Purity in Death

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Eve knew she'd shaken Clarissa Price, and shaken her hard. She also knew Price wouldn't be calling any lawyer unless he was Purity approved. But she would call Dwier.

She'd seen the horror on Price's face when Price had looked at the crime scene photos of Hannah Wade. There had been shock and disbelief along with it, but it was the horror that would continue to surface. That would eat at Price until she woke screaming in the night.

To keep herself from doing the same, Eve knew she had to do what came next, take the next steps. Focus on the work. That's what she told herself when she pinned the latest photos to the case board in her office.

She couldn't allow her own horror to surface again, to have it slam into her belly as it had when she'd stepped into Greene's Park Avenue condo. The horror that had taken her back, for an instant, to a small, freezing room in Dallas, where the blood had reeked and the knife, covered with it, was clutched in her hand.

Roarke came in, closed the door. Locked it.

"I need the whole team in here, except for Jamie, to update them on the latest homicides."

"In a minute." He crossed to her, took her shoulders, turned her to face him. Her eyes were shadowed. Some was fatigue, he knew. But most of it was the nightmare.

"I can see it in you." He pressed his lips to her brow. "The pain from it."

"It's not getting in my way."

"No, can't have that, can we? Hold on for a minute, Eve. Just for a minute."

His arms were already around her, and now hers wrapped around him in turn. "It wasn't the same. It wasn't anything like the same. But… it shoved me back. It shoved me right back there. I stood there, looking down at her, at him. I was so cold. I've seen that kind of thing before, and he hasn't pushed me back there."

"This was a girl. A young girl."

"Older than I was. Twice as old as I was. She could have been me." She let out a long breath after she said it. "That's what I thought when I stood there. When I stood over her. If I hadn't killed him first. If I hadn't gotten away from him, she could've been me."

Steadier, she turned her head on his shoulder, looked back at the board with clear eyes. "Do you see what they did to her?"

As much as he'd seen, as much as he'd done in his life, the image of Hannah Wade still made his blood run cold.

The girl had been hacked to pieces. The shirt and shorts she'd been wearing were in tatters, and soaked red with her own blood.

"You can," he said quietly. "You see it time and time again, and no matter how often you do, it still matters. That's what makes you."

"I need to do this now." Take the step, she thought. Do the work. "I want Jamie kept busy somewhere. He's not going to see this. I'll take the stills of her down between briefings."

"I'll send him off to the pool or the game room, have Summerset monitor him to make sure he stays well away from here until you're done."

She nodded, stepped back. "One thing. Did I coerce, bribe, or threaten you into opening sealed files?"

"No. You asked, with some reluctance and teeth gnashing."

She nearly managed a smile. "Except for the teeth gnashing, that's how I saw it. If 'requested' had been on the list, I still would've said no in the IAB query. I'd've lied. I don't like knowing that, but I can live with it."

She looked back at Hannah Wade's photo. "Yeah, I can live with it."

When her team was assembled she ran the details for them.

"Nick Greene provided services. His employment is listed as an entertainment consultant. While he did have some straight clientele, the bulk of it ran below the surface. Illegals, vids that push code as they tend to involve minors, authentic violence, and bestiality. He also provided unlicensed companions, either sex, for those looking for a little more than the law allows or who just like the thrill of breaking it. He's got a sheet, which indicates he often auditioned these companions personally.

"He'd been picked up for questioning a total of eight times, but never charged. His business apparently paid well. His digs were Park Avenue smooth."

"Is he linked to Price or Dwier?" Baxter asked.

"I don't find their names on any of the data. I have no doubt he was known to Child Services. Of the eight times he was hauled in for questioning, two involved complaints involving a minor. One of those complaints is sealed. And under that seal we'll find one or more members of Purity."

"Lieutenant." Trueheart raised his hand like a kid at a school desk. "Isn't it possible Greene was infected because of what he was alone, without any other connection to the group?"

"It's too early for them to target that way. The first wave involves personal agendas."

"Gotta be," Feeney agreed. "You start up a group like this, people are risking a hell of a lot. Most aren't going to do it just on a principle. They need some payback first. Have to have incentive for the rank and file. You'll have some raving fanatics, too. Sociopaths who just like the idea of taking somebody out without getting bloody."

