Kindred In Death

6

AS SUMMERSET MADE NO APPEARANCE WHEN they walked into the house, Eve lifted her eyebrows. “Where’s Mister Scary?”

The look Roarke sent her managed to be both resigned and mildly scolding. “Summerset has the night off.”

“You mean the house is Summerset-free? Damn shame we have to waste it with work.”

He slid a hand down her back, over her ass. “A break wouldn’t be uncalled for.”

“Nope. I’ve got over thirty runs to do. Plus I put off reporting to Whitney hoping we’d catch a miracle.” She started up the steps, then stopped dead when she spied the cat sitting on the landing, staring at her with unquestionably annoyed eyes.

“Jesus, he’s almost as bad as your goon.”

“He dislikes being left on his own.”

“I’m not going to start hauling him to crime scenes. Deal with it, pal,” she told the cat, but stopped to crouch and stroke when she reached the landing. “Some of us have to work for a living. Well, one of us has to. The other one mostly does it for fun.”

“As it happens I need to go have a bit of fun. After which I’ll put in some time in the lab.”

“Work, on Peace Day-or pretty much Peace Night now, I guess.”

“A little something I started this morning when my wife left me on my own.”

They continued up together with the cat prancing between them.

“Can you make a copy of this disc?” she asked him. “I need to keep the original clean.”

“No problem.” He took the evidence bag. “We’re eating in two hours,” Roarke decreed as he walked past her office toward his own. “Meanwhile, you can feed the cat.”

She didn’t bother to scowl, it was energy wasted. She moved through her office, and again stopped dead when she saw the stuffed cat Roarke had given her-a toy replica of Galahad-sprawled on her sleep chair.

She looked at the toy, at the original, back to the toy. “You know, I don’t even want to know what you were doing with that.”

In the kitchen she fed the cat, programmed a pot of coffee.

At her desk she booted up her comp then sat to organize her notes, the reports, and start the first ten runs from the Columbia list. While the computer worked, she looked over the report she’d drafted for Whitney.

She refined it, read it again. Hoping he’d be satisfied, for now, with the written, she sent copies to both his home and office units.

She ordered the computer to display the runs, in order, on screen. Sitting back with her coffee she studied data, images.

Young, she thought, all so young. Not one of her initial runs had so much as a whiff of criminal, no juvie bumps, no illegals busts, not even so much as an academic knuckle rap.

She ran the rest, then started over from another angle.

“Computer, run current list for parents, siblings with criminal record and/or connection to MacMasters, Captain Jonah, as investigator or case boss.”

Acknowledged. Working…

Payback, if payback it was, came from different roots, she thought. While the run progressed, she rose to set up yet another murder board.

Data complete…

“On screen.”

Now there were some bumps and busts, and a few whiffs. Eleven on her list had illegals hits, some more than one. And yet, she noted, none of those had any connection to MacMasters.

Considering, she ordered a run on the investigating officer or team. Maybe the connection with MacMasters was more nebulous.

Once again, she hit zero. And paced.

She’d ask MacMasters directly. Maybe one of the investigators was an old childhood friend, or a third cousin once removed.

Waste of time, that wasn’t it, but they’d cover the ground.

She recircled the murder board, coming from another angle, but saw nothing new. She shook her head as Roarke came in.

“Daughter,” she said. “Payback-if we run with that-was to kill MacMasters’s daughter. Is it a mirror? Is MacMasters somehow responsible-in the killer’s mind-for the rape or death of his own daughter-child. Make it child as MacMasters only had a daughter.”

“If the killer is anywhere near the age he pretended to be, he’d be a very young father. What if he’s the child, and MacMasters is, to his mind, responsible for the rape or murder of his parent? Or, for that matter himself. He might perceive himself as a victim.”

“Yeah, I’m circling those routes, too.” She dragged both hands through her hair. “Basically, I’m getting nowhere. Maybe taking that break, clearing it out of my head for an hour, is a good idea.”

“I copied the music disc.”

Something in his tone had her looking away from the board, meeting his eyes. “What is it?”

“I ran an auto-analysis while I was working on the other e-business. It’s both audio and video, which is very unusual. Performance art is often a part of a disc like this. But there was an addition made this morning at two-thirty, and another at just after three.”

