Creation In Death

21

SHE WAS BUILDING A GOOD CASE, LINING UP her connections, her motives, her pathology. She had no doubt that when they found and arrested Robert Lowell, they’d be handing the prosecuting attorney a slam dunk.

But that didn’t help Ariel Greenfeld.

“Get me something,” she said to Roarke as they stepped into the elevator at Central’s garage.

“Do you know what the records are like from that era?” he snapped. “What there are of them? I’m putting together a puzzle where half the major pieces are missing or scattered about. And I need better equipment than my bloody PPC.”

“Okay, all right.” She pressed her fingers to the center of her forehead. The damn energy pill was wearing off, and she could feel the system crash waiting to happen. “Let me think.”

“I don’t know how you can at this stage. You’re going to fall flat on your face, Eve, if you don’t take a bit of downtime.”

“Ariel Greenfeld doesn’t have any downtime.” She swept out of the elevator. “We need the locations of all Lowell’s businesses and documented properties-worldwide. Anything current’s going to pop straight out, and we work from there. Talk to the director, put the strong arm on these damn Brit lawyers, the financial institutions where he has his numbered accounts.”

“I can tell you it would take weeks-at the very best-to pry anything out of the financials. Their lawyers will have lawyers, who will run you around. And if he was careful, and I imagine he was, in setting these up, those accounts would simply feed into others, and so on. I could cut through that, at home, but it would take considerable time.”

Would it help find Ariel? Eve asked herself. “I can’t spare you for that. We’ll push on the properties and the lawyers first. Got to have a bank box, too. Or boxes. Uses cash, so why wouldn’t he store cash in a bank box at the different locations where he has homes, or plans to work? Downtown bank’s best bet.”

She walked into the war room, and up to Callendar. “Search for downtown banks. I want you to send every one of them every sketch and description we have on Robert Lowell, along with the various known aliases. And I want a search for any and all relations on Lowell, living or dead. Names, last known locations, property deeded in their name.

“Roarke, if you need any help on the property search, pull in any of the EDD team. Heads up,” she said, boosting her voice over the chatter and clacking. “When Captain Feeney isn’t in the house, and I’m not in the war room, the civilian’s in charge of electronics. Questions on that? Go to him.”

“Lieutenant’s pet,” Callendar said just loud enough for Roarke to hear, and in a mock sulk that made him smile a little.

“I’ll wager ten I hit on the property before you hit on the banks.”

“You’re on, Prime Buns.”

Eve left them for her office to update her notes, to take another pass through them. While she worked she tried Feeney.

“Anything for me?”

“There’s nothing on the records here. The business passed to our guy when his old man died. These records list the same bogus London address. Director said there were some paper records, some disc files in storage, but Lowell took them years ago. Sorry, kid.”

“Tidy son of a bitch. Anyone still working there who was employed when Lowell was still in residence?”

“No, checked that. I’m bringing in what records there are. We’ll pick through them. On my way in now.”

“I’ll see you in the war room.”

She pushed up, wanting to be on her feet. Her system was bottoming out, she could feel it, and if she didn’t keep moving, she’d drop.

He was in New York, she thought. And wherever he lived and worked, wherever he was holding Ariel would be in New York, in a building that survived, or at least partially survived, the Urbans. It would have a connection to him, to her, to that time.

Nothing else would do for him, she was sure of it.

Death was his business. Body preparation or disposal, echoes of the Urban Wars, profit and science. He lived by death.

By killing he re-created the death of one woman, over and over again, while feeding his own need to control, to give pain. To study pain and death.

The torture devices were, in the opinions of the ME and the lab, tools and implements used during the Urbans with a few modern devices worked in. Same with the drugs found in the victims. He had to keep the connection.

Opera. The drama, the scope, the tragedy, and again the connection to Edwina Spring. The disguises were really costumes, the aliases simply roles to play.

Weren’t the victims the same? Just another element of his role-playing.

How much longer before he gave Eve her cue to come onstage? And why the hell was she waiting?

She got herself some coffee, took out another energy pill. Technically she wasn’t supposed to take a second one within the same twenty-four-hour period. But if she was going to push for her entrance in the play, she wasn’t going out so blurry she couldn’t remember her lines.

She popped it, and with the coffee in hand went back to the war room.

She opened communications so anyone in the field could hear and participate. “Updates. EDD first. Feeney?”

