Kindred in Death (26 page)

“No, but he asked to switch this week’s lesson to Friday afternoon.”

“Lieutenant, my father, my husband, brothers, the grandsons, they’re all going on a camping trip this weekend. They’re leaving Friday. My mother would be home alone until Sunday. He must know.”

“Sure he knows, didn’t I tell him myself?” Charity slapped a hand to her own thigh. “I must’ve said something a couple weeks back about how glad I was going to be to have the house to myself for a couple days, and damned if I didn’t tell him all about it. He asked where they camped, how long they’d be away. It was smooth, when I think about it, all how he’d never gone camping, wasn’t sure he’d like it. And last Wednesday, he brought it up, making sure, I see now, that it was still on.”

She gave a grimace of disgust. “He’s planning on coming here to kill me. I’ll kick that little bastard’s ass to next week.”

“I bet you could,” Eve said. “But you’re going to have to leave that part to me.”

Charity drew a deep breath, then gave Eve a look of approval. “You look like you can handle it. What do you want us to do?”

It took time to lay it out, reassure, and to bring in the last name on her list, find the target, interview, and again reassure.

At the end of it, a tired Peabody sighed. “We’ll get him tomorrow, at the memorial. We’ll get him then, and all the rest will just be precaution and backup. Because, well, we want him but . . . Louise’s wedding.”

“Don’t. Don’t even start.” Tired herself, Eve scrubbed her hands over her face. “Briefing tomorrow as scheduled. We’ll bring the rest of the team up to speed. I’ll write it up. Go ahead and fill in McNab and Jamie since you’re going to do that anyway. Then shut down. You need to be on full charge tomorrow.”

“I will. Because we have to take him tomorrow. For the sake of law and justice. And true love.”

“Roarke. Please.”

He smiled. “Good night, Peabody,” he said, and discharged the holo.

“Okay, and peace reigns across the land. For a minute. I need the recording so I can—”

“Disc copy.” He offered it. “And another is already transmitting to your unit. Now, come with me.”

“I have to—”

“Yes, I know you do.” He took her hand, drew her to the elevator. “If there was enough time—or I thought I could browbeat you into it—I’d see you took a hot bath and a relaxation session, but rather than argue for the next many minutes . . .”

He drew her into the bedroom.

“I don’t have time for that either.”

“Dear God, sex, sex, sex. It’s all you think about.” He turned her toward the sitting area.

There was candlelight, two glasses of wine, and—

“Is that cake?”

“It is.”

“I get cake?”

He pulled her back before she could pounce. “It depends.” He pulled a small case out of his pocket, watched her happy surprise turn to annoyed scowl.

“I don’t need a blocker.”

“You do if you want cake. I know you have a headache—overwork, stress—overthinking—it shows. Take the blocker like a good girl, and you’ll have cake.”

“It better be really good cake.” She popped the blocker, then immediately grabbed the plate. One bite had her closing her eyes. “Okay, it is. Really good. Worth it. Ten minutes for cake.”

“Seems only fair.” He tugged her down to sit.

“We found them all.” She closed her eyes again, not in pleasure but relief. “All five.”

“Saved them all.”

“No, not all.”

“There are five women, and their families, who think differently.”

“If we can take him tomorrow.” She let it ride a moment, took another bite of cake. “The judge’s mother? Something.”

“Indeed she is.”

“Do the math. Seventy years into the marriage deal, and she’s ninety. Twenty when she stepped into the deal, started popping out kids. Seven decades later, and it’s still there. It’s what Pauley wants to destroy. Not just the person, but the connection. Strangle them with their own family ties.”

A slow sip of wine went down smoothly. “If we don’t take him tomorrow, she’ll hold up. She’ll stand to it.

“I don’t want to screw up the wedding,” she said suddenly. “I don’t want to mess this up, but if—”

“One step at a time.”

She let out a huff of breath. “Yeah. One step at a time.”

In the morning, Eve stood in the conference room outlining positioning and strategy for her team. Using a remote, she highlighted specific areas of the blueprint on screen.

