Reunion in Death

*** CHAPTER 10 ***

probability roarke is next target is fifty-one-point-five-eight percent…

Eve stood, staring out her skinny office window. The fifty-fifty chance given in the computer's soulless tones didn't comfort her.

«Where will she come at him?»

insufficient data for probability…

«I wasn't asking you,» she grumbled and pinched her fingers to the bridge of her nose. «Think,» she ordered herself. «Think, think. What's in her head?»

More impact, Eve decided, if Julianna went for Roarke when his cop was close. At home then, or at a public or private social event they'd both attend. She called his schedule back on-screen and studied it. Again.

She didn't know how any one person managed that many meetings, deals, conversations, and contacts in one day and stayed sane. But that was Roarke.

All those people, she thought, that he brushed against in any given day. Business associates, staff, employees, waiters, assistants, and assistants to assistants. However brilliant his security, there was always a crack to slither through.

But he was aware of that, she reminded herself, on the most elemental level. The way a tiger would be aware of both predator and prey in his own jungle.

And if she allowed herself to worry into fear over him, she'd miss something.

She sat again, cleared her mind.

In the first wave of Julianna Dunne's killings, she had assumed the role of society princess. A young, glamorous butterfly who'd flitted among the abundant blooms of the wealthy. As one of them, Eve mused.

Her new pattern was efficient employee. Smart, Eve conceded. People rarely took full notice of those who served them. She would stick with that, Eve thought. Almost certainly stick with that level. Server, clerk, domestic.

Whoever the next target, she would likely find her way into his business or his home through his company.

Preferred method, poison. Old-fashioned poison, Eve added. Why? You didn't get your hands dirty that way, and most usually had the opportunity to watch it work. See the shock, confusion, pain. The victim understood a blaster or a blade when it came for him. But poison was subtle, even elegant. And it confused.

But you didn't bop into your local 24/7 and pick up a bottle of cyanide. It was time to track down the source.

Before she did, there was a little business to clear up. She put in a call to Charles Monroe.

The handsome licensed companion picked up on his pocket-link. Eve could hear the murmuring of voices, the quiet clink of china and crystal of a classy restaurant as his face filled the screen.

«Lieutenant Sugar.» He beamed. «What a nice surprise.»

«You got company?»

«Not quite yet. Client's late, she usually is. What can I do for my favorite avenger of the law?»

«Have you got any professional pals or associates in the Chicago area?»

«Dallas, when one is in the oldest profession, one has pals and associates everywhere.»

«Yeah. Well, I need one who's willing to go to Dockport Rehabilitation Center, do a conjugal for an inmate, for the standard police scale.»

His face, his tone, went all business. She saw him move, glance down, and knew he'd taken out an e-book. «Male or female companion?»

«Female inmate seeks attractive man with staying power for conjugal episode.»

«Time frame?»

«Within the next couple of weeks would be good. Sooner the better. The budget will spring for a two-hour call, no frills, and basic transpo.»

«Since I doubt the police are overly concerned with this woman's sexual health, I assume this is payment for information or cooperation in some ongoing investigation.»

«Assume whatever.» Her face, her tone, mirrored his now. «I need the contact. Can you reach out to an associate in that area? One who can handle himself. She's just after a solid bounce, but she has a violent tendency and I don't want to put anybody green in this situation.»

«I could, but why don't I just take care of it for you? I'm certainly not green, and I owe you enough favors to cover this.»

«You don't owe me anything.»

«I owe you Louise,» he corrected, and everything in his face brightened on her name. «Give me the information I'll need, and I'll work it into my schedule. On the house for you, Lieutenant Sugar.»

She hesitated. It felt weird to book him for sex. To think of his developing romance with the dedicated Dr. Louise Dimatto while she arranged to send him off for a conjugal with Maria Sanchez.

This friendship gig was almost as complicated and boggy as the marriage gig.

It was his job, Eve reminded herself. And if it didn't bother Louise, why should it bother her?

«You'll get scale. I want to keep this on the books. Maria Sanchez,» she began, and gave him the information he'd need. «I appreciate this, Charles.»

