Creation in Death (21 page)

“Charming thought.”

“Yeah, well, being as they were already dead—hopefully—it probably didn’t upset them too much. Oh, and FYI? When my time comes, I don’t want the preservatives and the stylist. You can just build a big fire, slide me in. Then you can throw yourself on the pyre to show your wild grief and constant devotion.”

“I’ll make a note of it.”

“Nothing down here for us. I want the second location that was up and running during the Urbans. Any other properties owned by Lowell, in any of his guises or fronts.”

“I’ll get to it,” Roarke told her.

She drew out her communicator, scowled at the buzzing static. “Reception’s crappy down here. Let’s go up. I want to see if Callendar had any luck with the stepmother.

“She could have had property in her name,” Eve continued as they started out. “Maybe he uses that. Lawyers are dragging their feet, as the breed’s prone to do. Between Whitney and Tibble they’ll cut through that bullshit quickly enough.”

“If he continues to be smart,” Roarke commented, “the lawyers would only lead you to a numbered account and message service. He covers himself well.”

“Then we’ll tackle the account and the service. Fucker’s in New York. He has a bolt-hole here, a work space, transportation. And one of these lines we’re yanking is going to bring us down on him.”

Eve had no more than reached the main level when her communicator beeped. “Dallas.”

“Found her!” Callendar all but sang it. “Edwina Spring. Found her in the music and entertainment section of an old
Times
. Opera sensation, if you believe the hype. Prodigy. Barely eighteen when she bowled over New York at the Met. I’ve got more coming up now that I’ve got her name.”

“Run a multitask. See if you can find any property in the city listed under her name.”

“On it.”

“Get it all together, Callendar. I’ve got a stop to make, then I’m heading in.”

“What stop?” Roarke wanted to know.

“Pella. He knows something. His medicals confirm he’s clocking out, and is barely able to walk across the room. But he knows something, and I’m not dicking around with him.”

“You weren’t tailed here.”

“That’s right.”

“Then it’s unlikely you’ll be tailed from here. As Peabody’s busy, I’ll go with you to see this Pella.”

“I can handle myself.”

“You certainly can. But do you want to pull any part of the team here off to run your wire? Simpler, quicker, if I go with you, then the rest of them meet us back at Central.”

“Maybe.” And for the sake of expediency, she shrugged. “Fine.”

W
hen they arrived at Pella’s, there was a great deal of objecting and hand-fluttering from both the housekeeping and medical droids. Eve just pushed through it.

“If you’ve got a complaint, report it to the chief of police. Or the mayor. Yeah, the mayor loves to get complaints from droids.”

“We’re obliged to look after Mr. Pella, to see to his health and comfort.”

Obviously, some joker had programmed the housekeeping droid to whine. “None of you are going to feel very healthy or comfortable if I haul you into Central. So move aside or I’ll cite you for obstructing justice.”

Eve elbowed the medical away, shoved open the bedroom door. “Stay back, out of eyeline,” she said quietly to Roarke. “He might not talk if he sees I’ve brought company.”

It was dim, as it had been before, and she could hear the steady rasps of Pella sucking air through the breather.

“I said I didn’t want to be disturbed until I called for you.” His voice was testy, and sounded years older than it had the day before. “I’ll have you broken down into circuits and limbs if you don’t give me some damn
peace
.”

“That would be tough to manage from where you are,” Eve commented.

He stirred, his eyes opened to latch on to hers. “What do you want? I don’t have to talk to you. I spoke with my lawyer.”

“Fine, speak with him again and tell him to meet you at Central. He’ll explain that I can hold you there for twenty-four hours as a material witness to homicide.”

“What kind of bullshit is this! I haven’t witnessed anything but those damn droids hovering like vultures for the past six months.”

“You’re going to tell me what you know, Pella, or a good chunk of the time you’ve got left is going to be spent with me. Robert Lowell. Edwina Spring. Tell me.”

He shifted restlessly in the bed, plucked at the sheet. “If you know so much, why do you need me?”

“Look, you son of a bitch.” She leaned over him. “Twenty-five women are dead, and another is in dire straits. She may be dying.”

“I
am
dying! I fought for this city. I bled for it. I lost the only thing in the world that mattered, and nothing has mattered since. What do I care about some women?”

