Devoted in Death

by J. D. Robb

  She did the best she could, then finished with Darryl’s help as they didn’t have much to transfer from truck to car. In ten minutes Darryl was behind the wheel with Ella-Loo beside him.

  “Don’t go over the speed limit now. We’re just going to put some distance between us and that man and the truck.”

  She held on, a mile, five, ten. At twenty-five, she broke.

  “Pull off, pull off! See that road there? God Almighty, pull off, Darryl, go back in the trees there.”

  “Are you gonna be sick, honey?”

  “I can still smell his blood. It’s on you. It’s on me, too.”

  “It’s all right, now. It’s gonna be all right, now.” He pulled off, bumped his way through some trees, stopped. “Honey.”

  “Did you see his face? His eyes staring at us, but not seeing us? And the blood coming out of his mouth. Of his ears.”

  She turned to him, her face lit like the sun, her eyes huge, full of wonder and want. “We killed somebody. Together.”

  They fell on each other. For them, sex was always hot, hard and heady, but now, with the smell of fresh blood, with the knowing, it turned feral until her screams, his shouts echoed in the car.

  When they were done, when sweat fused their flesh together like glue and the white dress was tattered, stained with blood as red as her heels, she smiled at him.

  “Next time, I don’t want to do it so fast. We’re going to take some time with the next one.”

  “I love you, Ella-Loo.”

  “I love you, Darryl. Nobody’s ever loved like we do. We’re going to have everything we want, do anything we want, from right here all the way to New York City.”

  The first kill, mostly an accident, took place on a hot night in August. By the time they arrived in New York, in mid-January, their tally was up to twenty-nine.

  With her first look at New York, Ella-Loo had the same reaction she’d had with her first look at Darryl.

  She knew they were made for each other.

  An ice-pick wind stabbed down the litter-strewn alley, slicing at exposed flesh, hissing and snarling as it hacked its way from Madison Street through the tunnel formed by graffiti-laced buildings of crumbling red brick or pitted concrete.

  The few lights that worked cast purple shadows along with sickly yellow glows so the pools and splashes of them bloomed bitter, like a bruise.

  The lowest of low-level street whores – licensed or not – might take a john into one of the narrow niches hoping for shelter from the worst of the cold and wind while business was conducted. A junkie desperate enough for a fix might follow an illegals dealer into those bruising shadows.

  Anyone else thinking to shortcut through might as well wear a flashing sign offering themselves up to muggers, rapists and worse.

  None of those options applied to Dorian Kuper as he’d met his unfortunate fate elsewhere before his body had been wrapped in plastic and dumped, much like the wind- and vermin-tattered bags of garbage beside a broken recycler.

  The vicious wind wouldn’t trouble Dorian any longer. Its toothy knives cut keenly enough, so Lieutenant Eve Dallas gave into necessity and yanked on the ski cap with its embarrassing snowflake. But she drew the line at the fuzzy gloves – both given to her on a cold December day by the dreamy-eyed Dennis Mira.

  She thought, fleetingly, that twenty-four hours earlier she’d been basking, mostly naked, on the sun-washed sand of her husband’s private island with Roarke, also mostly naked, beside her.

  However she’d begun 2061, she was back in New York now, and so was death.

  She was a murder cop, so while others slept in the blustery dark still an hour shy of dawn, she crouched over a body, hands bare but for sealant, brown eyes flat and narrowed.

  “Killed the hell out of you, didn’t he, Dorian?”

  “He’s got an Upper West Side address, Dallas.” Detective Peabody, wrapped in a pink coat, her feet toasty in fuzzy-topped pink boots, and her face all but buried in the many swirls of a multicolored scarf, relayed the data from her PPC to her partner.

  “Age, thirty-eight, single, no cohab. He’s with the Metropolitan Opera company. First cellist.”

  “What’s a cellist from the Upper West Side doing dead in Mechanics Alley? Wasn’t killed here. Plenty of blood on the tarp, on him, smeared from surface to surface. Ligature marks, wrists and ankles, and some of the bruising, the lacerations from struggling look at least a day old. Maybe more. Morris will confirm.”

