Connections in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “The grandmother.”

  “She had her kids all back together, you see. She had the one everybody thought was lost come home. Really come home. And now … They’re going to see him today, and I know how hard that is. But I thought it best I stayed back, let them go as a family. Maybe I should go. Maybe I should.”

  “I think you made the right decision,” Peabody told him. “Give them this time, then you’ll be there.”

  “We just left Rochelle and her brother Walter at the apartment. She was packing up some things.”

  He nodded at Eve. “She let me know she was gonna meet you, and we’d already talked about her staying with me. Not so much room over at Martin’s place. I ain’t going to let her go back to that apartment. That’s a talk we’ll have when she’s settled some more.”

  “There were some things missing.”

  “They stole from her, too.” His eyes, already hard, turned to stone. “What did they take?”

  “They emptied out Lyle’s coin jar, took his good shoes, his earbuds. I’m going to confirm the buds, make sure he didn’t leave them at work.”

  “He wouldn’t’ve. No way. It wasn’t just because they were prime ones, but he got them from Martin. Martin was kinda a holdout on Lyle. He held back the longest, and the buds? Well, it was saying how he trusted Lyle again, had his back again. He’d never have left them somewhere.”

  “Rochelle had a red purse in her closet. It’s gone.”

  “That little red job?” Obviously puzzled, he held his big hands out to indicate size. “It have money in it?”

  “No. Just the purse.”

  “That don’t make a spit worth of sense.”

  “It might. They took her mother’s pin—brooch—from a box in her dresser, and a bangle bracelet.”

  “That makes more sense. They ain’t worth anything, but if you’re a fuckhead you could think they’re worth something. That pin was sentiment. I hope you can get it back.”

  “They took the earrings you gave her for Valentine’s Day.”

  “Well, shit.” He punched the menu, ordered a brew. “Want a drink?”

  “No, we’re good. The other jewelry was costume, no real value. I’m betting the earrings were the real deal, whatever Rochelle thinks.”

  “If I said how they’re real, she’d be too nervous to wear them.”

  “Are they insured?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” As his big hand tapped, tapped, tapped on the table, he scowled through the dome. “I look like a fool to you?”

  “You look like a big, hard-bodied black man gone soft over a woman to me.”

  Without turning his head, he shifted that scowl to Eve.

  “If they’re insured, you have the exact description,” she continued, unfazed, “the carat weight on the rubies and diamonds.”

  “Diamonds. Rubies.” Peabody hunched her shoulders at the twin looks from her companions. “Sorry. Just wow.”

  “Just little ones,” Crack responded. “I liked the look of them, that’s all.”

  “What are they insured for?”

  “Ten.”

  “Th—thousand?” Peabody hunched again. “Sorry!”

  “I’ll need that information. They’ll probably try to pawn them. Taking easily identified items from the crime scene’s a stupid mistake. I have to lean toward taking the jewelry’s something they might think gets blamed on Lyle—if they figure cops are stupid enough to buy the OD. But the purse tells me something else. Peabody’s magpie theory.”

  “Bright, shiny things.” Crack’s brew finally eased out of the serve slot. “Might be they aren’t looking to pawn. Gonna keep it for their nest, or give it to some skank.”

  “And when the beat cops see some gang skank sporting diamonds and rubies, we’ll have them. We have one more lead. The woman across the hall remembered something else. One of the three couldn’t stand still. Like maybe he had music in his head. Makes me think of the geeks in EDD—always moving. And this one had his arms down by his sides, snapping his fingers.

  “You have a lot of the shady come in here, and you’re not far out of Banger territory. Maybe you’ve seen someone like that in here.”

  “I’d tell you if I had, and I’ll be asking my people to watch. I leave the customers be, unless they get out of line. Then?” He mimed cracking heads together. “We get some Bangers in here now and then.” He shrugged. “They know they cause trouble in my place, I give them more and worse.”

