The In Death Collection, Books 11-15

by J. D. Robb

  The grin vanished. “Who? How?”

  “You tell me.”

  They stared at each other a moment. His gaze shifted first. “I don’t know.”

  “What do you know? What’s IAB’s angle on this? Because there is one. I can smell it.”

  “Look, you come barging in here at . . . Christ, after one in the morning, jump down my throat, and tell me a cop’s dead. You don’t even tell me who or how it happened and I’m supposed to be some fount of fucking information for you.”

  “Mills,” she snapped. “Detective Alan. Illegals, same squad as Kohli. You want to know how? Somebody sliced him wide open from neck to balls. I know because his guts spilled out on my hands.”

  “Christ. Christ.” He rubbed both hands over his face. “I need a drink.”

  He walked away.

  She stormed after him. She remembered, vaguely, his old place, the one he’d had when he’d worked the streets. This one had a lot more space, and more of a shine on it.

  IAB, she thought bitterly, paid well.

  He was in the kitchen, at the refrigerator, pulling a beer out. He looked back at her, took out a second. “Want one?” When she simply stared at him, he put it back. “Guess not.” He flipped off the top, let it fly, then took one long swallow. “Where’d it happen?”

  “I’m not here to answer questions. I’m not your goddamn weasel.”

  “And I’m not yours,” he countered, then leaned back against the refrigerator door. He needed to get his thoughts in order, his emotions under control. Unless he did, she’d spring something out of him he wasn’t free to say.

  “You came to me,” she reminded him. “Either fishing or smelling bait. Or maybe you’re just IAB’s messenger boy.”

  His eyes hardened at that, but he lifted the bottle again, sipped. “You got a problem with me, you take it to IAB. See where it gets you.”

  “I solve my own problems. What do Kohli and Mills and Max Ricker have in common?”

  “You’re going to stir up a hornet’s nest and get stung if you mess with Ricker.”

  “I’ve already messed with him. Didn’t know that, did you?” she said when his eyes flickered. “That little gem hasn’t dropped in your lap quite yet. I’ve got four of his storm troopers in cages right now.”

  “You won’t keep them.”

  “Maybe not, but I might get more out of them than I’m getting from one of my own. You used to be a cop.”

  “I’m still a cop. Goddamn it, Dallas.”

  “Then act like one.”

  “You think because I don’t get all the press, don’t go out closing high-profile cases so the crowds cheer, I don’t care about the job?” He slammed the bottle on the counter. “I do what I do because I care about the job. If every cop was as hard-line straight as you, we wouldn’t need Internal Affairs.”

  “Were they dirty, Webster? Mills and Kohli. Were they dirty?”

  His face closed in again. “I can’t tell you.”

  “You don’t know, or you’re not saying.”

  He looked into her eyes. For an instant, just an instant, she saw regret in his. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Is there an ongoing investigation in IAB involving Kohli, Mills and/or other officers in the One two-eight?”

  “If there was,” he said carefully, “it would be classified. I wouldn’t be at liberty to confirm or deny that, or to discuss any of the details.”

  “Where did Kohli get the funds he’s funnelled into investment accounts?”

  Webster’s mouth tightened. Spring it out of him? She’d pry it out, he thought, with her fingernails. “I have no comment regarding that allegation.”

  “Am I going to find similar funds in an account under Mills’s name?”

  “I have no comment.”

  “You should be a fucking politician, Webster.” She turned on her heel.

  “Eve.” He’d never used her first name before, not out loud. “Watch your step,” he said quietly. “Watch your back.”

  She never stopped, never acknowledged the warning. When she’d slammed the door behind her, he stood for a moment while a war waged inside him.

  Then he walked to his ’link and made the first call.

  Her next stop was Feeney’s. For the second time, she woke a man from a dead sleep. Heavy-eyed, more rumpled than usual, and wearing a ratty blue robe that had his pale legs sticking out like a chicken’s, he answered the door.

  “Jeez, Dallas, it’s going on two o’fucking clock.”

  “I know; sorry.”

