Holiday In Death

CHAPTER TWELVE

Brent Holloway had lived well, and died badly. The furnishing of his town house spoke of a man who was ruled by both trends and comfort. A lake-sized sofa dominated the living area and was pooled with triangular black pillows that appeared wet to the touch. A view screen was recessed in the ceiling above. In a cabinet, shaped like a well-endowed female from neck to knee, was an expansive collection of porn discs, some legal, some bootlegged.

A silver serving bar stretched across one wall and was stocked with expensive liquor and cheap illegal drugs.

The kitchen was fully automated, soulless, and appeared to have been used rarely. There was an office with a high-end computer system and holophone and a playroom equipped with VR and a mood tube. A servant droid stood in the corner, shut down and blank-eyed.

Holloway was in the master suite, stretched over a water-to-air mattress, trussed in sparkly silver garland and staring blindly at his own reflection in the mirrored canopy. The tattoo had been painted low on his belly, and four plump birds flew on the silver choke chain around his neck.

"Looks like he'd been to a health center," Eve commented. His nose was only slightly swollen. Whatever bruising there might have been was expertly concealed with cosmetics.

Roarke stood back, knowing he wasn't permitted in the room. He'd seen her work before. Competent, thorough, with a gentleness under the professional moves as she tended the dead.

He watched her run the standard field test to establish time of death, recording it herself until Peabody and the Crime Scene techs arrived.

"Ligature marks, both wrists, both ankles indicate victim was restrained prior to death. Death occurred twenty-three fifteen. Bruising on throat indicates cause of death to be strangulation."

She glanced up as the buzzer sounded.

"I'll let her in," Roarke said.

"Okay. Roarke?" She hesitated only a moment. He was here, after all, and he was able. "Can you reactivate the droid? Bypass the programmed commands?"

"I think I could handle that."

"Yeah." There was very little he couldn't do to bypass security systems. She tossed him a can of Seal-It. "Coat your hands. I can't have your prints on it."

He gave the can a mild look of distaste, but carried it with him.

She turned back to the body, continuing her work. She could hear the muted conversation in the other room as Roarke spoke to Peabody. Moving to the doorway, she waited.

Peabody was back in uniform, her recorder pinned to her lapel, her hair ruthlessly slicked down in its usual straight bowl around her face. And her face was pale, her eyes horrified.

"Oh shit, Dallas."

"Tell me if you can't deal with it. I have to know now before you go in."

She'd asked herself the same question over and over since she'd received the call. Because she still wasn't sure of the answer, she kept her eyes on Eve's. "It's my job to handle it. I know that."

"I tell you what your job is. There's a droid. You can work that. You can check the 'links, the security discs. You can start the door-to-doors."

It was an out. She hated herself for wanting to take it. Wanting to do anything but step inside the room. "I prefer to work the scene. Sir."

Eve studied her another moment, then nodded. "Engage your recorder." She turned and walked back to the side of the bed. "The victim is Holloway, Brent, ID established by investigating officer. Preliminary on body recorded by Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. Subsequent record by Peabody, Officer Delia. Time and apparent cause of death established."

Peabody's stomach jittered when she forced herself to study the body. "It's just like the others."

"Apparently. Sexual molestation has not yet been established, nor has the victim been tested for drugs. The exposed skin shows signs of disinfectant. I can still smell it."

She took a visor out of her field kit, fit it over her head, adjusted the power on the eyepieces. "Crime Scene techs are late," she muttered. "Lights out," she commanded, and the spotlight beams trained on the bed went dark.

"Yeah, he's been sprayed down. The brushstrokes on the tattoo coincide with those on previous victims. It's damn good freehand," she added, with her nose all but pressing on Holloway's belly. "What have we got here? Give me the tweezers, Peabody. I got hair or fiber here."

Without looking back, Eve held out a hand, felt the small metal tool when Peabody passed it. "It's white, doesn't look man-made." Holding up the thin strand, she studied it through the magnified visor. "He's got several of these on him. I need a bag." Even as she said it, Peabody was holding one out. "I'd guess Santa's beard is shedding, and he wasn't as careful cleaning up after himself this time."