  He took a long, slow pull of his brew. “I know you do the job, both of you. And you’re about to say something to me about not doing something I think should be done if I see some Banger snapping his fingers, or some skank wearing my Ro’s earrings. You don’t have to. You took care of the fucker who took my Alicia from me. You’ll take care of those who took Ro’s baby brother from her. Anyway, she wouldn’t like it if I did what I maybe think I should do.

  “If I did something, it would piss you off and disappoint her. I ain’t aiming to piss off skinny-ass or fine-ass cops, or disappoint my woman. Especially when I’m going to ask her to cohab with me.”

  “Cohab,” Eve echoed, as stunned as Peabody had been about diamonds and rubies.

  “I’ve had my share of fine women.” He kicked back in the chair, looking up at the top of the dome as if seeing a parade of those fine women.

  “I’m gonna tell you not one of them would say I didn’t treat her good, treat her right. The first time I sat down talking to Rochelle, I knew, right then, she wasn’t a fine woman. No, she wasn’t. She was the fine woman. Not much puts a scare into a head-cracker like me, but knowing that gave me—you call it a pause. Yeah, I had a pause.”

  Peabody all but swooned. “That’s so romantic.”

  He shot her a grin. “Ain’t it just? After the pause, I thought, Well, that’s gonna be that. I’ve been taking it slow because the fine woman, she’s worth the time. I wanted to ask her to live with me for a while now, but I knew she had to give Lyle all she could. I was thinking I could look into getting a bigger place, and they could both move in, but now … Anyway, she ain’t going back to that apartment.”

  He slapped a finger on the table, ran it across the surface. “That’s a line right there. We’ll have a talk about that line, but I won’t be taking no on it. Right now she needs her grieving time, and you need your cop time.”

  He took another pull. “I’ll get you that insurance stuff.”

  “Okay. One last thing. Did Lyle say anything to you about cutting Duff off? Telling her he’d call the cops if she kept hassling him?”

  “No. We got along fine, me and Lyle, but I’m not the one he’d talk to about that. Did he?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “Now he’s dead, and if that’s the why of it, I’m gonna be more pissed, and I’m running out of pissed room. And still, goddamn it, I’m glad he laid that line. A man’s gotta lay his line. Women, too,” he said with a glittery look. “So don’t get bitchy.”

  “Getting bitchy is one of my lines. We’ll be in touch.” Eve gestured at the dome.

  When he lifted it, Peabody rose, then hesitated. “I know you’re feeling like there’s nothing much you can do to help. You are helping by being there for Rochelle. If you want something, I don’t know, more tangible … People bring food for death. You could have food sent over to where her family lives so they don’t have to think about it. It would just be there.”

  “That’s a fine idea, Peabody. I thank you for it.” They left him brooding into his brew while the holo band banged and the dancers gyrated.

  “That was a good thought, Peabody,” Eve said when they walked back to the car. “It gives him something to do.”

  “He looked so sad. Pissed, yeah, but sad, too. He loves her—I mean the big L. Jeez, he gave her ten-thousand-dollar earrings for V-Day.” She gave Eve an elbow bump. “What did I say about romance? Spring!”

  “V-Day’s in the winter.” Eve returned the jab. “Shiny gifts equal follow-up sex, which equals body he
at for some types. So what did I say?”

  “Damn it. No, I’ve got better.” Peabody shot a finger in the air. “Romance knows no season.”

  “We’re heading to the morgue. See what that does to romance.”

  “It’ll still be spring.”

  10

  Dinnie Duff wouldn’t see spring, not this one or any other.

  She lay on the slab with Morris’s precise Y-cut closed with his equally precise stitches.

  He swiveled around from a short counter where he’d been working, rose.

  “And here we three meet again, without the thunder, lightning, or the rain.”

  “I know that.” Peabody lifted a finger. “Shakespeare, right?”

  “It is indeed.” He crossed to the body on the slab. “Unfortunately for young Duff, she didn’t have the same outcome as the bard’s Macduff.”

  Since Eve didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, she focused on the body. “COD confirmed?”