«No, you're embarrassed, and that's very sweet of you. Give my love to Peabody, and I'll give your best to Louise. My lunch and bounce client's just walked in. If there's nothing else, I'd as soon not be talking to a cop when she gets to the table. These are the things that can mar the delicate balance of a romantic afternoon.»

His lips curved when he said it, and made Eve shake her head. «Let me know when you've nailed down the date and time and if you get any hassles with the arrangements at Dockport. Warden there's an asshole.»

«I'll keep that in mind. Later, Lieutenant Sugar.»

When he ended transmission, she made the next call on her list. Directing it, purposefully, to Nadine Furst's voice mail, Eve left a terse message.

«You got a one-on-one, my office, sixteen hundred. Sharp. No live feed. If you're late, I'll have something better to do.»

She pushed away from the desk, strode out, and swung by Peabody's cube. «With me» was all she said.

«I'm getting nowhere trying to track a supplier for the cyanide through standard sources.» Peabody hustled into the elevator behind Eve. «Even considering the number of legal sources for that kind of controlled substance, it's necessary to show authorization with prints. Prints are run through a stringent search and scan. Dunne's are on file, and would have popped.»

«Illegal sources?»

«I've run cyanide poisonings through IRCCA. Stuff's more popular than you might think, but most got their supply through a legal source. The dude in East D.C. where Dunne previously shopped was the major on-planet player, and he's dead. The others on record are mostly small-time, and the majority of them are doing time primarily illegals distribution, with poisons as a sideline. Research indicates poisons aren't very cost effective, narrow profit margin, and are generally not a specialty.»

«Possible she found a way through to a legal source but let's try the other route.» Eve strode to her vehicle, paused. «A lot of talk and jive in prison, and she might have followed up on a contact there. Plus, she had her finger on the world through computer access. Plenty of time to search and research. Her source might not be in New York, but people know people who know people. We're going underground.»

Peabody, a stalwart soldier, paled. «Oh boy.»

Beneath New York was another world, a seamy city of the lost and the vicious. Some went under to toy with that keen edge, the way a child might play with a sharpened knife, just to see how it would slice. Others enjoyed the elemental meanness, the stink of violence that permeated the air as thickly as the stench of garbage and shit.

And some simply got lost there.

Eve left her jacket in the car. She wanted her weapon in full view. Her clutch piece was strapped to her ankle, and she'd shoved a combat knife into her boot.

«Here.» She tossed Peabody a small shock bat. «Know how to use it?»

She had to gulp once, but nodded. «Yes, sir.»

«Hook it to your belt, keep it in plain sight. You kept up with your hand-to-hand?»

«Yeah.» She blew out a breath. «I can handle myself.»

«That's right.» Eve not only wanted her to say it, she wanted her to believe it. «And when you step down there, you remember you're one bad bitch cop, and you drink blood for breakfast.»

«I'm one bad bitch cop, and I drink blood for breakfast. Yuck.»

«Let's go.»

They headed down filthy steps and veered off from the subway entrance into the rat hole of a tunnel that led to the underground. Lights glowed dull red and dirty blue in a kind of snarling carnival of sex, games, and entertainment suited for the cold and the cruel.

Eve caught the stink of vomit and glanced over to see a man down on his hands and knees, puking horribly.

«You okay?»

He didn't look up. «Fuck you.»

Feeling other eyes on her, she squeezed into the passageway behind him, then gave him a solid shove with her boot that sent him facedown in his own vomit. «Oh no,» she said pleasantly, «fuck you.»

Her knife was out of her boot with its honed point at his filthy throat before he could curse her again. «I'm a cop, asshole, but don't think I won't slice your useless throat ear-to-ear just for the fun of it. Where can I find Mook today?»

His eyes were fire-red, his breath amazing. «I don't know no mother-fucking Mook.»

She risked all manner of vermin, fisted a hand in his stringy hair, and yanked his head back. «Everybody knows mother-fucking Mook. You want to die here, or live to puke another day?»

«I don't keep tabs on the cocksucker.» His lips peeled back as the point of the knife pressed against his jugular. «Maybe VR Hell, fuck do I know?»

«Good. Go right on back to what you were doing.» She released him with just enough force to send him sliding into the muck again, then made a show of slapping the jagged-edged knife back in her boot for the benefit of the onlookers lurking in the shadows.

