by J. D. Robb
“Good choice.”
No palm plate, no security cam, Eve noted, on 4-C. Just two dead bolts and a manual peep.
She banged her fist on the door.
“McQueen’s partners always kept their own places,” she told Peabody. “Usually worked full- or part-time. We only have information from the vics on the last. She helped him lure, abduct, restrain. She helped him clean them up if he decided to use one he’d had for a while. Then she liked to watch.”
Peabody’s face went cold. “Which makes her as much of a monster as him.”
“Yeah, it does.” Eve banged again.
A door opened across the hall. “Shut the fuck up! People are trying to sleep.”
Eve studied the man glaring at her. He stood buck-naked but for a nipple ring and a tat of a coiled snake. She held up her badge. “I’d call that indecent exposure, but it barely qualifies. Deb Bracken.”
“Fuck. She’s in there. She sleeps like the dead.” He slammed the door.
Eve banged again, kept on banging until she heard somebody cursing from inside 4-C. A minute later she saw the bleary eye through the peep. “What the hell do you want?”
Once again, Eve held up her badge. “Open up.”
“Goddamn it.” The peep flipped closed, bolts and locks rattled open. “What the hell? I’m trying to sleep here.”
From the looks of her, she’d been doing a good job of it. Her hair, a short, sleep-crazed mess of brass and black, stuck up everywhere around a thin, slack face. She’d neglected to remove her enhancers so her eyes and lips were smeared with what was left of them.
She wore a short black robe, carelessly looped, that showed good legs and breasts too perky not to have been paid for.
“Isaac McQueen.”
“Who?”
“If you bullshit me, Deb, we’ll have this little talk downtown.”
“Christ sake, you beat on my door, wake me up, hassle me. What the hell is this?”
“Isaac McQueen,” Eve repeated.
“I heard you. Jesus.” She gave Eve a hard, smeary-eyed scowl. “I need a hit.” And turned, shuffled away.
Eyebrows cocked, Eve stepped in, watched Bracken continue to shuffle to the far corner of the messy living area where the kitchen consisted of a bucket-sized sink, a mini-friggie, and a shoe box–sized AutoChef. When she stabbed at the AutoChef it made a harsh, grinding hum, then a clunk.
She pulled out a mug, downed the contents like medicine. From the smell, Eve identified cheap coffee substitute. She waited while Bracken programmed a second mug, took a slug.
“Isaac’s in the joint.”
“Not anymore.”
“No shit.” The first glimmer of interest passed over her face. “How’d he get out?”
“Sliced up a medical and took his ID.”
“He killed somebody?” Bracken’s scowl deepened. “That’s bullshit.”
“It’s not the first time.”
“I don’t believe that.” She glugged down more coffee, shook her head. “He wasn’t in for murder, so he didn’t do murder. He’s maybe a prick, but he ain’t no killer.”
“Tell that to the medical’s widow and kid. Has he been by to see you, Deb?”
“Shit no. I’m old news to him.” She frowned into her coffee. “Prick.”
“You visited him in The Tombs.”
“Yeah, so what? It’s not against the law. Some cop framed him, set him up so she could get some flash. So he liked kiddie porn. Everybody’s got their quirks, right? Anyway, I just went in a couple times to talk to him, give him some company.”
“Eleven visits is more than a couple,” Peabody pointed out.
“What’s the difference? I haven’t seen him in, like, two years. He gave me the boot. Get that? He’s in the joint and he gives me the boot. Prick.”
“How did you and McQueen get acquainted?” Eve asked her.
“What’s it to you?”
At Eve’s nod, Peabody took a file from her bag, handed it to Eve. She walked it over, set it on the tiny, crowded counter. Opened it. “Take a look. This is what he kept in a locked room in his apartment twelve years ago.”
Bracken’s face paled, but she shook her head again. “It was a frame-up.”
“I was in that room. I found those girls.”
“You’re the one who set him up?”