  “While several of these injuries, particularly the combined injuries, would likely have caused death left untreated, it was, as you noted in your on-site, the skull fracture. The repeated slamming of same against the concrete and gravel. She had several pieces of both in the wounds. Broken ribs—and a punctured lung from the breaks. Broken nose, detached retina, fractured cheekbones—both—the bruising on her neck indicates repeated chokings.”

  “Choke, let her come around, choke again. Probably during the rapes.”

  “I can’t tell you how many violated her, as they suited up, but she was repeatedly and forcibly violated. At least once postmortem.”

  “Sick fucks.”

  “I can’t disagree, though the sick fucks might not have fully realized she was dead. I’m finishing the report now, but I can tell you, in technical terms, they beat the crap out of her, raped the crap out of her, and killed her by beating her head against the ground until her skull cracked like an egg.”

  “Suited up.” She’d held out a little hope they’d gone into her bare. “Either because they worried she’d give them an STD or because they were smart enough to worry about DNA. Or both. Did she fight back, get a piece of one of them?”

  Morris gestured so they lowered their heads together over the body. “The bruising on the arms, the legs—mostly calf area or close to ankles?”

  “One goes in, the others hold her down.”

  “Yes. And though it’s hard to make out without goggles due to the extent of the facial damage, I also conclude a hand over her mouth at some point. Squeezing. And then the choking would have also prevented calling for help. I can’t tell you how many, as I said, but I’d say no less than three.”

  “It’ll be the same three she let into Pickering’s apartment. Cut bait,” Eve murmured.

  “Her tox came back positive for Zoner and Funk. I found no sign she’d been a habitual user of Funk, at least not long term.”

  “Wanted her compliant,” Eve mused. “Maybe told her it was her usual mix.”

  “A stingy amount of both, so while I agree on the compliance, they also wanted her awake and aware. And while they suited up, I found some hair, some fiber. No DNA match on record on my scan for the hair, but I’ve sent it all to the hair and fiber queen.”

  “Harvo will run it down if it can be run.” And faster, Eve knew, than anyone else on- or off-planet. “Chilly last night. Why undress when you can just unzip? Sloppy again. If you’re smart, you pump her with the junk like you did Pickering, but hey, what’s the fun in that?”

  Because it had told her all it had to tell, she stepped back from the body. “These were hits, both of them, carried out by thugs. Underlings. And both of them personal. Maybe doing her where they did, leaving her there has a side benefit of stirring up gang tensions, but it’s personal.”

  “I doubt this poor, doomed woman would disagree. She would have suffered. I gauge the first blows occurred about an hour before death.” Morris looked back down at Duff’s face. “A very long hour for her.”

  “Yeah. She was dead when Lyle opened the door, but a long hour.”

  When they walked outside, Peabody took a deep gulp of air. “Still spring, even if that put a damper on it. Bigger damper would be you saying we’re going back to Banger HQ.”

  “We’ll let the beat cops keep an eye out there for now. Whoever ordered this wanted her to suffer, wanted her hurting and violated. Personal. She was flopping with the one named Bolt, one of the lieutenants. Let’s find out more about him.”

  “I’ll see what I can dig up.”

  While Eve drove, Peabody dug.

  “Okay, got him. Kenneth Jorgenson’s a very bad boy. Age twenty-five, bad boy son of Oliver Jorgenson and Pauline Grant, who ended their eleven-year marriage shortly after Oliver—also a bad boy—went in for fraud, embezzlement, and money laundering. One sibling, Jessica, age twenty-eight. That’s Staff Sergeant Grant—she took her mother’s maiden—U.S. Army, currently based in Nevada, ten years in. She enlisted at eighteen.”

  “Where’s the mother?”

  “Two residences—Palm Beach, Florida, and Bar Harbor, Maine. Married, seven years, to Humphrey Merkle, no offspring from that relationship. He’s loaded—founder of Bertinili’s Frozen Pizza.”

  “That’s assembly-line shit.”

  “And sells. They also do pastas and all that. Anyway, loaded.”

  “So the Banger comes from money.”

  “Well, he started off with it.” Digging, Peabody toggled and scrolled. “Everything went south when the father went down. They had to downsize, big-time. Mom went to work for—ha!—Bertinili’s company, worked her way up the chain, and married the big guy. But by then, she’d spent considerable time dealing with the bad boy. Or not dealing—hard to say.”

