by J. D. Robb
“No, it wasn’t.”
“I’ll get you a beer.” Alma brushed her hand down his arm.
“Thanks. I guess we should all sit down.”
“I’m Lieutenant Dallas,” Eve began. “Primary on this matter. This is my consultant.”
“Roarke. I recognized you,” Brodie said. “I’ve done a little work on a few of your places.”
“Have you now?”
“Yeah, here and there.”
“If your work for me is as fine as the work you’ve done for yourself here, I’m sure I’m very pleased with it.”
“Well, you paid well, and on time. Can’t say the same for everybody.”
“What kind of work did you do in the building on Ninth, for The Sanctuary?” Eve asked him.
“Mostly slap and patch.” He pushed at the damp mop of hair in what looked to be an absent habit. “They couldn’t afford much, and I gave them the best break I could, seeing as what they were trying to do for the kids. I was trying to start my own business, just getting it going, so what I did for them was mostly on my own time, on my own.”
“Did you build any walls?”
“No. Patched a couple.”
Alma came back, sat on the arm of his chair, handed him a beer.
“Painted a few, but I didn’t charge for that. Mostly they painted themselves, save the cost, you know? I did what I could with the plumbing. Rewired some stuff. I’m going to tell you I wasn’t licensed to do the plumbing and electrical back then, but they couldn’t afford someone who was. And I knew what I was doing.”
“He can do anything,” Alma said. “God’s truth.”
“So can you, that’s why I married you.”
“I’m not worried about code violations or licenses,” Eve told them. “When’s the last time you were in the building?”
“Oh, man, let me think.” His hand went to his hair again. “It was right after they got the new one, and were still moving stuff out. They asked me to do a walk-through, just see if there was anything in there that would get them in dutch once the bank came through. I patched a couple more things, just in case. Alma was with me. Remember? We were dating.”
“Half-ass dating.”
“I got you, didn’t I? Anyway, that was it. I started doing handiwork on the building they’re in now. Sweet property that one. Good shape, solid bones. Nothing like that poor old dump. Somebody ought to gut it out, take it down to the bones and save it. I’d do it myself if I could. It’s a damn shame to see it just die the way it is.”
“But you said you haven’t been in it recently?”
“Haven’t, but I’ve seen it from the outside. We did a job in that area about six months ago. Heartbreaking, if you ask me, and just plain wrong. Boarded windows, all broken up, tagged all over. Roof probably won’t last another year from the look of it. Anyway, not my business.”
“If Brodie had the scratch,” his wife said, “he’d save all the buildings in all the world.”
“We’d start with New York.”
“You had a helper at some point, who did some work with you on the building.”
“Oh, yeah. Clip,” he said to his wife who expressed her opinion by casting her eyes to the ceiling. “Jon Clipperton. I toss him work now and then, but I don’t keep him on the crew.”
“Because?”
“He’s a good worker, when he’s sober. Even when he’s half sober.”
“Which is the second Tuesday of every other month,” Alma put in.
“He’s not that bad. But close,” Brodie admitted. “I used him more when I was first getting started. The drinking wasn’t as bad, and I couldn’t afford much better. But he only worked for me at The Sanctuary two or three times. Because . . .” he said when Eve just looked at him. “Well, because he showed up a little less than half sober and . . .” Brodie shifted as if he’d sat on a pile of rocks. “Well, he could be kind of a dick when he’d had a few.”
“Brodie, he’s a dick when he breathes. He’s a total asshole when he’s had a few.”
“You stopped taking him to work at The Sanctuary because he came to work drunk, and acted like a dick. Why don’t you describe the dickishness?”
Brodie winced at Eve. “It’s just, you know, a couple of guys on a job might make some comment about a good-looking woman walking by. Maybe you could say a sort of crude comment sometimes.”
“Please.” Alma punched him in the shoulder, laughed. “We all do it. Depending which side of the fence you’re on, some icy type comes in view, you remark.” She shrugged. “Time-honored tradition of the trade.”
“Yeah, well, the thing is, Clip remarked, but we’re talking kids, you know? Okay, we were younger then, but old enough not to make . . . remarks about girls that age. I told him to knock it off. It was, you know, inappropriate. He mostly did, but I’d catch him giving them looks, or talking to some of them a little too . . . close, I guess, when he was supposed to be on break. It just didn’t sit right with me, so I pulled him off there, gave him some other work.”
“What kind of remarks?”
“I don’t remember exactly, honest to God,” he told Eve. “I just remember I didn’t like it, and didn’t like the idea he was sort of hitting on teenagers.”
“He hit on me,” Alma announced, and had her husband’s jaw dropping.
“What? What? When?”
“Back then a couple times, a couple times since.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“You think I can’t handle myself, babe?”
“No, you can handle yourself. But—son of a bitch.”
“He was always pissed-faced drunk. Hell, he hit on Lydia. She’s eighty-three,” Alma explained. “She does our books. He’s a dog, no question, and I can see him trying to cop a feel as long as it’s female. Age not an issue. But I can’t see him hurting anybody. Ever.”
“No, no, he’d never hurt anybody. He’s an asshole, but—cop a feel? Did he try that on you?”
