Thankless in Death (21 page)

“Where is it? How is it?”

“It’s in the backseat console. Just a mini,” he said as he handed her the shake. “It’ll only hold a few basics. A couple of shakes, coffee—”

“Coffee?”

He gave her a long look, dry as dust. “It must be love.”

“Coffee,” she said again.

“A few protein bars as well. You told me you’d read the manual.”

“I did. Most of it. Some of it. A little of it,” she admitted. And because it must have been love, drank the shake. It didn’t suck.

“Why aren’t you tired? Why don’t you have to have a protein shake?”

“Because I had a decent lunch and a little tea with biscuits a couple hours ago.”

“I was chasing a killer a couple hours ago.”

“Maybe if you’d eaten something you’d have caught him.”

“Would not. Lucky bastard. Who gets in and out of a health clinic inside thirty minutes? Nobody. But he does. It’s been breaking his way, but with this”—she jerked her chin toward the comp—“maybe it’ll start breaking mine.”

She pulled up at the morgue.

“If you don’t need me to come in, I’ll start working on that break.”

“Yeah.” She started to get out, hesitated, then put her seat back. Reaching under, she tugged, then pulled out a candy bar with sticky tape crossed over the wrapper.

“Clever girl.”

“That damn candy thief can’t get into a shielded vehicle, so I keep emergency candy.” She broke it in half, handed him a share. “It is love,” she confirmed, then climbed out.

Amused, and since he knew her feelings about candy, touched, he unwrapped it while he began the work.

Interesting, he thought after his initial scan. And challenging, he added after a second, deeper one.

He lost track of time with that interest and challenge, pausing only to make or take ’link tags if they were relevant or important enough.

He came out of his work zone when Eve opened the car door again.

She sat, put her head back, shut her eyes.

So he set the work aside altogether, laid a hand over hers, said nothing.

“Morris figures he had her for about eighteen hours. Taped and
tied to a chair in her home office. He’d bashed her good, back of the head first. A bat again. She had a mild concussion, probably a blinding headache. She was severely dehydrated so it’s unlikely he gave her any food or water. Several blows to the face—hand, fist. Some of the blood and urine in her lap was canine. She had a little dog. He’d busted it up some, it’s at the vet. She’d torn her wrists, back of her hands, her ankles.”

Ah, God, he thought, but said nothing.

“She tore the skin off trying to get the tape loose. Dislocated shoulder. We think she did that right before or when he was killing her, smothering her with a plastic bag over her head. We think she managed to tip the chair over so it fell on his foot. He has a couple of broken toes and a hairline fracture in his foot. I think she did that. She didn’t let him stroll away. She made him pay a little. At least a little.”

“Who was she?” Roarke asked quietly.

“A good teacher, a good neighbor. A woman who loved her damn dog. I think he used that. Everyone said she loved the dog, the dog was her family. I don’t see her just doing whatever he wanted, but if he threatened to hurt what she loved, threatened her family, she probably would. At least try to stall him. And then hurt him when she knew she wouldn’t live through it.”

“You’ll find him.”

She glanced at the comp. “Will I?”

“You will, yes. This part may not be quick, but it’ll be done. This unit wasn’t wiped by an amateur. It’s thorough and professional.”

“He must’ve forced her to do it.”

“When did she die? The time, I mean.”

“Right about sixteen hundred.”

“Then no. It was done shortly after.”

“No way he could do it if you say it’s thorough and professional. He doesn’t have the chops. It’s … the droid,” she realized. “She had a droid, and she would’ve programmed it herself. He had the droid wipe the comps. There’s nothing there?”

“There’s always something. It’s the bringing it back, the finding it that’s the trick. I’ll do better with this in my own lab. I’ll work the financial data Feeney’s sent me until we get home.”

She nodded, straightened, then called up the list Peabody had sent her, and followed the computer’s suggestion for route.

S
he was tired, Eve realized when she came to the last address. At this point she just wanted home, just to get inside her own space, work this thing through.

“I’ll go in with you this time,” Roarke said. “I’ve done most of what I can this way.”

“Okay. This is Reinhold’s former Little League coach. He benched Reinhold for not listening, so Reinhold basically picked up his bat and went home.”

“And you think he’d kill this man for something that happened when he was a child?”

“I know he would,” Eve corrected. She lifted her badge to the security scanner of the squat, six-unit building. Waited for verification and clearance.

