Big Jack

by J. D. Robb

  Her eyes, very bright, very blue, settled levelly on Eve’s. “But I’ve had time to play this all out in my head. A long night’s worth of time, and I don’t think that. You don’t think that.”

  “I don’t. Ms. Gannon—Samantha—the woman who was assigned to clean your house has been murdered.”

  “I don’t understand. I haven’t hired anyone to clean my house yet.”

  “Your regular cleaning service. Maid In New York assigned Tina Cobb over the last several months to your house.”

  “She’s dead? Murdered? Like Andrea?”

  “Did you know her? Personally?”

  Without thinking, Samantha picked up Eve’s bottle of water, drank. “I don’t know what to think. I was just talking about her ten minutes ago, just talking about her with Nadine.”

  “You told Nadine about Tina Cobb?”

  “I mentioned her. Not by name. Just the cleaning service and how I remembered—just when we were talking, I remembered—that I hadn’t canceled the service for this week.”

  No wonder Nadine had given up so easily. She’d already had another line to tug. “Did you know her?”

  “Not really. Oh God, I’m sorry,” she said, staring at the bottle of water in her hand. She passed it back to Eve.

  “No problem. You didn’t know Tina Cobb?”

  “I met her. I mean, she was in my house, cleaning my house,” she added as she rubbed her forehead. “Can I have a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  Samantha got up, walked around the room once, started around it again.

  “Pulling it together,” Peabody murmured. “Calming herself down.”

  “Yeah. She’s got spine. Makes it easier from our end.”

  After the second circuit, Samantha ordered her own bottle of water, stood patiently until the machine had finished its recital and spat the selection into the slot.

  She walked back, opening the bottle as she sat. After one long pull, she nodded at Eve. “Okay. I had to settle down.”

  “You need more time, it’s not a problem.”

  “No. She always seemed like such a little thing to me. Tina. Young and little, though I guess she wasn’t that much younger or smaller than me. I always wondered how she handled all that heavy cleaning. Usually, I’d hole up in my office when she was there, or schedule outside meetings or errands.”

  She stopped, cleared her throat. “I sort of come from money. Not big mountains of it, but nice comfortable hills. We always had household help. But my place here? It’s my first place all my own, and it felt weird having somebody around, even a couple times a month, picking up after me.”

  She brushed her hands over her hair. “And that is completely beside the point.”

  “Not completely.” Peabody nudged the bottle of water toward Samantha because it seemed she’d forgotten it was there. “It gives us an idea of the dynamics between you.”

  “We didn’t have much of one.” She drank again. “I just stayed out of her way. She was very pleasant, very efficient. We might have a brief conversation, but both of us would usually just get to work. Is it because she was in my house? Is she dead because she was in my house?”

  “We’re looking into that,” Eve said. “You told us in your earlier statement that the cleaning service had your access and security codes.”

  “Yes. They’re bonded. They have a top-level reputation. Their employees all go through intense screening. Actually, it’s a little scary and nothing I’d want to go through. But for someone like me, who can’t always be at home to let a cleaning service into the house, it was ideal. She knew how to get in,” Samantha stated. “Someone killed her because she knew how to get in.”

  “I believe that’s true. Did she ever mention a friend—a boyfriend?”

  “No. We didn’t talk about personal matters. We were polite and easy with each other but not personal.”

  “Did she ever bring anyone with her? To help her with her work?”

  “No. I have a team every three months. The company sets that up. Otherwise, it was just one maid, twice a month. I live alone, and I have what my mother says is my grandmother’s obsession with order. I don’t need more help than that, domestically.”

  “You never noticed, when she came or went, if anyone dropped her off, picked her up?”

  “No. I think she took the bus. Once she was late, and she apologized and said her bus got caught in a jam. You haven’t told me how she was killed. Was it like Andrea?”

  “No.”

  “But you still think it’s a connection. It’s too much of a coincidence not to be.”

  “We’re looking carefully at the connection.”

