Kindred In Death

4

“WAS SHE A TARGET BEFORE HE SAW HER RUNNING in the park habitually, then set up the play,” Peabody wondered, “or before even that? I mean, specifically Deena MacMasters rather than just a teenage girl, maybe one with certain physical characteristics?”

“It’s a good question.”

“It seems like, if it was luck of the draw, he’d have backed off when he found out her father was a cop. Easier prey out there.”

“Which may have been part of her appeal to him,” Eve said. “She’d make a challenge. He knew enough about her at the setup meeting. He’d already done or at least started research on her. He knew her father was a cop when he staged the meet-cute. Knew her tastes. Shy boy, awkward boy, gentle boy.”

“Specifically her then.” Peabody frowned. “So why was it a good question?”

“Because we can’t rule out the other option. I’m going to drop you off at the next pal’s, leave that one to you. I think Jo was being straight when she said nobody else knew about this guy-but we’ll cross the Ts. When you finish interviewing the friends, head down to Central. I’ll book a conference room. I want EDD to come in with a prelim report asap.

“They went for walks,” Eve murmured, thinking of what Jo had said. “You can bet he didn’t walk with her in her own neighborhood. Nowhere they’d be likely to run into someone who knew her. To vids, where it’s dark. Keep it all a secret. It’s more romantic, and I’m ashamed of my minor transgression. I’m shy. A few weeks, Jo said. A long time to play out the string. Patient bastard.”

“Young, if he’s really nineteen.”

“Maybe he is, or maybe he knows how to look nineteen.” She swung to the curb. “We’ll run like crimes. I’ll start on that after I go by the morgue.”

“Tell Morris… well, just tell him welcome back.” Peabody climbed out.

Hell of a welcome, Eve thought, but bulled her way back into traffic. The barricades, the swarms of pedestrians trooping toward Fifth for the parade, the seas of entrepreneurs with carts and wheeled cases loaded with souvenirs jammed the streets and sidewalks.

Within blocks her bulling slowed to inching. She narrowed her eyes at the throng of tourists and locals forming impenetrable walls-and thought if she saw one more person sporting a peace sign or waving a flower flag, she might just pull her weapon and give them one good zap.

I’ve got your peace right here, she thought.

She glanced at the time, blew out a breath, then used her dash ’link to contact Roarke.

“Lieutenant. I take it this isn’t to let me know you’re on your way home.”

“No. I’m fighting through freaking Peace Day mayhem. If these people want peace, why the hell don’t they stay home?”

“Because they want to share goodwill with their fellow man?”

“Bullshit. Because they want to get drunk and cop feels in the crowd.”

“There is that. Where are you heading?”

“The morgue. It’s a bad one.”

“I’m sorry. Can you tell me?”

“Sixteen-year-old daughter of a decorated cop, one who recently earned his captain’s bars. Rape-murder, in her home. Her parents found the body this morning when they returned from a weekend holiday.”

“I’m very sorry.” Those intense blue eyes searched her face looking, she knew, for cracks.

“I’m fine.”

“All right. Is there anything I can do?”

You just did it, she thought, by asking. “I’m trying to fit the pieces together. One of them is Jamie.”

“Jamie? How?”

“They were friends.”

“Surely you don’t think-”

“No, I don’t think. I’ll check out his alibi simply because I don’t want to leave any blanks, but he’s not a suspect. She had a secret boyfriend-one it’s looking like targeted her, laid all the groundwork. I’m on my way to the morgue to see if some of the pieces in my head fit the evidence. After that, I’m hitting the lab.”

She saw a minute break in traffic, gunned it, flipped her vertical, soared over-she loved this new ride-and swung west.

“I asked Whitney to order Morris in today. Then I’m convening a briefing at Central. We need to run like crimes, go through the electronics, start a sweep on her areas of interest, so-”

“I believe I’ll come down and watch you work.”

“Look-”

“I can stay out of the way if that’s what you want. But you won’t keep Jamie out. I may be some help there. You’ve said her parents-one a police captain-returned home to find her dead. But you don’t mention security discs or the system. One assumes a veteran cop would take all necessary means, including strong security, to protect his family. There’s some e-work here.”

“That’s Feeney’s aegis.”

“I’ll be contacting him then.”

Knew you would. “Wouldn’t you like a nice quiet Sunday at home?”

“I would, if I had my wife here. But she’s having a different sort of day.”

“Suit yourself. Question. Why didn’t you tell me you were supplementing Jamie’s scholarship?”

