by J. D. Robb
chapter six
Eve strapped on her weapon and eyed her husband. He was enjoying a light breakfast in the sitting area of their bedroom. The morning news was playing on the wall screen and the stock reports skimmed by in a puzzling series of codes and figures on the tabletop unit.
The cat, Galahad, lounged beside him, with one of his dual-colored eyes aimed hopefully at a slice of Irish bacon neglected on Roarke’s plate.
“How can you look like you’ve just come home from a week’s vacation in some pamper spa?” she demanded.
“Clean living?”
“My ass. I know you were up till after three, drinking whiskey and telling lies with your pal. I heard his looney laugh as the pair of you stumbled upstairs.”
“He might have been a bit unsteady at the end of it.” He turned to her, his eyes blue and clear and rested. “A few fingers of whiskey’s never been known to set me under. I’m sorry we woke you.”
“It couldn’t have been for long. I never heard you come to bed.”
“I needed to pour Mick into his first.”
“What are you going to do with him today?”
“He has business of his own, and will make his way about well enough. Summerset can tell him where I’ll be if he wants to know.”
“I thought you’d probably work from here today.”
“No.” He watched her over his coffee cup. “Not today. Stop worrying about me, Lieutenant. You have enough on your plate.”
“You’re the main course.”
He laughed at that and rose to kiss her. “I’m very touched.”
“Don’t be touched.” She gripped his arms once, firmly, to make her point. “Be careful.”
“I’ll be both.”
“Will you at least use a driver? And the limo.” The limo, she knew, was reinforced and could withstand a hailstorm of boomers.
“Yes, to set your mind at ease.”
“Thanks. I’ve got to get going.”
“Lieutenant?”
“What?”
He cupped her face in his hands, gently touched his lips to her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth. “I love you.”
Everything inside her shifted, shimmered, settled. “I know. Even though I’m not a French redhead with a rich daddy. How much did you take her for?”
“In what area?”
She laughed, shook her head. “Never mind.” But at the door she stopped, looked back at him. “I love you, too. Oh, and Galahad just copped your bacon.”
She strode down the hall, but caught the mild exasperation in Roarke’s voice. “Haven’t we discussed that sort of behavior?” It made her smirk a little as she took the steps in a jog.
At the bottom, lurking as she thought of it, was Summerset. He held her leather jacket between one long thumb and one bony finger. “I will assume you’ll be home for the evening meal unless I hear to the contrary.”
“Assume all you want.” She took the jacket, but glanced back up the stairs as she shrugged into it. “I need you a minute.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Stuff the attitude back up your pointy nose,” she suggested, but she kept her voice lowered. She aimed a finger at the front door, then swung it open. “Come on.”
“I have several tasks on this morning’s schedule,” he began.
“Quiet.” She shut the door behind him, drew in a breath of sweet spring air. “You’ve been with him for a long time, and you know all there is to know. First give me your take on Mick Connelly.”
“I’m not in the habit of gossiping about houseguests.”
“Goddamn it.” She rapped a fist on his chest, an impatient gesture that caused Summerset to show his teeth. “Do I look like I want a cozy gossip here? Somebody wants to shake Roarke. I don’t know why, I don’t know the bottom line, but someone’s looking to cause him trouble. Give me your take on Connelly.”
Summerset’s eyes, which had gone black as onyx at the fist to his chest, narrowed. Considered her. “He was wild as they all were. They were wild times. My understanding was he had a difficult home life, but then all of them did. Some worse than others. He came around when Roarke settled in with me. Polite enough, if rough around the edges. Hungry, but they were all hungry.”
“Did he ever square off with Roarke?”
“There were words and fists at one time or another between all of them. Mick would have cut off his fingers for Roarke. Any of them would. Mick looked up to him. Roarke took a beating for him once, from the cops,” Summerset added with a sneer. “When Mick fumbled a pass off after a pocket dip.”
“Okay. All right.” She relaxed a little.
“This is about the chambermaid.”
“Yeah. I want you to use that yard-long nose of yours for something other than looking down at inferiors. Sniff around, past and present. If you catch a whiff of anything, anything that’s off, contact me. You can monitor Roarke without putting his back up. He expects you to know where he is. Make sure you do.”
