Obsession in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “Imagine that,” Eve mumbled.

  “You know what it’s like. I like the work I’m doing. A skip tries anything like that, a kick in the groin takes care of it. You can’t take care of things like that on the job. But I’d come back in a heartbeat under you, Dallas. You don’t have an aide since you made Peabody your partner.

  “I’ll give you my résumé,” she continued before Eve could speak. “You can talk to Charlie—Charlie Kent, the bondsman I work for. Charlie’s okay, so far, but I work out of my own place so he doesn’t get the idea he can move in on me.”

  “Like everybody does.”

  Farmer rolled her eyes, cast them to the ceiling. “I don’t know what’s wrong with people. But back to you and me, I’m willing to work as a civilian aide or we can request I be reinstated. I’m not picky on it. Clearly, the important thing is that we work together. But I’ll thank you not to stare at my breasts. My face is up here.”

  With a thin smile, Farmer tapped her cheeks.

  As Eve had been looking at her face, and only her face, she just lifted her eyebrows. “Okay. You’ve been researching my current investigation.”

  “As always. You’re the reason I joined the force. I requested assignment to Central, to you, but didn’t get it. A lot of jealous people in the department, but I accepted that. Pay the dues, I told myself. But the harassment was so relentless. I actually think it was deliberate, a way to push me out before I could be reassigned to you.

  “So! We should have that coffee if you want to discuss the investigation. I’ll bring up my notes.”

  “We’ll pass on the coffee,” Eve told her. “Regarding the investigation, I have a couple of questions that should wrap this up.”

  “I’m at your disposal. Professionally,” Farmer added, ticking her finger at Eve.

  “Since you’ve followed the investigation, I’d like your whereabouts at the time of the two murders and the assault on Hastings.”

  “Dallas.” Huffing out a breath, Farmer sat back. “Let me make this very clear. My personal life is personal. However closely we’ll work together, however intimate that relationship is, I won’t allow the line into personal to be crossed. I realize you and Peabody bend those rules, and while I don’t approve of the sexual free-for-all between a detective and her direct superior, I can overlook it.”

  Peabody said, “Huh?”

  “You don’t have to worry I’ll usurp your . . . dynamic, we’ll call it in polite company. I’m not interested. There will be no threesomes here.”

  “Gosh, I was counting on that. I even had the outfit.”

  “Peabody.” Eve’s voice remained firm and flat despite the laugh tickling the back of her throat.

  “Let’s put all the sex aside,” Eve began.

  “I couldn’t agree more! Now—”

  “No, now,” Eve corrected. “Your whereabouts for the times in question are pertinent to the investigation. I have no personal interest in you whatsoever. If you’d check your calendar, we’ll wait.”

  “Are you suggesting I’m a suspect?”

  “I’m suggesting you state your whereabouts so we can stop wasting each other’s time.”

  “Fine. I don’t have to check anything.” Farmer tapped her head. “On the evening of the twenty-seventh, I was in Miami, tracking, and apprehending, Janet Beaver. I returned with her to New York on the eight-fifteen shuttle—North-South Transportation. On the night of the twenty-eighth through the morning of the twenty-ninth, I was following up a lead on Montoya, which turned out to be a dead end. I stayed in the Motor Court Lodge, off Exit 112 on 68 in Pennsylvania. I used my credit card for expenses, and I did the same when I had breakfast in their coffee shop at six hundred on the twenty-ninth. For the last, I was here, working, but I ordered a pizza—personal size, pepperoni and mushroom. It was delivered about seven-thirty. The delivery girl was about eighteen, five feet, four inches, one twenty, pink hair, green eyes. Mama Mia’s Pizzeria, West Twenty-third off Seventh.”

  “We’ll verify, and that should be that.” Eve got to her feet.

  “I can see I misplaced my admiration and ambitions with you.”

  “Yeah, you did. You should seek help, Farmer. It might clue you in you’re just not an irresistible sex magnet. Besides”—on impulse she slung an arm around Peabody, cuddled her stunned partner in—“my partner’s got the better tits.”

