women are a problem for him.
Can’t let them get the upper hand, like his mother did. Or the prominent female figure in his life. He’s had some success, but not enough. He can’t quite get to the top. Maybe because a woman’s in the way. Or women.”
She narrowed her eyes, closed them. “Women who speak,” she murmured. “Women who use words to wield power.”
“That’s a new one.”
“That’s mine,” she said, turning back. “He cuts their throats. He doesn’t rough them up, doesn’t sexually assault or mutilate. It’s not about sexual power, though it’s about sex. If you term it as gender. There’s all sorts of ways to kill, Feeney.”
“Tell me about it. Somebody’s always finding some new, inventive way to ditch somebody else.”
“He uses a knife, and that’s an extension of the body. A personal weapon. He could stab them in the heart, rip them in the gut, disembowel—”
“Okay, okay.” He swallowed a nut manfully and waved a hand. “You don’t have to draw a picture.”
“Towers made her mark in court, her voice a powerful tool. Metcalf, the actress, dialogue. Furst, talking to viewers. Maybe that’s why he didn’t go after me,” she murmured. “Talking isn’t my source of power.”
“You’re doing all right now, kid.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” she said with a shake of the head. “What we’ve got is an unattached male, in a career where he’s unable to make a deep mark, one who had a strong, successful female influence.”
“Fits David Angelini.”
“Yeah, and his father if we add in the fact that his business is in trouble. Slade, too. Mirina Angelini isn’t the fragile flower I thought she was. There’s Hammett. He was in love with Towers but she wasn’t taking him quite as seriously. That’s a squeeze on the balls.”
Feeney grunted, shifted.
“Or there’s a couple thousand men out there, frustrated, angry, with violent tendencies.” Eve hissed a breath through her teeth. “Where the hell is Nadine?”
“Look, they haven’t located her vehicle. She hasn’t been gone that long.”
“Any record of her using credits in the last twenty-four hours?”
“No.” Feeney sighed. “Still, if she decided to go off planet, it takes longer to access.”
“She didn’t go off planet. She’d want to stay close. Damn it, I should have known she’d do something stupid. I could see how ripped she was. I could see it in her eyes.”
Frustrated, Eve dragged her hands through her hair. Then her fingers curled in, went tense. “I could see it in her eyes,” she repeated slowly. “Oh my Jesus. The eyes.”
“What? What?”
“The eyes. He saw her eyes.” She leaped toward her ’link. “Get me Peabody,” she ordered, “Field officer at the—shit, shit—what is it? The four oh two.”
“What have you got, Dallas?”
“Let’s wait.” She rubbed her fingers over her mouth. “Let’s just wait.”
“Peabody.” The officer’s face flipped on screen, irritation showing around the mouth. There was a riot of noise on audio, voices, music.
“Christ, Peabody, where are you?”
“Crowd control.” Irritation edged toward a sneer. “Parade on Lex. It’s some Irish thing.”
“Freedom of the Six Counties Day,” Feeney said with a hint of pride. “Don’t knock it.”
“Can you get away from the noise?” Eve shouted.
“Sure. If I leave my post and walk three blocks crosstown.” She remembered herself. “Sir.”
“Hell,” Eve muttered and made do. “The Kirski homicide, Peabody. I’m going to transmit a picture of the body. You take a look.”
Eve called up the file, flipped through, sent the shot of Kirski sprawled in the rain.
“Is that how you found her? Exactly how you found her?” Eve demanded over audio.
“Yes, sir. Exactly.”
Eve pulled the image back, left it in the bottom corner of her screen. “The hood over her face. Nobody messed with the hood?”
“No, sir. As I stated in my report, the TV crew was taking pictures. I moved them back, sealed the door. Her face was covered to just above the mouth. She had not been officially identified when I arrived on scene. The statement from the witness who found the body was fairly useless. He was hysterical. You have the record.”
“Yeah, I’ve got the record. Thanks, Peabody.”
“So,” Feeney began when she ended the transmission. “What does that tell you?”
“Let’s look at the record again. Morse’s initial statement.” Eve eased back so that Feeney could bring it up. Together they studied Morse. His face was wet with what looked like a combination of rain and sweat, possibly tears. He was white around the lips, and his eyes jittered.
“Guy’s shook,” Feeney commented. “Dead bodies do that to some people. Peabody’s good,” he added, listening. “Slow, thorough.”
“Yeah, she’ll move up,” Eve said absently.
Then I saw it was a person. A body. God, all the blood. There was so much blood. Everywhere. And her throat . . . I got sick. You could smell—I got sick. Couldn’t help it. Then I ran inside for help.
