Kindred in Death Page 10

  “Darling Eve.” He stepped to her, danced his fingertips over her messy cap of hair. “I wanted a home, and I wanted important. I managed the shell of it, didn’t I? An impressive shell for all that. But you? What you are, what you bring into it—even this, maybe due to this, you make it important. And for me, for what I might add to it? Well, it might balance the scales a bit.”

  “Are you looking for balance?”

  “I might be,” he murmured. “So.” He leaned down to brush a kiss over her brow. “Let’s have our meal.”

  She lifted one of the silver tops and studied the plate below. A chunk of lightly grilled fish topped a colorful mix of vegetables with a spray of pretty pasta curls.

  “It looks . . . healthy.”

  He laughed, kissed her again. “I wager it’ll go down easy enough. Then you can wipe the healthy out with too much coffee and some of the cookies you’ve stashed in your office.”

  She gave him a bland look as she sat down. “Stashed indicates concealed. They’re just put away in such a manner that certain people whose names rhyme with Treebody and McBlab can’t grab them and scarf them down.” She stabbed some fish, ate it. “It’s okay.”

  “As an alternative to pizza.”

  “There is no alternative to pizza. It stands alone.”

  “Do you remember your first slice?”

  “I remember my first New York pizza—the real deal. Out of school, of age. Shook myself out of the system and hit New York, applied to the Academy. I had a couple weeks, and I was walking the city, getting my bearings. I went into this little place downtown, West Side—Polumbi’s. I ordered a slice. They had a counter that ran along the front window, and I got a seat there. I bit in, and it was like, I don’t know, my own little miracle. I thought, I’m free, finally. And I’m here, where I want to be, and I’m eating this goddamn pizza and watching New York. It was the best day of my life.”

  She shrugged, stabbed more of the delicately grilled fish. “Damn good pizza, too.”

  It both broke his heart and lifted it.

  For a time they spoke of inconsequential things, blessedly ordinary things. But he knew her, her mind, her moods.

  “Tell me what Whitney said. It’s inside your head.”

  “It can wait.”

  “No need.”

  She toyed with the vegetables. “He agrees there’s no point in showing MacMasters the disc, or—at this time—informing him of it. We’ll focus on MacMasters’s cases, current and prior, see if we can hook any of them to his threat file. But . . .”

  “You’re thinking he’s too smart to have threatened outright.”

  “He’s made one mistake, he’ll have made another. But I don’t think we’ll find him there. Baxter and Trueheart hit the one name MacMasters came up with, a dealer he’d helped bust. There’s nothing there,” she said with a shake of her head. “It doesn’t play. When you . . .”

  He angled his head when she trailed off and scooped up more fish. “Finish it off.”

  She looked into his eyes, already sorry she would take him—them—out of the shimmering night and into the blood and pain of the past. “Okay. The men who killed Marlena, who brutalized her and killed her to strike at you . . .”

  “Did I let them know I intended to hunt them down and kill them?” he finished. “It makes you—what’s the most diplomatic word under the circumstances—uncomfortable to ask, or to delve too deep into the fact that I did hunt them down, and I did kill them. Everyone who’d tortured and raped and beaten and broken her.”

  She picked up her wine while the raw edge of his tightly controlled anger stabbed at her. But she kept her eyes steady on his. “Comfort isn’t always a part of this, what I do, what we are.”

  “What was done to that girl we watched on the screen upstairs was done to another, even younger girl. By more than one. Over and over, again and again. For the same reason, it seems. To strike out at someone else. With Marlena, it was me. She was family to me, and they ripped her to pieces.”

  “I told you to tell me when bringing it home is too much. Why the hell don’t you?”

  He sat back making an obvious—it was so rare for it to be obvious—effort to settle himself. “We’re too entwined for that, Eve. And I wouldn’t change it. But there are times, Christ Jesus, it’s like swallowing broken glass.”