"Disciples," Roarke continued, "eager to follow the path. Frustrated cops, city officials, social workers, and the like who've seen the guilty walk away free once too often. And some, I'd think, who are simply intrigued, intellectually, at the idea of this sort of man-made selection."

"They've got their first wave in place." Eve gestured to the board. "Working quickly. My opinion is they've infected or set to infect their entire first wave by this time. Give their membership bulk gratification, quick and multiple successes, and keep the media hot on the story. Focusing on targets who have, in some way, victimized children is very deliberate. Even cops have a different attitude when the victims are children."

She looked at the board again.

"According to statements from the knock-on-doors, Hannah Wade was first seen in the building ten days ago. It's possible she was there longer as her parents haven't seen or heard from her in three months. They didn't bother filing a police or CS report on her this time. She was a habitual runaway. McNab, you'll review the building's security discs and pin down the exact date she took up residence with Greene."

"On that."

"I want to know how often she came and went, and who else visited Greene in the last two weeks. We have a list of her known associates from her parents. Peabody and I will run those. Baxter, see if any of the cops of record who questioned Greene will reach out. Feeney, Roarke, and the kid will continue to work to extract data from the units we've impounded."

"We're eking it out," Feeney told her. "We should have enough to dupe the virus in another eight, ten man-hours."

"Keep me up on that. The Greene/Wade hit follows the basic pattern. Greene was holed up in his place for the last five days. Building has live doormen on eight to midnight, in three shifts. Droid handles the graveyard. None of them saw Greene come or go in that space of time. Statements indicate this was unusual for him. He generally went out most days, and at least five nights out of seven. Third shift man verifies Greene brought a girl matching Wade's description home with him ten days ago, and that she appeared to come and go freely from that time. No one recalls seeing her exit or enter yesterday."

She turned. "Crime scene record, screen one."

The image that popped on was stark and grisly. The white-on-white living area was splashed with blood. Broken glass sparkled in thin rivers of it that had snaked and spurted their way over carpet. Overturned tables, a smashed entertainment screen, lush tropical plants that had provided a contrast to the white but were now uprooted set the stage for the girl's body.

She had been flung facedown, arms and legs spread. Her hair was long and curly and had once been blonde with sapphire highlights. Some of that gold and blue still showed through the matted blood.

Eve heard her own voice detailing the scene, saw herself step into view, and crouch by the body.

"You can see the illegals scattered over the rug. What appears to have been a hospitality bowl was found, broken, in this living area. Traces of substances identified as Jazz and Erotica were still in the damaged bowl. Switch to bedroom record."

The disc shifted, showed a large, sun-washed room done in blacks and reds. The sheets on the bed were torn off. The desk unit's monitor faced the recorder, and read:

ABSOLUTE PURITY ACHIEVED

"A smaller bowl, undamaged, can be seen here on the dresser. Various illegal substances are still in it, and others are on the floor. It appears Greene continued to use while the symptoms of the infection manifested. There were traces of blood on the sheets, probably from a nosebleed, and traces of semen indicating he was capable of masturbating or engaging in sexual relations with Wade prior to death. Autopsy will tell us which. Wade's body showed no evidence of recent sexual activity."

"Where the hell is he?" Baxter asked.

"We'll get there. Reconstruct tells me, he probably spent some time closed up in the bedroom, popping illegals, jerking off, while in the last hours, Wade entertained herself in the living area. Ate junk food, got buzzed, watched some screen. Greene wouldn't have been good company, but hanging in a Park Avenue condo with easy access to illegals, plenty of food, lots of alcohol, was a better deal than picking up a few tricks on the street, maybe getting busted. She'd tough it out until he came around."

Trueheart raised his hands again. Baxter simply kicked him lightly, shook his head. "Uh-uh," he whispered. "She's in the zone."

"Eight transmissions came in during the last three days. Neither of them answered. They were all for Greene. She wouldn't be interested in playing his admin. At some point this afternoon, she gets up. Maybe she wants to go out, look for some action. Maybe she goes to the bedroom, but he's locked the door. Asshole. Her clothes are in there. How she's supposed to go out if she can't get her clothes, slick up some? She wants him to open the door, open the goddamn door, but he doesn't. She kicks at it, bruises her toes. Pisses her off. Bumps it a couple times with her left hip, bruises that some, too. Fuck him."

She could see it, almost feel the girl's edgy frustration. All buzzed up and nowhere to go. "She heads into the kitchen, looking for something sweet. You get a sweet attack with Jazz. Gets herself some ice cream, and feeling put out, writes asshole on the counter in chocolate sauce.