  “I always wanted to write this book. Always. I’d beg my grandparents to tell me the story, again and again. Until I could play it backward in my mind. I loved picturing how my grandparents met, seeing them sitting at her kitchen table with a pool of diamonds. And how they’d won. It was so satisfying for me to know they’d beaten the odds and won. Lived their lives as they chose to live. That’s a real victory, don’t you think, living as you choose to live?”

  “Yeah.” She thought of her badge. She thought of Roarke’s empire. “It is.”

  “The villain of the piece, I suppose you could call him, Alex Crew, he killed. He killed for those shiny stones and, I think, because he could. As much because he could as for the diamonds. He would have killed my grandmother if she hadn’t been strong enough, smart enough to best him. That’s always been a matter of pride for me, and I wanted to tell that story. Now I have, and two people I know are dead.”

  “You’re not responsible for that.”

  “I’m telling myself that. Intellectually, I know that. And still, there’s a part of me that’s separating, and observing. That part that wants very much to tell this story. To write down what’s happening now. I wonder what that makes me.”

  “A writer, I’d say,” Peabody answered.

  Samantha let out a half laugh. “Well, I guess so. I’ve made a list, everyone I could think of. People I’ve talked with about the book. Odd communications I’ve had from readers or people claiming to have known my great-grandfather.” She drew a disk out of her bag. The enormous one Eve had noted the day before. “I don’t know if it’ll help.”

  “Everything helps. Did Tina Cobb know you’d be out of town?”

  “I let the service know, yes. In fact, I remember telling Tina I’d be away and asking her to check the houseplants and my fish. I wasn’t sure Andrea would be able to stay, not until just a couple days before I left.”

  “Did you let the service know you’d have a house sitter?”

  “No. That slipped by me. The last few days in New York were insane. I was doing media and appearances here, packing, doing holographic interviews. And it didn’t seem important.”

  Eve rose, extended a hand. “Thanks for coming in. Detective Peabody will arrange for you to be taken back to your hotel.”

  “Lieutenant. You didn’t tell me how Tina Cobb was killed.”

  “No, I didn’t. We’ll be in touch.”

  Samantha watched her walk out, drew a long breath. “I bet she wins, doesn’t she? I bet she almost always wins.”

  “She won’t give up. That comes to the same thing.”

  Eve sat at her desk, input the data from the Cobb case into a sub file, then updated her files on the Jacobs homicide.

  “Computer, analyze data on two current case files and run probability. What is the probability that Andrea Jacobs and Tina Cobb were killed by the same person?”

  Beginning analysis . . .

  She pushed away from the desk as the computer worked and walked to her skinny window. Sky traffic was relatively light. Tourists looked for cooler spots than stewing Manhattan, she imagined, this time of year. Office drones were busy in their hives. She saw a sky-tram stream by with more than half its seats empty.

  Tina Cobb had taken the bus. The sky-tram would’ve been faster, but that convenience cost. Tina’d been caref
ul with her money then. Saving for a life she’d never have.

  Analysis and probability run complete. Probability that Andrea Jacobs and Tina Cobb were murdered by the same person or persons is seventy-eight point eight.

  High enough, Eve thought, given the computer’s limitations. It would factor in the difference in victim types, the different methodology, geographic location of the murders.

  A computer couldn’t see what she saw, or feel what she felt.

  She turned back as a beep signaled an incoming transmission. The sweepers had been quick, she noted, and sat to read the report.

  Fingerprints were Gannon’s, Jacobs’s, Cobb’s. There were no other prints found anywhere in the house. Hair samples found matched Gannon’s and the victim’s. Eve imagined they’d find some that matched Cobb’s.

  He’d sealed up, and that wasn’t a surprise to her. He’d sealed his hands, his hair. Whether or not he’d planned to kill, he’d planned to leave no trace of himself behind.

  If Jacobs hadn’t come in, he might have gone through the entire house without leaving a thing out of place. And Samantha would’ve been none the wiser.

