Kindred in Death Read online

  “That would be filed under none of yours.”

  In droid fashion, the machine dubbed “Ms. Sloop” according to its nameplate stared blankly during processing.

  “I am responsible for the residents and visitors of this building.”

  “I’m responsible for the residents and visitors of this city. I win.” Eve tapped her badge. “This requires you to answer one simple question: Is Darian Powders on the premises at this time?”

  The droid blinked twice, then consulted its comp, though Eve imagined it had the information in its own circuits.

  During the process, Eve wondered if the pinched-face, tight-lipped, slicked-back-bun look of the machine was an attempt by whoever was in charge to intimidate the residents into behaving.

  Since the stern, disapproving facade reminded her of Summerset, she didn’t see how it could work.

  “Resident Powders logged in at oh-three-thirty. He has not since logged out.”

  “Okay then.” Eve turned toward the elevator.

  “You are required to log in.”

  Eve didn’t bother to glance back. “You scanned my badge. That logs me in.” Stepping on, she ordered the fourth floor. “Why can’t they use humans?” she complained to Roarke. “Droids aren’t nearly as much fun to screw with.”

  “I don’t know. I found it mildly entertaining. And it did look considerably put out.”

  “Maybe, but it’s already moved on.” Hands in pockets, she rocked on her heels. “A person would probably sulk or stew about it for a few minutes anyway. That’s more satisfying.”

  When the doors opened, the noise slammed her eardrums, and made her eyes throb. Music—clashing styles, volumes, lyrics—pumped out of rooms with their doors propped open. Voices mixed with them, some raised in argument or debate, others singing along. People, possibly under the influence of pharmaceuticals and in various stages of dress, wandered the hallways.

  A couple twined in deep kiss/grope mode just outside a closed door. Eve wondered why they just didn’t go inside and finish the job.

  She stepped in front of a girl sporting two nose rings and what might have been a tattoo of a honking goose on her left shoulder.

  “Darian Powders? Where do I find him?”

  “Dar?” The girl flapped a hand behind her while giving Roarke a long, slow, smoldering study. “Straight back, last on the right. Door’s open. I’m over that way,” she said to Roarke, “if you’re interested.”

  “That’s an offer,” Roarke said pleasantly. “But I’ll be going this way.”

  “Bummed.”

  With a look more of wonder than annoyance, Eve watched the girl stroll off. “She completely eye-fucked you.”

  “I know. I feel so cheap and used.”

  “Shit. You got off on it. Men always do.”

  “True enough, which is why we’re so often cheap and used.”

  She snorted, then heading down the corridor glanced in rooms. She saw a jumble of possessions and people, smelled very old pizza and very fresh Zoner. Peace Day signs lay scattered among snoring bodies and bottles of brew, which were probably as illegal as the Zoner.

  “Does anyone actually study around here?”

  “The ones with the doors closed, I imagine.” Roarke shrugged. “And it being the end of a holiday weekend, I’d think most are still in the mode.” He looked as she did at a couple curled up together on the floor in front of a blasting vid screen. “Or simply unconscious.”

  Eve could only shake her head. “The droid’s useless, and they know it.”

  She stopped at the open door at the end of the corridor. Inside ten young people sprawled on big colorful floor pillows or slumped on a small red sofa. The source of the music here was a comp game blasting on screen. The two remaining people seemed to be dueling on stage. Their icons, outfitted in the pinnacle of trash rock gear, held guitars while their counterparts played the air version and sang at the top of their lungs.

  She considered shouting, but judged it a waste of air and effort. Instead she walked in and shoved her badge in front of one of the sprawlers.

  It was just a little disappointing that no one scrambled to conceal or dispose of illegals. The boy she badged, scooped a hank of red and black hair out of his eyes and said, “Whoa! What do?”

  “Turn it off.”

  “The what?”

  “Turn the game off.”

  He gave her saucer eyes. “But it’s like the final round, and dead heat. Dar could maybe lose his title.”

  “Heart bleeds. Turn it off.”

  “Whoa.” He scooped his hair again, then scooted over to the main controller to switch it manually. He used pause, which suited Eve. But the participants, and the audience who hadn’t seen the badge, went ballistic.