"She turns around, and there he is. He looks bad, really bad. His nose is bleeding, his eyes are red. His breath is horrible, and the rest of him smells like a sewer. Doesn't look like he's changed out of his underwear in days. If he thinks she's going to do him now, he is so wrong."

She brought the kitchen of the condo back into her head. White and silver and red from the blood. "She says something, something a teenager thinks is clever and cutting. He hits her, hits a good one across the face. Knocks her back so she bangs her head on the AutoChef, drops her bowl of ice cream. It hurts. She hit her head hard enough to break the skin, enough to leave some skin and hair on the door of the AutoChef. It blurs her vision for a second and scares her. But not as much as seeing Greene take the knife, the big silver knife, out of the block.

"He slashes at her. She throws her hands up, and the knife slices across both her palms. She tries to run, and the blood from her hands splatters on the white wall. Then from her shoulder, probably her shoulder as he swipes at her again. He doesn't hack. No down strokes in that room. Just those long, sweeping slashes. Left to right, right to left.

"She's screaming, begging, crying, trying to run. Get away. But those swipes keep catching her. The back, the buttocks, the shoulders again. Through the dining alcove. He opens her up good there, hits an artery and the blood starts spurting. She's dead then. She doesn't know it. She still thinks she can get away. She makes it to the living area before she goes down on that white rug. Crawls a few inches. Then he starts hacking."

"Jesus," McNab said softly, prayerlike.

"He doesn't know who she is, doesn't care." Eve's face was stone-cold as she stared at the screen. "She's stopped screaming, but his head won't. He throws the goodie bowl, smashes the screen, shoves at tables, stabs the sofa a few times. He has to stop the pain. He goes back in the bedroom, but he can't stand it. He shoves open the terrace doors. He's still got the knife, and he looks like he's been painted red. He screams, and screams. At the air traffic, at the street below, at his neighbor who comes out on her terrace two apartments down. She runs back in, locks herself in, and calls the cops. By then it's all over. Bedroom terrace view," she ordered.

He was lying on his back, and looked like a man who'd been swimming in a river of blood.

He'd plunged the knife into his own heart.

"Got your timing."

Wanting to stay with the action in the lab, McNab set up in a corner. He liked listening to the familiar language of compu-jocks as Feeney and Jamie debated the next level, or when Roarke weighed in with an opinion.

They were close, he knew they were right on the verge of duplicating the virus. Once they had it, they could fight it.

Eve walked over to him. She wasn't sure why she'd come into the lab-the last place she was needed. Unless it was to get away from her own thoughts.

"Here's our girl," he continued, taping the image onscreen. "Coming in with Greene. Doorman had it. She doesn't show before this time and date. Perv rubs her ass as they walk in. He's old enough to be her father."

"She walked in of her own free will." Eve studied the girl's face. The suggestive smirk, the glittering eyes. Oh yeah, she thought. Figured you knew the score. You didn't know a damn thing.

"Yeah, well, doesn't make him less a perv. She pops in and out. Never see her before noon. When she makes the daylight appearances, she's back before nightfall. Usually has a couple bags with her. High-end stores. He must foot the bill for the shopping. She's thinking she's got a good thing going."

"Hmm. They go out together."

"Yeah." He zipped through the disc. "Jumped up for a night out. Look half-buzzed already, all duded out. Up till the six days prior to implosion, they went out every night. We got three visitors during the time frame, all male."

He keyed in to the view outside Greene's condo. "This first one goes in, stays sixteen minutes. Bet the contents of his briefcase switched during that little social call."

"Time to test the merchandise and count the money," Eve agreed. "Do we know if Illegals was tracking this guy?"

"Don't. Can." Unconsciously, McNab flexed his fingers, working on the tingle that hadn't quite faded. "I got some contacts there. Far as I can tell, the perv skimmed the line, kept legitimate business avenues open, didn't deal too heavy."

"Second visitor?"

"Different deal. Stayed ninety-eight minutes. No bag,"

Eve studied the second man entering, exiting. "Sex," she said flatly. "What about the third?"

"Forty-minute stay, carried a disc bag in and out. Likes his sex on vids, I guess."

