by Robb, J. D.
“But I cannot.”
“We can and will get a warrant.”
“No, no, I mean to say I literally cannot. Above even the need to keep confidential, I have only first names—and many may not use their real name even then. I keep no records from the group. It is simply a place, a safe place, where these women can come when they feel the need, where they can say what they need to say and not be judged.”
“You have notes. How could you remember who comes, what they need, what’s happened to them if you didn’t keep notes?”
“I have notes, yes, with first names.” With those deep, liquid eyes trained on Eve, Natalia turned her hands palms up. “Please understand I want to help, but if I gave them to you, how could any of the women trust me? If you get a warrant, I will have no choice but to obey the law.”
“All right. Peabody, see if Yancy’s got the sketch from the McEnroy witness.”
“I’m sorry I can’t give you what you want without this,” Natalia continued. “I feel if another dies, I’m responsible, too. And yet, the ones who come to us are hurt or frightened, broken or despairing. A woman beaten who blames herself for the blows. A woman discarded who wonders why she wasn’t enough. I was one of them once.”
“It would help if you give us your whereabouts between nine last night and five this morning.”
“I understand. I also connect.” And still calm, still steady, Natalia took a breath. “Last night I was with a man. His name is Geo Fong. He’s a good man, I think, but I’ve been wrong before. We’ve been seeing each other for several months, and I don’t think I’m wrong. Last night, I made him dinner. He came at seven, and after dinner, we went upstairs and were together. My daughter, as I said, was at a friend’s. He left only shortly before you arrived.”
“And the night before?”
“With my daughter. We had dinner out, went to the vids. Then we came home and talked until almost midnight. She believes she’s in love. He seems a nice boy. I hope he is. She’s my world, Lieutenant. I can swear to you, I would do nothing that would hurt her. And if her mother took a life, she would be deeply hurt. Lost.”
With the faintest smile, Natalia turned around a framed photo to show Eve and Peabody a pretty girl with her mother’s eyes.
“My world,” she said again. “Her father left when she was only a baby. I came to America with my parents—they are doctors. They hoped I would follow that path, but I fell in love, and then there was Kendra. It hurt my heart when he left, but I had her. I had my world. And then there was a man, one I thought a good man. I let him into our lives. I learned, when my beautiful girl was just fifteen, he had … touched her. She was afraid to tell me at first, and I was blind. But when she did, finally did, I took her to a doctor. I took her to the police.”
“What happened to the man?”
“He’s in prison. And he will be for a long time more. He had pictures of my child he’d taken when she didn’t know. When she was in the shower, or in bed. I was here, but I didn’t see. He forced himself on my child, told her he would deny and I would believe, told her he would kill me. Told her many things. But he’s in prison now, and my girl is well. She trusted me, and we trusted the police. If ever I had it inside me to kill, he would be dead.”
Peabody rose, held out her PPC. “Do you recognize this woman?”
Natalia studied it, rose, took the PPC to the window to look at it in stronger light. “I think she’s very beautiful, but I don’t think I know her. I don’t think she comes to our group. I would say yes if I did. I wouldn’t give you more, but I would not lie.”
“I believe you. We’ll get the warrant. Have you shared your story in group?”
“Of course.” She lifted her ringless hands. “How can I ask for trust if I don’t trust? But he’s in prison.”
And justice was met, Eve thought.
“If you’d give my partner Mr. Fong’s contact information, we’ll verify.”
Natalia gave it, then rose. “I hope you’re wrong. I hope you find it’s no one who’s come into our circle.”
You can hope, Eve thought. But I’m not wrong.
She headed to the morgue next.
“Push for the warrant, Peabody,” she said as she drove. “First names only don’t give us much, but it’s better than nothing. And I want to talk to whoever booked Pettigrew’s LCs. Let’s see if he had a type.”
“On that. Do you want me to contact Zula’s alibi, see if it holds up?”
“Yeah, we’ll get to it. It’s going to.” When her ’link signaled, she answered through the in-dash. “Dallas.”