“Remember that mouse he was sporting after the Fourth of July cookout about six, seven years back? Who do you think popped him?”
This time both hands went to his hair. “Alma, jeez! Why don’t you tell me this stuff?”
“Because then you’d’ve popped him, and I already had. And it was the last time he tried to mess with me. He apologized when he sobered up. What I’m saying, Lieutenant, is say you’re sitting at a bar, waiting for somebody or just trying to have a quiet drink. He’s the type who’d be all over you, thinking he’s witty-like or sexy or whatever, when what he is? Drunk and stupid and annoying. But he’s not the type who’d follow you out of the bar and get physical or get riled up and start something when you tell him to blow. You know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah, but I want to talk to him. I’d appreciate his contact information.”
“Sure. Yeah. Crap.” Brodie boosted up a hip, pulled out his pocket ’link, then read off the data. “Right now I want to punch him in the face, but I have to say, he’d never do anything like this. He wouldn’t have done anything to those girls. I mean, yeah, he might’ve gotten drunk enough back then to try for some touch, but he wouldn’t have killed anybody.”
“Okay. Did you ever see anyone come around, or notice anyone who worked there who gave you a bad feeling?”
“I can’t say I did, or remember. I was juggling a lot of small jobs back then, trying to get a good toehold. It wasn’t like I was there every day or anything. Sometimes I’d be there a few days running, but mostly it was spotty. They’d call me in for some little thing they couldn’t fix, or to fix something they’d tried to fix and screwed up more than it was screwed up to begin with. I got more work out of it—doing stuff for some of the staff, doing stuff for people Nash and Philly recommended me to.”
“Impressions, on any of the staff, including Nash and Philly.”
“They were doing good work, still are, and it takes a lot of doing from what I can see. There’s no clocking in and out.”
“One more thing.” Eve brought Linh’s image on screen. “Does she look familiar?”
“Wow, really pretty kid. No.” He glanced over at his wife, who shook her head. “Is she one of the . . .”
“She is.”
“God.” He scrubbed his hands over his face, angled, took another, longer look. “She doesn’t ring any bells. I don’t know if I’d remember after all this time, but she’s got a really distinctive face, you know? A stunner waiting to happen.”
“We appreciate the time.” Eve pushed to her feet. “If anything comes to mind, contact me.”
“I will—we will,” Brodie assured her. “I hate thinking about those girls.”
Eve figured she’d be doing little else but thinking about them, especially when the second reconstruction came through as they left the apartment building.
“Got another face.”
Roarke looked at her screen, studied the thin-cheeked, sad-eyed image. “Would you like me to run a search?”
“Peabody’s doing it on the preliminary we got earlier, now she’ll run it on this. But hold on. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”
She dashed back into the building, left him on the sidewalk. To pass the time, he took out his PPC, did some research of his own.
She was back inside five minutes.
“He recognized this one. He seemed pretty confident, even added an eyebrow hoop they didn’t have on the image. And said she had crazy hair—purple, pink, and green. She had tats—full sleeves—and he figured her for no more than about twelve or thirteen tops. He remembers all this because he was working right there when she jumped one of the other kids. He doesn’t remember why, just that it took several members of the staff to yank them apart.”
“Which tells you she was in the building, as a resident, had at least one physical altercation, and from the description wasn’t the quiet, retiring type.”
“You can’t get tats at that age without a legal guardian signing off, showing ID, and being in attendance. Her remains indicate she’d been knocked around regularly so I don’t see her legal guardian taking the time to do something that stupid with her. And that tells me she was likely on the street awhile, had connections. Maybe she’d been picked up a few times. We’ll get her ID’d. We’ll have her name.”
“Are we off to talk to the rarely sober asshole while Peabody finds her?”
“Not yet. I’ll get to him, but whoever did this probably wasn’t drunk. Probably isn’t a drunk as they tend to mouth off and make stupid mistakes, like hit on the boss’s wife.”
“Some bosses’ wives,” Roarke said, tapping the dent in her chin with his finger, “handle themselves.”
“Yeah. Anytime one of your half a zillion employees puts a move on me, I’ll deck him. Don’t worry.”
“Not a worry in the world, about that.”
“Right now, I’m more interested in a former resident, current staff member, and granddaughter of the woman who donated the new building. Seraphim Brigham, granddaughter of Tiffany Brigham Bittmore.”
“I know of Tiffany Bittmore.” As she didn’t want him running a search, Roarke walked around her car to the driver’s seat. “Philanthropist, with particular interests in children and addictions. She worked as a general dogsbody for a political activist organization where she met and married Brigham when they were quite young I believe. Early twenties, and had two children with him before his death—a shuttle crash some fifteen or so years later. He was wealthy—family money—and political with a strong liberal leaning.”
He slid into a stream of north-bound traffic as he spoke.
“She married again some years after his death. The Bittmores were even wealthier. They had two more children—I believe—before he was killed during an earthquake in Indonesia, where he’d gone as an ambassador for a global health organization.”
“That’s knowing a lot about.”
