Thankless in Death

by J. D. Robb

  She recognized Mavis on the vocals, and however much she loved her friend, there were limits.

  “How can you think with all that noise?” she demanded.

  “Keeps the juices rolling,” McNab claimed, but bowed to rank. “Music end,” he ordered, and cut Mavis off mid wail. The room descended into blessed quiet.

  “What have you got?” Eve asked as she stepped toward a screen where images flew by in a blur.

  “A puzzle,” Roarke told her. “With the last pieces just in place.” He swiveled on his stool to face her. “In plain English?”

  “Yeah, let’s go with that.”

  “Starting at the victim’s building, we were able to correlate from various security cam footage Reinhold’s route to, and to a lesser extent from. It took some time and doing as he made a few detours, and far from all buildings in that sector have cams—or working ones in any case.”

  “We nailed arrival, Dallas.” McNab sucked from a giant go-cup. “But he hit a residential pocket on departure, out of any cam range, and we haven’t been able to pick him up. He could’ve grabbed a cab or a bus, or kept walking. We’d have him if he headed into a subway. We’ve run all the stations in that sector. But he could’ve gone down somewhere else. We can keep looking.”

  “Show me what you have.”

  “We just put it together.” McNab ordered the results on screen. “We’ll run it forward, so you can see him arrive, then move into position.”

  She watched the Rapid Cab swing out of the tangled traffic, brake at the curb. Reinhold, in his new suit and dark sunshades, hopped out, hefted a long duffel.

  “Zoom in there, get me the cab number.”

  McNab paused the run, sticking Reinhold as he’d secured the strap of the duffel on his shoulder.

  “He’s happy,” Eve stated. “Excited. You can see it on his face. He’s thinking about what he’s going to do to her. How he’ll do it.”

  “We got the number,” McNab told her, but ordered the zoom so she could see it herself. “We wanted you to see it before we called it in.”

  She pulled out her ’link. “Keep it going,” she ordered, as she contacted the cab company’s central dispatch. “This is Lieutenant Eve Dallas, NYPSD, Homicide. Badge number 43578Q. I need the pickup location of a passenger.”

  She relayed the information as she watched Reinhold walk, his movements smoothed out by geek-skill as the cams caught him.

  She saw his head turn, imagined his gaze shifting, over, up with the movement. Looking at Lori’s building, her apartment windows, Eve thought. Taking out his ’link, trying to contact her, see if she’s up there. Her day off. He’d know that.

  “Outside the Grandline Hotel on Fifth, got it. Thanks. Keep it going,” she said to McNab.

  She wanted to watch him.

  She studied his face when she could see it, his body language as she contacted the hotel. “Show me what you have on departure,” she told McNab once Reinhold walked into the café.

  She repeated her name and identification data to the hotel clerk. “Do you have a Reinhold, Jerald registered?”

  “One moment, Lieutenant … We have no one by that name.”

  “A checkout? Today.”

  “There’s nothing in our records.”

  “What time did you come on shift?”

  “Nine P.M.”

  Too late, Eve thought, but there would be security cams.

  “I’m coming in. I’ll need to see your security discs for today, starting at seven-thirty. All of them, all day.”

  She didn’t wait for an agreement, just clicked off.

  “You’ve got him walking south.”

  “Yeah, then we get to this sector here, we catch him for a nano crossing over west, and that’s when we lose him.” McNab took another deep suck of whatever overly sweet drink he’d chosen. “Most building cams here have a shorter range. If he’d gone into any of the buildings, the search would’ve nabbed him.”

  “Opposite direction from the hotel where he got the cab,” she considered. “Unlikely he was going back there.”

  She paced for a moment. “He knows we’re looking for him, knows we’ll find Nuccio’s body and fairly quickly. Maybe he thinks it’ll be tomorrow, but still quick enough. He’s not going to grab a cab near her place, so he needs to stay on foot long enough to put some distance between any pickup and the crime scene. Smug smile on his face, just strolling along. World’s his clam.”

