by J. D. Robb
“Acknowledged. Inform Peabody, Detective Delia. Request that she meet me on scene as soon as possible. Has the victim been ID’d?”
Victim identification is not confirmed.
“I’m on my way. Dallas out.”
She shoved at her hair, saw Roarke was already up, getting dressed. “Shit. Shit. You don’t have to come. That’s hovering, isn’t it?”
“In this case it’s sheer curiosity. The likelihood is it’s your man, and since I’m awake now in any case, I’d like to see for myself.”
It was quicker not to argue. Besides, he had an eye as good as most cops she knew. And drove faster and better.
“Inside job, what did I tell you?” She watched buildings whiz by on the way downtown. “It’s one thing to break into the place on Twelfth, but it takes a lot more to get through the security they have at the Center.”
At his noncommittal sound, she gave Roarke a narrowed stare. “For most people. Rosenthall’s lab. He works late a lot. Shit, shit, shit.”
She was out of the car the instant Roarke parked, flashing her badge at the NYPSD uniform and the building security officer.
“Lieutenant. Security Officer Tweed will take you to the scene. My current orders are to remain on the door.”
“Has Detective Peabody arrived?”
“No, sir.”
“Send her in when she gets here. She knows the way. Tweed?”
“This way.”
“I know the way, too. Who found the body?”
“I did. I was doing a standard cam sweep, and I saw . . . a figure.”
“Green, deformed face, red eyes, wearing a cape?”
“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.”
“And you’ve got him on disc.”
“Yeah. He was heading down from the second level, east, moving fast in a kind of—boogie. Part of me was spooked, I admit. The other part figured somebody was playing a joke. But we have to check out any unauthorized activity. By the time I got to that sector—along with the other guard I’d alerted—he was gone. I went up, saw the lights were on in Dr. Rosenthall’s lab, so I keyed in, and I saw . . . The place is wrecked, Lieutenant, and there’s a body. It’s male, but I couldn’t tell who it was. The face, it’s, well, wrecked, too. And there’s blood everywhere.”
“Okay.” She nodded to the uniform outside the lab doors. “Key me in, Tweed, then I’m going to want those discs. The originals.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“And stand by,” she told him.
Wrecked was a mild word for it, Eve thought as she scanned the area. Smashed comps lay on the floor on a sea of broken beakers, dishes, specimen bowls. The body lay faceup—what was left of the face. Blood stained the hacked and ripped clothes, spread over the floor, left its obscene abstract art on the sides of a counter.
And on the top, in blood, his message.
Memo to: Lt. Dallas.
Nobody liked him anyway.
You’re welcome!
Sincerely, Dr. Chaos.
“It’s Billingsly.”
“How can you be sure?”
“That’s the suit he had on this morning.” She took a can of Seal-It out of her kit, used it, tossed it to Roarke. “This takes him off the suspect list.”
“I doubt he’d feel grateful.”
“What was he doing in here? He doesn’t strike me as the type who’d come by for a late-night visit with Rosenthall, and this isn’t his area. He’s another floor up, in the other wing.”
“He might have been lured here.”
“Yeah, maybe. But it’s late, way after hours. Why is he in the building, and where’s Rosenthall? I need to know who keyed in before Security.”
“Would you like me to see to that area?”
“Yeah, that would save time.”
“His nose is gone.”
“It sure is. What does that mean? Smell no evil? No, that’s just stupid. To me it says nosy. You’re nosy, Billingsly; now you’re dead.”
She turned as Peabody came in.
“Wow. Another day, another slaughter.” Peabody eased out a breath. “McNab’s with me. I had him start on Security. I thought maybe Roarke would be here, so we’d have two e-men on it.”
“Then I’ll go hook up with Ian.”
“What do you see?” Eve asked Peabody when they were alone.
“I see Billingsly’s off the suspect list.”
Despite the circumstances, Eve smiled a little. “And?”
“He’s been stabbed a whole bunch. It might even be more than Bickford, but it’s hard to tell. He’s missing his nose.”
