Brotherhood in Death

20

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.”

—

Roarke 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.”

“That’s not the plan. Easterday has to suffer first. They have things to say to him, things to do to him. He has to beg, the way they begged. He has to know, the way they knew, begging won’t stop what’s coming.

“Hold here a second.”

She moved over to where Uniform Carmichael stepped in.

“Sorry to pull you back,” she began.

“It’s how it goes, Lieutenant.”

“It’s how this is going. I want you to supervise the canvass. We need to wake up the whole fucking block, Carmichael, dig down for any information. They had transportation, most likely a van, light colored, on the new side. Make sure every uniform has copies of Yancy’s sketches of the suspects. You’re going to need to coordinate with and work with the local PSD.”

“No problem. I’ve got a cousin on the job here. Already gave her a tag, let her know. She’ll help smooth the way if I need it.”

“Good. Let the locals secure the scene. But keep an eye. I don’t know them.”

She walked back to Roarke, Peabody, McNab.

“We’ve done a first pass on the electronics,” McNab told her. “Nothing that hits on this. I’ve got an EDD team taking everything in. You want me on that?”

“No. We’re going to hit Blake’s residence and office. You and Peabody will take the office, and the civilian and I the residence. That way we’ve each got an e-man. Anyplace to land the damn copter near Blake’s office?”

Since she would have objected, perhaps physically, to an ass pat, Roarke patted her shoulder instead. “There’s always a place.”

“Then you’ll fly back with us, and get there from wherever that place is.”

“Copter ride. Woo!” Peabody shrugged. “You had to know it was coming.”

“Reo’s working on the warrant for the electronics. Stickier when it’s a law office, but we’ve got more than enough to get it now. Until we do, turn the place inside out, but don’t touch the electronics or files.”

“Got that.”

“We’re done here for now.” She gave the hallway a last glance. “Let’s move on.”

—

On the short flight back to Manhattan, Eve kept in touch with Reo via ’link texts, read what she could of Baxter’s and Trueheart’s and Peabody’s runs on MacKensie and Downing.

“You can see it now, knowing where to look. They all travel on the same shuttle to Elsi Adderman’s memorial—coming and going. They all made annual contributions to a women’s crisis or rape center—not the same amounts, not the same center, but every one of them put some money where their issues are. None of them are in relationships. All but Downing went to Yale, and we’ll find her connection. All but Blake either dropped out or hit some skid during college. She hit hers later, that’s how it reads to me.”

“Lipski at the crisis center recognized Su, Downing, and MacKensie,” Peabody added.

“And we now know Blake served as legal consultant there. We show Adderman’s sketch to Lipski, she’ll recognize it, too. They had their convergence there, or through the support group either before or after the memories came tumbling back.”

She turned around as Roarke touched down on a rooftop.

“This is only a block or two from the office, and another two from the apartment.”

“It’ll do.” Eve got out, reminding herself she only had to get back in once more.

She turned to Peabody and McNab as the wind buffeted around them, and Roarke bypassed security on the roof access door.

“Wait for the warrant before you hit the electronics. By the book. However you feel about it, these women are serial killers, and the last vic they can get to is already in their hands.”

“Sorry about before,” McNab began.

“Before what?” Eve said, making him smile a little as they went in and started down the stairs.

“Anything to be found, we’ll find it—and send up a signal if and when.”

After they parted ways, she hunched against the wind, rubbed her tired eyes. “I can’t figure if they’ll do him fast or draw it out. They didn’t expect to come on him like they did—that’s a bonus for them. Will they kill him quick, or savor it? Because if they do him fast, we’re not going to have time to stop them.”

“If fast was the goal, you’d have found his body with Betz.”

“Yeah, I tell myself that, then I think—in their place? I’d start calculating how much time, how much risk. If they want to get away with it, they’ve got to get it done and blow.”

“Have you considered they don’t care about getting away?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I have. And that’s a bigger problem.”

