by J. D. Robb
“You’re very pretty, but she was almost exquisite. And when she sang, she was glorious.”
“What…what did she sing?”
“Soprano. She had a multiple voice.”
“I…I don’t know what that means.”
“Her brilliance was so bright. She was allegra—those high, clear notes seeming to simply lift out of her. And the color, the texture of lirica with the intensity and depth of the drammatica. Her range…”
Moisture sheened his eyes as he pressed his fingers to his lips, kissed the tips. “I could, and did, listen to her for hours. She would accompany herself on the piano when at home. She tried to teach me, but…” He smiled wistfully as he held up his hands. “I had no talent for music, only a vast appreciation for it.”
If he was talking he wasn’t hurting her, Ariel thought. She had to keep him talking. “Is it opera? I don’t know anything about opera.”
“You think it’s stuffy, boring, old-fashioned.”
“I think it’s beautiful,” she said carefully. “I’ve just never really listened to it before. She sang opera?” Questions, Ariel thought desperately. Ask questions so he’ll spend time answering. “And—and was a soprano? With, um, multiple voice like—like ranges?”
“Indeed, yes, indeed, that’s very good. I have many of her recordings. I don’t play them here.” He glanced around the room. “It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“I’d love to hear her sing. I’d love to hear her multiple voice.”
“Would you?” His eyes turned sly. “Aren’t you clever? She was clever, too.” He rose now, picked up the torch.
“Wait! Wait! Couldn’t I hear her sing? Maybe I’d understand if I could hear her sing? Who was she? Who was—Oh, God, God, please!” She tried to shrink away from the tip of the flame he traced, almost teasingly, along her arm.
“We’ll have to chat later. We really must get to work.”
Eve went directly to Feeney when she reached Central. “Female brunettes between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-three who died on this date in New York. We need names, last known addresses, cause of death.”
“Records around that time are sketchy,” he told her. “A lot of deaths went unrecorded, a lot of people were unidentified, or misidentified.”
“Dig. She’s what’s going to open locks on this. I’m going to check with Yancy, see if he’s got any sort of an image on the wallet photo.”
To give Yancy more time, she went first to Whitney and asked for more men to form a stakeout team at the Met.
“Done. I need you for a media briefing at noon.”
“Commander—”
“If you think I don’t know how pressed and pressured you are, you’re mistaken.” And he looked just as irritated as she did. “Thirty minutes. I’ll cut it off at thirty, but unless you’re on your way to arrest this son of a bitch, I need you there. We have to hold back the flood.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Confirm the new and salient you fed Nadine this morning, and the twenty-four-hour shifts. I want you to express confidence that Ariel Greenfeld will be found alive.”
“I will, Commander. I believe she will be.”
“Let them see you do. Dismissed. Oh, Lieutenant, if I learn you’ve stepped foot outside this building without your vest or your wires, I’ll skin you. Personally.”
“Understood.”
It was a little annoying to realize he’d sensed she was considering forgetting the vest. She hated the damn thing. But she had to respect a man who knew his subordinates.
She strode into Yancy’s section and saw him working with Baxter’s peach. He caught Eve’s eye before she wound her way through the stations. He rose, smiled, and said something to the witness before heading Eve off.
“I think we’re making progress here. She’s got him nailed, but she only got a quick look at the photo. We’re working on it, Dallas. You’ve got to give me more time, more room.”
“Can you give me him?”
“Already sent it to your office unit. Subtle differences in the facial structure from Trina’s image, different hair, eyebrows. My eye says same guy.”
“Your eye’s good enough for me. When you get the woman’s image, send it to me, and to Feeney. Make it work, Yancy. This one could be the money shot.”
By the time Eve reached her own division, Peabody was heading out of the war room. “Tried Morris, as ordered. He’s on his way here with the tox results. Jenkinson and Powell reported in. They’re at the spa boutique. There’s a clerk who thinks maybe she saw our guy in there sometime.”