“He added to it. Son of a bitch. Did you play it?”

“I didn’t, no, assuming you’d disapprove of that.”

She held out her hand for the disc, then took it to her comp. “Play content from additions, starting at two-thirty, this date. Display video on screen one.”

Roarke said nothing, but went to her, stood with her.

The music came first, something light and insanely cheerful. The sort of thing, she thought, some stores play in the background. It always made her want to beat someone up.

Then the image slid on screen-soft focus, then sharper, sharper until every bruise, every tear, every smear of blood on Deena MacMasters showed clearly.

She’d been propped up on the pillows so that she reclined, half-sitting, facing the camera. Probably her own PPC or ’link, Eve thought. Her eyes were dull, ravaged, defeated. Her voice, when she spoke, slurred with exhaustion and shock.

“Please. Please don’t make me.”

The image faded, then bloomed again.

“Okay. Okay. Dad, this is your fault. Everything is your fault. And, and, oh God. Oh God. Okay. I will never forgive you. And I hate you. Dad. Daddy. Please. Okay. You’ll never know why. You won’t know, and I won’t. But-but I have to pay for what you did. Daddy, help me. Why doesn’t somebody help me?”

The image faded again, and the music changed. Eve heard the cliché of the funeral dirge as the camera came back, panned up, slowly, from Deena’s feet, up her legs, her torso, to her face. To the empty eyes.

It held on the face as text began to scroll.

It may take you a while to find this, play this. Your dead daughter sure liked her music! I played it for her while I raped the shit out of her. Oh, btw, she was an idiot, but a decent piece of ass. I hope our little video causes you to stick your weapon in your mouth and blow your brains out.

She didn’t deliver her lines very well, but that doesn’t diminish the truth. Your fault, asshole. If it wasn’t for you, your deeply stupid daughter would still be alive.

How long can you live with that?

Payback is rocking-A!

For the crescendo, the audio blasted with Deena’s screams.

“Computer, replay, same segment.”

“Christ Jesus, Eve.”

“I need to see it again,” she snapped. “I need it analyzed. Maybe he said something that we can pick up, maybe there’s something that picks up his reflection.” She moved closer to the screen as it began its replay.

Roarke crossed over to open the wall panel. He pulled out a bottle of wine, uncorked it.

“There’s no mirror, no reflective surface. Her eyes? The way he’s got her sitting, maybe he can get a reflection off her eyes.”

“Alive or dead? I’m sorry,” Roarke said immediately. “I’m sorry for that. Truly.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not. She’s so young, and so afraid, so helpless.”

“She’s not me.”

“No. Not you, nor Marlena. But…” He handed her a glass of wine, then took a long drink from his own. “I’ll see if I can get something off it. I’d have a better chance with the original than a copy.”

“I need to log that in, in Central, run it through Feeney.” Time, she thought, it all took time, but… “No shortcuts on this.”

“All right then.” Roarke gestured to the screen. “You won’t show this to the father.”

“No.” She drank because her throat was dry. “He doesn’t need to see this.”

Because he needed to, needed the contact, Roarke took her hand in his as they studied the screen together. “It seems revenge, your payback, holds as motive.”

“It had to. I couldn’t see it any other way.” Again, and again, she read the final text, that ugly message from the killer.

“It’s boasting,” she said quietly. “He couldn’t resist digging in the knife. Leaving the music disc wasn’t the mistake. But adding this, that’s a big one. He doesn’t care about that, but it’s a mistake.”

“It wasn’t enough even to torture that child, to force her to say those words-her last-to her father. He had to add his own.”

“Exactly right. That’s a crack in control, in logic, even in patience.”

“The kill,” Roarke suggested. “For some it’s a spike, a rush.”

“That’s right. He was so damn pleased with himself. All those weeks, those months of preparation coming to a head here, in what he sees as his victory. So he has to do his little dance. It’s a mistake, a weakness,” she said with a nod. “He put too much of himself in there, couldn’t resist claiming that much responsibility for her. It’s the kind of thing that gives us a handle.”

Personal, she thought. Deeply personal. “He needed MacMasters to know, and to suffer for the knowing. It gives us a focus. We concentrate on MacMasters, his case files, his career. Who has he taken down, what cops has he kicked over the years. Everything he did up to that was cold, controlled. This part? It’s cocky, and even while it’s smug, it’s really pissed off. It helps.”

