Seduction In Death

CHAPTER THREE

"Sick bastard creep ought to have his balls scooped off with a rusty spoon."

Eve settled back in her car. "Don't hold back, Peabody. Tell me how you really feel."

"Goddamn it, Dallas, it got to me in there, looking at her on that slab, remembering how pretty she was, how excited when she called her pal about going out to meet this fuckhead. Thinking she was meeting someone romantic and, damn it, nice. Someone nice and the whole time he's planning to…"

"Fuck her to death? I don't know that he planned that going in, but that's how it worked out. Could be we get him on Murder One, using the illegals as the murder weapon. More likely, it's going to Second Degree. And don't blow your cortex, Peabody, we wrap him on that, add in the sexual assault and his attempt to dispose of the evidence, he's not going to see daylight again."

"It's not enough." She shifted in her seat, appalling them both because there were tears in her eyes. "Sometimes it doesn't seem to be enough."

Eve stared through the windshield to give them both time for Peabody to pull herself together. A pack of kids, sprung from school, were cruising over the crosswalk on airboards, wreaking havoc on the bipeds they wove through.

There was something painfully innocent, painfully alive about the flash and color of them, a half a block away from a house of dead.

"It's enough," Eve said, "because it's what we can do. Our job is to stand for Bryna Bankhead and bring in the man who killed her. After that…" She remembered her session in court, the defense attorney's slippery twist on the law. "After that, we trust the system to give her justice, and we put it away. You don't put it away, they pile up. The dead pile up," she added when Peabody stared at her, "until you can't see past them, and you can't do the job."

"Do you put it away? Can you?"

It was a question Eve tried not to ask herself – and asked herself too often. "A lot of murder cops, they've only got so many years in them. So many dead. Then it starts eating at them until they're used up. I can't do anything else but this, so it's not going to use me up." She let out a long breath. "But in a perfect world, we'd have the rusty spoon option."

"When I started working with you, I thought Homicide was the most important thing I could do. It's been about a year now. I still think that."

"Okay." She jammed her way into traffic like a battering ram. "I need to make a stop down at the Canal Street Clinic. Let's see if the boys in EDD have made any progress."

She used the in-dash 'link to contact Feeney's office, and felt Peabody stiffen when McNab's pretty face appeared on-screen.

"Hey, Lieutenant." Eve watched his gaze shift over, saw his lips stretch into a smile every bit as stiff as Peabody 's shoulders. " Peabody."

"I need your captain," Eve told him.

"He just stepped out."

"Tell him to tag me as soon as he comes back."

"Hold it, hold it, hold it." His face filled the screen as he leaned in. "Don't eject till you hear the tune. The captain put me on your electronic account search."

Eve punched her vehicle through a narrow opening, switched lanes, and gained half a block. "Pretty basic e-work for a hotshot, isn't it?"

"Yeah, well, it got bumped up to hotshot level when the tech ran into some snags. Your cyber-Casanova put in some blocks and walls. I scaled them, being a hotshot, and came up with an address."

"Are you going to stop bragging long enough to give it to me?"

"I would, Lieutenant, but you'd be wasting your time. Address is in the Carpathian Mountains."

"Where the hell is that?"

"Mountain range, Eastern Europe. I know," McNab said, with a frisky toss of his long blond ponytail, "because I looked it up. And before you ask me what the hell our perp's doing on a mountain in Eastern Europe, he's not. It's a dummy. Address is bogus as my cousin Sheila's tits."

"It doesn't sound like you scaled a wall to me, McNab."

" Dallas, I scaled a fucking mountain here. I got a bounce from the fake address, and I'm following the echo. Should have it nailed in another hour."

"Then don't talk to me until you set down the hammer. And McNab? Any guy who knows anything about his cousin's tits is a perv."

She broke transmission on his hoot of laughter. "He may be irritating," Eve said to Peabody, "but he's good. He'll nail it. And if it's taking him this long, that tells me our suspect is an above-average hacker. He protected himself going in, which in court will be, to overuse an image, another nail in his coffin."

She glanced at Peabody 's profile. "Don't sulk."

"I'm not sulking."

Hissing, Eve flipped down the passenger visor so the mirror dropped down. "Look at your face. You want him to know you get bent when you have to deal with him? Snag a little pride, Peabody."

Studying herself, Peabody saw sulk move into pout mode at Eve's words. She flipped the visor back up. "I was just thinking, that's all."