She studied the building as they approached. Nothing fancy, but solid. No doorman, but what looked like decent security from her take on it. A Thai restaurant and a discount shoe store on street level.

Eve moved to the door of the apartments, let Roarke pop the locks. Then turned on her recorder.

“Until the amended warrant comes through, it’s just straight search. Unless, of course, she’s here eating soy chips and watching screen.”

She ignored the skinny elevator, took the stairs. “She’s on four.”

“I’m aware.”

“She’s going to be the one with the second place—the torture chamber. Not here—this isn’t set up for that—but she’ll have something. We’ve got to dig deeper there. None of the others have enough scratch to buy or rent another property. I couldn’t find anything that indicated any of them inherited a place—or enough scratch to buy or rent.”

A clean, well-lighted stairwell, she thought. And a pretty quiet building. Not fully soundproofed, as she caught the mutter of voices from within an apartment on the second floor. And the backbeat of a party going on when they climbed to three.

On four, she rapped smartly on Blake’s door. Gave it a minute, rapped again, added: “Grace Carter Blake, this is the police.”

That resulted in the door across the hall opening a crack.

“She’s not home.”

Eve turned, studied the slice of dark face, the suspicious dark eye. She held up her badge.

“Do you know where she is?”

“Nope, but she hasn’t been home all day. Don’t think she was home last night, either. Maybe took a trip.”

“A trip.”

“Had some suitcases yesterday—and took some stuff out a couple days ago. Maybe three. Closed down her office is what Ms. Kolo said. She’s on two, and she said how the office was closed yesterday. Today, too. She in trouble?”

“I need to speak with her.”

“Well, she hasn’t been here much the last couple weeks.”

Eve took out the sketches. “How about any of these women?”

The dark eye narrowed, and the door opened another fraction. “Saw her with that one.” One bony finger poked through the crack to point at Su.

“Here?”

“Nope, down the market. Ginaro’s. Couple doors down.”

“When?”

“I don’t know, maybe last week. Probably last week because I was doing my marketing, and I’ve got to do it again tomorrow. They were buying a bunch of produce and such, but they didn’t bring it back here because what they did was haul it on down the street and around the corner.”

“They walked south to the corner, then . . . west?”

“That’s right. If she’s in trouble, she keeps quiet about it. Keeps to herself. Doesn’t party like that bunch downstairs. I can hear them howling and laughing right through the floor.”

“Ms. . . .”

“Jackson.”

“Ms. Jackson, I have a warrant to search Ms. Blake’s residence. We’re going to enter it now. If you want, you can verify that by contacting Dispatch at Cop Central.”

“You got the badge,” she said. “I know how to keep to myself, too.” So saying, she shut the door.

Eve used her master, bypassed the three locks—one standard, two additional police issue.

“She needed to feel safe when she was inside,” Eve murmured. “This is the police,” she repeated. “We’re coming in.”

As a matter of course, she drew her weapon, swept it as Roarke called for lights.

Modest, was Eve’s first thought. Uncluttered with a few nice pieces including a leather sofa she bet Blake bought in her corporate days.

But yeah, she’d taken a few things out.

“Took whatever art was on the wall there—you can see the variation in the tone of the paint, and the hanger’s still there. I’m putting it five to one it was one of Downing’s. Should be a table over there, right? Why have a chair sitting out there without a table? Nothing to put your drink on, and no light.”

“Easier for a woman to carry out a table than a chair.”

“Yeah, it is. No photos, good wall screen, no mess. Let’s clear it.”

They split up, with Eve taking the bedroom and bath off the living space.

They moved systematically: kitchen alcove, smaller room set up as an office—and now without computer or ’link.

“She took clothes,” Eve said as she holstered her weapon. “You can see spaces in the closet. Pretty much cleaned out the bath—no toiletries or enhancers.”

Idly, she opened the drawer in a night table. “Empty.”

