Chaos in Death edahr-42 Read online

  “That’s a good question.”

  “It’s one I’m going to ask him.”

  Old, time-faded brick housed the Whitwood Center. No flash, Eve noted, no gloss—at least not on the exterior—so the building sat comfortably in the old Meatpacking District.

  With Peabody, she walked in the front entrance. The lobby area was large and quietly furnished. Comfortable chairs, simple art, some plants gave off the atmosphere of a living area rather than a waiting one despite the reception counter manned by two people.

  The man, early thirties, continued to work on his comp while the woman, a few years younger with a pretty face and earnestly welcoming eyes, smiled in their direction.

  “Good morning. How can we help you today?”

  Eve approached the counter, laid her badge on it. “We need to speak with Dr. Rosenthall.”

  “I see.” The woman didn’t so much as blink at the badge. “Is the doctor expecting you?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “His offices are on the second floor, east. One of his interns or his assistant should be able to help you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Stairs to the left, elevators to the right.”

  As Eve angled left, the woman continued. “You’ll want to take the right corridor, go over the garden breezeway, then take the first turn to the left.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s nice work,” Peabody said as they started up. “The work they’ve done on the old building. Kept its character. It’s comfortable, and it doesn’t shout, ‘We’re really rich philanthropists.’ ”

  On the second floor they walked by several doors, all discreetly shut, with their purposes or a doctor’s name on a plaque.

  They passed people in lab coats, in street wear, in sharp suits, and in tattered pants. Eve noted the security cameras, and the card slots and palm plates on some of the doors. They passed a nurse’s station and the waiting area across from it.

  Then they came to the garden breezeway. Below, through treated glass, a central fountain gurgled in a fantasy of flowering plants, shrubs, trees in riotous bloom. White stone benches offered seating, bricked paths wound in an invitation to stroll.

  “That says, ‘We’re really rich philanthropists,’ ” Eve commented.

  “But in a really pretty way.”

  They made the left into a small blue and cream reception area. The woman behind the counter tapped her earpiece, turned away from the smart screen where, it looked to Eve, she’d been working on updating a complex schedule.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Lieutenant Dallas and Detective Peabody.” Eve held up her badge. “We need to speak with Dr. Rosenthall.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “There almost always is.”

  The woman didn’t look pleased by the answer, and reminded Eve of Dr. Mira’s admin. The dragon at the gates of the NYPSD’s shrink and top profiler.

  “Dr. Rosenthall’s in his lab this morning.”

  “Where’s his lab?”

  “I really must insist you tell me your business before I disturb the doctor.”

  “I really must insist you take us to his lab.” Eve tapped her badge. “And this has a lot more insistence than you because it can arrest you for interfering with a police investigation.”

  “I’ll check with the doctor.” The words sounded as sour as the woman’s face looked. She tapped her earpiece again. “Yes, Pach, would you tell Dr. Rosenthall two police officers are here and insist on speaking with him. Yes. No, they won’t say. Thank you.” She waited a moment, staring holes through Eve. Then scowled. “Very well.”

  After another tap, she spoke to Eve. “The doctor’s lab assistant will come out and take you back. The doctor will see you.”

  She aimed her nose in the air before turning back to her screen.

  Moments later a side door opened. The man who came out had deep brown skin and large, heavy-lidded eyes nearly as black as his crown of curly hair. He wore a standard white lab coat over jeans and a red T-shirt that asked, “My petri dish or yours?”

  “Officers?”

  “Lieutenant Dallas and Detective Peabody.”

  “Oh. Um . . .” He flashed a very white smile. “If you’ll come this way?”

  Through the door was a maze, a rabbit warren of rooms off angled corridors. The lab assistant negotiated them on flapping gel sandals. He paused at double steel doors, swiped his card, spoke his name. “Pachai Gupta.”