Because he’d had enough, maybe too much, Roarke turned away from the screen. “I hope to God it does.”

“We’ll take a break.”

“Which you’re doing now for me.”

“About half.” She ordered the screen off, ordered a copy of the disc. “You’re right, it hits really close to home. I need it out of my head for a little while.”

He went back to her wondering why he hadn’t seen how pale she’d gone, how dark her eyes. “We’ll have a meal. Not in here. We’ll step away from this. We’ll have a meal outside, in the air.”

“Okay. Yeah.” She let out a breath that eased some of the constriction in her chest. “That’d be good. I need to inform Whitney, and the team. I have to do that now.”

“Do that, and I’ll take care of the meal.”

When she came down, stepped out on the terrace, he stood with his glass of wine on the border between stone and lawn. He’d switched on lights that illuminated the trees, the shrubs, the gardens so they glimmered under the moon. The table was set-he had a way-with flickering candles and dishes under silver covers.

Two worlds, she supposed. What they’d closed away inside for a while, and what was here, sparkling in the night.

“When I built this house, this place,” he began, still looking out into the shimmering dark, “I wanted a home, and I wanted important. Secure, of course. But I think it wasn’t until you I put secure in the same bed as safe. Safe wasn’t a particular priority. I liked the edge. When you love, safe becomes paramount. And still with what we are, what we do, there’s the edge. We know it. Maybe we need it.”

He turned to her now, and he was both shadow and light.

“Earlier I said I didn’t know how you could bear doing what you do, seeing what you see. I expect I’ll wonder that a thousand times in a thousand ways through our life together. But tonight, I know. I don’t have the words, no clever phrases or lofty philosophy. I simply know.”

“When it’s too much, bringing it home, you have to tell me.”

“Darling Eve.” He stepped to her, danced his fingertips over her messy cap of hair. “I wanted a home, and I wanted important. I managed the shell of it, didn’t I? An impressive shell for all that. But you? What you are, what you bring into it-even this, maybe due to this, you make it important. And for me, for what I might add to it? Well, it might balance the scales a bit.”

“Are you looking for balance?”

“I might be,” he murmured. “So.” He leaned down to brush a kiss over her brow. “Let’s have our meal.”

She lifted one of the silver tops and studied the plate below. A chunk of lightly grilled fish topped a colorful mix of vegetables with a spray of pretty pasta curls.

“It looks… healthy.”

He laughed, kissed her again. “I wager it’ll go down easy enough. Then you can wipe the healthy out with too much coffee and some of the cookies you’ve stashed in your office.”

She gave him a bland look as she sat down. “Stashed indicates concealed. They’re just put away in such a manner that certain people whose names rhyme with Treebody and McBlab can’t grab them and scarf them down.” She stabbed some fish, ate it. “It’s okay.”

“As an alternative to pizza.”

“There is no alternative to pizza. It stands alone.”

“Do you remember your first slice?”

“I remember my first New York pizza-the real deal. Out of school, of age. Shook myself out of the system and hit New York, applied to the Academy. I had a couple weeks, and I was walking the city, getting my bearings. I went into this little place downtown, West Side-Polumbi’s. I ordered a slice. They had a counter that ran along the front window, and I got a seat there. I bit in, and it was like, I don’t know, my own little miracle. I thought, I’m free, finally. And I’m here, where I want to be, and I’m eating this goddamn pizza and watching New York. It was the best day of my life.”

She shrugged, stabbed more of the delicately grilled fish. “Damn good pizza, too.”

It both broke his heart and lifted it.

For a time they spoke of inconsequential things, blessedly ordinary things. But he knew her, her mind, her moods.

“Tell me what Whitney said. It’s inside your head.”

“It can wait.”

“No need.”

She toyed with the vegetables. “He agrees there’s no point in showing MacMasters the disc, or-at this time-informing him of it. We’ll focus on MacMasters’s cases, current and prior, see if we can hook any of them to his threat file. But…”

“You’re thinking he’s too smart to have threatened outright.”