“We’re about to run searches through the discs taken from Lowell’s Funeral Home. We’ll go through the paper records as well, looking for any pertinent data on Robert Lowell and/or Edwina Spring. Secondary unit has a list of prior open homicides and Missings that may be his earlier work. We’re requesting case files, moving from the highest probability down.”

“Anything sing for you?”

“Two. Both in Italy, one fifteen years back, one twelve. Both missing females that bull’s-eye our vic profile. One from Florence, one from Milan.”

“Roarke, does Lowell have business operations in Italy, either of those cities?”

“Milan, established just prior to Lowell’s inheriting the business.”

“I want every detail of the Milan case first. Baxter, I want you to reach out to the investigating officer or his superior. Get a translator if necessary. Roarke, put the other Lowell operation locations on screen.

“We hit these,” she said as he complied. “Blanket warrant-Feeney, make that happen. Three-man teams at each location, communication open throughout. Hit private and/or employee-only areas first. Get statements, get data, get every fucking thing.”

“I have two prior business locations,” Roarke put in. “Buildings that were sold. One was severely damaged during the war, torn down and rebuilt as an apartment building. The second was intact, but sold by this Lowell’s father twenty-three years ago. He bought it shortly after the Urbans.”

“I’ll take those two. Fire up my eyes and ears, Feeney. Peabody and two uniforms can shadow me. Ten-block minimum. I move out in five.”

Roarke got up to follow her out, and after scratching his head, Feeney went after both.

“Three-man teams,” Roarke commented. “Except for you.”

“You know why.”

“I don’t have to like it. You can spare a uniform. I’ll shadow with Peabody.”

She shook her head. “I need you here. Out there, you’re just weight. In here, you may make the difference.”

“That’s a hell of a thing.”

“Can’t be helped.” She swung into her office for her coat, spotted Feeney when she started to pull it on.

“Let’s check you out, kid.”

“Oh. Right.” She depressed and turned the button on her jacket to activate. “System’s a go?”

He glanced at his hand monitor. “That’s affirmative.” Then he looked up at her. “We’re closing in. You get that, too?”

“Yeah. Another twenty-four, maybe thirty-six, we’ll pin him. I don’t want it to go that long, Feeney. He probably started on her this morning, bright and fucking early this morning. Been at her now ten or twelve hours, I’d say. Maybe she can make another twenty-four or thirty-six. Maybe she can’t. I can’t make him go for me, but I’m going to be out there the next few hours, giving him the chance to try.”

Feeney’s glance drifted to Roarke, then back to her. “Not enough for him to try.”

“No. I’ve got to get inside, got to get him to take me where she is. I know how to handle it. I know how to handle it,” she repeated, looking directly at Roarke. “If he gives me the chance. If he doesn’t, I need the two of you here, digging out the next piece that brings us to him. If we had this much nine years ago, if we believed he might move on me then, Feeney, what would you have done?”

He puffed out his cheeks. “I’d’ve sent you out.”

“Then I’d better get going.”

Roarke watched her go, and when he was back at his station, split his work screen with her camera. He could see what she saw, hear through his ear bud what she heard.

That would have to be enough.

She took the second location he’d given her first. Private home, higher probability. While his searches ran he focused all his attention on the building she approached. Urban and attractive, he decided, tucked in among other urban and attractive buildings.

When the door was opened by a woman with a dog yapping at her feet and a toddler on her hip, he relaxed. The probability had just dipped very low.

Still he kept her on split screen as she went inside, sidestepping the dog the woman shooed away.

He let bits of the conversation wind through his head as he put the bulk of his concentration on the work. Everything the woman said to Eve confirmed the official data on the property. A family home owned by a junior exec and his wife, professional mother, who lived there with their two children and a very irritable terrier.

“Nothing here,” Eve said as she moved back outside toward her vehicle. “Heading to second location. No tails spotted.”

S he was cold. She was so awfully cold. It was probably shock, Ariel told herself. In vids when somebody went into shock, they put a blanket over them. Didn’t they?

Parts of her had gone numb, and she didn’t know if that was a blessing or if it meant those pieces of her had died. She knew she’d lost consciousness the second-or had it been the third?-time he’d hurt her.

But then he’d done something, something that had shot her back into the nightmare. Something that had jolted her like a hot blue electric current.

Sooner or later, he wouldn’t be able to bring her back. A part of her wanted to pray for that, so she buried that part, that weeping, yielding part.

Someone would come. She would stay alive, then someone would come.

