Dead Of Night

by J. D. Robb

  He wore short dreads, sweatpants, and a T-shirt, and an expression of fear in his topaz eyes. When he tried-and was well on his way to succeeding-shoving past the uniforms at the crime-scene barricade, she called out, went over.

  “Rick Sabo?”

  “Yes. Yes. My wife-my ex-wife. A detective called and said…”

  “Let him through. I’m Lieutenant Dallas, Mr. Sabo. I’m sorry about your ex-wife.”

  “But are you absolutely sure it’s her? She had a panic button, a ministunner. She knew how to handle herself. Maybe-”

  “She’s been identified, I’m sorry. When did you-”

  She broke off when he just crouched down, dropped his head in his hands as a man would if pierced by a sudden and unspeakable pain. “Oh, God, oh, God. Alless. I can’t…I told her to quit that goddamn job. I told her.”

  “Why did you tell her to quit her job?”

  He looked up, but since he didn’t straighten, Eve hunkered down with him. “She worked in this cult club-vampire shit-which is bad enough. But it was underground, off Times Square. It wasn’t safe, it’s not safe down there, and she knew it.”

  “Then why’d she work there?”

  “Made three times what she made on street level. Sometimes four with tips. No doubles. She wanted to buy a house, a little house, maybe in Queens. We’ve got a boy.” His eyes watered up. “We got Sam, and she wanted a place out of the city. We share custody of Sam. But, Jesus, I told her it wasn’t worth it. I went down to check it out right after she took the job. Goddamn pit in a goddamn sewer. Alless.”

  There was love here, Eve thought. Maybe not enough to make a marriage work, but there was love. “Did she talk about her work, the people she worked with? For?”

  “No, not to me. Not after we went a round about it. Haven’t fought like that since we split. Don’t know that we fought like that before we split. I was scared, if you want to know the truth. Scared for her, and I handled it wrong.”

  His hands dangled between his knees now, and he stared at them as if they were foreign objects. “Flat out told her she was going to quit, and I know that’s just the way to make her dig into something. If I’d handled it better, she might’ve…”

  He looked up, looked past Eve. There were people gathered on the other side of the barricades, as people always did.

  What happened? they’d ask, and as word trickled down, they’d think how awful, how terrible, even as they continued to gawk, to linger, to hope to catch a glimpse of the dead body before they had to head off to work.

  Because it wasn’t them, it wasn’t theirs the city had swallowed up. So they could gawk and linger and congratulate themselves that it wasn’t them or theirs-and the next time it might be.

  Sabo didn’t see them, Eve knew that, too. Because for him, it was the next time.

  “Mr. Sabo, did you meet any of her coworkers or her employer while you were in the club, or after?”

  “What? No. No.” He scrubbed his hands hard over his face. “Didn’t want to. I only stayed about twenty minutes. Illegals passing around like party favors. People coming out of the private rooms licking blood off their lips, or it looked like it. She wanted a damn house in Queens.”

  “Mr. Sabo, I have to ask. It’s routine. Can you verify your whereabouts between two and four A.M. this morning?”

  “In bed, at home. I got Sam. I can’t leave Sam alone at night.” He rubbed at his eyes now before his hands dangled uselessly again. “I have building security. In and out. You can check. Whatever you have to do so you don’t waste time, so you find who hurt Alless. Was she raped?”

  Before Eve could respond, he shook his head. “No. No. Don’t tell me. I don’t think I want to know either way. Walk from the subway, after two in the morning, alone. Because of that damn job. Now what am I going to tell our boy? How am I going to tell our Sam his mama’s gone?”

  “I can have a grief counselor contact you, one who works with children.”

  “Yes. Please. Yes.” His throat worked on a swallow. “I’ll need help. Alless and I, well, we couldn’t stay married, but we were a team when it came to Sam. I’ll need help. I have to get back to my kid. I left him with the neighbor. I have to get back to Sam. Can you let me know when…when I need to do whatever I need to do?”

  “We’ll contact you, Mr. Sabo.” Eve watched him walk away. “ Peabody?”

  “I’ll take care of the grief counselor. Poor guy.”