“He’s made one mistake, he’ll have made another. But I don’t think we’ll find him there. Baxter and Trueheart hit the one name MacMasters came up with, a dealer he’d helped bust. There’s nothing there,” she said with a shake of her head. “It doesn’t play. When you…”

He angled his head when she trailed off and scooped up more fish. “Finish it off.”

She looked into his eyes, already sorry she would take him-them-out of the shimmering night and into the blood and pain of the past. “Okay. The men who killed Marlena, who brutalized her and killed her to strike at you…”

“Did I let them know I intended to hunt them down and kill them?” he finished. “It makes you-what’s the most diplomatic word under the circumstances-uncomfortable to ask, or to delve too deep into the fact that I did hunt them down, and I did kill them. Everyone who’d tortured and raped and beaten and broken her.”

She picked up her wine while the raw edge of his tightly controlled anger stabbed at her. But she kept her eyes steady on his. “Comfort isn’t always a part of this, what I do, what we are.”

“What was done to that girl we watched on the screen upstairs was done to another, even younger girl. By more than one. Over and over, again and again. For the same reason, it seems. To strike out at someone else. With Marlena, it was me. She was family to me, and they ripped her to pieces.”

“I told you to tell me when bringing it home is too much. Why the hell don’t you?”

He sat back making an obvious-it was so rare for it to be obvious-effort to settle himself. “We’re too entwined for that, Eve. And I wouldn’t change it. But there are times, Christ Jesus, it’s like swallowing broken glass.”

It struck her suddenly, and made her want to spring up and punch him. “Goddamn it, I’m not comparing what you did to what this bastard’s done. You didn’t kill an innocent to punish the guilty. You didn’t act out of blind revenge, but-whether or not I agree-out of a sense of justice. I asked, you idiot, because you were young when it happened, and youth is often rash, impatient. But you countered that with patience, with focus until you’d… done what you’d set out to do. Which wasn’t, for Christ’s sake, raping and murdering a kid to get your rocks off.”

He said nothing for a moment, then gave an easy shrug. “Well, that’s certainly telling me.” Even as she scowled at him, candlelight flickering between them, he smiled. “The fact, the singular fact, that you can know what you do of me and accept is my great fortune.”

“Bollocks,” she muttered, and made him laugh over her co-opting one of his oaths.

“I adore you, every day. And I realize I needed more than the meal and the break. I needed to get that out of my system. So, to your question, Lieutenant.”

“What the hell was the question?” she asked.

“Did I threaten or boast or transmit to the men who’d killed Marlena that I intended to make them pay for it? No. Nor did I leave any trace so any of those involved would know the why of it.”

“That’s what I thought.” Calmer, she nodded. “But then, it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t revenge. That’s part of the difference, and part of the need here. The reason for the video, the message.”

“Aye. I’d agree. That kind of revenge? It’s thirsty.”

“Thirsty,” she murmured, and ran the message back through her head. “Yeah. That’s a good word for it.”

“Generally you’d leave enough so the target of that revenge knew which quiver the arrow came from. Otherwise, there’s no point in that victory dance.”

“Yeah, but we have to check it out. We’ll need to comb through the university, that’s an angle. And we’ll analyze the disc. Feeney needs to take that.”

“Am I being demoted?” Roarke asked lightly.

She arched her brows. “We’re too entwined for that,” she said. “But it’s a cop’s kid. We need to be careful. I want the head of EDD in charge of that piece of evidence. We’ve got an unlimited budget, unlimited manpower-and there will be those, in the media, even in the department, who question that.”

A faint line of annoyance rode between her eyes. “How come this case gets so much time and effort? Why didn’t Civilian Joe get the same treatment? The answers are simple. You come after a cop or a cop’s family, we come after you. And it’s more complex. You come after a cop or a cop’s family, it puts us all in the crosshairs and makes it goddamn hard to do the job for Civilian Joe. We live with that, but this intensifies. MacMasters had partners through the years, and as a boss, men under his command. How many of them might be vulnerable? And more, when we catch this bastard, every piece of evidence, every point of procedure has to be above reproach. We can’t have anything questionable in court, nothing some defense attorney can hang us on.”

She ate a bite. “That said, if you had the time and the inclination to work with the copy, nobody’s stopping you. As expert consultant, civilian, assigned to EDD, you report to Feeney.”