“I didn’t set him up, but I took him down. And I will again. Here’s what he did yesterday, so I’d know he was back in business.” She showed her the evidence photo of Julie Kopeski. “She and her cohab live in that apartment now. McQueen broke in. He beat the crap out of her, raped her. I wonder, Deb, if he’ll decide to look you up, renew your acquaintance.”
“I wanna sit down.”
“Go ahead.”
She made her way through the clutter, dropped into a chair. “This isn’t bullshit?”
“Do you want to see a picture of the medical he cut up?”
“No. Christ no. I liked the guy. I mean I really liked him. He talked to me like I was special, said real sweet things. And he’s nice looking, you know? He just seemed so sad, and like he needed somebody to talk to, to care about him. It really hurt my feelings when he said he didn’t want to see me anymore. And he took me off the visitor’s list, wouldn’t answer my messages.”
“You didn’t start visiting him out of the goodness of your heart.”
“See I was in this program. I had some issues with . . . substances. It was like community service, supposed to be good for me. And okay, I’m clean now. You can do a test. I’ve been clean for almost nine months. But maybe back then I still had issues, and I got a hundred for the visits. I did it for the money at first, but then I really liked the prick. You know?”
“Who made the arrangements?”
“I don’t like to get him in trouble.”
“Deb, McQueen had a steady stream of women visiting him. Women like you,” Eve added, “with issues. McQueen liked to work with a partner. A woman with issues.”
Spots of color bloomed on her cheeks as her mouth dropped open. “Fuck me! I’d never do shit to a kid—to anybody. Okay, maybe when I had issues I skimmed a few pockets, ran a few games, but that was part of the issue. I never hurt anybody. I wouldn’t have helped him do anything to a kid. Christ sake.”
“Which is probably why he gave you the boot. Who set you up?”
“Stib. That son of a bitch. I’ll kill him. I don’t mean for real,” she said quickly.
“Randall Stibble?”
“Yeah, yeah.” She shoved at the mess of her two-toned hair. “He headed up the program, was like the counselor, and he did that stuff for inmates. I got messed up when Isaac cut me off, and I dropped out of the program, got sort of deeper into the issues awhile. I’m clean now. Swear to God.”
“I believe you. Did he ever talk to you about his plans?”
“Well, sometimes he talked about finding a way out, and when he did how he’d set the record straight with the cop who set him up. I guess that’s you.”
“Did you ever smuggle anything in to him?”
“Look, look, I’m clean. Nine months clean, and I got a regular job. It may not seem like much to you, but I haven’t been clean, not really, since I was fifteen.”
“I’m not going to hassle you about it,” Eve told her. “But”—she tapped Julie’s photo again—“I need to know.”
“Okay, well, maybe, sometimes, I’d pass stuff to Stib, or to this guard—”
“Lovett?”
“If you already know why ask me?”
“What stuff?”
“Well, maybe, sometimes, some kiddie porn. He had a weakness, who was I to judge?”
“Is that all?”
“Maybe electronic stuff.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know—hand to God—I don’t know much about that shit. He’d give me lists, and I’d go get it. Even paid for it mostly. Prick! He said how electronics was a hobby, and they wouldn’t let him have the stuff he wan
ted inside. I mean, what was the harm? He was so nice. He called me baby doll. Nobody ever called me baby doll. And he sent me flowers. Twice.”
“A real romantic.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I thought.” Slumping, she sulked into her coffee. “Then he gave me the boot, and now you’re saying he really did that to those kids. Maybe I should’ve known it, but I had those issues back then. You see things different when you’re clean.”
“If McQueen contacts you, contact me. If he comes to the door, don’t let him in. Alert nine-one-one and contact me.”
“You bet your ass I will.” She took Eve’s card.
“Do yourself a favor. Don’t contact Stibble.”
“I got zip to say to that son of a bitch. Jesus, I really liked the guy. Sick fuck.”
