Survivor in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “So I see. You didn’t even ask if she’d been hurt.”

  “I don’t care.” Anger, or perhaps just a hint of embarrassment colored her cheeks. “I have my life, I have my career. If I wanted children, I’d have my own. I have no intention of fostering someone else’s.”

  “Then I’ve made a mistake.” He got to his feet. “I’ve taken up too much of your time, and wasted my own.”

  “Grant’s mother booted my father out when I was ten, and she was just one of many. What possible reason would I have to take responsibility for his daughter?”

  “Apparently none at all.”

  He walked out, more angry with himself than with her.

  Eve stepped out of the dojo, surveyed the street, eyes tracking over parked vehicles, pedestrians, street traffic.

  “Odds are low they’d have been able to trail us here,” Peabody said from behind her. “Even if they had the equipment, and the man power, to keep round-the-clock surveillance on Central, they’d have to be really good or really lucky to make our unit.”

  “So far they’ve been really good and really lucky. We don’t play the odds on this one.” She drew the scanner out of her pocket.

  “That’s not standard issue.”

  “No, it’s Roarke issue. Cop issue would be what they’d expect, and they could have planted any number of devices with that in mind.”

  “Dallas, you make me feel all safe and snuggled. And hungry. There’s a deli right next door.”

  “I’m off delis for a while. I’ll always wonder if somebody’s getting a blow job in the back room, with the extra veggie hash.”

  “Oh, well, thanks. Now I’m off delis, and I didn’t have waffles this morning. Chinese place across the street. How about an egg roll?”

  “Fine, just make it fast.”

  She ran the scan for explosives, homing devices, while Peabody hotfooted it. She gave a shoulder roll—the light body armor irritated her—then slid into the car as Peabody dashed back across.

  “Didn’t have Pepsi.”

  “What?” Eve stared at the take-out bag. “Is this America? Have I crossed over into some dark continent, some alternate universe?”

  “Sorry. Got you a lemon fizz.”

  “It’s just not right.” Eve pulled away from the curb. “It should be illegal to run a food-service operation and not offer Pepsi.”

  “Speaking of food-service operations, you know what Ophelia told me she’s going to do with the reward?”

  “If she gets it.”

  “If. Anyway, she and the deli guy talked about going in together if she ever got enough scratch. So, with the reward, she’d be solid. They want to open a sex club.”

  “Oh, like New York doesn’t have enough of those.”

  “Yeah, but a sex club deli. It’s pretty innovative. Get your salami hard, get your hard salami, all in one venue.”

  “Christ, I’m never eating in a deli again.”

  “I think it might be interesting. Anyway.” Peabody popped a mini eggroll. “You want me to tag Feeney, have him start trying to trace the transmissions?”

  “No. I’ll take that. Tag Baxter, tell him to prioritize the Brenegan case. And contact the commander, see if he’s had any luck cutting through the red tape. Let him know Kirkendall is now prime, and we’ve got Baxter looking into a closed case that may connect. No, not the ’link,” she added. “Let’s mix up the communication devices. Use your personal for this. Then do a check with the rest of the team, using your communicator.”

  “You think they might try to triangulate our location through communication?”

  “I think we’ll be careful.” Eve used the dash unit for Sade Tully’s home address. Her next stop.

  It was a modest building, easy walking distance to the law firm. No doorman, Eve noted. Average security. A scan of her badge got them through—and she imagined a couple of buzzes on various apartment intercoms would have done the same. In the narrow lobby, she pushed the button for Sade’s floor and studied the setup.

  Dual security cams—that may or may not have been working. Fire-door leading to stair access. There was another cam in the single elevator, and the standard set of them on opposite sides of Sade’s floor.

  The apartment door was fitted with an electronic peep and a sturdy police lock. Eve buzzed, saw the peep engage a few moments later. Locks snicked, and Sade opened the door.

  “Has something happened? Oh, Jesus, did something happen to Dave?”

