by J. D. Robb
* * *
"The witnesses are giving the investigation their full cooperation." Eve stood in Commander Whitney's office. Too wired to sit, she barely resisted pacing as she gave him her report.
"The woman's shaken, can't give us much to go on. The man's holding it together. Nothing about the perpetrator is familiar to either. I've interviewed both of the matches Cissy Peterman dated. Both are alibied for at least one of the murders. I think they're clear on this."
Lips pursed, Whitney nodded and began to scan the hard copy of Eve's report. "Jacko Gonzales?The Jacko Gonzales? Number twenty-six with the Brawlers?"
"He plays professional arena ball, yes, sir."
"Well, hell." Whitney's faced creased in one of his rare smiles. "I'll say he plays. He's a killer out there. Scored three goals his last game and took out two defensive blocks."
He cleared his throat as Eve only watched him. "My grandson's a big fan."
"Yes, sir."
"Too bad Gonzalez didn't get his hands on this guy. He wouldn't be walking, I promise you."
"I got that impression, Commander."
"Ms. Peterman's a fortunate woman."
"Yes, sir. The next one might not be. This threw him off schedule. He's bound to hit again. Tonight. I ran this by Dr. Mira. Her opinion is he'll be angry, emotionally distraught. To me that means he might be sloppy as well. McNab and Peabody have three meets each set up for tonight. Everything's in place there. I have their lists and reports."
She hesitated, then decided to speak her mind. "Commander, what we're doing tonight is a necessary step. But he's going to be out there while we're on this surveillance. He's going to move."
"Unless you've got a crystal ball, Dallas, you've got to take the steps."
"I've got a probability list of victims down to just over two hundred. I think I've found another connection, the theater, that can carve that number down. I'm hoping with the new data Feeney can get us a short list of probables. The potential victims need to be protected."
"How?" Whitney spread his hands. "You know as well as I do the department can't spare that many officers."
"But if he fines it down -- "
"If he quarters it, I can't spare them."
"One of those people is going to die tonight." She stepped forward. "They need to be warned. If we go to the media, put out an alert, whoever he's targeted might not open the damn door."
"If we go to the media," Whitney said coolly, "we start a panic. How many street-corner Santas ringing their bells for charity get assaulted as a result? Or killed. You can't play trade the victim here, Dallas. And," he added before she could speak, "if we go to the media, we risk scaring him off. He goes under, we might never find him. Three people are dead, and they deserve better."
He was right, but knowing it didn't ease her gut. "If Feeney fines down the list to a workable number, we can contact each name. I'll put together a team to make the calls."
"It'll leak, Lieutenant, and we'll be back to panic."
"We can't just leave them open this way. The next one he kills is on us."On me, she thought, but knew better than to say it. "If we do nothing to alert the victim, it's on us. He knows we've got his pattern. He knows we've got the number of targets. And he knows we can't do anything but juggle names and wait for him to hit again. He loves it. He performed for the security camera at Peterman's. Stood in the damn foyer and posed. If Gonzales had been out making goals last night, she'd be dead. That's four in a week, and it's too damn many."
He heard her out, his face calm and set. "It's a hell of a lot easier where you're standing, Lieutenant. Maybe you don't think so, but it's a hell of a lot easier on that side of the desk. I can't give you what you want. I can't let you stand in front of every victim and take the hit the way you stood in front of Roarke's man a few weeks ago."
"This has nothing to do with that." Battling frustrated fury, she set her teeth. "That incident is closed, Commander. And my current investigation is against the wall. Information is already leaking to the media. Another one dies, it's going to blow up in our faces."
Whitney's eyes flattened. "How much have you given Furst?"
"No more than I had to, and most of that off the record. She'll hold back. But she's not the only reporter with a good nose, and not many of them have her integrity."
"I'll take that matter up with the Chief. That's the best I can do. You get me Feeney's amended list, and I'll ask for individual contacts. I can't authorize the budget for that kind of operation, Dallas. It's out of my control."
He leaned back, studying her. "Come up with something tonight on this surveillance. End this thing."