  “Well, come in, but keep it down before the wife wakes up and thinks she has to come out and make coffee or some damn thing.”

  The apartment was small, several steps down from Webster’s in size and style. A big, ugly chair sat in the center of the living area, facing the entertainment screen. The privacy screens on the windows had been pulled, giving the place the feeling of a tidy, and well-worn box.

  She felt more at home immediately.

  He went toward the kitchen, a short, skinny space with a battered counter running along one wall. She knew he’d added that on himself because he’d bragged about it for weeks. Saying nothing, she boosted herself on one of the stools and waited while he programmed the AutoChef for coffee.

  “I thought you were going to tag me earlier. Waited around awhile.”

  “Sorry, I got held up on something else.”

  “Yeah, I heard. Taking Ricker on. That’s a big chunk to chew.”

  “I’m going to swallow him down before I’m finished.”

  “Just make sure he doesn’t give you permanent indigestion.” He set two steaming mugs on the counter, settled onto the other stool. “Mills is dirty.”

  “Mills is dead.”

  “Well, shit.” Feeney paused, thinking while he drank some coffee. “He died rich. Found two and a half million tucked into different accounts so far, and there may be more. He did a good job of burying them, used names of dead relatives mostly.”

  “Can you trace where it came from?”

  “Haven’t had any luck with that yet. With Kohli either. Money’s been through the wash so many times, it oughta be sterilized. But I can tell you Mills started pumping up his goddamn pension fund and portfolio big time two weeks before the Ricker bust. There were dribbles before that, but that’s when it started rolling.”

  He rubbed his hand over his face where the nightly complement of chin hair itched.

  “Kohli started later. Months after. Don’t have anything on Martinez yet. She’s either clean or more careful. I took a look at Roth.”

  “And?”

  “She’s had some sizable withdrawals over the last six months. Big chunks taken out of her accounts. On the surface, it looks like she’s damn near broke.”

  “Any of the withdrawals connect?”

  “I’m still looking.” He blew out a breath. “Thought maybe I’d see if I can work into their logs and ’links. Take a little time, since I have to be careful.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “How’d Mills go down?”

  She sat, drank her coffee, and told him. It was still raw inside her, but by the time she’d finished, it was easier.

  “He was an asshole,” Feeney said. “But that’s ugly. Somebody he knew. You’re not going to get that close in on a cop, open him up that way, without some solid resistance unless the cop’s relaxed.”

  “He’d been drinking. My hunch is he’d been drinking with somebody. Just like Kohli. Taking a meet in his ride maybe, having a drink. He gets sloppy, gets drugged, gets dead.”

  “Yeah, most likely. You did good putting McNab on the traffic scans. He’ll do the job.”

  “I’ve got him and Peabody in my home office at eight. Can you come in on it?”

  He looked at her, smiled his sorrowful basset-hound smile. “I thought I already was.”

  It was nearly four when she got home, and a soft spring rain had started to fall. In the dark she showered off the greasiness of the
night. Resting her forehead on the tiles until she stopped smelling blood and bile.

  She set her wrist alarm for five. She meant to hit at Lewis again, and that meant another trip to Central in just over an hour. For that hour, she promised herself she’d sleep.

  She climbed into bed, grateful for Roarke’s warmth. He’d be awake, she thought. Even if he’d slept before she got home, he slept like a cat and would have sensed her.

  But he didn’t turn to her as he usually did, didn’t reach out or say her name to help her slip into comfort.

  She closed her eyes, willed her mind to blank and her body to sleep.

  And when she woke an hour later, she was alone.

  She was out in her car, nearly ready to pull out, when Peabody ran out of the house behind her.

  “Nearly missed you.”

  “Missed me? What are you doing here?”

  “I bunked here last night. Me and McNab.” In a bedroom, she thought, she’d dream about for the rest of her life. “We brought the traffic discs back here. Roarke said it’d be easier to do that instead of running us back to McNab’s, then all of us coming here this morning.”

  “Roarke said?”

