by J. D. Robb
He turned, then bent down to her ear. “Five minutes, and don’t give them any more than they already have. Next time, Dallas, wear a goddamn coat.”
She huddled in her jacket and stepped forward.
“Do you have any suspects?”
Eve didn’t sigh, but she wanted to. She hated facing the media. “We’re questioning several individuals in connection with these cases.”
“Were the victims sexually assaulted?”
“The cases are being handled as sexual homicides.”
“How are they connected? Did the victims know each other?”
“I’m not free to discuss that area of the investigation at this time.” She held up a hand to cut off the vicious barrage. “We are, however, treating the cases as connected. As Chief Tibble stated, the investigation, thus far, points to one killer.”
“Santa Claus is coming to town,” some comedian called out, and set off a wave of laughter in the crowd.
“Yeah, make a joke of it.” Temper warmed her blood and made her forget her hands were freezing. “That’s easy enough when you haven’t seen what he leaves behind. When you haven’t had to tell mothers and partners that the person they loved is dead.”
The crowd fell quiet enough that she heard the swish of copter blades overhead. “I imagine the person responsible for this misery, for these deaths, will get a big charge out of being played up in the media. Go ahead and give him what he wants. Make the murder of four people small and foolish, and turn him into a star. But inside Cop Central we know what he is. He’s pathetic, even more pathetic than you. I’ve got nothing more to say.”
She turned, ignoring the shouts, and all but bumped into Tibble.
“Inside one moment, Lieutenant.” He took her arm, steering her quickly through guards and through the reinforced doors. “Well done,” he said briefly. “And now that we’re done with that annoying spectacle, I have to play politics with the mayor. Go do your job, Dallas, and get me this son of a bitch.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And find some gloves, for Christ’s sake,” he added as he stalked away.
Eve jammed one hand in her pocket to warm it, and took out her communicator with the other. She tried Mira first, and was told the doctor was still in testing. She put in the next call to Peabody.
“Anything pop on the necklace?”
“We got a possible. Baubles and Bangles on Fifth. Their jeweler designed and made the necklace. This was a one of a kind—commissioned. They’re checking records now, but the clerk said she thought she remembered the customer coming in personally to pick it up. They’ve got security cameras.”
“Meet me there. I’m on my way.”
“Lieutenant?”
She glanced over and into the hollow eyes of Jerry Vandoren. “Jerry, what are you doing here?”
“I heard about the press conference. I wanted . . .” He lifted his hands, then helplessly let them fall. “I wanted to hear what you had to say. I listened. I want to thank you . . .”
He trailed off again, looking around as if he’d turned a corner and found himself on another planet.
“Jerry.” She took his arm, guiding him away before the reporters scented fresh meat and pounced on him. “You should go home.”
“I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I dream about her every night. Marianna’s not dead when I dream about her.” He drew in a shuddering breath. “Then I wake up, and she is. Everyone says I need grief counseling. I don’t want to be counseled out of my grief, Lieutenant Dallas. I don’t want to stop feeling what I feel for her.”
It was out of her element, she thought, this raw desperation that looked to her for an answer. But she couldn’t turn away from it. “She wouldn’t want you to go on hurting. She loved you too much for that.”
“But when I stop hurting, she’ll really be gone.” He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them. “I wanted—just to say I appreciated what you said out there. That you weren’t going to let them turn this into a joke. I know you’ll stop him.” The plea swam in his eyes. “You will stop him, won’t you?”
“Yeah. I’m going to stop him. Come on.” Gently, she led him toward a side exit. “Let’s get you a cab. Where did you say your mother lived?”
“My mother?”
“Yeah. Go see your mother, Jerry. Go stay with her for a while.”
He blinked at the sunlight when they stepped outside. “It’s almost Christmas.”
“Yeah.” She signaled to a uniform leaning against his cruiser. A better bet, she decided, than a cab. “You go spend Christmas with your family, Jerry. Marianna would want you to.”
