Connections in Death

by J. D. Robb

  She didn’t want any distractions.

  When she turned into her bullpen, she regretted leaving the sunshades in her car. They might have prevented her eyes bleeding from a glance at Jenkinson’s latest tie, featuring jagged blue sperm squiggles over a field the color of chili peppers. If you infused them with plutonium.

  “Bring Strong in when she gets here,” she told Peabody, and escaped to her office.

  She tossed her coat aside, programmed coffee. As she began to set up her board she considered that only the day before she’d spent several loose hours at her desk tackling paperwork.

  Now she had two unquestionably connected murders, a potential gang war in the offing, and a whole lot of questions.

  At the center, Lyle Pickering, recovering addict. A man who had appeared to drive himself to a fresh start. The system had worked in his case. Crime, punishment, rehabilitation.

  Now it would be her job to make certain that system continued to work for him, and find him justice.

  Dinnie Duff. Eve pinned the ID shot, one of a worn-looking woman wearing a pound or two of eye gunk and pink streaks in her hair, and beside it the crime scene shots of the battered, bloodied dead.

  An addict, one who’d sold her body and likely any remaining portion of her heart and soul for the next fix or a place to flop. In and out of lockup, part-time underground sex worker, and one complicit in the murder of Lyle Pickering.

  And still the system she’d slithered around would work to find her that same justice.

  Marcus “Slice” Jones. A bad dude, she considered as she added his photo. Maybe, maybe not behind the murders, but a bad dude nonetheless, and one she didn’t doubt had killed or ordered hits.

  Not an addict, she mused. Likely sucked down some Zoner now and again, downed his share of brews, but he showed no signs of abusing his own products.

  Too smart for that, she decided. He had some brains in there, and some canny with it. If he’d used those qualities on the right side of the law, he’d probably have earned some reasonable success and a decent life. And he wouldn’t have her determined to slap him in a cage.

  Because that’s where he belonged.

  She added the tox report on Pickering as it came through her incoming. Enough Go in his system to kill him twice—and a solid, souped-up dose of Out, like an injected mickey.

  Wouldn’t a man, one with brains, one who trafficked in illegals, know that heavy of a tranq would show up in autopsy?

  Would he care? she wondered. If not, why go through the motions to set it up to look like an OD?

  Sloppy, sloppy, she thought as she added to the board. Maybe even impulsive. Slice struck her as more calculating than impulsive.

  With more coffee, she sat at her desk, started her murder book. She’d barely begun when she heard the clomp of Peabody’s cowgirl boots.

  Detective Lilah Strong stepped in with her.

  Eve’s first thought was the Illegals detective looked tired, with shadows under the eyes, against the toffee-colored skin. She’d let her hair grow some, but unlike Peabody’s jaunty little tail, Strong let hers explode in a cloud of curls around her face.

  She wore a rust-colored jacket over her service weapon, serviceable boots, and a grim expression.

  It deepened when Strong’s tired eyes scanned the murder board.

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Detective.” Eve gave Peabody the come-ahead as she rose. “Close the door, Peabody. You want coffee, Detective Strong?”

  “As strong and black as you’ve got it, thanks. I was finishing up a long one, didn’t get your message until … Damn it, Lyle.”

  “You knew him.” Eve handed Strong her black coffee, Peabody her coffee regular. So the three women stood with their mugs, facing the board. “You worked on the bust that sent him in the last time, with Officers Zutter and Norton.”

  “Yeah. He was high and stupid, I was undercover. He tried to sell me Go, with a downer chaser to bring me down after the high. Then he ran, then he got in a pretty solid roundhouse before we got him under control. You know, later, he told me that was the best thing that ever happened to him.”

  Eve could hear it. Not just regret, but grief. “You kept up with him?”

  “He contacted me from prison, asked me to come talk to him. I figured maybe he had some info, wanted to turn it for some privileges or early parole. What he wanted? To apologize for the punch, and the uncomplimentary names he called me. Part of his twelve steps. I’m going to say I didn’t buy it right off, figured he had some angle.”

