Survivor in Death (37 page)

“Only seven.” His lips twisted. “You're way off.”

“That may be, but it's the seven that concern us at the moment.”

Taking his cue, McNab kept his voice as brittle as Turnbill's, and drew crime scene photos from his field bag. “Here's a couple to start.”

He'd gone straight to the kids, and saw by the way Roxanne paled, it had been the right move. “They were sleeping when he cut their throats. I guess that's a mercy.”

“Oh God.” Roxanne wrapped her arms around her belly. “Oh my God.”

“You've got no right to come in here and do this.”

“Oh yeah.” McNab's eyes were merciless as they met Turnbill's. “We do.”

“McNab.” Peabody murmured it, deliberately reached out and pulled back the photos. “I'm sorry. Sorry to disturb you, sorry to upset you. We need your help.”

“We don't know anything.” Turnbill put his arm around his wife's shoulders. “We just want to be left alone.”

“You left high-powered, high-paying jobs six years ago,” McNab began. “Why?”

“That's none of your--”

“Joshua.” Roxanne shook her head. “I need to sit down. Let's just sit down.”

She turned into a living room showing the chaotic debris of young children, the comfortable wear of family. Roxanne sat, gripped her husband's hand. “How do you know he did it? He's gotten away with so much for so long, how do you know?”

“We have evidence linking him to the crimes. Those children, their parents, and a domestic were all murdered in their beds. Grant Swisher was your sister's attorney in her divorce and custody case.”

“Six years ago,” she replied. “Yes, he could wait six years. He could wait sixty.”

“Do you have any idea where he is?”

“None. He leaves us alone now. He leaves us alone. We're not important anymore. We don't want to be.”

“Where's your sister?” McNab demanded, and Roxanne jerked.

“She's dead. He killed her.”

“We believe he's capable of doing so.” Peabody kept her eyes level on Roxanne's. “But he hasn't. Not yet. What if he finds her before we find him? What if you have some information and refuse to cooperate with us, impede our investigation long enough for him to hunt her down?”

“I don't know where she is.” Weary tears filled Roxanne's eyes. “Her, my nephew, my niece. I haven't seen them in six years.”

“But you know she's alive. You know she got away from him.”

“I thought she was dead. For two years. I went to the police, but they couldn't help. I thought he'd killed them. And then--”

“You don't have to do this, Roxie.” Her husband drew her closer. “You don't have to go through this again.”

“I don't know what to do. What if he comes here? What if he does, after all this time? Our babies, Joshua.”

“We're safe here.”

“You've got a good security system.” McNab drew Turnbill's attention back to him. “So did the Swishers. The nice family on the Upper West Side he slaughtered. Their good security system didn't help them.”

“We'll help you,” Peabody assured them. “We'll arrange for police protection for you, for your family. We took private transpo out of New York, under the radar. He doesn't know we're here. He doesn't, at this time, know we're looking for him. The longer it takes to find him, the better the chance he'll know.”

“When will this be over?”

“When we find him.” McNab shut down on compassion as the tears slid down Roxanne's cheeks. “We'll find him sooner with your help.”

“Joshua. Please, would you get me some water?”

He studied her face, then nodded. “Are you sure?” he asked as he rose. “Roxie, are you sure?”

“No, but I know I don't want to live like this.” She took slow breaths as he left the room. “It's worse for him, I think. Worse. He works so hard for so little. We were happy in New York. Such an exciting city, full of so much energy. We both had careers we loved, we were good at. We'd just bought a townhouse. Because I was pregnant. My sister ...”

She trailed off, managed a smile when her husband came in with a glass of water. “Thanks, honey. My sister was damaged, I guess you could say. He damaged her. Years of abuse, physical, emotional, mental. I tried to get her to leave, to get help. I'd talk to her, but she was too afraid, or too entrenched, and I was the little sister who didn't understand. It was her fault, you see. I did a lot of studying on battered syndrome in those days. I'm sure you've seen your share of it.”

“Too much,” Peabody agreed.

“He was worse than anything, than anybody. Not just because she was my sister. It's not that he likes to cause pain, to harm. It's that it means nothing to him. He might snap the bone in her finger for having dinner on the table two minutes late--according to his schedule--then sit down and eat a hot meal without a single flicker of emotion. Can you imagine living like that?”

