by J. D. Robb
“Probably. Or wanted to be. She was young, a lot younger than Taker.”
“Who? Taker?”
“That’s what they called Lowell—James Lowell.”
“Because he took the bodies the dead wagon brought in,” Eve said, remembering Dobbins’s comment.
“That’s right. She was half his age, vital, beautiful. He was too damn old for her, and…and there was something in his eyes. In the old man’s, too, his father. Something in their eyes that brought the hair up on the back of the neck.”
“They found out about her and the soldier.”
“Yes. I think they were going to run away. He wouldn’t have been the first to desert, or the last. It was summer. We had the sector secured, temporarily in any case. I went out, just to walk, to remind myself what we were fighting for. I heard them talking, behind one of the supply tents. Her voice, you couldn’t mistake it for anyone else’s. They were talking about going north, up into the mountains. A lot of people had fled the city for the mountains, the country, and he still had family up that way.”
“She was going to leave her husband, run off with this soldier.” And Robert Lowell, Eve calculated, would have been around twenty.
“I didn’t let them know I was there. I wouldn’t have turned him in. I knew what it was to love someone, and be afraid for her.
“I backtracked a little, then crossed the street so they wouldn’t know I’d been close. Give them privacy, you know. Fucking little privacy back then. And I saw him, on the other side of the tent, listening to them.”
“Lowell,” Eve realized. “The younger one.”
“He looked like he was in a trance. I’d heard he had a mental condition. There were whispers, but I thought it was just the excuse they used to keep him out of the fight. But when I looked across the street, when I looked at him, there was something not right. No, not right at all. I need water.”
Once again, Eve lifted the cup and straw to his mouth.
“He turned them in.”
“He must have. There was nothing I could do, not with him there. I was going to warn them later, warn the lieutenant about the kid. But I never got the chance. I went up the block, debating with myself on what I should or shouldn’t do—wanted to talk to Therese about it first. They were gone when I came back. The soldier off on assignment, and Edwina back home. I never saw either of them alive again.”
“What happened to them?”
“It was more than a week later.” His voice was tiring, genuinely, she judged. She wouldn’t get much more. “The soldier was listed as AWOL, and she hadn’t been back. I thought they’d gotten away. Then one night, I went out for sentry duty. She was on the sidewalk. No one would ever say how whoever had tossed her there had gotten through the posts. She was dead.”
A tear slid out of his eye, tracked around the side of the breather. “I’d seen bodies like that before, I knew how they came to be like that.”
“Torture?”
“They’d done despicable things to her, then tossed her, naked and mangled, on the street like garbage. They’d shorn off her hair, and had ripped up her face, but I knew who she was. They’d left her wearing the Tree of Life necklace she always wore. As if to make certain there would be no mistake.”
“You thought the Lowells did it? Her husband, father-in-law, stepson.”
“They said she’d been taken and tortured by the enemy, but it was a lie. I’d seen that kind of work before, and it had been on the enemy. The old man was a torturer. Everyone knew it, and everyone was careful not to speak of it too loudly. If they believed a prisoner had information, they took him to Robert Lowell—the old one.
“When they came to get her, he wept like a baby, the one you’re looking for now.” Pella’s eyes opened, and they were fierce despite his flagging voice. “When he saw her under the sheet we covered her with, he wept like a woman. Two days later, I lost Therese. Nothing mattered after that.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police this nine years ago when these murders started?”
“I didn’t think of a dead woman from a lifetime ago. I never thought of it, nor of her. Why would I? Then, I saw that sketch. A long time ago, but I thought there was something familiar. When you came yesterday, I knew who he was.”
“If you’d given me this yesterday, given me his name, you might have spared Ariel twenty-four hours of pain.”
Pella just turned his head away and closed his eyes. “We all have pain.”
Riding on disgust, Eve stormed out of Pella’s town house. “Miserable bastard. I need any and all properties owned by the Lowells, or Edwina Spring, during the Urbans. Get out that damn golden shovel and dig.”
“You drive, and you’ll have it,” Roarke told her, already working with his PPC.
She got behind the wheel, then tagged Callendar at Central. “Any more data?”
“Data, yes, property, no. I can tell you Spring retired—with great lamentations from opera buffs, at the age of twenty when she married the wealthy and prominent James Lowell. There’s society stuff after that. This gala, that party, then interest in her seemed to fade out some.
“But I found her death record. She’s listed as Edwina Roberti. Data reads opera singer, and that she was survived by her spouse, Lowell, Robert. COD is listed as suicide. There’s no image, Lieutenant, but it’s got to be her.”
“It’s her.”
“And, Lieutenant, Morris has something.”
“Put me through.”
“Dallas, the Manhattan Family Center on First. There’s a children’s psychiatric wing that was funded by the Lowells in the late twentieth. Endowment continues through a trust. I’ve spoken with the chief of staff. Saturday they received an unexpected visit from the Lowell Family Trust’s representative. A Mr. Edward Singer. At his request, he was taken through the facility. Their drug count’s off.”
She calculated the distance. “I’ll send somebody over to get a statement.”