  “I’m filing a complaint!” Farmer shouted.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  Eve strode out, pleased to be amused this time instead of depressed and angry. “Let’s check in with Charlie, just to close the door, but she’s not who we’re after.”

  “Everybody’s after her.”

  “Must be a constant trial.” Eve opted to walk, let the cold blow her brain clear again. “She’s smart enough, and she has strong e-skills, but she’s too obsessed with sex. No sexual component at all in the kills, and with her there would be.”

  Eve stopped at a cart along the walk. “I’ve still got enough to spring for a cart lunch.”

  “You’re just paying to distract me. Because you want to ogle my tits.”

  “Always, Peabody. Always.”

  By sixteen hundred, Eve felt she’d covered all the ground and all the potentials that made sense.

  She considered her options, didn’t care for any of them.

  “Peabody, book a holoroom at Central.”

  “Really?” Surprised delight flashed over Peabody’s face. “You never use frosty tech like a holoroom.”

  “I’ve used Roarke’s a few times. I want to walk through it, all three scenes. One, two, three. Something might pop out rolling through them one after the other.”

  “Checking on it . . . There’s one, and only one, open in ten minutes for forty minutes. The big one’s booked straight through until twenty hundred hours, and the second one’s out of order—again. McNab says it’s glitchy more than not. Booking it now. We’ve got a couple of the booths free, but that’s the only room.”

  She only needed one.

  Because she wanted the full time, Eve headed straight there, suffered the elevators jammed by the eight-to-four, four-to-midnight changes of shift.

  The Holo and VR sector was quiet, and clean. No Vending was offered, and signs were posted along the corridor as reminders that food and drink were forbidden in the rooms.

  Others warned that all activity in said rooms would be monitored and recorded.

  One way to discourage personal use if a cop had an urge to virtually lie naked on a beach, or get it on with a fellow officer, visitor, or tech.

  There were ways around it, of course, and rumor was the second holoroom was routinely glitchy because somebody messed with the monitors so they could lie on the beach or get it on.

  As Eve rarely used the facilities, she didn’t much care.

  She swiped her master in the slot, waited while it was scanned and approved.

  Dallas, Lieutenant Eve approved. Time and facility booked by Peabody, Officer Delia. Approved, the computer announced after Peabody also swiped in.

  They stepped into the empty room with its white, windowless walls and white floors. Eve moved to the wall comp as Peabody secured the door.

  Eve keyed in the three case files, in order, programmed a reenactment, most probable, in sequential order.

  Elements accepted, system analyzing. Facial details on suspect incomplete.

  “Use the sketches.”

  Coordinating artist renditions, merging. Remaining data is being uploaded.

  “I saw this vid where these four people were fooling around in a holoroom and got stuck there in like this swampy jungle place—except one of them who got tossed in some urban underworld. And there was this guy with an ax who . . .”

  Peabody trailed off as she looked around the white room. “And maybe I shouldn’t be thinki
ng about that right now. We could end up in a swampy jungle. Anyway it was called HoloHell. They’re doing the sequel now.”

  “If some guy comes at you with an ax, stun him,” Eve suggested.

  Upload complete, program to commence in ten seconds. You have thirty-four minutes, eighteen seconds remaining on your reservation.

  “Fine, fine, fine. Go.”

  Program to commence in three seconds, two seconds, one second.

  Eve followed the killer to the door of Bastwick’s building. She noted the fading light of the late December evening, the computer-generated traffic noises. She watched the gloved hand press the buzzer, and the casual ease of the door opening.

  “What do you suppose she’s feeling?” Eve wondered as she stepped onto the elevator with the killer. “If this is the first time—and we’ve got no reason to believe it isn’t, doesn’t she feel nerves? Excitement? Something? But her hands are steady. She shifts and angles the box so easy, like it’s choreographed in her head.”

  “No hesitation,” Peabody commented. “No rush either.”