Eve made the swing onto Canal, pitching through its bazaarlike sector where the offerings were plentiful and cheap and the Black Market did the lion's share of business. Tourists were routinely scammed, then they filed complaints against shops that changed venues more often and with greater efficiency than a tent circus.

Then again, Eve figured if you were stupid enough to believe you could buy a Rolex for the same price as a large pizza, you deserved the skinning.

Within a few blocks, the carnival gave way to the dumping ground for the homeless and the disenfranchised. Sidewalk sleepers erected their boxes and tents in pitiful little communities of despair. Those with beggar's licenses, and many without them, wandered across town to shill enough credit tokens to buy a bottle of home brew to get them through another night.

Those who didn't make it through the night would be transported to the morgue by the NYPSD unit not-so-affectionately known as the Sidewalk Scoopers.

No matter how many were loaded up, cremated at city expense, more came to replace them.

It was a cycle no one, particularly the city fathers, seemed to be able to break. And it was here, in the midst of the filth and despair, that Louise Dimatto ran the Canal Street Clinic.She didn't break the cycle either, Eve thought,but she made the spin on it a little less painful for some.

In an area where the shoes on your feet were considered fair game, it was a risky business to park a car unless you then surrounded it by droids wearing body armor and hefting rocket lasers. Patrol cars were manned by exactly that.

The good news was, parking places were plentiful.

Eve pulled to the curb behind what might have been a sedan at one time. But since all that was left of it was part of a chassis and a broken windshield, she couldn't be sure.

She stepped out, and in the hot, stinking steam that gushed up from a subway vent, engaged all locks, activated all alarms. Then she stood on the sidewalk, scanned the street in all directions. There were a few loiterers hulking in doorways and one pitifully skinny street LC trying to drum up customers.

"I'm Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD." She didn't shout it, but raised her voice enough to cause faces to shift in her direction. "This piece of shit is my official city vehicle. If said piece of shit is not in this exact spot, in this exact condition when I come back, I'll bring a squad of door-bangers down here to roust every living soul in a five-block radius, along with illegals-sniffer dogs who will find and confiscate all the goodies you've got stashed. I guarantee it will be a very unpleasant experience."

"Bitch cop!"

Tracking the direction of the comment, Eve lifted her gaze to a third-floor window in a building across the street. "Officer Peabody, will you verify the asshole's opinion?"

"Yes, sir, Lieutenant, the asshole is correct. You are the supreme bitch cop."

"And what will happen if anyone lays hands on my vehicle?"

"You will make their life a living hell. You will make their friends' lives a living hell, their family's lives a living hell. And, sir, you will make people's lives who are complete strangers to them a living hell."

"Yes," Eve said with a cold and satisfied smile. "Yes, I will." She turned away and walked to the door of the clinic.

"And you'll enjoy it."

"Okay, Peabody, point made." She pulled open the door, stepped inside.

For an instant she thought she'd walked into the wrong door. From her visits over the past winter, she remembered the jammed waiting room, the dingy walls, the tattered, inadequate furniture. Here instead was a wide space partitioned by a low wall where glossy green plants thrived in simple clay pots. Chairs and sofas were ranged on either side, and though nearly every seat was taken, there was a sense of order.

The walls were a pale, pretty green decorated with framed pictures obviously drawn by children.

There was the hacking, wheezing, the soft whimpering of the ill and the injured. But there was not, as there had been the previous winter, an underlying sense of anger and hopelessness.

Even as she scanned the room a woman in a jumpsuit the same color as the walls came through a doorway. "Mrs. Lasio, the doctor will see you now."

At the shift in patients, Eve crossed over to the reception window. Through it she could see updated equipment and the same sense of ordered efficiency that permeated the waiting areas.

There was a young man at the station with a face as cheerful and harmless as a daisy. He couldn't have been more than twenty, Eve thought as he beamed up at her.

"Good afternoon. How can we help you today?"

"I need to see Doctor Dimatto."

"Yes, ma'am. I'm afraid Doctor Dimatto is fully booked for the rest of this afternoon. If this is a medical emergency – "

"It's personal business." Eve laid her badge on the counter. "Official business. If she's tied up, have her contact me when she's free. Lieutenant Dallas, Cop Central."

"Oh, Lieutenant Dallas. Doctor Dimatto said you might come by. She's with a patient, but if you don't mind waiting just a few minutes? You can wait in her office, and I'll tell her you're here."

"Fine."

He buzzed her through the door. She saw what she assumed were examining rooms on either side of a hallway, and the hallway opened into a wide pass-through where lab equipment stood on counters. From somewhere nearby, she heard a child laughing.

"You guys expanded."

