The In Death Collection, Books 11-15

by J. D. Robb

  “Gracie? She’s not in any trouble, is she?” The smile tried to spread, but only fell away from her face. “My Gracie’s never in trouble.”

  So it had to be done in the doorway, with the bright flowers a soldier’s guard. “Mrs. Lutz, I’m sorry to tell you Grace is dead.”

  Her eyes went blank. “She is not.” There was a crack of irritation in her voice. “Of course she’s not. What a terrible thing to say. I want you to go away right now. I want you to go away from here.”

  Eve braced a hand on the door before it closed in her face. “Mrs. Lutz, Grace was killed last night. I’m the primary investigator, and I’m very sorry for your loss. You need to let us in now.”

  “My Grace? My baby?”

  Eve said nothing now, but slid an arm around the woman’s waist. The door opened into the living area with a plump blue sofa and two sturdy chairs. Eve led her to the sofa, sat beside her.

  “Is there someone we can call for you, Mrs. Lutz? Your husband?”

  “George. George is at school. He teaches at the high school. Grace.” She looked around blindly as though her daughter might walk into the room.

  “Peabody, make the call.”

  “You’ve made a mistake, haven’t you?” Mrs. Lutz gripped Eve’s hand with frozen fingers. “That’s all. You’ve just made a mistake. Grace works in the city, at the library on Fifth Avenue. I’ll just call her and we’ll all feel much better.”

  “Mrs. Lutz. There’s no mistake.”

  “There has to be. George and I went into the city only Sunday and took her to dinner. She was fine.” The anger and shock were breaking down so tears flooded through them. “She was fine.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “What happened to my baby? Was there an accident?”

  “There wasn’t an accident. Grace was murdered.”

  “It’s just not possible.” Her head shook, as if gently tugged side-to-side with invisible strings. “It’s just not possible.”

  Eve let her weep. She knew that first roll of grief flattened everything else.

  “He’s on his way,” Peabody murmured.

  “Good. Get her some water or something.”

  She sat beside the sobbing woman, scanning the living area. There were books here, displayed like treasures on shelves. There was a quiet order to everything, and the sturdiness of solid middle-class living. A framed hologram of Grace stood on a table.

  “What happened to my baby?”

  Eve shifted, looked into Mrs. Lutz’s shattered face. “Last night Grace met a man she’d been corresponding with by e-mail and in chat rooms. We believe this man doctored her drink or drinks during the evening with a substance known to be used in date rapes.”

  “Oh God.” Mrs. Lutz wrapped her arms around her belly and began to rock. “Oh my God.”

  “Evidence indicates that he returned with her to her apartment, continued to give her illegals until she overdosed.”

  “She would never take illegals.”

  “We don’t believe she was aware, Mrs. Lutz.”

  “He gave them to her because he wanted to . . .” She pressed her lips together in a tight white line. Then breathed out, one long ragged sound. “He raped her.”

  “We suspect that’s true. I . . .” How far did you go? Eve wondered. How much could you help? “Mrs. Lutz, if it’s any comfort to you, Grace wouldn’t have been afraid. She wouldn’t have been in pain.”

  “Why would anyone hurt her? What kind of person does that to an innocent young girl?”

  “I can’t tell you, but I can tell you I’ll find him. I need you to help me.”

  Mrs. Lutz laid her head back. “What can I do if she’s gone?”

  “Did she have any boyfriends?”

  “Robbie. Robbie Dwyer. They dated in high school, and a bit in the first few semesters of college. He’s a nice boy. His mother and I belong to the same book club.” Her voice wavered. “I suppose we’d hoped more would come of it, but it was more friendship than romance. Grace wanted to move to the city, and Robbie got a job teaching here. They drifted apart.”

  “How long ago did they drift?”

  “If you’re thinking Robbie would do this, anything like this, you’re wrong. I’ve known him since he was a baby. Anyway, he’s seeing a very nice girl now.”

  “Did she ever talk about anyone she was interested in, or who was interested in her? In the city?”