  She drank some coffee. “But he didn’t ask me for anything, just said he was going to try to stay clean. He knew he had work to do, knew it wouldn’t be easy.

  “Anyway, it made me curious enough to talk to the warden, and the prison addiction counselor. Both said they felt he’d turned a corner, or at least was standing on one. Still, I didn’t so much buy it.”

  “When did you start to buy it?”

  “At his parole hearing. His family was there, his sister spoke. She would let him move in with her, on the condition he finished his halfway-house term with no issues, he went to regular meetings, got work, and kept clear of anyone in the Bangers. You could see she wasn’t a pushover. It wasn’t blind faith so much as hope. And … grit,” Strong decided. “She wanted her brother back. Lyle spoke of remorse, of getting and staying clean, learning to cook, and finding self-worth and pride in learning a skill.”

  Strong let out a breath. “God, he was really proud he could cook. Then he said what turned a key for me. He said with his sister’s help and the help of the prison shrink, he’d come to understand his addiction to illegals was connected to his addiction to the gang. He’d used illegals as an excuse not to face life as it was, and the gang as a way to distance himself from the family he was hurting. So he had to work, every day, not to fall back and use, either. It didn’t sound like bullshit.”

  “After he got out?”

  “I kept track. I wondered, because it didn’t sound like bullshit, if he could walk the walk. I dropped by the place he worked, and he came out on his break. I could see he was still clean, could see how the waitress—old enough to be his mother—doted on him. That’s when he told me getting busted, getting locked up tight, had been the best thing that ever happened to him.”

  Strong stopped, rubbed at the back of her neck. “Goddamn it. He said he had his family, he had a job. Sometimes when he got really tired or low, he thought how easy it would be to get a little boost. How he’d tell himself maybe he would—after he went to a meeting. If it was a bad maybe, he’d tag his sponsor.”

  Strong looked down at her mug. “Any chance of another hit? Getting the real’s a big moment.”

  “Sure.” Eve signaled to Peabody.

  “I asked him if any of the Bangers gave him grief. He sort of brushed it off as no big. Yeah, a couple times some had come around wanting to hang or get high or pull him back. If it shook him, he tagged his sponsor, or went to see his younger brother, maybe his grandmother.”

  Strong took the refilled mug, gestured to Duff’s photo. “That one there? He told me—not that first time, but later—she’d come around looking to pick things up with him—sex and drugs. He cared about her, that was the problem. He gave her information about rehab—and Clean House, where his sponsor works. Tried to get her to go to a meeting with him, that sort of thing. And I’m pretty sure he gave her a little money now and then when she came crying.”

  “When did you turn him?” Eve asked. Strong sighed.

  “I’m still not sure if I turned him or he turned himself. Some of both, I guess, some of both. But for the last ten months he’s been one of my confidential informants. And I’m sick, just sick, Dallas, thinking that might be why he’s up there on your board.”

  8

  Eve eased a hip onto her desk. “At this point I can’t tell you why he’s up there. I know how. I know Duff’s one of the whos, but I don’t have clear motive.”

  “Could be I ju
st gave it to you. I don’t know.”

  “Why did you take him on as a CI?”

  “He contacted me, asked me to meet him. That’s close to a year ago. He didn’t want to meet where he worked, but at this place near his grandmother’s. Near one of his meeting sites, too. Fake-coffee place a lot of those in recovery go to after meetings. Well out of Banger territory, a good clip from where he works.”

  Eve nodded. “So you realized he didn’t want to be seen with you by someone he knew?”

  “Yeah, had to figure it. He looked stressed, said he’d been to a meeting, and he was going to another after he talked to me. Or maybe he’d just go hang with his sponsor. But he’d wrestled with telling me what he was going to tell me, and he couldn’t go back to work if he just swallowed it down.”

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Eve said. “Take the desk chair. The other’s a killer.”