Carefully Eve plucked white strands from the body, bagged them. "He just made his first mistake. Take the visor." Eve pulled it off. "Check the bathroom, every corner. Pull the drains and bag the contents. I want everything. Lights on," she added. "Missing Cissy last night shook him, Peabody. He's getting sloppy."

By the time Eve turned the room over to the Crime Scene team, she'd found more than a dozen hairs, and minute traces of fiber. Her eyes were dark with purpose when she found Roarke with the droid in the playroom.

"Did you get it on?"

"Of course." Staying comfortably in the body-mold chair, he gestured toward the droid. "Rodney, this is Lieutenant Dallas."

"Lieutenant." The droid was short and squat, with a homely face and a clipped voice. Obviously Holloway hadn't wanted any competition, even in his electronics.

"What time were you disengaged tonight?"

"At ten oh three, shortly after Mr. Holloway returned for the evening. He prefers that I remain off unless he requires my services."

"He didn't require them tonight."

"Apparently not."

"Did he have any visitors from the time he returned and you were disengaged?"

"No. If I may say, Mr. Holloway didn't appear to be in the mood for companionship this evening."

"How so?"

"He appeared upset," the droid claimed, then folded his lips.

"Rodney, this is a police investigation. You're required to answer my questions fully."

"I don't understand. Has there been a burglary?"

"No, your employer is dead. Did anyone come to the door before Holloway returned?"

"I see." Rodney took a moment, as if adjusting his circuits to the news. "No, there were no visitors this evening. Mr. Holloway had an outside engagement. He returned home at nine fifty. He was angry. He swore at me. I noticed he had some facial bruises and I asked if I could be of assistance. He suggested that I fuck myself, which is a function I am not programmed to perform. He ordered me to go to hell, which was not possible, then countermanded that order with one to come into this room and shut down for the night. I was programmed to reengage at seven a.m."

Out of the corner of her eye, Eve could see Roarke grinning. She ignored him. "Your employer has illegal drugs and pornographic materials on the premises."

"I am not programmed to comment on those matters."

"Did he entertain sexual partners here?"

"Yes."

"Male or female?"

"Both, occasionally at the same time."

"I'm looking for a man, approximately six feet tall. I believe he has long hands, long fingers. He's likely Caucasian. Over thirty years of age, but probably not more than fifty. He has some artistic talent, and interest in theater."

"I'm sorry." Rodney inclined his head politely. "That is insufficient data."

"You're telling me," Eve muttered.

Eve waited until the body was bagged and removed. "There's more to this guy than we have on record," she said to Roarke. "Look around here, you can see. He had money, and liked to spend it on his face and body. He liked to look at himself." Her gaze scanned the room, noting mirrors on nearly every surface. "He uses a dating service, claiming to be straight hetero, but his droid says he was bi. The dating service screens better than the Candidate Control Division out of East Washington, but he slips all this by them. He finger rapes Peabody on their first meet. If he did it once, he did it before, but he gets by with it."

She paced the living room while Roarke said nothing. Nothing was required, he knew. She was using him as a bounce for her thoughts. "Maybe he's connected to either Rudy or Piper. A lover. Or he's helping to fund the place, or he's got something on them so they let it all slide. This guy wasn't a lonely heart, he was a pervert. They had to know it. At least one of them had to know it."

She paused by the cabinet, empty now of the discs already taken into evidence. "Some of those were homemade jobs. I wonder who we'll find doing nasty things with Holloway."

She looked back at Roarke. They were alone for the moment, but Peabody would be back shortly. She struggled with the decision, then thought of four body bags. "I have to go in with this. I don't know when I'll be home."

He knew her very well. He moved close, touched a hand to her cheek. "Do you want to ask, or do you want me to just do it and tell you after it's done?"

She blew out a breath. "I'll ask." She jammed her hands in her pockets as she did. "You can dig beneath the surface of what Holloway put on record. You can find out in hours what it would take Feeney days. He can't cut the corners you can. I don't have days. I don't want this bastard to give me another body to be bagged."

