Creation In Death

17

“LOCKED IN,” EVE SAID WHEN THE GATES OF home closed behind her. “Eyes and ears off. Dallas out.”

No ugly mush and slush here, she thought. The snow spread, pure and pristine, over the grounds, draped heavy as wet fur on the trees so that the great house rose like the powerful focal point of a winter painting. And like a painting, now that the frigid March wind had died, it all stood utterly still.

She left the car, and even moving through winter’s irritable bite, she had the thought that maybe Peabody was right. Maybe spring was edging closer.

As she entered the house Summerset oozed into the foyer with the fat Galahad shadowing him.

“I’m to tell you that Roarke will be somewhat late. It seems he has considerable business of his own to deal with as he’s been spending so much of his time entrenched in yours.”

“His choice, Scarecrow.” She tossed her coat over the newel.

“There’s blood on your pants.”

She glanced down. She’d nearly forgotten the bite. Little thieving bastard. “It’s dry.”

“Then you won’t drip on the floor,” he said equably. “Mavis wishes you to know she wasn’t able to pinpoint the hairpiece, but she and Trina believe they may have narrowed the brand of body cream down to three choices. The information is on your desk.”

Eve climbed two steps, partly because she just wanted to get the hell upstairs, and partly because it allowed her to look down on him. “They’re gone?”

“Since midday. Leonardo returned. I arranged for their transportation home, where Trina will be staying with them until this matter is resolved.”

“Good. Fine.” She went up two more stairs, then stopped. He was a righteous pain in her ass most of the time, but she’d heard the concern in his voice. Whatever his numerous flaws-and don’t get her started-he had a big, gooey soft spot for Mavis.

“They’ve got nothing to worry about,” she said, looking straight into his eyes. “They’re clear of this.”

He only nodded, and Eve continued upstairs. Galahad trotted up after her.

She went to the bedroom, but only glanced at the big, gorgeous bed. If she went down, she knew she’d stay down, and that wasn’t the answer. Instead, she stripped, placing her weapon-and the clutch piece she’d strapped onto her ankle that afternoon-her badge, electronics on the dresser, then pulled on a tank and shorts.

She started to pick at the bandage on her calf, then ordered herself to stop. If she looked at the wound, the stupid thing would start hurting again.

What she needed was a good, strong workout where she could empty her mind and push her body awake.

Galahad obviously had other ideas on how to use his time and was already curled up dead center of the bed. “See, that’s why you’re fat,” she told him. “Eat, sleep, maybe prowl around a little, then eat and sleep some more. I oughta get Roarke to put a pet treadmill downstairs. Work some of that pudge off you.”

To show his opinion of the suggestion, Galahad yawned hugely, then closed his eyes.

“Sure, go ahead. Ignore me.” She stepped into the elevator, went down to the gym.

She did a two-mile run, using her favored shoreline setting. She had the texture of sand under her feet, the smell of the sea around her, the sight and sound of waves rolling, receding.

Between the effort and the ambiance, she finished the run in a kind of trance, then switched to weights. Sweaty, satisfied, she ended the session with some flexibility training before she hit the shower.

Okay, maybe the bite on her leg throbbed a little in protest, but it was still better than a nap, she assured herself. Though she had to admit the cat snoring on the bed looked pretty damn happy. She pulled on loose pants, a black sweatshirt she noticed with baffled surprise was cashmere, thick socks. With her file bag in tow, she went from bedroom to office.

She programmed a full pot of coffee, and drank the first cup while updating, then circling and studying her murder boards. She paused, looked into the eyes of the killer Yancy had sketched.

“Did you come home to die? Ted, Ed, Edward, Edwin? Is it all about timing and circles and death? Has it all been your own personal opera?”

She circled again, studying each victim’s face. “You chose them, used them. Cast them away. But they all represent someone. Who is that? Who was she to you? Mother, lover, sister, daughter? Did she betray you? Leave you? Reject you?”

She remembered something Pella had said, and frowned.

“Die on you? More than that? Was she taken, killed? Is this a recreation of her death?”