  The security blinked green in acceptance, and the doors slid open into a large lab. Eve felt a weird juxtaposition as her friend Mavis’s voice wailed out about love on the wild side over the pristine red and white room. Strange equations and symbols held frozen on one of the wall screens while something bubbled blue in a heated beaker. A woman with short, sleek red hair hunched over a microscope while her foot tapped to Mavis’s grinding beat. Another lab coat diligently worked two comps at a long white counter. He sported a short stub of a ponytail and ragged skids.

  In the center of it, amid the coils of tubing, the sparkling electronics, the busy screens, and the forest of test tubes, beakers, and specimen dishes, stood Justin Rosenthall.

  He wore a lab coat like other men wore a tux, perfectly fitted and somehow elegant. His gilded mane of hair gleamed under the bright lights. Vid-star handsome, poetically pale, he removed a beaker from its heater with tongs and set it in a bath of water. Steam hissed and curled.

  Through the thin curtain of it, Eve saw his eyes, tawny as a lion’s, fix intently on some sort of gauge.

  “What’s he working on?” she asked their guide.

  “An antidote.”

  “To what?”

  “To evil.” At her raised eyebrows, Pachai flushed, shrugged.

  Eve heard a low beep. Justin lifted the beaker again, slid it into a container, sealed it, set another gauge.

  Only then did he step back, look over.

  “Sorry.” There was an absent charm in his smile, in his movements as he crossed to them. “The timing’s crucial. You’re the police?”

  “Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody, NYPSD.”

  “Dallas. Of course, you’re Roarke’s wife.” His smile warmed as he extended a hand. “It’s nice to finally meet you. How is Roarke? I haven’t seen him in . . . it’s probably been a year. More.”

  “He’s good. This isn’t a social call, Dr. Rosenthall.”

  “Justin. No, of course not. Sorry. How can I help you?”

  “You know Jennifer Darnell, Coby Vix, Wilson Bickford.”

  “Yes.” His smile faded. “Are they in trouble? I can assure you they’ve been working very hard against their addictions. It’s a hard road, and there will be stumbles, but—”

  “They were murdered early this morning.”

  Behind her, Pachai let out a strangled gasp as Justin just stared at her. “What? Sorry, what?”

  “They were murdered between two and two-forty this morning in the building where they were squatting.”

  “Dead? Murdered? All?”

  “How?” Pachai took Eve’s arm, then quickly released it. His eyes were liquid onyx swimming under inky lashes. They only shimmered more intensely when Justin laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “Pach, let’s sit down.”

  “No. No. I’m sorry, but how can they be murdered? I saw them only yesterday.”

  “When?”

  “Pach,” Justin repeated, gently. “Music off,” he ordered. The redhead called out a protest when Mavis stopped wailing.

  “Not now, Marti.” Justin rubbed his temple. “There’s no mistake?”

  “No. When did you see them last?” she asked Pachai.

  His lips trembled, and tears continued to swarm those heavy-lidded eyes. “Before Jen and Coby went to work, after Wil got off. We had coffee. We have coffee almost every day.”

  “You were friends?”

  “Yes. We—I—I don’t understand.”

  “No, neither do I,” Justin said
. “What happened?”

  The lab rat with the stubby ponytail had turned and, like the redhead, watched.

  “Early this morning Wilson Bickford was stabbed to death, Coby Vix was bludgeoned to death, and Jennifer Darnell was strangled.”

  Pachai began to weep, and the harsh sobs bore him down to the floor, where he covered his face with his hands.

  Justin turned ashen. At her station the redhead sat very still, staring at Eve as if she’d spoken in an ancient foreign language. The other man slumped back in his chair, shuddered, then closed his eyes, lowered his head.

  No one spoke.

  Three

  In the silence, Eve gave Peabody a signal, and responding, Peabody moved to Pachai. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she began in the comfort voice she used so well. “Let me help you. Let me help you up. Why don’t we go over here, sit down?”