"I'll call you when I have something."

He was making it simple, and that only made it worse. "I'll transmit his file when I get into Central," she began, then shut her mouth firmly when he grinned.

"No point in wasting time when I can get it myself." Leaning down, he kissed her. "I enjoy helping you."

"You just like screwing CompuGuard and running illegal programs."

"There is that added benefit." He laid his hands on her shoulders, rubbed briefly at the tension there. "If you work until you fall on your face, I'm going to be annoyed."

"I'm still standing. I need the car and I don't have time to take you back home."

"I think I can manage to get there." He kissed her again before starting toward the door. "Oh, by the way, Lieutenant, you have an appointment with Trina at six tonight. She and Mavis will come to the house."

"Oh, for Christ's sake."

"I'll entertain them if you're running a bit late." Ignoring her next curse, he slipped outside.

She ended with a hiss, then gathered her field kit, called to Peabody, and sealed the scene. "I want to run the hair and fiber to the lab and light a fire under Dickhead," she said as they climbed into her vehicle. "We'll push the ME, too, though I don't think we're going to find out anything from the postmortem that we don't already know."

She slid a sidelong glance at her aide as she drove. "It's going to be a long day, Peabody. You might want to take some approved ups to get through. You can requisition some Alert-All."

"I'm okay."

"I need you sharp. I want you transformed and under by nine. You have to pull off your bit with Piper. We'll hold the release of Holloway's name as long as possible."

"I know what to do." Peabody stared out the window, watching the night sweep by. There was a lone glide-cart on the corner at Ninth, the operator warming himself in the steam from his grill.

"I'm not sorry I broke his goddamn nose," she said abruptly. "I thought I would be. I thought when I saw him there, saw what had been done to him, that I'd be sorry."

"One doesn't have anything to do with the other."

"I thought it would. I thought it should. I was afraid to go in that room. But once I was in there, doing the job, I didn't feel all the stuff I thought I would."

"You're a cop. A good one."

"I don't want to be the kind who stops feeling." She turned her head, studied Eve's profile. "You're not. They're not just slabs to you, they're people. I don't want to stop remembering they're people."

Eve glanced right and left as she approached a red light, then seeing her way clear, breezed through it. "You wouldn't be working with me if I thought you would."

Peabody took a long, slow breath and felt her stomach settle. "Thanks."

"Since you're grateful, contact Dickhead. Tell him I want his skinny ass in the lab within the hour."

Peabody grimaced, shifted in her seat. "I don't know if I'm that grateful."

"Make the call, Peabody. If he balks, I'll take over and bribe him with a case of Roarke's Irish beer. Dickie's got a weakness for it."

It took two cases and a threat to tie his tongue around his neck, but at three a.m. Dickie was in his labcoat and testing hair and fiber.

Eve paced the lab, barking into her communicator as the assistant ME claimed a holiday backup on autopsies. "Look, you little drone, I can call Commander Whitney and fry your ass. This is Priority One. You want me to let it drop to the media that my investigation was delayed because some AME wanted to read his Christmas cards instead of doing a cut?"

"Come on, Dallas, I'm working a double. I got stiffs stacked like bricks in the drawers here."

"Put my brick on the table and have the report to me by oh six hundred or I'm coming over there and I'm going to show you what a Y cut feels like."

She cut transmission and turned around. "Gimme, Dickie."

"Don't crowd me, Dallas. You don't scare me. I don't see no Priority One tab on this evidence."

"There will be by nine." She walked over and gave his hair a hard quick yank. "I haven't had my fucking coffee, Dickie. You don't want to mess with me here."

"Jeez, get some then." Behind his microgoggles, his eyes were as big as an owl's. "I'm running the damn stuff, aren't I? You want it quick or you want it right?"

"I want it both." Because she was desperate, she walked over and ordered a cup of the lab sludge pretending to be coffee and forced down a swallow.

"Hair's human," he called out. "Treated with a salon fixer and an herbal disinfectant."

That perked Eve up enough to have her drinking more coffee as she crossed to him. "What kind of fixer, what's it for?"