"I know this guy. I know him. Tripps. Deals bootlegged vids. Has a few runners on the street. Yeah, I know him. I'll tap him if I need to, see if he can draw me a picture. Run the other faces for ID in case we need them."

Eve saw him massaging his right thigh as he set up for the search. "No, not now. Morning's soon enough. Pack it in for the night. Why don't you and Peabody go use the pool or something? Or just get out for a while."

"Yeah? Taking pity on the recovering crip?"

"Grab it while you can, pal. It won't last."

He grinned. "I wouldn't mind a little club action. Some music. Not up to dancing yet. You know what would really do it? Virtual club scene. If we could use the holoroom."

"If you're going to program in some perverted sexual fantasy, I don't want to hear about it."

"Mum's the word."

She went back to her own office and spent the next hour dissecting Nick Greene's life.

College man, a business major who'd started picking up trouble in his teens. Minor possession fines, criminal trespass, bootlegging vids. Always the entrepreneur, she thought.

It had paid off for a while. Classy Park Avenue digs, closet full of snazzy designer duds.

She frowned as she continued through his financials. He'd garaged two high-end vehicles, and had kept a third, and a watercraft, stored at his weekend place in the Hamptons. He had art and jewelry insured in excess of three million.

"Doesn't add up."

She went to the 'link and beeped Roarke. "I need you to look at something in my office."

He came in, looking mildly irritated. "If you want the job done, Lieutenant, you have to let me do it."

"I need your expert opinion on something else. Look at these assets, reported income, debits. Give me your take."

She had the numbers on-screen, and paced the office while Roarke studied them.

"Obviously someone didn't report all their income. That's shocking."

"Ditch the sarcasm. How much in excess of this could you make from a mid-level illegals business, running a few unlicensed whores, dealing some porn vids, a little sex brokering?"

"I've decided to be flattered rather than insulted that you assumed I'd know of such matters. Depends, of course, on the overhead. You'd have to buy or cook the illegals before you could sell them, outfit and maintain the prostitutes, generate the vids. Then there's the outlay for bribes, security, employees. If you were good at it, had a steady clientele, you'd pull in two or three million in profit."

"Still doesn't add up. He kept it small, exclusive. You don't get busted as hard or as often if you keep it low profile. So say you add the three million to what he reported last year. That keeps him under five million. You could live real comfortable on that."

"Some could. Are we done now?"

"No. You've got five million to play with. Look at his clothing expenditures last year."

Stifling impatience, Roarke scanned the data she shot on-screen. "So he wasn't a snappy dresser."

"But he was. Closet full of designer labels. Had to have a hundred pairs of shoes. Since I live with someone with the same baffling addiction, I can recognize the pricey stuff. There was an easy million in the closet. Probably more."

"He prefers paying cash then," Roarke said, but he was becoming interested despite himself.

"Okay, subtract a million from the five. He has art and baubles insured for over three."

"One rarely buys all their baubles in a single year."

"Yeah, but there're appraisals for over three-quarters of a million last year. No debit entries. Cash again. Subtract another seventy-five. Vid equipment, insured for one point five mil. Two new cams on the list last year to the tune of half a mil. Two garaged vehicles in the city. Annual for that's what, two, three thousand a month, each. One's a XR-7000Z, new last September. What do they run?"

"Ah… two hundred K, if he got it loaded."

"Three-bedroom condo on Park. Annual's about the same as the car, right?"

He was doing the math in his head. "Close enough."

"Then you add a five-bedroom beach house in the Hamptons, the slip fee for his watercraft. What's that?"

"Run him near a million."

"Okay. You add in he goes out dining and debauchering almost nightly. Basic living expenses over that. What do you get?"

"Either I'm well off on the estimate of his business profit, or he had another source of income."

"Another source." She hitched a hip onto her desk. "Follow me here. You got an underground business that caters to fairly exclusive clientele. Some of whom might blush if their little hobby came out in the light. You've got expensive taste, and your business does pretty good, but hell, you want better. What do you do?"

"Blackmail."

"And we have a winner."

"All right, so he ran a shakedown on the side. A profitable one by all accounts. What does that have to do with the matter at hand?"

"The matter at hand is homicide. It's a Purity hit, and it's connected, but you still run it by the numbers. He might have kept his blackmail data in a safebox. If he did, he'd keep it close to home. Easy access. We can check the banks and depositories. But, maybe he kept them even closer to home. I'm going to go check out his place again."