She studied her own face, the ID print she’d pinned up. And what did he see when he looked at it? she wondered. Not just another victim this time, but an opponent. That was new, wasn’t it? Hunting the hunter.

The grand finale. Yes, Mira could be right about that. The twist at the end of the show. Applause, applause, and curtain.

She poured out a second cup of coffee, sat to prop her feet on her desk. Maybe not just an opera fan. A performer? Frustrated performer or composer…

The performer didn’t fit profile, she decided. It would involve a lot of training, a lot of teamwork. Taking direction. No, that wasn’t his style.

A composer, could be. Most people who wrote anything worked alone a lot of the time. Taking charge of the words or the music.

“Computer, working with all current data, run probability series as follows. What is the probability the perpetrator has returned to New York, has targeted Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, in a desire to complete what he may consider his work?

“What is the probability that desire is fostered by his knowledge of his own death, or plans to self-terminate?

“What is the probability, given his use of opera houses for false addresses, he is or was involved in opera as a profession?

“What is the probability, given the timelines of the perpetrator’s sprees and subsequent rest periods, he utilizes chemicals to suppress or release his urge to kill?”

Acknowledged.

“Hold it. I’m still thinking. What is the probability the victims represent a person connected to the perpetrator who was, at some time, tortured and killed by methods he now employs? Begin run.”

Acknowledged. Working…

“You do that.” Leaning back, Eve sipped coffee, closed her eyes.

She let it filter in, chewed on it awhile, used the results to formulate other runs. Then she simply sat and let it all simmer in her head.

When Roarke stepped in, she had her boots on the desk, ankles crossed. There was a coffee mug in her hand. Her eyes were closed, her face blank. The cat padded in behind him and arrowed straight for the sleep chair, lest someone get there first. Then he sprawled out, as if exhausted by the walk from nap to nap.

Roarke started across the room, then stopped dead in front of the murder board. If someone had slammed a steel bat into his chest it would’ve been less of a jolt than seeing Eve’s face on that board, among the dead and missing.

He lost his breath. It simply left his body as he imagined life would if he lost her. Then it came back, blown through him by sheer rage. His hands clenched at his sides, hard balls of violence. He could see them punching through the face of the man who saw Eve as a victim, as some sort of grand prize in his collection. What he felt, literally, was the connection of those fists to flesh, to bone and blood, not to empty paper and ink.

And he reveled in the raw phantom pain in his knuckles.

She didn’t belong there. Would never belong there, in that hideous gallery of death.

Yet she had put herself there, he realized. Had put her image among the others. Steely-minded, he thought now. His cop, his wife, his world. Coolheadedly, cool-bloodedly aligning the facts and data, even when her own life was part of them.

He ordered himself to calm, to understand why she’d put herself there. She needed to see the whole picture, and seeing the whole picture would shut it down.

He looked away from the board and over to her. She was exactly as she’d been when he entered. Kicked back, still-and safe.

He went to her, realized some of the rage and fear was still with him when he wanted to simply pluck her up, wrap himself around her, and hold on. And on. Instead he reached down to take the mug out of her hand.

“Get your own coffee,” she muttered, and opened her eyes.

Not asleep, he realized, but in the zone. “My mistake. I thought you were sleeping on the job.”

“Thinking time, pal. Didn’t hear you come in. How’s it going?”

“Well enough. I grabbed a swim and a shower to delude myself that I was still feeling human.”

“Yeah, I went the beach run and iron pumping route. Mostly works. I’ve been doing probabilities and some data juggling. I need to write up a report, then do some runs. When-”

“I want ten minutes,” he interrupted.

“Huh?”

“Ten minutes.” He took the coffee now, set it aside, then captured her hand to pull her out of the chair. “Where it’s just you, just me.”

She cocked up her eyebrows as he drew her away from the desk. “Ten minutes isn’t anything to brag about, ace.”

“I’m not meaning sex.” He slid his arms around her, kept moving in what she now understood was a slow and easy dance. “Or not precisely that. I want ten minutes of you,” he repeated, lowering his brow to hers. “Just that, without anything or anyone.”

She drew in a breath, and smelled the shower on him. That lingering scent of soap on his skin. “It already feels good.” She touched her lips to his, angled her head. “Tastes good, too.”

