Faithless in Death: An Eve Dallas Thriller (Book 52)

by J. D. Robb

  Studied Mirium Wilkey’s ID shot.

  A young, not unattractive woman who presented herself as plain, wore clothes even Eve recognized as dowdy and unfashionable. An educated woman with three degrees and a substantial income, who owned nothing.

  Her older brothers owned homes, vehicles, held important-sounding titles.

  But not the daughter.

  “It’s got to fucking grate. Peabody.”

  “Yeah, I’m about to send you the highlights.”

  “Tell me this. Where did Wilkey’s sons go to college?”

  “Stanton Wilkey University.”

  Eve turned her head from the board to look at Peabody. “Where?”

  “He built a small, private college on Utopia Island. All three went there. The youngest just graduated. I took a closer look at it. It’s males only, and only accepts students who’ve graduated from approved schools.”

  “They can do that?”

  “Private island, private school. Ninety-six percent of the graduates go on to work in what they call the Natural Order Network.”

  “Huh. Computer, search for any and all female-only universities and colleges connected to Stanton Wilkey or Natural Order. Global search.”

  Acknowledged. Working …

  “You’re doing the daughter. Where did she go?”

  “Online. Two bachelor’s degrees and an MBA from his online college.”

  Search results show no college or university on-planet with those parameters.

  “Because women don’t need higher education,” Eve concluded.

  “Plus, it might give them ideas. He let his daughter get those degrees—but not in a social or open setting—because he can use her. I found some photos of her online, with him. Sometimes her mother or her brothers are in them, too. Mirium’s always in the background. She looks like staff because that’s essentially what she is.”

  Eve drank some coffee. “Wouldn’t that bug the shit right out of you?”

  “Me, yeah. But it’s the way she was raised, it’s what she’s been taught.”

  “Wouldn’t you say the woman we spoke to today on that veranda deal could think for herself? Even had a sense of power and authority?”

  “Yeah, I would. Until her father joined us.”

  Eve lifted a hand, shot a finger at Peabody. “Exactly. He masks bigotry with benevolence. She masks intelligence with subservience. I think they’re both liars.”

  She looked over at Yancy. “Got anything interesting?”

  “I think so, here and there.”

  “Why don’t you come over here, bring a chair?”

  He brought the one he’d been sitting on, and his portable.

  “I’m going to let this other Wilkey stuff stew back here for a while.” She waved her hand at the back of her head. “Give me what you’ve got on Steenberg.”

  “Okay, she and her husband didn’t join the order until they were in their late forties. She worked as a domestic, he had a small handyman business. This was outside of St. Paul. Financially they were underwater more than above. What I put together is Carl Steenberg did some work for a member, and over the course of the job, the member talked up the order. Steenberg already belonged to Freedom Warriors—that’s been taken down, but it was a white nationalist group in the Midwest back then—so it was preaching to the choir.”

  “Are you still synched with the screen?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Put Carl Steenberg up there. I like the visual.”

  When he had, Eve saw a hard-eyed man in his upper sixties, going jowly. Gravel gray hair in a severe buzz cut.

  “Split screen Gayle Steenberg and keep going.”

  “They look like the mean version of American Gothic,” Peabody commented, and Yancy laughed.

  “They really do. I have to figure the member sponsored the Steenbergs, because that’s one way to get into meetings and seminars, and they couldn’t afford the orientation and screening fees required otherwise.”

  “Sponsored?”

  “I set up a fake account and filled in a questionnaire on their website,” Yancy told her. “The orientation and screening fees are pretty sticky, but they waive the orientation fee if you’re sponsored by a member in good standing who’s been in for a minimum of three years.”

  “That’s good work, Yancy. Good thinking.”

  He shrugged. “You get curious. Six months after they joined, Steenberg closed his business, and they went to work at a Natural Order center—maintenance for him, domestic for her. A few years later, they packed up, moved to Kansas. They worked on the order’s Heartland Farm, and their kids went to the farm school. Five years after that, they moved to the HQ in Connecticut.