  “Murder kills more than the victim,” Eve said quietly. “We need to wrap up here, get into Central. Feeney may be able to clean up some of her last transmission from my unit. We get even a glimmer of this bastard…”

  “I could help with that.” Roarke stepped up beside her.

  “You’ve got your own work.”

  “I do, but I’d be interested in, let’s say, hammering one of those nails.”

  “If Feeney-” She broke off as her ’link signalled. “Hold on a minute.” She moved aside, answered.

  Roarke noted the instant change in her body language-the stiffening, the aggressive stance. When she turned back, he saw it mirrored in the temper that heated her eyes.

  “DNA doesn’t match Vadim’s.”

  “But-”

  “No but about it,” Eve cut Peabody off. “There’s a fucking screwup somewhere. You want in,” she said to Roarke, “you’re in. You can round up Feeney at Central, do whatever the two of you can do with the transmission. Peabody, with me. We’re going to the lab. Contact Morris.” She moved quickly as she snapped out the order. “I want him to personally take the DNA samples from this vic, have them hand-delivered to the lab. That’s red-flagged.”

  “Got it.”

  Eve glanced back at the building one last time. “No way, no goddamn way he slithers out of this.”

  Peabody had to all but leap into the car to keep up. “Maybe he didn’t kill her.”

  “Screw that.”

  “What I mean is, maybe he had her killed. Set it up.” Peabody jerked her safety harness tight as it looked like they were in for a hell of a ride.

  “No. He wouldn’t deny himself the pleasure of the kill.” Monsters didn’t want to watch, to be told. They wanted to do. They wanted the smell of the blood. “He did them both. Kent because it’s what he set out to do, Carter because he was smart enough to know she wasn’t going to hold up his alibi, and it slaps at me. He picked her, put her on the spot, then he took her out. The lab screwed up, or I did. I did if he switched the vials.”

  “We were right there. He drew his own blood right in front of us.”

  “Hand’s quicker than the eye,” Eve muttered. “He worked as a magician, he’s worked the grift all of his life. He offered the blood sample without a blink because he knew he could swing it so it wouldn’t match.”

  And she’d been distracted, she couldn’t deny it. Tight chest, dry throat, pumping heart. Her own fears had dulled her senses.

  “Either way,” Peabody commented, “without the match, with Allesseria vouching for him and being unable to recant, we’ve got nothing on him.”

  “That’s what he’s counting on. I played into it, and that pisses me off. Dark club, all that movement and noise. Guy draws his own blood at a bar. Not something you see every day.” Looking into his eyes, she remembered. Caught in them for a few seconds too long, shuddering inside at what she’d seen there, and she’s conned. “Son of a bitch.”

  She strode into the lab, only to be cut off by the chief, Dick Berenski.

  His egg-shaped head was cocked aggressively as he jabbed one of his long, thin fingers at her. “Don’t think about coming into my shop and saying we fucked up. I ran those samples twice myself. Personal. You want to argue with science, you go somewhere else. I can’t make a match when there’s no match.”

  He was called Dickhead for a reason, and it had everything to do with his personality. Eve throttled back. “I think he switched them on me. It’s his DNA on the vic, but it’s not his in the vial you have. I’ve got an idea ho
w he pulled it off, but the question right now is: If it’s not his blood in the vial, whose is it?”

  It was obvious Berenski had been expecting a battle. Now, caught off guard, he was more accommodating than he normally would be without a substantial bribe. “Well, if we got the DNA in the system, I can find it for you.”

  “I did a standard search, crapped out.”

  “Global?”

  “Yeah, do I look like this is my first day on the job? But I didn’t run deceased.”

  “Blood from a corpse? How’s that going to end up in some mope’s veins?”

  “Not in his veins, in a damn vial he palmed off on me. Can you do a global search, deceased donor?”

  “Sure.”

  “How fast?”

  He wiggled his spidery fingers. “Watch and learn.”

  He went back to his station, the long white counter with comps and screens and command centers. Sliding back and forth on his stool, he began to work-verbal orders, manual keys.

  While he ran the searches, Eve drew out her ’link and tried Feeney.