«Anybody here wants trouble, I'm happy to oblige.» She lifted her voice just enough to have it echo, to have it punch through the mean flood of viper rock pumping out of doorways. «Otherwise my business is with Mook, who's been described by this fine example of humanity as a mother-fucking cocksucker.»

There was a slight movement, shadow in shadow, to her left. She laid her hand on her weapon, and the movement stilled. «Anybody hassles me or my uniform, we start busting asses, and we aren't particularly delicate about how many of those busted asses end up in the city morgue, are we, Officer?»

«No, sir, Lieutenant.» Peabody prayed her voice wouldn't crack and embarrass both of them. «In fact, we're hoping to win the pool on morgue count this week.»

«What's that up to, anyway?»

«Two hundred and thirty-five dollars. And sixty cents.»

«Not too shabby.» Eve cocked a hip, but her eyes were keen as a blade. «Could use it. When we're finished kicking the shit out of anybody who gives us grief,» Eve added pleasantly. «There'll be a squad down here shaking down what's left. Which will really irritate me as I'd have to share the pool with them. Mook,» she said again, and waited ten humming seconds.

«VR Hell,» someone said in the dark. «Dancing with the S&M machines. Asshole.»

Eve merely nodded, deciding to attribute the asshole comment to Mook rather than herself. «And where do I find VR Hell in this delightful and intriguing paradise many of you call home?»

There was another movement, and she whirled, braced, felt Peabody go on full alert beside her. At first she took him for a boy, then saw he was a dwarf. He was crooking his finger.

«Back-to-back,» Eve ordered, and they started down one of the dripping tunnels, facing out, guarding each other's backs.

The dwarf moved fast, skittering along in the steaming, stinking tunnels like a cockroach on shoes that flapped against the damp stone floor. He zipped past the bars, the clubs, the joints and dives, twisting and turning through the labyrinth of the underworld.

«Morgue pool was a nice touch,» Eve said under her breath.

«Thanks.» Peabody resisted swiping at the sweat dripping down her face. «I live to improvise.»

From somewhere deeper in the dank, Eve heard a woman scream in pain or passion. She saw a huge man crumpled on the ground sucking on a filthy brown bottle of home-brew. Against the wall beside him a man and woman copulated in an ugly parody of lovemaking.

She smelled sex and piss, and worse.

The tunnel widened, opened into an area jammed with video, VR, and hologram dens.

VR Hell was black. Its walls, its windows, its doors all coated with the same unrelieved, and somehow greasy black. Across it, in letters she assumed were supposed to reflect the devil's fire, was its name. A poorly painted image of Satan, complete with horns and tail and pitchfork, danced over the flames.

«Mook's in there.» The dwarf spoke for the first time in a voice like a bass drum constructed from sandpaper. «Digs on the Madam Electra machine. Bondage shit. Sick fucker. Got fifty?»

Eve dug for credits. «Got twenty. Blow.»

He showed his grayed, pointy teeth. The twenty disappeared, then so did he.

«You meet such interesting people down here,» Peabody said shakily.

«Stay close,» Eve ordered. «Anybody moves in, bang 'em.»

«You don't have to tell me twice.» With her hand gripped tight on her bat, Peabody followed Eve into Hell.

The noise was awesome: screams, sirens, grunts, and groans from dozens of clashing machines and patrons. The lighting was an ugly red that shimmered and swayed. It flashed her back to a freezing room in Dallas, made her stomach pitch before she controlled it.

She heard the ragged breathing, the hissed words of violent sex. She'd heard those in that room, too, before the end. Heard them in too many rooms to count where the walls were thin as tissue and brutality was only a whisper away.

The sound of flesh striking flesh. Gleeful punishment.

Stop it! Goddamn you, Rick, stop! You're hurting me!

Whose voice was that? Eve wondered as she stared around blindly. Her mother's? One of the whores he'd used when he wasn't using his daughter?

«Dallas? Lieutenant?»

The uneasy tremble in Peabody's voice snapped her back. This wasn't the time to lose her focus. It wasn't the time to remember.

«Stay close,» Eve repeated, and began to thread through the machines.