“Which isn’t nearly as fun as reporting to you. But message received.”

“One of the most valuable things you do is let me bounce stuff off you. Listen, give opinions. Just talking it through opens up angles for me. That’s why I asked the question.”

“Understood. Now you have another, so bounce.”

“Okay, I have to play all the lines-pull, tug. One of them that keeps circling for me is the Columbia connection. Maybe, maybe it was just more bullshit. But it feels like he’d have played it with roots in truth. Just like you said about the accent. So he went there, or worked there, or knows someone who did. Alternatively he scoped it out, maybe-what is it-monitored classes. Got the feel so he could talk about it to her. Maybe he faked his name, but he probably picked something that felt natural to him, or meant something to him. He’s not going to give her too much truth, but those roots again.”

“With a school that size, even with the security, it’s not difficult to get on campus, study the layout, gather particulars. Names of instructors, times of classes. He could get most of the information online or simply by requesting it.”

It was more, she thought. Something more.

“He studied her, so he knew she had a friend who went there. It was, I’m dead sure, one of his angles. One of the ways he used to get her to talk to him. In those first stages, she’s got no motivation to keep it all secret. So she might say to Jamie how she met this guy who goes there.”

“Ah.” Following her lead, Roarke nodded. “And if he’d been studying her, he would know her friend Jamie’s interest in e-work, police work. Wouldn’t he want to cover himself there, if Jamie got it into his head to check out this boy who put stars in the eyes of his good friend?”

“If he had a brain he would. Maybe, once they’re established and he’s got her hooked, he doesn’t know teenage girls well enough to realize she’s got to tell someone. A peer, a pal. So he’s not worried about us digging there. But he had to worry about Jamie checking or her-cop’s daughter-checking, even just to satisfy her curiosity. He had to show student ID at the vids and so on to get the discount, or wouldn’t she wonder why he didn’t? Where did he get it?”

“Stolen or forged.”

“Maybe both, because if someone checked-and he’s got to cover that-he needs to show up on the roster.”

“We know he has some e-skills. It wouldn’t be hard to do. And,” Roarke added, “if he had a brain, he’d have already wiped himself off that roster.”

“High probability on that. So tomorrow I’m going to start pushing somebody at the college to get me a list of students reporting a stolen ID, then start wading through that.”

“Why tomorrow?”

“Because it’s freaking and increasingly annoying Peace Day, and it’s late anyway, and nobody’s in Administration or whatever.”

“I can take care of that.”

Narrowing her eyes, she pointed a warning finger at him. “I just told you we have to be careful. I can’t have you hacking into Columbia’s student files.”

“Which is a shame as I’d enjoy that. But I can take care of this with a ’link call.”

“To who?”

“Why don’t we just start at the top, with the president of the university?”

She squinted. “You know the president of Columbia University?”

“I do, yes. Roarke Industries sponsors a scholarship, and has donated lab equipment from time to time. Plus, I spoke with her at length regarding Jamie.”

“So you can just pick up the ’link, give her a tag, no problem?”

“Well, we won’t know till we try, will we?”

He pulled his ’link out of his pocket, tapped his fingers on the screen to do a search. “She’s an interesting woman, with a nearly terrifying radar for bullshit. You’d like her.” He smiled as the call went through. “Peach. I’m sorry to interrupt your evening.”

Across the table, Eve heard the muted response, but not the words. Whatever it was, Roarke laughed.

“Well then, I’m delighted to be of help. As it happens, I’m about to ask for yours. You’re aware my wife is a police officer. Ah, is that so? Yes, indeed, she comes across quite well on screen. She’s heading an investigation that may have some connection to a student or former student at Columbia.”

He paused, listened, flicked a glance toward Eve. “Yes, that would have been her partner. I know the NYPSD appreciates your cooperation. They need to ask for more. I think it would be best if the lieutenant explains to you directly what she needs. Would you hold one moment?”

He tapped for hold, held out the ’link to Eve.

“Peach?” she said. “A university president named Peach?”

“Doctor Lapkoff.”

“Right.” Eve took the ’link, opened communications. Her first impression was of ice blue eyes so sharp they looked able to pierce steel. They beamed out of a cool, attractive face topped with short, straight brown hair.