"Yes. Dr. Dimatto was able to purchase the building that adjoined the original clinic." Still beaming smiles he led them across the pass-through, into another hallway. "She expanded and updated the clinic and its services and added pediatrics. We have six doctors now, two full-time and four on rotation, and a fully equipped lab."

He opened a door. "Doctor Dimatto is the angel of Canal Street. Please, help yourself to the AutoChef. She'll be with you as soon as she can."

Louise's office hadn't changed much, Eve noted. It was still small, still cramped, still crowded. And reminded Eve very much of her own space at Central.

"Jeez, she's really done something here," Peabody commented. "It had to run her a couple million."

"I guess." And since Eve had only donated – okay, bribed Louise with – a half a million for the clinic, she figured the angel of Canal Street had done some very intense, very successful fund-raising in a very short amount of time.

"This place is better equipped, and I bet better run, than my local health center." Peabody pursed her lips. "I might switch."

"Yeah, well." To Eve's mind one health facility was the same as another. They were all voids of hell. "You got an e-memo on you? We'll just leave the doctor a message. I want to get back to Central."

"Maybe. Somewhere." And as Peabody dug into her pockets, Louise rushed in.

"Got five. Need coffee." She made a beeline for the AutoChef. "Fill me in while I refuel."

"Did you know Bryna Bankhead?"

"No."

"Picture Peabody." Eve took the ID photo Peabody took from her file bag, held it out. "Recognize her?"

Louise drank coffee with one hand, dragged her other through her hair as she frowned at the image. A stethoscope and a red lollipop peeked out of her lab coat pocket. "Yes. I'd ridden in the elevator with her now and again, seen her in the local markets where I shop. I suppose I might have spoken to her, the way you do with neighbors you don't have time to know. Was she murdered?"

"Yeah." Eve held out a copy of the suspect's image. "Recognize him?"

"No." Louise set down her coffee, took the photo for a closer look. "No, I've never seen him before. He killed her? Why?"

Eve handed the photos back to Peabody. "You ever treat anybody for sex-inducement drugs? Whore, Rabbit?"

"Yes. In my ER rotation we'd have somebody coming down off Rabbit a few times a month. Mostly Rabbit clones, or Exotica/Zeus combo, because the real's so pricey. I never dealt with Whore, don't know anybody who has. You study it, and its derivatives in illegals training, but it's on the inactive list."

"Not anymore."

"Is that what he did to her? Doped her with Whore? Whoreand Rabbit. Jesus Christ." She rubbed her hands over her face. "Mixed with alcohol, I take it. Why didn't he just blast her brains out with a laser?"

"Maybe you could poke around, ask some of your doctor friends if they've seen any re-emergence of Whore."

"I can do that. You know, a man had to come up with the street name for that crap. You know how it started?"

"No, how?"

"As an experimental treatment for phobias and conditions like social anxiety disorder. It was a little too good at it."

"Meaning?"

"It also had an affect on the hormones. It was discovered that it worked more effectively as an aid in sexual disorders. In diluted and carefully monitored doses, it could and did enhance sexual desire and function. From there, it went into use as an aide for training licensed companions. Though non-addictive, it was soon found to be dangerously unstable. Which, naturally, meant it became desirable on the street, particularly among your more well-heeled college boys and junior execs who would slip a dose into their dream girl's drink to loosen her up." She washed the rising rage back down her throat with coffee.

"That's how it got its name," she continued, "as mixed with alcohol it tends to loosen the system up enough so the ingestor would be amenable to being fucked naked on the ice rink at Rockefeller Center. The ingestor wouldn't necessarily have the motor coordination left to actively participate, and would unlikely remember doing so, but she'd be damn amenable to suggestion."

"Add Rabbit?"

"Oh, she'd participate with the entire U.S. Marine Corps, until she passed out cold, until her heart rate went off the charts and her brain-wave pattern flattened."

"A doctor would know that," Eve prompted. "A chemist, pharmacist, nurse, med tech, anyone with a working knowledge of pharmaceuticals would know the combination was fatal?"

"Yeah, anyone should. Unless he or she is a moron, or just didn't give a shit as long as it was fun while it lasted."

"Okay, ask around. If anything strikes you, get in touch."

"You can bank on it."

"You did a nice job around here," Eve added.

"We like to think so." Louise finished off the coffee, two-pointed the cup in the recycle bin. "Your three million went a long way."

"Three million?"

"I was ready to dive into the half million we agreed on. Didn't expect the bonus."

"When…" Eve ran her tongue around her teeth. "When did I give you the bonus?"