“Busted.” He looked mildly disconcerted.

“It’s not a crime.”

“Well now I’m not altogether sure, as you’d see it as a bribe, wouldn’t you, to lure him into one of my companies?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Damn right, and a fine one, too. But the boy’s determined to be a cop. If he’s still of that mind when he’s finished at university, your gain is my loss. He’s bloody brilliant.”

“As good as you?”

Those wild blue eyes sparkled. “No, but a good deal more honest. I’ll see you at Central.”

“Don’t take Fifth. Jesus! I wish you could see this. There’s some asshole dressed like a peace sign. He’s a big yellow circle, with naked limbs. People are so damn weird. I’ll see you later.”

She’d known he’d come, just as she’d come to know how useful it was to have a thief-former-help analyze the bypassing of locks and codes.

Deena might have given her killer the passcode for the control room, if she’d had it. But if he’d shut down the cameras, wiped the hard drive, accessed the discs, he’d needed more than the code. He’d needed excellent e-skills.

And there her thief-former-was unsurpassed.

“Bloody brilliant,” she muttered, using Roarke’s own term.

A skeletal holiday shift manned the morgue, and those who remained behind to deal with the dead wore colorful shorts under lab coats. Music danced jauntily out of offices and cutting rooms.

She doubted the residents cared overmuch one way or the other.

She paused long enough to scowl at Vending. She wanted a tube of Pepsi, and didn’t want any bullshit from the damn machine.

“You!” She jabbed a finger at a passing tech, and the gesture had his face going as white as his bony legs. “Two tubes of Pepsi.” She pushed credits at him.

“Sure, okay.” Dutifully, he plugged them in, made her request. Even as the tubes plopped into the slot, and the machine began the soft drink’s current jingle, Eve snatched them out.

“Thanks.” She strode away.

The first sip was shockingly cold, and exactly what she was after. She continued down the white tunnel, chased by the echo of her own boots and the sticky hints of death that clung to the air under the blasts of citrus and disinfectant wafting out of the vents.

She paused outside the double doors of the autopsy suite not to brace herself to face that death, but the man who studied it.

She drew a breath, pushed through the doors.

There he was, looking the same.

He wore a clear protective coat over a suit of moonless night black. He’d paired it with a shirt of rich gold, and a needle-thin tie where both colors wove together. She frowned at the silver peace sign pinned to his lapel, but had to admit on Morris it worked.

His ink-black hair drew back from his exotic face in a single, gleaming braid.

He stood over the dead girl he’d already opened with his precise, almost artistic Y cut.

When his dark eyes lifted to Eve’s, she felt her belly tighten.

He looked the same, but was he?

“I guess this is a crappy welcome back.” She crossed over, offered the second tube. “Sorry I had to pull you in early, and on a holiday.”

“Thank you.” He took the drink, but didn’t crack the tube.

Her tightened belly began to jump. “Morris-”

“I have some things to say to you.”

“Okay. All right.”

“Thank you for finding justice for Amaryllis.”

“Don’t-”

He held up his free hand. “I need to say these things before we go back to our work, our lives. You need to let me say them.”

Feeling helpless, she stuck her hands in her pockets and said nothing.

“We deal with death, you and I, and with that death leaves grieving. We believe-or hope-that finding the answers, finding justice will help the dead, and those the dead leaves grieving. It does. Somehow it does. I no longer believe it, or hope it, but know it. I loved her, and the loss…”

He paused, opened the tube, drank. “Immense. But you were there for me. As a cop, and as a friend. You held my hand during those first horrible steps of grief, helped me steady myself. And by finding the answers, you gave me, and her, some peace. It’s a day to remember peace, I suppose. The job you and I do is often ugly and thankless. I need to thank you.”

“Okay.”

“More, Eve.” He rarely used her first name, and using it now, he closed his hand over her arm to keep her still. “Though it discomforts you.” And smiled, just a little-just enough to loosen the tightest knots in her belly. “Thank you for suggesting I speak to Father Lopez.”

“You went to see him?”

“I did. I had thought to go away, stay away until… Until. But there was nowhere I wanted to be, and frankly, I felt closer to her here. So I stayed, and I went to see your priest.”

She had to fight not to squirm. “He’s not mine.”

“He gave me comfort,” Morris continued over her flustered response. “He’s a man of unassailable faith, with a flexible mind and limitless compassion. He helped me with those next difficult steps, and helped me accept I’ll have more to take.”

“He’s… good, but not a pain in the ass about it. Much.”