Roarke repeated the process on the other side of the wide bed with its simple white duvet. “The same. And the AutoChef in the kitchen is the same as well. Not even a stray bagel.”

“She’s had time to plan, and a place to take what she wanted over time. So when she left, she took whatever she had left that suited her. It’ll be the same in her office. She’ll have cleared out the electronics. No chances taken. We’ll go through it, but it feels like she took her time, thought it through. When you do that, you don’t make mistakes.”

“If she has another place, we’ll find it.”

Eve nodded, began the search.

The warrant for the electronics came through, for all the good it did. When they left, they walked south, turned west at the corner.

“Parking lot over there. And not the kind that’s going to keep their surveillance feed for a damn week. We’ll check anyway.”

Dead ends, she thought, one after another, and connected with Peabody.

No electronics in the offices. No files.

“Go home,” Eve ordered. “Get some sleep. Have McNab set up a search on Su’s vehicle. Use variations of all their names for it, all five women. Use variations of all her family names. Set an alarm for any hits, and tag me if you get one.”

“I’m not playing mum.” Roarke put an arm around her as they walked back. “But it’s common sense to say you need some sleep.”

“What I want is coffee, and something I can twist to bust through one of these dead ends. Maybe we got a hit on the searches while we’ve been in the field.”

“I’ve checked. Nothing yet. Some take more time than others.”

She didn’t have time. Easterday didn’t have time.

—

In the copter, she closed her eyes. If she could clear her mind, she thought, maybe something would slide in, something she’d missed or overlooked.

The next thing she knew, Roarke was unhooking her harness.

“Dropped off a minute.”

“Because however much you want to keep at this, your system needs sleep. So will they,” he reminded her as he slipped an arm around her waist.

“They can take shifts. But yeah, they need sleep, food, conversation.”

It felt like walking through water, getting to the door, moving into the warm.

“They won’t kill him tonight. I should’ve gotten to that. You were right. Fast would mean they’d have done it and left him. They’ve got him where they want him, and they need to sleep, to talk, to make him pay. The killing’s the easy part. Making him pay takes time.”

He led her to the elevator rather than the stairs, and went straight to the bedroom.

“Will you take a soother to ease my mind?”

“I haven’t had coffee in hours. I’m soothed enough. I get I need sleep or I’d have to take a booster, and I don’t want a booster. I’ll go down until five hundred hours. Where’s the cat?”

“I suspect with Summerset, as we were among the missing. Do you want him?”

She did, foolishly, but not enough to send Roarke to get him.

“Just wondered.”

She undressed, still in that underwater state. How long had she been up? She couldn’t figure it—didn’t matter. She’d go down now and start again before dawn. It was all she could do.

She slid into bed, ready, willing to go under, but the minute she closed her eyes, even with Roarke’s arm around her, the recording of the gang rape began to play in her head.

“Stevenson—Billy—couldn’t live with it, so he killed himself.”

“Hush now. Put it away.”

“I keep seeing her eyes, the terror in them.” She turned over, pressed her face to his shoulder. “And that moment when the terror’s too big, so you have to go away. Go inside, go somewhere else. I know what it is when it’s too big to stand. When the pain and the fear and the knowing you can’t stop it is too much to stand. And they just . . . devoured that terror. They wanted it. They wanted it so they kept at it, and found others, so they could revisit their fucking youth. It’s like that, isn’t it? Like going to a reunion and remembering when you were the hotshot on the field or the king of the goddamn campus.”

“There’s no logic or reason to it, darling. There’s no humanity in it.”

He was so warm, so solid, his hand stroking her back as if to soothe the dark thoughts away. She could feel her insides begin to shake, sense the wild tears that solved nothing burn closer.

God. God. She didn’t want to break again.

So she lifted her face. “Show me, will you? Remind me what it’s meant to be. How it always should be.”

“You’re so tired,” he murmured.

“Be my soother.” She tipped her face up again, touched his lips with hers. “I’ll be yours.”