  “How could—was it—I’m sorry,” Justin said. “I just can’t think. They were attacked? In the building on West Twelfth?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why, for God’s sake? None of them belonged to a gang, none of them had any valuables to speak of. Was this just some random killings?”

  “Do you know anyone who’d wish them—any one of them—harm?”

  “No. No, I don’t. They were turning their lives around, and the three of them had formed a strong bond. Their own small support group.”

  “They were addicts.”

  “In recovery,” Justin said quickly.

  “Was there anyone who they—again any one of them—used to associate with prior to their recovery who might have resented the fact that they were getting clean, staying clean?”

  “I don’t know, but if so, they didn’t mention it to me. If there was someone, something, one of them might have told Arianna. Arianna Whitwood. She was the therapist of record for all three of them.”

  “Your fiancée.”

  “Yes.” He looked away, pressed his fingers to his eyes. “My God, they were so young, so hopeful.”

  “You gave them permission to squat in that property.”

  “Yes. They couldn’t make the rent on Jen’s apartment. She’d fallen behind before she’d made the commitment to recovery. Pachai told me they were sleeping on the street. I thought . . . it would be a roof over their heads until they found a place.”

  “You formed an attachment to them?”

  “To Jen, then through her to Coby and Wil. She was so determined, and you could see the light coming back into her. You could see her finding her quiet. It was gratifying. Even inspiring.”

  “I guess I’m curious why you didn’t float them the rent.”

  “I wish I had.” Mouth tight, he glanced over to where Peabody murmured to Pachai. “We have a policy not to lend money to anyone in the program, but to try to find another way to help, to guide them to help themselves. I never imagined . . . The three of them together should have been safe. God knows, each one of them had experience on the street, handling themselves.”

  “I have to ask where you were between one and four this morning.”

  “Yes. I . . . Well, here. I was here.”

  “That’s a lot of midnight oil to burn.”

  “What I’m working on, it’s—I believe—at its tipping point. I worked until after two, then bunked on the sofa in my office.”

  “Did you see or speak with anyone during that time?”

  “No. I sent Ken and Pachai home about eleven, I think it was. You can ask them, or check the log-outs. Marti left earlier. I spoke with Arianna . . . I’m not sure, I’d have to check the’link log. Maybe ten or ten thirty before I sent the boys home.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “A serum to counteract deep and chronic addiction and substance abuse. It will treat the craving on both a physical and psychological level, quiet the violence of that need during withdrawal, and after.”

  “There are medications for that already.”

  “Medications that basically substitute one chemical for another. I’m attempting to work with natural ingredients that will trigger the chemistry in the brain and the body to return to the levels prior to the addiction. A rebalancing, we’ll say.”

  He rubbed at his temple again, the same two fingers on the same spot in the same circular motion. “Is there anything I—we—can do for them now? Contacting family? I can’t remember the details of that, but Arianna will have it. With the burial, memorial? Anything?”

  “We’ll be notifying next of kin. I’ll need to talk to Ms. Whitwood, and as soon as possible. First I’d like to speak with your other assistants.”

  “Interns,” he corrected automatically. “Marti Frank and Ken Dickerson are here on intern scholarships. Sorry, it hardly matters. I want to tell Ari in person, face-to-face, not over the’link. We lose patients, Lieutenant. To their addiction, to the violence it often generates, or the physical abuse it causes. But this? This comes very, very hard.”

  “Is she in the Center now?”

  “Yes, she should be in session now. I’ll go up, tell her.”

  “If you’d tell her I want to speak with her before we leave, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry to meet you this way. I’m just . . . sorry.”

  Eve let him go, and decided to take the redhead first.

  “You got the picture,” Eve began.

  “Yeah. It’s a really ugly picture.”

  “Were you close to the victims?”

  “I hate that word. Victim.” She folded her hands together on her lap as if she wanted to keep them still. “It’s overused.”

  “It is in my line of work.”

  “Yeah, I guess. Not especially close. I liked them. Jen in particular. She was just so damn likable.”