  “Oyster,” Roarke corrected when McNab’s brows drew together in puzzlement.

  “He’s too cocky-looking not to have another hole ready to crawl into. The Village maybe, or SoHo, Tribeca. Or maybe he walked south, and then caught an uptown bus. Tucked in by now, wherever the hell he is. I’m going to check out the hotel.”

  “I’m with you,” Roarke said and pushed to his feet.

  “Do you want me to keep running the search, Lieutenant?”

  She considered it, shook her head. “We’ve got what we’re going to get, and it’ll have to be good enough. Peabody’s using the crib.”

  McNab’s face brightened. “Oh yeah?”

  “And don’t even think about doing the deed in there.” She strode out, knowing he’d probably do more than think about it.

  She decided to risk the elevator, breathed a little easier when she found it empty.

  “What kind of a place is the Grandline?”

  “I thought you might ask.” Roarke tapped his PPC. “Midsized business hotel, twenty-four-hour services to accommodate the business traveler.”

  “A step down from The Manor.”

  “Well, most are.”

  She scowled when the doors opened and a pair of uniforms dragged in a pair of bloody, battered, still spitting street LCs.

  “It’s my corner, you thieving whore-bitch.”

  “You don’t own the sidewalk, Cuntzilla.”

  “You tried to steal my john, right in my fucking face!”

  “I can’t help I was walking by and he went for me instead of your fat, dumpy ass.”

  Noting the fire in fat, dumpy ass’s eye, Eve instinctively nudged Roarke back an instant before FDA kicked out with a foot squeezed into a shoe with a toe as sharp and pointed as a stiletto. It connected with bare shin. Thieving whore-bitch let out an ear-splitting yowl, swiped out with inch-long nails as pointed as the shoes.

  This time blood flew, and pandemonium reigned as the uniforms fought to drag the women apart.

  TWB tore FDA’s sparkly pink shirt, exposing one impressive man-made breast.

  “And you ask why men enjoy watching women fight,” Roarke commented.

  “Oh, for the sake of silicone Jesus.” Eve grabbed one of them by the hair, she didn’t know or care which one. Yanked, dragged, and managed to plant a boot on the other one’s neck.

  “Knock it off!” Her voice echoed in the confines of the elevator. “Or I’ll stun the pair of you. And shut the fuck up,” she added when the pair of them screamed out their curses and complaints.

  “Secure these two, damn it.”

  “Come on, Dorie, what the hell?” One of the uniforms crouched to slap restraints on one pair of wrists while he partner did the other.

  The elevator doors opened. “Get them off.”

  “We’re actually taking them down to—”

  “Now.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hauling them up, the uniforms pulled the now weeping and wailing LCs off the car.

  “Well now, that was entertaining.” Roarke took out a handkerchief, caught Eve’s chin in his hand.

  “What?”

  “Just a little back-blow from the nail swipe. “There, that’s better.”

  “God” was all she said until they reached the garage level.

  “You drive,” she told him. “I want to check on some things on the way.”

  He got behind the wheel. “Such as?”

  “I want to make sure Morris is on the third DB. I can put together how and when, I sure as hell know who and why, but it keeps
it consistent. And I want to alert Harpo—hair and fiber queen—at the lab. Mira thinks he took some of the vic’s hair. That’s a personal trophy if so. And I want to check on the probabilities I had Peabody run on his next victim.”

  “You believe there’ll be a next.”

  “He’s got one picked out. If we don’t net him soon, we’ll have another DB for Morris.” She paused long enough to scrub her hands over her face. “If he put half this time, effort, and thought into any one of the jobs he’s blown through, he’d be at least middle management by now.”

  “This is more fun.”

  “You got that right. He’s found himself. They have sites, right? Conduits, avenues, to hype yourself as a kill-for-hire, or to look for one.”

  He sent her a sidelong glance.

  “You’d know … people who know people.”

  “Possibly. That was never my avenue nor did I buy rounds at the pub for those who drove along it.”

  “But you know people.”

  “I do.”