“Her name’s Ariel. She bakes for a living. She has a neighbor across the hall from her pretty little apartment. Seems like a nice guy. She doesn’t know he’s in love with her, doesn’t know he came to me today desperate and scared, pleading with me to find her. Her name is Ariel, and you’re going to tell me what you know.”

Pella turned his head away, stared toward the draped windows. “I don’t know anything.”

“You lying fucker.” She grabbed hold of his breather, saw his eyes go wide. She wouldn’t actually rip it off—probably wouldn’t—but he didn’t know that. “You want to take another breath?”

“The droids know you’re in here. If anything happens to me—”

“What? Like you just—oops—fall over dead when I happen to be talking to you? An officer of the law, sworn to protect and serve. And with a witness to back me up?”

“What witness?”

Eve glanced over, jerked her head so that Roarke stepped into Pella’s view. “If this fucker just happened to kick it when I was duly questioning him about his knowledge of a suspect, it would be an accident, right?”

“Absolutely.” Roarke smiled, cold and calm. “An unforeseen event.”

“You know who he is,” Eve said when Pella’s eyes wheeled. “And who I am. Roarke’s cop, that’s what you called me. Believe me when I tell you if you happen to stop breathing, and I lie about how that might’ve happened, he’ll swear to it.”

“On a bloody stack of Bibles,” Roarke confirmed.

“But you’re not ready to die yet, are you, Pella?” Her hand stayed firm on the breather when he batted at it. “It shows in the eyes when someone’s not ready to die yet. So, if you want that next breath, then the one that comes after, you tell me the goddamn truth. You know Robert Lowell. You knew Edwina Spring.”

“Let go of it.” He wheezed in air. “I’ll have you up on charges.”

“You’ll be dead, and the dead don’t scare me. You knew them. Next breath, Pella, say yes.”

“Yes, yes.” He shoved his hand at Eve’s, and the harsh sound of his labored breath eased when she lifted it. “Yes, I knew them. But not to speak to. They were the elite. I was only a soldier. Get the hell away from me.”

“Not a chance. Tell me what you know.”

Pella’s eyes ticked over to Roarke, back to Eve. Then, for a moment, he simply closed them. “He was about my age—a few years younger—but he didn’t serve. Soft.” Pella’s hand trembled a little as it came up, stroked over the breather to be sure it was in the correct position. “Soft look about him, and he had his family money at his back, of course. His type never got dirty, never risked their own skin. She…I need water.”

Eve glanced over, saw the cup with a straw on the bedside table. She picked it up, held it out.

“I can’t hold the damn thing. It’s bad today. Worse since you got here.”

Saying nothing, she angled it down so he could guide the straw with a trembling hand to the opening in the breather.

“What about her?”

“Beautiful. Young, elegant, a voice like an angel. She would come to the base sometimes, sing for us. Opera, almost always Italian opera. She’d break your heart with every note.”

“You have a thing for her, Pella?”

“Bitch,” he muttered. “What would you know of real love? Therese was everything. But I loved what Edwina was, what she brought us. Hope and beauty.”

“She came to the base on Broome?”

“Yes, on Broome.”

“They lived there, didn’t they?”

“No. Before I think, but not during the fighting, not while soldiers were based there. After, who the hell knows, who the hell cares? But when I was assigned there, they didn’t live in the base on Broome. They had another place, another place on the West Side.”

“Where?”

“It was a long time ago. I was never there, not a foot soldier like me. Some of the others went, officers, and you heard things. Yeah, some of the officers, and the Stealths.”

She felt the next click. “The coverts?”

“Yes. You’d hear things. I heard things.” He closed his eyes. “It hurts to go back there.” For the first time, his voice sounded weak. “And I can’t stop going back there.”

“I’m sorry for all you lost, Mr. Pella.” And in that moment she was. “But Ariel Greenfeld is alive, and she needs help. What did you hear back then that might help her?”

“How the hell do I know?”

“It would have to do with her, with Edwina Spring. She died, did she?”