  “Their kids didn’t.”

  “What happened there?”

  “The address I got for both kids, at the time of that move, was back in St. Paul. Maternal grandparents. Both had reached eighteen, so the Steenbergs couldn’t legally stop them. Both still live in that general area. The oldest one’s a cop with St. Paul PSD.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It’s an hour earlier there, so I went ahead and reached out. Detective Leroy Russ—both of them changed their last name legally to their grandparents’. I’ll have it all in the report, but to sum it up, he said his father was a vicious brute, and his mother no better. And Natural Order’s full of the same, along with lunatics, assholes, dumb shits, and other colorful terms.”

  “I take it he didn’t enjoy his time with them.”

  “Counted the days. He said he would have left when he hit eighteen, but couldn’t leave his brother. The minute the brother hit, they walked off the farm, stuck out their thumbs, and rode them back to St. Paul. He says he still remembers how his grandparents cried when they saw him and his brother at the door.”

  “Any contact with the parents?”

  “None. He said if we need anything from him to ask. He and his brother had to put it all in a box, but he’d open it up if we needed him to.”

  “This is good information. Peabody, anything nearly that interesting on the Wilkey brothers?”

  “I’m sorry to say, no. Their official data’s pretty straightforward—except for no medical, like the others. I got more from media searches, which pretty much shows the two oldest as entitled, and not really bright, jerks.

  “They both had big society weddings—on the island. Both their wives are members, and come from membership families. The oldest heads the order’s European HQ, based outside of London, and lives there with his family. He travels a lot. The second son heads up what’s called Global Networking, is based outside of East Washington. He clearly has political ambitions, has a lot of followers on his social media rants about how our rights have been stripped away, a lot of anti-immigration, anti-gay, anti-everything, really, but his own views. Plenty of his media followers are there to punch at him, but there are plenty who agree.”

  She glanced at her notes. “They both have law degrees, but since the island’s university isn’t recognized by the American Bar Association, they can’t practice here. Oh, and for fun? They like to hunt. They have the money and the connections to go to these preserves overseas where they can shoot genetically engineered animals.”

  Her eyes went teary. “Genetically engineered animals can still feel. They kill them, then they pose with them.”

  “Take a break. Walk around, get a fizzy.”

  “I’ll walk around, get some water.”

  When Peabody got up to go into the kitchen, Yancy turned to Eve.

  “I’m not Homicide. I like my work. That’s not true,” he amended. “I love my work. But if and when you go to take these people down, I’d like to be part of it.”

  “Done.”

  She got up herself, but only to walk to the board. “I agree with Detective Russ, and we’ll do everything we can to break this apart. But our priorities remain Ariel Byrd, Keene Grimsley, Special Agent Quirk, and Ella Foxx.

  “It’s money,” she said. “And it’s p
ower—protecting those. Money and power they used to spread and perpetuate an ugly vision.”

  She heard the geek squad coming back, and hoped McNab’s burst of laughter meant success.

  “We’re good,” McNab announced when he pranced in. “We are damn spanky good.”

  “Data now, brag later.”

  “You’ll have it.” Looking pretty pleased himself, Roarke strolled over to swipe a fingertip down the shallow dent in her chin.

  He had his hair tied back, his sleeves rolled up.

  “But now we’ve earned a beer.”

  “We’re on duty.”

  “Are you?” Roarke looked deliberately at his wrist unit. “Are you really?”

  “Your house, your case.” Feeney slid his hands in his baggy pockets. “But I still outrank you.”

  “Hell. One beer. McNab, I want whatever you got on-screen.”

  While he set it up, Roarke came back from the kitchen with two bottles in each hand, and Peabody, steady again, brought the other two.

  “Figured we’d be on this half the night.” Feeney took his beer, then a nice long pull. “But not only are we damn good, but they did a half-assed job of it. Maybe three-quarter-assed job, but not a full-assed job. Figured nobody’d bother looking into it. Why would they?”