“The ten-story building holds bereavement facilities on floors one through three, offices and counseling centers for same, four and five, ah, showrooms and retail spaces on six and seven. Eight through ten are hotel facilities offered to families and other attendants of the memorials and funerals held on site.”

“One-stop shopping,” Baxter commented.

“Yeah.” And, well, creepy to her mind. “Moreover, their preparation facilities in the basement comprise over four thousand square feet, and two outside entrances. There are four banks of elevators for a total of twelve cars, a glide between the hotel floors and the retail areas. Stairs, here, here, here, and here.” She highlighted. “Serving all floors.”

“Lots of ins, lots of outs,” Feeney added.

“Plus, you have the main doors here, facing south, additional entrances west and east, and two egresses north. Both the size and the position of the building add complexity. The MacMasters memorial is being held on level two, southwest corner, which includes a large, open terrace facing the park, as do all rooms on the west side. Three other memorials and two viewings overlap the time frame of the MacMasterses. Twenty of the twenty-two hotel rooms are occupied. All offices, chapels, counseling centers, and retail markets will be open.”

“Place’ll be jammed,” McNab pointed out. “That could give him an advantage.”

“We weren’t able to persuade the owners or various managers to cooperate, and have no authority to compel them to do so. We’ll focus on entrances and egresses, concentrating on the memorial areas. They consist of this room where the formal memorial will take place, and these two smaller parlors, all with access to the terrace and the corridor.”

She switched to a view of the memorial areas, with points already highlighted and numbered. “We cover the exits, as assigned here, with rovers continually sweeping point to point. If and when he’s spotted, we close off the exits, box him in. Those positioned at exits remain at their stations while those roving move in. I want him taken fast and clean.”

“Lieutenant.” One of the uniforms from MacMasters’s squad signaled. “The place is going to be jammed, but the memorial’s going to be jammed with cops. That’s an advantage for us, if we get the suspect’s picture out, put the full blue on it.”

“Making the picture department-wide gives us more eyes, and no control or focus. I want this tight, and I don’t want the suspect tipped off because a cop gives him the hard eye. He’s been on the grift all his life. He’ll know what to look for. I don’t want it there for him to find. Feeney.”

“We have an e-team monitoring the security cams. The building has cameras at every entrance, on all elevators, and in their retail areas. Any sighting’ll be relayed.”

“If and when that happens, everyone is to remain at post,” Eve continued. “We want to lure him in, not scare him off. Now, any questions about the overview?” She waited, scanned the room. “All right, specific assignments.”

When she’d dismissed the team, Eve continued to study the screen, searching for flaws. “A lot of ins and outs,” she said, echoing Feeney.

“We’ll have them all covered.” Still Peabody studied the screen as well. “It’s a good point about all the cops that’ll be there, at some time during the two hours. If we broadcast the sketch through the department, it would be like a rabbit walking into the wolf den.”

“Too many opportunities for leaks and hotheads and mistakes. I thought rabbits hopped.”

“Well, yeah.”

“And if we’re going to use that kind of analogy, bringing the department in would be like all those cooks burning the pie or whatever it is.”

“I think it’s spoiling the broth.”

“Who eats broth?”

“Sick people, maybe.”

“Burning the pie makes more sense, because then nobody can eat it, sick or healthy. A small, tight team,” she continued while Peabody puzzled over pie. “Then when he’s in, we box and close. He’s got no reason to be worried. He thinks we’re chasing our tails.”

“Yeah, we’re getting hammered by the media. Even knowing it’s for the good of the cause, it’s an ouch.”

“Suck it up,” Eve ordered. “He can walk right in, go right up to MacMasters, look him in the eye, and see the result of his work. Then that task is complete. Multitasking, that’s what he does. He figures he’ll have the third on his list, the judge’s mother, Friday or Saturday, and the Robins memorial Monday. He’s free to move on to the next.”

She shut down the comp and screen, gathered the discs.

“Let’s head over there now. I want to go through the place, top to bottom, before the team assembles.”