Now the smile reached those dark eyes and eased more of her tension. “An excellent summary. And thank you for trusting me when I wasn’t sure I trusted myself.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Before your request came in this morning, I was going over the reasons-excuses-not to come back yet. Another week, maybe two. I wasn’t sure I was ready to be here, to face this place, to handle the work. But you asked for me. You trusted me, so what choice do I have but to trust myself?”

“She needs you.” On that single point Eve had Lopez’s unassailable faith. “Deena MacMasters needs you. You have a good team here, good people. But she needs you. She needs us.”

“Yes. So…” He stunned her by brushing his lips, very lightly on hers. “It’s good to see you.”

“Um. Likewise.”

He gave her arm a quick squeeze, then released it. “And where is the estimable Peabody?”

“Field work. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

“Then we’ll begin. I know MacMasters, of course. He’s solid. This will have put a hole in him.”

“He’s maintaining.”

“What else is there? Her name is Deena.” He glanced at Eve, got her nod. “Sixteen-year-old female in exceptional health prior to her death. She took care of herself, and was cared for. The scan showed no prior injuries of any note, and confirms excellent nutrition. Her last meal, consumed at approximately six-thirty p.m., was pizza with a topping of peppers, mushrooms, black olives, and about six ounces of cherry fizzy. As you flagged tox, I’ve determined the barbiturate she ingested with the meal was mixed with the drink.”

“He drugged her.”

“I can’t say, only that she ingested the barb, and there are no signs of regular use of same in her scan. All to the contrary. Given her weight, and the assumption she wasn’t accustomed to taking drugs, the dose would have been enough to render her unconscious, for perhaps as much as an hour.”

“Plenty of time for him to get her upstairs, restrained, then shut down the cameras and take the discs. If he did so in that order. Plenty of time. She’d have been groggy, disoriented when she came to.”

“Yes. She ingested another dose-smaller-at about midnight.”

“A second dose?”

“Yes. Her hands were cuffed behind her back at the wrists-there’s deep bruising, lacerations indicating she struggled against them, quite violently. The marks on her ankles indicate a different restraint. Probably cloth.”

“Bedsheets.”

“That’s consistent. She fought those, too. And if you look.” He paused to pick up a second pair of microgoggles, gave them to Eve. “Here.” They bent over the ankles together. “The bounds were extremely tight, digging into the skin. Here, here, here.”

“Tied, retied, tied again.” She saw it in her head as well. “Tied, raped, untied, turned, tied, sodomized. Untied, turned, raped again?”

“It would be my conclusion. Multiple rapes, multiple sodomy, all extremely violent. As you can see…”

He moved up the body. A line of sweat, icy cold, slid down Eve’s spine. But she moved with him, slammed more locks on her memories, and studied the damage.

“The tears, the trauma. Her hymen was intact before the rape. So young,” he murmured. “And so mercilessly used. I found no semen. He sealed up, and was cautious enough to do so with each rape. We’ve no trace of him in or on her. I’d speculate he removed his own genital hair, possibly all his body hair before the act. Otherwise, even sealed, with multiple, violent rapes, we should have found a stray hair. There’s some bruising on her legs, her torso from his hands. Deeper bruising on her shoulders where it appears he held her down more forcibly. On her throat-”

“He choked her. Watched her face while he did. Watched until she passed out. Between the rapes, between them because he wouldn’t want to risk going too far, taking her out too soon, spoiling the fun.”

She could see it, in the room with the soft violet walls and the glossy white furniture. See the terror, the horror. Feel the pain.

“He chokes her while she struggles, fights for air, goes out. Then he unties her legs, shoves her over, secures her again. And waits for her to come to so she can feel him sodomize her. No good if she’s out. He wants to hurt her. Needs to hurt her. Maybe he gets off that way. On her pain, her struggles, her pleas.”

“You’ve gone pale.” Morris touched her arm. “Step back, sit.”

She shook her head, brushed him off. She would get through it. Staring into her own past as much as Deena’s, Eve swiped the cold tube over her brow.

“Then what he does, when he’s finished, however many times he feels inclined, when she’s lying there, quivering or when she’s gone somewhere else, somewhere she can’t feel the pain, he pushes her face into the pillow, holds her down, smothering her until she passes out again. Then he can turn her over, tie her again. He worked her for about eight hours, a full day’s work. So he could let her lie there a while until he could get it up again.