“What does that say to you?”
“It’s another quiz. This time I want a grade. It says to me Billingsly won’t be sniffing around anymore. Maybe around Arianna, maybe around something else—something lab related. The note’s addressed directly to you this time, so he knows it’s our case—and that Billingsly wasn’t a popular guy around here.”
“I’d say A minus.”
“A minus?” Both insult and sulk piped through Peabody’s voice. “I want A plus.”
“For an A plus you’d need to observe, identify, and relate the teeth marks in the vic’s face and throat.”
“Teeth . . . oh jeez.” Observing and identifying them now, Peabody swallowed hard. “He ate him.”
“Just here and there. He’s accelerating,” Eve concluded. “This time blood wasn’t enough. He wanted a taste of flesh.” She scanned again, noted the open door on an empty cabinet. “Did the killer walk in on the vic, or the other way around?”
“If this is extra credit, I want a review of my earlier grade. Let me think.” To help herself do that, Peabody looked away from the body. “I can’t think why Billingsly would be here. He and Rosenthall aren’t pals, and this isn’t his area—not only sector-wise, but professionally. Maybe if Rosenthall asked him to come in—but I don’t buy it. He’s not going to do his competitor any favors. He’d come if Arianna asked him, but that puts her in this, and it just doesn’t fit well for me.”
Pausing, she made herself look at the body again. “If he came here—which, okay, obviously, he did—it was to get something on Justin, or screw with something, or poke around looking . . . Poke his nose in!”
Eve took the cloned key card and recorder out of Billingsly’s pocket. Hit Play.
“Justin Rosenthall.”
“Billingsly tried a little B&E,” Peabody commented.
“That’s an A plus.”
“Yay!”
“Billingsly keys in using the dummy card and the recorder. He’s poking around. The killer is already here—looking for something, doing something, waiting for something. Billingsly sees him, and that’s the end of Billingsly. The killer chews on him, stabs him, amputates his nose, wrecks the lab, takes time to leave the message, then boogies out. They’ve got him on disc, so we’ll be able to track his movements.”
“That’s a break.”
“For us, not for Billingsly.” Eve opened her field kit again, crouched by the body. “Let’s verify ID, get TOD.”
“If there are bite marks, they should get some saliva, and the impressions, too,” Peabody began.
“We got better.” Eve lifted Billingsly’s lifeless hand. “We got skin under the nails. Billingsly got some flesh, too.”
NINE
Eve put on microgoggles for a better look before she bagged the hand. “Tinted green flesh, so that’s our guy. We’ll get DNA.”
“And see if one of our main suspects shows some recent scratches.”
Eve looked up as Roarke came back in. “McNab’s working with Security,” he told her. “Everyone in the lab logged out, Rosenthall being the last at eleven twenty-six. The log shows Rosenthall swiping in again at twelve oh-seven, but the discs show Billingsly swiping in at that time, clearly entering alone.”
Eve held up an evidence bag. “Billingsly had a clone swipe and a recording of Rosenthall’s voice.”
“
Nosy becomes very apt. No one else entered the lab after the last log-out at eleven twenty-six except Billingsly. No one exited until your Dr. Chaos at one fifteen.”
“Well, he didn’t just materialize.”
“TOD,” Peabody announced before Roarke could comment, “twelve fifty.”
“That’s a lot of time between when Billingsly entered and TOD. It didn’t take that long to kill him. Contact the sweepers, and the ME,” Eve ordered, then, avoiding blood and debris, did another long study of the room, walked over to the break room area.
“Peabody! Get us a warrant for these lockers. Six, digital locks.” Looking up, she studied the open ceiling vent. “There’s his access. It’s big enough for a man to get through.”
“Low tech,” Roarke commented. “But classic.”
“I need the ventilation layout. But for now . . . boost me up.”
