Connections in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “Yeah.” She’d be checking that.

  “He took the last bust as an adult, in a fight with a rival gang member. Both had knives over the legal limit, and he had possession of Zeus, Erotica, and other substances with a street value of around six thousand on him.”

  “Which is likely what the fight was about.”

  “He went down harder for that one, and that hard time appeared to slap him straight. He completed rehab, got a cooking certificate and parole—the halfway-house bridge, then the condition that he live with a family member for a year, sought gainful employment, and so on. For the last year, he’s met all the parole provisions, submitted to the random drug tests, and apparently, through his own initiative, meets the prison therapist about once a month over coffee.”

  “So on the surface, textbook rehabilitation. And now he’s dead, with his works and vomit in his lap.”

  “So the cop thinks, beneath the surface: once a user—of illegals and people—always a user?”

  “My closest friend was a grifter,” she reminded him. “The cop thinks people can change. It’s just, they don’t more often than they do. Almost never do. And the cop has to see the DB, the scene before making any conclusions.”

  “You haven’t pulled in Peabody.”

  “If, after observing the scene, examining the DB, establishing the timeline, my conclusions are he slipped, fell back, and OD’d, there’s no need to. Otherwise, I’m going to spoil her night.

  “Rough neighborhood,” she added as she looked around the shadowy streets lined with tat parlors, sex clubs, prefab walk-ups tossed up after the Urban Wars.

  “Yes. Between them, they make a decent living, but there are expenses. The younger brother’s in law school, partial scholarship, part-time job, but Rochelle and her older brother are supplementing the tuition and dorm fees. It’s considerable.”

  She spotted Crack—you couldn’t miss a man his size—and Rochelle outside a five-story prefab. Roarke squeezed between a couple of junkers at the curb. In a neighborhood like this, she thought, the choice was junkers or mass trans.

  Most couldn’t afford the junker.

  Crack opened her door, reached for her hand. “Thanks for this.”

  She met his eyes, the sorrow in them, nodded.

  Roarke went directly to Rochelle and, because it was his way, put his arms around her. “I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.”

  She fell to weeping. “He wouldn’t do this. He wouldn’t do this to himself, to us. He’d never—”

  Because it was her way, Eve stepped forward. “This is hard for you, but I need to ask you a couple of questions. When did you last see your brother?”

  “It was right before I left to meet Wilson for dinner. It was right after the contract came through. I think about seven. I think.”

  “Yes, I sent the contract about seven,” Roarke confirmed.

  “He’d just gotten home. He’d worked the lunch shift and the happy hour. He had his first night off in eight nights. He was tired and happy. He was happy. He was happy for me. And he said he was going to clean up, go to a meeting, then over to mooch leftovers from Gram, bunk at Martin’s tonight. He wouldn’t do this.”

  “Okay. I need you to go somewhere and wait. Crack, your place isn’t far. Why don’t you take Rochelle there?”

  “No. Please. I need to be here. I can’t leave him alone.”

  “You need to get out of the cold,” Eve told her, “and wait. I’m going to look after Lyle. He won’t be alone.”

  “You need to trust her, Ro. You come on home with me, then Dallas is going to come over in a little while. I’ve got the keys here.” Crack pulled them out of his pocket, handed them to Eve.

  Between her master and her master thief, she didn’t need them, but she took them.

  “I need to tell my brothers, my grandmother.”

  “Why don’t you hold off on that? You’ll be able to tell them more when I’ve finished here.”

  With visible effort, Rochelle pulled herself together, and her eyes went fierce as they met Eve’s. “I know one thing I’ll tell them. He didn’t do this to himself. I know the signs like I know my own name. Depression, evasion, withdrawal, agitation, anger. I know what I saw in my brother, and he wasn’t using again. Don’t you go up there looking at him like he was some loser. Don’t you do that.”

  “He’s a victim, one way or the other. And he’s mine now. I’ll do my best for him.”

  “Come on now, Ro, we’re going to walk awhile. It’ll do you good to walk awhile.” With an arm wrapped around her waist, Crack led her away.

