Brotherhood in Death (30 page)

He sighed as he rose. “I just gave you Elis fucking Frater out of thin air, and you have to ask?”

He had a point.

She
really
hated to fly, and zipping over Manhattan, between spears of buildings, scooting around trundling sky trams didn’t help the chicken and dumplings settle in comfort.

It would be a short zip to the Bronx, she reminded herself, and she spent most of it on her ’link.

Peabody would be a little pissy—Peabody
loved
to fly. Go figure. And Eve needed to alert the local PSD she was coming in.

“Reo came through. We’ve got the warrant, and there’s no activity as yet at the Betz residence—the other one. Glasgow cops picked up Ethan MacNamee, and are currently holding him.”

“That’ll keep him alive. Will you get him back here?”

“I’ll damn well get him back here. I’ll be copying that ugly recording to Scotland, once I touch base with the commander.”

Because she felt the copter shudder, she made the mistake of glancing through the windscreen. The moving lines of cars and burning lights
made her head spin. Better than her stomach, she told herself, but swallowed hard.

“If we identify the house in the painting—and I’m working that by backtracking through old records, looking for an address on at least one of these bastards back in college—we may want to use this damn copter again.”

“A moonlight flight over Connecticut. Ah, romance.”

She hissed out a breath when he began the descent.

“Where are you going to land this thing? Why didn’t I think of that before? Why is this damn thing shaking so much? Christ, I hate this! Where are you putting down?”

“Safe as houses.” He said it as he fought a vicious wind shear.

“People break into houses all the time. Houses burn down. What makes them safe?” she demanded. “Where are you putting this flying tube?”

“On the very handy rooftop of the building we’re going to visit.” If the bloody wind didn’t bash them into it first. “Can’t get much closer than that.”

No, but now there were a lot of buildings entirely too close to that windscreen for her comfort.

He set down on the convenient, if narrow, flat roof near what she thought must be a maintenance shed. But her breath didn’t come easy until he’d switched off the copter and the engine purred into silence.

“Thank Christ.” She unhooked her harness, jumped out onto reassuring concrete, and into the wild wind. “Roof access,” she shouted, nodding at a steel door. “We go in like the suspects are inside. We clear, floor by floor. I know you’re carrying.”

“Of course I am. Do you want me to pop the locks?”

She pulled out her master, turned on her recorder. “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Roarke, expert civilian consultant, entering residence of Frederick Betz. Duly warranted.”

She used her master, nodded to Roarke.

They went in fast, high and low.

“This is the NYPSD,” she called out. “We’re coming in, and we’re armed.”

They went down a short stairway to another door, repeated the procedure, and the warning.

Eve took out her flashlight, swept with it and her weapon.

“Feels empty,” she said quietly, “but we clear.” She gestured him one way, took the other.

There were rooms full of furniture, but more like storage areas than livable spaces. A pristinely clean bathroom, and stairs leading down.

“Clear,” she called out.

“And clear here, but you should come see this.”

She wanted to go down, clear the second floor, the first, but she moved in the direction of Roarke’s voice.

And found a small, well-equipped lab.

“I’m going to venture I’ll find another account or two,” Roarke said, “as it looks as if Betz has a small illegals operation here. And I’ll wager he’s cooking rape drugs in his leisure time.”

She stepped in toward a glass-fronted refrigerated cabinet, studied the organized crates of vials.

“He has family money, family business—though my data is he doesn’t do a lot. He likes to bet on the horses. So he cooks up illegals on the side to support his habit, to have more to stow away. This is his fucking hobby,” Eve said and turned away. “Let’s clear the rest.”

They went down to the next floor, split up again.

This time she called Roarke.

“Suitcase—guest room. Bed’s mussed up like somebody stretched out there. Bottle of liquor, a glass.” She spoke softly as she eased open the suitcase.

On top of a jumble of clothes—a handmade sweater she recognized from the work Peabody did—was a framed photo of Petra Easterday.

“Easterday,” she told Roarke. “He came here to hide. A brother would have access to a brother’s house, right?”

“He didn’t unpack, or repacked hastily.”

“I think didn’t unpack. Brought the suitcase up, got a bottle, laid down, and drank.”