“They’re on two,” she told Roarke when they went inside. “Wayne Boyd, his wife Marianna. Two offspring, one in grad school, one in college.”

She chose the whistle-clean stairway, then knocked on 2-B, held her badge up to the security peep.

“Lieutenant Dallas?” came through the speaker.

“That’s right. I spoke with you earlier.”

“There’s someone with you?”

“My civilian consultant.”

It took another moment, but locks cleared, the door opened. Boyd stood cautiously studying both her and Roarke, a fit man in his late fifties who’d let a little gray sprinkle through his deep brown hair. He had a strong face, clear blue eyes, and beside him stood a burly, ugly dog whose study was anything but cautious.

“All right, Bruno, rest.”

The dog immediately leaned against Boyd’s side, and his tongue rolled out in a strange and goofy grin.

“We’re a little edgy since we heard about Ms. Farnsworth.”

“Understood. Can we come in?”

“Yeah, sorry. It’s okay, Marianna! It’s the police. I told her to go upstairs, in case. Our kids are here, for the holiday.”

He closed the door, stepped back into a large, high-ceilinged living space ringed by a railing along the second level.

The dog padded over to a square of dog-haired red rug and immediately began gnawing on some sort of bone.

Three people appeared on the second level—a slim blonde, a broad-shouldered man, early twenties, and a willow-slim brunette, a couple years younger than the man.

“They’re old enough to argue,” the blonde told Boyd, “and I’m outnumbered.”

“We’re all in this, Dad.” The young man led the way down.

“Okay. Okay, Flynn, you’re right. We’re all in it.”

“I should make coffee. Can I get you coffee?” Marianna asked.

Eve decided she could kill for coffee, even fake coffee. “That’d be great. Mr. Boyd, is there anyone else staying here at this time?”

“No, just us. Flynn and Sari will be here until Sunday when they go back to campus. We all have until Monday before routine starts again.”

“You’ve seen the morph of Reinhold. All of you?”

“Yes. None of us have seen him.”

“I hope I do,” Flynn muttered.

“Stop.” Boyd leveled a warning glare. “Flynn had Ms. Farnsworth in high school. We’re all shaken by what happened to her. Lieutenant, I benched the kid for a few games more than a decade ago. Maybe fifteen years ago. Not that he learned anything from it. When he didn’t listen at his at-bat, championship game and struck out, I didn’t come down on him. It’s Little League. They’re kids. You don’t dump on them.”

“He was a little bastard then, now he’s a bigger one.”

“Flynn,” his mother said wearily as she brought out coffee.

“It’s true.” Sari spoke up. “Maybe I didn’t really know him, but I remember he was mean and spiteful. And maybe I didn’t have Ms. Farnsworth, but I have friends who did, and they liked her.”

“I’m not making excuses for him. He’s sick,” Boyd continued. “And he needs to be caught, stopped. We’re going to be careful, just the way we talked about, but he’s got no reason to want to hurt any of us. He probably doesn’t even remember me.”

“Believe me when I say he does,” Eve corrected. “Believe me when I say he’s vindictive and he’s violent, and he’s looking to pay back every perceived slight. You’re one of them, Mr. Boyd. He used a baseball bat on three of his victims.”

“Oh my God, Wayne.”

Eve waited while Boyd took his wife’s hand, tried to keep her calm. The coffee, she decided, hit somewhere between the horrors of cop coffee and the joys of Roarke coffee. She couldn’t complain.

“Listen, I haven’t seen or spoken or had any contact with Jerry since he was about eleven.”

“Give me your assessment of him, at eleven. No filters, Mr. Boyd. Honest take, you worked with a lot of kids. You have a take.”

“Okay.” He shoved a hand back through his hair. “Lazy, arrogant, sneaky. Not wild, not right-in-your-face, but he had an edge, and under the edge, he— God, he was a kid.”

“Honest,” Eve repeated.

“Soft. Look at him crosswise, he took offense. A backbiter. He was pretty good at the game, and he’d have gotten better with some discipline, some practice. He’d miss or come late for practice all the time, always had an excuse.”

He still had his wife’s hand, and looked at her briefly before he turned his gaze back to Eve. “I didn’t like him, that’s honest. I was glad when he quit, and I felt bad about it. But he was a problem, and I wasn’t sorry to lose him.”