  Eve let out a breath, took the field kit Roarke had already retrieved from the trunk. “Whatever I find up there, it isn’t going to be easy for her.”

  “You’ll find the truth, and that’s all she can ask for.”

  She studied the building. A squatting piece of crap with no cameras, no visible security, and what she assumed would be a couple of half-assed locks on the exterior doors. A buzz-in system to make even the half-assed locks useless.

  A basement unit where litter scattered over the pad of concrete, and the streetlights left deep shadows.

  The perfect place for dark deeds.

  She noted a street LC picking up a john near the east corner, and the guy hovering in a doorway toward the west corner who was practically wearing a sign announcing: Illegals Dealer Waiting for a Mark.

  A couple of boys trying to look tough swaggered by across the street, hoods up, hands in pockets. Aiming for the dealer, she concluded.

  Might as well gum up those works.

  “Hey!” She held up her badge. “NYPSD!”

  The boys took off in a non-tough trot. The dealer melted away.

  “You know they’ll be back inside the hour.”

  “Sure.” She shrugged that off. “But those assholes have to go change out of the pants they just pissed in first.”

  She walked to the building, shook her head at the locks. “Why bother?”

  Before she could try one of the three keys, Roarke took out a tool, went through the locks in seconds.

  The entranceway—small, dark, smelling of old piss—had a stairway straight up, and a chain over the skinny door of an elevator that likely hadn’t operated since they’d thrown up the building.

  “She’s on the second floor,” Roarke said as they started up a stairway just as dark and smelly as the entrance.

  Someone had cared enough to try to paint over the graffiti tagging the walls, and she caught a whiff of something like bleach, so maybe the same somebody had tried to eradicate the stewing germs.

  As they moved above the first floor she heard music banging, a screen show muttering, an argument in midstream.

  On the second, she heard someone laughing in what sounded like genuine enjoyment, a buzz of voices.

  She studied the locks on the Pickering door.

  “They’re decent.” She engaged her recorder. “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Roarke, entering the premises with the permission of the tenant to investigate a suspicious death.”

  For the record, she used the keys, opened the door.

  It smelled of lemon-scented cleaner and death.

  The lights were on full. The living area held a sofa, two chairs, a couple of tables, some photos, and dust catchers. It stretched—barely—to include a tiny eating area off what she assumed was a kitchen.

  Lyle Pickering slumped in one of the chairs and, as Crack had told her, had a syringe in his lap, a homemade tourniquet on his left arm where the sleeve of his sweatshirt had been shoved up.

  The sweatshirt announced him as a Knicks fan. He wore baggies and well-worn high-tops. Vomit, crusting, ran down the shirt.

  She turned from him to study the locks. “No sign of forcing, locks or jamb. No signs of struggle in here.”

  Out of the kit, she took a can of Seal-It, sprayed her hands, her boots, handed it off to Roarke.

  “Must I?”

  “Yeah. Take a look at the kitchen, then the bed
rooms while I deal with the body.”

  She went step-by-step, confirming ID. “Victim is identified as Pickering, Lyle, age twenty-six of this address.”

  “There’s a glass of water overturned on the counter in the kitchen,” Roarke told her. “And what I’d assume is the victim’s ’link on the floor.”

  “That’s interesting. Like this small, shallow nick on the vic’s throat and the faint bruises on his wrist are interesting.”

  “Should I contact Peabody for you?”

  Eve studied the body, especially that left arm where a gang tat—a fist encircled by the word Bangers—showed distinct signs of a removal process. Before she answered, she put on microgoggles, studied that arm.

  And spotted the tiny—and fresh—needle mark on the first knuckle of the fist. The circular mark from the pressure syringe hit at the curled thumb.

  “Yeah. Yeah, why don’t you do that?”

  She sat back on her heels. “How do you kill a recovering addict if you’re bright but not real bright?”

  Standing back, Roarke studied Rochelle’s brother with pity. “You stage it to look like a self-inflicted overdose.”

  “Yeah. Better to have hit him on the street, make it look like a mugging, a gang retaliation, a wrong-place-wrong-time. Come here, into his home, shoot him up for his sister to find? Bright, not real bright. And personal.”