  “A lot of cuts, punctures, burn marks, bruising.” Peabody, her eyes a deeper, darker brown than Eve’s, scanned the body. “A lot of them superficial. But then…”

  “Yeah, a lot of them not. Bound, gagged – the corners of his mouth are cut and abraded – tortured for hours. Maybe a day or more before it stopped being fun. And then… the slice across the gut, that ended him. But it would have taken time for him to bleed out. Some painful time.”

  Taking out her gauges, she established time of death. “The painful time ended at twenty-two-twenty last night.”

  “Dallas, there’s a missing persons on him. Just filed this morning. His mother filed it. Ah… okay. He didn’t show for work night before last, didn’t answer his ’link, missed his class – he’s teaching one at Juilliard – yesterday afternoon, and was a no-show for last night’s performance.”

  “So about two days. Contact whoever caught the missing person, get a full report. We’ll notify next of kin.”

  Hunkered back on her heels, Eve studied the face of the dead. His ID shot had shown an attractive man with deep green, flirtatious eyes and long, rich blond hair. A face sharp at the cheeks, full at the lips.

  His killer had hacked at the hair, leaving thin tufts and ugly little wounds, burned small circles in his cheeks, like blackened dimples. Spiderwebs of red shattered the whites of his eyes. But the killer had focused most of his energy and creativity on the body. She thought Morris, the chief medical examiner, would find multiple broken bones and damaged organs.

  “Some of these burns are small and precise,” she noted. “Probably used a tool. But see on the back of the hands here? Bigger, not precise. Somebody put out cigarettes, herbals, joints, whatever, on the vic’s hands. Cellist. A cello’s that violin type thing, right?”

  “Well, it’s…” Peabody made a large shape in the air with her hands, then mimed sawing across it with a bow.

  “Yeah, a big, fat violin. You need your hands to play one of those. Burned the hands, broke four of his fingers, right hand, crushed the left hand – heavy object. Maybe personal. Hacking off the hair, that reads personal. Dumping him naked could read personal.”

  Eve lifted one of the hands, used her light to do a cursory exam of the nails. “I don’t see any skin under here, and nothing that looks like defensive wounds.” She shifted to the head, lifting carefully, feeling the skull. “Big knot back here.”

  “He has a fight – verbal, I mean,” Peabody began. “With someone he knew, turns his back, and they give him a good bash. They’re pissed off enough to bind him, gag him, torture him.”

  “This isn’t pissed off.” Eve shook her head, finally straightened up. The wind snatched at her long, leather coat, sent it billowing, snapping around her legs. “It isn’t patient and intricate like – Remember The Groom?”

  “I’m not likely to forget. Ever.”

  “He made a science out of torture. It was his work. This looks more like play.”

  “  ‘Play’?”

  “Pissed off usually whales right in. Pissed off would go for the face more, especially if there’s a personal connection.”

  But here, she thought, the face was the least of it, as if the killer had wanted to keep it fairly unharmed.

  So they could see the victim? So he remained recognizable?

  “Pissed off doesn’t torture like this for a couple days,” she added. “Pissed off and crazy, maybe. But again, I’d expect to see more physical contact – more from fists or saps. Some damage to the genitals, but ag
ain, not as much as I’d expect if it was a pissed-off friend or lover.

  “But we’ll look at that.”

  Shifting, Eve looked down the alley toward Madison, turned, looked north toward Henry.

  “The killer had to have transpo, and likely pulled up on Madison. The dump site’s close to Madison. The vic’s – what was it – five-ten, and one-fifty-five. We’ll have the sweepers determine if the plastic with the body was dragged down the alley, but it doesn’t look like it. Hard to be certain in this light, but dragged or carried, the killer had some muscle. Or help. We’ll see if the canvass turns up anything.”

  She looked up, scanned dark windows. “Middle of the night, middle of the winter. Cold as a bitch’s tit.”

  “It’s ‘witch’s.’   ”

  “Why? Doesn’t matter,” Eve said quickly. “Neither way makes sense. If somebody’s a witch, why do they put up with cold tits? I’m a bitch, and twenty-four hours ago, my tits were plenty warm.”

