Obsession in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “I thought we might visit there next summer,” Roarke continued, enjoying his less saturated waffles. “There should be considerable progress on the villa’s rehab by then.”

  Eve glanced toward the window where the falling sleet looked bitter and just a bit toothy. She could barely imagine summer, and sunshine and heat.

  “Miserable, isn’t it?” But he said it easily—and why not, she thought, since they were eating waffles in the warmth with a fire snapping and a holiday tree sparkling.

  What was the killer doing? she wondered. Sleeping still? Did she—it was damn well a woman—have a job that allowed her to sleep until the sun, what there would be of it today, rose?

  Did she dream, as Eve had dreamed, of blood? Of eyes blindly staring that still held a brutal accusation?

  “I’m going to work here this morning,” she decided. “They can’t drag me on screen if I’m here. I can have Peabody come in—McNab, if Feeney can spare him. We’ll have more matches by now in the lab, and still with the new parameters, it’s a smaller grouping.”

  “I’ll send a car for them.”

  “What?” Genuinely appalled, she gaped at him. “Why? The subway—”

  “Eve.” He gestured toward the window, the ugly, frigid sleet.

  “Cops are supposed to freeze their asses off,” she told him. “You spoil them.”

  “And why not?” he countered. “They’ll get here faster, and drier.” He rubbed a hand on her thigh. “What is it—under it all?”

  “Dreams,” she admitted. “Just ugly dreams. Ledo playing pool with a broken cue, with the other half stuck in his chest. Reminding me I broke the cue in the first place. Reminding me he helped me on the dead sleeper—Snooks, the sleeper went by Snooks. Not a lot of help, but he did give me a little. And Bastwick, pounding at me on the witness stand again.”

  Eve shook her head, went back to coffee.

  “And the killer. She looked like me—sort of. A reflection, I guess, smudged. I guess that came from Hastings talking about her eyes being something like mine. And I get the shrink-wrap of that,” she added. “We’re sitting there, drinking wine. Or she’s drinking it. There’s a big, bubbly pizza on the table between us. Like we’re sharing a friendly moment, you know? And she’s making her case. Just how many murderers, rapists, pedophiles, spouse beaters would Bastwick have gotten off if she’d lived? How many people would mug or steal or kill to get the scratch to buy what Ledo sold? Couldn’t I see the greater good here? Wasn’t it about that? About protect and serve? About justice? About respect for the law and the people who enforce it?”

  She fell silent a moment, but he knew she wasn’t finished. She was working up to the rest.

  “I said something like killing, taking a life, wasn’t respecting or enforcing the law. That’s when she leaned over, and it was all blood then. The wine, the pie. Just blood. She’s looking at me, and she says I did the same. I killed my father. She’s smiling when she says it, like we’re just a couple of pals having a friendly chat.”

  She needed another moment, just one more. “In the dream, I felt panic. She can’t know that. She shouldn’t know that. I said she didn’t know anything about it, but she just kept smiling, told me she knew everything. Everything about me.”

  To soothe, Roarke lifted her hand, kissed it. “She doesn’t know anything about you.”

  “It felt like she did. ‘You killed Richard Troy,’ she said to me, ‘because he needed killing.’ That I knew what it was like, same as her, to do what needed doing, and to like it.”

  “Bloody bollocks to that.”

  “I know it.” She pushed up, had to stand, walk it off. “I was eight, and he was raping me—again. And so crazy drunk he might’ve killed me. I believed he would. That little knife on the floor, then in my hand, then going into him. It’s not the same, not the same as killing someone who poses no threat, not to you or anyone. It’s not even in the same universe.”

  She shoved her hands through her hair then made herself sit again. “I know that,” she said, calmly now.

  Still, he put an arm around her, drew her closer. “You don’t believe what she said in this dream, but you think she does—or would if she knew.”