“This is Bondita Rothchild, Marcella’s mother. We’re en route to the city, and should be there within the hour.”
“All right, Ms. Rothchild, we’ll come to you.”
“I’m taking Marcella home with me. I don’t want her in that house.” She rattled off an address in Cobble Hill, which meant a trip across the river into Brooklyn.
“We’ll come to you,” Eve repeated. “About ninety minutes.”
“I’ll expect you to be respectful of Marcella’s delicate emotional state,” Bondita added before she clicked off.
Once they’d parked, started down the tunnel, Peabody checked her own ’link. “The warrant’s in the works.”
“See who’s loose in the bullpen. I’d rather a detective, but a uniform will do. Have them serve it, get the data.”
As they approached Morris’s doors, her comm signaled. “What now?” Then she read Commander Whitney on the readout, and had a pretty good idea what now. “Dallas. Sir.”
“Lieutenant. You’re needed in The Tower for a conversation with Chief Tibble.”
That proved a higher what now than she’d expected. “Commander, I’m in the field, currently at the morgue about to speak to Dr. Morris regarding Thaddeus Pettigrew, who all evidence indicates is the second victim in my current investigation. We also have an interview with Pettigrew’s live-in scheduled in ninety minutes.”
“Report to The Tower at thirteen hundred hours.”
“Yes, sir.” She stuffed her comm back in her pocket. “Geena McEnroy.”
“She went straight to the top,” Peabody commented. “At least we’ve got some time to interview Horowitz.”
“He didn’t send for you. You weren’t there for my interview with her anyway.”
“Uh-uh.” Peabody put her stubborn face on. “Partners. You have to risk an ass-frying, my ass is in the pan with yours.”
“I didn’t need the visual of your ass bumped up against mine in some damn pan. Ass partners,” she muttered, and pushed through the doors when Peabody snorted out a laugh.
Morris had one of his favored bluesy numbers going and wore a suit in forest green. Cord, stone gray like his tie, wound through the braid he’d doubled up at the back of his head in a loop.
He currently had his hands in Pettigrew’s open chest.
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends. This poor soul won’t fight another battle.”
“He didn’t get to fight the last one,” Eve pointed out.
“No, he didn’t. No defensive wounds though he suffered more trauma than our previous guest. I have no argument with your on-scene conclusions, Dallas. He hung by the wrists, from above, and his weight, his struggle eventually dislocated both shoulders. An electric prod—the same dimensions as the one used on McEnroy—was used to beat, burn, sodomize. I estimate at least four hours between the first burn and the last.”
“She’s … dedicated.”
“I’d say that’s an accurate term for it. It takes a kind of dedication to torture another human being for hours. There’s no sign of gagging, so he’d have screamed, likely have pleaded. COD would be severe blood loss from the amputation. He was, as was McEnroy, alive when she used the blade. The same blade, in my opinion, that was used on McEnroy.”
“Was he drugged?”
“As before I put a rush on the tox report. It’s the same mix. In this case, the first dose was administere
d into the palm of his hand.”
“Okay, okay, that’s how it’s done.” Nodding, Eve circled the body. “He comes to the door to let her in. She introduces herself, offers her hand. She’s got the syringe palmed. He wouldn’t even have time to react. She just leads him out to the waiting car, and she’s got him.”
“He ingested the second dose.”
“Probably in the car.” She could see it. Yes, she could see it very clearly.
“Puts him out,” she continued. “Whoever’s driving helps her get him inside once they get where they’re going, maybe helps her string him up.”
“Only one deviation I’ve found thus far,” Morris told her. “Have a look at his toes.”
He offered her, then Peabody, microgoggles. Peabody eased back a step.
“That’s okay. I can see fine from here.”
Eve adjusted hers, bent down with Morris. “With McEnroy, there were scrapes and bruises on the balls and heels of his feet. He’d swing, you see, when the prod struck, or jerk. And his feet would beat on the floor or ground. But in this case—”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. She elevated him a little higher. He barely had his toes on the floor surface, so he’s digging in with them to stay up, to try to relieve the weight on his arms and shoulders. They’re scraping over the floor when he swings. Anything under the toenails?”