“There’s a fresh image on my unit. Send it to them, have them show it around the store and the salon.”
“Got it.”
“Lieutenant Dallas?”
Both she and Peabody turned. Ariel’s hungover neighbor, Eve realized. “Erik, right?”
“Yeah. I have to talk to you. I have to find out what’s going on. That woman, Gia Rossi, she’s dead. Ariel…”
“I’ll take him,” Peabody told Eve.
“No, I got it. Get the image to Jenkinson. Let’s sit down, Erik.” She didn’t have time to take him to the lounge, didn’t have the heart to boot him out. Instead, she led him to one of the benches outside her own bullpen.
“You’re worried and you’re upset,” Eve began.
“Worried? Upset? I’m scared out of my goddamn mind. He’s got her. That maniac has Ariel. They said he tortures them. He’s hurting her, and we’re just sitting here.”
“No, we’re not. Every cop assigned to this case is working it.”
“She’s not a case!” His voice rose, threatened to crack. “Goddamn it, she’s a human being. She’s Ariel.”
“You want this prettied up for you?” Her voice was sharp, deliberately so to cut off any risk of hysteria. “You want pats and strokes, you’ve come to the wrong place, and you’ve come to the wrong person. I’m telling you that everything I’ve got is on this, is in this, just like every cop working it. If you think we don’t know who she is, you’re wrong. If you think her face isn’t in everyone’s head, you’re wrong.”
“I don’t know what to do.” His hands fisted on his thighs, pounded against them. “I can’t stand not knowing what to do, how to help. She must be so scared.”
“Yeah, she must be scared. I’m not going to bullshit you, Erik. She’s scared, and she’s probably hurting. But we’re going to find her. When we do, I’ll make sure you’re contacted. I’ll make sure you know we’ve got her safe.”
“I love her. I never told her. Never told me either,” he managed on a long, shaky breath. “I’m in love with her, and she doesn’t know.”
“You can tell her when we’ve got her back. Go home. Better, go be with a friend.”
When she’d nudged him along, she went back to the war room, straight to Roarke’s station. She picked up his bottle of water and guzzled.
“Help yourself,” he commented.
“Popped a buzz a couple hours ago. Always makes me thirsty. And…” She rolled her shoulders. “Wired. Location, location, location,” she added and made him smile.
“I have some others for you, and I’m working on trimming the number of them down. Any help on the opera connection?”
“Pieces, bits and pieces of him—and I’m getting a handle on the women he’s re-creating, we’ll say. Once we ID her, we’re going to have more data on him. I’ve got to go flap lips with the media.”
She started out, nearly ran headlong into Morris. “Sorry. Sorry.” The damn booster made her feel as if she were jumping out of her own skin. “What have you got? Tell me while we walk. I’ve got to get to the media room.”
“Energy pill?”
“It shows?”
“Generally, on you. He used dopamine and lorazepam on her. We haven’t detected those substances before.”
“What do they do?” She wished she’d copped Roarke’s water. “Would they have turned her off?”
“I’d say he was hoping for t
he opposite result. They’re sometimes used on catatonics.”
“Okay, so she turned off on him, and he tried to bring her around, keep the clock going.”
“I agree. Still, if she went into true and deep catatonia, he could have, potentially, kept that clock going for hours more. If not days.”
“But what fun is that?” Eve countered. “Not getting any reaction. She’s not participating.”
“Yes, again I agree. It holds with the fact she didn’t sustain as many injuries as the others. He couldn’t bring her around, so he gave up.”
“I don’t imagine you can pick up dopamine or whatzit?”
“Lorazepam.”
“Yeah, those. Probably didn’t pick them up at his local drug store.”
“No. And a doctor isn’t going to prescribe either for home use. It’s something that would be administered, by a licensed professional, under controlled conditions.”