Eve had to put Jerry Vandoren and his grief out of her mind and focus on the next step. After fighting through traffic, she parked illegally in front of the jewelry store, switched her On Duty sign to active, then bulled her way through the crowd jamming the sidewalk.
Eve imagined it was the kind of place where Roarke might breeze in, have a glitter catch his eye, and drop a few hundred thousand.
The shop was all pink and gold, like the inside of a seashell. Music, the quiet, deep sort that made her think of churches, hummed in the rarified air.
The flowers were fresh, the carpet thick, the guard at the door discreetly armed.
Because he gave her jacket and boots a sneer of disdain, she badged him. It gave her a petty pull of satisfaction to see the sneer vanish.
She breezed by him, her battered boots silent on the shell-pink carpet. A quick scan showed her a woman wrapped in miles of mink seated on a thickly padded chaise, debating over diamonds or rubies; a tall man with silvered hair with a topcoat folded neatly over his arm, perusing gold wrist units; two more guards; and a giggling blonde being treated to a shopping spree by a pouchy man old enough to be her grandfather. He obviously had more money than sense.
She tagged the security cameras, little pinhole lenses tucked in the carved molding that framed a coffered ceiling. A fluid spiral of stairs arched to the right. Or if madam was too weary from carting around pounds of gold and stones, she was welcome to use the shining brass elevator.
Only the weight of the diamond between her breasts prevented Eve from a sneer of her own. It was faintly embarrassing to know that Roarke could buy everything in the place, and the building it was housed in.
She approached a beveled glass counter where bracelets studded with colored gems were artfully draped, and sized up the clerk behind the counter. He didn’t appear particularly thrilled to see her. He was as polished as his wares, but his mouth was pinched, his eyes bored, and his voice, when he spoke, dripped with sarcasm.
“May I help you, madam?”
“Yeah, I need the manager.”
He sniffed, inclining his head so that the lights gleamed on his gilt hair. “Is there a problem?”
“That depends on how quickly you get me the manager.”
Now his mouth drew in as if something not quite fresh had landed on his tongue. “One moment. And please, don’t touch the display case. It’s just been cleaned.”
Little bastard, Eve thought mildly. She managed to put half a dozen fingerprints on the sparkling glass by the time he came back with a slim, attractive brunette.
“Good afternoon. I’m Ms. Kates, the manager. May I help you?”
“Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD.” Because the woman’s smile was a great deal warmer than her clerk’s, Eve held her badge at counter level and blocked it from the clientele with her back. “My aide called in earlier regarding a necklace.”
“Yes, I spoke with her. Shall we talk in my office?”
“Fine.” She glanced around as Peabody and McNab came in. Saying nothing, she signaled them to follow.
“I remember the necklace distinctly,” Kates began as she led them into a small, feminine office. She gestured toward two high-backed chairs before taking a seat behind a desk. “My husband designed it, on commission. I haven’t been able to reach him, I’m sorry, but I believe I can give you any information you need.”
“You have the paperwork on it?”
“I do. I looked up the disc and printed out a hard copy for you.” Efficiently, she opened a file, checked the contents, then passed it to Eve. “The necklace was done in fourteen-carat gold, interlinked chain, choker length, with four stylized birds. A charming piece.”
It hadn’t looked so charming, Eve mused, wrapped around Holloway’s bruised neck.
“Nicholas Claus,” she murmured, reading the customer’s name. She supposed he’d thought of it as irony. “Did you get ID?”
“It wasn’t necessary. The customer paid in cash, a twenty percent deposit on order, the remainder on completion.”
Kates folded her hands. “I recognize you, Lieutenant. Am I to assume this necklace is part of a murder investigation?”
“You can assume that. This Claus, he came in personally?”
“Yes, three times that I recall.” Kates lifted her folded hands, tapped her fingers against her mouth, then lowered them again. “I spoke to him myself on his first visit. About average height, I suppose, perhaps a little taller. Slender, but not thin. Graceful,” she said after a moment’s thought. “Very well presented. Dark hair, rather long, with silver streaks. I remember him as very elegant, very polite, and very specific about his needs.”