Obliging, Roarke hooked his fingers together. With her foot in the hammock of his hands, Eve bounced up, gripped the edge of the open vent. “Yeah, the grille’s in here. Maybe he initially planned to go back out this way.” She took a penlight out of her pocket, shined it in the skinny ventilation tunnel. “Tight squeeze. I see some scuff marks. So he logs out, comes back in somewhere else. Through the health center area, maybe the visitor’s lodging, pretty much anywhere. Scoots and crawls along. Pops out, then—”
“Are you going to solve the case while I’m holding you off the floor?” Roarke wondered.
“Hmm? Sorry.” She jumped down. “Pops out,” she continued. “Maybe gets into his gear here. Lockers, bathroom. Sweepers could find traces of the makeup. Would he be stupid enough to leave something in a locker?”
“Shall I open them?”
“When we get a warrant.”
“Stickler,” he said and made her smile.
“I could claim they’re part of the crime scene, which they are, so the PA could probably hold that line. But a defense attorney would make noises, so a warrant keeps it clean.”
She set her hands on her hips, turned a slow circle. “Was he meeting Billingsly here? In it together, there’s a disagreement, death ensues. I don’t like it. This guy works alone. Billingsly got nosy, then got dead. The killer wasn’t expecting company. He came in for the serum, and he got it. Billingsly’s a bonus round.”
“Why didn’t he go out the way he came in?”
“Too hyped up from the kill to care,” she concluded. “By then, leaving where he’d be caught on disc—if he thought of it—just added some fun. Look at me!”
Peabody came to the doorway. “I tagged Cher Reo,” she said, speaking of the APA. “She was about to call me a very bad name, but I showed her the body.”
“Good thinking,” Eve told her.
“She’s all over the warrant.”
“Okay. When the morgue gets here, I want the skin sent to the lab asap. I want that DNA the same way. I need something for a bribe. Something really good,” she told Roarke. “For Dickhead.”
Chief Lab Tech Dick Berenski wouldn’t drag himself to work in the middle of the night for less than a first-class bribe.
“Two tickets, skybox, first game of the World Series, with locker-room passes.”
“Excellent, but we’re still in play-offs.”
“Wherever it is—transpo included.”
“Nice. I’ll start with one, let him squeeze me for the second ticket—which he will. I’ll tag him on the way to Security. I want to see those discs. Peabody, wait for the morgue and the sweepers. I want that skin hand-carried to the lab. And I want to know as soon as the warrant comes through.”
In Security, Eve studied the screen, the movement, the face. She ordered magnification, ordered freeze, replay.
“Gotta be a new strain of Zeus, or something like it. Along with some serious prosthetics. Nothing’s quite right about him. It’s almost as if his whole body’s disjointed.”
She magnified again to study the hands. Gloved, she noted, with long, sharp nails slicing through the tips. Then went back to the face.
“He couldn’t have taken those bites out of the vic wearing that gear. So he didn’t put it on until after the kill. Or he can manipulate it, because the bites had puncture marks like those pointed incisors he’s got. What is his deal?”
“Totally freak show,” was McNab’s opinion.
Eve glanced at the e-man, and Peabody’s cohab. He wore his long blond hair in a tail secured with silver rings that matched the half dozen hanging from his earlobe. His skinny frame vibrated with color from the many pocketed baggies in Day-Glo orange that picked up the zigs in his shirt.
The zags were nuclear blue.
“You’re wearing that getup and talking freak show.”
He grinned. “Easy to find these pants in the dark.”
“It’d be easy to spot them on Mars in the night sky with the naked eye.”
“They blind the bad guys,” he claimed, still grinning. “Anyway, Dallas, it looks real. This guy, I mean. He looks real.”
“Nothing about this guy looks real,” she corrected. “I want you to take this in to EDD for a full anal.”
She looked down at her com when it signaled. “Warrant’s in. Let’s open those lockers.”
“You’re not going to like this,” Roarke said as they walked back. “But I agree with McNab.”
“Yeah, I figure those pants could blind somebody if they stared at them too long.”
“Something I try to avoid. I also have to agree with him that your killer doesn’t look as if he’s wearing a disguise.”