“Funny you should ask.” Smiling, Morris straightened. “Yes, I scraped substance from under them, sent it to the lab. It’s not fiber, so not a rug or carpet, not fabric. I don’t think it’s wood. Stone or concrete perhaps.”
“Good, that’s good. She didn’t think of that, did she? Wanted him to hurt so she didn’t think of that.”
“One can never overestimate a human being’s capacity for cruelty.” Morris drew off his goggles, met Eve’s eyes. “But this one runs wide and runs deep. I hope you’re closer to her than she is to the next.”
“We think she’s using a support group for women to pick her targets,” Peabody told him.
“That’s cruel in itself, isn’t it? To take that circle of compassion and outreach to inflict suffering. Ah well, we’ll do what we do. I’ll have the full report to you this afternoon.”
“Appreciate it.”
Eve dug credits out of her pocket as they walked out, then tossed them to Peabody. “Cold caffeine.”
Peabody went for two tubes of Pepsi—hers Diet. “You okay?” she asked when Eve rubbed the cold tube against her forehead.
“Yeah. Little headache.”
“I’ve got blockers.”
“No, it’ll pass.”
“Are you worried about Tibble?”
“No. We did our job. If he has to give us a smack for it, we take the smack, then go out and keep doing our job.”
“You said ‘we.’” Smug, Peabody bopped her shoulders. “Ass partners.”
Back in the car, Eve sat for a moment, then cracked the tube. “We’re going to tell a second woman the guy she lived with liked to have some strange when she wasn’t around. She may get her bitch on over that—and we’ll be the ones that falls on.”
“It’s hard to get bitchy about the bitch on when we had to tell her the guy’s dead, and now we’re going to tell her he’s dead because he went off with the strange.”
“Here’s the thing.” Eve drank. “He cheated—on his ex with the current. Why the current believes he wouldn’t cheat on her is beyond me, but that’s usually how it goes. But, thinking from the killer’s perspective, there’s no evidence this one drugged women, raped them, abused them. He hired them. We’re going to talk to the booker, see if he went for the violent end of things with LCs, but there was no sign of that in the bedroom setup. The toys were toys. No illegals, just aids. You add the money in—him maneuvering the ex with the company she started. But even with that, he doesn’t reach the level of McEnroy.”
“But she went at him harder.” Following, Peabody nodded. “The other way around would make more sense.”
“Yeah. So that’s not in play. It’s not—from a twisted thinking—the punishment fits the crime. It’s either escalation or she had more reason to want Pettigrew to suffer.”
“Taking us back to the ex.”
“To the ex, to someone else he screwed with, or to the current.” Eve pulled out. “Let’s go to Brooklyn.”
“Okay, warrant’s in.” Peabody studied her ’link. “Jenkinson and Reineke are on tap to handle it. And … hey, the offices for Discretion are on the way to Brooklyn. We’d have time to hit there before we talk to Horowitz.”
“Even better. Plug it in.”
As she did, Peabody frowned. “They might want a warrant, too. Discretion, right?”
“We’ll risk it. They have a dead customer,” Eve pointed out. “One who got his johnson whacked off. Seems they’d want to prove one of their LCs didn’t do it.”
“That’s an angle. Do you think if sex was your job it’d get really boring, or more exciting because you were always mixing it up?”
“I think because it’s not just sex that’s the job, it’s pretending attraction to somebody who put me on their credit card—or, lower level, picked me up on the street, and on the upper levels you actually have to have conversations with the john like you give a rat’s ass what they think about anything—I’d rather work the night shift in some factory that tests cat food.”
“Like they have to taste it, the cat food? They don’t do that, do they?”
“How the hell do I know? I don’t work at a cat food factory. There!”
She spotted a curbside slot, hit vertical, did a one-eighty in midair, and dropped down.