“Lieutenant Dallas.” The tone was brisk, as no-nonsense as the do. “How can I help you?”

Within minutes, the bureaucratic wheels were turning. Eve passed the ’link back to Roarke. “She says she’ll have the data to me within an hour.”

“Then she will.”

“So I guess I better go back to work, and get ready for it.”

Back in her office, she started a match search with the Columbia list and MacMasters’s threat file, and a second for matches with his case files for the last five years. It would take time.

She used it to study the video again.

He’d stopped and started, she judged, a number of times. Each time Deena hesitated or went off script. Patience, focus. He had a message, and he wanted it delivered.

Blame the father, even though it was perfectly clear the victim spoke only under duress. He’d needed the words said. Daughter to father? Was that important? Child to parent? An issue or just the luck of the draw?

No, nothing was luck on this. Every choice deliberate. Direct to MacMasters, with no mention of the mother. Dad, Daddy-not the mother.

Never forgive. Hate. Never know why. Must pay.

Sins of the father? she wondered. Eye for an eye?

She sat, put her booted feet on the desk, shut her eyes.

The killer was older by a few years-maybe more-than the victim. Deliberate target, used to punish MacMasters. Blood kin.

Relative? Son?

Unacknowledged child?

Possible.

The cruelty of the act, the planning, the message sent-all pointed to intense offense. Against killer? Against relative or close connection to killer?

Note: Search MacMasters’s files for terminations, or arrests/wits/vics that resulted in death or extreme injuries. Add life sentences on and off planet.

Personal, extremely personal. This wasn’t business.

She opened her eyes when her unit signaled an incoming. Straightening, she brought up the data. Peach Lapkoff was a woman of her word.

That was the good part, Eve noted. The bad was just how many students at one freaking college managed to lose their IDs.

She needed more coffee.

With more fuel she began the laborious process of whittling down. Even as her unit reported no match on her initial search, she felt the pop.

“Powders, Darian, age nineteen. Lit major, second year. Replacement ID requested and paid for fifth of January, 2060.” She brought up her previous list, eyes narrowed. “And here you are again, Darian, hailing from Savannah. All data on current subject on screen.”

She swiveled, studied his ID. “Good looking guy, big, charming smile. You’re tailor made.”

Eve continued to study and wondered if she could be looking at a killer, or his dupe.

“One way to find out.”

She rose, tugged on the jacket she’d tossed over the back of her chair, then buzzed Roarke.

“Hey, I’ve got an angle I need to check out. I won’t be long.”

“Check out as in go out?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a possible. I want to work it now.”

“I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“You don’t have to-”

“Waste time, and neither do you. I’ll drive.”

When he clicked off she blew out a breath.

No point in arguing. And she could do a secondary run on Powders while Roarke played chauffeur.

He beat her downstairs and opened the door under the bitter eye of Galahad just as the vehicle he’d remoted on auto cruised to the front of the house.

“Where are we going and why?”

“Columbia, on-campus housing to interview a possible suspect. More likely a potential dupe. But either way that’s not my vehicle.”

Roarke glanced at the slick two-seat convertible, top down, in glittering silver. “It’s mine, and since I’m driving and it’s a very nice evening, I want an appropriate ride.”

She frowned all the way to the passenger seat. “I have an appropriate ride, which you gave me.”

“Safe, loaded, and deliberately unattractive. Key in the address,” he suggested, and gunned it down the drive.

She hated to admit it, but it felt damn good, the night, the air, the speed. Reminding herself it wasn’t about fun, she started a deeper run on Darian Powders.

“Kid’s from Georgia, requested new ID in January. He’s the right age, and he’s got a pretty face.”

“Isn’t school out for the summer? Why would he be on campus in June?”

“He’s taking a short summer semester, and interning at Westling Publishing. Lit major. He’s completed his second year at the college, carries a 3.4 grade average. No criminal, but his brother-who’s still in Georgia-has two illegals pops. Minor shit. He’s got an uncle in New York, an editor at the publishing house, who has a son a couple years older than this one who took a harder illegals hit. Did six months, and another three in rehab. Bust was Brooklyn’s, so not MacMasters.”

“Hardly motive for what was done to that girl.”

“It’s a start,” Eve said, and kept working the run as she enjoyed the ride.