“No, ma'am. No,” Peabody repeated, “I can't.”

“She was property to him, Dian and the children. It was when he began to hurt the children that she was able to pull out of the mire. He'd already damaged them, too, but she thought she was protecting them, keeping the family together. He brutalized them, punishments, his brand of discipline. Solitary confinement, he'd call it, or he'd make them stand in cold showers for an hour, deny them food for two days. Once he cut off all of my niece's hair because he said she'd taken too long brushing it. But then he began to beat Jack, my nephew. Toughen him up, he claimed. One day, when Roger was out, she found her son with Roger's army-issue stunner. He'd put it on full, he was holding it here . . .”

She pressed her fingers to the pulse in her throat. “He was going to kill himself. This eight-year-old boy was going to end his own life rather than face another day with that monster. It woke her up. She left. She took the kids, nothing else. She didn't even pack a bag. There were shelters I'd told her about, and she ran to one.”

Roxanne closed her eyes, drank deeply. “I don't know if she'd have gone through with it, expect for the children. But once she did, it was like a miracle. She got herself back. And a few weeks later, she hired a lawyer. It was horrible, going through the trial, but she did it. She stood up to him, and she won.”

“She never intended to adhere to the conditions, to stay in New York, to allow him to see the kids again,” Peabody said.

“I don't know. She never told me, never even hinted, but no, I think not. I think she must have planned to run all along. I don't know how else she could have managed to get away from him.”

“There are undergrounds, for people in her situation.”

“Yes. I didn't know then. When she vanished, I was sure he'd killed her and the kids. He's not only capable, but he has the means, the training. Even when he took me, I thought--”

“He abducted you?”

“I was on the subway coming home, and I felt a little sting.” She cupped a hand around her biceps. “I felt sick and dizzy--and I don't remember. I remember waking up, still sick. It was a room, a big room. No windows and just this ugly greenish light. He'd taken my clothes, all of my clothes.”

She pressed her lips together until they went white, reached blindly for her husband's hand. “I was on the floor, my hands in restraints. And as I woke I was lifted up, by some sort of pulley, so that I was standing, had to stand on my toes. I was six months pregnant with Ben.”

Turnbill pressed his face into his wife's shoulder, and Peabody could see now that he wept.

“He stepped in front of me. He had some sort of rod. He said, 'Where is my wife?' Even before I could answer, he pressed the tip of the rod here.” She laid a hand between her breasts. “Horrible pain, electrical shock. He told me, very calmly, that he had the rod on low, and would up the power every time I lied.

“I told him I knew he'd killed her, and he shocked me again. And again and again. I begged, I screamed, I pleaded, for myself, for my baby. He left me there, I don't know how long, then he came back and did it all again.”

“He had her over twelve hours.” Turnbill sucked in breath, ignored the tears on his face. “The police--you can't file a report, a missing person's, that soon. I tried, but they said it wasn't enough time, when I called. But it was a lifetime, for both of us. It was a miracle she didn't miscarry. When he was done with her, he dumped her on the sidewalk in Times Square.”

“He believed me, finally. He must have known that I would've told him anything just to stop the pain. So he believed me, and before he knocked me out again, he told me if I went to the police--if I implicated him in any way--he would find me again. He would cut the brat out of my belly and slit its throat.”

“Roxanne.” Peabody spoke quietly. “I know this is very hard for you to speak about. But I need to know: Was Kirkendall alone when he held you?”

“No. He had that bastard with him. They were joined at the hip, claimed to be brothers. Isaac, Isaac Clinton. They were in the army together. He ... he sat at some sort of console, controls. I don't know. I think he was studying some kind of readout. They had some sort of hookup on me, like in a hospital. He sat, the whole time Roger tortured me, and he never spoke. Not one word. At least not when I was conscious.”

“Was there anyone else?”

“I'm not sure. Sometimes I thought I heard voices, maybe a woman's. But I was out of my mind. I didn't see anyone else, and I was unconscious when they took me out, when they tossed me onto the street.”

“You didn't tell the police that you knew your abductors?”

