Devoted in Death

13

Jayla knew struggling only caused more pain, but she went into a frenzy of it when she heard them leave. She screamed against the gag until her throat felt burned and bloody, twisted her body, strained up with her arms with everything she had left in her.

It wasn’t enough.

Fresh wounds opened on her wrists, her ankles so the thick tape binding them rubbed raw and wet. Her fight cracked the NuSkin they’d slapped on some of her wounds, so they seeped again. She tasted her own tears and hysteria until, exhausted, she went still.

Remember, she ordered herself. Remember everything in case, just in case she lived through this.

They had her strapped on some sort of board, tied and taped down. Rope around her waist, her belly. Sometimes they choked her with another until she passed out.

Plastic – she thought – under the makeshift table. She could hear it swish and crinkle under their feet when they hurt her.

A window. She could just see a window, barred, and a big brown couch where they sometimes had sex. And a screen – they watched porn and game shows on it.

An apartment. Maybe street-level, she thought because she could hear traffic when they went out or came in through the door.

A white ceiling – dingy white, be specific, Jayla – dingy white ceiling with those round lights inside it.

They never turned the lights off.

They brought in takeaway food – never deliveries, at least not when she’d been conscious. A lot of beer and jug wine. And once, at least once, she’d smelled Zoner.

She could describe them perfectly.

All she had to do was get away, and she could describe them both perfectly right down to the matching tattoos.

Little hearts with D and E inside, etched in blue and red over their own hearts.

People would be looking for her, she could comfort herself with that. She had people who cared about her, and would be looking for her.

But how would they find her?

Why hadn’t she called a cab? Why hadn’t she used her head and called a cab when she’d walked out of that stupid party? Why had she gone in the first place? Why hadn’t she stayed home and watched vids with Kari?

She began to weep again, struggled again. And slid into shivering sleep.

The noise woke her. For a moment she was back in her college dorm with Kari, trying to sleep while a party went on in the next room. She tried to roll over – and the grinding pain brought her back.

They had music on – shit-kicking country music with some woman yodeling about how she was gonna hunt down her man. They sang along, top of their lungs, while they set up some sort of folding table.

The woman danced around it, rubbed her ass into the man’s crotch, danced away again on a giggle.

Jayla could see the plastic on the floor now.

And the body sprawled facedown on it.

Her first reaction was a kind of crazed jubilation. She wouldn’t be alone. They’d have someone else, might forget to hurt her, even for a little while.

Shame avalanched over the ugly joy, reminded her whatever they did to her, she was still human. She could still feel shame. And pity.

Together they rolled the body over, began to undress the man – no, she saw and the pity heightened. A boy. Younger than she was. Twenty, maybe twenty, and pale as glass.

He stirred a little, moaning. Darryl picked up the sap – they’d cracked at least one of her ribs with that weighted leather bag – and slapped the boy on the side of the head with it. Like you might slap a fly – absently, with a mild annoyance.

“Don’t want him waking up as yet,” Darryl said. “Need to get him situated first.”

“He’s about the whitest thing I’ve seen outside of that snow on the ground outside.” Ella-Loo snickered as she dragged off the boy’s pants.

She dumped out the contents of the pockets while Darryl finished getting him stripped down. And opened the wallet.

“Got less than twenty on him. Shit, and no wrist unit or nothing. Name’s Reed Aaron Mulligan.”

Jayla repeated the name over and over in her head. She’d remember Reed Aaron Mulligan. About twenty, on the skinny side, milk-white skin and some freckles, reddish-blond hair with a sorry-looking goatee on his soft boy’s face.

“Key swipe, few loose credits, nice little pocketknife. One of those – what-do-you-call-thems?”

Darryl glanced over. “Multi-tool. Lemme see.” He took it from her, examined it. “It is a nice one,” he said and slipped it into his own pocket.

“Boots’re pretty new, and the coat, too.”

Christmas presents, Jayla imagined. From his parents. His parents would be looking for him soon.

“Too small for you,” Ella-Loo said to Darryl, and standing, tried on the coat. “It’s warm.”

“Not pretty enough for you, baby.”

“I bet we can get something for it, and the boots.” She tossed them, and his pants toward the couch, then studied Reed Aaron Mulligan with her hands on her hips.

“Pecker’s nothing to write home about, but we get some Erotica in him, get the wood going on him, he’ll do all right.”

She turned to Jayla then, smiled that hot, feral smile. “He’s going to rape the shit out of you.”