Not for the first time Eve wished the MacMasterses had chosen a smaller, less complex venue for their daughter’s memorial. She stood in the large entrance foyer, all but smothered by the scent of lilies, and studied the various escape routes.

Up, down, in, out, sideways, she thought. The place was a hive, and the staff a swarm of quiet bees in black suits. She crossed the slick marble floor toward the first bank of elevators.

“Excuse me. Is there any way I might help you?”

Eve looked at the sober face of the woman who stepped toward her.

“Security detail for the MacMasters family.” Eve pulled out her badge.

“Of course.” The woman consulted a mini e-board. “The MacMasters memorial service will be held in Suite two hundred. That’s the second floor. Would you like me to escort you?”

“I think we can find the second floor.”

“Of course.” Sarcasm slid off her well-oiled composure, as her eyes, her voice, continued to radiate an oddly efficient sympathy. “Nicholas Cates is managing that program. I’ll notify him of your arrival. Is there anything else I might help you with today?”

“No.”

Eve stepped into the elevator, called for the second floor.

“She was just creepy,” Peabody decided. “I know she’s supposed to be comforting or reassuring, but creepy is what she is with that whispering-in-the-graveyard voice. So’s this whole place creepy. It’s like the upscale death hotel.”

Considering, Eve pursed her lips. “I was thinking it’s more like an exclusive spa of death. They give corpses manicures in the basement.”

“Eeww.”

“Don’t say ‘eeww.’ It’s wussy.”

“Places like this make me feel wussy, especially now that I’m picturing some chatty death tech painting a DB’s fingernails.”

“Maybe Trina should work here.”

They stepped off into another wide corridor, with more rivers of marble, more elaborate banks of flowers. As they walked, Eve glanced into open doorways to see respectfully black-suited staff already setting up for services.

More flowers, she noted, wall screens activated to do test runs of vids or photos the family of the dead chose.

“Lieutenant Dallas.” A man with golden hair and an angelic face hurried toward her. He boasted the male version of the whispering-in-the-graveyard voice Peabody had coined. “I’m Nicholas Cates. My supervisor told me to expect you. I’m sorry I wasn’t downstairs to greet you. What can I do to help?”

“You can cancel the other services and viewings this morning, and keep everyone not directly connected to the MacMasters memorial off this floor.”

He smiled, sadly. “I’m afraid that’s just not possible.”

“So I’m told.”

“While we want to cooperate to the best of our ability, there are others, the departed and their loved ones, who must be considered.”

“Right. You’ve verified your internal security, and all staff members on site?”

“Of course. Everyone’s accounted for. We’ve accommodated your electronics teams. They’ll have use of my offices for the day.”

She moved past him, into the main room of the suite. As with the others, preparations had begun. She ignored the flowers, the laughing young face of the dead on the wall screen, in images on easels, the glossy white coffin draped in pink and purple flowers—bold blossoms on ice.

She checked the terraces, the parlors, the stairways, the restrooms, and the small meditation room across the corridor.

All exits would be covered by electronic eyes and warm bodies. She and Peabody had completed runs of every staff member, and secondary runs on every staff member assigned to duty that day. She would have plainclothes officers, including herself, mingling with the mourners. And all of them would be wired.

Every cop under her command had been briefed and rebriefed on operation procedure.

Nothing to do, she thought, but to do it.

20

THIRTY MINUTES BEFORE THE MEMORIAL, THE team in place, Eve watched the MacMasterses and a small group of others file off the elevator. She moved aside as Cates led them toward the suite for their private viewing.

But Carol MacMasters shook off her husband’s supporting arm and whirled on her.

“Why are you here?” she demanded. “Why aren’t you out there doing your job? Do you think we want you here, want your condolences? My baby is dead, and the monster who killed her is still out there. What good are you to us? What good are you?”

“Carol, stop. Stop now.”

“I won’t stop. I’ll never stop. It’s just another case to you, isn’t it? Just another file. What good are you? It’s all over the media that you have nothing. Nothing. What good are you?”

As she began to weep, the older man beside her pulled her to him. “Come on now, Carol, come on now. You need to sit down, you need to come with me.”