He skimmed a finger down the dent in her chin, brushed his lips on hers. “So it does. And there’s this spot I know.” He used his finger to turn her head slightly, then laid his lips along her jawline, just below her ear. “Just exactly there. It’s perfect.”

“That one spot?”

“Well now, there are others, but that’s a particular favorite of mine.”

She smiled, then rested her head on his shoulder-a favorite spot of hers-and let him guide her through the easy dance. “Roarke.”

“Mmm?”

“Nothing. It just feels good to say it.”

His hand stroked up and down her back. “Eve,” he said. “You’re right again. It does. I love you. There’s nothing that feels more perfect than that.”

“Hearing it’s not bad. Knowing it’s the best.” She lifted her head, met his lips again. “I love you.”

They held on, and they ended the dance as they’d begun. With his brow resting against hers. “There, now,” he murmured. “That’s better.” He drew back, then lifted her hands to his lips.

He had a way, just that way, of making her insides curl. His lips warm on her skin, and those wild blue eyes looking over their joined hands into hers made her wish she had a hundred ten minutes just to be. As long as he could just be along with her.

“It’s pretty damn good,” she told him.

“Why don’t I get us a meal,” he suggested, “and you can tell me about those probabilities.”

“I’ll get it. It’s got to be my turn by now. You can go ahead and look them over if you want.”

She stepped back, turned. And saw, as she realized now he would have seen, her photo on the board. “Oh, Jesus. Jesus.” Appalled, she gripped a handful of her own hair and tugged. “Listen, this was stupid. I’m stupid. I only put this up there to-”

“Don’t call yourself stupid, for you’re far from it most of the time.” His tone was cool and even. “I’m more than happy to let you know when you are stupid. It’s not a problem for me.”

“Yeah, you’ve made that clear in the past. But this was just so-”

She broke off again when he held up a hand. “You put yourself there because you have to be objective, and more-you have to be able to see yourself as he does. Not only as you are, but as he sees you. If you don’t, you may be careless.”

“Okay, yeah.” She slid her hands into her pockets. “Got it in one. Are you okay with this?”

“Does it help you if I’m not okay with it? Obviously not. So I’ll deal with it. And I’ll kill him if he hurts you.”

“Hey, hey.”

“I’m not meaning the garden variety of bumps, bruises, and occasional bites,” he added with a glance at her leg, “you seem to incur on an alarmingly regular basis.”

“I hold my own,” she snapped back, oddly insulted. “And you’ve taken some hits yourself, pal.” Her eyes narrowed when he held up a finger. “Oh, I really hate when you do that.”

“Pity. If he manages to get past your guard, past me, and all the rest, and causes you real harm, I’ll do him with my own hands and in my own way. You’ll have to be okay with that, as that’s as much who and what I am and it’s who and what you are that put your own face up there.”

“He won’t get past my guard.”

“Then we won’t have a problem, will we? What’s for dinner?”

She wanted to argue, but she couldn’t find any room to maneuver. So she shrugged and stalked off toward the kitchen. “I want carbs.”

The man was exasperating. One minute he was kissing her hand in the sort of quietly romantic gesture that turned her to putty, and the next he was telling her he’d do murder in that calm, cool voice that was scarier than a blaster to the temple.

And the hell of it was, she thought as the cat bumped his head against her leg, he meant both those things absolutely. Hell, he was both of those things absolutely.

She ordered spaghetti and meatballs, leaned back on the counter, and sighed. He might be exasperating, complicated, dangerous, and difficult, but she loved every piece of the puzzle that made him.

She gave the now desperate Galahad a portion from each plate-fair was fair-before carrying them back into the office. She saw he’d correctly interpreted her carbs as spaghetti, and had opened a bottle of red. He sat, sipping, and scanning her comp screen.

“Maybe he’ll cause you real harm.” Eve set the plates on her desk. “Then I’ll kill him.”

“Works for me. Interesting questions posed here, Lieutenant.” As if it were any casual meal-and for them perhaps it was-Roarke expertly wound noodles around his fork. “Interesting percentages.”