“Maybe he’s a doctor, or some sort of medical. Or managed to pose as one.” Good at posing, she thought. Good at his roles. “Could be he scored it from a hospital or medical facility. But he’s never used it before, so why would he have had it on hand? Wouldn’t,” she said before Morris could speak. “If he scored it, he scored it over the weekend, and in New York.”
“Psychiatrics, primarily, would be the most logical source.”
“Give this to Peabody, okay? I want a search on facilities in New York that carry those meds. Tell her to use Mira if she needs grease or an expert. Meds like that have to be, by law, under lock and fully accounted for.”
“By law,” Morris agreed, “but not always strictly by practice.”
“We track it down. Start by getting full accountings from those facilities of these drugs. Any deviation, we take another push.”
“I can do this. A doctor for the dead’s still a doctor,” he added when she frowned at him. “I think I could help on this.”
“Take it to Peabody,” Eve repeated. “Work with her. I’ll check back with you when I’m done in here.”
In the war room Roarke saved, copied, and printed out the real estate list. Curious, he took out his PPC to access the last few minutes of Eve’s briefing while he wandered out for another bottle of water. She looked, he thought, rough and tough—and if you knew her as he did, a little ragged around the edges.
She’d make herself ill if this wasn’t over soon, he concluded. Push herself until she, very literally, collapsed.
There was absolutely no point in nagging or browbeating her this time as he was in it too deeply himself. He switched off as she was finishing up, then shifted to communications.
He thought if he ordered a dozen pizzas, she’d at least end up eating something. And he could damn well do with some food himself at this point.
After returning to his station, he took a fresh look at his list. Lowell’s Funeral Home, Lower East location, he mused. Sarifina York’s memorial was being held there. Today, he remembered. He should go, pay his respects.
He called up the funeral home on his comp to check the time of the service. If he couldn’t get away from the work—and the living took precedence over the dead—he could and would at least send flowers.
He noted down the time, the address, the specific room where the memorial was scheduled to be held. Cleverly, he thought, the page linked to a local florist. Handy and quick, he decided, but he preferred to trust Caro for the floral tribute.
Thoughtfully, he glanced at the link labeled “History,” and tapped it. It might tell him more than the standard data he’d already unearthed from the records.
Moments later his eyes went cool, his blood went hot. Roarke glanced over at Feeney, who was pushing at his own search.
“Feeney. I believe I have something.”
20
EVE STOOD, HANDS FISTED ON HER HIPS, STUDYING the data Roarke ordered on wall screen.
“The property didn’t pop in the initial searches as it’s been retitled a number of times, and not officially owned by the same person, persons, or company for the time period you asked I check. But with a deeper search, the ownership is—buried under some clever cover—held by the Lowell Family Trust.”
“Funeral parlor. Death house.”
“Indeed. As you see from the website history, the building first belonged to the Lowell family in the early nineteen-twenties, used both as a residence and as a funeral home. James Lowell established his business there, and lived in residence with his wife, two sons, and one daughter. The older son was killed in the Second World War, and the younger, Robert Lowell, joined the business, taking it over at his father’s death. He expanded, opening other locations in New York and New Jersey.”
“Death’s a profitable business,” Eve commented.
“So it is. And more so during wartime. Robert Lowell’s eldest son, another James, joined in the business, residing in their Lower West Side location—they had a second by that time. During the Urbans, this location, the original, was used as a clinic and base camp for the Home Force. Many of the dead were brought there, and tended to by the Lowells, who were reputed to be staunch supporters of the HF.”
“The second James Lowell is too old.” With her hands on her hips, Eve studied the data. “There are some spry centurians, but not spry enough for this.”
“Agreed. But he, in turn, had a son. Only one child, from his first marriage. He was widowed when his wife died from complications in childbirth. And he subsequently remarried six years later.”
“Pop,” Eve said quietly. “Have we got the second wife? The son?”
“There’s no record of the second wife that we’ve found as yet. A lot of records were destroyed during the Urbans. And the databases were far from complete in any case.”
“It’s one of the reasons these clowns—the Lowells,” Feeney said, “were able to manipulate the records.”
