Celebrity in Death

by J. D. Robb

  She juggled data and theories, answered questions, reasserted time lines.

  “Considering the length of time we’re dealing with,” Reo began, “it would take a miracle to access all the data. The financial records, travel, wit statements. Much less locate and interview all parties involved. Then we have to jog, and trust those memories and impressions.”

  “So he keeps getting away with it, because he scatters his kills, changes his method. Nine people—maybe more—are dead because Joel Steinburger wanted them that way. Because he wanted money or sex or fame or a reputation he’d never earned. They’re dead because he wanted the easy way to the red carpet, the media spotlight, the power chamber of a glamorous industry. And he wanted all the benefits that go with it. The money again, the sex, the envy of others.”

  “I don’t disagree with you, Dallas. But you’ve got pattern—a logical pattern, a convincing one. You don’t have evidence.”

  “We’ll get it.”

  “How close are you to getting him for K.T. Harris and/or Asner?”

  “Closer than I was. Closer still when you put them together with the others—when you see the pattern. Get me a warrant to search his residence, his office, his vehicle. Get me one to confiscate and search his electronics.”

  “And would you like me to get you a pony while I’m at it?” The Southern in Reo’s voice went to steel. “Where’s the cause? The judge and any decent lawyer, which believe me Steinburger will have a fleet of, will point out that many men in their sixties can be connected to nine deaths over the course of their lives. That only one of these cases was designated homicide, for which the individual charged was convicted. I can get a judge to look at this, to see what you see, what I’m damn well seeing, too. And we still won’t get a search warrant.”

  “So that’s it?” Eve shot back. “You don’t even try.”

  “Of course I’m going to try. Damn it. I want to put this creepy bastard away for the rest of his life. I’m telling you we’re going to get a big, fat, solid no on a search warrant.”

  Eve paced away.

  “I’ll talk to your boss,” Whitney told Reo, “and as many judges as it takes. If Doctor Mira will reprofile. If you have some thoughts on this, Doctor Mira.”

  “Yes.” It was the first word she’d spoken since entering the room. “I have some thoughts.”

  “Before that, as a backup.” Eve turned back. “What about a warrant to monitor his transmissions? An EDD trace on his ’links, his comps. Everything. He’s my primary suspect in two current murders. I can eliminate several of the others present at Harris’s death. I have a partially open dome, evidence the vic was smoking herbals laced with zoner. And a statement that can and will be verified that the suspect has a strong, even passionate aversion to smoke. The dome was closed, and the mechanism faulty. The suspect was unaware of this. When he opened it to clear the smoke, he was unable to close it completely after he killed Harris.”

  “I can work with that,” Reo calculated. “I could work a trace. And we’ll work with the prosecutor on the Pearlman suicide. If your contact on that can locate the evidence, the files, we may be able to toggle back now that we have this secondary account. But if you don’t get something off the trace in short order, we’re going to have a tough time keeping it in place when he leaves New York. And the rest.”

  Reo turned to the boards again. “I want to believe we can prove it, but realistically, it could take years to put it all together.”

  “He’ll kill again.” Mira spoke up now. “He won’t wait years between this time. He’s killed twice in two days. It’s a new kind of power. He murdered Asner with extreme violence, the kind he’s only exhibited, that we see here, one other time. There’s a pattern there as well. His privacy was infringed. He reacted with violence, then took and we assume destroyed all that pertained to him. In this case, Asner isn’t the end of it. If Valerie was paid or compensated to give him an alibi, she’s now a new threat. He’ll need to eliminate her, and I don’t believe he’ll wait. Not years, not months. Weeks perhaps. He’ll need to finish it to feel fully in control again.”

  She looked at Eve. “He’s more dangerous now, without that feeling of control. He is organized, so he’ll plan. He’s self-serving and can justify all his actions as necessary. And he is ruthless. Whatever gets in the way of his comfort, his success, his ambition must be eliminated. He’s killed for his own needs for forty years, and has become a powerful, respected, famous, wealthy man. On the one hand, killing is the same for him as it is for a paid assassin.”