When he led her away, the others followed while MacMasters looked helplessly after them. “I apologize, Lieutenant.”

“Don’t.”

“She wouldn’t take a soother. She wouldn’t take anything to help her get through. I didn’t know she’d been watching the media reports until it was too late to stop her, and she’s too . . . too upset to understand. It’s partially my fault. In trying to comfort her I told her you’d have him before today. I know better. I hoped you would, but I . . .” He shook his head, turned into the room.

A moment later, Cates closed the double doors. Carol’s weeping battered against them like fists.

“She was wrong, Dallas,” Peabody said. “She was unfair.”

“Wrong maybe. Unfair’s a different thing.”

“But—”

“Focus on why we’re here.” She walked away from the door and the sound of weeping. “Feeney? Eyes on?”

“Eyes on,” he said through her earpiece. “Peabody’s right, you’re wrong. That’s all on that. Your man’s coming in. Whitney and his missus, the commissioner, some brass from Illegals. We’re getting deliveries, north side, pretty regular. Flowers, messengers, what I take are blowups of dead people. Couple stiffs carted into the basement.”

“Copy that. Keep me updated.” She waited until the elevator opened. “Commissioner Tibble, Commander, Mrs. Whitney. The MacMasterses are inside the suite for the family viewing.”

“We’ll wait.” Dark eyes hard, Tibble nodded. “Anything to report?”

“Not at this time, sir.”

“I hope your strategy justifies the beating we’re taking in the media.” He looked toward the closed doors. “And results in some closure for the captain and his wife.”

“We’ll take him if he shows, Commissioner, and I believe he will. Alternate plans are being formulated to apprehend him tomorrow if—”

“I don’t want to hear about alternate plans, Lieutenant. Your suspect is in custody this afternoon or the sketch is released.”

He turned and walked to the window at the end of the corridor.

“Your plan to make the investigation appear stalled has worked better than we could have anticipated,” Whitney told her. “We’re under a lot of pressure, Lieutenant.”

“Understood, sir.”

Whitney and his wife stepped away to speak to other arrivals.

“That’s not—”

Eve cut Peabody’s mutter off with a look. “Don’t say it’s unfair. I’m primary. I take the knock if there’s a knock coming. Check in with the rest of the team. We’re going to start filling up out here soon. I didn’t expect you to make it for this,” she said to Roarke.

“I adjusted a few things.” He glanced toward her commander, and the city’s top cop. “I’m glad I did, and might have some part in helping you finish this.”

“He’ll show. The probabilities say it, Mira says it, my gut says it. He’ll show, and we’ll box him in, take him down. Then while the department takes a short round of applause from the media god, I’ll have him in my box. And then . . .”

She stopped, took a couple of quiet breaths. “Okay. Okay. I’m a little pissed off.”

Roarke trailed a hand down her arm. “It looks good on you.”

“No room for that. No room. One set of prints on the playbill, no match in any database. We get him, we’ll match them, but it doesn’t help us get him.” She jammed her hands into the pockets of her black jacket. “Nadine and her amazing research team haven’t hit on any likelies on the security system clients.”

“I’ve got some ideas there I’m still working,” Roarke told her.

“Time’s running. It needs to be today.” She spotted Cates coming out of the adjoining parlor to speak to Whitney and his wife, then lead them, along with Tibble, inside.

“We’re green,” she announced.

She’d expected a large crowd—a lot of cops stopping to pay respects, and neighbors, Deena’s school friends, their families. But there were more than she’d anticipated.

She saw Jo Jennings and her family, the neighbor she’d spoken to on the morning of Deena’s murder. She saw cops she recognized, and many more she didn’t, but simply made as cops. Young, old, all in between. Dozens of teenagers mingled among the dress blues, the soft clothes.

More than one burst into tears and had to be led away while images of Deena played over the wall screen. Eve exchanged a look with Nadine across the room, but kept her distance.

She circled the room, again and again, studying faces, builds from different angles.