“Your take?” Eve asked Peabody as they headed back to the car.
“Same as yours. She was telling it straight. I don’t think McQueen’s given her a thought in the last two years. I can’t see him paying her a visit.”
“No, but the thought he might will have her telling us anything else she thinks of, and it confirmed Stibble as the liaison.”
“And we’ve got a lot more than zip to say to that son of a bitch.”
“Bet your ass.”
5
They found Stibble in a shoe-box storefront he used for addiction counseling. He looked, Eve decided, even more like a ferret in person than in his ID documents. The short, curly beard he sported didn’t do anything to soften his pointy chin, and the rosetinted shades on his short hook of a nose only added an element of silly.
Those, the skinny braid down the back of his white, hooded tunic, and the pair of leather bracelets around his bony ankles combined to fall somewhere between affected Free-Ager and urban monk.
Which, she supposed, was what he’d aimed for.
He sat with three people on the floor in a circle. Some sort of pyramid-shaped paperweight stood in the center. Harps and gongs trilled and bonged.
He paused, beamed a welcoming smile at Eve and Peabody.
“Welcome! We’ve begun our visualization exercise. Please, join us. Share your first name if you feel comfortable doing so.”
“That would be Lieutenant,” Eve said, and took out her badge. “And you can visualize taking a trip down to Cop Central.”
“Is there a problem?”
“Isaac McQueen’s a big one. You arranging his auditions for a new partner while collecting a fee from the State’s another big one for you.”
Stibble folded his hands at his waist. “It sounds as if you have inaccurate information. We’ll need to straighten this out. I have another forty minutes in this session, so if you’d come back—”
“Would you like to stand up voluntarily?” Eve asked pleasantly, “or would you like me to help you? Class is dismissed,” she said to the trio on the floor.
“Hey, I paid for the hour.”
She studied the man who’d objected, the scruff of beard, the exhausted eyes.
“What’s the damage?”
“Charge is seventy-five. Special introductory fee.”
“Buddy, you’re so getting hosed. Peabody, give this gentleman the address for the closest Get Straight location. It’s free,” she said to the man. “They don’t make you sit on the floor or look at pyramids. And they serve halfway decent coffee and cookies.”
“I really object to you insinuating I—”
“Button it,” she advised Stibble. “I apologize for the inconvenience,” she told everyone else. “Your counselor’s required elsewhere.”
“I’m happy to reschedule.” As his group filed out, Stibble hurried after them. “Please don’t let this minor problem cause you to stumble on your journey to health and well-being!”
“Close it up, Stibble.”
“I have other patients due in—”
“His rights, Peabody.”
“Wait, wait!” He waved his hands in the air, danced on his toes, did a couple of agitated circles while Peabody recited the Revised Miranda.
“Do you understand your rights and obligations, Mr. Stibble?”
“You can’t arrest me! I haven’t done anything.”
“Answer the question,” Eve ordered.
“Yes, I understand my rights, but I don’t understand what this is all about. Isaac McQueen attended a number of my sessions. I’ve conducted them at the prison for years. I know he’s escaped, and that’s terrible. But it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“Deb Bracken. Ring a bell?”
“I-I—I’m not sure.”
“She didn’t have any problem remembering you, or the hundred dollars a visit you gave her after she agreed to meet McQueen. I’ve got a whole list of names, and I bet every one of them points a finger at you.”
“Human contact and talk therapy are essential tools in rehabilitation counseling. It’s not illegal.”
“Taking a bribe from an inmate to set him up with women is. You didn’t shell out a hundred out of compassion and generosity, Stibble. How did McQueen pay you?”
“That’s ridiculous.” Behind the rose-colored glasses his eyes jittered with panic. “I’m afraid Ms. Bracken was under the influence of her addiction at the time. She’s misremembering, that’s all.”
“I’m about to charge you with accessory in the forced imprisonment of two people, the assault and rape of one of them.”