  “What kind of bad?”

  “Since his juvie record’s already unsealed, I can tell you he’s got truancy, destruction of property, shoplifting, trespassing, possession of illegals, possession of a knife over the legal limit, and assault.”

  Eyebrows lifted, Peabody glanced over at Eve. “That’s all before he hit thirteen.”

  “That’s bad enough, and cruising toward worse.”

  “Yeah. The mother actually tried a military school. He got kicked out. Then we’ve got more assaults, some B and E, illegals, more destruction of property, and so on. That’s just what stuck before sixteen.”

  “Cruised to the worse,” Eve decided.

  “And kept going. He’s got a rape charge in here that didn’t stick—victim recanted. Looks like he was already a Banger by that time.”

  Peabody continued to scroll as Eve drove into the garage at Central. “Whoa. Dallas, he went after his mother—physical assault—and the sister kicked his ass. You go. Looks like he was about seventeen.”

  “Let’s get the report on that. I want the details.”

  “Will do. He’s done some stints. Been out now for about four years. Been hauled in a few times, but wiggled out.”

  “Could be he wants a higher rank than he has, more power than he’s got. Let’s pull all we can on him.”

  “Jesus, Dallas.” The beaming that spring had brought on had dimmed by the time Peabody got in the elevator. “He beat on his own mother. What if the sister hadn’t been there to stop him? That’s more than bad boy. I mean, if you’d punch your own mom—”

  “Why quibble about killing your fuck buddy?”

  A woman with a sweep of winter-white hair and a sour expression stepped on. “Language!” she snapped at Eve.

  “Yes, ma’am, that was language.”

  “Are you a police officer?”

  “That’s right.”

  She jabbed a long, red-tipped finger into Eve’s chest, repeatedly.

  “Ma’am, I’m going to ask you to stop that.”

  She jabbed again. “I pay your salary, young lady, and I don’t expect officers of the law to use such language.”

  As she spoke, jabbing that finger, the doors opened on the next level and let in a pai
r of uniforms discussing the dickwad they’d just brought in.

  The woman actually said, “Harrumph!” then stalked off the elevator.

  “Must be her first trip to a cop shop.” Eve rubbed idly where that finger had tried to poke through flesh, and waited another level before jumping off.

  “Get those reports on Jorgenson,” she said as they used the glides. “He’s not a big guy—and the wit’s firm on that. Unlikely, if he’s involved, he’s one of the three who killed Lyle. As an LT, he’d probably have access to the illegals stash, be able to cut out enough to take Lyle out, to plant the rest.”

  “To pass the junk to Dinnie, too.”

  “Yeah, he’s a definite possibility.”

  “Could he do all that without Jones knowing?”

  Eve replayed the visit to HQ, and Jorgenson’s reactions. Pushing Jones, pushing at him to stand up, to strike back.

  “That’s something else to find out.”

  In her office, Eve hit routine. Coffee, updating board and book. Then she sat, boots on desk, coffee in hand, for some thinking time.

  The evidence, and every instinct, said both murders came through the Bangers, with Lyle Pickering as the primary target. The method, the setup on Pickering read as an attempt to mask murder with accidental overdose. An addict surrendering to old habits.

  That method also read personal grudge. Easier to jump him on the street one night after a late shift, if taking him out was the only goal.

  The why of taking him out, Eve mused. Gang pride? He’d cut himself off from his “family,” even started the process of removing his gang tat.

  Not enough, she thought. Enough for a beatdown, possibly, but not enough to kill. Or to spend so much valuable product in the cover-up attempt.

  But more than enough, she considered, if someone in the gang discovered Pickering’s connection to Strong.

  And yet, wouldn’t that rate a beatdown, a serious beatdown, followed by an execution? Not a relatively tame OD?

  He’d betrayed that family, worked with the enemy. And for that, death—but in this case a relatively painless one.

  Because the cover-up rated as high, or possibly higher, than the crime?