  “Was it wonderful? Your vacation?”

  “It didn’t suck.”

  Blue skies, blue water, white sand and Roarke. No, it hadn’t sucked.

  And now it was done.

  “Let’s call in the sweepers, the morgue, and get a couple of uniforms back here on the body.” She checked her wrist unit. “We’ll go by the vic’s residence first. There’s no point waking his mother up at this hour to tell her he’s dead.”

  Eve tugged the silly cap farther over her frozen ears, bobbled her light. As she leaned over to retrieve it, her gaze flicked toward the body where the end of the beam arrowed.

  “Wait. Is that… Peabody, microgoggles.”

  “You see something?”

  “I’ll see if I see something better with the microgoggles.”

  She was kneeling beside the body now, drawing the left arm farther out.

  “Fuck me, I almost missed this.”

  “Missed what?” After she pulled the microgoggles from Eve’s field kit, Peabody pushed them at her, tried to angle to see what Eve’s light beamed on.

  “It’s a heart. So much blood and bruising, I might’ve missed it. Morris would have caught it once the vic was on his table, but in this light, I didn’t see it.”

  “I don’t see it now.”

  “Just under the armpit.” Leaning closer, goggles in place, Eve bookended it with her fingers, top to bottom, then side to side. “About an inch high and wide. Precise as a high-dollar tattoo. Initials inside. E over D.”

  “D for Dorian.”

  “Could be.” And it sure as hell shifted some angles. “Maybe a pissed-off lover or wannabe or used-to-be lover after all. Ante- or postmortem?” she wondered. “A signature or a statement? This part’s precise. The killer took some time and care carving this in.”

  “McQueen carved numbers in his vics,” Peabody remembered, “so the cops would know how many he’d done. Maybe this is E’s signature, and E picks the vic and develops some sick, delusional relationship. And since sick, delusional relationships never end well, the killer bashes, ties up, gags, tortures, kills, then carves in the heart – killer over vic inside it.”

  Eve nodded – a good theory. Solid and logical. “It could play.”

  “Maybe this isn’t E’s first sick, delusional relationship.”

  “That could play, too.” Eve rose, pulled off the goggles. “We’ll run the elements through IRCCA, look for like crimes. Right now, let’s go check out the vic’s place. Maybe we’ll find out who he knew whose name starts with E.”

  “His mother lives in the same building,” Peabody said as Eve signaled to one of the uniforms at the mouth of the alley.

  “Well, that saves us time. We’ll go through his place, then do the notification.”

  “She’s with the orchestra, too. She plays a baby cello.”

  “They have babies?”

  “It was, like, a joke. She’s first violin. So, ha ha, baby cello.”

  “Assume I laughed. Lives in the same building, works the same job – basically. She probably knows anybody with the initial E he knew. And how he got along at work, with lovers.”

  Eve turned away, had a short conversation with the uniform.

  With the scene secured, and no witness – so far – to interview as the body had been discovered by beat droids, she climbed into her car. And with unspeakable relief, ordered the heat on full.

  With even more unspeakable relief, she pulled off the snowflake hat.

  “Aw. It looks cute on you.”

  “If I wanted to look cute, I wouldn’t be a cop.” She forked her fingers through her short, shaggy brown hair. “Address, Peabody.”

  “West Seventy-first between Amsterdam and Columbus.”

  “A long way from where he ended up.” Needles pricked along her fingers as they thawed out.

  One of the things she’d figured out how to operate in the fully loaded, purposely nondescript vehicle her husband had designed for her was coffee from the onboard AutoChef.

  And right that minute, she thought she might kill for real coffee.

  “Computer, engage AutoChef,” Eve began.

  “Yippee!”

  “Shut up, Peabody, or you won’t get any.”

  AutoChef engaged. What would you like, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve?

  “One coffee black, one coffee regular, both in go-cups.”

  One moment, please. Is front-seat delivery desired?

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s desired.”

  “I didn’t know it did that,” Peabody piped up. “I thought it was just backseat – Whoa!”