“Got another group approaching the main entrance,” Feeney said in her ear. “Eight—no nine—mixed male, female, age range about sixteen to eighteen. Hold on, hold on, another one’s moving in with them. Male, ball cap, shades, dark hair, right build. It’s . . . No, it’s not him.”

Whitney moved up beside her. “Students from Deena’s school were given permission to attend.” He answered Eve’s frustrated look with one of his own. “Jonah wasn’t aware Carol had arranged for it.”

“He hasn’t come in any of the entrances. We’d have made him. We’re only into the first hour.”

She watched Mira come in, then make her way through the crowd toward the grieving parents.

Too many cops, she thought, too many kids. She tracked staff as they offered little cups of water, thimble-sized cups of coffee or tea, or brought in yet more flowers.

The air in the room was overripe, a garden of grief.

People spilled onto the terrace, into both parlors, and their voices ebbed and flowed into a sea of sound. Through it she listened to team members report status through her earbud.

She started toward the terrace as much for some air as to do another sweep.

As she reached the doorway a crash had her whirling around. Screams, shouts exploded as the sea of sound became a sea of panic. She pushed, shoved her way through, shouting for status, status, and yanked out her communicator. In front of her, people went down in an avalanche of flailing bodies. A shove from behind pitched her violently forward, slam ming her down to her hands and knees. The communicator shot out of her fingers on impact, crunched under stampeding feet as she swore.

She took a blow to the eye, to the nose as she went down, another to the small of the back as she fought her way back to her feet in a tidal wave of people rushing for the exits.

Through the gaps she saw a couple of uniforms muscling a male to the floor. The ball cap he wore fell off, and his shaggy brown hair flopped forward.

Swiping blood off her face, she pushed forward again.

And she saw him, standing at the edge of the chaos, looking across the tumult of panic to the glossy white coffin blanketed with pink and purple flowers. She saw the man who’d put Deena MacMasters in that cold white coffin smile as he stared at the man who held his weeping wife beside it.

In seconds, the wall of people surged again, blocking both her view and her forward progress.

“Second-floor suite entrance. Main. Confirmed sighting.” A woman fell into her. Eve simply pushed her aside, plowed on. “Suspect is wearing a black suit, white shirt, staff ID. Goddamn it, goddamn it, move in.”

Only static sounded through her earpiece. And ahead of her, the doorway filled with fleeing people, forming a human barricade that cut her off.

She pushed, dragged, bulled while behind her she heard Whitney’s commanding voice demand order. Too late, she thought, too fucking late. When she made the corridor, she searched right, left, spotted Trueheart helping an elderly woman into a chair.

She reached over, grabbed him. “Suspect is wearing a black suit, white shirt, black tie, staff ID. Hair’s short, medium blond. Send it out. Now. Now. I want this building shut down. Nobody out.”

“Yes, sir.”

She rushed for the stairs, all but leaping down them, bursting into the foyer.

“Oh, your nose is bleeding, let me—”

“Did a male, early twenties, short hair, medium blond, staff suit and ID, come through here?”

The woman who’d greeted her on arrival stared at the blood on Eve’s face. “Ah, yes, I believe I just saw one of our assistants just—”

“Where did he go?”

“He just left. He looked as if he was in a hurry.”

Eve charged outside, scanned in every direction. She caught sight of the two cops she’d assigned to the main doors giving chase. Cursing, she leaped down to the sidewalk, kicking into a full-out sprint as she yanked out her ’link, patched through to Dispatch.

“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, in foot pursuit of murder suspect heading north on Fifth at Fifty-eighth. White male, twenty-three, slim build, blond hair, wearing black suit, white shirt, black tie.”

She couldn’t see him, not through the wide stream of pedestrians flooding the sidewalk. She dodged, wove, eating up one block, then a second.

Even as she gained ground on the two cops, she knew it was fruitless. When she caught them at the cross street she didn’t need to hear their report. It was clear on their faces.

“We lost him, Lieutenant. He had a solid block on us when we got the alert, and he was moving fast. We barely caught sight of him. He just poofed in the crowd.”