  “Yeah. She’d see it as something that makes us more alike. She sees us as alike, and this would cement it. She needs to convince me, that’s what I think. She needs to show me how right she is, and how it’s all a kind of partnership. She could pick anybody, right, but she needs to pick people she sees as against me, who’ve hurt or offended me in some way. To her twisted mind. Jesus, if a cop isn’t hurt or offended every other day, she’s not doing the job.”

  She poked at the waffles on her plate. Shame to waste them, she thought, but her appetite had dropped out. “She asked if I wanted to pick the next one.”

  “She thinks she knows you, that’s true enough in dream and reality. But she couldn’t be more wrong.”

  “I don’t know her—that’s the problem. Just pieces. But I will, I’ll know her, and all of it. I’m going to wake up Peabody,” she decided, and got up again to do just that.

  Once she’d verbally dragged her partner out of a warm bed, Eve headed straight to the computer lab. She brought up the next batch of results, gave them a quick scan.

  A pattern here, she decided—definitely a pattern starting to form. She ordered the results on her own comp, started for her office. She could leave any e-nudging to McNab, if Feeney cleared him for her.

  With the door connecting her office to Roarke’s open, she heard him on the ’link, and a sizzly female French accent speaking back to him.

  Eve listened for a minute, realized despite the sizzly French it was all geek speak. The same, as far as she was concerned, in any language. Incomprehensible.

  She went directly to her desk, began to sort and order the latest results with the ones she’d sorted and ordered late the night before.

  She ran probabilities, re-sorted, re-ran.

  Considered, then wrote up a summary of her conclusions, sent it all to Whitney, to Mira, and for good measure to Feeney as well.

  Then sat back and began to read the correspondence she’d highlighted, beginning with the earliest. August of ’59, she mused. Before the Icove investigation. So that . . . notoriety hadn’t set it all off—if she was on the right track.

  The interest—no, obsession—hadn’t rooted there.

  Dear Lieutenant Dallas,

  You don’t know me—yet—but I’ve been following your career for some time, and with admiration and great respect. Up until now, I couldn’t find the courage to contact you, but the tragedy of the Swisher family, and the bravery of young Nixie compelled me. If an orphaned child has the courage to be heard, why can’t I?

  You risked your life to bring the Swishers justice, as you have before and will again. You inspire me, and challenge me to work for justice, to take risks, to do what must be done.

  It pains me to know how often those you seek to protect and serve give you no thanks, give you no respect. I know, too well, what it’s like to be unappreciated, not respected.

  Yet you continue to do what must be done, within the confines of the system. A system, I know as you do, that often fails to mete out just punishment.

  I feel I know you, that we share many of the same values and goals, and could be good friends. For now know I’ll continue to give you my admiration, my respect, and my support. The law has boundaries that are too often senseless. My friendship has none.

  A humble friend

  A little over the top, sure, but not threatening, Eve mused. Not batshit crazy. There’d been a considerable outpouring of sympathy for Nixie Swisher in the media. A kid who’d survived a home invasion that had slaughtered her entire family? Strong story, and it had had some legs, if Eve remembered.

  An e-mail like this? She’d have tossed it straight to public relations. Bu
t now, she thought—and the computer backed her up—maybe, just maybe, this was first contact.

  She’d need to find out if they’d answered it. Maybe the e-mail address had remained valid then—as it was no longer.

  yourfriend@globallink.com.

  She read through the next, the next, seeing the gradual escalation. Still, nothing that would have set off alarms, not individually. And as the e-mail addresses varied, no one—including herself—would have paid much attention.

  She’d have paid none, Eve admitted, after the Icove blast hit, fall of ’59, because she’d tossed pretty much everything to public relations.

  She glanced up as Roarke came in.

  “I think I’ve found her—not who she is or where, but where she started contacting me. The first one—and it’s the first—is up on screen. There were three more in ’59, and there’s been nine this year.

  “The searches matched all these on every factor. Same writer, different e-mails, but the same person wrote them.”

  “Different e-mails—you’d never have noticed,” he commented.