  “No. Sorry to alarm you. Can we come in?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She pushed a hand through her hair. “I guess I’m on edge. Getting myself together for Linnie’s funeral. I’ve never been to one for a kid. You should never have to go to one for a kid. We closed the office for the day. Dave’s going to pick me up soon.”

  The apartment was pretty and bright, the trendy gel sofa done in shimmering shades of blue and green with a small eating area set up in front of a pair of windows framed with fabric. Inexpensive posters of some of the city’s highlights decorated the walls.

  “Dave says you’ve got a good memory for names, for details.”

  “That’s why they pay me the big bucks. You want to sit? Do you want . . . God, I don’t know what I have. I haven’t been to the market since . . .”

  “It’s all right, we’re fine.” Peabody went into comfort mode. “This is a nice place. Great sofa.”

  “I like it. I mean the whole shot. It’s a quiet building, close to work. And when I want to play, I can scoot half a block to the subway and head toward the action.”

  “Full apartment in this neighborhood doesn’t come cheap,” Eve commented.

  “No. I have a roommate. Had,” she corrected. “Jilly’s a flight attendant—handles the New York to Vegas II route, mostly. She’s gone so much we don’t get in each other’s way, or on each other’s nerves.”

  “Had?” Eve prompted.

  “She got in touch a couple of days ago. She’s going to base on Vegas II now, so . . .” Sade shrugged. “No big for me. I can handle the rent now on my salary. Grant and Dave—hell. Dave’s not stingy. I’ve gotten raises along the way.”

  She looked down at herself. “Do you think this is the right thing to wear? Maybe it’s too morbid. Black suit. I mean, a funeral’s morbid, but maybe—”

  “I think it’s very appropriate,” Peabody told her. “Respectful.”

  “Okay. Okay. I know it’s a stupid thing to worry about. Why the hell should they care what I’m wearing when . . . I’m going to get some water. Do you want any water?”

  “No, go ahead.” But Eve rose, wandered toward the trim galley kitchen. “Sade, do you remember a case Grant worked on? Kirkendall. His client was Dian.”

  “Give me a sec.” She got a bottle of water from a minifriggie, leaned back on the lipstick-red counter. “Divorce and custody deal. Guy used to knock her around. Army guy—well, he was retired army by then. But one mean son of a bitch. They had a couple of kids—boy and girl. Dian finally got her butt in gear when he started on the kids. Well, not straight off.”

  She opened the bottle, sipped thoughtfully. “Seems he ran the show like he was the general. More the tyrant. Schedules, orders, discipline. Had the three of them pretty well cowed. She went into a shelter, finally, and one of the people who ran it recommended our firm. Woman was terrified, seriously terrified. We see that sometimes. Too many times.”

  “The court ruled in her favor.”

  “All the way. Grant worked hard on that case.” Her eyes went shiny, and she paused to take a long drink, fight back the tears. “She’d screwed herself pretty good along the way, a lot of them do. Not calling the cops, or telling them that there was no trouble if somebody else called them. Going to various health clinics so she wouldn’t send up a red flag. But Grant, he put a lot of hours in—pro bono, too—finding doctors, health techs, getting psych evals. The guy had some slick lawyers. Tried to make it like Dian was unstable, that her injuries were both self-induced and a result o
f affairs with abusive men. It didn’t wash, especially when Grant put Jaynene on the stand.”

  “Jaynene Brenegan?”

  “Yeah.” Sade frowned. “You knew her?”

  “Why was her testimony important?”

  “Trauma expert—and she just blew the bastard’s lawyers out of the water. Made it clear that her exam of Dian showed consistent and long-term physical abuse, impossible to self-inflict. They couldn’t shake her, and it was one of the things that really turned the tide. She was killed two, no, must be three years ago now. Some goddamn junkie knifed her after her shift. Bastard claimed he found her dead, just helped himself to her money, but they slapped his ass away.”

  “Dian Kirkendall got full custody.”

  “Right, with him getting monthly supervised visits. He never got the chance to make one. She whiffed a day or two later. Grant was sick about it, we all were. Worried he might have gotten to her somehow.”