  “Everything about her says pay no attention, and no one did. But attention’s what she wants. Maybe most of all.”

  “Yours.”

  “Yeah, to start.”

  Bastwick, in her classy loungewear, opened the door. Bastwick’s mouth moved, and the program gave her voice.

  All right. Just put it on the

  Her last words as the killer stepped in, drawing the stunner from the right pocket. Center mass, full stun. Bastwick’s nervous system went haywire so her body convulsed, perfectly manicured hands flapping. She crumpled, fell back, went down. The head smacked against the floor. Eyes stared for a second, another, before rolling up white, then the lids came down.

  Following the scenario Eve had laid out, the killer—the face an almost cartoon-like sketch—set the box on a table, took a box cutter from the left pocket of the coat, broke the seal.

  Removed a can of Seal-It from the box, removed the gloves.

  “She’d have sealed up before she came in. Hands, feet, everything. Maybe she gave the hands another backup coat, but she didn’t step in without being sealed first.”

  “The cleaning service came in on the twenty-third,” Peabody said, referring to her notes. “No one came to her place that we know of until this. The sweepers didn’t find any hair, fiber, prints that weren’t the vic’s.”

  “Sealed up tight. She might even have a seal cap under the hat, just to be sure. She’d have put the security back on—this program doesn’t show that, but she would’ve. No chances. And she’d have taken off the coat. Too hot, too bulky, but we don’t know what’s under it. And why take her into the bedroom?” she added as the killer deadlifted Bastwick, hefted her into a fireman’s carry.

  “More comfortable?” Peabody speculated.

  “Drawing it out a little, that’s what I think. There has to be some nerves, so she’s drawing it out. Curious, too. Into the bedroom, check it out. Lay her down,” Eve continued, “take a breath or two, go back for the box.”

  Eve watched murder, saw the way, even stunned, the body’s heels beat a tattoo on the bed. And the eyes rolled open again, went to glass as the blood slid down the throat.

  “From behind. Had to take the coat off, sure. Have to be sealed up under it. Protective clothing under it in case of blood, even the vic’s hair. You burn the protective gear later, but there’s no chance of blood or trace on the coat.”

  “Medical gear, morgue gear, sweeper gear?”

  “Like that. Or like painters or exterminators use. Put it on to kill, take it off. Roll it inside out or even bag it, put it back in the box. Pause program.”

  The scene froze in place as Eve moved through it, circling the killer with her sketched face.

  “You had this planned out for so long, every single detail. Computer, elapsed time?”

  Elapsed time is twelve minutes and forty-five seconds.

  “Add into elapsed time removing protective suit from box, putting it on, removing it again, bagging it, replacing it in the box.”

  Average time calculated at one minute and fifty-two seconds for full protective covering.

  “Recalculate with additional time, continue program.”

  “We had her at twenty-seven minutes from entry to exit,” Peabody said.

  “Exactly, and she’s only used about half that time. Writing the message adds to it,” Eve commented as the killer did so. “Replacing everything in the box, resealing it, replacing the coat, the gloves. A glance around to be sure you got everything, then out. With that little spring in the step.”

  She waited, still watching the killer, until the computer announced program, first stage, end.

  “Elapsed time?”

  Twenty minutes, ten seconds.

  “What did she do with the other seven minutes?” Peabody asked.

  Insufficient data to answer.

  “I’m not asking you. Maybe she took a quick tour of the place. It’s a nice place, classy. Maybe she did take a couple things nobody noticed.”

  “I don’t think so. I’d say, possibly, she needed time to gather herself to do the kill, or to pull herself together after. But she’d waited so long to do this, she’s so happy when she leaves. And the writing’s rock solid.”

  “Gloating?”

  “No.” Once again Eve circled, studied. “That’s wasting time. She can gloat when she’s in the clear. I’m betting she had a power beam and some microgoggles in that box. She checked the bed, just in case—smoothed it all out so she could detect a stray hair. Retraced her steps from bedroom to living room, back again. That’s what she did with the time.”