“Feeling sorry for himself,” Roarke concluded.

“Yeah, poor, sad serial rapist had a fucking bad day. Let’s go down. If we box him, he’ll try to run. He may try to fight, but he won’t be much trouble.”

They turned out of the room, toward the stairs. And stopped halfway down when they saw Betz.

The first floor and its entranceway remained dark but for the beam of her flash. And that spotlighted the man hanging from the pendant light above the main floor hallway.

She’d known the chances were slim she’d find him alive, take him alive into the box and batter him into a shaking mass over what she knew. But she’d hoped. She’d hoped deeply after viewing the recording she’d have her chance at him.

“And that’s four of six,” she stated. “They didn’t wait to deal with him, took the chance and got him in here, finished him way before their usual time frame.

“Clear first. They’re not here, but Easterday might be.”

She found an overturned table and broken glass on the floor leading toward the rear of the house.

Then blood—some spatter, some smears.

She stepped around it, continued to clear, saw drag marks.

“The house is clear,” she told Roarke, “and they’ve got Easterday. It reads he was down here, probably a little drunk, when they came in.
Maybe he figures his brother Betz is coming in, then he sees them, tries to run. They go after him, stun him. He goes down, takes that table with him, hits his head. They drag him back. I bet they wanted him to watch. Like he watched Betz rape them. Now he can watch while they execute Betz.”

She holstered her weapon, called for the lights. “I need to let the locals know what we’ve got here, but it’s our case. I’ll pull Peabody in after all.”

“If you suggest I go back home, you’ll make me very angry.”

“I should, but I won’t. And I don’t want to,” she admitted. “I can handle this. I will handle it. But I want you with me. It helps having you with me.”

“Always.”

“It helps knowing that, too. I think, unless they’re stupid—and so far, not a bit—they know they don’t have much of a chance to get to the last one, to MacNamee. They might take more time with Easterday. They might because he’s the last one they’ll have. Otherwise, he’s already dead, and they’re in the wind.”

Because he knew her, he brushed a hand down her hair. “If it were me, and I’d come this far, was this determined, it would be the first. I’d want to . . . do justice to the last.”

She nodded, took out her ’link to tag her local contact. “This is Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, NYPSD. I’ve got a body.”

She contacted Whitney, leaving it to him to play politics with the Bronx brass, if necessary, called in her own sweepers, and had a conversation with the two local detectives who came in on the roll.

By the time Peabody and McNab arrived—riding in hot in a black-and-white—she had the latest victim lowered to the floor, and had established TOD.

“Twenty-fifteen. We didn’t miss them by a full hour. They had to get
this address out of Betz—or one of the others. They went to town and back on him. Shorter time frame, bigger beating.”

“He’s the one who drugged them,” Roarke said.

“Drugged them?”

Eve glanced up at Peabody. “It’s on the recording from the bank box. We have all six of them. Gang rape, by turns—like a sporting event. This one injected the vic—their first the way it reads—with something that made her go from screaming, fighting, and begging them to stop to begging for more.”

“They injected her?” Under the bright splash of his watch cap, McNab’s green eyes went hard and cold. “With something like Whore?”

“Something like it, this one cooked it up himself. He’s got a lab upstairs here where he’s kept at it.”

She saw something on McNab’s face that had her speak sharply. “We’re on the record here, Detective.”

He simply swung away and went to work on the entrance door.

“As with previous victims,” Eve continued, “the victim has a symbolic tattoo in the groin area. ME to determine if this victim was stunned in this area as well, as the damage to said area is very severe. Weighted saps again, most likely. However, further injuries are burns that may have been caused by the same heated implement used to sodomize the victim. Other evidence of burning and bruises on the torso, which was not evident on the two other victims connected to this one. The facial bruising is, again, severe. The gouges around the neck and throat were most likely caused by the victim himself in an attempt to free himself from the noose. There is skin tissue and blood under the fingernails, both hands.”

She rubbed the ache in the center of her forehead, then straightened up. “Bag and tag. Morris has already been notified. McNab.”

He turned back, his face still stony. “Sir.”