“How’d he get by you?” she demanded. “How the hell did he get by you?”

“Lieutenant, we were on watch for incomings. Wired into the EDD guys keeping us up on any possibles heading in. This guy walked out with a small group of staff. We’d just gotten an alert there was a ruckus upstairs, that we’d taken the suspect down. There was a lag between that and the notification the suspect was posing as staff and on the loose. We pursued as soon as we got it. We were lucky to even catch sight of him before—”

She cut it off with a lift of her hand. “We’ll debrief this clusterfuck at Central. Report back to your unit and await orders.”

She clipped back, furious, her face throbbing, and only shook her head when she saw Roarke moving quickly north toward her.

“We lost him. Goddamn it.”

Roarke took a handkerchief out of his pocket, handed it to her. “Your nose is bleeding.”

“I got clocked twice, maybe more in that riot. Knocked out my com, trampled my communicator. And he walks right out, right under the noses of two cops. He did exactly what he’d come to do, and had the extra benefit of watching us act like morons. What the fuck happened?”

“I don’t know.” He took her elbow to steer her through the Fifth Avenue throng. “I saw you go down, but by the time I was able to get through that mass of panic, you were gone. I came after you when Trueheart said you’d gone in pursuit.”

“A lot of good it did me. He was lost before I hit the sidewalk.”

As she approached the building, arrowing through the people congregating on the sidewalk, Peabody came down the main stairs.

“Gone,” Eve said.

“Damn it.” Peabody hissed out a breath, then winced at Eve’s face. “I thought I took a knock,” she said, tapping ginger fingers to the bruise on her cheek. “You took harder.”

“Let’s go clean this mess up. What do you know?” Eve demanded as they went back in.

“The best I can get is some hair-trigger tackled some kid, and another cop helped him wrestle the kid to the ground and restrain him. Panic ensued. We’ve got all parties in one of the private parlors upstairs. Baxter’s riding herd there. Whitney’s with the MacMasterses, and is to be advised when you’re back on site. We had to call in MTs. People got bruised and bloodied. We’ve got a really big mess, Dallas.”

“Clean up what you can on the periphery, and inform Whitney I’m talking to the officers and the civilian involved. My communicator’s toast.”

“Why don’t I speak to whoever manages this place,” Roarke suggested. “Smooth over what I can.”

“Couldn’t hurt. But I’m going to speak to him later. Son of a bitch.” Eve squared her shoulders and went up to the second level.

The scent of lilies and roses was stronger now, probably because so many of them lay trampled. She skirted around broken glass, puddles of water, to where Trueheart stood outside a door.

“We got the word on the suspect, Lieutenant. Sorry. Ah, Baxter has the two officers involved here, and the kid. We brought in an MT to look at the kid. He’s got some bruises.”

“Perfect. Just perfect.”

She stepped inside, closed the door at her back.

A male of about eighteen sat in a blinding-white chair while a grizzled MT checked his pupils.

“I’m okay,” the boy said. “Mostly just got the shit and the wind knocked out of me. I’m okay.”

“I get called to take a look atcha, I take a look atcha.”

The MT ran a wand over the bruise on the boy’s jaw.

Eve spared a glance toward the two cops slumped on a sofa of the same blinding white, flicked one to Baxter who rolled his eyes heavenward.

Yeah, she thought, call on that higher power. We’re going to need it.

“I’m Lieutenant Dallas,” she told the boy.

“Ah, yeah, hi. I’m Zach. Can I just get out of here now? I need to find Kelly. I came with Kelly. She went to school with the dead girl. I just came with Kelly because she was freaked about seeing the dead girl.”

“What’s Kelly’s full name?”

“Kelly Nims. Everything went whacked in there, and I don’t know if she’s okay.”

“Detective Baxter, have someone find Ms. Nims.”

“Yes, sir, right away.”

“Thanks. I’ll feel better once I know she’s frosted. We’re tight, and like I said, she was already freaked.”

He bore a surface resemblance to Pauley, she noted. The basic build, coloring, the shaggy hair. She noted the ball cap in his lap.