  She nodded, reached in her kit for the next tool. “Yeah, pull Peabody in. We’re going from what looked like murder this morning and turned into accidental, to what looks like accidental OD but is murder.”

  4

  After he contacted Peabody, Roarke skirted around Eve, moved down a short hallway toward the two facing bedrooms and the single bath at the end.

  He identified Rochelle’s not only from the floral spread on the bed and the frilly shade over the lone window but by the neatly made bed with no clothes scattered over it or the floor. She’d squeezed in a small desk for a work area in the corner.

  He turned to the brother’s room.

  A thin, gray duvet covered the not-as-neatly made bed. In the closet, clothes heaped in a plastic basket or hung—a number crookedly—on a rail.

  A two-drawer dresser held a framed copy of the Serenity Prayer. A stubby jar, empty, carried a handwritten label.

  Save It!

  The top drawer hung crooked, jammed a bit when Roarke pulled it open. On top of underwear and socks, a jumble of bandannas, was a second pressure syringe and a pair of dime vials he imagined the dealer Eve had rousted earlier sold routinely.

  One of the vials was nearly empty.

  He left them alone, for Eve’s record, moved to the second drawer.

  Tees, workout gear, sweatshirts.

  In the drawer of the box of a nightstand he found a cheap e-book that opened at a swipe. He scanned the contents, replaced it, moved into the bathroom.

  As he came out again he heard Eve calling in sweepers.

  “There’s another pressure syringe in his top dresser drawer, and two vials of illegals. All but in plain sight, Eve. Lying on top of his socks and boxers.”

  “Which makes it look like he’s been using all along. Or at least he started up again.”

  “There’s also a notebook in the bedside table. A journal of sorts that it appears he’s kept faithfully for about two years. Some poetry, some recipes. It has his work schedule. And a kind of log—how much money he’s banking every pay period, and what he spends on his share of the rent, food, his clothes, music, even what he puts in the jar at meetings. He has a jar on his dresser for saving—I’d suspect loose coin and credits. It’s empty.”

  She listened as she replaced her tools, the evidence bags she’d used.

  “Might as well take the money. The only thing in his pockets is his two-year chip, his keys, and a bandanna. No wallet, no loose coins. They may have lifted other things. We’ll have Rochelle go through the place later.”

  “What do you see?”

  Shoving at her hair, she turned to the door. “He let somebody in, and since TOD was nineteen-twenty-two, it couldn’t have been long after his sister left.”

  “Someone watching the place then.”

  “Possibly, yeah.” Almost had to be, she thought, because she didn’t buy that kind of lucky timing. “So he lets them in. Someone he trusted, wasn’t afraid of, or just wanted to deal with. Then he goes into the kitchen, pours a glass of water. Maybe he takes out his ’link—going to contact someone. They—because it’s probably more than one—get him from behind. The bruises on his wrist look like hand grips. Somebody with muscle. Glass gets knocked over, ’link hits the floor. I figure they jab him with the needle—he’s got a needle mark. Get him high or put him out. Pull him out here, stage the OD. He’s got a little slice on the throat. Hold a knife there in case he fights or tries.”

  Roarke could see it, too. “He wouldn’t have had much of a chance, would he?”

  “No, and it wouldn’t take long. Minutes, really. While he’s dying, they plant the illegals and works where they’re easy to find.”

  She moved back to the body, lifted the sweatshirt to expose the abdomen and lower ribs, and the bruising.

  “Couldn’t resist giving him a couple shots before they killed him. Personal. Could’ve been clean, but they’re not as smart as they think.”

  She walked to the door again to answer a knock.

  “Good timing,” she said to Peabody—and McNab, who stood with her. “We’ve got a homicide staged, poorly, to look like an OD.”

  “Rochelle’s brother?” Peabody looked beyond Eve to the body. “Man, that’s rough.”

  “No cams out front or on the door. You got the god of e’s already,” McNab added. “But I can help if you need.”