“Probability’s high Mira hit it with the reasons he’s come back to New York, and the reason he’s targeted me. Also in the high range he’s connected to opera professionally. I’m not sure I agree.”

“Why?”

“Has to be a lot of work, right? Focus, energy, dedication. And in most cases, a lot of interaction with others. Factor it in, sure,” she said, studying the display on-screen, “but when I rolled it around during my thinking time, it doesn’t fit for me. He’s no team player. My gauge is he likes his quiet time. You could, on some level, call his killings performances, but that’s not how I see them. They’re more intimate. Just between him and the vic until he’s done.”

“A duet.”

“A duet. Hmm.” She rolled that around, too. “Yeah, okay, a duet, I can see that. One man, one woman, the dynamics there, extremely personal. A performance, okay, without an audience, too intimate to share. Because, I think, at some time he was intimately connected to the woman all the rest represent. Yeah. They were a duet.”

“And his partner was killed.”

“Derailed his train. That’s why I think he uses chemicals to rein himself in for long periods-or conversely to free himself for short ones. There, the computer and I agree. So, I look for types of medications that can suppress homicidal urges. And if he’s sick, as we’re theorizing, he may be taking meds for whatever his condition might be. Do you know Tomas Pella?”

“The name’s not familiar, no.”

“He seemed to know you.”

“I know a great many people.”

“And a great many more know you, I get that. He used to own some restaurants in Little Italy. Sold them shortly after the time all this started nine years ago.”

“I might have bought them, or one of them. I’ll check the records.”

“How about Hugh Klok, antiquities dealer. You buy a lot of old stuff.”

“Doesn’t ring.”

“I’ll do a run on him. One of the others Newkirk remembered from the prior was this guy who did taxidermy. You know, stuffed dead animals.”

“Which always begs the question: Why in the bloody hell?”

“Yeah, what’s with that?” Eve slanted her gaze over to Galahad, who’d wandered back in to sit and wash up after his meal. “I mean, would you want…you know, when he uses up his nine?”

“Good God, no. Not only, well, creepy would be the word, wouldn’t it, for us, but bloody humiliating for him.”

“Yeah, that’s what I think. I liked the idea of the taxidermy guy for the symbolism. House of death and blah. But he’s clear. Lives on Vegas II, and has for four years. Checked out. So anyway, you want the background on these other two, and the third I questioned today, Dobbins?”

“I’m sure it’s as much sparkling dinner conversation as the philosophy of taxidermy and dead cats. Go ahead.”

D owntown in their apartment, Peabody and McNab worked on dueling computers. Because he worked better with noise and she didn’t care, the air blasted with trash rock and revisionist rap. She sat, hunched over, tuning most of it out and picking her way through a complicated search.

He was up and down like a restless puppy, alternately snapping out directives and singing lyrics. She didn’t know how anyone could get any work done that way. But she also knew he not only could, he had to.

The remnants of the Chinese delivery they’d ordered were scattered around both their workstations. Peabody was already wishing she’d resisted that last egg roll.

When she finally found the data she was after, tears blurred her eyes. The hot prick of tears warned her she was overtired and her resistance was bottoming out.

“Hey, hey, She-Body!” McNab caught the look on her face. “Music off. Computer, save and pause. What’s wrong, honey?”

“It’s so sad. It just makes me so sad.”

“What does?” He’d already come behind her to pat and rub her shoulders.

It was a pretty good deal, she thought, to have somebody there to pet you when you were shaky. “I found Therese-Therese Di Vecchio Pella. Tomas Pella’s wife, one of the guys Dallas and I talked to today.”

“Yeah, from Old Newkirk’s notes, from the first go-round.”

“They got married in April. They were with the Home Force. He was a corporal, she was a medic. And see, look.” She tapped the comp screen. “In July she was dispatched to this area, on the edge of SoHo and Tribeca. An explosion, mostly civilian casualties. There was still firing in the sector, but she went in. She was wearing the red cross-the medic symbol. But she got hit by sniper fire when she tried to reach the wounded. She was only twenty. She was trying to help wounded civilians, and they killed her.”