Most were too intent on the game, on the world they'd created to notice her. But others still had instincts sharp enough to make a cop. Though plenty of those people were armed, nothing was aimed in their direction, for the moment.

She passed a tube titled Whips and Chains where a woman, thin as a stick, wearing VR goggles, screamed in ecstasy. Sweat poured down her body like oil, over the tight leather loincloth, beaded on the restraints that locked her arms and legs to the console of her machine.

«Looks like we're in the right section. There's Mook.»

He, too, was locked in a tube. Stripped down to a black leather cock sheath and studded dog collar, his impressively muscled body jerked, his throat worked with gasps. His hair was candlelight gold, shoulder-blade length, and damp with sweat.

His back was crisscrossed with lash marks, proving that he didn't always settle for virtual punishment.

Though it wasn't quite proper procedure, Eve used her master to unlock the tube. His body was arched, his lips peeled back in a grimace of erotic pain. Eve hit the main switch and left him trembling on the brink.

«What the fuck.» His body sagged, muscles quivering. «Mistress, please. I beg you.»

«That's Lieutenant Mistress to you, creep.» Eve whipped off his goggles. «Hi, Mook. Remember me?»

«This is a privacy booth.»

«No kidding? And here I was looking forward to a fun group session. Well, next time. Now, let's you and me go somewhere quiet and talk.»

«I don't have to talk to you. I got rights. Damn it, I was about to get off here.»

With someone else, she might have given him a quick little jab. But Mook, well, he'd just enjoy it. «I take you in, nobody's going to hurt you for the next thirty-six hours. You don't want to go that long without pain, do you, Mook? Let's talk, then you can get back to Madam Electra and her what is it? six million tortures.»

He leaned in, straining against the restraints. «Make me.»

«Want me to rough you up, Mook?» She kept her voice low, in a purr. «Force you?» And when excitement filled his face, she shrugged. «Nope, not in the mood. But I will give your dominatrix here a quick blast. I don't guess they're real quick on repair and replacement of equipment in this joint.»

«Don't!» His voice squeaked in protest. Moving fast now, he nudged the toe release so that the restraints popped open. «Why do you want to mess me up this way?»

«Just part of my daily entertainment. Let's get us another privacy booth, Mook, one without the toys.»

She stepped back, and when he followed she saw his gaze land on Peabody's bat. He made a lunge. Peabody flipped it out of her belt, zapped him dead center of the chest. His body jerked, danced, then shivered.

«Thank you.»

«Don't encourage him, Peabody.» Taking Mook's arm firmly in hand, she strode to the nearest private-table booth. As it was occupied by a couple of chemi-heads in the middle of an illegals deal, she kicked the tube, flashed her badge. Jerked her thumb.

They slithered out and away like smoke.

«This is cozy.» She settled in. «Watch the door, Peabody, and we'll keep this quick and private. Who's in the poison business these days, Mook?»

«I'm not your weasel.»

«A fact that has always brought me joy and cheer. As does the fact I can put you in solitary lockup for those thirty-six hours during which time your life will not be the living hell you know and love. The Reverend Munch is dead as Hitler, Mook, and so are all his merry men, but for you.»

«I testified,» he reminded her. «I gave the Feds all the info.»

«Yeah, you did. Seemed like mass suicide was just a little over the top even for someone with your particular appetites. But you never told them who provided that curare and cyanide cocktail the reverend mixed up with the lemonade for his congregation.»

«I was low on the feeding chain. I told them what I knew.»

«And the feebies were satisfied. But you know what? I'm not. Give me a name, and I walk out of your sick and pitiful life. Hold out on me, and I'll be coming down here, or whatever cesspool you try to frequent, every fucking day. Every day, interrupting your S&M games until orgasms are just a fond and distant memory for you. Every time you try to get off, jack off, whack off, I'll be there spoiling the fun. Come on, Mook, it's been what… better than ten years since the cult offed itself. What do you care?»

«I was sucked in. I was brainwashed-«

«Yeah, yeah, blah, blah. Who brought in the poison?»

«I don't know who he was. They just called him the doctor. Only saw him once. Skinny guy. Old.»

«Race?»