  “You could knock on doors with Peabody. I don’t think we’ll have much luck, if any, but we need to check if anybody saw anything. I’m looking, particularly, for anybody who came into the building or approached this unit, left this unit between seven and seven forty-five tonight.”

  “Can do.”

  “Rochelle?” Peabody added.

  “I had Crack take her to his place. They got back from dinner out about nine-fifteen, found him, tagged me. I’ll fill you in later. Sweepers and dead wagon on the way. Try to dig me up a wit.”

  Even as she spoke, the door across the hall opened. A woman, mid-fifties, mixed race, streaked hair slicked back in a tail, stepped out.

  “I saw something.”

  Eve eased the door behind her closed to block the view of the body. “Ma’am.”

  “You the police?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” All three drew out badges.

  “Well, I’m not going to pretend I didn’t listen through the door when I heard these two come up.” She nodded her chin at Peabody and McNab. “Been more coming up the stairs tonight than I hear in a month or more.”

  Then she sighed. “Is that young Lyle in there, come to a bad end?”

  “Yes. Could we have your name?”

  “I’m Stasha-Jean Gregory. I’m going to say I got home from work right about six, got out of my work clothes, had a brew, fixed me some dinner. I heard Lyle come up—gets so you recognize the steps—and, plus, I heard him open the door there. I think that was about seven, maybe a little before, but not much. Then I heard that sweet Rochelle leaving not too long after. Figure she had a date because she was wearing heels. Couldn’t’ve been more than ten minutes after Lyle went on in.”

  “And you heard someone else come up?” Eve prompted.

  “I saw that one. I forgot how it’s trash day tomorrow, so I had to run my bag down. She was coming up.”

  “She?”

  “A girl. Had a hood on, had her head down, but I got a glimpse, and she had a girl body, you know what I mean. Breasts and such. Pink in her hair. I heard her knocking on Lyle’s door, and kind of crying. Saying how she was ready for help, or needed help. Didn’t pass her on my way back, so I figured he let her in.”

  “What time?”
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  “Rochelle couldn’t’ve been gone five minutes.”

  “You didn’t recognize this girl?”

  “I think maybe I’ve seen her around outside before. Not up here. So, I’m hardly back inside my place when I hear more coming up. I think three.” Ms. Gregory blew out a breath. “All right, I know three because I got nosy and looked out the peep.”

  “Did you recognize them?”

  “Didn’t see faces, as they were at the door when I snuck up to look. Big ones, big guys in hoodies. Was the girl let them in. Let them in and ducked right out herself and ran on down the steps.”

  She paused now, rubbed her hands over her face. “I liked that boy. I sprained my ankle last summer, and didn’t he help me up these steps when he was around? Carted bags up for me, or down on trash night. I saw that gang tat on him last summer, though he tried to keep it covered, and he saw me see it. He said that was all finished, and how he was saving to have it removed.”

  She let out a puff of air. “If I’d known there was trouble for him, I’d’ve called the police. The man I had the bad sense to hook up with when I was younger than that boy in there had some run-ins with the police, and they weren’t much good to me back then, either. But I’d have called you in to help Lyle and his sister.”

  “You’re helping them now. Did you see them leave? The three who came?”

  “I heard them. I settled in to watch some screen, and I heard them. Laughing and banging on down the stairs. They weren’t in there very long. I guess it was still shy of seven-thirty, but I didn’t get up to look. They were laughing,” she said again, “and now you say that young Lyle’s come to a bad end.”

  She stared at the door across the hall. “I wish I’d gotten up to look. I wish I had. I heard Rochelle come up with that big, handsome man she’s seeing. Sounded like they were getting a little frisky out in the hall. I had a smile over that, and went on in to put my night things on. I didn’t hear them leave. Is she in there? I think I’ve got some tea, maybe.”

  “No, she’s not here now.”

  “Poor thing.” Lips pressed, Ms. Gregory shook her head. “Poor thing. I heard you come, and I thought, What the hell’s going on tonight? So I looked. I heard you say you were the police, and when you opened the door, I could just see that poor boy. So I stayed up, and listened.”