“Dallas, they keep their security discs, in full, for seven days. They have him on disc.”
“We’ll pick ’em up. We’ll have sweepers go over the drug cabinet. Maybe we’ll keep getting lucky. Nice going, Morris.”
“Felt good.”
“Know what you mean. Out.” She clicked off, looked over at Roarke as she switched over to Peabody’s communicator. “We’re building the cage. All we have to do is throw the bastard in it.”
21
SHE WAS BUILDING A GOOD CASE, LINING UP her connections, her motives, her pathology. She had no doubt that when they found and arrested Robert Lowell, they’d be handing the prosecuting attorney a slam dunk.
But that didn’t help Ariel Greenfeld.
“Get me something,” she said to Roarke as they stepped into the elevator at Central’s garage.
“Do you know what the records are like from that era?” he snapped. “What there are of them? I’m putting together a puzzle where half the major pieces are missing or scattered about. And I need better equipment than my bloody PPC.”
“Okay, all right.” She pressed her fingers to the center of her forehead. The damn energy pill was wearing off, and she could feel the system crash waiting to happen. “Let me think.”
“I don’t know how you can at this stage. You’re going to fall flat on your face, Eve, if you don’t take a bit of downtime.”
“Ariel Greenfeld doesn’t have any downtime.” She swept out of the elevator. “We need the locations of all Lowell’s businesses and documented properties—worldwide. Anything current’s going to pop straight out, and we work from there. Talk to the director, put the strong arm on these damn Brit lawyers, the financial institutions where he has his numbered accounts.”
“I can tell you it would take weeks—at the very best—to pry anything out of the financials. Their lawyers will have lawyers, who will run you around. And if he was careful, and I imagine he was, in setting these up, those accounts would simply feed into others, and so on. I could cut through that, at home,
but it would take considerable time.”
Would it help find Ariel? Eve asked herself. “I can’t spare you for that. We’ll push on the properties and the lawyers first. Got to have a bank box, too. Or boxes. Uses cash, so why wouldn’t he store cash in a bank box at the different locations where he has homes, or plans to work? Downtown bank’s best bet.”
She walked into the war room, and up to Callendar. “Search for downtown banks. I want you to send every one of them every sketch and description we have on Robert Lowell, along with the various known aliases. And I want a search for any and all relations on Lowell, living or dead. Names, last known locations, property deeded in their name.
“Roarke, if you need any help on the property search, pull in any of the EDD team. Heads up,” she said, boosting her voice over the chatter and clacking. “When Captain Feeney isn’t in the house, and I’m not in the war room, the civilian’s in charge of electronics. Questions on that? Go to him.”
“Lieutenant’s pet,” Callendar said just loud enough for Roarke to hear, and in a mock sulk that made him smile a little.
“I’ll wager ten I hit on the property before you hit on the banks.”
“You’re on, Prime Buns.”
Eve left them for her office to update her notes, to take another pass through them. While she worked she tried Feeney.
“Anything for me?”
“There’s nothing on the records here. The business passed to our guy when his old man died. These records list the same bogus London address. Director said there were some paper records, some disc files in storage, but Lowell took them years ago. Sorry, kid.”
“Tidy son of a bitch. Anyone still working there who was employed when Lowell was still in residence?”
“No, checked that. I’m bringing in what records there are. We’ll pick through them. On my way in now.”
“I’ll see you in the war room.”
She pushed up, wanting to be on her feet. Her system was bottoming out, she could feel it, and if she didn’t keep moving, she’d drop.
He was in New York, she thought. And wherever he lived and worked, wherever he was holding Ariel would be in New York, in a building that survived, or at least partially survived, the Urbans. It would have a connection to him, to her, to that time.
Nothing else would do for him, she was sure of it.
Death was his business. Body preparation or disposal, echoes of the Urban Wars, profit and science. He lived by death.
By killing he re-created the death of one woman, over and over again, while feeding his own need to control, to give pain. To study pain and death.
The torture devices were, in the opinions of the ME and the lab, tools and implements used during the Urbans with a few modern devices worked in. Same with the drugs found in the victims. He had to keep the connection.
Opera. The drama, the scope, the tragedy, and again the connection to Edwina Spring. The disguises were really costumes, the aliases simply roles to play.
Weren’t the victims the same? Just another element of his role-playing.
How much longer before he gave Eve her cue to come onstage? And why the hell was she waiting?
She got herself some coffee, took out another energy pill. Technically she wasn’t supposed to take a second one within the same twenty-four-hour period. But if she was going to push for her entrance in the play, she wasn’t going out so blurry she couldn’t remember her lines.
She popped it, and with the coffee in hand went back to the war room.
She opened communications so anyone in the field could hear and participate. “Updates. EDD first. Feeney?”
“We’re about to run searches through the discs taken from Lowell’s Funeral Home. We’ll go through the paper records as well, looking for any pertinent data on Robert Lowell and/or Edwina Spring. Secondary unit has a list of prior open homicides and Missings that may be his earlier work. We’re requesting case files, moving from the highest probability down.”
“Anything sing for you?”