  “You work in the lab. Do you get friendly with a lot of people in the program?”

  “There’s interaction. It’s part of it. There’s a communal eatery on-site, so a lot of times staff’s eating with patients and recoverings. When work allows, we’re encouraged to attend sessions or lectures. It’s more than lab work, especially for Justin. It’s our whole life, and understanding who and what we’re working for. You’re going to find out,” she added. “I know how it works. My brother was a junkie, favored Jazz laced with Zeus. He favored it a lot right up until he OD’d. He made my life, my mother’s, my father’s, hell. I hate the junk, and it took a long time before I stopped hating the junkie.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “With Ken it was his father. Came into it late, you could say. Started with prescriptions after a car accident, escalated until he’d destroyed his marriage, did time for smacking his wife and Ken around, ended up on the street where he stabbed somebody to death for twelve dollars and a wrist unit. He died in prison when somebody returned the favor.”

  Eve connected the dots. “And Pachai?”

  “Childhood friend. They were tight, like brothers. The friend played around with recreationals, liked them too much until he was flying on Ups and Bounce, crashing on Chill. Then he was just one more OD when Pachai found him dead—two days dead. Justin wants people invested who work for him, people who know all the sides, all the layers, and have a reason to be here.”

  “He wants it personal.”

  “Yeah, and it is.” She looked over at Pachai, then down at her folded hands. “This happening to Jen and the others, people who had a real shot at redemption, who really put it all into kicking it? That’s personal, too. For all of us.”

  “Understood. If you know how it works, you know I have to ask. Where were you between one and four this morning?”

  “In bed.” Her gaze tracked up, met Eve’s. “Alone and asleep. I had a date, but it didn’t go anywhere. I got home just after midnight. I’ve got a roommate, but she had a date and it did go somewhere. She didn’t get home until six this morning.”

  She gave Eve a narrow look. “Anyway, from what you said, how they were killed? The three of us would’ve had to go batshit together, break in to that pl
ace, and kill them like a pack.”

  “That’s a thought, isn’t it? I appreciate the time. If you think of anything, contact me or my partner.”

  Eve moved on to the last.

  “Ken Dickerson,” he said. “Did they maybe get attacked on the street?” He watched Eve with horror and hope. His face, pale and thin, showed signs of fatigue. “Maybe they ran,” he continued, in a voice that hitched in a battle against tears. “And the people who attacked them went at them when they got to the building.”

  “No.”

  “It just doesn’t seem real,” he murmured, rubbing at his damp, tired eyes. “I feel like I’m going to wake up and none of this happened.”

  “How well did you know the victims?”

  “I . . . God. I don’t know. To talk to. Not like Pach, but we hung out a couple times. My uncle manages a Slice, and I helped Jen, then Coby, get jobs there. I mean, I asked my uncle if he could give them a try. He’s good about giving people a chance.”

  “Did you ever go to the place they were staying?”

  “Once. The restaurant’s close to where I live, so I go in a lot. I walked back with Jen and Coby one night. My uncle gave them some food. And we hung out.” He smiled a little. “It was nice.”

  “Did they own ’links?”

  He blinked in puzzlement. “Sure. Everybody has at least one ’link.”

  “Do you know anyone who’d want to hurt them?”

  “I don’t see why anyone would. They were harmless. They didn’t have anything, didn’t hurt anybody. Jen was studying so she could do secretarial work. She wanted to work in an office. That’s not much to ask.”

  No, Eve thought. It wasn’t much to ask.

  When Justin came back in, he looked drained. “If you could give Arianna a few minutes, she’ll meet you in the Meditation Garden.”

  “All right.”

  “Is there anything more we can do?”

  “Not at this time.”

  “Will you keep me—us—informed?”

  “I can do that. If anything occurs to you, anything at all, let me know.” She signaled Peabody, who put her hand on Pachai’s shoulder before rising.