"Want company?"

"Two could toss it faster than one."

He thought she was wasting her time and his. But he supposed the cop in her needed to snip off any loose ends.

And he'd had no intention of letting her go back alone to a place that had taunted her nightmares.

He waited until she bypassed the police seal, uncoded the locks.

The air still carried death. It was the first thing that struck him when he stepped in beside her. The raw, pitiably human stench of it lingered under the odor of chemicals used by the crime scene team and sweepers.

Red stains, splatters, streams were a virulent horror over the white. Walls, carpet, furniture. He could see where the girl had fallen. Could see where she had crawled. Where she had died.

"Christ, how do you face it? How do you look at this and not break?"

"Because it's there whether you look or not. And if you break, you're done."

He touched her arm. He hadn't realized he'd spoken aloud. "Did you need to see this again? To face this again to prove you could?"

"Maybe. But if that was all, I'd've come on my own. Second bedroom and the office are over there. We went through the place thoroughly on the first sweep. But we weren't looking for a hidey-hole. Now we do."

She put Roarke in the second bedroom and started on the office herself. They'd taken the data andcommunication center away, had gone over the work area, through the closet where Greene had kept his extra supplies.

She did it all again, point by point. There was a safe. One of the crime scene techs had run his scanner over it, tagged the combination. She'd found nothing unexpected in it. Some cash, disc documents, a little paperwork.

Not enough cash, she thought now. Not nearly enough. If three clients had come by in the last few days-at least two of them when Greene's symptoms would have been increasing-where was the payoff?

Would he have sent Wade out with cash to tuck it into a safebox? She didn't think so. You might bang a teenager, sell her off to clients, but you didn't put cash in her hand and wave bye-bye.

She took two paintings and a sculpture off the wall, searched behind them for panels.

"Bedroom's clean," Roarke told her.

"He's got another safe. He's got a hole. This is the logical place. The office is the logical place."

"Maybe it's too logical. First place you looked, isn't it?"

She stopped scooting along the baseboard and sat back on her heels. "Okay, if this was your place, where's your stash?"

"If I liked combining business and pleasure, as it appeared he did, the master bedroom."

"Okay, let's try it."

She led the way, then stood in the doorway with him, scanning the room.

"Money doesn't always buy taste, does it, darling?" He shook his head at the black and red decor. "A bit obvious for a passion den."

He wandered to the closet, opened it. "Well, here at least he showed some level of class. Very nice fabrics."

"Yeah, and he died in his underwear. Just goes to show."

"Just what does the city do with this sort of thing?"

"The clothes? If he doesn't have family, heirs, that kind of thing, they're donated to shelters."

He pressed the button that had the first tier of suits revolving to reveal the second. "The sidewalk sleepers are going to be better dressed this year."

He moved the second tier aside, studied the wall of shoes to his right. Smiled. "Here you have it."

"Have what?"

"Give us a minute," he said, running his fingertips along shelves, under them. "Ah, here we are. Let's see."

He depressed a small lever. The lower third of the shelves swung slowly open. He crouched. "Here's your hidey-hole, Lieutenant. And your second safe."

She was already breathing down his neck. "Can you open it?"

"Would that be a rhetorical question?" he chuckled.

"Just open the damn thing."

He drew the jammer he'd taken from Jamie out of his pocket. "Well, this is why you're the cop and I'm not."

"Because you can pop a safe?"

"No. I could teach you to do it quick enough, even without this handy little toy. Because I thought you were wasting time coming back here tonight."

"You still think I'm wasting time."

"I suppose I do, but you've found your safe." The display on the jammer began to flash, numbers zipping by in a blur. Then a series of them locked on. The safe hummed once, then clicked.

"Abracadabra," Roarke stated, and opened it.

"Now that's more like it." Hunkered down beside him, Eve studied the neat stacks of cash. "This is how he stayed out of a cage so long. No credit, no e-transfers. Cash on the line. And a file box, loaded with discs and vids."

"Best of all." Roarke reached in, took out a PPC. "His personal palm, very likely uninfected and chock-full of interesting data."

"Let's load it up, get it in." She pulled out her memo book.

"What're you doing?"

"Logging the entry. I better not see any of that green stuff or those baubles go into your pockets, Ace."

"Now I'm offended." He straightened, brushed at his shirt. "If I nipped anything, you can bet your ass you wouldn't see me do it."