Jayla wanted to close her eyes, just close them and go away again, but she made herself meet those hard eyes. Made herself stare back into them until Ella-Loo picked up the sap, slapped her once, twice in the crotch.

The pain burst in her center, radiated everywhere.

“There’s a taste for you.” Angling her head, as if considering, she slapped each of Jayla’s breasts in turn.

As Jayla’s body arched and fell, Ella-Loo watched the bruises bloom.

“I never tried any sex stuff with any of them. It gets me hot.”

“Me too.”

She glanced over, saw the gleam in Darryl’s eyes, the way his hand was working between his legs.

“Not yet, baby. Not yet. Let’s get our new friend here situated, like you said. We’re going to want to soften him up a little.”

Jayla crawled into herself, into the tight, dark space where the pain pushed around the edges. After a while, she couldn’t say how long, she heard the awful, almost inhuman high-pitched sound, one she’d heard herself make.

And knew they’d begun to soften up Reed Aaron Mulligan.

Eve read over DeWinter’s very preliminary report, again.

Too early to be conclusive – and that just burned her ass – but DeWinter believed, and Morris concurred – that a number of Melvin Little’s injuries had been inflicted prior to his fall. Some as much as twenty-four to thirty-six hours prior.

She waded through the science-speak, the ass-burning probables, possibles, and pulled out the meat.

Sharp-bladed instrument nicked bone, blunt object on oldest wound, back of skull. Femur fracture due to forceful downward strike.

Maybe by a tire iron, Eve thought as she paced and read, paced and read.

Numerous bones in the right hand crushed.

Further testing to continue at oh-seven-hundred.

She took heart from Morris’s postscript.

Garnet’s not ready to commit, and she’s correct. But he’s one of yours. The local autopsy was badly botched here. This victim suffered multiple wounds – stabbing, beating, striking – at least a day prior to TOD. It would be a considerable coincidence for him to have fought with or been attacked by someone other than your unsubs.

“Coincidence is bollocks,” she muttered.

“As you’ve said.” Smoothly, subtly, Roarke angled himself between her and what he believed was now – another – empty coffeepot. “You – all of you – have done all you can do tonight.”

“Santiago and Carmichael —”

“Will certainly contact you if they hit on anything. But as it’s past midnight there, it’s likely they’ll need to pick it up in the morning.”

“What time is it here?”

“If it’s past midnight there, it’s past one here. It’s an hour difference.”

“That drives me stupid crazy.”

“It does.” Banner dragged his hands through his hair, kept them gripped there as if it was the only way to keep his head upright. His eyes had the hazed and dazed look of a sleepwalker. “Step across some state line and you gain an hour, lose an hour. It’s confusing.”

She jabbed a finger at him in solidarity. “See?” she said to Roarke.

“I see that our Central Time deputy needs sleep, and so do the rest of you.”

She considered feeding everybody a departmentally approved energy boost, then realized the futility. Plus she hated the way boosters made her feel. They’d all work better with a few hours down.

“Okay, we’ll call it. Meet back here at oh-six-hundred.”

“I hear that. Sorry,” Banner added. “Brain’s gone soft on me. I can’t remember how to get to my bunk.”

“Where’d they put you?” Peabody rubbed her eyes as she rose.

“Ah…”

“The Park Room,” Roarke told her.

“We know where that is, right?”

McNab nodded, got to his feet, wrapped an arm around Peabody as she leaned against him. “Yeah, it’s right down from us. We’ll guide you in.”

“  ’Preciate it.” He glanced back at the board, zeroed in on Melvin Little. “He’s got more than me now. I’m not going to forget it.”

When he followed Peabody and McNab out, Eve eyed the coffeepot.

“Absolutely not.”

“You don’t get to say —”

“I do, and I’d expect you to do the same for me. Your blood must be three-quarters caffeine by now. You’re vibrating with it.”

“I’m a little wired,” she admitted.

“And if there was a single stone left for you to turn over tonight, I’d get you another pot myself, and join you.”

Maybe he would, she thought, maybe he’d just tranq her and be done. But he was right. She’d turned every stone available. Maybe she’d have a different perspective on what she’d found under one in the morning.

“Towing company takes calls 24/7,” she said as he pulled her from the room. “That’s what they do. Maybe Carmichael and Santiago will hit something tonight.”

“They’ll contact you if they do.”