“I woulda walked,” Peabody managed. “I’d’ve been happy to walk blocks. Loose pants. And more no cardiac arrest.” Because her legs still trembled, she eased out carefully to stand on the sidewalk.
“It’s starting to rain,” Eve pointed out.
“A walk in the rain’s refreshing.”
“A walk in the rain’s wet.” Pleased, Eve walked into the soaring downtown office building.
A small horde of business types moved at a quick pace in the lobby. To elevators, from them, with briefcases, suits, earbuds, take-out fake coffee.
She walked straight to the security desk, held up her badge. “Discretion.”
The short man with thin, graying hair gave them a once-over. “Sign in please, with the name of the party you’re here to see.”
“I’ll know the party when I get there. What floor?”
“Twelfth floor, east bank.” He checked his log screen. “Twelve hundred for the main office.”
Eve scrawled her name, waited for Peabody to do the same, then headed for the east bank.
They got on the elevator along with more business types. She tuned out the talk of marketing strategies, Jenny in accounting’s birthday, brainstorming sessions, lunch meetings as the damn car stopped on every damn floor to let some off, let more on.
She grieved for the glides at Central.
Everything smelled like too much perfume, cologne, fake coffee, somebody’s mid-morning muffin, somebody else’s fear sweat.
On twelve she stepped out into a moment of blessed quiet.
Discretion’s office, behind double-frosted glass doors, held more quiet yet, and the faint scent of … she didn’t know what the hell, but it was good—and probably discreet.
The waiting area held deep scoop chairs, each with an individual screen. Maybe to preview choices of companions, she thought.
A single female—late twenties, silky blond hair, sharp green eyes, and a red suit that showed just a hint of black lace at the cleavage—sat at what looked like an antique desk or excellent replica.
She swiveled away from her comp screen, smiled. “Good morning and welcome to Discretion. How can I assist you?”
Eve pulled out her badge. “Manager.”
The smile faded. “We’re fully licensed and inspected.”
“Not my area, not my question. We need to speak to whoever runs the s
how, regarding a dead guy.”
“Wh—how— Please wait.”
She didn’t call back from the desk, but popped up and rushed away on shoes so high Eve wondered she didn’t suffer nosebleeds.
“You’ve got to give them classy,” Peabody decided. “The colors, the furnishings—and those are real miniature orange trees over there. In blossom. What a great smell.”
Okay, Eve thought, so that was it.
Another woman came back—tall heels again, these with toes so pointed Eve imagined they could jab a hole in brick. A good two decades older than the desk girl, she had an air of what Peabody would have called class.
The dark suit with its short skirt showcased excellent legs; the fitted jacket, an excellent body. Her hair, a kind of caramel, coiled tidily at her nape. Her skin, a few shades lighter, all but glowed, and her eyes, sea green, showed only polite curiosity.
“I’m Araby Clarke. Why don’t we speak in my office?”
“Okay.”
She gestured, led them to a wide doorway, into a long hall. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your names, but I swear … have we met?”
“Don’t think so. Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody.”
“Oh, of course! No, we haven’t met until now.” She gestured again into a spacious office. “But I did see the vid, and admit I’ve followed you and Roarke, and you, Detective, whenever there’s media. Please sit.”
The office suited her, deep cushioned chairs in dull gold, glass tables holding glass vases and exotic flowers. Art of beautiful men and women—oddly romantic rather than sexual. And a view of command through the window behind the long, glossy desk.
“You gave Kerry quite a jolt.” She sat, crossed her killer legs. “She said someone was dead. Is it someone I know?”
“Thaddeus Pettigrew.”
That polite curiosity flashed away. Eve wouldn’t say the woman jolted, but she registered distress. “Oh no. Oh, I’m very sorry to hear this. He’s been a client for years.”
“Years. As in?”
“I’ll have to check, but I believe at least a decade.”
So, not a new habit, Eve thought. “I’m going to need you to check on that, and several other things.”
Araby sat back. “You put me in an interesting position. Under most circumstances we would refuse to answer any questions regarding a client. Even with a warrant, I would contact my legal department and do what could be done to void that.”