Eve nodded, glanced at Flynn. “He was a little bastard, now he’s a bigger one. And he’s a killer. You’ve got a good place here, pretty good security, but it wouldn’t take much to get past it. Not with some planning, and he’s learning how to plan. He slips in behind somebody, poses as maintenance, delivery. You’ve got a nice family, Mr. Boyd.”

“All right. All right. We’ll take protection.”

“That’s good. When any of you go out, don’t go alone. If you see him—and this goes for you, Flynn—don’t engage, get to a safe place, back home or a public place, and contact the police.”

“For how long?” Boyd asked.

“I wish I could tell you. Finding him, stopping him, is my priority.”

“She won’t stop,” Roarke added. “Until he’s in a cage, she won’t stop. I can promise you that.”

“You’ll have an officer here within the hour,” Eve said as she rose. “And around the clock until this is done.”

“Thank you. I’ll walk you out.”

“I’ll do it, Mom.” Sari got to her feet, walked to the door. “I know who you are,” she said quietly. “I recognize you both. I’ll tell them after you go. They’re too upset to recognize you, I think.” She managed a smile. “They’ll feel safer when they know who you are.”

“Stay together,” Eve advised. “That’s safer, too.”

THE LIGHTS OF HOME GLIMMERED AGAINST
the dark. As she drove through the gates the wind began to whip, lashing denuded trees, sending out a whistling groan.

It’s going to be a rough night
, she thought,
in more ways than one
.

As she got out of the car, that fierce wind clawed at her coat, sent it billowing.

“What?” she demanded when Roarke grinned at her.

“The wind, the gloom, the halos of light. You look like some otherworldly warrior queen about to battle.”

“I don’t know about that, but the battle sounds about right.”

She pushed her way in, assumed the first stage of battle started in the foyer as Summerset gave her a cool stare.

“Ah, you did remember where you live.”

“I keep hoping you’ll forget.”

He merely shifted his attention to Roarke as Eve shrugged out of her coat, and the cat hurried over to rub against her legs.

“Your aunt contacted me to let you know your family will arrive tomorrow as planned. I estimate their ETA here at two
P.M
. our time.”

“Good. I’ll do what I can to be here for their arrival.”

“I should hope. Richard DeBlass also confirmed. They arrived in New York this evening. The children are very excited.” His eyes pinned Eve now. “Nixie is particularly excited to see you, be here with you.”

“I’ll be here,” Eve snapped back. Sometime. Somehow. God.

And because she could see Nixie as she first had—cowering, covered with her parents’ blood, shaking in the shower where she’d hidden, Eve went straight up the stairs and into her home office with a new weight on her shoulders.

“What am I supposed to do?” she demanded when Roarke came in behind her.

“Exactly what you need to do.” He set the comp down. “And right now? It’s eat dinner.”

“Jesus, lay off, will you? I have work. I need to update my board, check in with Peabody, Baxter, and Trueheart, and the cops I put on various protection details. I need to cross with Feeney and start pushing on hotels because the son of a bitch is
somewhere
. Add in rental units, property purchases because he’s got a pile of money now and you can bet your ass a spanking new ID. And, oh, while I’m doing that, I’m supposed to stuff food in my face, and worry about a freaking houseful of people and a holiday dinner. I can’t
think
with everybody crowding me.”

“It must be difficult,” he said in a voice deceptively, dangerously calm, “to be the only one in the city, possibly on the planet who can
catch this particular son of a bitch. Or, in fact, so many murdering sons of bitches. Harder yet when so many around you are inconsiderate enough to expect you to eat and sleep and have the occasional conversation. What a burden we are in your world.”

“That’s not what I mean. You know damn well—”

“I know I don’t have to stand here taking slaps because I have friends and family coming to our home. Or because you’re overstressed and jittery. So do as you please.”

He picked the comp up again, walked out.

“
Jittery?
” Appalled, deeply insulted, she balled her fists, stared down at the cat who stared back at her. “Where does he come off with that crap?”

Galahad turned around, stuck his tail in the air—adding further insult—and strolled out after Roarke.

“Right back at you,” she muttered. She stalked to her desk, kicked it, then ordered her computer to read out her incomings while she updated the board.

She made it nearly two minutes before she swore bitterly. “Computer, stop and save. Goddamn it.”

She started to ask the house system where he’d gone, then knew. He’d taken the evidence comp, so he’d gone to his lab.

Well, he didn’t get to walk away during a fight, and he especially didn’t get to walk away to spend time doing work for her so she’d feel shittier than she already did.