  “So, she’s smart, thorough, and probably anal.”

  “Maybe some obsessive-compulsive thrown in. I’m betting when we get her, Mira finds a whole deep well of neuroses. Computer, begin second stage.”

  No security cams here, no way to know the time the killer spent. But Eve was betting she’d spent extra combing over the dirt and debris of Ledo’s flop to be certain nothing of herself was left behind.

  “More emotional this time. It’s a similar sort of kill.”

  As she had in the other program, Peabody looked away when the killer took out a scalpel to remove the tongue.

  “Similar?”

  “She had to put her back into both. Pulling back on the wire so it cut that deep? Her arms probably trembled with the effort. Jamming the cue into Ledo? She had to push down, both hands, give it her weight. She needed to feel the kill, feel responsible for it, in control of it. But the second time she’s a little, just a little, less controlled.”

  “Shouldn’t she be more? More confident?”

  “But she knows how good it feels now, and that adds anticipation on a different level. Not just duty—as she sees it—but pleasure, too. Or at least satisfaction. Plus, she got my attention, but it wasn’t exactly what she wanted. She wanted approval,” Eve said as the killer wrote on the grimy wall. “And some fucking gratitude. She’s trying to convince herself she saw all that in the media conference. That I somehow signaled that to her. But the words I said—and words matter—aren’t the right ones.”

  “You think she’d already started to turn on you?”

  “She started to turn when she walked out of Bastwick’s apartment feeling joyful. Because it became about her—it always has been, but she let herself see it. It’s about what she wants, who she is. I’m an excuse. An important one, and she needs that excuse. Run final program.”

  This was interesting, Eve thought. When you watched the progression, it solidified. There were so many other ways to get to Hastings. Or to someone else, someone more like Ledo who’d be easy pickings. But Hastings was more . . .

  “Daring,” she said aloud. “She’s taking more physical risk here, going up those stairs. Yeah, sure, who lo
oks up?”

  “Tourists, foreigners,” Peabody began, and Eve turned to grin at her.

  “Bingo. People who don’t live here look up all the time. Wow, look how tall that building is! Look, there’s a sky tram—we should take one. She dared that. Good odds, really, because even if somebody saw her, it’s just somebody carrying a box up the stairs. But . . .”

  “She didn’t have to take the risk, I get it. She wanted to. To impress you, maybe?”

  “Maybe, and to add a little thrill to the kill. She likes the thrill now. And waiting, buzzing. If she’s studied Hastings, she knows he’s capable of telling her to fuck off without opening that door, but she wants it so bad, needs him to open that door.

  “And he does.”

  Eve listened to his explosive cursing, felt an odd fondness for him. Watched the close-in stun—closer than with Bastwick—knock him back, body jiggling, then crashing to the floor.

  Set the box down, start to close the door, and Matilda calls down the stairs, comes down the stairs. Wine bottle flies; stun goes wide.

  “Yeah, some of that wine splattered on the coat. It had to. But here’s the thing. A couple things. End program.”

  Eve turned to Peabody.

  “First, if she really studied Hastings, why didn’t she factor in creativity? He might’ve had a shoot, browbeat the models, the team into working late until he got what he wanted. Factor out the idea of a girlfriend and a sexy dinner, but he’s volatile, demanding, weird. He’s a bad target, at least this way.”

  “But an impressive one. If she can get to him, take him out—and she would have if Matilda hadn’t been there—it’s a lot more of a wow than Ledo,” Peabody pointed out. “Even than Bastwick. And it’s number three—which would’ve officially made her a serial killer. More impressive if you take out a successful photographer/imaging artist instead of another junkie.”

  “Take out a second junkie, people say ho-hum. Second point. She had an unarmed, half-naked woman, but didn’t pursue. To finish it. She doesn’t think—ha ha—outside the box, didn’t account for thinking and acting on her feet. Matilda was off script, and all she could do was run.”