“Two. Both in Italy, one fifteen years back, one twelve. Both missing females that bull’s-eye our vic profile. One from Florence, one from Milan.”
“Roarke, does Lowell have business operations in Italy, either of those cities?”
“Milan, established just prior to Lowell’s inheriting the business.”
“I want every detail of the Milan case first. Baxter, I want you to reach out to the investigating officer or his superior. Get a translator if necessary. Roarke, put the other Lowell operation locations on screen.
“We hit these,” she said as he complied. “Blanket warrant—Feeney, make that happen. Three-man teams at each location, communication open throughout. Hit private and/or employee-only areas first. Get statements, get data, get every fucking thing.”
“I have two prior business locations,” Roarke put in. “Buildings that were sold. One was severely damaged during the war, torn down and rebuilt as an apartment building. The second was intact, but sold by this Lowell’s father twenty-three years ago. He bought it shortly after the Urbans.”
“I’ll take those two. Fire up my eyes and ears, Feeney. Peabody and two uniforms can shadow me. Ten-block minimum. I move out in five.”
Roarke got up to follow her out, and after scratching his head, Feeney went after both.
“Three-man teams,” Roarke commented. “Except for you.”
“You know why.”
“I don’t have to like it. You can spare a uniform. I’ll shadow with Peabody.”
She shook her head. “I need you here. Out there, you’re just weight. In here, you may make the difference.”
“That’s a hell of a thing.”
“Can’t be helped.” She swung into her office for her coat, spotted Feeney when she started to pull it on.
“Let’s check you out, kid.”
“Oh. Right.” She depressed and turned the button on her jacket to activate. “System’s a go?”
He glanced at his hand monitor. “That’s affirmative.” Then he looked up at her. “We’re closing in. You get that, too?”
“Yeah. Another twenty-four, maybe thirty-six, we’ll pin him. I don’t want it to go that long, Feeney. He probably started on her this morning, bright and fucking early this morning. Been at her now ten or twelve hours, I’d say. Maybe she can make another twenty-four or thirty-six. Maybe she can’t. I can’t make him go for me, but I’m going to be out there the next few hours, giving him the chance to try.”
Feeney’s glance drifted to Roarke, then back to her. “Not enough for him to try.”
“No. I’ve got to get inside, got to get him to take me where she is. I know how to handle it. I know how to handle it,” she repeated, looking directly at Roarke. “If he gives me the chance. If he doesn’t, I need the two of you here, digging out the next piece that brings us to him. If we had this much nine years ago, if we believed he might move on me then, Feeney, what would you have done?”
He puffed out his cheeks. “I’d’ve sent you out.”
“Then I’d better get going.”
Roarke watched her go, and when he was back at his station, split his work screen with her camera. He could see what she saw, hear through his ear bud what she heard.
That would have to be enough.
She took the second location he’d given her first. Private home, higher probability. While his searches ran he focused all his attention on the building she approached. Urban and attractive, he decided, tucked in among other urban and attractive buildings.
When the door was opened by a woman with a dog yapping at her feet and a toddler on her hip, he relaxed. The probability had just dipped very low.
Still he kept her on split screen as she went inside, sidestepping the dog the woman shooed away.
He let bits of the conversation wind through his head as he put the bulk of his concentration on the work. Everything the woman said to Eve confirmed the official data on the property. A family home owned by a junior exec
and his wife, professional mother, who lived there with their two children and a very irritable terrier.
“Nothing here,” Eve said as she moved back outside toward her vehicle. “Heading to second location. No tails spotted.”
She was cold. She was so awfully cold. It was probably shock, Ariel told herself. In vids when somebody went into shock, they put a blanket over them. Didn’t they?
Parts of her had gone numb, and she didn’t know if that was a blessing or if it meant those pieces of her had died. She knew she’d lost consciousness the second—or had it been the third?—time he’d hurt her.
But then he’d done something, something that had shot her back into the nightmare. Something that had jolted her like a hot blue electric current.
Sooner or later, he wouldn’t be able to bring her back. A part of her wanted to pray for that, so she buried that part, that weeping, yielding part.
Someone would come. She would stay alive, then someone would come.
When he came back, she wanted to scream. She wanted to scream and scream until the force of the sound shattered all those glass walls. Until it shattered him. She could imagine it, how that kind and quiet face of his would shatter into pieces like the walls of glass.
“Could I…May I please have some water?”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not allowed. You’re getting fluids through the IV.”
“But my throat’s so dry, and I was hoping we could talk some more.”
“Were you?” He wandered over to his tray. She wouldn’t let herself look, didn’t dare look at what he picked up this time.
“Yes. About music. What’s the music that’s playing now?”
“Ah, that would be Verdi. La Traviata.”
He closed his eyes a moment, and his hands began to move like a conductor’s. “Brilliant, isn’t it? Stirring and passionate.”
“Did—did your mother sing this one?”
“Yes, of course. It was a favorite of hers.”
“It must have been so hard for you when she died. I had a friend whose mother self-terminated. It was terrible for her. It’s…it’s hard to understand how anyone could be so sad or so lost that it seems to them death is the answer.”