  “No, not really. She worked very hard, and she was studying as well. She’s shy. My Gracie’s shy. It’s hard for her to meet new people. That’s why I encouraged her to move to . . .” She broke down again. “George wanted her to stay here, to teach and stay in the nest. I pushed her out, just little nudges, because I wanted her to fly. Now I’ve lost her. Will you take me to her? When George gets here, will you take us to our baby?”

  “Yes. I’ll take you to her.”

  Commander Whitney was on the ’link when he motioned Eve into his office. He didn’t gesture to a chair, nor did she make any move to sit. His wide face was creased with lines, a map that showed the routes of stress, battles, and authority. His suit was a rich coffee color, nearly the same tone as his skin. In it he looked both beefy and tough. A combination, Eve had always thought, that made him appear as natural behind a desk as he did in the field.

  A fluted bowl sat on the right corner of his desk. It was filled with cerulean water with smooth, colored stones shimmering in the base. While she puzzled over it, she caught the quick flash of scarlet.

  “My wife,” Whitney said when he ended the call. “She thinks it cheers up the office. Supposed to relax me. What the hell am I supposed to do with a damn fish?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir.”

  For a moment both of them studied the red streak that circled the bowl. Knowing the commander’s wife was keen on fashion and decor, Eve searched for a polite comment.

  “It’s fast.”

  “Crazy thing spins around like that most of the day. I get tired just looking at it.”

  “At that rate it’ll probably wear itself out and die within a couple weeks.”

  “Your mouth to God’s ear. Where’s your aide, Lieutenant?”

  “I’ve got her running cross-checks on the two victims. We’ve found no evidence to support a relationship between them. They both liked books, poetry in particular. Both spent time in cyber-rooms. At this point we can’t place them in the same chat or club at the same time.”

  He sat back. “What have you got?”

  “The across-the-hall neighbor of Lutz’s, Angela Nicko, found the body this morning. They had a regular morning coffee date, and when Lutz didn’t show, didn’t answer her door, Ms. Nicko was concerned enough to open the door with her spare key. Nicko is a retired librarian, well into her nineties.”

  And had cried, Eve thought wearily, cried silent tears while she’d given her statement.

  “At this point she appears to be the only resident of the apartment building the victim had regular contact with. Lutz is described as a quiet, polite young woman who rarely varied her routine. She went to work, she came home. Twice a week she stopped in the neighborhood market for supplies. Other than Nicko, she had no close friends, no lovers. She was doing a part-time, in-home course to get her degree in library science.”

  “The security cams?”

  “One, at entrance. As trace evidence at the first scene confirmed, the suspect wears a disguise, we’re assuming he was doing so again. I’m waiting for lab reports. His appearance was markedly different in the second murder. Short, straight blonde hair, lantern-jaw, wide brow, dark brown eyes, pale gold complexion.”

  Eve stared at the fish. It was making her dizzy, but she couldn’t look away. “There was a different attitude, as well. A deliberation, and a pleasure in the violence that wasn’t apparent in the first killing. We’re working to trace the first wig, the enhancements. We’re also pursuing the cyber-angle, and continue to look for another connection between the victims. I’ve requested a
consult with Dr. Mira, and am copying her all files and reports to date.”

  “The media hasn’t yet sniffed out the connection, but we won’t keep it that way for long.”

  “In this case, sir, the media might be an advantage. If women are made aware of the potential dangers, the suspect’s pool gets shallow. I’d like to leak some of the data to Nadine Furst at Channel Seventy-five.”

  He pursed his lips. “Make sure the leak doesn’t become a flood before we’re ready for it.”

  “Yes, sir. I have some more sources on the illegals angle, and I’ve asked Feeney to use his contacts within the department in that area. Neither drug is common. When I find the supplier, I may need room to deal.”

  “We’ll work that out when you find the supplier. But I can tell you there won’t be much room. Politically, these illegals are a hot button. We go soft on a supplier, we’ll have feminist’s organizations, social balance, and moral watchdog groups taking numbers to kick us in the teeth.”

  “And if dealing with the supplier saves lives?”