  “What the fuck? The fuck? Who did that?” The boy player—who Eve recognized as Darian—whirled around. He looked ready to bash someone with his invisible guitar. “I was about to take Luce down!”

  “Bogus.” Luce sniffed, tossing a yard of hair the white-blonde of bleached straw. “I had you. Totally under.”

  “Not this eon. Jesus, Coby, what?”

  “Got cop,” Coby said and jerked his head toward Eve.

  Slouchers and sprawlers came to attention. Darian shifted toward Eve, goggled a little. “Whoa. Seriously?”

  “Seriously. Darian Powders?”

  “Yeah, um, me!” He raised his hand. “If we’re too loud and like that, so’s everybody.”

  Eve saw, out of the corner of her eye, one of the sprawlers butt-scoot toward the door. She stopped him with a single finger point.

  “I’m not campus, I’m NYPSD. I have some questions.”

  Luce sidestepped to Darian, put her hand in one of his pockets in a way that told Eve they weren’t just game rivals, but involved. “You need a lawyer, Dar.”

  “What? Why? Why?”

  “When a cop asks questions, you should have a rep.”

  “I bet you’re a law student.”

  Luce looked at Eve out of eyes such a pale blue they looked like springwater. “Prelaw.”

  “Then why don’t you rep him on the first question. It’s an easy one. Darian, can you account for your whereabouts from six p.m. last night to four a.m. this morning?”

  “Well yeah. Come on, Luce, that is easy. A bunch of us went down to the Shore yesterday afternoon. What, about two maybe?”

  “About.” Luce kept those pale eyes on Eve. “We got back about seven.”

  “And we chowed at McGill’s, and hit a party at Gia’s. She’s got an off-campus group. Gia.” He gestured to a tiny brunette.

  “Um, I don’t know when he left, exactly, but it was pretty late. Or early, I guess,” Gia offered. “We started the Rock Your Ass tourney, and we were going till close to three. Close anyway.”

  “We came back here after and crashed,” Darian told Eve. “Time, I don’t know, exactly, but the log’ll have it below.”

  “Okay, see? Easy.” Eve thought of connections, and Jamie’s comment about partying late on Saturday night.

  “So . . . I did good?” Darian offered the same blasting smile from his ID shot.

  “Yeah. No lawyers necessary,” she said to Luce. “Do you know Jamie Lingstrom?”

  “Sure. We’ve had some classes together, hang sometimes. Hey, he was at the party last night for a while. You could ask him. . . Wait. Is he in trouble? He’s not trouble. He wants to be a freaking cop. Sorry, I mean, he’s studying to be an e-cop.”

  “He’s not in trouble. It happens I know Jamie, too. You’re not in trouble either, but I still have questions. Everybody else, clear out.”

  Bodies lurched up, scrambled. Luce remained glued to Darian’s side, and the boy Coby stayed on the floor.

  Eve pointed at Coby, pointed at the door.

  “But I live here and all that.”

  “Find somewhere else to be. And close the door behind you.”

  When he had, Eve looked at Luce.

  “I’m not leaving.
I’m within my rights.”

  “Fine. Sit down, both of you.”

  Eve showed them Deena’s ID photo. “Do you know this girl?”

  “No. Wait. No . . . Maybe.”

  “Pick one,” Eve advised Darian.

  “I think I’ve seen her maybe?” He looked at Eve as she imagined he might have looked at one of his professors. Earnestly. “Maybe with Jamie? But not like at the party last night, or for a while. I just think maybe. Luce.”

  Luce frowned over the image. “Yeah. A couple times with Jamie. Not a girlfriend. I asked because she’s younger. He said they’d been buds forever. I didn’t really talk to her much or anything, but I saw her a couple of times with Jamie at Perk It—the coffee shop. Why?”

  Eve ignored the question. “Darian, you requested a new student ID in January.”

  “Yeah. I lost mine.”

  “How’d you lose it?”

  “I don’t know. If I did, I’d probably find it.” He smiled, a little weakly.