“I supplemented my knowledge since this morning. She’s known for being generous with her time, money, and influence when the cause speaks to her. She lost a son—that would be this granddaughter’s father—to an overdose. Apparently his daughter was determined to follow in his footsteps before ending up at The Sanctuary. Bittmore showed her appreciation with the donation of the building and a trust for operating funds.”
“And now Seraphim works for Jones and Jones.”
“And is a respected therapist with a solid reputation. And is recently engaged.”
“Huh. I’m just thinking I have to make sure my next husband’s a rich bastard, too. But I’m not sure I can snap a richer bastard than you. The pool’s pretty shallow.”
“Maybe it’ll be deeper in eighty or ninety years.”
“Well, that’s something to consider. How do you know where we’re going?”
“You said you wanted to interview Seraphim Brigham. Anticipating that when you tagged me, I tugged a few lines and learned she’s scheduled for drinks and dinner at her grandmother’s home—her New York home. Not so far, really, from ours.”
“I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. You can be handy.”
He shot her a glance. “You should also consider your richer bastard, should you fish one out of the pool, needs to understand cop brains, and have the right connections.”
“Those are going on my list.” She shot him a glance in return. “Would you go for another cop in eighty or ninety years?”
“Absolutely not. The next time I’m after a nice, quiet woman, perhaps one who does watercolors and bakes scones.”
“My richer bastard bakes pies. I like pie.”
“I like pie, too. I’d like to meet him.”
“Wait a few decades. What’s he been doing for fifteen years?”
She wasn’t thinking of her fictional richer bastard now, Roarke mused. How her thought process fascinated.
“How did he stop killing? Did he? Did he find another way to dispose of the bodies? Did he die, end up in a cage, find God? He killed twelve. Probably within a few weeks or months. You don’t just stop cold. I keep asking myself, where is he? What’s he doing? I did a run on like crimes, and sure, you get a couple pops here and there for girls in that range, for the plastic wrap and other elements. But none that fit this, not this. Multiples, the time and effort to hide them, the lack of violence. How the hell did he kill them?”
“I think you need to give DeWinter a bit of time there.”
“Yeah, yeah. She and Morris have their heads together on it.”
Frustrated, Roarke concluded, that she didn’t have the data, couldn’t start using it to narrow her track toward the killer.
“We notified the parents of the first vic we ID’d. Solid upper middle-class—upper-upper. Both doctors, long-term first marriage, two other offspring—grown now. Nice home, stable, affluent. No signs of abuse on the remains, and every sign the victim had been well cared for, medically, physically.”
“Was she abducted?”
“No. At least not from home. Got pissy about a concert. Was going through a pissy stage, which apparently is pretty normal. Took off for the city—from Brooklyn—had money, so my best guess is she lived it up for a couple days, tried the walk on the wild side, liked it fine. She wasn’t like the girl he wrapped up with her though. If she’d stayed clean, she wouldn’t have stayed on that path. She’d have gone home. The other one? The last place she’d have gone was home because that’s where they hurt you.”
Roarke simply covered her hand with his. It’s all he had to do.
“It’s not like me,” Eve murmured. “There was never a home in the first place, and maybe that was an advantage. I didn’t expect someone to look out for me. And I didn’t know, until he was dead, I could run. Even after, I didn’t manage to run far
. Running’s what killed her, or put her on the path to being a victim.”
She yanked her ’link when it signaled, read the text from Peabody.
“Shelby Ann Stubacker. She’s got a name now.”
“Tell me about her.”
“She was thirteen. Father’s doing a dime in Sing-Sing—his second for assault. Mother’s got a sheet, mostly for illegals. They didn’t file a report, so we wouldn’t have found her there. She was picked up a few times. Truancy, shoplifting, did some juvie time, and some court-ordered rehab as she was picked up stoned, and in possession of illegals. She was nine the first time she got busted. Born here, died here. She’d have a file with CPS, but what’s the point. The system failed her, everybody failed her.”
“You won’t.”
Roarke pulled up in front of a gold-trimmed white building with seas of glass sparkling. Considering the low-end look of the vehicle, it wasn’t a surprise to Eve to see the doorman’s chin jut up, his mouth tighten, and his feet beat across the royal blue carpeting that stretched from sparkling glass door to curb.
Now, she thought, Roarke would get a load of what she put up with. Looking forward to it, she squeezed her way out on the street side.
The minute Roarke stepped out on the sidewalk, the doorman went from protective terrier to welcoming hound.
“Sir! Are you visiting someone at The Metropolitan this evening?”
“As it happens, I’m accompanying Lieutenant Dallas inside. I’m sure she’ll appreciate you keeping her vehicle in place until she’s completed her business.”
“I’ll see to it personally. Can I notify anyone for you?”
“If you’d let Ms. Bittmore know Lieutenant Dallas is here to see her on NYPSD business.”
“I’ll let her know. You’ll want the first bank of elevators, on the left side of the lobby. Mr. Bittmore’s main entrance is on the fifty-third floor, number fifty-three hundred.”
“Thank you.”
Eve scowled her way inside. “How much did you slip him?”
“A fifty.”
“I don’t bribe doormen,” she said with some righteousness.