“Once DeWinter puts her stamp on Little, and the other vic in her house, the FBI’s going to angle over, or start to.”

“Does that trouble you?”

“It irks on a purely – what’s it – visceral level. But the more resources the better. They’ve got people looking into Jayla, but their focus is north. They see New York as part of the pattern, not a destination.”

She noted when they entered the bedroom, Galahad had beaten them and was now sprawled dead center in the bed.

“The more resources the better,” she repeated, sliding her hands into her pockets, trying to pace off some of the excess energy. “We wouldn’t be this far on Little without Banner, and we wouldn’t have him confirmed – and he damn well is – without DeWinter and Morris.

“And the towing angle, that’s good. Wouldn’t have that without your criminal perspective.”

“Always happy to help.” He turned her around, released her weapon harness.

She shrugged out of it. “The locals didn’t want that connection – the local connection. They wanted Jansen to have gotten his head caved in by some homicidal hitcher. It’s all over their reports.”

“Hmm.” Roarke turned her around again, unbuckled her belt.

“As for Little, smoother if that was just his bad luck.”

He tugged her sweater over her head.

“Same with Fastbinder in West Virginia. Guy takes a wrong step, does a header into a crevice. Tragic, sure, but people aren’t hammering the local law about tracking down a couple killers.”

Roarke backed her to the bed, hefted her onto the platform, nudged her to sit.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m here to help, remember.” He lifted one of her legs, pulled off her boot.

“You’re working on getting me naked.”

“The reward for the help.”

“You looking for another payment?”

“I’d planned to run an account, but under the circumstances.” He pulled off the other boot.

“I am a little wired.” She boosted up her hips as he tugged her trousers down and away. “Might as well put the caffeine to some use.”

“And if I burn it out of you, you might shut up long enough for us to both get some sleep.”

With the flat of his hand, he covered her face, gave her a gentle shove back.

And with a throaty growl, Galahad padded to the far corner of the bed, turned his back to them.

“How does he know we’re not just going to sleep?”

“Animal instinct,” Roarke supposed, pulling off his own sweater before he levered over her.

“I’ve got some of that.” Eve yanked him down, added a quick bite to the kiss. “Fast.” She used her teeth on his throat now. “Fast and hard and rough.”

She was already pulsing, already pumping. And her swift, ripe greed sparked its match in him. While she struggled to undress him, he cupped a hand between her legs, sent her careening over the first keen edge.

Nothing now, nothing but need, like a fever, like a flame, burning, climbing. Mad with it, she arched up, grinding herself against him until they both shuddered.

Still arched, she locked her legs around his hips, reached up to grip the sheets as if she’d fly away without the anchor.

“Fast,” she said again, barely breathing. “Hard. Rough.”

He drove into her, sheathed to the hilt, ripped a cry from her. And again, with the pleasure so sharp it slashed through him like a blade.

Again, and still again, with a madness that clawed up to haze his vision so she seemed suspended in smoke beneath him.

He used his hands on her, slick, quivering skin, and his mouth, while he plunged – hard, fast, rough.

She’d wanted that dark greed inside him, the animal roused, so he freed it, rode it, rode her until her strangled scream sounded in his ears, until her body shook against his. Until she seemed to melt away.

And still he rode, past reason, took more. Took all.

And with all, released.

Her ears rang with the hammering of her own heart. His knocked against her like a fist. She sensed him start to move and managed to get her limp arms around him.

“No. Just stay,” she murmured. “Just stay awhile.”

And slept.

She woke in the dark, pulled from deep and blessedly dreamless sleep by the insistent beeping of her communicator.

Disoriented, still tangled with Roarke, she tried to push up.

“Wait. Lights on, ten percent.”

At Roarke’s command, the dark lifted as he rolled away.

“My comm…”

“Still in your trousers.” He found them, fished the communicator out while she tried to scrub the fog of sleep away.

“Ah —”

“Block video,” he advised.

“Christ. Yes. Block video,” she ordered. “Dallas.”

“Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve.”

At 4:18 a.m., she learned of Reed Aaron Mulligan.

Downtown again, she thought. A full day ahead of schedule. Unless…

“Do you want me to wake Peabody?” Roarke asked.

“Yes. No. No, no point. It’s going to be one of theirs, but that’s gut, not fact. I’ll talk to this Mulligan’s mother first.”

“Then I’m with you. With you,” he repeated before she could object.

She was showered, dressed and pumped on coffee inside ten minutes, with Roarke barely a minute behind as he remoted a vehicle over from the garage.