“That’s the gist of it.” Eve steepled her hands, tapped them against her jaw. “Okay, run through to where I talked to him after we shut down the broadcast that night.”
He still looked pale, she noted, but he had that little superior smirk around his mouth. She’d run him through the details much the same as Peabody had and received basically the same responses. Calmer now. That was expected, that was usual.
Did you touch the body?
No, I don’t think—no. She was just lying there, and her throat was wide open. Her eyes. No, I didn’t touch her. I got sick. You probably don’t understand that, Dallas. Some people have basic human reactions. All that blood, her eyes. God.
“He said almost the same thing to me yesterday,” Eve murmured. “He’d never forget her face. Her eyes.”
“Dead eyes are spooky. They can stay with you.”
“Yeah, hers have stayed with me.” She shifted her gaze to Feeney’s. “But nobody saw her face until I got there that night, Feeney. The hood had fallen over it. Nobody saw her face before I did. Except the murderer.”
“Jesus, Dallas. You don’t seriously think some little media creep like Morse is slicing throats in his off time. He probably added it for impact, to make himself more important.”
Now her lips curved, just a little, in a smile more feral than amused. “Yeah, he likes being important, doesn’t he? He likes being the focus. What do you do when you’re an ambitious, unethical, second-string reporter, Feeney, and you can’t find a hot story?”
He let out a low whistle. “You make one.”
“Let’s run his background. See where our pal comes from.”
It didn’t take Feeney long to pull up a basic sheet.
C. J. Morse had been born in Stamford, Connecticut, thirty-three years before. That was the first surprise. Eve would have pegged him as several years younger. His mother, deceased, had been head of computer science at Carnegie Melon, where her son had graduated with double majors in broadcasting and compuscience.
“Smart little fucker,” Feeney commented. “Twentieth in his class.”
“I wonder if it was good enough.”
His employment record was varied. He’d bumped from station to station. One year at a small affiliate near his hometown. Six months with a satellite in Pennsylvania. Nearly two years at a top-rated channel in New Los Angeles, then a stretch in a half-baked independent in Arizona before heading back East. Another gig in Detroit before hitting New York. He’d worked on All News 60, then made the lateral transfer to Channel 75, first in the social data unit, then into hard news.
“Our boy doesn’t hold down a job long. Channel 75’s his record with three years. And there’s no mention of his father in family data.”
“Just mama,” Feeney agreed. “A successful, highly positioned mama.” A dead mama, she thought. Th
ey’d have to take time to check on how she died.
“Let’s check criminal.”
“No record,” Feeney said, frowning at the screen. “A clean-living boy.”
“Go into juvie. Well, well,” she said, reading the data. “We’ve got ourselves a sealed record here, Feeney. What do you suppose our clean-living boy did in his misspent youth bad enough that somebody used an arm to have it sealed up?”
“Won’t take me long to find out.” He was cheering up, fingers ready to dance. “I’ll want my own equipment, and a green light from the commander.”
“Do it. And dig into each of those job positions. Let’s see if there was any trouble. I think I’ll take a swing by Channel 75, have a nice, fresh chat with our boy.”
“We’re going to need more to take him down than a possible match with the psych profile.”
“Then we’ll get it.” She shrugged into her shoulder harness. “You know, if I hadn’t had such a personal beef with him, I might have seen it before. Who benefited from the murders? The media.” She locked in her weapon. “And the first murder took place when Nadine was conveniently off planet on assignment. Morse could step right in.”
“And Metcalf?”
“The fucker was on scene almost before I was. It pissed me off, but it never clicked. He was so damn cool. And then who finds Kirski’s body? Who’s on air in minutes giving his personal report?”
“It doesn’t make him a killer. That’s what the PA’s office is going to say.”
“They want a connection. Ratings,” she said as she headed for the door. “There’s the goddamn connection.”
chapter nineteen
Eve did a quick pass through the newsroom, studied the viewing screens. There was no sign of Morse, but that didn’t worry her. It was a big complex. And he had no reason to hide, no reason to worry.
She wasn’t going to give him one.
The plan she’d formulated on the trip over was simple. Not as satisfying as hauling him out by his camera-friendly hair and into lockup, but simpler.
She’d talk to him about Nadine, let it leak that she was worried. From there, it would be natural to steer things to Kirski. She could play good cop, for a good cause. She could sympathize with his trauma, add a war story from her first encounter with the dead to nudge him along. She could even ask him for help in broadcasting Nadine’s picture, her vehicle, agree to work with him.