"To preserve color and texture. It'll keep the white from yellowing or getting stiff. Two of your samples have some adhesive on one end. These hairs likely came from a wig. A good, expensive one. This is real human hair, and that puts it high-end. I'll have to run more to tag the adhesive. Might be able to get you a brand name on the fixer after some more tests."

"What about the fibers, the stuff Peabody got from the drains?"

"I haven't done it yet. Jesus, I'm not a droid."

"Okay." She pressed her fingers to her eyes. "I need to go to the morgue, make sure Holloway's on the table. Dickie." She laid a hand on his shoulder. He was a pain in the ass, but he was the best. "I need everything you can get me, and I need it fast. This guy's taken out four, and he's already looking for number five."

"I'll get it to you a hell of a lot faster if you stop breathing down my neck."

"I'm leaving. Peabody."

"Sir." Peabody jerked from her doze in a lab chair and blinked blindly.

"We're moving," Eve said shortly. "Dickie, I'm counting on you."

"Yeah, yeah. You know I don't think I got my invite to your big party tomorrow night." He smiled thinly. "Musta gotten lost."

"I'll make sure we find it. After you give me what I need."

"You got it." Pleased, he turned back and bent over his work.

"Greedy little bastard. Here." Eve pushed the coffee into Peabody's hand as they headed back out to the car. "Drink this. It'll either wake you up or kill you."

Eve badgered the AME until she had confirmed cause of death. She stood over his shoulder until he'd run the tox test and reported the over-the-counter tranq in Holloway's system.

Back at Central she ordered Peabody to the cramped area commonly known as the Resort. It consisted of one dark room with three two-level bunks.

While her aide slept, Eve settled into her office and wrote up the reports. She transmitted the necessary copies, and fueled herself with more coffee and what might have been a cranberry muffin from the vending machine.

It was still shy of dawn when her 'link beeped and Roarke's image swam onto her screen.

"Lieutenant, you're pale enough to see through."

"I'm solid enough."

"I have something for you."

Her heart bumped once. He'd know to say nothing more on a logged call. "I'm going to try to swing home shortly. Peabody's down for a couple of hours more."

"You need to go down yourself."

"Yeah. I've about done all I can here. I'm coming in."

"I'll wait up for you."

She broke the call, and left a brief memo for Peabody, should she wake before Eve returned. Once she was in her car and headed out, she put in another call to the lab.

"Anything more for me?"

"Jesus, you're relentless. Tagged your fiber. It's a sym-poly blend, trade name Wulstrong. Simulated wool, commonly in coats and sweaters. This was dyed red."

"Like a Santa suit?"

"Yeah, but not one of your bell-ringing suits. Those poor bastards can't afford this kind of weight and quality. This is good shit, next best thing to real wool. The manufacturers claim it's better – warmer, more durable, and blah blah blah. That's bullshit, 'cause nothing's better than genuine. But this is good, pricey. Just like the hair. Your guy isn't worried about spending credits."

"Good. Nice work, Dickie."

"You find my invitation, Dallas?"

"Yeah, it fell behind my desk."

"Those things happen."

"Get me the results of the drain lift, Dickie, and I'll have it messengered over."

She watched dawn flirt with the eastern sky as she turned toward home.

She knew where to find Roarke. In a room that shouldn't have existed, manning equipment that she shouldn't know about. She ignored the knee-jerk reaction, a cop's reaction, as she approached the room and laid her palm on the plate.

"Dallas, Lieutenant Eve."

Her palm- and voiceprints were analyzed quickly, and she was cleared inside.

He'd left the curtains open on the wide glass. The glass itself was treated. No one could see inside. The room was large, the floor a fancy marble, the walls accented with art – but for one, which was dominated by several screens.

All but one screen was blank now. On that, Roarke ran stock reports while he sat behind the slick U-shaped console toying with an unregistered computer.

"You were faster than I figured."

"There weren't that many layers to go through." He gestured to a chair beside him. "Sit down, Eve."

"Were they thin enough that I can slide it through? Indicate I found it myself without falsifying my report?"