Louise opened her mouth, closed it again. Smiled. "Now why do I think you don't have a clue?"

"Refresh me, Louise. When did I give you three million dollars?"

"Never. But your rep did, late February."

"And my rep would be?"

"Some slick suit named Treacle, of Montblanc, Cissler and Treacle. Issued in two installments – -the half mil as agreed, and another two point five if I contracted to donate my services toDachas, a newly established abuse center for women and children on the Lower East Side.Dachas," she said, still smiling, "is, I'm told, Gaelic forhope."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah. You've got a hell of a man there, Dallas. You ever get tired of him, I'll take him off your hands."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"You gave her the money for all that?" Peabody demanded as she hustled out after Eve.

"No, I didn't give her the money because it's not my money, is it? It's Roarke's money. I'm a cop, goddamn it. A cop doesn't have space stations full of money to make grand gestures with."

"Yeah, but still. Does that piss you off?"

Eve stopped on the sidewalk, took a long breath. "I don't know if it pisses me off." But she kicked the base of a street lamp just in case she was. "He could tell me about this stuff, couldn't he? He could keep me in the loop so I wouldn't go into this sort of situation and come out feeling like an idiot."

Peabody looked back at the clinic, her soft heart going to goo stage. "I think it was a beautiful gesture."

"Don't contradict me, Peabody. Do you forget I am the supreme bitch cop?"

"No, sir. And as your vehicle is in the same spot and the same condition as you left it, the neighborhood didn't forget that either."

"Too bad." A bit wistful, she looked around. "I'd've enjoyed busting some ass."

Back at Central, Eve snagged a candy bar in lieu of lunch, brooded, called up data on the chemicals pertinent to the Bankhead homicide, brooded some more, then called to harass McNab.

"I want an address."

"Would you settle for twenty-three of them?"

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Look, I'm going to snag a conference room, your office is a box. Your level," he said, working a keyboard to his left manually as he spoke. "Ah… Room 426. I'm using your name to finesse it."

"McNab – "

"Easier, quicker to explain this face-to-face. Give me five."

He broke transmission on her snarl, which gave her no choice but to finish her snarl at Peabody. "Conference room 426. Now," she ordered.

She stormed out of her office, through the detective's bullpen where the kill lights in her eyes discouraged any of her associates from speaking to her. By the time she shoved into the conference room she'd worked up a fine head of steam and only required a handy target to spew it on.

To his misfortune, Feeney strolled in first.

"What the hell kind of division are you running up there?" she demanded. "McNab's giving me orders now? Hanging up on me? Booking rooms inmy name on his own initiative, and…and refusing to give me data when ordered."

"Hold on now, Dallas. I'm an innocent bystander."

"Too bad, 'cause they're the ones who usually end up bloody."

With a little shrug, Feeney rattled the bag of nuts weighing down his pocket. "All I know is the kid tagged me, asked me to swing by here so he could fill us both in at once."

"I'm primary on this case. EDD was requested to assist and consult. I have not yet formed a task force in this matter, nor have I been authorized by the commander to do so. Until I say different McNab's a drone and nothing more."

Feeney stopped rattling the bag, angled his head. "That go for me, too? Lieutenant?"

"Your rank doesn't mean dick when I'm primary. If you can't teach your subordinates proper pecking order and procedure, then maybe your rank doesn't mean dick in your own division."

He stepped in until the tips of his shoes bumped her boots, leaned in until the tip of his nose bumped hers. "Don't you tell me how to run my division. I trained your ass and I can still kick it, so don't you start thinking you can tear a strip off mine."

"Back off."

"Fuck that.Fuck that, Dallas. You got a problem with my command style, you spit it out. Chapter and verse."

Something in her head wanted to explode. Why hadn't she felt it? Something in her heart was screaming. But she hadn't heard it. So it was she who backed off, one cautious step. "He drugged her with Whore and Rabbit. He covered the bed with rose petals and fucked her on them until she died. Then he tossed her out the window so she lay broken and naked on the sidewalk."

"Oh Jesus." Pity edged his voice.

"I guess it's been stuck in my throat since Morris told me. I'm sorry I slapped at you."

"Forget it. Sometimes you catch one that hits you harder than others. You gotta slap at somebody."

"I've got his face, I've got his DNA, I've got his transmissions. I know the table in the club where he fed her the first of the Whore in drinks that she paid for with her own debit card. But I don't have him."

"You will." He turned as Peabody strode in a step in front of McNab. Both of them had flushed faces. "Detective, did you request permission from the primary to convene in this room?"