Then they were out the door, into the cold, clear night, where one of his burly A-Ts waited, engine and heaters running.

“Possible missing lives with his mother on Leonard, off Broadway.”

“I heard Dispatch.” He drove fast, smooth through the gates and onto streets quiet in the predawn winter. “This is a break-in pattern, yes?”

“If they’ve got him, yeah. Jayla Campbell should have had another day. Maybe something went south there, and they’ve dumped her body where we haven’t found it yet. Or disposed of it another way. Or…”

“Still have her. Alive.”

“Doubtful, but I’d like to think so. And it may be this is a false alarm. The missing’s twenty-one – barely.” She scanned her PPC, and the run she’d already started on him.

“A couple juvie bumps, looks like. Illegals, nothing major. Currently working as assistant manager, days, at a music store – instruments, lessons. Got some income here from a band called Thrashers.”

She dug a little deeper. “Plays the guitar, sings. Looks like a handful of club dates – low-rent. Have to check it out, but —”

“He might have gotten lucky, might have gotten stoned and flopped with a friend.”

“Maybe. But it’s their territory. Single mother, bar waitress, no sibs.” Eve put her PPC away. “We’ll hear her out.”

The Mulligans lived in a triple-decker walk-up with solid security and a reasonably clean lobby.

No graffiti on the stairway leading up to three, Eve noticed, which said something about the tenants. She’d heard a mutter of a media report on two through one of the apartment doors.

Lousy soundproofing, and someone worked the early shift.

She’d lifted her fist to rap on the door, but it swung open first.

“I heard you coming. Cops?”

“Lieutenant Dallas.” Eve held up her badge. “And my civilian consultant. Ms. Mulligan?”

“Yeah, yeah, come in. Thanks for getting here so fast. The first guy I talked to barely listened to me.”

She wore a short black skirt that showed good legs and a low-cut white top that framed good breasts. Her work clothes, Eve thought, and had only changed out her shoes for house skids, tossed a bulky cardigan over the shirt.

She radiated worry.

“Reed wouldn’t not come home. I mean to say he’d let me know if he was staying out. That’s our deal. I do the same for him.”

“Why don’t we sit down, and you can run through it for me?”

“Oh, sorry.” She looked around as if she couldn’t find her place in her own apartment. “I can’t think I’m so worried. Have a seat. I’ve got coffee.”

“That’d be great,” Eve said, mostly to give the woman something to do, something that would settle her. “Just black for both of us.”

“Give me a sec.”

She moved to the rear of the room, to the jog that held a narrow, open kitchen.

She wore her flame-red hair scooped up in a bouncy tail that left her face – narrow, angular – unframed. Her run had put her at forty, but she could have lied her way to thirty-five, even with the pallor and the shadows under misty green eyes.

“I work five nights a week at The Speakeasy. It’s a bar just a couple blocks over. It’s a good place, not a dive. Classy, good customers. Roarke owns it – you know who I mean.”

Eve slanted Roarke a look. “Yeah.”

“So it’s a good place to work – not a lot of ass-grabbers come in. And it’s close to home – Roarke owns this place, too, so it’s nice. It’s secure, and it’s clean. Reed’s a good boy. Responsible. He’s got a solid day job. He wants to be a music star – that’s the dream. He plays in a band, and they’re starting to get some jobs. He’s good. I know I’m his mom, but he’s good. Anyway.”

She brought coffee on a tray with the grace and ease of a longtime waitress.

“I work four nights seven to midnight, and one night – like tonight – five to two. Reed said how he might go out late, jam with his band some. They’re working on a sound, compu-boosted. He’s got a knack with computers. So when I got home and he wasn’t here, I wasn’t worried. But when I checked the house ’link – it was blinking so I knew there were messages, I got worried.”

She picked up her own coffee, set it down again. “The first message was from Benj—that’s Reed’s best friend, and one of the band. He was a little steamed. Where are you, sort of thing, why aren’t you answering your ’link. You could listen.”

“That’d be good.”

Quickly, Jackie rose, flipped on the message replay.

Hey, man, wtf! We’re still waiting. Answer your pocket, dude. You said you’d be here in a few. It’s been a freaking hour. Tag me.

The machine flagged the message at 1:06 a.m.

And the next, again from Benj, twenty minutes later. A third from a female – ID’d as Roxie Parkingston, lead vocalist – twenty-two minutes after that.

