Ceremony In Death

CHAPTER EIGHT

The steady beep of an alarm had Eve rolling over and cursing. "It can't be time to get up. We just went to bed."

"It's not. That's security."

"What?" Now she sat up quickly. "Our security?"

Roarke was already out of bed, already pulling on slacks, and answered with a grunt. Instinctively Eve reached for her weapon first, clothes second. "Someone's trying to break in?"

"Apparently someone has." His voice was very calm. As the lights were still off, she could see only his silhouette in the scattered light of the moon through the sky window. And joining that silhouette was the unmistakable outline of a gun in his hand.

"Where the hell did you get that? I thought they were all locked up. Goddamn it, Roarke, that's illegal. Put it away."

Coolly, he plugged a round in the chamber of the antique and banned-for-use Glock nine millimeter. "No."

"Damn it, damn it." She snatched up her communicator, shoved it in the back pocket of her jeans out of habit. "You can't use that thing. I'll check it out – that's my job. You call Dispatch, report a possible intruder."

"No," he said again and started for the door. She was on him in two steps.

"If someone's on the grounds or in the house, and if you shoot him with that, I'm going to have to arrest you."

"Fine."

"Roarke." She grabbed at him as he reached for the door. "There's procedure for something like this, and reasons for that procedure. Call it in."

His home, he thought. Their home. His woman, and the fact that she was a cop didn't mean a damn at the moment. "And won't you feel foolish, Lieutenant, if it's a mechanical malfunction?"

"Nothing of yours ever malfunctions," she muttered and made him smile despite the circumstances.

"Why, thank you." He opened the door, and there was Summerset.

"It appears someone is on the grounds."

"Where's the breech?"

"Section fifteen, southwest quadrant."

"Run a full video scan, employ full house security when we're out. Eve and I will check the grounds." Absently, he ran a hand down her back. "A good thing I live with a cop."

She looked down at the gun in his hand. Attempting to disarm him would likely prove unsuccessful. And it would take too much time. "We're going to talk about this," she said between her teeth. "I mean it."

"Of course you do."

They went side by side down the stairs, through the now silent house. "They haven't gotten in," he said as he paused by a door leading onto a wide patio. "The alarm for a breech of the house is different. But they're over the wall."

"Which means they could be anywhere."

The moon was waxing toward full, but the clouds were thick and shadowed its light. Eve scanned the dark, the sheltering trees, the huge ornamental bushes. All provided excellent cover for observation. Or ambush. She heard nothing but the air teasing leaves going brittle with age.

"We'll have to separate. For Christ's sake don't use that weapon unless your life's threatened. Most B and E men aren't armed."

And most B and E men, they both knew, didn't attempt to ply their trade on a man like Roarke. "Be careful," he said quietly and slipped like smoke into the shadows.

He was good, Eve assured herself. She could trust him to handle himself and the situation. Using the dim and shifting moonlight as a guide, she headed west, then began to circle.

The quiet was almost eerie. She could barely hear her own footsteps on the thick grass. Behind her, the house stood in darkness, a formidable structure of old stone and glass, guarded, she thought, by a skinny snob of a butler.

Her lips curled. She'd love to see an unsuspecting burglar come up against Summerset.

When she reached the wall, she scanned for any breech. It was eight feet high, three feet thick, and wired to deliver a discouraging electric shock to anything over twenty pounds. Security cameras and lights were set every twelve feet. She whispered out an oath when she noted the narrow beams were blinking red rather than green.

Disengaged. Son of a bitch. Weapon drawn and ready, she circled to the south.

Roarke did his own circuit in silence, using the trees. He'd bought this property eight years before, had had it remodeled and rehabbed to his specifications. He'd supervised the design and implementation of the security system personally. It was in a very real sense his first home, the place he'd chosen to settle after too many years of wandering. Beneath the icy control, as he slipped from shadow to shadow, was a bubbling, grinding fury that his home had been invaded.