  It struck her suddenly, and made her want to spring up and punch him. “Goddamn it, I’m not comparing what you did to what this bastard’s done. You didn’t kill an innocent to punish the guilty. You didn’t act out of blind revenge, but—whether or not I agree—out of a sense of justice. I asked, you idiot, because you were young when it happened, and youth is often rash, impatient. But you countered that with patience, with focus until you’d . . . done what you’d set out to do. Which wasn’t, for Christ’s sake, raping and murdering a kid to get your rocks off.”

  He said nothing for a moment, then gave an easy shrug. “Well, that’s certainly telling me.” Even as she scowled at him, candlelight flickering between them, he smiled. “The fact, the singular fact, that you can know what you do of me and accept is my great fortune.”

  “Bollocks,” she muttered, and made him laugh over her co-opting one of his oaths.

  “I adore you, every day. And I realize I needed more than the meal and the break. I needed to get that out of my system. So, to your question, Lieutenant.”

  “What the hell was the question?” she asked.

  “Did I threaten or boast or transmit to the men who’d killed Marlena that I intended to make them pay for it? No. Nor did I leave any trace so any of those involved would know the why of it.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Calmer, she nodded. “But then, it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t revenge. That’s part of the difference, and part of the need here. The reason for the video, the message.”

  “Aye. I’d agree. That kind of revenge? It’s thirsty.”

  “Thirsty,” she murmured, and ran the message back through her head. “Yeah. That’s a good word for it.”

  “Generally you’d leave enough so the target of that revenge knew which quiver the arrow came from. Otherwise, there’s no point in that victory dance.”

  “Yeah, but we have to check it out. We’ll need to comb through the university, that’s an angle. And we’ll analyze the disc. Feeney needs to take that.”

  “Am I being demoted?” Roarke asked lightly.

  She arched her brows. “We’re too entwined for that,” she said. “But it’s a cop’s kid. We need to be careful. I want the head of EDD in charge of that piece of evidence. We’ve got an unlimited budget, unlimited manpower—and there will be those, in the media, even in the department, who question that.”

  A faint line of annoyance rode between her eyes. “How come this case gets so much time and effort? Why didn’t Civilian Joe get the same treatment? The answers are simple. You come after a cop or a cop’s family, we come after you. And it’s more complex. You come after a cop or a cop’s family, it puts us all in the crosshairs and makes it goddamn hard to do the job for Civilian Joe. We live with that, but this intensifies. MacMasters had partners through the years, and as a boss, men under his command. How many of them might be vulnerable? And more, when we catch this bastard, every piece of evidence, every point of procedure has to be above reproach. We can’t have anything questionable in court, nothing some defense attorney can hang us on.”

  She ate a bite. “That said, if you had the time and the inclination to work with the copy, nobody’s stopping you. As expert consultant, civilian, assigned to EDD, you report to Feeney.”

  “Which isn’t nearly as fun as reporting to you. But message received.”

  “One of the most valuable things you do is let me bounce stuff off you. Listen, give opinions. Just talking it through opens up angles for me. That’s why I asked the question.”

  “Understood. Now you have another, so bounce.”

  “Okay, I have to play all the lines—pull, tug. One of them t
hat keeps circling for me is the Columbia connection. Maybe, maybe it was just more bullshit. But it feels like he’d have played it with roots in truth. Just like you said about the accent. So he went there, or worked there, or knows someone who did. Alternatively he scoped it out, maybe—what is it—monitored classes. Got the feel so he could talk about it to her. Maybe he faked his name, but he probably picked something that felt natural to him, or meant something to him. He’s not going to give her too much truth, but those roots again.”

  “With a school that size, even with the security, it’s not difficult to get on campus, study the layout, gather particulars. Names of instructors, times of classes. He could get most of the information online or simply by requesting it.”

  It was more, she thought. Something more.

  “He studied her, so he knew she had a friend who went there. It was, I’m dead sure, one of his angles. One of the ways he used to get her to talk to him. In those first stages, she’s got no motivation to keep it all secret. So she might say to Jamie how she met this guy who goes there.”

