Devoted in Death (22 page)

“The lieutenant tells me you’ve been at this since yesterday. I expect you could use a beer.”

The wary look on his face lifted with an easy grin. “I sure wouldn’t turn one down.”

“Eve?”

“Yeah, beer’s great. I’ll get it. And food, I guess. Pizza work?”

Banner flashed that grin a second time. “When doesn’t it?”

“Cops. The same everywhere. Arkansas, is it?” Roarke asked Banner while Eve went into the kitchen.

“Silby’s Pond. Seems a long ways from here.”

“In the Ozarks, isn’t it? Lovely country there.”

“You’ve been?”

“Around and about. And how did you come to being with the police?”

“Circular route, I’d guess. I always figured to work the family farm, did some deputy work summers when there was time for it – and a need with tourists and such. But, well, the farm’s been in the family five generations, and you’ve got an obligation there. But my daddy set me down one night a few years back, and he said he could see my heart wasn’t in it, and you had to do what your heart was in. That was police work for me.”

“Your father sounds like a wise man. Thanks, darling,” he said as Eve brought out the beer.

“He is, and a good farmer. So’s my sister and her man, so the farm’s in good hands. I help out when there’s time, but I wanted to be a cop. Good beer. We brew our own – family recipe. I’m going to send you some after I get home.”

“Clomp and prance,” Eve said and got a puzzled look from Banner. “Peabody and McNab.”

“I’ll see to the pizza,” Roarke said as they came in.

“Did I hear pizza?” McNab bounced in, but was smart enough to release Peabody’s hand at Eve’s narrowed stare.

“And beer. You’d rather a glass of wine, Peabody.”

“If it’s okay.”

“One,” Eve decreed. “Then it’s coffee and it’s work. Santiago checked in.”

While Roarke set up the meal, Eve filled in the others.

“What kind of bumfuck bozos don’t check for blood at a crime scene?” McNab glanced over at Banner. “Sorry.”

“It’s hard to take offense. They weren’t my bumfuck bozos, but close enough.”

As the others did, he helped himself to a slice. Bit in. Sat, just sat.

“This is
pizza
. Is it like the coffee?” he asked Eve.

“It’s New York. Morris and DeWinter should already have the first remains. She expedited, and they were going to start tonight.”

“That’s quick work.”

“Time’s the issue. When they verify these two victims are part of our stream, we can pull in more resources. It’s Santiago and Carmichael we need. We verify the first victim, we’re closer to ID’ing the killers. The first is going to be closer to home, closer to where they knew – and were known. The first is key.”

She looked toward the board. “But Campbell may not have time for that.” As she rose, Banner started to get to his feet. “Sit. Eat. I want to update the board. It helps me think.”

She got to work. “Why don’t you brief the others on the two stops we made?” she said to Banner.

“The lieutenant’s running searches on missings who have homes or businesses in the city here, figuring maybe they got somebody we haven’t found, and are using their place for their killing room.”

“Have to be private,” Roarke speculated. “Soundproofed. Even gagged, such matters made noise. And low security or they’d show on disc when bringing in a victim.”

“We stopped at two, eliminated them. Regular civilians living there.”

“Others to eliminate,” Eve said. “We’ll spread out tomorrow, bring in some uniforms. They’ve got a place, one they’re comfortable in. One they could take Kuper to. One where they’re working on Campbell right now.”

“Downtown,” Roarke added.

“Probability’s high. Peabody, put the sector on screen.”

While they ate, while they worked, Jayla Campbell struggled to rise above the pain. Going under it was a kind of escape, but they always brought her back, gave more.

She’d stopped trying to understand it. It simply was.

How long she couldn’t tell, not any longer. Hours, days, weeks. There was only pain and fear, and the certainty there would be more.

They’d had sex on the floor, against the wall, sometimes blessedly out of sight. Though she could hear them grunting or wailing, laughing.

They liked when she tried to scream, when she cried and begged. So she tried not to, but sometimes she couldn’t stop. Just couldn’t stop.

They looked so ordinary. Monsters shouldn’t look so ordinary, so much like ordinary people. The woman was pretty, in a hard, slutty sort of way, and the man – good-looking, sort of gangly and… stupid, she thought now.