  “Thanks.” As she sat, Strong took another moment, gathering her thoughts. “The waitress I told you about had a kid still at home, her youngest. Sixteen. So, Lyle tells me the kid sees a couple of Bangers trying to sell this boy’s cousin—and that one’s fourteen—some junk. Sort of pushing him around, saying how he might as well because if he doesn’t, they’ll just take whatever he has on him, and his shoes, and he’ll get nothing. So the older boy heads over to get his cousin, tells him to take off and go home. And ends up getting the crap beat out of him. Ended up in the hospital. Messed him up good.”

  “Lyle knew the kid.”

  “Yeah, and he knew the two Bangers. The kid was afraid to give the cops a description, but he told Lyle.”

  “And Lyle told you.”

  “Yeah.” She paused again, drank more coffee. “I want to say it wasn’t easy for him to rat them out, but he’d—he’d really turned that corner, Dallas. They’d beat that kid down for protecting his cousin, and Lyle wouldn’t just stand by, you know?”

  “The kid mattered to him. The kid’s mother.”

  “Yeah. And doing the right thing mattered, too. He said if we busted them for this, it would come back on the kid, maybe the cousin, maybe the mom, too. But couldn’t I do something?”

  “You did something.”

  “This was back when Oberman still had Illegals in her pocket, so I had to do something on the down low. I had a lot more free time back then, as our squad was basically Oberman’s cover, so I used it to watch the two Lyle identified. It didn’t even take long for me to catch them making a deal. Another minor, apparently their specialty. I didn’t bust them for the assault, but for possession, and intent to sell to a minor and within fifty feet of a school. That wrapped them.”

  “He was grateful,” Eve prompted.

  Strong looked back at the board, at Lyle. “He baked me cupcakes, fancy ones. Damn good, too. I took advantage of that, Lieutenant. I took advantage.”

  “You did your job, Detective.”

  “Ah, fuck me.” After setting the coffee down, Strong pressed her fingers to her tired eyes. “The whole Oberman deal—I knew she was a dirty cop, worse than dirty. But I couldn’t do a damn thing. It stewed in me, and here I saw a way to do my job, like you said, and work around her. I never listed him as my CI. Never told her or anybody, not at first, I had a source. One I started milking. He was grateful,” she murmured. “He’d developed a genuine moral code, you could say. So he’d feed me bits—a lot he’d pick up from Duff. Mostly they turned out to be good bits, and I could use them. Small-time, mostly, but we both felt good about it.”

  “I think it probably helped him,” Peabody put in. “Gave him something, like his cooking. He was making restitution.”

  “I guess. You know he was getting his gang tat removed. He’d show me the progress. Slow—it costs more to get them off than to ink them on. He introduced me to his sponsor, Matt Fenster.”

  Strong let out another breath. “Ah, I’d better disclose Matt and I have sort of been seeing each other recently.”

  “Okay.”

  “I just want to be up front on that. Have you notified him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Would you let me do that? I’d like to tell him in person. He’s going to take it hard, LT. He was really proud of Lyle, and they, well, they had a real connection.”

  “Peabody, did you reach him?”

  “Yes, sir. I asked if he could come in, and he said he’d be here before noon. I didn’t tell him why.”

  “You take a few minutes with him, Detective.”

  “Appreciate it.” Steadier, Strong picked up the coffee again. “After we took Oberman down, that bitch, and got the dirt out of the squad, I still kept Lyle on the DL for a while. I just wanted to get a good feel for the new LT, the transfers. I didn’t tell my boss about it until a few weeks ago when—between what I got from Lyle, what I was able to put together from pattern, from some buzz—I thought I hit on a fairly major illegals buy.

  “We busted three Bangers, got a couple of flunkies buying up the junk for an asshole trust-fund baby on Long Island. Got him, too, but he got a deal.” On a scowl of disgust, Strong gestured with her mug. “Money talks.”

  “I heard about that. Good bust. Isn’t the trust-fund asshole doing six months—minimum-security rehab palace, but six months in?”

  “Yeah. The Bangers are doing a dime each, and he gets a knuckle rap. But it’s something. I thought I had enough shields up, Dallas, to cover Lyle, but if I didn’t…”

  “He made a choice, a courageous one. Don’t take that from him.”

  Strong turned her gaze to Eve. “I need to be in on this. He was mine. I need to be in on this.”