  “For a lot of these people, that won’t matter. They deal in principles, not individuals. Work the angles, Lieutenant, do the checklist and get this bastard before we have more dead. And a public relations nightmare.”

  Eve didn’t give a rat’s skinny ass about public relations. Since this wasn’t a well-kept secret, it was no surprise that Nadine expressed some suspicion at being offered inside data.

  “What kind of happy bullshit is this, Dallas?”

  Eve had waited, deliberately, until she was home rather than at Central to contact Nadine. It seemed to her that made the exchange friendly rather than official.

  “I’m doing you a favor.”

  Nadine, already polished for an on-air segment, lifted one perfectly arched brow, let her coral-slicked mouth curve. “You, Lieutenant Locked Lips, are going to, of your own free will and out of a sense of camaraderie, give me data on an ongoing investigation.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just a minute.” Nadine’s face disappeared from the ’link screen for ten seconds. “Just wanted to check with the meteorologist. It appears, despite indications to the contrary, hell has not frozen over.”

  “Pardon me while I fall into an uncontrollable fit of giggles. You want the data or not?”

  “Yeah, I want it.”

  “A top police source confirms that the investigations of the Bryna Bankhead and the Grace Lutz cases are linked.”

  “Hold on.” Everything about Nadine sharpened as she leaped into full reporter mode. “There’s been no confirmation to this point as to whether the Bankhead death was accidental, self-termination, or homicide.”

  “It’s homicide. Confirmed.”

  “My information is that the Lutz murder was sexual homicide.” Nadine’s voice was brisk now. All business. “Is that the case in the Bankhead homicide? Did the victims know each other, and are we dealing with one suspect?”

  “Don’t interview me, Nadine. This isn’t a one-on-one. Both victims were young, single women who, on the night of their deaths, met with an individual they had corresponded with via e-mail and online chat rooms.”

  “What kind of chat rooms? Where did they meet?”

  “Shut up, Nadine. Evidence indicates that both victims were given an illegal substance, possibly without their knowledge, during the evening.”

  “A date rape drug?”

  “You’re quick. Your source neither denies nor confirms that information. Take the freebie, Nadine, and run with it. That’s all you get for now.”

  “I can get out of here in ninety minutes. I’ll meet you wherever you want.”

  “Not tonight. I’ll let you know where or when.”

  “Wait!” If it had been possible, Nadine would have burst through the ’link screen. “Give me something on the suspect. Do you have a description, a name?”

  “All avenues of investigation are being vigorously pursued. Blah, blah, blah.” Eve broke transmission on Nadine’s curse.

  Satisfied, she walked into the kitchen, ordered coffee. Then just stood by the window, looking out at the gathering dark.

  He was out there now. Somewhere. Did he already have another date? Was he, even now, making himself into some hopeful woman’s fantasy?

  Tomorrow, the next day, would there be other friends, more family she would have to shatter?

  The Lutzes would never fully recover. They’d go on with their lives, and after a while they wouldn’t think of it every minute of every day. They’d laugh again, work, shop, breathe in and out. But there would always be a hole. Just a little hollow inside their lives.

  They’d been a family. A unit. She’d sensed that unification in the house. In the comfort and clutter of it. In the flowers outside the door, and the easy give of the sofa.

  Now rather than parents, they were survivors. Those who survived lived forever with that echo of what was gone sounding inside their heads.

  They’d kept her room, Eve thought now while her coffee sat in the AutoChef going cold. When she’d gone through it, looking for something, anything to add to the sum of Grace Lutz, she’d seen the stages of a life, from child to young girl to young woman.

  Dolls carefully arranged on a shelf. Decoration now rather than toys, but still treasured. Books, photographs, holograms. Trinket boxes in the shapes of hearts or flowers. The bed had had a canopy the color of sunbeams, and the walls had been virgin white.

  Eve couldn’t imagine growing up there, in all that sweet, girlish fuss. Ruffled curtains at the windows, the inexpensive minicomputer on the desk that had been decorated with daisies to match the shade on the bedside lamp.

  The girl who’s slept in that bed, read by that lamplight had been happy, secure, and loved.