The night was cool, clear, quiet as a tomb. He wondered if he was up against a very ballsy thief. It could be as simple as that. Or it could be something, someone much more dangerous. A pro hired by a business competitor. An enemy – and he hadn't fought his way to where he was without making them. Particularly since many of his interests had been on the dark side of the law.

Or the target could be Eve. She, too, had made enemies. Dangerous enemies. He glanced over his shoulder, hesitated. Then told himself not to second-guess his wife. He knew of no one better equipped to take care of herself.

But it was that hesitation, that instinctive need to protect that turned his luck. As he paused in the shadows, he caught the faint sound of movement. Roarke took a firmer grip on the gun, stepped back, stepped to the side. And waited.

The figure was moving slowly, in a crouch. As the distance between them melted away, Roarke could hear the puff of nervous breathing. Though he couldn't make out features, he judged male, perhaps five-ten, and on the lean side. He could see no weapon, and thinking of the difficulty Eve might have explaining why her husband had held off an intruder with a banned handgun, tucked the Glock into the back of his slacks.

He braced, looking forward to a little hand-to-hand, then lunged when the figure slunk by. Roarke had an arm around a throat, a fist clenched and raised in anticipation of quiet, perhaps petty revenge, when he realized it wasn't a man, but a boy.

"Hey, you son of a bitch, let go. I'll kill you."

A very rude and very frightened boy, Roarke decided. The struggle was short and all one-sided. It took seconds only for Roarke to pin the boy against the trunk of a tree. "How the hell did you get inside?" Roarke demanded.

The kid's breath was coming in whistles, and his face was pale as a ghost. Roarke could hear the audible click in his throat as he swallowed. "You're Roarke." He stopped struggling and tried to smirk. "You've got pretty good security."

"I like to think so." Not a thief, Roarke decided, but ballsy, certainly. "How did you get past it?"

"I – " He broke off, eyes going huge as they shot over Roarke's shoulder. "Behind you!"

With a smoothness the boy would later appreciate, Roarke pivoted, keeping his grip unbreakable. "We have our intruder, Lieutenant."

"So I see." She lowered her weapon, ordered her heart to slow to normal. "Jesus, Roarke, it's just a kid. It's – " She stopped, narrowed her eyes. "I know this kid."

"Then perhaps you'd introduce us."

"It's Jamie, right? Jamie Lingstrom. Alice's brother."

"Good eye, Lieutenant. Now, you want to tell him to stop choking me?"

"I don't think so." She holstered her weapon, stepped up. "What the hell are you doing, breaking into private property in the middle of the night? You're a cop's grandson, for Christ's sake. You want to end up in juvie?"

"I'm not your big problem right now, Lieutenant Dallas." He made a valiant attempt to sound tough, but his voice wavered. "You've got a dead body outside the wall. Really dead," he added and began to shake.

"Did you kill someone, Jamie?" Roarke asked mildly.

"No, man. No way. He was there when I came by." Terrified his stomach would revolt and humiliate him, Jamie swallowed hard again. "I'll show you."

If it was a trick, Eve considered it a fine one. She couldn't take a chance. "All right. Let's go. And if you try to run, pal, I'll zap you."

"Wouldn't make any sense to run, would it, when I went to all this trouble to get in? This way." His legs were rubber, and he sincerely hoped neither of them noticed that his knees kept knocking together.

"I'd like to know how you got in," Roarke said as they headed for the main gate. "How you bypassed security."

"I fool around with electronics. A hobby. You've got a really high-grade system. The best."

"So I thought."

"I guess I didn't disengage all the alarms." Jamie turned his head, tried another weak smile. "You knew I was here."

"You got in," Roarke repeated. "How?"

"This." Jamie pulled a small palm-sized unit out of his pocket. "It's a jammer I've been working on for a couple of years. It'll read most systems," he began, frowning when Roarke plucked it out of his hand. "When you engage this," he continued, leaning over to point, "it'll scan the chips, run a cloning program. Then it's just a matter of backing out the program step by step. Takes some time, but it's pretty efficient."