«White-bread, through and through. I figure he drank the shit, too.»

«Did he?»

«Look.» Mook looked around, and though they were in the tube, lowered his voice. «Most people, they don't remember what went down back there; they don't know about it. People find out I was in the Church of Hereafter, they get all weirded out.»

She glanced around as well, taking in the screams, the writhing bodies. «Oh yeah, I can see how people acting weird would be a major concern for you. Spill.»

«What's it worth?»

Eve pulled out twenty credits, slapped it on the nail-head-sized table.

«Shit, Dallas, that don't buy me an hour VR time. Give me a frigging break.»

«Take it. Or leave it and we'll stop being so friendly and go into Central. You won't see Madam Electra and her many exquisite tortures for thirty-six, minimum.»

He looked sad, sitting there in his studded dog collar. «Why you gotta be such a bitch?»

«Mook, I ask myself that very question every morning. Never have come up with a satisfactory answer.»

He scooped up the twenty, tucked it into his cock sheath. «Want you to remember I helped you out.»

«Mook, how could I ever forget you?»

«Right.» He looked around, through the smoky glass of the booth. Licked his lips. «Okay, right. Nothing coming down on me about this shit, right?»

«Not a thing.»

«Well, see … I was going to tell the Feebs everything, total cooperation.»

«Get to it, Mook. I have a life to get back to.»

«I'm telling you. I was cooperating, and I was gonna name all the names. But I saw him outside, behind the barricades at the church when they started hauling bodies out. Man, that was some scene, right. You were there.»

«Yeah, I was there.

«So … He looked at me.»

Earnest now and just a little jazzed, he leaned in. «Scary guy, all pale and spooky. And me, I don't want to go out with no slurp of some poison. I could tell he knew I went in with the cops instead of following through on the promise. So I had to cover myself, didn't I? I just left him out of it. What's the big deal?»

«So, he's alive?»

«He was then.» Mook shrugged his massive shoulders. «I never saw him again, and that was fine by me. I didn't know him,» Mook insisted. «Swear on my dick.»

«And that is a solemn oath.»

«Yeah, it is.» Pleased she understood, he nodded rapidly. «Only thing I ever heard was talk about how he used to be a real doctor, but they kicked him outta the club. And that he was fucking rich and fucking crazy.»

«Give me a name.»

«I didn't know him. That's solid, Dallas. Slave level wasn't allowed to speak to anyone over the rank of soldier.»

«Need more.»

«I don't got more. He was some old, crazy dude. Look liked a goddamn corpse. Skinny, sick-looking guy, come around and whisper with Munch time to time. Stare right through you so you got bone chills. Guys called him Doctor Doom. That's all I know about it. Come on, that's all I know about it. I want to get back to my game.»

«Yeah, go back to your game.» But she clamped a hand on his wrist as he started to rise. «If I find out you know more and aren't telling me, I'll pick you up, pull you in, and plunk you down in a locked room full of soft pillows, pastels, and moldy-oldy music.»

His face hardened. «You're a cold bitch, Dallas.»

«Bet your ass.»

«Reverend Munch and the Church of Hereafter cult.» Peabody was so impressed she forgot to kiss the sidewalk when they reached street level again. «Were you in on that?»

«Peripheral. Way peripheral. That was a federal op, and local law was just background. Two hundred and fifty people self-terminating because one mad monster preached that death was the ultimate experience.» She shook her head. «Maybe it is, but we're all going to get there eventually anyway. Why rush it?»

«They said people said not everyone in the cult was willing to go through to the end. But the soldier level forced them to drink. And there were kids. Little kids.»

«Yeah, there were kids.» She'd still been in uniform then, not quite a year out of the Academy. And it was one of the images that lived in the back of her brain. Always would. «Kids, and infants whose mothers fed them that shit in a bottle. Munch had vids taken of the ceremony. Part of his legacy. First and last time I ever saw a Feebie shed a tear. Some of them sobbed like babies.»

She shook her head again, pushed the memory away. «We need to start searching for doctors who lost their licenses to practice, going back ten to twenty years to start. Mook said he was old, so let's assume, going by Mook's criteria, this guy was at least sixty during Reverend Munch's reign. Keep the search centered on men, Caucasian, sixty-five to eighty for now. Nearly all of Munch's people were located in New York. So we'll stick with the state's medical board.»

