Obsession in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “Where does she say that?”

  “Implied,” Peabody repeated. “Like . . .” She scrolled through the e-mails until she found what she wanted.

  I don’t know how you take the way some of these people get in your face, disrespect you so blatantly. I’d never be able to tolerate it.

  “You can read that, why do you take that shit? You ought to stand up for yourself, and since you don’t, I guess I have to.”

  “Read between the lines,” Eve noted.

  “Yeah. She says that sort of thing in different ways. And then there’s how she keeps hammering how much you have in common—and how strong and brave and smart you are. How important you are.”

  And reading between the lines, Eve nodded. “Because she wants to feel that way, wants that reflected back on her.” Eve thought of the dream, the blurry reflection, and understood she’d already gotten to that in some part of her brain. “If she’s a cop, she hasn’t climbed the ranks. If she’s periphery, she’s competent, likely considered a solid asset, but doesn’t draw a lot of attention.”

  “Or accolades,” Peabody added. “She wants them, don’t you think? But she’s too afraid to push herself out there? Maybe?”

  “I need to talk to Mira. Again.” She checked the time. “If she could come by here, or I could go by there before she goes into Central, I think we could add to the profile. Use the auxiliary, Peabody. Start going through the names the rest of the team sent in. For now, just the women.”

  “If you’ve zeroed in, they won’t find her in your correspondence.”

  “Maybe she slipped up. It would only take once.”

  Eve sat down to contact Mira, annoyed when an incoming e-mail interrupted. She started to ignore, then checked the sender’s address in case it applied to the investigation.

  dle#1@systemwide.com.

  She clicked it open, hit copy, reached for the house ’link.

  “I’ve got a fresh one, just came in, forwarding to you,” she told Roarke.

  “It’s coming through now. Starting the trace.”

  She read as they worked, said nothing as Peabody jumped up to read over her shoulder.

  Eve,

  I failed. I failed you, failed myself. I hope you can forgive me. I know you will, but it will be harder to forgive myself. He should be dead, with his ugly eyes destroyed.

  He should be dead.

  You would ask, as I do, what a woman like Matilda is doing with such a vicious, violent man? Some women are weak, some women almost ask for mistreatment, abuse, disrespect. Her weakness saved his life. My miscalculation saved him.

  I know you see some redeeming quality in him. That’s your compassion, I suppose. Or is it a weakness? I hate to think that. But is it, Eve, is it a weakness in you, a flaw in what I so want to see as perfection? Is this why you tolerate disrespect from those so unworthy? Is this why you follow the rules that too often protect the guilty and ignore the innocent, the victim?

  I don’t want to believe it. I want to believe that justice is your god, as it is mine. I want to believe you celebrate with me on the death of two people who not only abused you but were responsible for injustice and rewarding the guilty.

  I’ve begun to doubt this is true. Are you one of them after all, Eve? Calling for justice while subverting it?

  We have to think. We have to be sure. I’ve killed for you, and now I find myself wondering if you’re worthy of the gift, of my friendship and my devotion—something you rejected publicly.

  How that hurt me, to hear you say, so coldly, “inaccurate.”

  Have I let you down, Eve, or have you let me down? I have to know. For now, I struggle to remain

  Your true friend.

  Peabody laid a hand on Eve’s shoulder. “She’s turned on you.”

  Nodding slowly, Eve felt the faint sickness she’d carried since she’d read the first message burn away. “About fucking time.”

  “Smart, she’s a smart girl,” Roarke murmured.

  At his station he worked on the trace manually while McNab stood at another station, tick-tocking his hips while he ran an auto-trace.

  “Got chops,” McNab agreed. “Got flex. Bounce and swerve, echo it, pass on, bounce again. Got a fence line here, too, and a wall behind it.”

  “I see it, yes. And the bloody pit beyond it.”

  “Watch the three-sixty,” McNab warned. “Virus.”

  “Aye, but a distraction’s all it is. Does she think we’re a couple of gits? She’s set a Dragon’s Tail under it, Ian.”