  “I thought that was understood.”

  Eve knew Strong to be tough, so the swirl of tears in her eyes brought some concern. “Okay, listen—”

  But Strong waved a hand, battled back the tears. “I’ll copy you on all my files where he played a part. How they’d get to him?”

  Eve ran it through, gave Strong a minute to absorb it.

  “Yeah, yeah, he’d have let her in. It’s the first I know about her going to his place, going into his place. At least, he never told me she had. She’d hang outside the building, catching him coming or going to work. Sometimes she’d wait outside where he worked. Lately he didn’t see her as much, and he heard she’d started flopping with a Banger called Bolt.”

  “Yeah, that sticks.”

  “He’s a bad one, Dallas. Bolt, along with a female—not a Banger Bitch but a soldier—Tank, because she’s built like one, and Riot are lieutenants for a reason.”

  Frowning, Strong studied her coffee before she drank. “It might be Duff hooked up with Bolt to try to get more stable status with the gang. Can’t say for sure, but if she came around crying, asking for help, I see Lyle opening the door—even just to give her a couple bucks, get her gone.”

  “You don’t see him being involved with her again?”

  “Risk his parole, his job, the life he was building? Big no. He felt sorry for her on some levels. He saw her as caught in the same cycle he’d finally broken for himself. And they had a history, so he’d try to help her.”

  At a knock on her door, Eve moved over, opened it to Santiago.

  “Sorry, LT. There’s a Matthew Fenster out here. He says you asked him to come in.”

  “Yeah, thanks. Ask him to wait a minute. Peabody, check and see if we’ve got an open Interview room so Strong can talk to him in private. Tag me when you’re ready, Detective,” she told Strong. “Make it quick. I want his take on this.”

  When she had breathing room in her office again, Eve turned back to her board. Back to Dinnie Duff.

  Why would Duff have betrayed such a soft touch? Addicts like her always needed money for the next fix, and it sounded like she’d been able to whine a few bucks out of Pickering routinely.

  Then again, addicts like her could and would betray anyone.

  Still.

  Then again, Pickering wouldn’t get high with her, have sex with her, hang out with her. All of those would
be essential needs for someone like Duff.

  He gave her a few bucks here and there, but otherwise, he’d cut off their connection. No banging, no partying.

  Would that make him just another mark? No, she considered, more than just another. A mark, but one she wanted to pay back for casting her aside.

  Maybe.

  “Were you pissed off at him, Dinnie? Yeah, I bet you were. Fucker thought he was better than you, with his going-straight life and asshole job. Maybe some payback in there.”

  Maybe, maybe, but she could punch a dozen holes in that one, Eve mused. And the first would be if nothing turned out to be missing.

  She sent a text to Rochelle.

  She needed a walk-through of the crime scene.

  When she got the buzz from Strong, she walked out to Peabody in the bullpen. “Where are they?”

  “Interview B.”

  Eve waved Peabody down again. “I’ve got this. I need you to notify Duff’s next of kin, and I want to know the last contact. You know the drill. I need you to run a search on Pickering’s journal for any mentions of Strong, Duff, the Bangers. When we’re done here, we’re meeting Rochelle at the apartment.”

  She headed out, walked down, and opened the door of Interview B.

  Strong sat beside a man who rivaled Feeney’s explosion of ginger hair. He had pale green eyes to go with it that, right now, were blurred with clouds of grief. He had a long, sharp nose and a long, thin neck that made his face—between the explosion and the stem—look oddly oversized. A single silver stud glinted in his left ear.

  “Matt, this is Lieutenant Dallas.”

  He got to his feet, a skinny guy in a gray sweatshirt, and extended his hand. “Lieutenant. Anything I can do to help you.”

  “I appreciate you coming in so quickly, Mr. Fenster.”

  “Matt. Just Matt.”

  She sat across from him. “I understand you were close to Lyle. I’m sorry for your loss. When did you last see or speak to him?”

  “A couple of nights ago. Thursday night. We went to a meeting, had coffee after. We tried to hook up every week if we could. Just connect, talk.”

  “What did you talk about?”