His cop, Roarke thought fondly, would always worry about such niceties. "If you'd know just where to look, just what to question – which I imagine you would have, given another day or two. Sit," he repeated, and this time took her hand and pulled her into the chair.

He'd tied his hair back – which always made her want to tug it free of the thin leather band. He'd pushed up the sleeves of his black sweater. She found herself looking at his hands, thinking about his hands. Gorgeous, clever hands. She realized she was drifting and snapped herself back.

When she blinked her vision clear, his face was close, and one of those gorgeous, clever hands held her chin, his thumb brushing over the shallow dent in its center. "Nearly went out, didn't you?"

"I was just… thinking."

"Uh-huh. Thinking. I'm going to make a trade with you, Lieutenant. I'll give you what I've found if, in exchange for it, you'll be here at six tonight. You'll take a soother – "

"Hey, I'm not bargaining for information."

"You are if you want the information. I can wipe it." He reached out a hand and let it hover over some controls she couldn't identify. "You'll be here, take a soother," he repeated, "and let Trina give you a full treatment."

"I haven't got time for a stupid haircut."

It wasn't the hair styling he was thinking of, but the body massage and relaxation program he was going to arrange. "That's the deal. Take it or leave it."

"I've got four murder discs on my desk."

"Right at this moment, I don't give a damn if you have four hundred. Whatever your priorities, you happen to be mine. That's my price. Do you want the data?"

"You're as bad as Dickhead."

"I beg your pardon?"

She snorted out a laugh at the insult in his voice, then rubbed her hands over her face. She really hated when he was right. She was running on fumes. "Okay, I'll take the deal. What did you find?"

He frowned at her for a moment, then dropped his hand and turned to the screen wall. "Save data on screen four, screen off. Holloway file up, on all screens. Our friend here had a costly ID change four years ago. Under his birth name…"

"John B. Boyd. Shit." She got to her feet and walked closer to the screens to read the first of several police reports. "Sexual offender, rape charges. Dropped by victim. Coerced sexual partnership, convicted. Six months psych treatment and community service. Bullshit. Possession of illegal sexual paraphernalia, pleaded out. Voluntary treatment for sexual obsessions. Treatment complete, records sealed. Fuck that. This guy was twisted and the system let him slide."

"He had money," Roarke pointed out. "It's easy to buy your way out of mid-level sex charges. He slithered his way clear, then ends up sodomized and strangled. Irony, Eve, or justice?"

"He should have gotten his justice in the courts," she snapped. "I don't give a damn about irony. Would Personally Yours have found this during screening?"

"I would have." He moved his shoulders. "It depends on how deep they go, but as I said, it was only a few layers down. Any full-security screen would have popped it. Sealing the records only protects him from a standard employee or credit screen."

"Did you get his financials?"

"Of course. Subject financials, screen six. You can see he did very well monetarily at his work. Had a decent broker who invested well. He liked to spend, but he had it to spend. There are, however, several reasonably good deposits which are over and above his modeling fees or investment dividends. Ten thousand at three-month intervals over a two-year period."

"Yeah." Again, she stepped closer to the screen. "I see them. Were you able to trace?"

"I wonder why I tolerate these small insults." He only sighed when she turned back and scowled at him. "Naturally. They were e-transfers, swung through a variety of sources in a decent attempt to conceal the original source. However, all of them bounce back to one location."

She nodded her head. "Personally Yours."

"You're an excellent detective."

"So, he was blackmailing them. Or one of them. Do you have initials of the name authorizing transfer?"

"The account is under both names. It could have been either Piper or Rudy. Their account uses a passcode rather than a signature."

"Okay, it gives me enough to bring them into Interview and cook them awhile." She drew a long breath. "I'm going to let Peabody have a go at them first, shake them up. Then I'll move in."

"Just make sure you're home by six."

Impatient, she turned back to him. The morning was breaking, light slipping through the treated glass and accenting her pale cheeks and shadowed eyes. "I made the deal. I'll keep it."

"Of course you will." If he had to go down to Cop Central and carry her out personally.