When he came back, she wanted to scream. She wanted to scream and scream until the force of the sound shattered all those glass walls. Until it shattered him. She could imagine it, how that kind and quiet face of his would shatter into pieces like the walls of glass.

“Could I…May I please have some water?”

“I’m sorry, but that’s not allowed. You’re getting fluids through the IV.”

“But my throat’s so dry, and I was hoping we could talk some more.”

“Were you?” He wandered over to his tray. She wouldn’t let herself look, didn’t dare look at what he picked up this time.

“Yes. About music. What’s the music that’s playing now?”

“Ah, that would be Verdi. La Traviata.”

He closed his eyes a moment, and his hands began to move like a conductor’s. “Brilliant, isn’t it? Stirring and passionate.”

“Did-did your mother sing this one?”

“Yes, of course. It was a favorite of hers.”

“It must have been so hard for you when she died. I had a friend whose mother self-terminated. It was terrible for her. It’s…it’s hard to understand how anyone could be so sad or so lost that it seems to them death is the answer.”

“But of course, it is, just that. It’s the answer for all of us in the end.” He stepped closer. “It’s what we all ask for when our time comes. She did. You will.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“You will,” he said again. “Just as she did. But don’t worry, I’ll give you that answer, and that gift, just as I did for her.”

O ther chatter came and went as teams reported in from their destinations. Roarke drank coffee and painstakingly scraped layers off old records, pried out ragged bits of data, and tried to sew them together into answers.

The second building had a basement. Though Eve knew the chances were small, she did a walk-through.

Not his kind of place, she decided. Too modern, too ugly, too crowded, and with too much security. A guy couldn’t comfortably drag a terrified or unconscious woman inside without annoying the neighbors.

Still she questioned a few, showed Lowell’s picture.

What if she was off, she wondered, about him working out of the city? Maybe he’d bought a damn house in the suburbs, and used Manhattan for hunting and dumping. How much time would she have wasted looking for the right building among thousands if he was killing women in some ranch in White Plains or Newark?

She got back in the car. She’d go back to the bakery, back to Greenfeld’s apartment. Maybe she’d missed something. Maybe they all had. She’d do another sweep of each victim’s home and place of employment.

Swinging out into traffic, she relayed her intentions back to base. “It’ll keep me out on the street a couple more hours, keep me in the open. And it’ll look like what it is. Like I’m chasing my goddamn tail.”

“I’ve got another possibility,” Roarke told her. “It was a sewing machine factory, regentrified into lofts in NoHo late in the twentieth. I’ve got a bit about it being used for barracks during the Urbans, taking some considerable hits. It was repaired and sold for lofts again in the early thirties.”

“Okay, I’ll check that one. Give me the location.” She pursed her lips when he gave her the address. She’d gone from west to east, and now would cross west again, head north. “Peabody, you copy that?”

“Affirmative.”

“Heading west.”

She made her turn, then answered the signal of her in-dash ’link. “Dallas.”

“Lieutenant Dallas? I’m calling for Mr. Klok. You requested that he contact you when he returned home. He arrived today, and would be happy to speak with you if you still wish it.”

“Yeah, I still wish it.”

“Mr. Klok is able to meet with you at your convenience. However, it would be helpful if you could come to his residence as he’s injured himself in a fall. His doctors prefer he remain at home for the next forty-eight hours.”

“Yeah? What happened?”

“Mr. Klok slipped on some ice on the sidewalk upon his return. He suffered a mild concussion and a wrenched knee. If it’s not convenient for you, Mr. Klok wishes for me to relate to you that he will come to your office as soon as his doctors allow.”

“I can come to him. Actually, I’m in the area now. I can be there in a few minutes.”

“Very well. I’ll inform Mr. Klok.”

Eve ended the transmission, and said, “Hmmm.”

“Got a smell to it,” Feeney commented in her ear.

“Yeah, awfully well timed and convenient. It’s also pretty stupid for our guy to invite me into his home to make his move. No tail on me. As far as he knows I’ve got my partner here.”

She tapped her fingers on the wheel as she thought it through. “Klok ran clean-and no, I’m not discounting that could be another fabrication. Either way, I want to talk to him. And if this actually turns out to be his move on me, he’s giving me free entry.”

“Into a trap,” Roarke pointed out.