“Everyone dies.” But his hand came to his breather again, and his eyes watched Eve warily over it. “I heard her—Edwina—talking to a soldier I knew. Young first lieutenant, sent down from upstate. Can’t remember his name. They’d slip off when she’d come to sing. Or you could see the way they looked at each other. The way Therese and I looked at each other.”

“They were lovers?”

“Probably. Or wanted to be. She was young, a lot younger than Taker.”

“Who? Taker?”

“That’s what they called Lowell—James Lowell.”

“Because he took the bodies the dead wagon brought in,” Eve said, remembering Dobbins’s comment.

“That’s right. She was half his age, vital, beautiful. He was too damn old for her, and…and there was something in his eyes. In the old man’s, too, his father. Something in their eyes that brought the hair up on the back of the neck.”

“They found out about her and the soldier.”

“Yes. I think they were going to run away. He wouldn’t have been the first to desert, or the last. It was summer. We had the sector secured, temporarily in any case. I went out, just to walk, to remind myself what we were fighting for. I heard them talking, behind one of the supply tents. Her voice, you couldn’t mistake it for anyone else’s. They were talking about going north, up into the mountains. A lot of people had fled the city for the mountains, the country, and he still had family up that way.”

“She was going to leave her husband, run off with this soldier.” And Robert Lowell, Eve calculated, would have been around twenty.

“I didn’t let them know I was there. I wouldn’t have turned him in. I knew what it was to love someone, and be afraid for her.

“I backtracked a little, then crossed the street so they wouldn’t know I’d been close. Give them privacy, you know. Fucking little privacy back then. And I saw him, on the other side of the tent, listening to them.”

“Lowell,” Eve realized. “The younger one.”

“He looked like he was in a trance. I’d heard he had a mental condition. There were whispers, but I thought it was just the excuse they used to keep him out of the fight. But when I looked across the street, when I looked at him, there was something not right. No, not right at all. I need water.”

Once again, Eve lifted the cup and straw to his mouth.

“He turned them in.”

“He must have. There was nothing I could do, not with him there. I was going to warn them later, warn the lieutenant about the kid. But I never got the chance. I went up the block, debating with myself on what I should or shouldn’t do—wanted to talk to Therese about it first. They were gone when I came back. The soldier off on assignment, and Edwina back home. I never saw either of them alive again.”

“What happened to them?”

“It was more than a week later.” His voice was tiring, genuinely, she judged. She wouldn’t get much more. “The soldier was listed as AWOL, and she hadn’t been back. I thought they’d gotten away. Then one night, I went out for sentry duty. She was on the sidewalk. No one would ever say how whoever had tossed her there had gotten through the posts. She was dead.”

A tear slid out of his eye, tracked around the side of the breather. “I’d seen bodies like that before, I knew how they came to be like that.”

“Torture?”

“They’d done despicable things to her, then tossed her, naked and mangled, on the street like garbage. They’d shorn off her hair, and had ripped up her face, but I knew who she was. They’d left her wearing the Tree of Life necklace she always wore. As if to make certain there would be no mistake.”

“You thought the Lowells did it? Her husband, father-in-law, stepson.”

“They said she’d been taken and tortured by the enemy, but it was a lie. I’d seen that kind of work before, and it had been on the enemy. The old man was a torturer. Everyone knew it, and everyone was careful not to speak of it too loudly. If they believed a prisoner had information, they took him to Robert Lowell—the old one.

“When they came to get her, he wept like a baby, the one you’re looking for now.” Pella’s eyes opened, and they were fierce despite his flagging voice. “When he saw her under the sheet we covered her with, he wept like a woman. Two days later, I lost Therese. Nothing mattered after that.”

“Why didn’t you tell the police this nine years ago when these murders started?”

“I didn’t think of a dead woman from a lifetime ago. I never thought of it, nor of her. Why would I? Then, I saw that sketch. A long time ago, but I thought there was something familiar. When you came yesterday, I knew who he was.”

“If you’d given me this yesterday, given me his name, you might have spared Ariel twenty-four hours of pain.”

Pella just turned his head away and closed his eyes. “We all have pain.”

R
iding on disgust, Eve stormed out of Pella’s town house. “Miserable bastard. I need any and all properties owned by the Lowells, or Edwina Spring, during the Urbans. Get out that damn golden shovel and dig.”