McNab blinked. "I needed to – "

"Answer the question."

"Not exactly. Captain." He didn't need to see Peabody smirk to know she did. "I apologize for overstepping, Lieutenant Dallas. I believe the information I have to, ah, impart, is important to the investigation and is better served in person than interoffice transmissions."

The dull flush burning up his throat was enough to satisfy her. "Then impart it, McNab."

"Yes, sir." It was difficult to look stiff and cold while wearing cherry red trousers and a skin-tight sweater the color of daffodils. But he nearly managed it. "In tracing the suspect's account from the fraudulent source location, I was able to ascertain the name used to register the account. It purports to be a business called La Belle Dame. "

"Purports to be," Eve said.

"Yes, sir. There is no firm or organization by that name doing business in the state of New York. The address given for the company is, in fact, Grand Central Station."

"And I'm to be excited about this because…?"

"Well, I kept separating layers and hit on sources for the actual transmissions. The locations they were sent out from. So far. I've hit twenty-three spots. All public cyber-cafes and clubs, in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn. So far," he repeated. "He moves around, sends and receives from ports in public venues. The only e-mail sent or received from that screen address was to and from Bryna Bankhead."

"He created it for her," Eve murmured.

"The umbrella account could have other screen names," McNab went on. "I haven't been able to break through the blocks. Yet. Whoever created the account knows his cyber-shit. I mean, he's good, and he's careful."

"Her best friend didn't recognize him. So far none of the door-to-doors on the building have turned up any neighbors who recognized him." Eve paced. "If Bankhead didn't know him, if he wasn't seen in or around her building before the night of the murder, then we have to assume he targeted her from the chat room."

"He knew where she worked," Peabody put in.

"But she didn't make him, and neither did her friend who works the same department. So he's maybe a casual customer. If he was a regular or an employee who spent any time in their department, they'd have noticed. You still notice guys who hang out where they sell women's underwear. But we'll run his picture through their human resources division.

"So he uses public venues. He either likes to socialize or he's hiding in plain sight. Maybe both. We circulate his picture at the cyber-spots."

"Lieutenant?" McNab wagged his fingers. "Do you know how many cyber-venues there are in New York?"

"No, and I don't want to know. But you can start counting them off as you visit them." She looked at Feeney. "You in if Whitney authorizes?"

"I'd say we're already in."

"Generate a list," she told McNab. "We'll split it up, work in pairs for now." She gave a soft sigh. "McNab and Feeney are the experts in this area. I'm only going to ask this once, in this room. Does anyone here have a problem working with anyone else on this team?"

McNab stared at the ceiling as if fascinated by the dull white tone of the paint. Peabody simply frowned at her shoes.

"I take that as a no. Peabody, you're with McNab; Feeney, you're with me. Start on the West Side; we'll take the East. We'll do as many venues as possible until…" She checked her wrist unit, calculated. "Twenty-one hundred. We'll meet at my home office tomorrow, oh eight hundred for a full briefing. Feeney, let's pitch this to Whitney."

Feeney strolled out after her, whistling. "You could've split us up another way."

"Yeah." She glanced back down the corridor and hoped she wasn't making a mistake. "But I'm thinking this way maybe the two of them will duke it out and we can all get back to normal."

He considered that as they hopped on a glide. "I got twenty on Peabody."

"Shit." She jammed her hands in her pockets. "Okay, but if I've got to lay down on McNab's bony ass, I want odds. Three to five."

"Done."

Back in the conference room, Peabody and McNab sat just as they were.

"I've got no problem working with you,"' McNab said.

"Why should you? I haven't got one working with you either."

"Good."

"Good."

They stared, ceiling and shoes, for another twenty seconds. McNab broke first. "You're the one who's been avoiding me anyway."

"I have not. Why should I? We are so over."

"Who said anything different?" And it burned him that she could say it, just that coolly, when he thought about her all the time.

"And you wouldn't think I'd been avoiding you ifyou hadn't been trying to get my attention."

"Shit. For what? I'm a busy boy, She-Body. Too busy to worry about some stiff-necked uniform who spends her off-time playing with LCs."

"You leave Charles out of this." She leaped to her feet, rage boiling in her blood. And a new little tear in her heart.

"Me, I don't have to hunt up pros. I got all the amateurs I can handle." He kicked out his legs, worked up a sneer. "But that's neither here nor there, right? We got the job, and that's it. If you can handle it."

"I can handle anything you can. More."

"Fine. I'll put the list together, and we'll get started."