  “Business,” Eve said.

  “Yes. And on the other, it’s intensely, intimately personal. Friends, lovers, former wives. You may find he had a sexual relationship at one time with K.T. Harris. Only twice were his kills not part of his intimate circle.”

  “And those he killed with extreme violence.”

  “He could let that violent nature out with them. I believe when you interview his ex-wives and any former or current lovers they’ll tell you—if they’re honest—he preferred rough sex, likely with rape role-playing. The violence is there, always. Ending lives gives him a sense of control, and at the same time, the need to end them when threatened controls him.”

  “He’s going to be real unhappy when we take away his control and put him in a concrete cage. Get me a warrant,” Eve told Reo. “Whatever you can get.”

  After a quick knock, Kyung stepped in. “Do you need me to wait?”

  “No.” Eve angled her head. “It’s good timing. If everyone could stay a few minutes more. I’ve got a way I think we can get something on that EDD trace sooner rather than later.”

  She jerked a thumb at the box on the conference table. “Have a doughnut,” she invited Kyung.

  19

  “YOU NEED TO SET UP ANOTHER MEDIA CONFERENCE,” Eve said to Kyung.

  “I’m afraid so.” After a brief perusal, he selected a conservative glazed, broke it tidily in half. “It’s necessary.”

  “Okay, but it has to wait until APA Reo finesses a warrant, and EDD is set on a tap and trace.”

  “Well.” Kyung spread his hands in surprise. “You’re very agreeable.”

  “I hope to say the same about you. We’re going to announce there’s been a break in the case, and I feel an arrest is imminent.”

  “Excellent news.” Kyung continued to study her face. “If it’s true.”

  “The break part’s true. In my opinion. The arrest depends on how the killer reacts to the true part.” Eve turned toward Whitney. “With your permission, of course, Commander.”

  “I follow you,” Whitney told her. “You expect the suspect to make some sort of contact after this announcement. That he’ll be compelled, through panic or curiosity.”

  “He’ll want to know what we’ve got, and if any of it casts a shadow on him. His alibi for Asner is another person, a person and an alibi I believe he bought. Price could go up. His alibi may contact him to renegotiate terms.”

  “They could deal with that face-to-face.” Feeney lifted his shoulders. “May not use a ’link or comp to work it out.”

  “True. But I’ve got someone else who’ll engage the suspect face-to-face. Nadine’s good at getting people to say things they don’t expect or intend to say. Every and any little slip he makes adds weight. I want to bring her in, Commander. Not only does she have a vested interest, but I know she won’t go public with any information I give her until I give her the go. Especially when I agree—reluctantly and with some annoyance—to giving her an exclusive on Now in exchange for her assistance and discretion.”

  “He manipulates,” Mira commented. “No one can live as he’s lived, do what he’s done for four decades and not have a mastery of manipulation. Nadine also manipulates expertly. And so,” she said to Eve, “do you. You know he’ll lie to her.”

  “Yeah. But about who? Because at a point where he believes we’re nearly ready to make an arrest, he has to throw some dirt on someone else. There’s a limited
number of suspects. He’s going to have to toss one of his own into the fire to feel safe. He’ll have to lie, or shave the truth into another shape. The more he does that, the better chance he’ll slip up.”

  “He may kill one of his own,” Mira pointed out. “And, as he did with his partner, stage it as a self-termination, one executed out of guilt.”

  “Yeah, so we’ll have to take steps there. I’m working it out.”

  “Excuse me.” Kyung held up a hand. “I’m not a detective, but am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?”

  Eve glanced at the board when he gestured. “That information stays in this room.”

  “Understood. Of course. But … have you actually connected nine murders to Joel Steinburger? One of the most respected, revered, successful, and celebrated producers in the industry?”

  “Just because he makes a good vid doesn’t mean he’s not a stone killer. And I’m about to end his streak and his celebrated status.”