“Give me his voice.”
“His voice?” Kates blinked a moment. “I . . . Cultured, I’d say. Faintly accented. European, I suppose. Quiet. I’m sure I’d recognize it again. I remember taking a call from him and knowing who it was the minute he spoke.”
“He called in?”
“Once or twice, I think, to check on the progress of the necklace.”
“I’m going to need your security discs, and your ’link logs.”
“I’ll get them for you.” She got immediately to her feet. “It may take a little time.”
“McNab, give Ms. Kates a hand with that.”
“Sir.”
“He had to know we’d check,” Eve said to Peabody when they were alone. “He left the necklace at the scene, a one of a kind he commissioned himself. He had to know we’d track it here.”
“Maybe he didn’t think we’d move this fast, or that Kates would have such a good memory.”
“No.” Dissatisfied, Eve rose. “He knew. This is just where he wants us to be. It’s another show. He played a role here, and he doesn’t look like the man we’re going to see on those discs any more than he looks like Santa Claus.”
She paced to the door, back again. “Different props, different costume, different stage, but it’s just his show. He covered his ass, Peabody, but he’s not as smart as he thinks he is. The voice prints from the ’link logs are going to nail him.”
chapter sixteen
“Jesus, Dallas.” Feeney shrugged the shoulder she was leaning over. “Stop breathing down my neck.”
“Sorry.” She leaned back one stingy inch. “How long does it take to program the print into this thing?”
“Twice as long as it would if you weren’t nagging on me.”
“Okay, okay.” She backed off, stalked to the window of the conference room. “It’s sleeting,” she said more to herself than him. “Traffic’s going to be ugly later.”
“Traffic’s always ugly this time of year. Too many damn tourists. I tried to do a little shopping last night. Wife wants this sweater thing. People are like wolves on a dead deer out there. I’m not going back.”
“Video shopping’s easier.”
“Yeah, but the fucking circuits are jammed. Everybody and his cousin’s on trying to scoop up bargains. I don’t come up with a dozen pretty boxes under the tree for her, I’m bunking in the den till spring.”
“A dozen?” Mildly horrified, she swung back around. “You have to buy her more than one?”
“Man, Dallas, are you green in the marriage area.” He snorted, working manually on the programming. “One present don’t mean dick. Quantity, pal. Think quantity.”
“Great, terrific. I’m sunk.”
“You got a couple of days left. And here we are.”
Her shopping dilemma cleared from her mind as she rushed back. “Run it.”
“I’m getting to it. Here’s our man on the ’link.”
Is Mr. or Mrs. Kates available?
“I cut out the other voices. That’s your pauses,” Feeney explained.
Good morning, Ms. Kates. This is Nicholas Claus. I wondered how the work on my necklace is progressing.
“I can run the rest, but that’s enough for a match.”
“The accent’s vague,” Eve mused. “He doesn’t put a lot on it. That’s smart. You got Rudy in there?”
“Coming up. This is from the interview tape. Just him.”
We advise all our clients to meet their matches in a public place. Any who agreed to meet him privately subsequent to that were making their own decision.
“Now we got prints. This baby computes everything: pitch, inflection, cadence, tonal quality. Don’t matter a damn if you disguise your voice. It’s as reliable as fingerprints and DNA. You can’t fake it. Shift to Subject A, graft style, on screen and on audio.”
Working . . .
Eve listened to the ’link call, watched the lines of color skim and jump along the screen. “Split the screen,” she told him, “put the interview blurb up under that one.”
“Just hold on.” Feeney ordered the function, then pursed his lips. “Got a problem here.”
“What? What’s wrong with it?”
“Meld prints on screen,” he ordered, then sighed as the points and valleys clashed. “They don’t match, Dallas. They aren’t even close. You got two different voices here.”