“You can’t possibly be serious.” Panic morphed into fear as he backed up several steps. “I’ve never laid a hand on another human being in my life.”
“McQueen has. You’ve been aiding and abetting him for years.”
“This is a big misunderstanding. I feel very upset to be threatened in this way. I think we should all take several deep, cleansing breaths.”
“Cuff him, Peabody.”
“Now wait, just wait.” He waved his hands around again. “I did arrange for a few women to visit Isaac. For therapeutic purposes, and with full approval. Naturally, they—the women—needed to be compensated for their time. Rehabilitation requires many tools.”
“Cut the bullshit. How much did he pay you?”
“A small fee. Barely worth mentioning. Just to cover my own expenses.”
“A thousand a pop’s a lot of expenses. We found your account, Stibble.”
“Donation.” It squeaked out of him. “He donated to my center. It’s perfectly legal.”
“How did you find the women? They’re not all local.”
“I, ah, I’ve counseled many troubled people.”
“Who did he pick, out of those troubled people, to work with him?”
His eyes darted left and right, and Eve concluded she’d barely have to flex her fingers to squeeze the juice out of him.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do. I see it all over you.” She moved forward just enough to infringe on his space, kept her face hard, her voice flat and grim. “You knew exactly what he was up to, and you didn’t give a shit as long as you collected your fee. He settled on one. I want a name.”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
Eve moved fast, had him against the wall, arms behind his back. She slapped restraints on him.
“No! What are you doing? You can’t! I’m cooperating.”
“Not by my gauge. You’re under arrest for taking a bribe while in the employ of the State of New York, for aiding and abetting a convicted felon, for accessory to that felon’s escape, for murder, for—”
“Murder!”
“Nathan Rigby. McQueen slit his throat in the escape, and you’re going down for it.”
“I didn’t know. How could I know?”
“Give me a name.” Eve perp-walked him to the door. “I want his partner.”
“Sister Suzan! It’s Sister Suzan. Let me go.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I swear to God.”
She paused, just inside the door, slightly loosened
her grip. “How do you know he picked her?”
“I took messages in and out for them, after she told me he wanted to stop the visits. Memo cubes and discs. I don’t know what was on them. He’d tell me where to send hers, different mail drops. That’s all I know.”
“Oh, I doubt it, but it’s a start.”
She muscled him out the door.
“I cooperated. You can’t arrest me for anything.”
“Watch me.”
Eve planned to move him through processing, let him sweat, then hit him again. He had more to give, and she had little doubt he’d give it. While she worked him, Peabody could do a deeper search on and for Sister Suzan Devon.
But as she pulled into the garage at Central her communicator signaled.
“Dallas.”
“You’re to report to Commander Whitney’s office immediately, Lieutenant.”
“On my way.”
“Do you think something broke?” Peabody wondered.
“I’ll find out when I get up there. Can you handle this asshole?”
Peabody glanced back at Stibble, who’d sobbed the entire way in. “I think I can manage him.”
“Pass him off, then have him put in a box until I get there.”
He sobbed on the elevator, too. With absolute relief, Eve jumped off at the first opportunity, shifted to the glides for the trip to the commander’s office.
The admin showed her in immediately, shut the door.
“Commander. Detective Peabody and I took Randall Stibble into custody. He gave up the partner.”
“We’ll get to that. Sit down, Lieutenant.”
Though she preferred standing, and he knew it, she sat, because his tone brooked no argument.
“Sir.”
“McQueen’s surfaced. He’s taken a hostage.”
“A hostage?”
“We assume hostage as she no longer fits his victim type.”
“No longer fits.” Her belly clutched. “He’s taken one of his former victims. He has one of those girls. I never considered—I should have.” She shook it off; tried to shake it off. “How do we know she’s with McQueen?”
“He left a message.” He paused at the knock, nodded when Dr. Mira came in.
Now Eve felt a prickle at the back of her neck.