  Order complete, the computer announced as two go-cups slid out from under the dash.

  “That is totally iced.”

  “It better not be iced.” Eve snagged the go-cup with the black top, leaving the cream-colored top for Peabody.

  It was hot and strong and perfect.

  “I love this ride,” Peabody stated, cuddling her coffee.

  “Don’t get used to the coffee service. Maybe the next time it’s shy of five a.m., minus three with a windchill of you don’t fucking want to know, we’ll do it again. Otherwise, forget it.”

  Peabody only smiled, took the first glorious sip. “I love this ride,” she repeated.

  2

  Eve concluded playing a big, fat violin paid pretty well. Dorian Kuper had lived in a two-level apartment in a meticulously rehabbed building – one that had survived the Urban Wars. It stood, bright white brick and long sheets of glass gleaming, in a tony area of the Upper West Side.

  When the doorman, wearing a classic black topcoat over his livery, greeted her by rank instead of snooty insults on the bland appearance of the DLE she drove, she knew Roarke owned the building. Obviously Doorman Frank had gotten the memo.

  “How can I help you today, Lieutenant?”

  “We need access to Dorian Kuper’s apartment.”

  His round, almost cherubic face fell. “I was afraid of that. Please, come inside, out of the wind. I heard Mr. Kuper was missing. I guess you found him, and I guess it’s not good.”

  She stepped inside, into warmth and white marble veined with gray, into the strangely spicy scent of whatever the masses of bold flowers cast off from their silver urn on the central table.

  “We found him. It’s not good,” she confirmed.

  “This will crush Ms. McKensie. His mother. They were really tight. He was a nice guy, Lieutenant, I just want to say. Always had a word, you know?”

  “Do you know anyone who didn’t think he was such a nice guy?”

  “Not right off, I’m sorry. He had a lot of friends. They’d come over for parties, for music.”

  “Girlfriends, boyfriends?”

  Frank shifted on his feet.

  “Anything you can tell us,” Peabody said, adding a light touch to his arm. “Anything may help us find who killed him.”

  “I get it, but it’s hard to talk about a resident’s personal life. I’d say Mr. Kuper had both, and nothing really serious.”
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br />   “All right. Has anyone been around in the past couple weeks, asking about him?” Eve asked. “Any former friend make any trouble?”

  “Not that I know of. And when you’re on the door, you usually know.”

  “Okay, Frank, thanks. I need you to clear us up to his place.”

  “Sixth floor. Apartment six hundred. That’s the main entrance. I’ll clear the first elevator. I need to get clearance to get his pass key and code. It’ll take a minute.”

  “I’ve got a master. We’ll get in.”

  With a nod, Frank walked over to a blank granite counter, tapped and brought up a screen. “Lobby droid’s in the back. I don’t activate her this early. It’s usually quiet, so what’s the point? You’re clear, Lieutenant.”

  He cleared his throat as Eve and Peabody stepped to the elevator. “Ah, does his mom know?”

  “We’ll speak to her after we see his apartment. Like you said, it’s early. No reason to wake her up with this kind of news.”

  “It’s going to crush her. They doted on each other, you know?”

  Though she didn’t know what it was to have a mother dote on her, or to dote back, Eve nodded before she stepped into the elevator.

  Ascending to sixth floor, the computer announced as they started to rise, proving Frank as efficient as any droid.

  “Nice guy, lots of friends, loved his mother, bisexual.” Eve considered. “Not a bad rundown from a doorman in a couple minutes.”

  “He looked sad,” Peabody commented. “When the doorman looks sad, you know you’re going to be dealing with a lot of sad in an investigation.”

  “If you want happy, don’t be a murder cop. Or a cop period,” Eve decided.

  The elevator opened to a wide hallway carpeted in dignified gray with the classy touch of artwork arranged on the walls. Curved tables holding slim, clear vases of white flowers ranged between apartment doors.

  Six hundred took the west corner farthest from the elevator. Prime real estate in a prime building. Yeah, Eve thought, playing the big, fat violin brought in the bucks.

  “Full security,” she noted, engaging her recorder. “Cam, palm plate, double police locks.”