Time of Death

by Robb, J. D.

  “I’m putting a watch on them,” Eve began, then shrugged. “It is better.” She engaged the ’link to update her men on the change. “Let’s go home and start ‘checking into.’”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Summerset, Roarke’s man about everything, wasn’t lurking in the grand foyer when Eve walked in. She spied the fat cat, Galahad, perched on the newel post like a furry gargoyle. He blinked his bicolored eyes twice, then leaped down with a thud to saunter over and rub against her legs.

  “Where’s Mr. Macabre?” Eve asked as she scratched the cat between the ears.

  “Stop.” Roarke didn’t bother to sigh. The pinching and poking between his wife and his surrogate father were not likely to end anytime soon. “Summerset’s setting things up in my private office. We need to use the unregistered equipment,” he continued when she frowned. “Any serious digging on your victim is going to send up flags to certain parties. And there’s more.”

  He took her hand to lead her up the steps.

  “If I don’t dig into the vic through proper channels, it’s going to look very strange.”

  “You have Peabody on that,” he reminded her. “And you can do some of your own, for form. But you won’t find what you’re after through legitimate channels. Set up your runs, on Buckley, the Grogans, the possible causes of this optic smudge. All the things you’d routinely do. Then come up and meet me.”

  He lifted her hand to kiss her fingers. “And we’ll do the real excavating. She’s a freelance spy and assassin, Eve, who works for the highest bidder or on a whim. That work would definitely include certain areas of the U.S. government. You won’t get far your way.”

  “What’s the ‘more’?” She hated the cloak-and-dagger crap. “You said there’s more?”

  But he shook his head. “Start your runs. We’ll go over what I’ve heard, know, suspect.”

  Since there was no point in wasting time, Eve walked into her home office to set up the multiple runs and searches. She sent an e-mail to Dr. Mira, the NYPSD’s top profiler and psychiatrist, to ask about the validity of mass hypnosis. It made her feel foolish, but she wanted a solid opinion from a source she respected.

  Before compiling and updating her notes, she checked in with Peabody, and read over all the initial lab and sweepers’ reports. No witnesses had come forward to claim they’d seen anything unusual, including any individual transporting a dead body. Which was too bad, she mused. Also in the too-bad department was the report that the pipes and vents within the crime scene were just too damn small to have served as an escape route.

  Solid walls, no windows, one door, she decided. And that meant, however improbably, both killer and victim had exited through the door.

  He hadn’t stepped into Peabody’s vortex, hadn’t employed an alien transporter beam or flourished a magic wand. He’d used the damn door. She just had to figure out how.

  She made her way to Roarke’s private office, used the palm pad and voice recognition to enter. He sat behind the U-shaped console with the jewel-toned buttons and controls winking over the slick black surface. The privacy screens shielded the windows and let the evening sunlight filter into the room in a pale gold wash. A small table stood by those windows, set with silver domed plates, an open bottle of wine, the sparkle of crystal.

  His idea of a working dinner, she mused.

  He’d already tied his hair back—serious work mode—and commanded keyboard and touch screens with rapid movements.

  “What are you hacking into?” she asked.

  “Various agencies. CIA, Homeland Security, Interpol, MI5, Global, EuroCom, and that sort.”

  “Is that all?” She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “I was going to stick with coffee, but now I think I need a drink.”

  “Pour me one. And after I get these to auto-search, I’ll tell you a story over dinner.”

  She poured two, pleased the wine was red, which lowered the chances of something healthy like fish with steamed vegetables on the plates. She peeked under the silver cover and was instantly cheered. “Hey, lasagna!” Then, on closer study. “What’s this green stuff in there?”

  “Good for you.”

  “Why is good for you mostly green? Why can’t they make it taste like candy or at least pizza?”

  “I’m going to get my R and D right on that. And we’re going to speak of R and D, as it happens. There now.” He sat back, nodded at his screens. “We’ll see what we see.” He rose, crossed to her. Taking up his glass, he tapped it to hers, then smiled. “I think I’ll have another of these,” he decided, and cupped her chin before taking her mouth with his.