  “Why indeed?” Roarke handed Eve her beer, and rubbed an arm on her shoulder. “When she had, essentially, no one.”

  “There she is,” Yancy murmured when Ella’s ID shot popped onscreen.

  Eve saw young, defiant, and sulky. In the official ID her hair, a reddish purple with bright blue streaks, exploded around that pretty young face. She had a tiny red stud on the right side of her nose, multicolored studs in her ears.

  “Parents, Cokie Crosse, deceased last February—OD—and Zeek Foxx, deceased in April of 2059, shanked in prison, Florida.”

  “As you can see,” Roarke began, “she was tossed back and forth quite a bit in her young life. Into foster care, back to the mother, into juvie, foster, and so on. Picked up as a runaway, for begging without a license.”

  “Picking pockets at sixteen,” Eve added.

  “A girl has to eat, after all.”

  “Last known address Stone Tree House, not in Brooklyn. Here in the city.”

  “It’s a halfway house.” Feeney took another pull. “She wasn’t eighteen when she went in, but her caseworker signed off. It’s in the data. Jane Po, Child Services. She’s got employment listed, too. Fast Break Café, and she graduated high school with a GED—and damn good grades.”

  “Why didn’t Po look into this when she didn’t show up, at the halfway house, at work? Let’s find out.”

  Before Eve could stride to her command center, Roarke took her arm. “Eve, not tonight. It’s past midnight.”

  “Crap. Crap. Okay, Peabody, get her address. We’re going to take her first thing in the morning.”

  “She’s on Beach—528 Beach, apartment 302.”

  “Meet me there, eight hundred hours. Nobody filed a missing persons, nobody looked and saw her data wiped? Why?”

  Absently, she drank beer. “They dyed her hair, took away her personality, but they didn’t get her. Not all the way.”

  “We have to get her out, Dallas.” Peabody leaned into McNab and looked a little teary again.

  Tired, Eve decided. They were all tired, and burnout could follow if she didn’t call it.

  “That’s the plan. It’s not going to be tonight, probably not tomorrow, but we’ll get her out. I need those financials, Roarke.”

  “You’ll have them. I’ve accumulated quite a bit already.”

  “All right. Peabody and I will talk to Po first thing in the morning. I need to meet with Whitney, and coordinate with the feds. I have to give them what we’ve got. We hit Po, and we hit Foxx’s last place of employment. See what we see.

  “We’ll brief by noon tomorrow, that’ll include the financials. Whatever you have, send them in.”

  “So, I’m not invited?”

  She’d expected that. “You want to brief and be briefed, be there. Noon, unless I need to reschedule. This was good work, everyone. Damn fucking good cop work. Now get out. Go home.”

  “I’ll get you transpo,” Roarke told them.

  “Got my own ride.” Feeney handed Eve his empty bottle. “You take care of the kids.” Then he lifted his chin at Ella’s photo. “Reminds me of you.”

  Eve’s jaw dropped. “What? I never looked like that in my life.”

  “It’s in the eyes, kid. In the eyes that say I’ll kick your ass if I need to.”

  He gave her a little shoulder punch and headed out. “See you at noon.”

  She frowned at the screen while Roarke arranged for a car and driver.

  And when the rest of the cops herded themselves out, she turned to Roarke.

  “I don’t see it.”

  “I do.” He kissed her temple. “And it will give me great pleasure to help get her away from there. Now come to bed, Lieutenant, you’re as tired as the rest of your cops.”

  She let him lead her out, but couldn’t let go. “Just give me some highlights on the financials so far.”

  “He spends lavishly on himself. I think many of his faithful will be disillusioned when that comes out. Fine wines, art, furnishings, the jets, the homes, and so on. And, of course, he’s tucked more than a bit away in offshore accounts, under assumed names. And, as I told you before, the order itself is heavily invested in property. They do make profits—the medical centers, the membership fees, merchandizing.”

  “Merchandizing?”

  “His oratories, his books, meditative music, that sort of thing.”