“Maybe he promised to let her go if she gave him the passcode for the control room. But I think he may have already taken care of that. Either way, lots of time. She’d ask him why, why he was doing this. He’d tell her, tell her exactly. Because he was going to kill her, and he’d enjoy telling her why.”

“Why?” Morris spoke softly, watching her face.

“Don’t know. Not yet. But he’d make sure she knew it wasn’t because he wanted her. Not because he liked her. If he made all this time, took all this effort to hurt her physically, again and again, wouldn’t he want to hurt her emotionally, mentally? Break her down, carve her away, every inch. In addition to the rape, and all that does to your body, your mind, your fucking soul, he’d want to make sure she knew she meant nothing. That he’d played her. Taking her out, holding her hand, being a shy guy. Making her feel like a fool? Nice bonus.”

She kept her breathing even, she could do that, even if she couldn’t stop the pulse from hammering in her head.

“Mask’s off. No need for it now. He’d want her to see who he was. He’d want her to know what’s inside her when he rapes her, what’s tearing and ripping her. Young healthy girl, strong girl, so he can drag it out for hours, until the last time he put his hands around her throat, the last time she looks in his eyes as he starts to squeeze. Until he ends it.”

She did step back now. She didn’t tremble, though she wanted to. Still, she took a long, slow drink of the now-lukewarm Pepsi. “He leaves the cuffs. Cop cuffs. Standard issue. He unties her legs, but leaves her hands cuffed. Because that’s a message to her father. That’s an extra punch to the gut. It wasn’t her, not about her. She was just an instrument. A weapon. He could’ve killed her dozens of times before this, in dozens of ways. He wanted it to be in that house, inside the house where the cop believed his little girl would always be safe.”

She studied the face. “The second dose, that was for MacMasters, too. He wanted to make sure we found the drug in her system. As far as he knew, at the time of the murder, her parents weren’t due back until the afternoon, mid- to late afternoon. We wouldn’t have gotten to a tox yet on that time frame. We wouldn’t have gotten to one until evening, even flagged and expedited. Just another boost to make sure we found it. That’s why he left the glass.”

“Glass?”

“It’ll be her glass he left on the counter in the kitchen, and there’ll be traces of the barb there for the lab to find. It’s like… thumbing his nose. An insult to kick it all down. Look what I can do in the sanctity of your own home, to your precious daughter, using the very thing you work against every day of your life. It wasn’t about her, about Deena. That’s worse, isn’t it?”

She looked at Morris again, composed again. “It’s worse for MacMasters knowing it wasn’t about her. She was just the conduit.”

“Yes. It would be worse.” And what were you? he wondered. What were you to the one who used you this way?

But he didn’t ask. He knew her too well, understood her too well, to ask.

Later, she stood outside, breathing in New York, drawing in the sticky heat of a day that decided to soar to summer. She’d gotten through it, she told herself, gotten through what should be the worst of it. She got back in her car and drove to the lab.

She expected to butt heads with Chief Lab Tech Dick Berinksi. In fact, she looked forward to the tension relieving ass-kicking she hoped to give the man not so affectionately known as Dickhead. “He’s a fuck, but he’s the best,” she’d say about him.

She found the lab empty but for a handful of lab rats tucked in their glass cubes or dozing over paperwork. And the egg-shaped head plastered with thin black hair of the chief bent toward a comp screen while his clever, if creepy, fingers played over both screen and keyboard.

“Status.” She said it like a dare.

He shot her a resentful glare. “I had tickets to the ball game. Boxed seats.”

Bribes, no doubt. “Captain MacMasters had a daughter. Now ask me if I give a flying shit about your box seat.”

“She wouldn’t be less dead if I was chowing on a dog, sucking down a brew, and watching the Yankees on freaking Peace Day.”

“Gee, you’re right. It’s too bad she got raped, sodomized, raped again, terrorized, and choked to death on freaking Peace Day just to inconvenience you.”

“Jesus, chill.” The murderous gleam in her eye must have gotten through his own ire as he waved those spider fingers in the air. “I’m here, aren’t I? And I already ran the glass. You got cherry fizzy and barbs. The mickey comes up as Slider, liquid form, with a small kick of powdered Zoner.”

“Zoner?”

“Yeah, just a touch. Didn’t need it, not with the Slider, but the combo gives the user freaky dreams. Usually, you wake up with a mother of a migraine. I don’t see an upside to sucking down this particular cocktail, but it takes all kinds.”

“So, she’d have suffered even when she was out. And come back in pain.”