“When I ... when I came out of it, I was in the hospital. I was afraid for my life, for my baby's life. So I said nothing. I told them I couldn't remember anything.”

“What do you expect--” Turnbill began, but Peabody sent him a look of such sympathy his voice broke.

“I expect I would have done exactly the same,” she told him. “I expect my only clear thought would be to protect my child, my husband, myself.”

“We said nothing,” Roxanne continued, her voice a little stronger.

“We left New York, we left our lives there, and came here. My parents live nearby. I realized she'd run--Dian--but I thought he'd find her. Kill her. Two years, I was sure she was gone. Then I answered the 'link. She'd blocked the video, but she said my name. She said my name and we're safe. That's all. She broke the connection. I get those calls every few months, sometimes more than a year between. That's all she ever says.”

“When was the last time she contacted you?”

“Three weeks ago. I don't know where she is, and if I did I wouldn't tell you, for the same reasons I said nothing after the abduction. We've made a life here. We have two sons now, and they're happy. This is their home. And still, we live in a prison because of this one man. I'm afraid every day, every single day.”

“We're going to find him, Roxanne, and when we do, you won't have to be afraid again. Tell me about the room where they held you,” Peabody said. “Every detail you remember.”

EVE WAS BACK AT HER DESK WHEN ROARKE CAME into her office. He immediately sniffed the air.

“You had a burger?”

“What? No. Baxter, Trueheart. Let cops loose near food, it's a freeforall. They'd want a place in the city, wouldn't they?”

“Baxter and Trueheart? Is there something about their relationship I've missed?”

“What?”

“You keep saying that. You need to eat.”

Her mind cleared slightly as he moved into the kitchen. “I'm not talking about Baxter and Trueheart.”

“I'm perfectly aware of that. And yes, I agree. Kirkendall and associates would want a place in the city. Why risk running into pesky commuter traffic, or pesky commuter traffic cops?”

“I bet it's Upper West.”

“We agree again.” He came back in with two plates, and this time Eve sniffed the air. “What is that?”

“Lasagna.” Veggie lasagna, he thought. One of the easiest ways to get something green in her system that wasn't a gumdrop was to disguise it in pasta.

“Why do you agree? About the Upper West?”

He set one of the plates in front of her, the other across the desk. Then went to get a chair, and two glasses of wine. When a man wanted to eat a meal with his wife, and his wife was Eve, Roarke thought, the man learned to make adjustments.

“Considerable time and effort went into casing out the Swisher property. Not only the electronics, but lifestyle. They knew where to go and when to go. So--”

He set her wine down, tapped his glass against it, then sat. “More efficient to have a location near the target point. You can do drivebys, walk-bys, test your jammers and so on against their system. And you'd want to watch them.”

She watched him as she cut into the lasagna. “Because you'd want to see them alive before you saw them dead.”

“Oh yes. It's personal. So though the kill is clean and quick, you'd want the rush beforehand. Look at them, they don't know I have the power to end them. When and how I like.”

“It's a little strange being hooked up with someone who can think that much like a killer.”

He lifted his glass to her. “I'll say precisely the same. And make a considerable wager that your thoughts ran parallel to mine.”

“Yeah, you win.” She sampled the lasagna. Something in there tasted like spinach. But it wasn't half bad. “You come up with anything for me?”

“I'm a little hurt you'd have to ask. Eat first. You've heard from Peabody ?”

“They're on their way back. Want to hear the roundup?”

“Of course.”

She told him while they ate.

“Torturing a pregnant woman,” Roarke commented. “Lower and lower. But he should've killed her, in hindsight. It seems his long suffering wife learned enough from him to keep her location--more likely locations, as she'd be smarter to move every few months at least-- from everyone. He kept the sister alive assuming that his wife would, at some point, run to her family.”

“Then they'd all be dispensable. I really want this guy.”

This time Roarke reached over, laid a hand on hers. “I know.”

“Do you? He's not like my father. There's a world of difference, but somehow they're exactly the same.”

“Brutalizing his children, day after day. Training them in his own sick fashion. Breaking their spirit, destroying their innocence, driving a young boy to contemplate suicide. The difference between him and your father, Eve, is Kirkendall has more skill, more training, and a sharper brain. But inside, they couldn't be more alike.”