  “It’s just a side angle, but he likes this, and so far it’s working for him. He likes the high life and he likes killing. Right now he’s killing people he knows, has some grudge against, but most of them aren’t going to keep him in the high life. Why not make your hobby your profession? He might think that.”

  “It’s an interesting side angle. I’ll ask around.”

  “He shouldn’t have gotten this far.” She let her head rest back. “He hit it lucky with Nuccio. She picks today to be out of reach, get a new ’link and number. Without that, I connect with her, and I’d have asked about the locks. On top of it, he tried her old number, I know he did. We’d have had that, even on a clone, I’d have known he was trying to find her. Everything just played in his favor.”

  “Luck’s a potent thing. Skill’s better.”

  He pulled up in front of the Grandline.

  The doorman hustled forward. “Lieutenant Dallas? They’re waiting for you inside. Mr. Wurtz at the desk.”

  The place struck her as very clean and entirely too bright. Busy even at this hour, the lobby throbbed with movement. Business people, she judged, coming in from late transpo, going out to same. Others sat slack-jawed with fatigue mumbling into hand or ear ’links.

  A striking man with a face too young for the silver mane of hair—and maybe that was the point—stepped around the long black counter at her approach.

  “Lieutenant, Michael Wurtz. I’m the night manager. I have the security feed you requested. The clerk informed me you’d inquired about Jerald Reinhold. No one registered under that name. We have the alert in place.”

  “He got a cab out front at just before sixteen hundred today. So I need to see that feed.”

  “I have it set up in my office. Just this way. I admit to being unnerved when Rissa told me. I’ve followed the reports on this man all day.”

  He opened a door behind the big counter into a small warren of rooms and cubes, then turned into an office.

  “People often take advantage of the cab line here,” he continued. “In any case, security made copies of the times you requested.”

  “Take the lobby cams first,” Eve told him.

  Wurtz used a remote, started the feed on his wall screen.

  Eve spotted Reinhold at 8:23.

  “That’s him. Ball cap, sunshades, the two suitcases.”

  “Oh dear. One moment.” He turned to a comp, operated it manually, and with a very swift touch. “We checked in a guest named Malachi Golde at eight-twenty-eight. He requested a day room. He showed ID, paid cash up front as it says in these notes his credit card had been compromised at the transpo center. Oh dear,” he repeated.

  “What?”

  “I see here the ID card is invalid—it’s over a year out of date. The clerk didn’t check that or notice.”

  “What time did he check out?”

  “Officially, he hasn’t. But we did a room check at six P.M., as he’d only paid for a day room. He wasn’t in residence, nor were his things.”

  “Let me see the feed for thirty minutes before he caught the cab.”

  Wurtz ordered the time to run.

  “Speed it up.” She watched, scanned. “Stop it there. In the suit now, no suitcases, just the duffel. He’d been in and out at least once between check-in and this. I’ll need a copy of the full day. Is the room he used occupied?”

  “No. We have it open.”

  “I want to see it.”

  “Right away. It’s very disturbing.” With nervous fingers, Wurtz tugged at his tie. “I wouldn’t like our guests to be made aware he was on premises.”

  “I’m not going to make an announcement. Let’s see the room.”

  “It’s on twelve.”

  He showed them out, gestured toward the elevators. “I’ll take you in, then unless you need me, I’ll go arrange for the disc copies.”

  “That works. I’ll also need a list of names. Who checked him in, if anyone helped with his bags, the doorman who got him the cab, anyone else on staff who had direct contact with him.”

  “I’ll see you have it.”

  He let them into the room on twelve, hurried away.

  “Has to cover his ass—or other asses as he wasn’t on,” Eve commented. “The expired ID should’ve been questioned, and he doesn’t look like Mal Golde. Same age, sure, basically the same height maybe, but that’s it. The clerk wasn’t paying attention so he got lucky again. He doesn’t check out so nobody pays attention. Just a day room for cash, his version of a flop.”

  She glanced around the streamlined, efficient space. Lots of tile and shiny silver—high-energy colors, its own business center and minikitchen.