  “I probably didn’t read them, or most of them. Different e-mails,” she repeated, “and until the last three, different signatures. She’s settled on Your True Friend for the last three.”

  She needed coffee, and got up to program a pot while Roarke read.

  “It’s the same writer. The comp agrees with me, and the probability is ninety-four-point-six.”

  “Nixie,” Roarke said. “That seems to have been the launching point.”

  “Innocent, defenseless kid, loses her entire family, crawls through her mother’s blood? It got play. And I talked about it some to the media. About her being a survivor, about her courage. I probably mouthed off about getting justice.”

  “It’s not mouthing off,” he corrected. “And you’ll annoy me if you try to find some handhold for responsibility here.”

  She’d annoy herself, Eve admitted. “I think we should contact Richard and Elizabeth.” Roarke’s friends—hers, too, she supposed—were Nixie’s foster parents. Nixie’s family now. “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, but I don’t want to be wrong and have done nothing. It wouldn’t hurt for them to be a little more careful.”

  “I’ll contact them, because I agree with you. Better safe.”

  “I’ve done a search on all the e-mails. No account currently exists. For any of them. We’ll dig there, contact the server, hold their feet to the fire, see if we can get any account information.”

  “I can work with McNab for a bit, try to dig out the IP, triangulate. Someone this careful would do some routing, some bouncing, but if we can find a few threads, we might be able to weave a bit of rope.”

  “I’ll take anything you can do. She gets more intimate, I guess you could say. Starts calling me Dallas in the third, then shifts to Eve by the sixth.

  “No threats, no talk about killing anyone—that would have sent up a flag. It’s more subtle, and in the one where she started calling me Eve, she talked about lawyers—no mention of Bastwick—just talking about lawyers who feather their nest with blood money, who undo, or try to undo, all the work I do, trampling on justice, badgering good cops. Like that. Just a few lines, and again on the imposed limits of the system that hamper my duty.”

  “Is there anything about her, any personal details?”

  “She’s too careful for much. Somewhere in her head this was always the plan. But she says she knows what it’s like to grow up without family, to have to carve out your own place. To be unappreciated, disrespected. There’s several mentions of being overlooked, not seen, unappreciated. She doesn’t mention the foster system, or use any of the code words foster kids use. But maybe a state school, or some nontraditional upbringing.” Eve blew out a breath. “Or she hated her family and pretends they don’t exist.”

  She sat on the desk. “I’m going to admit, right out loud, it’s fucking creepy. She’ll write something about hoping I enjoyed my vacation, and how relaxed I looked, or how mag I looked at the vid premiere—and wasn’t she proud when I took down a killer and closed a case at the same time.

  “I should know when someone’s watching me. I haven’t felt it.”

  “A lot of the watching may be on screen, on the Internet,” he pointed out. “And if she’s involved in law enforcement, it might be someone you see as a matter of course.”

  “See but don’t see. Just like she whines about in her correspondence.”

  He shook his head. “You see everything. It’s part of your talent. And I think, when you catch her, you’ll know her. Maybe not her name, but her face.”

  “Maybe that’s creepier,” Eve breathed out. “The last contact was right after the Sanctuary case. She had a lot to say—young girls again, I think that’s a trigger. Could be something happened to her when she was a kid. That’s something to dig into. Maybe . . .”

  She rose, circled her board. “The abuse. Maybe she senses it. She’s studied me, read about me, watched, extrapolated for her own means. And maybe she senses some of it because she experienced some of it. Young girls. Maybe.”

  She blew out another breath. “Reaching.”

  “Maybe not. We knew each other, you and I, didn’t we? On some level.”

  “Two lost souls, you said.”

  “She’s another, isn’t she? One who’s chosen murder instead of the law, or money, as we did, respectively. Choices we made because we refused to be victims. A choice you made—though I believe you were born a cop—to stand for victims. In her warped way, so is she. Standing for victims, and for you.”

  “She’s creating victims. But yeah, I get you. Here they come,” she added as she heard the clomp and prance that announced Peabody and McNab’s arrival.