  “Let’s try when did you lose it?”

  “It was right after winter break. I know I had it when I got back—I went home for Christmas—because you’ve got to show it to log back into the dorm and all after a break. I got back early, for New Year’s and like that, because, well, who wants to be with the fam for the big Eve. Plus, Luce and I had started . . .”

  “We’re a unit.”

  Eve nodded at Luce. “Got that.”

  “We started uniting last fall, and I wanted to get back. I missed her.”

  “Aw.” Luce cuddled closer.

  “And we had a big bash for the Eve here. Major bash. I know I had it on the Eve because I had to show it to get the discount on supplies. Not like brew or anything, being underage.” He smiled again, very, very innocently. “So we partied until way into the new, and we didn’t go out again until the third—the day classes started. I mean, we cleaned up, dumped trash and all that, but we stuck around. We were all wiped from the party, and it was freaking cold anyway. Then I go to check in for class, and no ID.”

  “On the third? Why is your replacement for the fifth?”

  “Ah . . . Well, you know you report and apply, and . . . crap. Okay, okay, so I slicked on the third. I just figured I’d left it back here or something.”

  “Slicked?”

  “I, ah . . .”

  He glanced at Luce for direction, but she was staring hard at Eve. “She doesn’t care about that, Dar. She’s not going to care about slicking.”

  “Okay, yeah, well, I got another student to pass me through on his ID. You’re not supposed to but, it’s not against the law. Is it?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I looked everywhere when I got back. No go. Then, okay, I slicked my early classes the next day, cut a couple so I could go back to the stores where we bought stuff, in case I left it there. No go again. I reported it, end of day on the fourth, so it got issued on the fifth.”

  “Where do you keep the ID?”

  “In the wallet, or sometimes just in my pocket ’cause it’s easier. You show it a lot, so it’s handy in the pocket.”

  “Where was it on the night of the party?”

  “I don’t know. My pocket? Maybe. Or I maybe tossed it in my room, which is why I tore the place up when I realized it wasn’t on me. It costs seventy-five for a reissue, plus the forms. It’s a hassle.”

  “I’ll need a list of who was at the party.”

  “Lady—”

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Whoa, seriously?” Surprised respect goggled in his eyes. “Lieutenant, I couldn’t do it if you put me in cuffs and hauled me in. We jammed. People came and went, and I didn’t know half of them. Somebody from somewhere brings a friend. You know how it is? We got a corner suite here, so it’s the biggest on the floor. We get banged when we party. Jamie was here,” he remembered. “You could ask him. We were wall-to-wall and then some, so . . . Shit. I’m stupid. Somebody lifted it that night. Damn it, people suck wind.”

  “They do,” Eve agreed.

  “And someone used it to do something illegal,” Luce put in as Darian paled. “Something that happened last night. Something between six p.m. and four a.m. It wasn’t Darian.”

  “No, it wasn’t Darian. I may need to talk to you again, but for now I appreciate your cooperation.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell us what he did, whoever took it?” Darian asked.

  They’d find out soon enough, Eve thought. No point in it now. “I’m not at liberty.”

  “It’s about that girl,” Darian murmured. “She did something or something happened to her.”

  Eve signaled Roarke and started to the door. “Take better care of your ID.”

  “Lieutenant? Is Jamie all right? Is he okay?”

  “Yeah.” She glanced back, the dark-haired boy and the pale, pretty girl. “Jamie’s all right.”

  She brooded over it a bit as they drove home. “So, the kid, Darian, throws a party on New Year’s Eve, and the killer just happens to walk in and cop the ID? Just too fucking lucky in my world.”

  “Agreed, though it’s not impossible it was a moment of opportunity. More likely, your killer had his eye on Darian, or a few candidates including Darian, then took the opportunity to slip into the party, among the crowd. Not difficult to snag the ID then, whether it was on Darian’s person, or left in his room. People in and out, jammed together, undoubtedly alcohol or some illegals in the mix.”

  “He knows the campus, he blends there. He’d targeted Deena, so he had to know she was tight with Jamie, who goes there.”