Roarke stared at the mechanism. It was no bigger than one of the E-games one of his companies manufactured. Indeed, the casing looked distressingly familiar. "You adapted a game unit into a jammer. Yourself. One that read and cloned and breached my security."

"Well, most of it." Jamie's eyes clouded in annoyance. "I must have missed something, one of the backups maybe. Your system must be ultra mag. I'd like to see it."

"Not in this lifetime," Roarke muttered and shoved the unit into his pocket.

When they reached the gates, he disengaged and opened them manually, sliding a narrow look at Jamie as the boy craned over his shoulder to see.

"Way impressive," Jamie commented. "I didn't figure I could get through this way. That's why I had to come over the wall. Needed a ladder."

Roarke simply closed his eyes. "A ladder," he said to no one in particular. "He climbed up a ladder. Lovely. And the cameras?"

"Oh, I blanked them from across the street. The unit's got a range of ten yards."

"Lieutenant." Roarke snagged Jamie by the collar. "I want him punished."

"Later. Now, where's this body you're supposed to have seen?"

The cocky smile fell away from his face. "To the left," he told her, paling again.

"Keep a hold of him, Roarke. Stay here."

"I've got him," Roarke replied, but he'd be damned if he'd stay back. He tugged Jamie through the gate, met Eve's annoyed stare blandly. "Our home, our problem."

She said something nasty under her breath and turned left. She didn't have to go far. It wasn't hidden, it wasn't subtle.

The body was naked and strapped to a wooden form in the shape of a star. No, she realized. A pentagram. Inverted so that the head with its dead doll eyes and gaping throat hung over the bloody sidewalk. The arms were outstretched, the legs parted in a wide vee. The center of his chest was a mass of black blood and gore, the hole hacked out of it bigger than a man's fist.

She doubted the ME would find a heart inside when he opened the body for autopsy.

She heard the choked sound behind her and turned to see Roarke shift his grip on Jamie and step over to shield the boy from the view.

"Lobar," was all he said.

"Yeah." She stepped closer. Whoever had taken his heart had also plunged a knife through a sheet of paper and through his groin.

DEVIL WORSHIPPER BABY KILLER BURN IN HELL

"Take the boy inside, will you, Roarke?" She glanced at the collapsible ladder tilted against the wall. "And get rid of that. Pass the kid off to Summerset for now. I can't leave the scene." She turned, her face blank and impassive. Her cop face. "Will you bring me my field kit?''

"Yes. Come on, Jamie."

"I know who he is." Tears swam in Jamie's eyes and were viciously blinked away. "He's one of the bastards who killed my sister. I hope he rots."

Because his voice had broken at the end, Roarke slipped an arm around his shoulder. "He will. Come inside. Let the Lieutenant do her job." Roarke sent Eve one last look before hefting the ladder and leading Jamie back through the gates.

With her gaze still fixed on the body, Eve pulled out her communicator. "Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve."

"Dispatch, acknowledged."

"Reporting homicide, requesting assistance." She gave the necessary data, then replaced her communicator. Turning, she stared across the wide, quiet street into the dark, shifting shadows of the great park. In the east the sky was stripping off the first layers of night, and the stars, such as they were, were blinking out.

Murder had come into her life before and would again. But someone would pay for bringing it into her home.

She turned as Roarke approached not only with her field kit but her battered leather jacket. "It gets chilly this close to dawn," he said and handed it to her.

"Thanks. Jamie all right?"

"He and Summerset are eyeing each other with mutual dislike and distrust."

"I knew I liked that kid. You can go inside and referee," she told him as she took out Seal-It and clear-coated her hands, her boots. "I've called it in."

"I'm staying."

Since she'd already figured he would, she didn't argue. "Then make yourself useful and record the scene." She took her recorder out of the kit, passed it to him, then covered his hand with hers. "I'm sorry."

"You're too smart to be sorry for something that isn't your responsibility. He wasn't killed here, was he?"