  “No distracting with wine and lip-locks,” she ordered. “I want to get to the bottom of this. The whole thing is . . . irritating.”

  “I imagine it is, to someone of your logical bent.” He gestured for her to sit, then settled across from her. “Your victim,” he began, “was a dangerous woman. Not in an admirable way. Not like you, for instance. She fought for nothing, stood for nothing, save her own gain.”

  “You said you didn’t really know her.”

  “This is what I know of her. It’s not the first time I’ve looked into her, which will make tonight’s work a bit easier on that score. Information on her is, naturally, sketchy, but I believe she was born in Albania, the result of a liaison between her American mother and an unknown father. Her mother served in the U.S. Diplomatic Corps. She traveled with her mother extensively, saw and learned quite a bit of the world. It seems she was recruited, at a young age, by a covert group, World Intelligence Network.”

  “WIN?”

  “Which was exactly their goal. To win data, funds, territories, political positions—however it was most expedient. They only lasted a decade. But in that decade, they trained her, and as she apparently showed considerable ability and no particular conscience, used her in their Black Moon sector.”

  “Wet work.”

  “Yes.” He broke a hunk of bread in two, passed her a share. “Somewhere along the line, she opted to freelance. It’s more lucrative, and she’d have seen WIN was fragmenting. She tends to take high-dollar jobs, private or government. As I said, I had a brush with her several years ago. I believe, two years after that, she killed three of my people in an attempt to acquire the data and research to new fusion fuel we had under development.”

  Eve ate slowly. “Did she target you? Have you been a target?”

  “No. It’s generally believed I’m more useful alive than dead, even to competitors or . . . interested parties. I’m able to fund the R and D, the science, the manufacturing, and others may hope to steal it. Nothing to steal if you cut off the head.”

  “That’s a comfort.”

  He reached across for her hand. “I watch out for myself, Lieutenant. Now, depending on the source, your victim is given credit, so to speak, for anywhere from fifty to two hundred and fifty deaths. Some were in the game, some were just in the way.”

  “You couldn’t find her.” Eve watched him as she ate. “You thought she killed three of your people, so you’d have tried.”

  “No, I couldn’t find her. She went under, considerably under. I thought she might be dead, having failed to secure what she was hired for.” He studied the wine in his glass. “Apparently I was wrong.”

  “Until now. It’s unlikely she was on that ferry to sightsee.”

  “Very. It might’ve been a meet or a target, but odds are it was business.”

  “Double cross. But someone like this, experienced, how does she get caught off guard and taken out? Someone she knew? Someone she trusted or underestimated maybe? Another spook? Another assassin?” She felt the frustration rising again, like flood water behind a dam. “Why so freaking public?”

  “I couldn’t begin to guess. Tell me what you think about this smudge, this flash of light.”

  She blew out a breath. “I left a message for Mira, asking her about the possibility of mass hypnosis. And that sounds crazy when I hear myself say it out loud. Not as c
razy as vortexes or invisibility cloaks, but in that mix of nuts. Still, we’ve dealt with mind manipulation before. The tiny burn in the cortex found in autopsy after suicides, manipulated by your pal Reeanna Ott.”

  “Hardly my pal, as it turned out.” But he nodded to show they were on the same page. “Manipulation, in that case, done through audio.”

  “So, a possible manipulation done optically,” Eve finished. “One that affects memory. But it has to do more. I can almost swallow people wouldn’t remember seeing someone haul out a dead body, but I have to figure they wouldn’t just let him by in the first place. And Carolee, whether she was conscious or unconscious, her kid wouldn’t have just stood where he was, would he, if he saw her come out? So, maybe we’re dealing with a device that can manipulate behavior, or sight, and memory? That’s a big jump. Mass hypnosis suddenly doesn’t sound so crazy.”

  “There have been rumors, underground and through the tech world, of a device in development. A kind of stunner.”