  “You’re thinking Jamie knows him, or has at least brushed up against him at some point. A friend of a friend of a friend.”

  “It fits, doesn’t it? He might’ve even used some names she was vaguely familiar with to make her more comfortable with him right off. Those two kids recognized Deena and put her with Jamie. So the killer mentions their names, or others. She automatically feels safe. He’s had the ID for months before he first approaches her. Patient as a fucking spider.”

  She went back to work to write up the interview with Darian, and to begin the laborious process of studying the results from her search of MacMasters’s case files.

  It was nearly two in the morning when Roarke found her nodding over the data.

  “You can’t work in your sleep,” he pointed out. “It’s time both of us were in bed.”

  “I’ve got a handful of possibles.” She pressed the heels of her hands to eyes gone fuzzy. “Connections to people MacMasters sent over for long stretches, ones who bought it in prison. He’s got no terminations in the last five years. I need to go back further, maybe. And I need to talk this through with him.”

  “Which is for tomorrow.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it is.” She pushed up. “Why are you still awake?”

  “Working on digging out wiped data, which with the system MacMasters has is like trying to find a ghost in a dark room while wearing a blindfold.”

  Since they were both too tired for the stairs, he called for the elevator. “And running the analysis on the copy of the recording. And that would be a hell of a lot more concise with the bloody original. There’s no reflection. He’s not in her eyes.”

  “Would’ve been too lucky.” She yawned her way into the bedroom. “I set up a briefing here for seven hundred, since Peabody and I are going to hit the park. Feeney can take the disc in, log it, start the analysis.”

  She stripped on the way to the bed. “I’ll meet with Mira, she’ll have a profile. And I’m going to pick Jamie’s memory. This guy will have been around, on the fringe, blending in, but he’s been around. He’s not a ghost. There’ll be tracks.” She flopped facedown on the bed. “There are always tracks somewhere.”

  “You’ve found some in less than twenty-four hours.” He slipped in beside her, wrapped an arm around her to tuck her close. “You’ll find more.”

  “Maybe it was a vic.” Her voice slurred. “And he figures MacMa
sters didn’t do enough . . . blame the cop, punish the cop. Maybe . . .”

  In the dark, Roarke stroked her back as she went under, as Galahad plopped on the bed at her feet. And he thought, Here we are, all safe and sound for the night.

  She dreamed of dark rooms, and of tracks dug into the hard streets of her city. Following them as things scrabbled away in the shadows. She dreamed of the young girl watching her with dead eyes.

  As she tracked, an animated billboard sprang to life, stories high and filled with the image of the girl weeping, defenseless, bleeding. Her voice filled the dark with pain, with fear.

  He was there with her—she felt him behind her, beside her, in front of her. Breathing, waiting, watching while the girl begged and bled and died.

  He was there while the image changed to another girl, a girl in a room smeared with red light. There, while the girl Eve had been begged and bled and killed.

  So she ripped herself out of the dream with her heart stuttering and the air trapped in her lungs. She forced the air out. “Lights. Lights on, ten percent.”

  Her hands shook lightly as she stared at them, turned them over, looking for the blood.

  Not there, of course it’s not there. Just a dream, and not so bad. Not so bad. Closing her eyes she willed her heartbeat to slow, to steady. But she couldn’t will away the cold, and Roarke wasn’t there to warm her.

  Her teeth wanted to chatter, so she gritted them as she got up, found a robe. She checked the time, saw it was just shy of five-thirty. Going to the house monitor, she cleared her throat.

  “Where is Roarke?”

  Good morning, darling Eve. Roarke is in his main office.

  “What the hell for?” she wondered, and went off to find out.

  Stupid, she told herself, just stupid to be too uneasy to go back to bed, catch the half hour she had left. But she couldn’t face it, not alone.

  She heard him as she neared the office, but the words were strange, jumbled, foreign. She thought longingly of coffee, and thought she needed the zap of it to clear her brain because she’d have sworn Roarke was speaking in Chinese.

  She walked, bleary-eyed, to his open office door. Maybe she was still dreaming, she thought, because Roarke damn well was speaking Chinese. Or possibly Korean.