  “What’s he really worth?”

  “I’ll have that for you tomorrow, but I can safely say not as much as he’d have people believe.”

  He turned her deliberately toward the bed where the cat opened one wary eye, then nudged her down to sit.

  When he bent to take off her boots, the gesture, combined with fatigue and that late-night beer, made her smile.

  “It’s been a hell of a day.”

  “That it has.”

  “You were right about calling it. My brain’s going to mush.”

  “Turn it off for a bit then.” He tugged her to her feet.

  Easier said, she thought, but unhooked her weapon harness.

  By the time she’d undressed, he’d turned down the bed. When she slid into it, she felt her body go: Ah.

  “You’ll be up before dawn anyway.” Another ah as she curled into him. “Organizing world domination and cop consultant duties. Wake me up.”

  “All right. Sleep now.”

  And she did, curled between him and the cat at the small of her back, until her communicator signaled. Blown fully awake, she snatched it from the bedside table.

  “Block video. Dallas.”

  Rather than the flat-voiced Dispatch she’d expected, the voice was hesitant.

  “Lieutenant Dallas, this is nine-one-one operator Harris. I realize this is irregular, but there’s a woman on the line who insists on speaking only to you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “She won’t give her name, sir, and her number’s blocked. She sounds desperate. I can attempt to trace her location if you can keep her on the line.”

  “Put her on.”

  Roarke called for lights at ten percent before he got out of bed.

  “Ma’am, I have Lieutenant Dallas for you. Lieutenant?”

  “This is Dallas. Who’s this?”

  “Oh God, thank God.” This voice wasn’t hesitant. Desperate, yes, but Eve recognized terror with it. “Will you help me? Something terrible’s happened. I know something terrible happened.”

  “What happened?”

  “I need to get away. I have a little boy, and I need to get him away. I’m pregnant, I need to get us somewhere safe. Please help me.”

  “I will help you.” She took the coffee Roarke offered. “But I need to know where you are, what happened. What’s
your name?”

  “You can’t come here. They watch, I know they do—and I know how that sounds. I’m going to get my little boy and what I can carry and leave, but I don’t have anywhere to go. I waited until all the lights were off, but I’m afraid someone will see us when I leave. I saw you today. I saw you and I recognized you, and … It was like a sign. I need your help.”

  “I’m going to help you. Are you in immediate danger?”

  “No. My husband’s not here. He’s at the retreat. But Marcia, next door—they took her away. Do you have somewhere safe I can take my son?”

  “Yes. Tell me where you are. I’ll take you both somewhere safe.”

  After a quick sob of relief, the voice rushed on. “Please don’t come here. They’ll know if you do, and I’m afraid they’ll find me. I’m going to walk out with Gabriel, he’s only ten months old. I already packed some things, and I waited, and I’m going to carry him and get out. It’s the only way, believe me.”

  “Okay. Walk two blocks west.” Shutting her eyes, Eve brought the Tribeca neighborhood back in her head. “Then walk a block north. It’s going to take me about twenty minutes to get to you, but I’ll meet you and I’ll take you to a safe place.”

  “Thank you. Thank God.”

  “Keep your ’link open. Operator Harris?”

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Stay on with the caller. Ma’am, what’s your name?”

  “I’m Zoe.”

  “Zoe, Operator Harris will stay on.”

  Roarke, already dressed in jeans, a thin gray sweater, brought clothes out of Eve’s closet.

  As she spoke, Eve wiggled into underwear, soot-gray trousers. “Stay calm. Take only what you absolutely need. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Please hurry. I’m so scared.”

  “Talk to Operator Harris. You’re not alone.”

  “I’m right here, Zoe,” Eve heard Harris say as she shrugged into the shirt Roarke handed her.

  She muted the comm. “Tribeca,” she told him.

  “The car’s already around front. I contacted Dochas while you spoke with her. They’ll be ready.”

  “Great.” She hooked on her weapon harness, grabbed her badge, her ’link, the rest of her belt and pocket debris.