She sat back, knuckled away the tears. “I don’t know. It just rips me, I guess. You’ve got to have hope, right, to stop long enough to get married in the middle of all that. And then, you’re gone. Trying to help people, and you’re gone. She was only twenty.”

McNab leaned down, pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Want me to take this for a while?”

“No. We talked to that old man today. Well, not that old, really, but it seemed like he was older than Moses in that bed, with the breather on. And then I read this, and think how he’d been so young, and he’d loved this girl. Then…she’s too young.”

“I know it’s tough, baby, but-”

“No, no. I mean, yeah, it’s tough, but she’s too young to be the source of the pattern.” Tears-and some still clung to her lashes-were forgotten. “She was only twenty, and the youngest vic was twenty-eight. Twenty-eight to thirty-three, that’s been his span. So Therese Pella died too young, it most likely eliminates Pella as a suspect.”

“You were seriously looking at this guy?”

“He’s the right age, the basic type, connection with the Urbans, private home-and can you spell bitter? Got a tumor-or he says-Dallas is checking that. Lost his bride-bride and groom-who was a pretty brunette. But after that it doesn’t follow.”

Peabody sat back, shaking her head at the data on screen. “Doesn’t follow pattern. She’s hit by sniper fire, not tortured. She’s eight years younger than his youngest vic when she was killed. Misses the profile. But there was something. A tingle, Dallas called it. There was a tingle when we talked to him.”

“Maybe he knows something. Maybe he’s connected.”

“Yeah, maybe. I need to get this to Dallas, then try for deeper data on Pella.”

“I’ll give you a hand.” McNab gave her shoulders another rub, then toyed with the ends of her hair. “Okay now?”

“Yeah. I guess it’s not enough sleep and too much on the brain.”

“You need to take a break.”

“Maybe I do.” She knuckled her eyes again, but this time to clear fatigue instead of tears. “If it wasn’t so cold out, I’d take a walk, get some air, some exercise.”

“I don’t know about the air,” he said as she rose. “But I can help with the exercise.” Grinning, he laid a hand on her ass, gave it a squeeze.

“Yeah?” Her eyes danced; her libido boogied. “You wanna?”

“Let me answer that question by ripping your clothes off.”

She let out a laughing squeal as they tumbled to the floor. “I thought, you know, you weren’t feeling the bloom and spark.”

“Something’s blooming just fine,” he said as he dragged off her sweater.

She tugged his pants down over his hips to check for herself. Looking down, she said, “I’ll say.”

“And as for sparkage.” He crushed his mouth to hers in a kiss hot enough she envisioned smoke coming out of her ears. “Any more, and we’d torch the place.”

She saw his eyes go dreamy when his hand cupped her breast, felt her stomach muscles tighten in response.

“Mmmm, She-body, the most female of females. Let’s see what we can light up.”

L ater, considerably later, Eve studied the data Peabody had sent to her office unit. “She’s right,” Eve mumbled. “Too young, wrong method. Dobbins hits me as just too sloppy, just too disinterested. Klok’s coming across as straight and narrow. But there’s something here. I just can’t see it yet.”

“Maybe you would if you got a decent night’s sleep.”

Instead, she walked around her boards again. “Opera. What about the opera-tickets angle?”

“I’ve got the list for season ticket holders for the Met. Nothing on the first cross-check. I’ll try others.”

“He jumps names, jumps names and ID data. Covert stuff. Smooth, under radar. Where’d he learn how? Torture methods. Covert operations have been known to employ torture methods.”

“I can tell you my sources on the matter of torturers isn’t popping anyone of this generation still living and in business, or anyone who moonlights by targeting young brunettes.”

“It was worth a shot,” Eve mused. “Covert might change that. Someone who was in military ops, or paramilitary at one time. He learned the methods somewhere, and developed the skill to manipulate his data.”

“Or has the connections or the funds to hire someone to manipulate it,” Roarke reminded her.

“Yeah, there’s that. So. Why do we torture someone?”

“For information.”

“Yeah, at least ostensibly. Why else do you torture? Kicks, sexual deviation, ritual sacrifice.”