Reed, you’re scaring me now. I swear if I don’t hear back from you in another half an hour, I’m tagging your mom. Don’t make me tag your mom.

“She did,” Jackie confirmed. “I was listening to the message, her last message, when she rang through. She said Reed had talked to Benj when he was on the way – walking to this basement unit Benj and a couple of the other boys share on Morton, just off Seventh. They’ve soundproofed it, so they practice there. It’s only ten minutes away on foot. At most.

“Something happened,” she insisted. “He wouldn’t do this. We have a deal. All either of us have to do is say we won’t be home – no explanations, no questions. But we have to let the other know. We always do. And he was on his way to Benj and the band. His dream.”

“What would he have been wearing?”

Jackie let out a long breath. “I looked, to be sure. I got him a new coat and new boots. His birthday, Christmas. Brown Trailblazer boots – the real leather ones. It was his twenty-first birthday, and he really wanted them. And the coat, it’s a Moose brand parka. Hunter green. I think he’d be wearing black pants, a black sweater. It’s a band thing.”

“A girlfriend?”

“He’s half seeing this girl – Maddy – and I checked with her, woke her up. She hasn’t seen him for a couple days. He’s got the hots for Roxie. I can see it. Hell, she can see it, but he hasn’t moved on it yet. I’d know. So he’s half seeing Maddy, but it’s not serious, and she hasn’t seen him since they grabbed a pizza the other night.”

Eve asked more questions, got a sense of a happy-go-lucky sort of guy, earning a living, helping his mother with the rent, sliding along, and dreaming of fame and fortune rocking it out for millions.

As her own closest friend did just that, Eve knew it could actually happen.

She got the contact information on the bandmates, the half-a-girlfriend, some coworkers.

“You’re going to look for him, right?”

“Yes, we’re going to look for him.”

“I know he’s of age, but he’s mostly still a boy. And he’s pretty.” She pressed her lips together. “I know there are people out there, people who prey on boys, even boys of age.”

Yes, there are, Eve thought, but she said, “We’re going to look for him.”

The minute she stepped out, she turned to Roarke. “Your building.”

“Apparently it is.”

“Then getting the security discs shouldn’t be a problem. Cam on the door. It would show him leaving.”

“I’ve already contacted the security company who handles this property. The system’s in the basement utility. I have the codes.”

“Can you get me copies? I want to get his description out. It’ll hit the morning reports. Maybe somebody saw him.”

“Five minutes,” he told her, and took the basement exit.

He was back in four, handed her the copy. “I ran it from nineteen hundred through oh-one-hundred. Just to cover the ground.”

“That’ll do it.”

She ran it through her PPC, zipping forward until she saw Reed.

“Straight up midnight, and dressed just like his mother said. Hood up. It’s cold.”

She stood where she was, ran it straight through until she saw Jackie Mulligan walk to the door and key in.

“Three people out, two in between. No couples. And no reason to think they’d grabbed the kid, then bopped over here.”

“But now you’re sure.”

“Yeah. You up for a walk?”

“A walk in the cold and dark? Sounds just lovely.”

“He’d walk west,” she said as they stepped outside. “West to Seventh, turn south. “Ten-minute walk – probably a little less as he’d be walking fast in the cold. And somewhere along the route, he ran into them. Between midnight and ten after – if he didn’t detour. It’s a good, narrow window.”

She scanned as they walked, looking for more security cameras, for lighted windows, for shadowy spots where LCs or dealers or muggers might lurk.

But her gut told her Reed hadn’t run afoul of a mugger, or a junkie, or some random street deal. So she looked for potential stretches where someone could get a vehicle close enough to the curb to —

“Shit.” She stopped by a loading zone, checked the time. “Right about six minutes in. Broken streetlight, right there. And glass on the sidewalk from it.”

“They broke one of the lights for cover, pulled right into the loading zone.”

“Used the woman to lure him. ‘Hey, honey, can you help me out a second?’   ” She studied the buildings, the storefronts as she spoke. “No bars right here, and that’s a damn shame. Retail, café, residential, accounting firm. Nothing that would be bustling at midnight on a ball-freezing night. But some traffic had to come by. So they had to be quick with him.”

She tipped her face up. “Yeah, they had to be quick. And that’s a mistake. Loading zones have cams. Crap cams, and a lot of them don’t work at all, but we’ve got a shot here.”

She pulled out her communicator. “We’ve got a shot,” she repeated.