  “Well, yeah.” She settled into the passenger’s seat, strapped in. “He rode along with us to pick up the discs, then he’d called for a car, so we drove back here with him and got to work.”

  “Who got to work?”

  Peabody’s brain had engaged enough now to catch the edginess in Eve’s tone. She’d have squirmed if it hadn’t been so undignified. “Well, me and McNab . . . and Roarke. He’s done some tech consults with us before, so I didn’t think anything of it. Are we in trouble?”

  “No. What would be the point?”

  There was a weariness in the answer Peabody didn’t like. “We broke off about three.” She infused her voice with cheer as they headed down the drive. “I never slept in a gel bed before. It’s like sleeping on a cloud, except I guess you’d fall through a cloud. McNab was snoring like a cargo tram, but I fell out about two seconds after I hit the bed anyway. Are you mad at Roarke?” she blurted out.

  “No.” But he’s mad at me. Still. “Did you spot Mills’s vehicle on the disc?”

  “Oh, man, I can’t believe I didn’t tell you. Yeah, we got it. Passed the toll through the e-pass at twenty-eighteen. You’d swear he was just sleeping until you enhance and see the blood.”

  “The driver, Peabody?”

  “That’s the not-so-good news. There was no driver. McNab said you’d need to go over the in-dash computer, but it looks like it was on auto.”

  “He programmed it.” She hadn’t thought of that. Very slick, very confident. Took Mills out somewhere else, then programmed the auto. If it ran into a snag and there was nobody in the vehicle to correct, what did he care?

  “Yeah, that’s what we came to. McNab started calling it the Meteor of Death. You know, it was a Meteor model,” Peabody said lamely. “Gets to be that late, you start making stupid jokes, I guess.”

  “You need a code to program a police unit. You need a code, or you need clearance. It’ll have security override to keep it from being boosted, even by electronic-savvy car-jackers.”

  “Yeah, Roarke said.” Peabody yawned comfortably. “But if you know what you’re doing, it can be finessed.”

  He’d know, Eve thought sourly. “If it was finessed, it’ll show.” She snagged her ’link, called Feeney, and asked him to go down to vehicle impound and run the test personally.

  “If it doesn’t show,” she said, thinking out loud as she swung into Central’s garage, “he had the code or clearance.”

  “He couldn’t have had clearance, Dallas, that would make him . . .”

  “Another cop. That’s right.”

  Peabody goggled at her. “You don’t really think—”

  “Listen to me. Murder investigation doesn’t just start with a body. It starts with a list, with potentials, with angles. You close the case by cutting down that list, narrowing the potentials, working the angles. You take that, the evidence, the story, the scene, the victim, and the killer. And you put it together as many different ways as you have to, until it fits.

  “You keep this to yourself,” Eve added. “You don’t say anything. But if we put it together and it fits a cop, then we deal with it.”

  “Yeah, okay. A lot of this one’s making me kind of sick.”

  “I know it.” Eve pushed out of the car. “Call in, have Lewis brought up to interview.”

  She fueled herself with coffee, took her life in her hands and bought what was reputed to be a cherry danish from vending on the Interview level. It tasted more like cherry-flavored glue over sawdust, but it was something in her stomach.

  She strolled into Interview, carrying an oversized mug of her own—or Roarke’s own—coffee because she knew the smell of it could make a grown man beg. She settled down, all smiles, while Peabody took up her post by the door and glowered. She set the recorder, read in the current data.

  “Morning, Lewis. Beautiful day out there.”

  “I heard it’s raining.”

  “Hey, don’t you know the rain’s good for the flowers? So how’d you sleep?”

  “I slept just fine.”

  She smiled again, sipped from her mug. He had circles layering the circles under his eyes. She doubted he’d gotten much more sleep than she had. “Well, as we were saying when last we met—”

  “I don’t have to say dick to you without my lawyer.”

  “Did I ask you to say dick? Peabody, replay the record and verify that I at no time requested that the subject say dick.”

  “That shit don’t work on me. I got nothing to say. I’m sticking with silence. It’s one of my civil rights.”