* * *
Eve found Feeney scanning the monitor in her office. "Good, you saved me a trip to EDD."
"Heard you had Jacko Gonzales in." He glanced wistfully over her shoulder. "Guess he's gone, huh?"
"I'll get you his autographed hologram, for God's sake."
"Yeah? Appreciate it."
"I need you to run these names and data." She pulled out a copy of a disc. "My machine's stuttering again and it takes me too damn long. I need victim probability whittled down as far as it'll go." She dragged open a drawer, pawing through and ignoring the vague headache behind her eyes. "Just the top fifty, okay? I can push Whitney into contacting fifty. God help the others. Where the goddamn hell is my candy bar?"
"I didn't take it." Feeney jostled his bag of nuts. "McNab was in here. He's a known candy thief."
"Son of a bitch." Desperate for fuel, she snagged Feeney's bag and downed a handful of nuts. "I had the security disc from Peterman's enhanced and enlarged, but I figure you can do better. I want the frame of him when he's most himself -- when he's turned to run. You can see the panic."
She jabbed at the AutoChef hoping for coffee to wash down the nuts. "I've got photos of the match lists, the personnel at Personally Yours. You got the equipment to scan them, see how many might pop as far as facial shapes, eye shape, that kind of thing. Even with enhancements, something's got to come through. Most of his mouth's hidden by the beard."
"We can do most-likely shapes on that if we have a good enough image."
"Yeah. Build isn't going to work, but height should. See how close you can come to height. From the images he didn't appear to be wearing lifts, so I think we can get close. The gloves screw up the shape of his hands."
She gulped coffee, eyes narrowing. "Ears," she said abruptly. "Would he have bothered to change the shape of his ears? How much of them show?"
She leaped to her machine, called up the program, the file, the images. "Shit, nothing, nothing, nothing. Here!" Scanning through she came up with a side view. "That's good, that's pretty damn good. Can you work with it?"
Feeney nibbled, considered. "Yeah, maybe. The hat covers the top of the ear, but maybe. Nice call, Dallas. It would've slipped by me. We'll work feature by feature, see what jumps. It's not going to be quick. Something this complex is going to take days. Maybe a week."
"I need the bastard's face." She closed her eyes, concentrated. "We'll go back, work the jewelry angle again, the disinfectant, the cosmetics. The tattoos were hand drawn. Maybe we can shake out something there."
"Dallas, two-thirds of the salons and clubs in the city have freehand tattoo artists."
"And maybe one of them knows that design." She blew out a breath. "We've got two hours before the meets at Nova. Let's do what we can."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The one thing that really irritated Peabody was that McNab was on her match list. It didn't matter that it was most likely due to the fact that her profile and his had been altered to fit those of the victims'.
It just griped her.
She didn't like working with him, with his ridiculous clothes, cocky grins, and know-it-all attitude, but figured she was stuck as long as Eve found him an asset.
There was no one on the force Peabody admired as much as Eve Dallas, but she figured even the smartest of smart cops could make one mistake. Eve's, in
Peabody's opinion, was McNab.
She could see him across the snazzy little bar. He and the six-foot blonde he'd matched with were directly in her line of vision. A deliberate move on McNab's part, Peabody imagined, just to annoy her while they worked.
If he hadn't been there, she might have been able to enjoy the quietly elegant atmosphere. The bar had pretty silver-topped tables, pale blue privacy booths, and clever art prints of New York street scenes decorating the warm yellow walls.
Classy, she thought, glancing over at the long, shiny bar with sparkling mirrors and tuxedo-decked servers. But you'd expect classy from something that belonged to Roarke.
The padded chair where she sat was designed for comfort; the drinks were glorious. The table was equipped with hundreds of musical and video selections and individual headsets if a customer wanted entertainment while he or she waited for a friend or enjoyed a quiet, solitary drink.
Peabody was sorely tempted to try out the headset, as her first match was a blistering bore. The guy's name was Oscar and he was a teacher who specialized in physics on at-home screens. So far, he'd mostly been interested in sucking down rippers and bad-mouthing his recent ex-wife.