  “Crap, crap. Got it.”

  Eve burst in, Peabody right behind her. “Do you have her?”

  “Quiet!” Roarke snapped, and sat, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, hair tied back. Full work mode.

  “She wants to play.” Now McNab’s shoulders wiggled into his e-geek dance. “I got trip spikes here. Man! Then a trip to fricking Bali.”

  Roarke’s flying fingers paused a moment. He angled his head, danced those fingers in the air. “It’s bollocks is what it is. Misdirection and false layers. I’m doing a clean sweep.”

  “Jesus, are you sure?”

  “Sure enough.”

  “How come they can talk?” Eve complained.

  “It’s how it works. Uh-oh,” Peabody said when Roarke’s screen went blank.

  “Fuck, fuck, lost her.” Eve rushed forward.

  “Quiet!” Roarke snapped again, and played the keyboard like a concert pianist hyped on Zeus. Weird lines of some sort of code jumped on one screen, a world map shimmered onto another.

  Eve watched arching lines spear across the map.

  “Underlayment,” Roarke mumbled.

  “Stupid, simple. Genius. I’m going manual,” McNab told him. “Squeeze play.”

  “Done. There you are now, there you are. Canny bitch, aye, that you are, but . . . Got her.”

  “Tagged.” A little wild-eyed, McNab turned to grin at Roarke. “Totally tight trek, man. Totally.”

  “Where?” Eve demanded. “Where?”

  Roarke rattled off an address even as he brought it on screen.

  “Son of a bitch. Ledo’s flop. She sent it from Ledo’s flop.”

  “She won’t be there now,” Roarke said. “That little game took us over twelve minutes.”

  “Giving me a slap, that’s what it is. Showing me she can go where she wants. A little pissed at me right now because I didn’t say thank you. Peabody, with me.”

  “It’s the four of us for this.” Roarke pushed to his feet—an angry motion even as he calmly rolled his sleeves down again. “She’ll have had ample time to lay a trap before sending this, if she’s inclined. Backup’s logical.”

  More than logical, it was SOP. She’d already intended to call in uniforms to secure the building. But a couple of e-men added good weight.

  “Then saddle up.”

  He chose the burly All-Terrain, and Eve didn’t complain. Thin, glittery ice coated the branches, dripped from them like frozen jewels. The slick sheen of it covered the roads as more fell from a dull, irritable sky in snaps and sizzles.

  While it cut down on traffic, of those who ventured out, at least half posed more threat than all the ice in the Arctic.

  Cars slid, spun, shimmied. Twice in under three blocks, Roarke hit vertical to avoid a collision. A Rapid Cab and a late-model sedan hadn’t been so lucky, and crossed together, sedan’s nose in the cab’s side, like a vehicular T.

  Pedestrians without Peabody’s Sure Grip soles did the same sort of slide, spin, shimmy—and in a few cases added an ungainly sprawl.

  Eve snatched her comm when it signaled. “Dallas.”

  “D-Officer Carter, Lieutenant. I’m on scene with D-Officer Bates. Police seal on crime scene door has been compromised. The door is closed but unsecured.”

  “Stand where you are, Cart
er. Scan for heat source, for booby traps, for explosives. Do not enter crime scene. Allow no one to exit same.”

  “Understood, Lieutenant. D-Officer Carter out.”

  “She could get through a couple of beat droids,” Eve speculated. “But it would be messy and loud.”

  “She won’t be there, Eve.”

  She flicked a glance at Roarke. “No, she won’t be there, but she went there for a reason. She sent that e-mail from that location for a purpose, even if it was a fuck-you.”

  She sniffed the air, caught the scent of chocolate, and glanced back to see Peabody and McNab each with steaming cups—courtesy of the rear AutoChef, she assumed.

  “Hot chocolate.” Peabody smiled, a little on the sheepish side. “Real as opposed to morgue. Want one?”

  Eve only grunted, turned back—in time to brace as a little silver mini skidded sideways into the intersection. Roarke swerved, hit vertical, and hopped over the silver roof with a couple of inches to spare.