“Shit.” She tunneled her fingers through her hair. Because she could see it for herself, her stomach started to burn. “Let me think. Okay, what if he used a distorter on his end of the ’link?”
“He could mess it up a little, but I’d still get match points. Best I can do is run a scan, search for any electronic masking, clean it out if I find it. But I’ve seen enough of these to know when I’m looking at two different guys.”
He sighed and sent her one of his mournful looks. “Sorry, Dallas. This sets things back a ways.”
“Yeah.” She rubbed her eyes. “Run the scan anyway, will you, Feeney? How about the feature-by-feature from the videos?”
“It’s coming—coming slow. I can run Rudy’s ear shape, eye shape against it.”
“Let’s go that route, too. I’m going to check with Mira, see if the profile’s done.”
To save herself time, Eve called Mira’s office. The doctor was gone for the day, but a preliminary report had been transmitted to Eve’s office ’link. She headed over, trying to pick apart the voice prints as she went.
The guy was smart, she mused. Maybe he’d figured on a voice print analysis. Anticipated it and found a way around it. What if he’d had someone else call the jeweler’s?
And that was reaching, she admitted. But it wasn’t impossible.
She heard what she would have sworn was a giggle, and stepped inside her office to see Peabody chatting amiably with Charles Monroe.
“Peabody?”
“Sir.” Peabody sprang instantly to her feet and to attention. “Charles, ah, Mr. Monroe has some . . . wanted to . . .”
“Restrain your hormones, Officer. Charles?”
“Dallas.” He smiled, rising from his seat on the arm of her one pathetic chair. “Your aide kept me company, charmingly, while I waited for you.”
“I bet. What’s the deal?”
“It might be nothing, but—” He shrugged. “One of the women from my match list got in touch a couple of hours ago. It seems her date for a jaunt upstate this weekend hit a snag. She thought I might like to substitute, though we didn’t really connect before.”
“That’s fascinating, Charles.” Impatient to get on with her work, Eve dropped into a chair. “But I don’t feel qualified to give you advice on your social life.”
“I can handle tha
t on my own.” As if to prove it, he winked at Peabody and had her going rosy pink with pleasure. “I was toying with the idea of taking her up on it, but knowing how things can go, I chatted her up awhile to get a feel for it.”
“Is there a point to this?”
He leaned forward. “I like my moment in the sun, Lieutenant Sugar.” Both of them ignored Peabody’s gasping snort at the term. “She started unloading. She’d had a big bustup with the guy she’d been seeing. Dumped all the crap on me. She caught him cheating on her with some redhead. Then she tells me how he thought he could make up for it by having Santa bring her a present last night.”
Eve sat up slowly, and now her attention focused in. “Keep going.”
“I thought that would do it.” With satisfaction, Charles leaned back. “She says the doorbell rings about ten last night, and when she looks out there’s Santa with a big silver box.” He shook his head. “I have to tell you, with what I knew, my heart just about stopped. But she’s rambling on about how she wouldn’t give the cheating bastard the satisfaction of opening the door. She didn’t want his pitiful makeup gift.”
“She didn’t let him in,” Eve murmured.
“And I figure that was why she was alive to call me and bitch.”
“You happen to know what she does for a living?”
“She’s a dancer. Ballet.”
“Yeah, that works,” Eve murmured. “I need a name and address. Peabody?”
“Ready.”
“Cheryl Zapatta, she’s on West Twenty-eighth. That’s all I’ve got.”
“We’ll find her.”
“Look, I don’t know if I did the right thing, but I told her. Your one-on-one with Nadine Furst had just run, so I figured it was out. I told her to turn on her screen, and I filled her in.” He blew out a breath. “She panicked. Big time. Said she was getting out. I don’t know if you’re going to find her for a while.”
“If she’s scrambled, we can get an order to enter and search. You did the right thing, Charles,” Eve said after a moment. “If she hadn’t heard the report, she might have had a change of heart and opened the door the next time. I appreciate you coming in.”