She tracked him down, shoved into his computer lab where he sat, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, hair tied back, a glass of wine in his hand, and his focus on the wiped comp.

“I am not jittery, and that’s a dumbass word.”

“As you like.”

“And you don’t get to do that.” She jabbed a finger at him. “You don’t get to respond in that reasonable voice that’s completely fake so I come off looking unreasonable. It’s fighting dirty.”

He spared her one cool look. “I fight as
I
like.”

“I don’t have time to fight. I’m trying to do my job because if I don’t somebody else is going to end up on a slab. Morris is going to start charging me rent.”

“Then go do your job, by all means, Lieutenant. I’m not standing in your way.”

“You are, too.” She snatched up his wine, took a gulp. “You’re screwing up my head, making me feel stupid and selfish and—”

“Jittery?” he suggested, and earned a burning, narrowed-eye stare.

“Call me that again, and I swear I’ll punch you.”

He stood. Nose to nose, eye to eye. “Try it. A bloody good brawl might do us both some good.”

She slapped the wineglass down again. “Oh, don’t tempt me.”

“I’d call it more a dare.” He smiled, very deliberately. “Unless you’re too jittery to follow through.”

She didn’t punch him; he’d be expecting that. Instead, she hooked her foot behind his, angled for a takedown. Which he countered, so momentum took them both down.

He tried to turn, take the brunt of the impact, but they both crashed, hard enough to jar bones on the floor of the lab. She scissored her legs, tried a roll that would’ve landed an elbow in his gut, but he’d always been slippery, and blocked it.

He used his superior weight, almost had her pinned. But she was slippery herself, slid clear. And nearly, very nearly, had her knee in his balls.

And she called his tone fighting dirty.

They grappled, rolling and bumping into stools, cabinets, each willing to take or give a few bruises, until he did manage to pin her—and she managed to press her knee, none too gently—against his balls.

His hair had come loose, and fell to curtain his face and hers. Breath came fast over the hum and click of equipment. His eyes, fiercely, furiously blue met her seething brown.

His heart, her heart, beat like war drums.

Then, in the flick of a switch his mouth was on hers, her legs wrapped around him. All the fury, the frustration, the insult, channeled into violent and primal need.

She nipped at his tongue, he tore at her shirt, all while that need, that violence, built and burned. Now they rolled, they grappled, to take in an urgent, almost vicious quest for release.

He filled his hands with her, filled his mouth with her, while his blood raged, while her body arched, quaked. She coiled under him, surrounded him, inflamed him beyond any thought of control.

He yanked her trousers down her hips, ripped away the thin, simple barrier and drove her to gasping, shuddering peak with his hands.

And more and more, from him, from her, in a wild whirlwind of mindless, reckless, impossible lust.

Soaked in the flood of dark pleasure, blind with greed for more, for all, she dragged him to her. Bridging up, she demanded that first savage thrust, then the next, the next. With her legs locked hard around him, she drove him, brutally as spurs to flanks, until he’d filled her. Until he’d emptied her. Until he’d emptied himself.

He collapsed on her, his breath gone, his mind gone. She’d destroyed him, he thought. She’d stripped him to the bone, then shattered him. Now she lay under him, limp, and he could feel the tremors, those aftershocks of crazed sex shake her.

Or him. Or both of them.

His. Every maddening, infuriating, fascinating, courageous inch of her. His.

And he’d change not one thing.

“It seems you had time for that.” His throat felt as if he’d swallowed fire—and he’d have given a million for the wine on his workstation—or the strength to stand and get it.

He barely managed to lift his head to look down at her. All flushed, all soft, all long, glinted whiskey-colored eyes.

“It was pretty quick.”

He smiled at that, and at the touch of her hand on his cheek after she spoke. He pressed his lips to her cheek in turn.

Now, with the anger and lust washed away, the love beneath stood solid and strong.

“I’m not jittery. Think of another word. I like your family, you know I do. It’s just … right now, with everything, all of them, it’s …”

“A bit overwhelming.”

She thought about it. “That’s okay. Overwhelming’s okay. When we went there last summer, it was mostly—well, except for the brief pause for the dead body that was
not
my case—hanging out, drinking some beer.”

“I understand that perfectly well.”

“I guess, maybe. And add on Nixie. It’s not fair, it’s not right, but every time I see or talk to the kid I get twisted inside. It eases off, but it always starts out that way. I just see her the way she was when I found her, after she’d crawled through her parents’ blood and hidden. I can’t get why she wants to see me, talk to me. I must remind her of that, what she went through, what she lost. It messes with my head, and I can’t afford that right now.”