  In the back, Peabody mopped a spill of chocolate off her lap, and wisely said nothing.

  To take her mind off a potential wreck, Eve sent updates to Whitney, Mira, Feeney. Then using her PPC, brought up the latest e-mail, studied it again.

  The change in tone, she thought, a little dramatic. Starts off with an apology, feeling bad, feeling sad.

  Doesn’t like feeling bad and sad, doesn’t like the idea of screwing up. That’s the turn. It isn’t my fault, so it’s yours.

  She glanced up, then put the handheld away when Roarke pulled to the curb in front of Ledo’s flop.

  “Whatever anti-theft and vandalism features you’ve got, light them up,” she told Roarke. “Even in this weather somebody’s going to try for a rig like this.”

  “It’s standard and auto. It’s slippery as a nest of eels out here,” he added when he stepped out. “Watch your footing.”

  He wasn’t wrong, Eve noted, but her boots held traction. “The city probably leaves this sector alone when it comes to ice and snow, hoping it holds back crime.”

  “Making it suck sideways for people who have to get to work or buy provisions,” McNab observed, skidding a little on his hyper-fashionable airboots. “I had some blades I could skate on this.”

  “He really can,” Peabody added, striding with confidence on her hot-pink Christmas boots. “We’ve hit the rinks—I literally hit them—in Rock Center and Central Park a few times.”

  “Lake or river ice is where it’s happening.”

  Ignoring them, Eve yanked open the unsecured exterior door. She didn’t even consider the elevator, but started up, taking the stairs two at a time.

  Both beat droids—the same as she’d encountered two days before, stood at attention.

  “No movement from inside, Lieutenant. We booted up our enhanced auditory, heard nothing. The probability is ninety-six-point-three the apartment is empty of living organism other than insects or possibly rodents. No booby traps scanned.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.” But Eve drew her weapon anyway. “You’re backup,” she reminded Roarke, and took the door with Peabody.

  She didn’t expect the UNSUB to be waiting, maybe picking through one of Ledo’s grimy skin discs, but interior booby traps still held some concern.

  “Watch your step,” she ordered Peabody. “We do the sweep and clear slow.”

  “There’s a new message, Dallas.”

  “I see it. Clear first. She might have left us a surprise.”

  But they found nothing but dirt, sweeper’s dust, dried blood, and a battalion of annoyed cockroaches.

  “McNab, have the droids canvass the building. Start with across the hall. Misty Polinsky. She might— Shit.” She glanced at Roarke. “Did you follow up on getting her a place at Dochas?”

  “She moved in yesterday.”

  “Yeah, yeah, good deeds kick you in the ass. Have them canvass.”

  Then she holstered her weapon, studied the latest message.

  This time the letters were huge, written in red rather than black. Uneven, Eve mused.

  Angry.

  IT MATTERS!

  I MATTER!

  SHOW ME IT MATTERS OR I CAN’T BE

  YOUR TRUE FRIEND

  “She’s losing it. She misses Hastings, can’t follow through there, and now she’s losing it. Just that quick, just that easy. One mistake, and she starts falling to pieces.”

  “It’s like . . .”

  Eve turned to Peabody. “What? Finish it.”

  “It just strikes me as middle school. You know, when you’re about twelve and you get mad at your best friend. You get all pissy, and it’s okay, I’m not going to be your friend anymore unless you—whatever.”

  “A long-winded way of saying immature?”

  “Yeah, but it’s a little more. That’s the stage when your hormones are zapping around, and everything’s so emotional. Your connect with your BFF is so intense, and a breakup is more traumatic even than a romantic breakup. It feels like life and death.”

  Eve had never dealt with any of that. The hormones, sure, she thought, she had some vague recollections of mood swings, quick anger, the sudden, hateful urge to cry over nothing. But she’d never had a BFF during puberty. She hadn’t wanted one, hadn’t wanted that kind of connection.

  “So she’s breaking up with me?”

  “It sounds like she’s giving you a chance to stop her from breaking up with you.”