  “Ah.” Following her lead, Roarke nodded. “And if he’d been studying her, he would know her friend Jamie’s interest in e-work, police work. Wouldn’t he want to cover himself there, if Jamie got it into his head to check out this boy who put stars in the eyes of his good friend?”

  “If he had a brain he would. Maybe, once they’re established and he’s got her hooked, he doesn’t know teenage girls well enough to realize she’s got to tell someone. A peer, a pal. So he’s not worried about us digging there. But he had to worry about Jamie checking or her—cop’s daughter—checking, even just to satisfy her curiosity. He had to show student ID at the vids and so on to get the discount, or wouldn’t she wonder why he didn’t? Where did he get it?”

  “Stolen or forged.”

  “Maybe both, because if someone checked—and he’s got to cover that—he needs to show up on the roster.”

  “We know he has some e-skills. It wouldn’t be hard to do. And,” Roarke added, “if he had a brain, he’d have already wiped himself off that roster.”

  “High probability on that. So tomorrow I’m going to start pushing somebody at the college to get me a list of students reporting a stolen ID, then start wading through that.”

  “Why tomorrow?”

  “Because it’s freaking and increasingly annoying Peace Day, and it’s late anyway, and nobody’s in Administration or whatever.”

  “I can take care of that.”

  Narrowing her eyes, she pointed a warning finger at him. “I just told you we have to be careful. I can’t have you hacking into Columbia’s student files.”

  “Which is a shame as I’d enjoy that. But I can take care of this with a ’link call.”

  “To who?”

  “Why don’t we just start at the top, with the president of the university?”

  She squinted. “You know the president of Columbia University?”

  “I do, yes. Roarke Industries sponsors a scholarship, and has donated lab equipment from time to time. Plus, I spoke with her at length regarding Jamie.”

  “So you can just pick up the ’link, give her a tag, no problem?”

  “Well, we won’t know till we try, will we?”

  He pulled his ’link out of his pocket, tapped his fingers on the screen to do a search. “She’s an interesting woman, with a nearly terrifying radar for bullshit. You’d like her.” He smiled as the call went through. “Peach. I’m sorry to interrupt your evening.”

  Across the table, Eve heard the muted response, but not the words. Whatever it was, Roarke laughed.

  “Well then, I’m delighted to be of help. As it happens, I’m about to ask for yours. You’re aware my wife is a police officer. Ah, is that so? Yes, indeed, she comes across quite well on screen. She’s heading an investigation that may have some connection to a student or former student at Columbia.”

  He paused, listened, flicked a glance toward Eve. “Yes, that would have been her partner. I know the NYPSD appreciates your cooperation. They need to ask for more. I think it would be best if the lieutenant explains to you directly what she needs. Would you hold one moment?”

  He tapped for hold, held out the ’link to Eve.

  “Peach?” she said. “A university president named Peach?”

  “Doctor Lapkoff.”

  “Right.” Eve took the ’link, opened communications. Her first impression was of ice blue eyes so sharp they looked able to pierce steel. They beamed out of a cool, attractive face topped with short, straight brown hair.

  “Lieutenant Dallas.” The tone was brisk, as no-nonsense as the do. “How can I help you?”

  Within minutes, the bureaucratic wheels were turning. Eve passed the ’link back to Roarke. “She says she’ll have the data to me within an hour.”

  “Then she will.”

  “So I guess I better go back to work, and get ready for it.”

  Back in her office, she started a match search with the Columbia list and MacMasters’s threat file, and a second for matches with his case files for the last five years. It would take time.

  She used it to study the video again.

  He’d stopped and started, she judged, a number of times. Each time Deena hesitated or went off script. Patience, focus. He had a message, and he wanted it delivered.

  Blame the father, even though it was perfectly clear the victim spoke only under duress. He’d needed the words said. Daughter to father? Was that important? Child to parent? An issue or just the luck of the draw?