“It’s only a trap if I let him spring it. I’ve got three men at my back, I’ve got eyes and ears. I’m going in, and you can dig deeper on his house while I’m in transit. If I see or feel anything off, you’ll know it. Peabody move in, secure the van three blocks from destination.”

“Copy,” Peabody acknowledged. “We’re about ten blocks back now, got a little snag in traffic. We’ll route around it and move in.”

“Go ahead and do another run on Klok. Let’s see if he arrived in New York today as advertised. Search public and private shuttles and transports. If you get those results while I’m in, relay. Otherwise, cut all chatter now. I’m only a couple blocks away.”

Jumpy, Eve thought, rolling her shoulders. Damn chemicals from the energy pills were bouncing around inside her like little springy balls.

“Transmission’s going a little fuzzy on the homer,” Feeney commented, then glanced over at Roarke. “You getting that?”

“I am. A little interference. Could be some stray transmission that bled onto the frequency. Can you clean it up?”

“Working on that. Peabody, you still have her?”

“Yeah. McNab says the beacon’s jumping a little.”

“It’s interference,” Roarke repeated as the signal went in and out. “It’s another transmission, crossing ours. Bloody hell.” He shoved back from his station. “It’s another homer. Another homer on her vehicle. It’s crossed ours now because she’s near or at the base point. He’s tracked her, that’s how he knew to call her in. He knew she was close.”

“Dallas, Dallas, you copy?” Feeney shouted into the receiver. “Dallas, goddamn it. Peabody, move in, move the fuck in.” He leaped up, rushed after Roarke as Roarke ran out of the room. “She knows what she’s doing,” Feeney said as they shoved onto an elevator.

“So does he.”

E ve parked, then moved across the sidewalk. The courtyard gate opened for her. Awfully damn accommodating, she mused, and shifted her shoulders just to feel the weight of her weapon.

“At the door,” she murmured into her receiver and pressed the bell.

The droid opened it. “Lieutenant, thank you for coming. Mr. Klok is in the parlor. May I take your coat?”

“No. Lead the way.”

She’d keep the droid where she could see him, just in case.

The curtains were drawn, the lights low. She could see the figure of a man in a chair near a quiet fire, his foot wrapped with a soft cast and resting on a padded stool.

He had a short brown beard, short brown hair, some bruising around his left eye. “Corpulent” would have been the polite word for him, Eve supposed. Hers would have been “really fat.”

“Lieutenant Dallas?” He had the slightest Germanic accent. “Please pardon me for not getting up. I was clumsy, banged myself up a bit this morning. Please sit down. Can I offer you something? Tea? Coffee?”

“No.”

He offered his hand as he spoke. She moved in to take it. The common gesture would bring her closer, close enough, she judged for her to determine if he was Robert Lowell.

And as she angled herself to look into his eyes, she knew. She shifted, pulling her right hand back to reach for her weapon. “Hello, Bob.”

He only smiled. “No one has ever called me Bob. You saw right through me.”

“Get up. You.” She gestured toward the hovering droid. “If you don’t want your circuits fried, stay exactly where you are.”

“I’m a little hampered,” Lowell said pleasantly. “All this padding, and the cast.”

Eve kicked the footstool away, so his foot thudded on the floor. “On the floor, on your face, hands behind your back. Now.”

“I’ll do my best.” He slid and humped his way off the chair, huffing as he struggled to roll onto his belly.

When she reached down to grab his wrist, to pull his arm behind his back, he turned his hand, closed it over hers.

She felt the prick, cursed. “Son of a bitch tranq’d me.” She aimed her weapon mid-body, fired a stream. Then her legs buckled and sent her to her knees.

“An old method,” Lowell said as he effortfully rolled over. “Often used in assassinations at one time. Just a tranquilizer now, as you said.” He smiled as she slid the rest of the way to the floor. “Very quick acting, of course.”

He sat where he was until he’d unbuttoned the padded suit, pulled it aside. Underneath he wore standard body armor. “I thought, as you’re very skilled, you might fire your weapon. It’s always wise to take precautions. Carry her down to my workroom,” he ordered the droid.

His duplicate droid was already taking her car away, very far away.

“Yes, sir.”

Plenty of time, Lowell thought. When he was certain all was well, he’d call the droid home, replace his hard drive as he would replace this house droid’s memory. As he’d done many times before.

Clean slate.

For now, he gathered the suit, the cast, picked up the weapon Eve had dropped. It was possible she’d called in her intention to stop there. Someone would come, be that the case. But there would be no sign she’d been there.