“We’ll need all electronics. The consultant has already determined the security equipment was compromised, as with the other incidents.
They took the hard drive. But I want all the comps taken apart, and any communications devices you find. Send for assistance.”

She turned back, blew out a breath. “Our sweepers will take the scene, and local PSD will secure. Peabody, we’ll go through Easterday’s belongings on the second floor. Let’s see if there’s anything in there that will lead us to where they took him.”

When she went up, Roarke walked over to McNab.

“Don’t think she doesn’t feel it, that there isn’t a rage in her as you feel yourself.”

“I know it. It’s just . . .” He shoved off his winter cap, stuffed it in one of his pockets. “I saw a lot of bad shit when I was on Vice, okay? And rape is bad enough. Gang rape’s beyond. Then you add sticking Whore into her? Like it’s not enough you’re going to rape her, but you’ve got to make her part of it? And it can come back on the vic, you know? If she’s dosed wrong or too much, she can have flashbacks so she wants anybody to do her, then and there. I saw a lot of it. Too much of it.”

“So has she.” He gave McNab’s shoulder a squeeze.

McNab stood a moment as if gathering himself, with the striped tail of his cap dangling out of a pocket of his bright green coat. A crescent moon of sparkling hoops adorned his ear. The long-dead Elvis rocked on the front of his sweater.

The deep green eyes in his pretty face were all cop. “I’m not saying what they did to him was right. It’s not right. But it’s hard seeing it as wrong. Easier to say it’s not right than to say it’s wrong.”

“It is, isn’t it? I may not believe it as truly as Eve, or you, or Peabody, but I see the value of the belief you hold that you’d rather have him alive, alive so he could suffer the humiliation and the loss of his freedom for a lifetime, than dead on the ground like this. However much he suffered first.”

“There are times it’s harder to believe than others, but yeah, I do believe it. Thanks for reminding me.”

“All in a day’s. I’ll give you a hand until your help arrives, or the lieutenant needs me elsewhere.”

—

R
oarke waited for her, busying himself with electronics. He knew worrying about her state of mind was fruitless, but couldn’t stop the worry.

She wouldn’t stop, he knew, no matter what it cost her.

When she came down—eyes flat as McNab’s had been, the shadows dogging them only accentuating her pallor—he had to bite back a demand that she take a break, get some rest. Because together they watched the morgue team take the bagged body away.

“If Easterday brought anything relevant with him, they’ve got it. And the cash I know he took from his house is gone. His passport’s in the suitcase, so he was prepared to get gone, too.”

She shifted aside to make room for the sweepers as they began their work.

“It’s clear enough, he decided to leave—his life, his wife. Better that than face what was coming.”

“Because, start to end,” Roarke said, “he’s a sodding coward.”

“Yeah. Yeah, start to end. I pushed enough buttons he knew what was coming. He came here because he figured it would be safe until he could make arrangements to get out of the country. Probably had a little pity party, like you said, with booze—poor me—maybe he came down after a while. Get more booze, maybe get some food.”

She walked back to the blood, the overturned table, the broken glass.

“When they come in, he’s not prepared, and maybe a little drunk. They’ve got Betz, carting him in. That’s got to take two of them, at least, but there are four of them. Younger, faster, and plenty determined. Easy enough to run down a guy pushing seventy, one who’s been drinking.
He tries to get away, but they gang up on him—tit for tat, right? Whatever the hell that means. Struggle, knock the table over, and the glass vase thing on it breaks. He goes down hard. That’s probably a head wound—maybe some cuts from the broken glass, too. He’s dazed or knocked out, and they’ve got him.”

She looked back to where the sweepers worked on the light, the rope. “Easy to restrain him, even wait for him to come around while they put the noose around Betz. Now they’ve got two—and make Easterday watch while they raise the light, while the noose tightens, while Betz claws at his own throat, legs kicking, body convulsing.”

She drew a breath. “And they’re thinking, You watched while your brothers raped us. They watched while you raped us. Now you’ll watch your brother die, and know this is what we’ll do to you.”

“They could’ve ended it all here.” Peabody hunched her shoulders as Eve’s rundown brought the scene into her head too clearly. “Killed both of them, and gone into the wind.”