  She contacted Maid In New York to check a few details and was adding them to her notes when Peabody came in.

  “Gannon had her quarterly clean about four weeks ago,” Eve said. “Do you know, the crew’s required to wear gloves and hair protectors? Safety goggles, protective jumpsuit. The works. Like a damn sweeper’s team. They all but sterilize the damn place, top to bottom.”

  “I think, maybe, McNab and I could afford something like that. Once we’re in the new apartment, it’d be worth it to have somebody sterilize the place three or four times a year. We can get pretty messy when we’re both pumping it on the job—and, you know, doing each other.”

  “Shut up. Just shut up. You’re trying to make me twitch.”

  “I haven’t mentioned sex and McNab all day. It was time.”

  “The point I was making before you stuck the image of you and McNab doing each other in my head, is Gannon’s place was polished up bright a few weeks ago and maintained thereafter. There are no prints other than hers, the maid’s, Jacobs’s. He sealed up before he went in. He’s very careful. Meticulous even. But, unless this was a direct hit on Jacobs, he still missed the house-sitter angle. What does that tell you?”

  “He probably doesn’t know either the vic or Gannon, not personally. Not enough to be privy to personal arrangements like that. He knew Gannon would be out of town. Could’ve gotten that from the maid, or from following her media schedule. But he couldn’t have gotten the house-sitter angle from the maid or the service because they didn’t know.”

  “He’s not inner circle. So we start going outside that circle. And we look for where else Cobb and Gannon and Jacobs connect.”

  “Baxter and Trueheart are back. We’ve got conference room three.”

  “Round them up.”

  She set up a board in the conference room, pinning up crime-scene photos, victim photos, copies of scene reports and the time line for the Jacobs murder she’d worked up.

  She waited while Baxter did the same for his case, and considered, as she programmed a cup of lousy station-house coffee, how to handle the meeting.

  Tact might not be her middle name, but she didn’t like to step on another cop’s toes. Cobb was Baxter’s case. Outranking him didn’t, in her mind, give her the right to tug it away from him.

  She leaned a hip on the conference table as a compromise between standing—taking over—and sitting. “You get anything more out of your vic’s sister?”

  Baxter shook his head. “Took some time to talk her out of going down to the morgue. No point in her seeing that. She didn’t have anything to add to what she told you. She’s going to her parents’. Trueheart and I offered to go inform them, or at least go with her. She said she wanted to do it herself. That it would be easier on them if she did. She never met this Bobby character. None of the stoop-sitters or neighbors remember seeing the vic with a guy either. They’ve got a cheap d and c unit. Trueheart checked it for transmissions.”

  “She—Tina Cobb,” Trueheart began, “sent and received transmissions from an account registered to a Bobby Smith. A quick check indicates the account was opened five weeks ago and closed two days ago. The address listed is bogus. The unit doesn’t store transmission over twenty-four hours. If there were ’link trans, to and from, we’d need EDD to dig them out.”

  “Yippee,” Peabody said under her breath and earned a stony stare from Eve.

  “You tagging EDD?” Eve asked Baxter.

  “Worth a shot. It’s probable he used public ’links, but if they can dig out a transmission or two, we might be able to get some sort of geographic. Get a voice print. Get a sense of him.”

  “Agreed.”

  “We’re going to talk to her coworkers. See if she gabbed about the guy. But from what her sister says, she was keeping him pretty close. Like a big secret. She was only twenty-two, and her record’s shiny. Not a smudge.”

  “She wanted to get married, be a professional mother.” Trueheart flushed as all eyes turned to him. “I talked to the sister about her. It, um, I think you can learn about the killer if you know the victim.”

  “He’s my pride and joy,” Baxter said with a big grin.

  Eve remembered that Trueheart was barely older than the victim they were discussing. And that he’d nearly become a victim himself only a short time before.

  The quick glance she exchanged with Baxter told her he was thinking the same thing. Both let it go.