  “They’ll want food.”

  “Crap.” Eve started to snarl, then remembered it was barely seven in the morning.

  Her partner and the e-geek she loved came in.

  “Get what you want out of the kitchen,” she said before either of them could speak. “And make it snappy.”

  “Score!” McNab, still holding Peabody’s hand, dragged her along on his dash to the kitchen.

  And all but blinded Eve with the blur of the kaleidoscope of stars decking his electric-blue shirt tucked into the screaming green of his cargos.

  “I’ll leave you to fill them in while I finish up some work,” Roarke told her. “Then I can give you about an hour.”

  “Appreciate it. Who was the sizzly French skirt?”

  Roarke looked blank for a moment, then smiled. “You mean Cosette—Cosette Deveroix. Chief cyber engineer, Paris office.”

  “What’s a cyber engineer?” she wondered, then held up a hand. “Never mind. I wouldn’t understand anyway, and don’t need to since I’ve got you. And him,” she added, jerking a thumb at McNab as he came out, shoveling in pancakes.

  “Howzit going?”

  “I’ll tell you both when Peabody gets the hell out here.”

  “I meant more like how was Christmas and stuff.”

  “Good, and done. Does that shirt run on batteries?”

  He grinned around more pancakes, a man with a pretty face, clever green eyes, and a long tail of blond hair, all topping a skinny build. “Body heat. I get revved, they really shine.”

  He turned his head, the spiral of silver rings along his earlobe sparkling as Peabody came out. She carried a plate holding a small scoop of scrambled eggs, two strips of bacon, and half a piece of unbuttered toast.

  “Sorry, it took me a while to figure out what I wanted versus what I should have, and I compromised. I shouldn’t have the bacon, but . . . it’s bacon.”

  But distracted, Eve continued to stare at Peabody’s feet. Not the pink cowboy boots, but still pink—hard-candy-pink boots that hit about mid-thigh with a thick fluff of snow-white furry stuff that glittered
. The inch-wide soles were lime green.

  “What do you have on your feet?” Eve demanded.

  “These are my rain, snow, sleet, cozy toes boots. My boyfriend gave them to me for Christmas.” She batted eyes at McNab. “The soles are Sure Grip, so they’ll handle the ice. You need that today. It’s a skating rink out there.”

  “What kind of murder cop wears pink boots with glittery white fuzz?”

  “She-body,” McNab said, batting eyes right back.

  “Christ.”

  No point in bitching, Eve reminded herself, especially since the fuzz-topped boots matched the damn pink coat.

  Why had she let Roarke overrule her on the pink?

  McNab wore the McNab tartan airboots Roarke had had made for him, so in some weird way, she’d contributed to the madness of both of their wardrobes.

  “Rundown,” she began. “What I believe is the first communication from the UNSUB is on screen.”

  Pink boots, shiny stars aside, both Peabody and McNab turned toward the screen with the eyes of cops.

  By the time they’d finished their breakfast, drunk Eve’s coffee, she’d brought them up to date with her current theory, and sent McNab off to Roarke’s comp lab.

  “Kid in a candy store. He’s always juiced about working in Roarke’s lab,” Peabody added. “They’ll find something if something’s there, Dallas.”

  “She’s smart, and part of her planned this from the start. Why do you send an e-mail to someone if you don’t leave them a way to respond?”

  “Here I am.” Peabody spread her hands. “That’s all. Just here I am, now you know I’m out here, that I’ve got your back. No credit necessary, not between friends.” Peabody lifted her shoulders. “That’s how I read it.”

  “That’s a good read.”

  “There’s more—to me. You don’t have sisters, so you maybe don’t pick up on the really, really subtle, passive-aggressive bullshit. It buzzed for me a few times, here and there. It’s this: Oh, you’re restrained by the rules, the system, so you can’t really finish things off. And how people disrespect you—it’s implied you take it. Maybe have to take it. Those rules again.”