  “You believed he might’ve done her violence.”

  “Grant did. Cops never found a trace of her, or the kids.”

  “Did Kirkendall make any threats to her, or to Grant?”

  “He was too cool for that. Like arctic. Never broke a sweat, never said a word that you could construe as threatening. But believe me, you could see he had it in him.”

  Eve nodded to Peabody who drew the sketches out of her bag. “Do you recognize these men?”

  Sade set the bottle down, took a good long look. “No. And I’d remember if I’d seen them. Scary. Are these the men who—” She broke off. “Kirkendall? You think he had something to do with what happened to Grant and his family? That bastard son of a bitch!”

  “We have questions we’d like to ask him.”

  “He could have done it,” she said softly. “He’s capable. You know how you see someone, or brush up against them on the street, and everything in you freezes? That’s the thing with him. Makes your blood run cold. But, Jesus, it was so long ago. It was years ago. I’d just started with the firm, was living in this one-room box up on One Hundred and Seventh.”

  “We’re checking several leads,” Eve said. “Thanks for the details on this. Oh, just curious. How’d you find this place, the roommate?”

  “They found me, basically. I met Jilly at this club I used to hang at. Friend of a friend of a friend sort of thing. We hit it off. Then she told me she had this place, was looking for a roommate since she was away so much. Just wanted somebody there, you know, so it wasn’t empty half the time. I snapped it.”

  “And this was after the trial?”

  “Right after, now that you mention it. Just a couple of weeks.” Sade’s hand trembled a little as she reached for her water. “Why?”

  “Did you ever talk with Jilly about work? About cases? Details.”

  “Nothing confidential, but yeah. Oh shit, yeah. Just the broad strokes of something hot or funny. I talked about the Kirkendall case—no names. Just about how hard Grant worked on it, how much he’d wanted to get what was right for this poor woman and her kids. Oh God, oh God. But we lived here together, for six years. Almost six years.”

  “I’d like her full name.”

  “Jilly Isenberry,” Sade said dully. “She went with me to Grant’s place. I don’t know how many times. She went to parties there, to barbecues. She had dinner at their table. I got in touch with her when this happened, and she cried. She cried, but she’s not coming back. I took her into their home.”

  “You’re not responsible. This may be nothing, but if it’s not, you’re still not responsible. What you’ve just told us may help us find the people who are.”

  Eve stepped back, drew Sade out of the kitchen. “Sit down. Tell us more about her.”

  Sharp-looking woman,” Peabody commented. She brought Jilly Isenberry’s data and image up on the dash screen so Eve could see. “Thirty-eight, mixed race, single. No marriage or cohab on record. Employed as flight attendant, Orbital Transportation, since 2053. Previous employment listed as—hoohaw—”

  Eve, fighting traffic, only furrowed her brow. “Hoohaw?”

  “I think it’s a military exclamation. Maybe. Which fits, as prior to her employment at Orbital, she was Corporal Isenberry, U.S. Army. Put in twelve years. You’d think she’d make more than corporal in a dozen.”

  “And you’d think a dozen years as a soldier would point her toward something other than serving drinks and passing out vids to yeehaws heading to the gambling world.”

  “Yeehaws?”

  “Another military term. We get the military records, you can bet she served with Kirkendall somewhere, sometime.”

  “And that kind of coincidence—”

  “Isn’t. She didn’t change her data, change her name, nothing. They thought they’d be gone by the time we got this far, if we ever got this far. We’ve got our who, we’ve got our why. Now we find the son of a bitch. Dallas,” she said into her communicator when it signalled.

  “A legal adjutant for military services requests a meeting,” Whitney informed her. “My office. ASAP.”

  “Heading toward Central now, sir.”

  Eve judged the traffic, the distance, then hit the sirens and went in hot.

  Peabody was still catching her breath when they caught the glide to Whitney’s floor. “Are my eyes back down where they belong? I don’t like to go into a meeting when they’re rolled up white. Looks bad.”