Eve glanced at her watch. «I've got a meeting back at Central. Look, let's try this. Head down to the Canal Street Clinic, see if Louise knows anybody who fits this guy's ID, or if not, if she'll nudge some of her medical sources for a name. She's got good contacts, and it could save time.»

But Eve hesitated. «You okay dealing with Louise?»

«Sure. I like her. I think it's really nice about her and Charles.»

«Whatever. Call in with whatever you get, then take an hour to surveil Maureen Stibbs.»

«Really? Thanks, Lieutenant.»

«You can take whatever time you can squeeze out tomorrow on the Stibbs matter when I'm out, but current load is priority.»

«Understood. Dallas, one thing, on a personal front. I just wondered if maybe my parents are getting on your nerves? It seemed like maybe you and my father were off each other the other night.»

«No, they're fine. Everything's fine.»

«Okay, but they're only going to be here a few more days. I'll keep them occupied as much as I can. I guess Dad was just sensing some of your stress over the case. He picks up on stuff like that, even when he's blocking. About the only thing that shakes him up is getting something from somebody without their permission. Anyway.» She brightened up again. «I can catch the subway to the clinic. Maybe we'll get lucky with Louise.»

«Yeah.» It was time, Eve thought, they got lucky with something.

Eve marched toward her office five minutes before the scheduled interview with Nadine. It didn't surprise her in the least to find Nadine already there. The reporter's silky legs were crossed as she meticulously applied fresh lip dye and checked her camera-ready face in her compact mirror.

Her camera operator stood slouched in a corner munching on a candy bar.

«Where'd you get that candy?» Eve demanded and moved in so quickly the operator's eyes popped wide.

«V-v-v-vending. Just down the hall.» She offered what remained of the candy like a shield. «You want a hit?»

Eve scowled at her just long enough to see sweat bead on her brow, and concluded that the camera wasn't her dastardly candy thief.

«No.» Eve dropped down at her desk, stretched out her legs.

«I was hoping you'd be late,» Nadine began. «Then I was going to lord it over you.»

«One of these days someone out there's going to do his job and keep you in the media area instead of letting you back here when I'm not in my office.»

Nadine only smirked, clicked her compact closed. «You don't really believe that, do you? Now if you've finished intimidating my camera and your usual bitching, what's this about?»

«Murder.»

«With you, it always is. Pettibone and Mouton. Obviously connected. Before we start I can tell you there's nothing in my searches that connects them personally and professionally. I'm sure you already know that. I've got nothing that puts any of their family on the same page, no particular links between colleagues. Pettibone used his own, in-house lawyers for WOF.»

Watching Eve, Nadine used her perfectly manicured fingers to click off points. «They may very well have known each other vaguely on some thin social level, but didn't run in the same circles. The current wives used different salons, different health clubs, and tended to shop at different boutiques.» Nadine paused. «But I imagine you know that, too.»

«We do manage to cover some ground here at Central.»

«Which is why I'm wondering how I got a one-on-one with you without begging for it.»

«You don't beg, you wheedle.»

«Yes, and quite well. Why the offer, Dallas?»

«I want to stop her, and I'll use all available tools. The more media exposure on this one, the better chance someone might recognize her. She'll be working toward her next target. Now this is off the record, Nadine, and I won't answer any questions pertaining to it on record. There's a better than fifty-fifty chance Roarke's a target.»

«Roarke? Jesus, Dallas. That doesn't play. He's not her type. Hell, he's every woman's type, but you know what I mean. He's too young, he's too married.»

«Married to me,» Eve said. «That may be enough for her.»

Nadine sat back again, let it settle in. She valued friendship as much as she valued ratings. «Okay. What can I do?»

«The interview. Give the story as much play as you can manage. Keep it and her on everyone's mind. She counts on being able to blend in. I want to take that advantage away from her.»

«You want to piss her off.»

«If she's pissed off, she'll make a mistake. She's got ice for blood, that's why she's good at what she does. It's time to heat it up.»

«Okay.» Nadine nodded and signaled her camera. «Let's start the fire.»