Summerset put a hand on her arm to stop her from turning away. “Is he in any sort of physical jeopardy?”
“If I thought he was, he wouldn’t get out of the house even if I had to drug him and put him in restraints.”
Forced to be satisfied with that, Summerset watched her go down the steps to where her increasingly dilapidated city-issue vehicle was parked.
Eve imagined the steam gushing out of her ears as she marched through the detective’s bull pen and on to her office. Her ’link light was blinking busily from messages and her computer was beeping from fresh incoming data.
She ignored both and began riffling through her drawers.
“Sir? McNab—”
“I want a riot laser,” Eve snapped at Peabody. “Full body armor.” She yanked a six-inch combat knife from its leather sheath and watched, with glee, as its wicked serrated edge caught the sunlight through her little window.
Peabody’s eyes popped. “Sir?”
“I’m going down to Maintenance, and I’m going locked and loaded. I’m taking those piss-brain sons of bitches out, one by one. Then I’m going to haul what’s left of the bodies into my vehicle and set it on fire.”
“Jesus, Dallas, I thought we had a red flag.”
“I’ve got a red flag. I’ve got one.” Her eyes wheeled to Peabody. “I’ve got under fifty miles on my ride since those lying, cheating, sniveling shitheads said it was road ready. Road ready? Do you want me to tell you about road ready?”
“I would like that very much, Lieutenant. If you’d sheathe that knife first.”
With one last oath of disgust, Eve rammed the blade home. “It starts bucking on me while I’m sitting at a light. Just sitting and it’s kicking like a . . .”
“Mule?”
“Probably. I run the diagnostic, and you know what it does? It brings up the dash map with directions to the morgue. Is that some sick joke?”
Peabody’s lips quivered. She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. “I couldn’t say, sir.”
“Then it coughs and stalls, and I get it going again. Two blocks and it’s lurching. You know, lurching like . . .”
“Frankenstein’s monster?”
Out of steam now, Eve dropped into her chair. “I’m a lieutenant. A ranked officer. Why can’t I get a decent vehicle?”
“It’s a sad state of affairs. Sir, if I might suggest, rather than going down with a riot laser, you could try a case of beer. Get on the good side of a couple of the crew down there. Make nice.”
“Make . . . nice? I’d rather swallow a live snake. You call down. Tell them I need my vehicle up and running within the hour.”
“Me?” Peabody’s eyes pricked with what might have been tears. “Oh, man. Before I go off to debase myself, I should tell you that we tightened the line on the wire, and the luggage.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say so?” Instantly Eve swung to her computer.
“I don’t know what got into me, Lieutenant. Standing here like a chatterbox.
” When that didn’t get a rise, Peabody huffed out a sigh and went back to her cubicle to bargain with Maintenance.
“Okay, okay, what have we got.” Eve ordered the data on-screen. There were numerous sources for and purchases of the silver wire that matched the murder weapon. But when you filtered it down to two-foot lengths and two-foot multiples, that number narrowed to eighteen globally and six nationwide. With one single purchase of four lengths of two, cash payment, from a wholesaler right in Manhattan.
“Right here, what do we bet you bought it right here. Twenty blocks from the murder scene.”
As she read the data on the luggage, a grim smile tightened her lips. There were thousands of purchases of the black leather carry-on since January, but focusing on the last four weeks, she found less than a hundred. And of the dozen or so purchased in New York City, there were only two selected on the same day the wire had been bought. And only one paid for with cash.
“There are no coincidences,” she murmured. “You got your supplies right here. Now why would a man buy a transpo carry-on if he’d already done the trip? There was no trip. You were already here.”
Wigs, she thought, and switched to Peabody’s search and scan. “Jesus, why don’t people just grow their own hair?” Literally millions of wigs, hairpieces, extensions, fillers, and fluffers had walked out of salons and stores and suppliers over the last six months.
She more than tripled that amount if she included rentals.