  She’d have the sweepers go over it, but didn’t expect much.

  “Just a place to stay for a few hours while he ran errands, made plans, showered, changed into his new suit. We’ll see him going out with the suitcases again—who notices that in a hotel lobby, but he’s worked out where he’ll try to sell what he didn’t liquidate on Sunday. Takes it out, or pieces of it. Does some selling, does some buying. The suit, maybe, more clothes, the duffel, the bat. Need the duffel for the bat.”

  She wandered as she thought it through. “In and out, using this as a temporary home base. Jewelry stores, secondhand stores, pawnshops, selling, trading. Even the suitcases at one point, and probably at least some of his old clothes. Shedding it all now, for profit.

  “Then, all done, he just walks out of here, catches a cab, and goes down to kill Lori Nuccio.”

  She paced circles in the top-flight business-style suite. “Shopping bags. He’s bound to have come back with shopping bags, so we’ll see where he went at least.”

  She rubbed fatigue from her eyes. “Look, I’m going to go ahead and review the discs back at Central, catch a couple hours in the crib.”

  “I have a better idea. I had them hold us a room at The Manor, it’s close enough. You can review the discs there and we can both catch a couple of hours in a room that doesn’t include Peabody, McNab, and potentially other cops.”

  It was the room without other cops that decided her. “Sold.”

  10

  THE ROOM AT THE MANOR SOOTHED WITH warm, deep colors, soft fabrics and thick, age-faded rugs over the gleam of hardwood.

  Over a small stone fireplace a wide-framed mirror reflected the style and dignity of the parlor. And at the touch of a button inside a wall niche, the mirror wavered away into the dark surface of a screen.

  “Well, that’s … pretty frosty,” Eve decided.

  “Manor guests prefer the look of Old World, with the convenience of the new. We’ve blended them wherever we can.”

  She needed the screen to view the security discs, but there were other priorities. “Does that include an AutoChef with decent coffee?”

  “It does, but we’ve both caffeinated enough at this point. I’ll make a deal,” he said before she could argue. “If you find something you can move on tonight, I’ll load us both up.” />
  It was probably fair. She didn’t like it, but it was probably fair.

  While she sulked over that, he went through a doorway, came back a few moments later with two tall glasses of water with a slice of lemon in each.

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” He kissed her nose. “Really.”

  She was thirsty enough to settle for it, and tired enough to sit on the arm of the big, plushy sofa while he set up the disc.

  “He didn’t want to settle for a business hotel,” Eve calculated. “Good enough while he ran around the city, but not where he wanted to bunk. And he was smart enough to use Golde’s old ID. He’d need his own to cash the checks, but smart enough, or nervous enough to use a ploy to register at the hotel. Maybe he’ll try using it again for his bedtime place.”

  “Wiser to spend some of that running-around-the-city time getting a new ID, a fake one.”

  “You need to know how. And yeah, he could’ve found out how. Run it,” she told him.

  Roarke sat on the opposite arm of the sofa, watching with her.

  Less than twenty minutes after check-in, they spotted him again. Roarke slowed the feed.

  “Same outfit as check-in. Just the briefcase. Bank time, get the cash before the bodies are discovered. He pulled that off,” she muttered.

  She watched him come back through the lobby, a fat, smug smile on his face—time stamp 9:38.

  “He hit the luck again,” she said. “Just frigging breezed through the banking, and now the briefcase is full of money and cashier’s checks.”

  He all but strutted into the elevator, and was back again, strolling out—one suitcase—eleven minutes later.

  “Just one suitcase. Gotta get rid of everything he can, maybe not the big tickets. He didn’t have a suitcase when he went into Ursa’s, but the smaller ones. Cash those checks before the bodies are discovered and his face and name hit the media. He’s still ahead of the game, by just enough. Speed it up again.”

  He came back without the suitcase, but wearing a suit, and carrying a garment bag.

  “Mission accomplished, and a little shopping, too. Can you—”

  “I am,” Roarke said and anticipating her zoomed and magnified.