  “This is going to be huge. The media will explode over this, and the NYPSD—and you, Lieutenant, will be at ground zero.”

  “You sound happy about that.”

  He only smiled, took a neat bite of his doughnut. “We all do what we do.”

  “You got that right.”

  Eve went straight to her office from the conference room to contact Nadine. “Boat lady,” she said to Peabody.

  “Lives in Tribeca with her cohab.”

  “Contact her. I want her to meet us at the boat.”

  “At the boat?”

  “Asap, Peabody. Nadine,” she said the minute the reporter came on. “We have to talk.”

  “I have a window this afternoon, about—”

  “Now.”

  “Dallas, I’m right in the middle of—”

  “Believe me, whatever you’re in the middle of isn’t as juicy.”

  “Really? What’s juicier than finalizing arrangements for an exclusive with Isaac McQueen as he awaits transport to his new facilities—an off-planet, maximum-security penitentiary? To tie in with interviews with the Jones twins, with the young girl McQueen and his accomplice snatched from the Dallas mall, and interviews with every survivor a certain rookie cop freed when she took McQueen down in New York over twelve years ago? We’re getting a six-hour special, in three parts, on this. It’s going to be mega.”

  “Good for you. Want something else mega? The kind of mega that could mean another book, and sure as it’s sweaty in hell, would have Hollywood beating down your door.”

  “When and where?”

  “The Land Edge Marina, Battery Park. Hold on.” She glanced over as Peabody came back, held up a finger, mouthed: In an hour. “In two hours. Don’t be late.”

  She clicked off.

  “It is mega,” Peabody said. “I don’t mean books and vids. I mean cop mega. When I became a cop it wasn’t for cases like this. I mean, it’s hard to even imagine anybody could do what he’s done, for forty years. It makes me feel …”

  “Depressed,” Eve finished. “Like he should’ve been stopped long before this. If one cop had looked right instead of left, up instead of down, had asked one more question, maybe he would have been stopped.”

  “Yeah. I know some people never get caught, or they slip through because you just can’t nail the case shut. But this is … It’s been decades, Dallas. And I look at the board, and I see that college guy, a guy younger than me. He’ll never get older, never graduate or fall in love. He’d be old enough to have grandkids now, but he’s always going to be twenty.”

  “He’s a good one for you to keep in your head. A good one for you to stand for in this. You remember his face and his name, Peabody, and remember he never had a chance to be older than twenty because Joel Steinburger cut off that chance. He cut it off, and he got away with it. So he cut off other chances.

  “We’re going to make sure he never does it again.”

  She answered her beeping ’link. “Dallas.”

  “McHone. I got lucky. Found the evidence box, case book, the tagged electronics. The works. Couldn’t get it off my head after I talked to you, so I went in, started digging.”

  “I owe you. Look, we’re hot here. If I could have what you found, I can get our top dog in EDD and a civilian consultant with mad skills to dig into the e-stuff. I’d appreciate getting my hands on that case book, and the rest.”

  “If you find something that lets me tell Pearlman’s widow he wasn’t a coward and a thief, we’ll be square. I’ve got to push through some paperwork to clear sending this out to you, then make arrangements for secure transport.”

  “I can expedite some of that. I’ll have my commander deal with the red tape, and I’ll get the transport. If you ever need anything from me, D-S McHone, just reach out.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Get Whitney to get this rolling,” she told Peabody. “I’ll get the transport moving.”

  She started to contact Roarke, winced, hissed, paced to the window and back. It was wrong, she knew it, to interrupt him every time she needed something he could supply.

  Maybe it was like swallowing sand, but she contacted Summerset instead.

  “Lieutenant?”

  “I need a fast, secure shuttle to transport two NYPSD officers to California, and bring them and sensitive evidence back to New York.”

  “I see. I’ll need the exact destination, and your preferred departure center.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I assume you wish this transportation expedited, so yes, destination and departure centers will suffice.”

  “Okay.” Still suspicious, she told him.