  No, nothing was luck on this. Every choice deliberate. Direct to MacMasters, with no mention of the mother. Dad, Daddy—not the mother.

  Never forgive. Hate. Never know why. Must pay.

  Sins of the father? she wondered. Eye for an eye?

  She sat, put her booted feet on the desk, shut her eyes.

  The killer was older by a few years—maybe more—than the victim. Deliberate target, used to punish MacMasters. Blood kin.

  Relative? Son?

  Unacknowledged child?

  Possible.

  The cruelty of the act, the planning, the message sent—all pointed to intense offense. Against killer? Against relative or close connection to killer?

  Note: Search MacMasters’s files for terminations, or arrests/wits/vics that resulted in death or extreme injuries. Add life sentences on and off planet.

  Personal, extremely personal. This wasn’t business.

  She opened her eyes when her unit signaled an incoming. Straightening, she brought up the data. Peach Lapkoff was a woman of her word.

  That was the good part, Eve noted. The bad was just how many students at one freaking college managed to lose their IDs.

  She needed more coffee.

  With more fuel she began the laborious process of whittling down. Even as her unit reported no match on her initial search, she felt the pop.

  “Powders, Darian, age nineteen. Lit major, second year. Replacement ID requested and paid for fifth of January, 2060.” She brought up her previous list, eyes narrowed. “And here you are again, Darian, hailing from Savannah. All data on current subject on screen.”

  She swiveled, studied his ID. “Good looking guy, big, charming smile. You’re tailor made.”

  Eve continued to study and wondered if she could be looking at a killer, or his dupe.

  “One way to find out.”

  She rose, tugged on the jacket she’d tossed over the back of her chair, then buzzed Roarke.

  “Hey, I’ve got an angle I need to check out. I won’t be long.”

  “Check out as in go out?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a possible. I want to work it now.”

  “I’ll meet you downstairs.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Waste time, and neither do you. I’ll drive.”

  When he clicked off she blew out a breath.

  No point in arguing. And she could do a secondary run on Powders while Roarke played
chauffeur.

  He beat her downstairs and opened the door under the bitter eye of Galahad just as the vehicle he’d remoted on auto cruised to the front of the house.

  “Where are we going and why?”

  “Columbia, on-campus housing to interview a possible suspect. More likely a potential dupe. But either way that’s not my vehicle.”

  Roarke glanced at the slick two-seat convertible, top down, in glittering silver. “It’s mine, and since I’m driving and it’s a very nice evening, I want an appropriate ride.”

  She frowned all the way to the passenger seat. “I have an appropriate ride, which you gave me.”

  “Safe, loaded, and deliberately unattractive. Key in the address,” he suggested, and gunned it down the drive.

  She hated to admit it, but it felt damn good, the night, the air, the speed. Reminding herself it wasn’t about fun, she started a deeper run on Darian Powders.

  “Kid’s from Georgia, requested new ID in January. He’s the right age, and he’s got a pretty face.”

  “Isn’t school out for the summer? Why would he be on campus in June?”

  “He’s taking a short summer semester, and interning at Westling Publishing. Lit major. He’s completed his second year at the college, carries a 3.4 grade average. No criminal, but his brother—who’s still in Georgia—has two illegals pops. Minor shit. He’s got an uncle in New York, an editor at the publishing house, who has a son a couple years older than this one who took a harder illegals hit. Did six months, and another three in rehab. Bust was Brooklyn’s, so not MacMasters.”

  “Hardly motive for what was done to that girl.”

  “It’s a start,” Eve said, and kept working the run as she enjoyed the ride.

  7

  EVE FLASHED HER BADGE AT THE STERN-FACED droid riding the desk at the check-in for the dorm. She assumed they’d gone droid to try to avoid any possibility of bribery or human weakness with infractions. But she figured that area would be offset by the ability of probably half the residents in reprogramming or memory erase.

  The droid gave Eve’s badge both a naked eye study and a red-beam scan.

  “Purpose of business?”