"No." Confident that Roarke could function as her aide until Peabody arrived, Eve approached the body again. "Not nearly enough blood. He'd have gushed from the jugular. That was likely the cause of death. We'll find the other wounds are postmortem. In any case, there'd be splatters all over hell and back. We'd be wading in it. Record on?"

"Yes."

"Victim identified as Robert Mathias, aka Lobar. White male, eighteen years of age. Preliminary visual exam indicates death was caused by a sharp-bladed instrument that severed the throat." Shutting off everything but training, she took out a pencil light, examined the chest wound. "Additional insults include a wound in the chest, probably inflicted by the same weapon. The victim's heart has been removed. The organ is not on scene. I need close-ups here," she said to Roarke.

She took instruments out of her kit to calibrate. "The throat wound is six and a quarter inches across, approximately two inches deep." Quickly, competently, she measured and recorded the other wounds. "A knife, black-handled with carving, was left in the body in the groin area to anchor what appears to be a computer-generated note on treated paper."

She heard the shrill sound of sirens coming closer. "Uniforms," she told Roarke. "They'll secure the scene. Not much traffic out this way at this time of night."

"Fortunately."

"The body has been strapped by leather strips to a wooden structure, pentagram shape. The small amount of blood and blood patterns indicate victim was killed and mutilated elsewhere and transported to scene. Perimeter security to be scanned. Possibility of breech onto private property beyond security gate and wall. Body discovered at approximately four-thirty a.m. by Lieutenant Eve Dallas and Roarke, residents."

She turned and walked over as the first black-and-white screeched up to the curb. "I want a privacy screen employed. Now. Block off the street in a twenty-foot perimeter. I don't want gawkers here. I don't want the fucking media. Got it?"

"Sir." The two uniforms hustled out of the car and to the trunk. They wrestled out the privacy screen.

"I'm going to be awhile," she told Roarke. Taking the recorder from him, she passed it to another uniform. "You should go inside, keep an eye on the kid." Wearily, she watched the cruiser cops erect the screen. "He should call his mother or something. But I don't want him to leave until I talk to him again."

"I'll take care of it. I'll cancel my appointments for the day. I'll be available."

"That would be best." She started to touch him, wanted to badly, then realized her sealed hands were smeared with blood and dropped them again. "It would help if you kept him occupied, kept his mind off of it for now. Goddamn it, Roarke, this bites."

"A ritual killing," he murmured, and understanding, laid a hand on her cheek. "But which side did it?"

"I guess I'm going to be spending a lot of time interviewing witches." She huffed out a breath, then frowned when she saw Peabody striding double-time down the street. "Where the hell's your vehicle, Officer?"

Her uniform might have been pressed to within an inch of its life, but her face was flushed and her breathing short. "I don't have a vehicle, Lieutenant. I use city transpo. The closest public stop is four blocks from here." She slanted a look at Roarke as though it was his personal responsibility. "Rich people don't use public transportation."

"Well, requisition a damn vehicle," Eve ordered. "We'll be in as soon as we're done out here," she told Roarke, then turned away. "Body's behind the screen. Get the recorder from the uniform, I don't trust his eye, and his hands are shaking. I want measurements on the blood pool and stills of the wounds, all angles. Seal up. I don't think the sweepers are going to find much here, but I don't want anything compromised. I'll do the prelim for time of death. The ME's on the way."

Roarke watched her march off, flip through the screen, and figured she was finished with him.

– =O=-***-=O=-

Inside the house, he found Jamie, guarded by a visibly irritated Summerset. "You will not be allowed free range of this house," Summerset snapped out. "You will touch nothing. If you break one piece of crockery, soil one centimeter of fabric, I will resort to violence."

Jamie continued to pace, continued to paw the statuary in the small – and as Summerset thought of it lesser – parlor. "Well, now I'm shaking. You really put the fear of God in me, old man."

"Your manners continue to disintegrate," Roarke commented as he stepped into the room. "Someone should have taught you to show some respect for your elders."