“He’d wanted to just knock her out, the Slider’d do it. You have to figure he wanted the edge. I got DNA and prints, and both match the vic’s. I was just sending it over. You could’ve saved yourself the trip.”

“What about the sheets, her clothes?”

“I’m not a freaking machine. I’ve got them logged in, and I’m going to run them. Sweepers lit them up on scene-just like I figure you did-no semen. He suited up most like. But we’ll give them a full scan. If his suit sprang a leak the size of a pinhole, or he drooled, we’ll find it. Before you ask, the cuffs are standard issue. I took a gander and they look new. Or at least they hadn’t seen any use to speak of before this. Blood and tissue match the vic’s. No prints. Fibers caught in them, probably from the sheets. Harpo can take those in the morning.”

She couldn’t argue. He’d done the job. “Send the report on the glass-and another as soon as you finish with the sheets, her clothes.”

She left it at that and headed to Central with the low hum of a headache at the base of her skull.

Even on Peace Day, cruising toward evening, Central buzzed. Protect and serve meant 24/7, and peace be damned. Bad guys, in their various forms, on their various levels, didn’t take time off. She imagined there were precincts across the island filled with not-so-bad guys who’d had too much holiday brew, indulged in some holiday pushy-shovey, or had their wallets lifted in the parade crush.

She took the glides rather than the faster elevators to give herself just a little more time to level out.

She wished she had something to pummel. Wished she could take twenty to swing into one of the on-site gyms and tune up a sparring droid. But eight hours after the tag from Whitney, she strode into the bullpen in Homicide, and straight through to her office.

Coffee, she thought-the real deal-would have to substitute for the release of punches and sore knuckles.

He sat in her visitor’s chair, one she knew was miserably uncomfortable because she didn’t want anyone to settle into her space too long.

But he sat, working on his PPC, his sleeves rolled up, his hair tied back as it was when he prepared to dive into some thorny task or was already in the thicket.

She shut the door.

“I thought you’d be with Feeney.”

“I was.” Roarke sat where he was to study her face. “They haven’t been back from the scene long. They’re setting up in the conference room you booked.”

She nodded, walked straight to her AutoChef to order coffee. “I just want a minute to organize my thoughts for the briefing. You can tell them I’m on my way.”

She’d wanted to brood out her skinny window while downing the coffee, but brooding required being alone. Instead, she turned to walk to her desk.

He’d risen and stepped behind her. He made less noise than their cat. And he took the mug of coffee out of her hand to set it aside.

“Hey. I want the kick.”

“You can have it in a minute.” All he did with those strong, seeking blue eyes on hers was touch his fingertips to her cheeks.

“Okay.” Letting go, just letting go, she stepped into his arms. She could close her eyes and be enfolded, be held, be loved and understood.

“There now.” He turned his head to press his lips to her hair. “There.”

“I’m okay.”

“Not quite. I won’t ask if you’ll pass this on. You wouldn’t even if a colleague hadn’t asked you for help.” At the shake of her head, he kissed her hair again, then eased her back so their eyes met. “You need to prove you can get through it.”

“I am getting through it.”

“You are. But I think you forget you need to get through nothing alone.”

“She was older than I was. Twice my age. Still…”

He stroked her back when she shuddered, just one hard tremor. “Still. Young, defenseless, innocent.”

“I’d already stopped being innocent. I was… When I was at the morgue, I looked at her, and I thought, that could’ve been me on the slab. If I hadn’t put him on one first, it could’ve been me. He’d have killed me sooner or later, or worse, turned me into a thing. Putting him there first had to be done, and that’s that. She didn’t have a chance, not even the chance I did. A good home, parents who loved her, and who’ll be broken, some pieces of them always broken now. But she didn’t have the chance I did. I could never pass her on.”

“No, you never could.”

She held and was held another minute, then stepped back. “I was wishing I had time to go beat the living crap out of a sparring droid.”

“Ah.” He had to smile. “A never-fail for you.”

“Yeah. This was better.”

He picked up her coffee, handed it to her. “Taking a blocker for the headache would be better yet.”

“It’s not so bad, not so bad now. I’ll work it off.”

“The pizza I ordered should help.”

“You ordered pizza?” The part of her that yearned warred against the part of her that wanted to maintain discipline. “I’ve told you not to keep buying food for my cops. You’ll spoil and corrupt them.”

“There’s only one cop I’m interested in spoiling and corrupting, and pizza happens to be a weakness of hers.”

She drank her coffee doing her best to scowl at him over the rim. “Did you get pepperoni?”