“Likely for tax purposes at one time,” Roarke continued. “Changed the name from Lowell’s to Manhattan Mortuary during the Urbans—with a bogus sale of the building. Then to Sunset Bereavement Center, another sale, roughly twenty years ago, with a return—five years ago—to the original name, with another deed transfer in the officials.”
“Just kept switching.”
“With a bit of creative bookkeeping, I imagine,” Roarke confirmed. “It caught my interest when I read that a Lowell has been at the helm of the business for four generations. Interested enough, I scraped away a bit.”
“The man’s got a golden e-shovel,” Feeney commented, and gave Roarke a slap on the back.
“Well, digging in, it turns out that the Lowell Family Trust owned companies that owned companies, and so on, which included the ones who ostensibly purchased the building.”
“Meaning they’ve been there all along.”
“Exactly so. And on the last generation, Robert—named for his grandfather—we have this.”
He pulled up the ID shot and data. Eve stepped closer to the screen, frowned. “He doesn’t look like Yancy’s sketch. The eyes, yes, maybe the mouth, but he doesn’t look like the sketch. Age is right, professional data, okay. Address in London.”
“Which is the English National Opera,” Feeney put in. “We ran it.” He tapped the image on screen. “Could Yancy have been this far off?”
“Never known him to be. And we have two wits verifying. That’s not him.” Eve shoved her fingers through her hair. Time to move. “Print it out. I want a team of five: Feeney, Roarke, Peabody, McNab, Newkirk. We’ll pay a visit to a funeral home. I want the team ten minutes behind me.”
“Ten?” Roarke repeated.
“That’s right. It’s time to open that window a little wider. Time’s moving for Ariel Greenfeld. And this might be when he makes his move on me, either en route to this place or when I’m inside it.”
She held up a hand as Yancy came in. “Feeney, get us a warrant. I don’t want any trouble going through that building. Yancy, give me a face.”
“Here she is.”
A
strong face, Eve thought. Strong and very feminine, almond-shaped eyes, slim nose, a wide, full mouth, and a cascade of dark hair. She was smiling, looking directly out. Her shoulders were bare but for two slim, sparkling straps. Around her neck was a glittering chain holding a pendant in the shape of a tree.
Tree of Life, Eve remembered. “Well, son of a bitch.” Another point for the Romanian psychic.
“Callendar, get a copy of this face. Find her. Run a data match for her picture. Search the newspapers, the magazines, the media reports from 1980 through 2015. Cross-check her with opera.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yancy.” Eve jerked her chin at the image still on screen. “That’s what his official ID has him looking like.”
“No.” Yancy just shook his head. “No way. Trina had him. This is a relative, maybe. Brother, cousin. But that’s not the guy Trina gave me, or the one Ms. Pruitt described from Tiffany’s.”
“Okay. Morris, you all right working on the meds alone?”
“I can handle it.”
“You get a hit, I get the buzz. Let’s move it, people. Ten minutes at my back. And nobody comes inside until I give the signal.”
“Sarifina York’s memorial is being held there,” Roarke reminded her. “It would be completely appropriate for me to pay my respects.”
Eve gave it a moment’s thought. “Ten minutes at my back,” she repeated. “Unless I signal sooner, you come on in to pay your respects. Get us that warrant, Feeney.”
“Vest and wire,” Roarke said, firmly.
“Yeah, yeah. In the garage. In five.” She strode out to prep.
When she pulled out of the garage, Eve’s instincts were tuned for a tail. And her mind was on Ariel.
She prayed to pass out, but the pain wouldn’t allow the escape. Even when he stopped, finally stopped, agony kept her above the surface. She tried to think of her friends, her family, of the life she’d led before, but it all seemed so distant, so separate. Nothing that had been would come clearly into focus.
There was only now, only the pain, only him.
And the time ticking away on the wall screen. Seven hours, twenty-three minutes, and the seconds clicking by.