  “You hold onto those civil rights, Lewis, while you can. They don’t count for a whole hell of a lot on Penal Station Omega. That’s where I’m sending you. I’m going to make it my mission in life to put you in one of their smaller concrete cages. So you stick with that silence, and I’ll do the talking. Conspiracy to kidnap a police officer.”

  “You can’t prove that. We never touched you.”

  “Four armed men in two vehicles, pursuing poor little me, at high rates of speed, over the state line. You shouldn’t have gone over the state line, ace. I can make that federal, and my guess is the FBI would just love a shot at you. With your record, the concealeds are enough to shoot you on the next transit to Omega. Add the illegals.”

  “I don’t use no drugs.”

  “They were in the vehicle you were driving. That was another mistake. You know, if you’d been a passenger, you might have had a better chance to cut back on that hard time. But being the driver, the driver with concealeds, with illegals, that makes you my favorite patsy. Ricker’s not even going to wave bye-bye when you’re strapped in the prison transport.”

  “I got nothing to say.”

  “Yeah, I heard that.” But he was starting to sweat. “I bet the lawyer’s made you promises. I bet I can list them right off for you. You’ll do some time, but you’ll be compensated. They’ll work the politics and get you into a nice, cushy facility. Five years, seven tops. And you walk out a rich man. I bet that’s real close.”

  She could see by the worry in Lewis’s eyes that it was more than close. It was bull’s-eye. “Of course, he’s a lying sack of shit, and I think you’re smart enough to have figured that out during the night. Once you’re in, you’re in, and if you’re unhappy with the arrangement and make noises, one of your upstanding fellow inmates is going to get a message. Poison sprinkled in your rehydrated mashed potatoes. A shiv in the kidneys during your single hour a day in the yard. An accident in the showers where you slip on the soap and break your neck. You won’t know where it’s coming from until you’re dead.”

  “I talk to you, I’m dead before I get there.”

  That was it, she thought, leaning forward. The first crack. “Witness protection.”

  “Fuck that. He can find anybody an
ywhere.”

  “He’s not a magician, Lewis. I’m offering you a nice ride, Lewis. You give me what I need, I can get you immunity, a free walk, a new life anywhere you want to go, on or off planet.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “Because I’ve got no reason to want you dead. That’s a big one, isn’t it?”

  Lewis said nothing, but he licked his lips.

  “I got the impression Ricker’s not real stable. He strike you as real stable, Lewis?” She waited a moment while he thought about it. “Ricker’s going to tell himself you screwed up. Doesn’t matter, won’t matter that he sent you out after me. That he was stupid. He’s going to blame you for missing me and for getting caught. You know it. You know that, and you know he’s just a little crazy.”

  He’d stewed about it all night, tossing, turning as best he could on the narrow bunk in the dark cell. He’d come around to that himself, and he didn’t like the fish-eye look of Canarde. Ricker wasn’t known for forgiving what he considered employee mistakes.

  “I don’t do any time.”

  “That’s what we’re going to work on.”

  “Work on? Screw that. You get me immunity. I don’t say squat until I see the PA and the paperwork. Immunity, Dallas, a new name, a new face, and a hundred fifty thousand in seed money.”

  “Maybe you’d like me to arrange a pretty wife and a couple of rosy-cheeked children while I’m at it.”

  “Hah. Funny.” He was feeling better now, better than he had in hours. “You get me the PA, get me the deal. Then I’ll talk to you.”

  “I’ll start on it.” She got to her feet. “You might have to go through the hearing. Keep cool about it, and try out that silence as a civil right. You let Canarde get a whiff of this, he’ll go straight to Ricker.”

  “I know how it works. Get me the deal.”

  “You called that one right,” Peabody commented as they headed down the hall.

  “Yeah.” Eve was already calling the PA’s office, and was disgusted when she got the snooty recording listing working hours. “Looks like I’m getting somebody else out of bed today. Let’s head back while I start the wheels rolling on this. I want a look at the disc. Then everyone needs to be briefed.”