"Yeah, well, someone should have taught your guard dog to be polite to guests."

"Guests don't tamper with security systems, climb over walls, and skulk around private property. You are not a guest."

Jamie deflated. It was tough to stand up under those cool blue eyes. "I wanted to see the Lieutenant. I didn't want anyone to know."

"Next time, try using the 'link," Roarke suggested. "It's all right, Summerset, I'll deal with this."

"As you wish." Summerset shot Jamie one last withering look, then stalked, stiff-backed, out of the room.

"Where'd you find Count Boredom?" Jamie asked and slumped into a chair. "The morgue?"

Roarke sat on the arm of a sofa, took out a cigarette. "Summerset can eat runts like you for breakfast," he said mildly and flicked on his lighter. "I've seen him."

"Right." Still Jamie sent a cautious look toward the doorway. Nothing in this house was what he'd expected, so he wouldn't underestimate the butler. "Speaking of breakfast, you got anything to eat around here? It's been like hours since I had anything."

Roarke blew out smoke. "You want me to feed you now?"

"Well, you know. We got to hang anyway. Might as well eat."

Cheeky little bastard, Roarke thought, not without admiration. Only youth, he supposed, could have an appetite after seeing what was outside the wall. "And what did you have in mind? Crepes, an omelette, perhaps a few bowls of sugar-soaked cereal?"

"I was thinking more of pizza, maybe a burger." He fixed on a winning smile. "My mom's a real nutrition fanatic. We only get health shit at home."

"It's five in the morning, and you want pizza?"

"Pizza goes down smooth anytime."

"You may be right." And he thought he could use something, himself, after all. "Let's go then."

"It's like a museum in here," Jamie said as he followed Roarke into the hall with its luminous paintings and gleaming antiques. "I mean, in a good way. You must be rolling in it."

"I must be."

"People say you just touch something and the credits fly out."

"Do they?"

"Yeah, and you didn't make all of it exactly on the upside, you know? But being hooked up with a cop like Dallas, you'd have to be straight."

"One would think," Roarke murmured and swung through a door into a huge kitchen.

"Wow. Ultimate. You got people who, like, cook things – by hand and stuff?"

"It's been known to happen." Roarke watched the boy prowl, toy with controls on the compu-range, the subzero refrigerator. "It's not going to happen this morning." He walked to a large AutoChef. "What is it then, pizza or burger?''

Jamie grinned. "Both? I could probably drink a gallon of Pepsi."

"We'll start with a tube." Roarke programmed the AutoChef, then went to the refrigerator himself. "Sit down, Jamie."

"Frigid." But he kept his eye on Roarke as he slid onto the padded bench of a breakfast nook.

After a short debate, Roarke punched in for two tubes, slipped them out of the door slot when they slid down. "You'll want to contact your mother," he said. "You can use the 'link there."

"No." Jamie put his hands under the table, rubbed them on his jeans. "She's zoned. She can't handle it. Alice. She's tranqued out. We – the viewing's tonight."

"I see." And because he did, Roarke let it drop. He handed the drink to Jamie, then took a large bubbling pizza from the AutoChef. He set it, then the burger that followed, on the table.

"Rocking A." With the appetite of the young, Jamie grabbed the burger and bit in. "Man! Man, it's meat," he said with his mouth full. "It's meat."

It took a master not to let his mouth twitch. "You'd prefer soy?" Roarke asked politely. "Veggie?"

"No way." Jamie wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, grinned. "Really decent. Thanks."

Roarke got two plates and a slicer. He went to work on the pizza. "I suppose breaking and entering stimulates the appetite."

"I'm always hungry." Without shame, Jamie transferred the first slice to his plate. "Mom says it's growing pains, but I just like to eat. She's real worried about junk intake, so I've got to sneak real food in. You know how moms are."

"No, actually, I don't. I'll take your word." And because he'd never been quite as young as Jamie. or quite as innocent, he took a slice for himself and prepared to enjoy watching the boy devour the rest.