  Her old partner and the captain of EDD popped on her screen. He had a Danish in one hand, and a mouth full of the hefty bite missing from it. “Yo.”

  “Roarke’s on his way in. Put him to work. I’ve got a ’link trans, voice mail, from a vic while she was being attacked. Lost the trans almost as soon. It’s dark, it’s jumpy, but if you can clean it up, I might burn this bastard quick.”

  “Take a look.” He swallowed. “This your vampire?”

  “Come on.”

  “Hey, before your time I took down this asshole who was grave robbing, then sewing body parts together. Thought he could make himself a Frankenstein. Weird shit happens. He take another one?”

  “Yeah, early this morning.”

  Contemplatively, Feeney took another bite of Danish. “McNab said he pulled out a syringe and gave you blood right on the spot.”

  “Yeah. There was a screwup there. Looks like mine. I’ll fill you in later. Anything you can do on the trans, Feeney, I’d appreciate.”

  “Your man gets here, we’ll do some magic. Meanwhile, you go up against this guy, wouldn’t hurt to take a cross along.” He lifted his eyebrows when she just stared at him. “Kid, weird shit happens because people are fucking crazy.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  She clicked off just as Berenski made a sound of victory. “Got your blood. And I’m forced to say, ‘Damn good call, Dallas ’.”

  “I’m forced to say, ‘Damn fast work’.”

  “I’m the best. Pensky, Gregor.” He tapped the ID picture on his screen.

  Square face, Eve noted. Small eyes, pinched mouth. The data put him at two-ten and six-one, with a long sheet of violent crimes.

  It also listed him as dead for nearly a year.

  “How’d he get to be a corpse?” Eve demanded.

  “Son of a bitch.” Berenski pursed his thin lips. “Been running DNA on a DB.” He called for the data.

  “Body found in the woods in freaking Bulgaria, where it was believed he headed after escaping from a work program on his latest visit to their version of the State Pen.” Eve shook her head. “Work program for a guy with this kind of sheet. Bludgeoned, partially dismembered, and how about this, exsanguinated. Peabody, let’s get the full ME’s report on this. I’m betting among his other injuries, there were a couple of puncture wounds in his throat.”

  “This vampire shit’s creepy.”

  Eve glanced at Berenski. “It would be, if vampires existed. What happened to science?”

  He jutted out what he called a chin. “You got science, you got the para side of it. I’d be sharpening stakes if I were you, Dallas.”

  “Yeah, that’s on my list.”

  “Really?” Peabody asked when they got back into the car.

  “Really what?”

  “The stake-sharpening detail.”

  “ Peabody, you’re making my eye twitch.”

  “I know it’s out there, but you have to consider all the information. Blood from a corpse. Vampires are corpses, essentially. No trace of Vadim on the first vic, scientifically at this point in time.”

  “Because he switched the fucking vials.”

  “Okay, okay.” Peabody held up both hands, palms out. “But if you bought into the vampire lore, he could’ve sired this Pensky guy, then-”

  “Then his body wouldn’t have been real available for the Bulgarian ME.”

  Peabody considered. “There’s that. But do we know, for absolute sure, that it stayed available?”

  Give up, Eve told herself. Logical debates can’t be made out of illogical theorems. “You be sure to check on that. While you do, I’ll just stick with the more pedestrian theory that Vadim hooked up with Pensky, killed the shit out of him, and stored the blood he drained out for later use. It’s smart, but it would’ve been a hell of a lot smarter to get blood from some unknown. We’re also going to see if we can pin Vadim’s whereabouts for the time of this Gregor’s murder. What do you bet he was in Bulgaria?”

  “He’d’ve been in Bulgaria if he vamped him, too,” Peabody said under her breath. “Guy’s got devil eyes.”

  “On the last part we heartily agree.” She pulled into the garage at Central. “And we’re going to give him a shot right between them. All data on Gregor Pensky’s autopsy, Vadim’s whereabouts at the time in question-and last night. Another DNA sample from that slippery son of a bitch.”