  For the hell of it, Eve gave her a thump on the back firm enough to have Peabody nearly wheeling off the glide. “There. They’re back.”

  “I don’t think that was funny. I don’t think that was funny especially after you nearly killed us three times flying back here.”

  “It was twice, and really, it was only maimed. People don’t respect sirens in this city, that’s the problem. They just keep la, la, la, when an emergency vehicle needs to get the hell where it’s going.”

  “The Rapid Cab you nearly creamed wasn’t going la, la, la. It was more a scream of abject terror.”

  “Yeah.” It made Eve smile to remember it. “So he should’ve gotten the hell out of my way.” She bounced her shoulders a couple of times. “You know, that little ride buzzed me up. Almost as good as coffee.”

  They were passed straight into Whitney’s office, where her commander and the rest of the team were already in place. Along with a holo-projection of a woman in dress whites.

  Spruced up for it, Eve thought, but couldn’t bother to be here in person.

  “Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody, Major Foyer, United States Armed Forces, legal branch. Major Foyer requires further incentive to release the full military records of the individuals we have requested.”

  “Those records are the property of the U.S. government,” Foyer said in clipped tones. “We have a duty to protect the men and women who serve.”

  “And we have a duty to protect the citizens of this city,” Eve put in. “Information has come into my hands during the course of a multiple homicide investigation that leads me to believe Kirkendall, Roger, former sergeant, U.S. Army, is involved.”

  “Disclosure of this nature requires more than the belief of an officer in the civilian sector, Lieutenant. The Revised Patriot Act, section 3 implemented 2040, specifically—”

  “Gives the government carte blanche to demand and receive personal data on any citizen, while secreting data on their own. I know how it works. However, when a member of the armed forces is under suspicion for acts against the government or its citizenry, those records can be turned over to both military and civilian authorities.”

  “Your suspicions, Lieutenant, are not enough. Evidence—”

  “Commander, with your permission?”

  He raised his brow when Eve stepped toward his computer, then nodded.

  Eve ordered the file on the Swishers. “Images of victims, crime scene, on-screen.”

  They flashed on, stark and bloody. “He did that.”

  “You believe—”

  “I know,” Eve corrected. She or
dered the images of Knight and Preston on screen. “He did that. You trained him, but that’s not on you. He twisted his training. But it’s on you if you don’t cooperate, if you don’t assist this department, this investigation. If you hamper in any way our pursuit of Roger Kirkendall, then the next one he kills is on you.”

  “Your evidence is far from conclusive at this stage of your investigation.”

  “Let me give you some more. And since you look like a woman who does her job, not a lot of what I’m going to give you is news. He owns part of a successful business in Queens, but hasn’t been seen by his partner in six years. Grant Swisher represented his wife in a custody suit—and won. Judge Moss, presiding, was assassinated, along with his fourteen-year-old son, in a car bomb two years ago. Karin Duberry, the case worker from Child Protection Services, was strangled in her apartment last year. I believe when I complete the investigation into the stabbing of the medical authority who testified for Mrs. Kirkendall, we will find that Kirkendall was also responsible for this death.”

  “Circumstantial.”

  “Bullshit, Major. Jilly Isenberry, former corporal in the U.S. Army, was until recently the roommate of Sade Tully, the paralegal in Swisher’s office. Isenberry spent time in the Swisher home, was considered a friend. Isenberry arranged to meet Tully shortly after the Kirkendall trial, with the happy coincidence of a nice apartment within walking distance of Swisher’s office. She, like Kirkendall, seems to travel a good deal. And I’ll bet my next month’s salary against yours that Kirkendall and Isenberry not only knew each other, but served together.”

  “One moment, Lieutenant.” The holo vanished.

  “Checking it now, aren’t you? Tight-assed bitch.” Eve caught herself, turned to Whitney. “I beg your pardon, Commander.”

  “No need.”

  “You’ve been busy,” Feeney said. “Good going, kid.”

  “We’re rolling. We don’t really need the military details at this point, but I’m not going to let her stonewall us. I want them.”