  Eve had never had a doll, nor curtains at the windows. There’d been no precious little pieces of girlhood to tuck away in heart-shaped boxes. The childhood rooms she remembered were cramped, anonymous boxes in cheap hotels where the walls were thin and often, too often, things skittered in dark corners.

  The air smelled stale, and there was no place to hide, no place to run if he came back and wasn’t drunk enough to forget you were there.

  The girl who had slept in those beds, trembled in those shadows had been terrified, desperate, and lost.

  She jolted as a hand touched her shoulder, and instinctively reached for her weapon as she spun around.

  “Steady, Lieutenant.” Roarke ran his hand down her arm, rested it lightly on her weapon hand as he studied her face. “Where were you?”

  “Trying to make a circle.” She eased away from him, opened the AutoChef for her coffee. “I didn’t know you were home.”

  “I haven’t been for long.” He laid his hands on her shoulders now, rubbed at the tension. “Did you have a memory flash?”

  She shook her head, sipped the cold coffee, continued to stare out the window into the dark. But she knew if she didn’t rid herself of it, it could fester. “When you were gone,” she began, “I had a dream. A bad one. He wasn’t dead. He was covered with blood, but he wasn’t dead. He talked to me. He said I’d never kill him, never get away.”

  She saw Roarke’s reflection in the glass, saw her own merging with it. “He had to punish me. He got up. Blood was pouring out of him, but he stood up. And he came for me.”

  “He is dead, Eve.” Roarke took the cup out of her hand, set it aside, then turned her to face him. “He can’t hurt you. Except in dreams.”

  “He said to remember what he’d told me, but I can’t. I don’t know what he meant. But I asked him why he hurt me. He said because I was nothing and no one, but most of all he hurt me because he could. I can’t seem to take that power away from him. Even now I can’t.”

  “You diminish him every time you stand for a victim. Maybe the further away you get from him in reality, the harder it is to pull back in dreams. I don’t know.” He skimmed his fingers through her hair. “Will you talk to Mira?”

  “I don’t
know. No,” she corrected. “She can’t tell me anything I don’t know.”

  Are ready to know, Roarke thought, and let it be.

  “Anyway, I need her for a consult on the murders.”

  “Another?”

  “Yeah. So I’ve got to put more hours in.”

  “Was it the same man?”

  She didn’t answer, but wandered back into her office. She didn’t want the coffee after all. Instead she kept moving, let it all play through her head as she gave him the basic details of the second murder.

  “If there’s a local source for the illegals used, I could track it for you.”

  She looked at him, elegant in his dark business suit. It didn’t pay to forget there was a dangerous man inside it, one who had once trafficked with other dangerous men.

  Roarke Industries might have been the most powerful conglomerate in the world, but it had been born, like its owner, in the dark alleys and grim streets of Dublin’s slums.

  “I don’t want you to do that,” she told him. “Not yet. If Charles and Feeney both crap out, I may tag you. But I’d as soon you didn’t make a connection with that particular area.”

  “My connection would be no different than yours, only quicker.”

  “Yeah, it’s different. I’m the one with a badge. You know a lot of women.”

  “Lieutenant. That portion of my past is a closed book.”

  “Yeah, right. What I’m saying is, in my experience, most guys generally go for a type. Maybe they like brainy women, or subservient women, or jocks, whatever.”

  He moved in on her. “What type do you suppose I go for?”

  “You just scooped them up as they fell at your feet, so you went for the variety pack.”

  “I definitely don’t recall you falling at my feet.”

  “And don’t hold your breath on that one. You don’t count so much because you’d never have to go fishing in the cyber-pool for a date or sex or anything.”

  “You’re not making that sound complimentary.”

  “But what I’m saying is, people generally have expectations, or fantasy types. Date number one. Savvy, sophisticated, urban female with a romantic bent. Slick dresser, sharp looker. Snappy apartment, sexually active when she can get it. Outgoing, friendly. She likes fashion, poetry, and music. Spends her money on clothes, good restaurants, salons. May or may not be looking for Mr. Right, but would really enjoy a Mr. Right Now.”