He went along with anything the woman said.

Cut here, she’d say – and he would.

They were eating now, and the smell of the Chinese takeaway made her want to gag. She hadn’t eaten since the party. Sometimes they dribbled water in her mouth, but they never gave her food. Sometimes the water was laced with salt, and they laughed and laughed when she choked.

Monsters shouldn’t look like ordinary people.

They’d taken her clothes, but she’d gotten over the worst of that. Neither of them touched her in a sexual way – as if she cared about that now. They saved the sex for each other.

They were naked, too, as they ate, and sometimes they smeared sauce on each other and licked it off.

That, too, made her want to gag. At least she could close her eyes or turn her head. When they were involved in each other, she barely existed for them.

She wished she would stop existing for them.

They talked eagerly, avidly.

He said they were star-crossed lovers. The woman – Ella-Loo – loved when he quoted Shakespeare or talked about how they were lovers like Bonnie and Clyde.

She didn’t know who Bonnie and Clyde were, but the woman did; and she’d laugh and strike poses that made the man – Darryl – moan or lick his lips.

She listened to them when she could, to every word. If she lived – and she didn’t believe she would, but
if
– she would remember everything. She would tell the police everything. And she would hope with every cell in her pain-filled body, the police killed them in the bloodiest, most brutal, most horrible way possible.

She wanted to kill them with her own hands.

She wanted her mother. She wanted Kari. Sometimes when she floated away, she wanted Luke, and his shy smile.

She wanted anything and anyone who wasn’t this. Anything that wasn’t strapped to a table under bright lights with something round and hard between her teeth, something where she couldn’t feel her own blood oozing out of her body, or the jagged pain of bones broken and rubbing viciously together if she moved even an inch to try to find comfort.

There was no comfort.

“It’s something different, and daring,” the woman was saying. “We don’t want to get bored, right, honey?”

“Are you bored, Ella-Loo?”

“Not with you, baby. Never! You’re my hero. But just think how exciting. If we did
two
, at one time. If we kept them going longer. Oh, it makes me wet just thinking of it.”

“I like you wet.”

He stuck his hand between the woman’s legs. Jayla closed her eyes.

“I’d be wetter, hotter with two. You can pick this time. Oh, yes! Get down there, baby, and get to work.”

She yelped, she laughed, she groaned. “Fuck me hard, baby, hard! Then let’s go get another one. Let’s get a man. Maybe we can make them fuck each other. Let’s make him rape her while we watch. Oh, oh,
Darryl
!”

“Anything you want. Anything. I love you, Ella-Loo.”

“Make me scream, Darryl. Make me scream. Then let’s go get another.”

And she smiled, feral and fierce, turning her head to look at Jayla as Darryl drove and drove and drove into her until sweat dripped off his face.

She smiled her monster smile as she came.

In the office, Roarke listened as the room of cops worked theories, ran searches. He listened while Eve spoke to Morris on the ’link, while she consulted with Mira.

His mind worked back to the first – the one they believed was the first.

A businessman killed on the side of the road. No vehicles left behind. Battered – fought back – smashed skull.

Nothing like the others, he thought. No torture, no sense of time taken. But he trusted his wife’s instincts.

The first, perhaps an accident, or a matter of impulse. The spark, possible, for all that came after.

“Someone towed it off.”

Distracted, a little annoyed, Eve glanced around. “What?”

“You’ve two options on your first – on this Jansen. They had a second vehicle, and drove off separately, or they left a vehicle behind.”

“No vehicle was recovered or reported on scene.”

“And you’ve never heard of auto theft I’m supposing. Driving off in two, it’s not impossible, of course, but then they’d have to dispose of one, and they’d not be together after the kill – when the blood would be high.”

“Wait.” She held up her hand to ward off comments, narrowed her eyes. “When the blood would be high,” she repeated. “If this is the first, if this started the ball rolling for them, it would be that high after the kill. Driving off separately? Cooldown period. So, less likely. But no vehicle reported or recovered.”

“Darling Eve,” he said, and had Banner glancing at her sideways, “it’s a very remote and rural area, yes?”

“So?”