  “Ah. Got one of those.” Eve tapped the weapon at her side she’d yet to take off.

  “Not your conventional stunner, but one that renders the target incapacitated through an optical signal rather than the nervous system. It sends a signal, through light, that shuts down certain basic functions. Essentially, in a theory not that far from your mass hypnosis, it puts the target into a kind of trance. Hocus-pocus.” He lifted his wineglass in half salute. “It’s often referred to as that, which made me think of it when you used the term. The rumors are largely dismissed, but not entirely.”

  “We’re talking dozens of people,” Eve argued. “Potentially hundreds.”

  “A nd the idea this device exists, and has a possibility for that sort of range, is . . . fascinating. And used as a weapon? Devastating.”

  Eve pushed up from the table to pace. “I hate this kind of shit. Why can’t it just be regular bad guy crap? You’ve got money, I want it, I kill you. You’ve been screwing my wife, it pisses me off, I cut out your heart. No, I’ve got to worry about disappearing bodies and weapons designed to turn the lights out on masses of people. Crap.”

  “It’s an ever-changing world,” Roarke said lightly.

  She snorted. “How much credence do you and your R and D people put into this device?”

  “Enough to be working on something similar—and a counterdevice. Though both are still in the theoretical stages. I’m getting the data for you,” he added, gesturing toward the console.

  She sat again, drummed her fingers on the table. “Okay, say this device exists, and was used today. Say its existence speaks to why Buckley was on that ferry, either with the device in her possession or with the hopes to make that so. It still doesn’t explain why she was murdered in the way she was, or why her body was taken off the ferry. Stealing or obtaining the device, even killing Buckley to get it, that’s business. Basically exsanguinating her and taking what’s left? That’s personal.”

  “I wouldn’t argue, but business and personal often overlap.”

  “Okay.” She lifted her hands and swiped them in the air as if clearing a board. “Why remove the body? Maybe to prove the hit, if it’s hired. Maybe because you’re a sick fuck. Or maybe to buy time. I like that one because it’s weirdly logical. It stalls the identification process. We have to depend on a DNA search and match. And then, we get what appears to be an innocuous vic, corn-fed Iowa-born female consultant. Maybe, given some time, we’d dig under that, have some questions. But the bigger puzzler would remain, at least initially, how rather than who, since we had the who.”

  “But, because I wanted to spend a bit more time with my wife, I happened to be there when she was identified.”

  “Yeah. You recognized her, and that’s a variable the killer couldn’t have factored in.”

  “Logical enough,” Roarke agreed. “But buy time for what?”

  “To get away, to deliver the device and/or the body. To destroy the body, certainly to get the hell away from the scene. This spy stuff doesn’t work like the job. It’s convoluted, covered with gray areas and underlying motivations. But when you wipe away all of that, you’ve still got a killer, a victim, a motive. We cross off random, because no possible way. It wasn’t impulse.”

  “Because?” He knew the answer, or thought he did, but he loved watching her work.

  “The sign on the door, the getaway. It was vicious—all that spatter. A pro wouldn’t have wasted time with that. Cut the throat, skewer the heart, hit the big artery in the thigh. Pick one and move on. But blood doesn’t lie, and the spatter clearly says this was slice, hack, rip.”

  The light softened as they spoke, and he wondered how many couples might sit in the evening light over a meal and talk of blood spatter and exsanguination.

  Precious few, he supposed.

  “Are you sure none of the blood was the killer’s?”

  She nodded. It was a good question, she thought, and only one of the reasons she liked bouncing a case around with him. “Reports just in, taking samples of every area of spatter, and several from the pool, confirm it all belonged to Buckley.”

  “Then she was caught seriously off guard.”

  “I’ll say. So, specific target, specific location and time, personal and professional connections. Add one more element, and I think it matters. Whoever killed Buckley didn’t kill Carolee Grogan when it would’ve been easier, more expedient and even to his or her advantage to do so.”

  “Leaving her body behind. More confusion,” Roarke agreed. “A longer identification time on the blood pool. A killer with a heart?”