"Parents are okay." Jamie shrugged, alternating between the pizza and the burger. "I don't see my father – not in a few years. He's got a life over in Europe, the Morningside Community outside London."

"Structured, programmed residential," Roarke put in. "Very tidy."

"Yeah, and very boring. Even the grass is programmed. He digs on it, though, him and his foxy new wife – his third already." He jerked a shoulder, sucked on the Pepsi. "He isn't much on the father game. It bothered Alice a lot. Me, I can take it or leave it."

No, Roarke thought, he didn't think so. Wounds were there. Odd what deep and permanent injury a parent could cause a child. "Your mother hasn't married again?"

"Nah. She's not into it. She was bummed pretty bad when he took off. I was six. I'm sixteen now, and she still thinks I'm a kid. I had to nag for weeks to get her to let me go for my vehicle license. She's okay really. She's just…" He trailed off, stared down at his plate as if he wondered how food had gotten there. "She doesn't deserve this. She does the best she can. She doesn't deserve this. She loved Grandpa. They were really tight. And now Alice. Alice was really weird, but she…"

"She was your sister," Roarke said quietly. "You loved her."

"It shouldn't have happened to her." He lifted his gaze slowly, met Roarke's with a kind of terrifying fury. "When I find them, the one who hurt her, I'm going to kill them."

"You want to be careful what you say, Jamie." Eve stepped in. Her eyes were shadowed, her face pale with fatigue. Though she'd been careful, there were a few smears of blood on her jeans. "And you want to put away any thoughts of revenge and leave investigation to the cops."

"They killed my sister."

"It hasn't been determined that your sister was a victim of homicide." Eve headed to the AutoChef, programmed coffee. "And you're in enough trouble," she added before he could speak, "without hassling me."

"Be smart," Roarke said when Jamie opened his mouth again. "Be quiet."

Peabody stood in the humming silence. She studied the boy, felt a little tug. She had a brother his age. With this in mind, she slapped on a smile. "Pizza for breakfast," she said with determined cheer. "Got more?''

"Help yourself," Roarke invited and patted the bench beside him in invitation. "Jamie, this is Officer Peabody."

"My grandfather knew you." Jamie studied her with cautious, appraising eyes.

"Did he?" Peabody picked up a slice. "I don't think I ever met him. I knew about him, though. Everybody at Central was sorry when he died."

"He knew about you. He told me Dallas was molding you."

"Peabody's a cop," Eve broke in, "not a lump of clay." Annoyed, she picked up the last slice of pizza, bit in. "This is cold."

"It's great cold." Peabody winked at Jamie. "Nothing better than cold pizza for breakfast."

"Eat while you can." Respecting her own advice, Eve took another bite. "It's going to be a long day." She pinned Jamie with a glance. "Starting now. Until you have a guardian or representative present, I can't record your statement or officially question you. Do you understand?"

"I'm not an idiot. And I'm not a child. I can – "

"You can be quiet," Eve interrupted. "With or without representation, I can toss you into juvenile lockup for trespassing. If Roarke chooses to press charges – ''

"Eve, really – "

"You be quiet, too." She rounded on him, all frustration and fatigue. "This isn't a game, it's murder. And the media is already outside, sniffing blood. You're not going to be able to step outside your own house without having them jump you."

"Do you think that disturbs me?"

"It disturbs me. It damn well disturbs the hell out of me. My job doesn't come here. It doesn't come here." She stopped herself, turned away.

This, she realized abruptly, was what ate at her insides, chewed at her control. There was blood on her home, and she had brought it there.

Steadier, she turned back. "That's all beside the point for now. You have some explaining to do," she said to Jamie. "Do you want to do it here or down at Central after I contact your mother?"

He didn't speak for a moment, just watched her as if measuring. It was, she realized, the same look that had been in his eyes when she had told him his sister was dead. It was very adult, very controlled.

"I know who the dead guy is. His name is Lobar, and he's one of the bastards who killed my sister. I saw him."