“And I’ll wager more than a pint there’d be a towing service or two, and beyond that – a farming sort of area? Those with tow bars handy enough. And it’s: Look there, mate, at that car/truck/van on the side of the road. Out you get to have a look. It may be it’s broken down —”

“Which would be a reason to boost another car, okay.”

“Some mechanical problem, that may be. Or it’s been previously boosted, and time to switch out. But either way, an enterprising soul might tow it off, strip it down or alter the van and resell it. Surely even in that area, they’d have a chop shop handy enough, or someone who’d pay to have another vehicle on their land.”

When she frowned, he smiled.

“Speaking hypothetically, of course, one who once made a bit of a living boosting vehicles may have cruised along such back roads and byways for just such an opportunity.”

“Slapping a tow bar on it, hauling it off to another location.”

“And making a tidy little profit through little effort,” Roarke concluded. “You might have your people down there put the arm on towing companies, farmers, mechanics and such.”

He looked over at Banner. “Would you have such events in Arkansas, Will?”

“Could be. There was a guy the next county over who ran a chop shop. They picked cars off the interstate mostly, but hit the back roads, too. I never thought of it. People know people, and you hear tell.”

Eve already had her ’link out. “Carmichael.”

“About to contact you, LT. Having some Arkansas barbecue, and have to echo Santiago. Yee-haw. The coroner —”

“Wait on that. I want you to push this angle, and now. Towing company, mechanics, garages, maybe little farms or whatever the fuck. Ability to tow away a vehicle. Let’s theorize,” she began.

When she’d finished, clicked off, she looked over at Roarke. “It’s a good angle. The locals should have been all over it. You’re handy.”

“I do my best.”

“Maybe it happened that way. I like the logic of it. Maybe they boosted whatever they dumped – or just dumped. Either way it could take us back to the prior step, the earlier location. It may give us names.”

She looked at the board, at Jayla. “Coffee,” she said.

“I’m all about that,” Banner agreed. “Dallas, I may know somebody who knows somebody around there. I’m a little pissed I didn’t think of it before.”

“Spend any time boosting cars, Banner?”

“I didn’t, but I can’t claim not to know some who did. I may be able to help your people down there.”

“Then get on it. Peabody?”

“Sir.”

“Coffee. Lots. Now.”

While they worked the new angle, Ella-Loo, in a micro skirt taken off an LC they’d killed and whose name she’d forgotten, struggled with a bulky armchair.

She was freezing in the skirt, in fishnets, and a short, fake leather jacket – taken off yet another victim – but inside she was furnace hot.

The guy came bustling along, ’link in hand, hood of his parka thrown up. “Yeah, yeah, I’m on my way. Jeez, it’s like the South Pole out here tonight. I’m nearly there. Fire it up!”

“Hey, cutie?”

She called out, shook back her hair, saw him turn his head, give her the eye.

“Back to you,” he said into the ’link and stuffed it in his pocket. “What’s shaking, baby?”

“Could you just give me a hand, for one little minute? I can’t lift this silly thing in here, and I need to get it in before my completely
ex-
boyfriend comes back.”

“Sure, no prob. Bad breakup?”

“So bad. He hit me!”

“Ah, come on.” The guy hunkered down to lift the chair. “You’re better off. I can get this if you take that side and —”

Darryl leaped in, weighted sap – Ella-Loo’s idea – whacking down on the back of his head.

He made a sound like a balloon letting the air out, and crumpled.

“Quick, baby, quick, before somebody comes!”

It took a couple of hard hefts to get him and the old, reliable armchair in the back of the van. Ella-Loo scrambled in after, happily giving the groaning man another good whack before yanking the duct tape around his wrists.

“Let’s go, baby! We got him good. I can’t wait! I’m already wet. I’m already hot.”

“Save it for me,” Darryl called, zipping out to drive the short two blocks back home.

13

Jayla knew struggling only caused more pain, but she went into a frenzy of it when she heard them leave. She screamed against the gag until her throat felt burned and bloody, twisted her body, strained up with her arms with everything she had left in her.

It wasn’t enough.

Fresh wounds opened on her wrists, her ankles so the thick tape binding them rubbed raw and wet. Her fight cracked the NuSkin they’d slapped on some of her wounds, so they seeped again. She tasted her own tears and hysteria until, exhausted, she went still.