Her vehicle would be found miles away.

He would have all her communication devices, and all would be shut down.

He would have her, Lowell thought as he started down the steps to his work area. And complete his life’s work.

O utside the house, Peabody stood sick with frustration and dread. She’d called for a battering ram for the door they couldn’t budge, and for laser torches to cut through the riot bars on every window.

Eve was inside, and she couldn’t find a way in.

“You’ve got to override the security.”

“I’m working on it,” McNab said between his teeth as he pulled out every trick he knew. “It’s got backups on its backups. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

They both whirled as a car squealed to a halt in the street. Some of her dread lessened when she saw Roarke and Feeney jump out.

“We can’t get past the system. The place is locked down like a fort.”

“Move aside.” Roarke shoved McNab away, pulled out his own tools.

“Tried the master, tried the override, got my comp to spit out codes. But when you input, they shift to another sequence.”

“It was a Stealth base during the Urbans,” Feeney told Peabody as sweat rolled down his back. “The minute she walked in, all comms were useless. We got the data on the way over. First Robert Lowell had it titled in his wife’s maiden name, ran a branch of the business out of here. More a front during the Urbans.

“Get that damn system down,” he ordered Roarke.

“Quiet and let me work.”

“You don’t get that down, get us inside before he puts hands on her, I’ll be kicking your ass for the rest of my natural life.”

A riel’s eyes tracked to him as he came in behind the droid. “Who is she? Who is she?”

“You could say the last of her breed.” He leaned over the table where the droid laid Eve, went through her pockets for her ’link, her communicator, her PPC. He removed her wrist unit. “Take these and put them into the recycler. Go upstairs, shut down,” he told the droid.

“Well, now.” Gently Lowell brushed a hand through Eve’s hair. “You’ll need to be washed and prepared. Best to do that while you’re sleeping. We’re going to spend some time together, you and I. I’ve been looking forward to it.”

“Are you going to kill me now?” Ariel asked.

“No, no, indeed, your time’s still running. But I am going to do something very special.” He turned to Ariel as if pleased to be able to discuss it. “I’ve never taken the opportunity to work with two partners at the same time. And you’re proving to be so much more than I anticipated. I really believe you’re going to exceed most, if not all who came before you. But she?” He glanced back at Eve. “I’ve set the bar very high for her. The last Eve.”

“She…she looks familiar.”

“Hmm?” Absently, he looked at Ariel again. “Yes, I suppose you might have seen her on some of the media reports. Now-”

“Mr. Gaines!”

He stopped his pivot back to Eve, frowned down at Ariel. “Yes, yes? What’s so urgent? I have work.”

“What…what is the most time? I mean, how long is the longest anyone-any of the women you’ve brought here-has lasted?”

His eyes brightened. “You’re such a delightful surprise to me! Are you challenged? Have I tapped your competitive streak?”

“I can’t…if I don’t know how long, I can’t try to last longer. Will you tell me how long?”

“I can.” With her clutch piece in her hand, Eve sat up on the steel table. “Eighty-five hours, twelve minutes, thirty-eight seconds.”

“No.” He looked baffled first, then red-faced and furious. “No, no. This is not allowed.”

“You don’t like that, you’re going to hate this.”

Eve shot out a stun, on a setting a little higher than was considered proper procedure, and dropped him like a stone. “Fuckhead,” she muttered, and prayed she wasn’t going to pass out or vomit.

“I knew you’d come.” Tears swam in Ariel’s eyes. “I knew someone would come, and when I saw them bring you in, I knew it was going to be okay.”

“Yeah, hold on.” She had to slide to her feet, give herself a moment to balance. “You did good. You did real good keeping his attention on you so I could get to my piece.”

“I wanted to kill him. I imagined killing him. It helped.”

“I bet it did. Listen, I’m a little off center. I don’t think I’d better try cutting those ropes just yet. You’ve got to hang in there a little bit longer. I know you hurt, but you’ve got to hang in.”

“I’m so cold.”

“Okay.” Eve managed to pull off her coat, then draped it over Ariel’s bleeding and battered body. “I’m going to secure him, okay? I’m going to secure him, then go call for backup.”

“Would you bring me back some water?”

Eve laid a hand on Ariel’s cheek. “Sure.”

“And maybe a whole bunch of drugs.” While the tears spilled out, Ariel struggled to smile. “This is a really nice coat.”

“Yeah. I like it.”