  “It’s a girl thing,” McNab observed. “Boys just punch each other a few times, then they’re done with it and off riding their airboards.”

  Peabody sent him a withering look, but Eve thought the “boy” way entirely more sensible.

  “I’m going to send this message to Mira now so she can factor it in. Take a look at the police seal, will you? How did she get through it?”

  “Should be a code.” McNab pulled a mini-reader out of one of the many pockets in his bright pants, scanned the lock on the seal. “Yeah, got a code, time of entry, six hundred hours seventeen minutes, this morning. Code read Zero-Eight-Zero-Echo-Five-Three-Delta-Niner. Running that for holder . . . Shit, Dallas, it’s yours.”

  “That’s not my master code.” Eve dug her master out. “That’s not my code, and this is my master. Scan it. Run it. On record, McNab. Let’s keep it clean.”

  “Yes, sir.” He took her master, did the scan. “Code reads Three-Eight-Two-Tango-Zero-One-Alpha-Zero. Not even close. And the run makes it yours.”

  “She got her hands on a dummy—or someone else’s master,” Roarke speculated. “Neither would be that difficult. She programmed it with a code, assigned it to you.”

  “She’d have to register the code. It would have to clear.”

  “Someone in law enforcement, or doing their research, would know that,” Roarke pointed out. “And she has the skills to figure out how to do it.”

  “She’s a geek?”

  McNab made an iffy sound. “She’s got skills, but my ten-year-old cousin, Fergus, has skills at least on par with what we’re seeing here. She did a lot of fancy work to reroute the e-mail, but it took us under fifteen to track it here.”

  “She wanted us here,” Eve pointed out.

  “Yeah, there’s that.” Looking unhappy, McNab stuck his hands in the pockets of his long red coat. “You’re going to want to look at EDD. I’ve got to say that anybody there, including the greenest shoot, could probably do what we’re seeing. The thing is, you’re going to find plenty in any department or division who could.”

  “I’ve got to look. And I’ve got to consider if I’d been in my usual routine, I’d have been at Central or en route there when the e-mail came in. That means it would’ve taken longer than the under fifteen. If I’d been en route, considerably longer. If I’d been right at my desk, as I was at home, I’d still have had to shoot it up to Feeney—if
he was already in—and get the trace going. She wanted time to get out of the flop, the building, the sector, before we pinned it and I could send officers.”

  Eve looked back at the fresh message. “Angry, and yeah, immature. But still controlled, still careful, still planning things out. Peabody, let’s find out when that master code was registered—and get it canceled on my authority.”

  “Maybe there’s a way to put an alert on it,” Peabody suggested. “So if it’s used you get instant notification.”

  “Can do,” McNab assured them.

  “And tempting,” Eve agreed. “But what if she uses it to gain access to another target’s residence? I get an alert, and by the time I can get there or have officers there, somebody’s dead.”

  She considered, paced. “Can we kill it, without her knowing it’s been canceled? Put the alert on it. She tries to use it, I get the signal?”

  “You kill it, the master notifies the holder,” McNab began.

  “There are ways around that,” Roarke put in, drew McNab’s attention to him.

  “Well, yeah, we could get around it.”

  “Get around it,” Eve ordered. “And this action is need to know. Feeney needs to know—but that’s it on your end, McNab. We’ll have the four people in this room, Feeney, Whitney, Mira. That’s it. No chatter about this, no notification. If she uses it, she finds out, at that moment, it’s dead. If she uses it, I find out, at that moment, and the location. I have to have the location.”

  “Trickier when we kill it.” McNab glanced at Roarke again. “Not impossible.”

  “Make it happen. I’ll clear it,” she said before he could speak. “With Whitney and Feeney. No electronic chatter on this action either. Just in case we do have somebody in EDD to worry about. Let’s seal this place back up and get started.”

  “You can handle this assignment—you and Feeney,” Roarke added. “I’ll come into Central as I’d as soon not loiter around here. I can order my own transportation from there, leave the All-Terrain with you.”

  “That’s a plan. Let’s move.”

  • • •