Patient as a cat at a mouse hole now, she pulled up the image of Yost outside the door of the suite, highlighted head and shoulders, erased the face, ordered a computer image of three hundred and sixty degrees, then dumped the result into the data bank.
“Computer, list cash-only purchases of human hair wig matching current image.”
WORKING . . . FIVE-HUNDRED-TWENTY-SIX PURCHASES, CASH, OF IMAGED PRODUCT IN REQUESTED PERIOD. LISTING . . .
While her computer spewed out the supplier locations and dates of purchase, Eve followed on-screen.
PARADISE SALON, RETAIL, FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, MAY THREE.
“Hold. And we have a winner. Busy boy that day, weren’t you, shopping all over town. Computer, list any other purchases on this receipt.”
WORKING . . . IN ADDITION TO HUMAN HAIR WIG MODEL DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN, RECEIPT INCLUDES PURCHASE OF HUMAN HAIR WIG MODEL CAPTAIN STUD; TWO TWELVE-OUNCE BOTTLES OF WIG GROOMING PRODUCT, BRAND NAME SAMPSON; ONE SIX-OUNCE BOTTLE OF COLLAGEN ELIXIR FOR FACE, BRAND NAME YOUTH; ONE EACH OF TEMPORARY EYE TINT, BRAND NAME WINK, IN VIKING BLUE, SEA MIST, AND CARAMEL CREAM; ONE DIETARY PRODUCT, BRAND NAME FAT-ZAP FOR MEN; AND TWO THREE-BY-SIX-INCH SCENTED CANDLES, SANDLEWOOD. PURCHASES TOTAL EIGHT THOUSAND, FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX DOLLARS AND FIFTY-EIGHT CENTS, INCLUDING ALL APPLICABLE TAXES.
“A lot of cash,” Eve mused, “but why leave a paper trail, even a false one, if you don’t have to? Computer, add image of Captain Stud brand wig to file. Copy addresses of luggage store, salon, and jewelry supplier, my PPC.”
While her computer completed the tasks, Eve turned to her ’link. Thirty-two calls, she noted, since she’d logged out the day before. Odds were the bulk of them were from reporters hoping for a statement or sound bite.
It was tempting just to dump them, but until Peabody reported her vehicle was a go, she could spare a little time.
She started through them, automatically transferring the usual media pleas to NYPSD Media Relations. Until she was told differently, directly from her commander, she wasn’t talking to the press.
She paused on the transmission from Nadine Furst, the star of Channel 75, and a personal friend. “Not yet, pal,” she murmured, but answered the message with a time delay. That way, she’d be in the field before Nadine received it.
“No point in nagging me,” Eve said. “I don’t have anything you can use at this point. The investigation is ongoing, all leads are being pursued with diligence, and blah, blah. You know the routine. When and if I have something for you, I’ll be in touch. You tie up my ’link, I’m not going to feel very friendly.”
Satisfied with that, Eve programmed the message to transmit in sixty minutes. She took twenty of them to write an updated report, then transmitted it to her commander.
She’d no more than pushed away from her desk and reached for her jacket when the summons from Commander Whitney came through.
As a matter of course, she snagged Peabody on the way up. “Maintenance?”
“Well, you know they have the whole how-backed-up-and-put-upon-they-are routine down pretty pat.”
Eve stepped onto the people glide, scowled. “Did you mention riot weapons?”
“I thought it best to hold that possibility in reserve, sir.” Just as she thought it best not to mention the snide comments made about a certain lieutenant’s track record with city vehicles and equipment. “But I made the priority of your current investigation clear, and indicated that Commander Whitney frowned on having his ranked officers going out into the field in a piece of junk.”
“That was good thinking.”
“As long as nobody down there calls him for verification. You know, Dallas, you could request that the commander put the arm on them.”
“I’m not whining to my superior, or pulling rank.”
“You don’t mind having me do it,” Peabody muttered.
“That’s right.” Slightly more cheerful, Eve switched from glide to elevator. “You’ll get your update on where we are in the case when I give the oral to Whitney. I think our man has a homey little hole right here in New York.”
“Here?”
“Yeah.” Geared up, Eve stepped off the elevator on Whitney’s level.