“Experimentation. Another tried and true rationale for inflicting pain.”

She looked at him. “We eliminate the need or desire for information, and the sexual deviation. No doubt in my mind he gets personal gratification from inflicting pain, but it has to be more. Ritual’s part of it, but this isn’t some sick religious deal or cult. So, experimentation,” she repeated. “Fits. Factor in that he’s very good at it. Torture skills are specialized. He isn’t messy about it, he’s precise. Again, where did he learn?”

“And you’re back to the Urbans.”

“It keeps crossing there. Someone taught him, or he studied. Experimented before the experimentation. But not here, not in New York.”

Circling her board, she studied, considered angles. “We ran searches for others before. I did a Missing Persons run on the victim type. But what if he experimented elsewhere? If he purposefully mutilated the bodies to eliminate the correlation, or disposed of them altogether?”

“You’re going to do a global search on mutilations and missing persons involving the victim type.”

“He might not have been as careful. If we find something…he might have left something behind.” She stopped, stared at the sketch of the man she hunted. “Still honing his craft, still finding his way. We did globals, but maybe we didn’t go back far enough.”

“I’ll set it up. I can do it faster,” he said before she could argue. “Then it’ll take a good long while for any results you can actually work with. I’ll set it up, then we’re getting some sleep.”

“All right. Okay.”

T he dreams came in blurry spurts, as if she were swimming through fog that tore and re-formed, tore and re-formed. The clock ticked incessantly.

Over that endless, echoing tick, she heard the sounds of a battle raging. A firefight, she thought. Blasts and bullets and the wild shouts and calls of the men and women who fought.

She could smell the blood, the smoke, the burning flesh before she could see it. Carnage carried a sickly sweet aroma.

As vision cleared, focused, she saw the battle was on a stage, and the stage was dressed to depict the city in a strange, stylized form. Buildings, all black and silver, were tipped and tilted above hard white streets that jagged into impossible angles or inexplicable dead ends.

And the players on stage were dressed in bright, elaborate costumes that flowed through bloody pools and swirled in dirty smoke as they murdered each other.

She looked down on it all with interest, from her gilded box seat. Below, in a pit where bodies lay twisted, she could see the orchestra madly playing their instruments. Their fingers ran with blood from razor-sharp strings.

On stage, the shouts and calls were songs, she realized, fierce, violent. Vicious.

War could never be otherwise.

“The third act is nearly over.”

She turned, looked into the face of the killer as he took a huge stopwatch out of the pocket of his formal black.

“I don’t understand. It’s all death. Who writes these things?”

“Death, yes. Passion and strength and life. Everything leads to death, doesn’t it? Who would know that better than you?”

“Murder’s different.”

“Oh, yes, it’s artful and it’s deliberate. It takes it out of the hands of fate and puts the power into the one who creates death. Who makes a gift of it.”

“What gift? How is murder a gift?”

“This…” He gestured to the stage as a woman, brown hair bloody, face and body battered, was borne in on a stretcher. “This is about immortality.”

“Immortality’s for the dead. Who was she when she was alive?”

He only smiled. “Time’s up.” He clicked the stopwatch, and the stage went black.

Eve came rearing up in bed, sucking for air. Caught between the dream and reality, she closed her hands over her ears to muffle the ticking. “Why won’t it stop?”

“Eve. Eve. It’s your ’link.” Roarke curled his fingers over her wrists, gently tugged her hands down. “It’s your ’link.”

“Jesus. Wait.” She shook her head, pulled herself into the now. “Block video,” she ordered, then answered. “Dallas.”

Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. Report to Union Square Park off Park Avenue. Body of unidentified female, evidence of torture.

Eve turned her head, met Roarke’s eyes. “Acknowledged. Notify Peabody, Detective Delia, request Medical Examiner Morris. As per procedure on this matter, relay notification to Commander Whitney and Dr. Mira. I’m on my way. Dallas out.”

“I’ll be going with you. I know,” Roarke said as he rose, “you don’t make prime bait with me along, but that’ll be Gia Rossi left on the ground. And I’m going with you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Ah, Eve.” His tone changed, softened. “So am I.”