  She tossed back the rest of her wine. “It’s more that a lot of people with a heart kill.”

  “My cynical darling.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Let’s see what we’ve got so far.” She jerked a thumb toward the console.

  Roarke walked back behind the command center, sat. Then, smiling at Eve, patted his knee.

  “Please.”

  “And thank you,” he said, grabbing her and tugging her down. “There now, this is cozy.”

  “It’s murder.”

  “Yes, yes, on a daily basis. Now, see here, we’re through several levels on HSO, but then, I’ve been through that door before.” He brushed his lips over her cheek. “And making some progress on the others. They’ll have done some code shifting and housekeeping since my last visits, but see there, we’re rerouting with them.”

  “I see a bunch of gibberish, numbers and symbols flashing by.”

  “Exactly. Let’s see if we can nudge it along.” He reached around her, began tapping keys. “There are all sorts of tricks,” he continued as the codes zipped by on the screens. “Realignments, firewalls, fail-safes, trapdoors and backdoors. But we keep updating along with them.”

  “Why? Seriously, why do you need access to this stuff?”

  “Everyone needs a hobby. What we want here are eyes-only personnel files, their black ops consultants. And verification if the device rumored to exist does indeed exist. Eyes-only again, but the trick would be to find where it might be tucked and by whom. Ah well, bugger it. Let’s try this way.”

  Assuming from the oath and his increased tapping that he’d hit a snag, Eve wiggled away. “I’m getting coffee, and I’m going to run some data of my own.”

  When his answer was a grunt, she knew playtime was over. It was time for serious work.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Using an auxiliary computer, Eve initiated her own search for any mention of a device such as Roarke had described. She found several articles on medical sites detailing the memory suppressive drugs and tools used during routine surgeries, others edging toward hypnotherapy in both medical studies and gaming.

  She also found a scattering of fringe blogs raging about government mind control, enslaving of the masses and the ever-popular doomsday warnings. A nation of human droids, forced experimentation, personality theft and human breeding farms were on their top-ten list of predicted abominations. This led her to others claim
ing to have been abducted by aliens in league with the shadow forces of government.

  “I’m surprised the government has time to, you know, govern, when they’re so busy working with aliens and their anal probes or pursuing their mission to turn the global population into mindless sex droids.”

  “Hmm,” Roarke said, “there’s government, then there’s government.”

  She glanced over to where he sat, fingers flying, eyes intent. “You don’t actually believe this crap? Alien invasions, secret bunkers in Antarctica for experimentation on human guinea pigs.”

  He flicked his glance up. “Icove.”

  “That was . . . Okay.” Hard to argue when they’d both nearly been killed when dismantling a subversive and illegal human cloning organization. “But aliens?”

  “It’s a big universe. You should get out in it more often.”

  “I like one planet just fine.”

  “In any case, I have your victim. No, don’t get up.” He waved her back. “I’ll put it on-screen. Data, wall screen one. This is from HSO, but the data matches what I’ve got from the other sources.”

  “Dana Buckley,” Eve read. “With her three most common aliases. Same age as her current ID. But with the biographical data you had.”

  “Now it lists her assets. The languages she spoke, her e-skill level, the weaponry she was cleared for. Included in her dossier is this list.” He scrolled down. “Names, nationalities, ranks if applicable, dates.”

  “Her hit list,” Eve mumbled. “They know or believe she’s killed these people, but they let her walk around.”

  “Undoubtedly she killed some of those people for these agencies. They let her walk around until now because she’s useful to them.”

  Eve dealt with murder every day, yet this offended and disturbed her on some core level she wasn’t sure she could articulate.

  “That’s not how it’s supposed to be. You can’t just kill or order someone’s death because it’s expedient. We’ve managed to virtually outlaw torture and executions; if a cop terminates in the line, he has to go through testing to ensure it was ultimate force that was necessary. But there are still people, supposedly on our side, who would use someone like her to do their dirty work.”