Since she was waved directly through, Eve knocked briefly on Whitney’s door, then stepped in.
He was seated behind his desk, and didn’t rise. He was a big man with dark, wide face and beefy shoulders, hair rapidly going gray and eyes that remained street-sharp.
There were two other people in the room, male and female. Neither of them rose either, but both studied her closely. As she did them.
The dull and boxy black suits with ties ruthlessly knotted at the neck, the good shoes with their military shine, and the cold survey tipped her off.
Feds. Shit.
“Lieutenant, Officer.” Whitney inclined his head and kept his big hands folded on his desk. “Special Agents James Jacoby and Karen Stowe. FBI. Lieutenant Dallas is primary on the Darlene French homicide investigation. Officer Peabody is her aide. The FBI has some interest in your case, Lieutenant.”
Eve said nothing, and stayed on her feet.
“The Bureau, in cooperation with other law enforcement agencies, has been pursuing the individual Sylvester Yost for several years in connection with various crimes, including murder.”
Eve met Jacoby’s eyes. “I’m aware of that from my research.”
“The Bureau expects the cooperation of the NYPSD in this pursuit. Agent Stowe and myself will run the case from the New York field office.”
“Agent Stowe and yourself are certainly free to run your case wherever it suits you best. You will not run my case from anywhere.”
Jacoby had brown eyes, dark and smug. “Yost’s activities come under the federal net.”
“Yost is not the exclusive property of the FBI, Agent Jacoby, nor of Global or Interpol, or the NYPSD. But the investigation into the murder of Darlene French is mine, and it’s going to stay mine.”
“You want to stay connected to this, Lieutenant, you’d better dump the attitude.”
“If you want to stay in this office,” Whitney cut in, “you’d be wise to dump yours, Agent Jacoby. The NYPSD is prepared to cooperate with the FBI as regards suspect Yost. It is not prepared to remove or replace Lieutenant Dallas as primary of the Darlene French homicide. Your jurisdiction has limits. You’d be smart to remember what they are.”
Jacoby angled himself toward Whitney, his posture aggressive, his eyes going hot. “Your primary’s connection to the individual R
oarke, who may or may not be tied to this homicide and has long been under the federal eye as a suspect in various illegal activities, makes her a poor choice to head this investigation.”
“If you’re going to make accusations, Jacoby, put something behind them.” It took all Eve’s control to keep her voice level. “Would you like to produce the individual Roarke’s criminal record at this time?”
“You know damn well he doesn’t have one.” He got to his feet now. “You want to sleep with a man who’s run every dirty game in the book and still wear a badge, that’s on you. But—”
“Jacoby.” Stowe rose as well, neatly positioning herself between her partner and Eve. “For God’s sake. Let’s keep personalities out of this.”
“An excellent suggestion.” Whitney pushed back from his desk, stood. “Agent Jacoby, I will ignore that inappropriate attack on my officer. Once. If it’s repeated, in any way, in any shape, in any form, I will report your conduct to your superiors. Your request for cooperation and for inclusion in any data generated on the Darlene French matter by my lieutenant and her investigation team will be considered, after said request is submitted formally, in writing, from your command. This meeting is over.”
“The Bureau has the weight to take over this case.”
“That’s debatable,” Whitney returned. “But you’re free to submit the appropriate paperwork to that end. Until that time, let me suggest that you refrain from coming onto my turf and insulting this office and my officers.”
“I apologize, Commander Whitney.” Stowe shot Jacoby a look that warned him to keep silent. “And we appreciate your time, and your consideration.” She gave her partner a not-so-subtle nudge to get him moving out of the room.
“Take a minute,” Whitney advised when the door closed behind them, “before you say something you may regret.”
“I assure you, Commander, I couldn’t regret anything I might say at the moment.” But she took a breath. “I appreciate your support.”
“Jacoby was out of line. He was heading over the line when he strutted in here thinking he could rattle his federal balls at me. He asks for cooperation properly, he’ll get it. He will not take over your case. It may come down to you working in tandem with Jacoby and Stowe. Is that a problem?”