  “Very well. Have your men at departure, with valid identification and signed authorization, of course, in thirty minutes.”

  “Signed authorization from who?”

  “From you, Lieutenant. As the shuttles are, always, at your disposal, the officers only require your authorization. Unless you intend to accompany them, then it won’t be necessary.”

  “No, I’m not going. They’ll be there in thirty.” She swallowed more sand. “Thank you.”

  “Of course.”

  She frowned at the blank screen on the ’link. How was she supposed to know it was that easy? If she’d known it was that easy, she could’ve contacted the transpo station herself. Still, Summerset could likely cut through it all faster anyway.

  “Dallas.”

  “What?” Distracted, she glanced over, saw Reo at the door. “Yeah.”

  “You got your warrant. I let Feeney know.”

  “Good. We’ll start rolling the ball.”

  “You don’t want to hear it, I know, but you’re going to have to be really lucky for him to say anything you can take to court on these murders.”

  “He may say something that leads to something else, that can be. It’s a process, Reo.”

  “And one that may take years—if ever—to build a case against him for the old murders. Shouldn’t you focus on the two already in your hands?”

  “I can focus on more than one goal at a time. A college kid, a pregnant woman, a husband and father, an old man, a woman smart enough to divorce him, some guy just doing his job. Who do you want me to forget?”

  “None of them. But if you can close it down on Harris and Asner, he’s never going to see daylight again. He’s only got one life, Dallas, and if we do this right he’ll spend what’s left of his in a cage.”

  “That’d be fine, if it was only about him. It’s also about seven people and the lives they’ll never get to live. Did you look at them?” Eve demanded.

  “Yes. I know. I know, Dallas. I want him for all of them. I want to prosecute him for every one, and win. Which is a fantasy because if we ever got enough to take him down for all of them, my boss would be all over it, and I’ll settle for first chair. But I’d settle, now, for a solid case on one count—put him away, and hope we can gather the others over time.”

  “I’m not ready to settle. When we get enough to box him on Harris and Asn
er—or either—I’m going to break him to pieces on the rest. On the whole. Then I’m going to hand you those pieces on a platter.”

  “And I’d take them. Mira’s worried. You got that, too? She’s worried he’ll find a way to block the light on him and beam it on someone else. Or worse. We don’t want to add another to his scoreboard.”

  “I know how he thinks now. I’m going to stay ahead of him.”

  “Keep me in the loop. And if you get me a couple more slivers, I’ll do a hard push for the search warrants.”

  “You could try it now.”

  Reo only shook her head. “I try it now, I’m going to get a no. I get a no, it’s harder to get a yes later.”

  Eve saw the logic, even if she didn’t like it. “You know when we—me and Peabody—went to the set before Harris got dead and things got sticky, they were shooting this scene where a feisty young APA accompanies two homicide cops into the Icove residence, and when they find a DB, the APA passes out cold.”

  “Crap. Crap. They put that in there?” Her face a study in mortification and annoyance, Reo did a quick circle. “Crap. It was my first body. It could’ve happened to anyone.”

  “It happened to you. The actress went down really graceful.”

  “You enjoyed it.” Eyes slitted, Reo pointed a finger. “You enjoy my video humiliation.”

  “It doesn’t suck for me. And if memory serves, you made up for it. You stuck your neck out, you got things done.”

  Reo sighed. “Get me a sliver. One sliver, and I’ll stick it out again.”

  “Get ready to do just that.” Eve grabbed her coat.

  “Oh my God.” Reo made a hum of almost sexual pleasure.

  “Really?” Keeping some distance, Eve shrugged into the coat. “Seriously, sex noises over a coat?”

  “It’s … delicious.”

  “Don’t lick it. Once,” Eve said, knowing damn well she wouldn’t get past Reo without it. “You can touch it, but just once.”

  “Mmmm. It’s gushy.”

  “What is that word?” Eve muttered, striding out into the bullpen. “Peabody, with me. We’ll get you the sliver,” she said to Reo.