She was, Peabody was told, a non-supporting, self-centered bitch who was frigid in bed. After fifteen minutes, Peabody was fully on the bitch's side.
Still, she played the game, smiling and chatting while she crossed Oscar off her mental lists of suspects. The guy had a serious problem with alcohol, and their man was too clearheaded to spend his time with the awesome hangovers a few rippers produced.
Across the room, McNab erupted with delighted laughter that ran along Peabody's nerve endings like a dull razor. While Oscar guzzled the last of his third ripper, she glanced over, and caught the quick, eyebrow wiggle McNab sent her.
It made her want to do something cool and mature. Like sticking out her tongue.
With great relief, she parted ways with Oscar, making vague plans to hook up again.
"When they sell iced rippers in hell," she muttered and winced as she heard Eve's voice in her earpiece.
"Maintain, Peabody."
"Sir." Peabody hissed the word, covering it by lifting her own virgin blitzer. She sighed, noting by her wrist unit that she had ten minutes before the next meet.
"Goddamn it!"
Peabody jolted when Eve's voice exploded in her ear. "Sir?" she said again, choking.
"What the hell is he doing here? Damn it!"
Baffled, one hand sliding down to where her weapon was snug inside her left boot, Peabody scanned the room. And caught herself grinning widely as Roarke strolled in.
"Now, that's a match made in heaven," Peabody murmured. "Why can't I get one of those?"
"Don't talk to him," Eve ordered in a snap. "You don't know him."
"Okay, I'll just stare and drool, like every other woman in the place."
She chuckled out loud at Eve's snarling string of curses, and the couple at the next table glanced over. Peabody cleared her throat, lifted her drink again, and settled back to admire her lieutenant's husband.
He walked by the bar, and the bartenders came to attention like soldiers on parade for the general. He stopped by a table to speak briefly with a couple. Leaned down to brush his lips over the woman's cheek, then moved to the end of the bar to lay a friendly hand on a man's shoulder.
Peabody wondered if he moved just that beautifully in bed, then flushed. It was a damn good thing, she decided, that the wire wasn't transmitting her thoughts to the surveillance van.
* * *
Outside, Eve scowled at the screen that projected the view from the micro-camera in Peabody's collar button. She watched Roarke work the room, very casual, very easy, and vowed to pound him into dust at the first opportunity.
"He's got no business walking into an operation," she said to Feeney.
"It's his place." Feeney hunched his shoulders, an automatic defense against a marital tiff.
"Right, he came by to check the liquor levels at the bar. Fuck." She dragged both hands through her hair, then made low, feral sounds in her throat as she watched Roarke wander over to Peabody's table.
"Enjoying your drink, miss?"
"Um, yeah, I... Shit, Roarke" was the best Peabody could manage.
He only smiled, leaned down. "Tell your lieutenant to stop swearing at me. I won't get in her way."
Peabody's eye twitched as Eve's voice exploded in her ear. "Uh, she suggests you get your fancy ass out of here. She'll, um, kick it for you later."
"Looking forward to it." Still smiling, he lifted Peabody's fingers, kissed them. "You look fabulous," he told her, then strolled away while the equipment in the van reported a sharp spike in her blood pressure and pulse rate.
"Down, Peabody," Eve warned.
"I can't control an involuntary physical reaction to outside stimuli." Peabody blew out a breath. "Sure does have a fancy ass. Respectfully, sir."
"Match Two approaching. Pull it together, Peabody."
"I'm ready."
She glanced toward the door, her company smile ready. One of the perks for the operation, as far as she was concerned, had just walked in. She remembered him from her first visit to Personally Yours. The trim bronzed god who'd caught her attention -- then given his own to his pocket mirror.
He was going to be a pleasure to look at for the next hour.
He posed at the door, head up, profile turned to the room as he scanned tables. His eyes, a tawny gold that matched his hair, flickered, then settled on Peabody. His mouth turned up as he gave a quick, practiced head toss to allow his hair to flow. He crossed directly to her table.
"You must be Delilah."
"Yes." Great voice, she thought with an inward sigh. Better in person that on his video profile. "And you're Brent."