“If you brought her pain, Richard and Elizabeth wouldn’t allow her to see or talk to you.”

“I guess not.”

“Take this friends and family business as it comes for the next couple days. You give what you can, when you can. And as they are friends and family, every one of them understands what you are, what you do, and what it means.”

“Summerset.” She sneered it.

“And Summerset as well.” Roarke flicked a finger down the dent in her chin. “He enjoys drilling you, just as you do him.”

“Maybe.”

She closed her eyes a minute. “I was too late. And I see them in my head, see what he did to them because I was just too late.”

“Eve.” He pressed his lips to her brow. “You know better than to blame yourself.”

“Knowing better doesn’t always stop it. Everything I turn up says his parents were good people, did their best to be good parents, and because he didn’t get his way, he slaughtered them. He annihilated them. Lori Nuccio, just an ordinary girl, a good waitress, responsible, who went out of her way twice to help him get work. He debases her, ends her because she wouldn’t let him live with her after he stole from her, after he hit her.”

She curled to him when he wrapped around her, and found such comfort.

“And Farnsworth—a good teacher, the kind students remember, a woman who loved her ugly little dog and offered to make soup for her neighbors. He tormented her for hours, and he killed her because he was too lazy to do his goddamn schoolwork.”

“You know him. You’ll stop him.”

“I have to find the worthless bastard first.”

“And you will,” he repeated.

She let out a long breath. “I will.” Let it go, she ordered herself. Just let it go. “Anyway, sorry. Sort of.”

He smiled down at her. “Considering where we ended up, it’s hard to say the same.”

And she found she could smile back. “
Now
I’m hungry.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, it’s so.”

He levered off, sat back on his heels. Then just grinned at her.

Following the direction of his gaze, she looked down at herself. She wore one tattered sleeve of what had been her shirt, most of her support tank, and her weapon harness—with her pants bunched around the ankles of her boots—and her clutch piece.

“That was probably a nice shirt,” she thought aloud.

“It’s good you have more. As do I.”

He tugged off the rags of his own.

“We need to get the torn stuff into a recycler. I’m not having Summerset getting a load of it.”

“I keep reminding you he’s aware we have sex.”

“There’s sex, then there’s sex.”

He considered the torn clothes as she hiked up her pants again. “There is, yes. We’ll gather them up.” He offered a hand, pulled her to her feet. “Then what do you say we change, eat, then get to work.”

“I say it’s a plan.”

“And what do you say to spaghetti and meatballs?”

“I say it’s a genius plan.” She let herself lean on him a moment. “I’ve been pissed under it all, all day. It’s nothing to do with anything but the case, and it doesn’t do any good to get pissed about a case. I guess I needed to blow off some steam.”

“Happy to assist.”

She poked his bare chest. “You got your steam off, too, pal.”

“We both have something to be thankful for.”

Together, they picked up torn shirts.

T
he food helped, as did the routine of updating her board, reading the reports from her people in the field, touching base with Feeney.

She couldn’t say what Roarke did in the lab, but knew without question if anyone could find something to help on the wiped machine, he could. He would.

She ran probabilities, but didn’t feel confident in the results. Indeed, when she factored out the Boyds’ two college-age children, the percentage increased for targeting. And how could Reinhold know the kids were home for Thanksgiving?

Would he even think of family and holidays?

He’d want Boyd, she thought, drinking yet more coffee as she worked. To prove he could hit one out of the park, that would be his thinking.

But Boyd was no slightly out-of-shape salesman, ambushed by his own son—a son who lived in the same apartment. Boyd was fit, tough, had good security. Reinhold would need to plan carefully there. More, Eve thought, he’d need to build up his courage.

More likely to try for women first, for older targets, less secure targets.

Marlene Wizlet and the Schumakers topped her list, along with his friend Asshole Joe, followed by Garber, his former Global Studies teacher.

If he stuck to pattern, it would be one of them. If, she thought, as she highlighted each.

Maybe he’d take a little vacation on his latest victim’s money.

No, she decided as she rose to pace and circle. He’d need that euphoria again, that power again, that payback again. But he was hurt, so that might buy a little time.

“Where are you, you bastard?”

Once again, she put the map on screen, highlighted each crime scene, each sighting. With the aid of the computer, she calculated more routes, more probabilities until her head throbbed.