  Mentally kicking herself one more time on that score, Eve slammed the door of her police-issue. “This one spit-and it’s going to be taken by a certified criminalist. Going to wrap him up before the day ends. He’s not going to bite anyone else.”

  “ Dallas?” Peabody scrambled inside the elevator. “Do you figure he’s fatally bitten someone before? Bulgaria ’s a long way from Times Square. And there are places farther away. Places where bodies might never be found.” Even if, Peabody thought, they stayed buried.

  “I don’t think he took a year off between Pensky and Kent.” Eve scowled at the elevator doors. “So yeah, I think there’ll be others.”

  “So do I. And listen, whether or not you-I mean we-believe in vampires, who’s to say he doesn’t? I know how he played it at Bloodbath. Like it was a show, a con-but a legal one this time. Maybe it isn’t.”

  “Mira’s initial profile allowed for him deluding himself into believing himself immortal, but his sheet screams con. We get him in the box,” Eve decided, “we’ll see how he plays it.”

  “I’m thinking if he does believe it, he’s feeling pretty full of himself right now. Sucking out two vics in two nights.”

  “As of now, he’s going on a no-hemoglobin diet.”

  Inside Central, Eve turned toward the Homicide bullpen. Stopped. Swags of garlic hung from the door frame like some odd holiday decoration. She caught the snickers from up and down the corridor, decided to ignore them, just as she ignored the surreptitious glances shot her way when she walked inside.

  She arrowed in on Baxter, strolled to his desk. “How much did it run you?”

  “It’s fake.” He grinned at her. “I’d have sprung for real, even though it’s steep, but it’s hard to come by enough to make a real impact so we got the fake stuff, too. You gotta admit, it’s funny.”

  “Yeah, inside I’m cracking up. I’m going back down to reinterview Count Dracula. Get your boy, you’re backup.”

  “Underground.” His grin vanished into a look of pure disgust. “I just bought these shoes.”

  “Now I’m crying on the inside.” She pushed him aside with a satisfied grin, and commandeered Baxter’s computer.

  Moments later, her suspicions were confirmed. Two puncture wounds had pierced Gregor Pensky’s carotid artery and had been attributed to an animal bite. She had news for Bulgaria, and the standing medical examiner. But for now, she contacted her own.

  “What’ve you got?” she demanded of Morris.

  “Saliva and semen, and I had my top
man walk them to the lab. Exsanguination was COD. She was beaten pre-and postmortem, he used his fists on her, and wore gloves. Her larynx was partially crushed by manual strangulation. Tox just came back. Traces of the same cocktail inside Kent, administered through the neck wounds.”

  “He transferred the drug through the bite?”

  “Yes. She didn’t consume any blood, or alcohol.”

  “This one wasn’t a party. Thanks, Morris.” She sat back for a moment, organizing thoughts and strategy.

  “ Peabody,” she said as she got to her feet. “Baxter, Trueheart. Let’s move.” She strode to the doorway, flicked a bulb of garlic with her finger. “You can take some of this along if that does it for you. Me?” She tapped her sidearm. “I’ll stick with this.”

  Eight

  Baxter might like to joke, and bitch about damage to his slick wardrobe, but he was a solid cop. His uniformed aide, Trueheart, hadn’t shaken off all the green, but he was dependable as sunrise.

  There wasn’t a cop on the job-or not a sane one-who would be thrilled to traverse underground, day or night. But there weren’t any who would back her up more reliably.

  She took point, left Baxter to take the rear. Below the streets, time vanished. In the world, the day was sunny and heading toward warm. Here, it was as dark and dank as midnight in a winter graveyard. Still, at this hour most of those who inhabited the tunnels were huddled away in their holes and burrows.

  Some of the clubs and arcades ran 24/7, and the harsh music still pumped, the ugly lights still glared. Those who came or stayed to do business were more interested in the pain or gain than confronting four armed cops.

  A few threats and insults were hurled. One brave soul invited the girls to have a taste of the appendage he was proud enough of to whip out and dangle in their direction.

  Eve paused long enough to glance down. “Only thing down here interested in a taste of that is the rats, but they generally like bigger meals.”

  This comment caused hilarity among the flasher’s companions.