  “The theory is the killer used a romantic involvement to lure her.” She waited until Baxter nodded. “Your case and ours come together through her. She was Samantha Gannon’s maid, and as such had knowledge of the security codes to her residence and knew, intimately, the contents and setup of that residence. She was aware that the owner would be out of town for a two-week period. But she was unaware that there would be a house sitter. Those arrangements were last minute and, as far as we can know, between Jacobs and Gannon.”

  “Lieutenant.” Trueheart raised a hand like a student in the classroom. “It’s hard for me to see someone like Tina Cobb betraying security. She worked hard, her employment record’s as clean as the rest of it. There isn’t a single complaint filed against her on the job. She doesn’t seem the type to give out a security code.”

  “I gotta go with the kid on this one,” Baxter confirmed. “I don’t see her giving it out willingly.”

  “You’ve never been a girl in love,” Peabody said to Baxter. “It can make you stupid. You look at the time line, you see that the break-in and Jacobs’s murder were prior to Cobb’s murder. And, when you calculate the time between her last being seen and time of death, there isn’t a lot. He’d been working her for weeks, right? Smoothing her up. It seems to me he’d be more sure she was giving him the straight scoop if it was willing pillow talk or something than if he tried to beat it out of her.”

  “My pride and joy,” Eve said to Baxter and earned a chuckle. “He beats or threatens or tortures, she might lie or just get mixed up. He eases it out of her, it’s more secure. But . . . ”

  She paused while her pride and joy wrinkled her forehead. “He seduces it out, she might talk, or get the guilts and report the lapse to her superior. That’s a risk. Either way, if we’re right about this connection, he got it out of her. Then after he broke in, killed Jacobs, he had to cover tracks. So he killed Cobb, dumped her. Killed and dumped her in such a way that identification would be delayed long enough for him to tidy up any connection between himself and Cobb.”

  “What’s Gannon got that he wants?” Baxter asked.

  “It’s more what he thinks she has or has access to. And that’s several million in stolen diamonds.”

  She filled them in and gave them each a disk copy of her file. Without realizing it, she’d straightened and was standing. “The more we find out about this old case, and the stolen gems, the more we know abou
t our current cases. We’ll learn more, faster, if we coordinate our time and effort.”

  “I got no problem with that.” Baxter nodded in agreement. “We’ll shoot you both copies of our file on Cobb. What angle do you want us to work?”

  “Track Bobby. He didn’t leave us much, but there’s always something. We’ll see what EDD can dig out of the vics’ ’links.”

  “Somebody should go through her personal items,” Peabody added. “She might’ve kept mementos. Girls do that. Something from a restaurant where they ate.”

  “Good one.” Baxter winked at her. “The sister said he took Tina to an art gallery and a play. We’ll work on that. After all, how many art galleries and theaters are there in New York?” He slapped a hand on Trueheart’s shoulder. “Shouldn’t take my earnest sidekick more than a couple hundred man-hours to find out.”

  “Somebody saw them together somewhere,” Eve agreed. “Peabody and I will continue to work Jacobs. We pool all information. For homework assignment, read Gannon’s book. Let’s know all we can know about these diamonds and the people who stole them. Class dismissed. Peabody, you’re with me in ten. Baxter? Can I have a minute?”

  “Teacher’s pet,” Baxter said, tapping his heart and winking at Trueheart.

  To stall until they were alone, Eve wandered to the board, studied the faces.

  “Are you giving him that drone work to keep his ass in the chair?”

  “As much as I can,” Baxter confirmed. “He’s bounced back—Christ, to be that young again. But he’s not a hundred percent. I’m keeping him on light duty for now.”

  “Good. Any problems combining these investigations under me?”

  “Look at that face.” Baxter lifted his chin toward the ID photo of Tina Cobb. Even the cheap, official image radiated youth and innocence.

  “Yeah.”

  “I play pretty well with others, Dallas. And I want, I really want to find out who turned that into that.” He tapped a finger on the crime-scene still of Tina Cobb. “So I got no problem.”