Across the room it was McNab's turn to scowl. The man preening for Peabody was all plastic, he decided, with a thick layer of spray gloss. Probably just her type.
Asshole had his face tailor-made, McNab decided. Body, too. He doubted there was an inch on the man that hadn't been paid for.
And just look! Just look at the way she's fawning all over him,McNab thought in disgust, tinged with a vicious dose of jealousy. The woman was practically lapping up every word the guy dropped through his collagen-enhanced lips.
Women were so pitifully predictable.
His gaze slid over as Roarke stopped by the table. "She's looking particularly appealing tonight, isn't she?"
"Most guys find it appealing when a woman has half her tits out of her shirt."
Roarke grinned, enjoying himself. McNab's eyes were on fire and his fingers were beating a rapid and angry tattoo against the tabletop. "But obviously you're above such things."
"Wish I were above them," McNab muttered as Roarke moved on. "Those are some superior tits."
"Keep your eyes off Peabody's tits," Eve ordered. "Your second match is at the door."
"Yeah." McNab glanced over at a tiny redhead in a spangled skinsuit. "I'm on it."
Inside the van, Eve frowned at the screen. "Give me the run on the guy with Peabody, will you, Feeney? Something about it seems off to me."
"Brent Holloway, commercial model. Works for Cliburn-Willis Marketing. Thirty-eight, twice divorced, no kids."
"Model?" Her eyes narrowed. "On screen? That's sort of like entertainment, right?"
"Shit. You haven't watched much commercial screen lately. Nothing entertaining about those ads, you ask me. He's originally from Morristown, New Jersey. New York resident since 2049. Current address Central Park West. Income in middle eighties. Shows nothing on yellow sheets -- no arrests. Got a mountain of traffic violations."
"We saw him -- Peabody and me -- at Personally Yours on our first trip there. How many consults has he had?"
"This is his fourth match group this year."
"Okay, why does a guy who looks like that, has credits, a strong career, and a high-dollar address become a dating service addict? Four match groups in a year, fiv
e matches per group. That's twenty women, and nothing sticks. What's wrong with him, Feeney?"
Feeney pursed his lips and studied the screen. "From my view he looks like a conceited asshole."
"Yeah, but a lot of women aren't going to care about that. He's got looks and bucks. Something should've stuck." She drummed her fingers on the narrow console. "No complaints to the service pop out?"
"Nope. His sheet there's clean, too."
"Something's off," she said again an instant before she watched her aide rear back and plow a fist directly in Brent Holloway's perfect nose. "Jesus Christ. Jesus, did you see that?"
"Busted it," Feeney said placidly as he studied the quick gush of blood. "Nice short-armed jab."
"What the hell was she thinking? What the hell's going on? Peabody, have you lost your mind?"
"Son of a bitch stuck his hand up me under the table." Flushed and furious, Peabody was on her feet, hands fisted. "Bastard's talking about the new play at the Universe and he grabs my crotch. Pervert. You pervert, get up."
"McNab, stay the hell where you are!" Eve shouted as McNab surged to his feet with murder in his eyes. "Stay the hell where you are, or you're off. That's an order. A goddamn order! Maintain. Peabody, for Christ's sake, put that guy down."
Even as Eve was pulling the hair out of her head, Peabody hauled Holloway to his feet and hit him again. She'd have gone for three, even though his gold eyes were rolling back white, if Roarke hadn't stepped through the excited crowd and pulled the rubber-legged Holloway back.
"Was this man bothering you, miss?" Coolly, Roarke hauled Holloway out of reach, kept his eyes level on Peabody's glinting ones. "I'm terribly sorry. I'll take care of it. Please, let me get you another drink." With one hand on Holloway, he lifted Peabody's glass with his free one, sniffed. "Blitzer, virgin," he ordered and all three bartenders rushed to comply as he dragged the now struggling Holloway to the door.
"Get your fucking hands off me. That bitch broke my nose. My face is my living, for Christ's sake. Stupid cunt. I'm suing her crazy ass off. I'm reporting -- "