“Because it’s a combination. Disguise and some kind of powerful drug.”
“How does he blink?”
That put a hitch in her stride. “What?”
“If his eyes aren’t real, if he’s using devices for the size, the shape, how does he blink? He looked directly at the security camera at several points, and his eyelids closed and opened. He smiled, if you can call it that. His jaw shifted, his mouth turned up. And we both saw him contort his body in impossible ways, and move at considerable speed.”
He did have a damn good eye, she thought.
“If he’s a scientist—and he damn well is—he’s figured out how to devise something, and he’s taking something that boosts his adrenaline. Monsters exist,” she added. “But they’re flesh and blood. They’re human, just like the rest of us. It’s what’s inside them that’s twisted. This guy isn’t some Frankenstein monster.”
“Actually, I was thinking of another classic. Mr. Hyde.”
“You’ve got to lay off those old vids,” she commented, and led the way to the lab.
“If you can believe a scientist can create devices and substances to disguise himself this way, why isn’t it possible for that scientist to create something that causes him to be this way?”
“Because,” she said as they approached the door, “appearing and being are different things.” She paused outside the door. “Maybe—maybe—there’s been something going on in this lab that’s whacked. Something botched. And we’re going to salvage Rosenthall’s records and find out. But for now, we’ve got a killer on a spree, and none of my suspects pop out as a fucked-up science experiment.”
“Maybe the more human face is the real disguise.”
With that thought planted in her head, she walked into the lab.
Police business moved forward, with sweepers and the dead crew already at work. With Roarke she headed straight back to the lockers.
She thought of the destruction of the lab and the open, unbroken door of the serum lockup.
“No point in busting them open since you’re here.”
“None at all,” Roarke agreed.
It didn’t take him long. As he moved down the line of lockers uncoding the locks, she called Peabody in for the search.
And hit pay dirt in Pachai Gupta’s.
Eve took out the silver pipe.
“Weighted it for extra punch. And he didn’t even clean it thoroughly,” Eve noted. “There’s sti
ll some blood, some matter. It shows some nicks and dents where it hit bone.”
“He loved her—Darnell.” Peabody shook her head. “It was all over him, Dallas. Love and grief, all over him.”
“He wouldn’t be the first to destroy what he loved. But this is so damn stupid, so careless. Steal the serum by unlocking the cabinet rather than busting it up. Then just leave one of the murder weapons in your work locker?”
“A frame-up? It makes more sense to me,” Peabody said. “I know I did the interview, and I hate thinking I missed anything, but a frame-up makes more sense.”
“He’s got this in the locker, but doesn’t use it. Kills Billingsly, and unless he’s really stupid, knows we’ll search the lockers, knows we’ll question the fact the serum cabinet was opened with its lock code. He’s unstable, and the drug makes him more so, but he’s organized. Takes care not to be seen coming in—but does murder, then shows himself.”
“Because he wanted us here,” Peabody concluded. “Following the bread crumbs to Gupta. No, not crumbs. Big, chunky hunks of bread.”
“Reads that way. Seal it up, get the weapon taken to the lab for processing. And let’s have all our players picked up, brought in.”
She walked out with Roarke. “A frame-up, if that’s what it is, that’s human. So’s screwing up and leaving evidence where it can be found, if that’s what it is. Either way, with the weapon, the DNA, we’ll lock it down.”
“I have every faith. I’m going into the office.”
“Now? It’s . . .” She checked the time as they stepped outside. “It’s shy of five a.m.”
“Should I point out you’ve been working since shortly after two? I’ll get my own jump on the day, and as I’m curious enough, I may come down to Central later, watch you lock it down.”
“If you need the car, I could—Guess you don’t,” she added when a dark limo glided smoothly to the curb. “I’m going to hit the lab first, give Dickhead a push. A DNA match will save the innocent bystanders from a round in the box. Thanks for the bribe.”
“Never a problem.” He touched her cheek. “Take care, will you? This one gives me a very uneasy feeling.”