Apprentice in Death

  But a head shot would do worse.

  Inside the van, on screen, she watched the feed Feeney sent her. She watched McNab and Callendar, looking every bit like a happy couple moving into a new place, haul boxes into Roarke’s building.

  “No heat source in suspect’s apartment,” Feeney told her. “We’re running that from the van for now. They’re not in there.”

  “When you’re ready, McNab and Callendar can run that from inside, and you move off.”

  “Your man has a garage about a block away. We’ll go in there, sit awhile. Lowenbaum’s team is moving into position. One of them will use the apartment, two on the roof, and another two in another empty apartment in Roarke’s building. See the window of the suspect’s apartment?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Privacy screened. I’m going to hit the mother’s place now. Jenkinson, you’re in charge here till I get back—sit tight. Peabody, I want constant reports. Roarke, you’re with me. I’ll be heading east, then south, on foot. I can be back here inside five minutes, so I need to know the first sighting on either suspect.”

  She stepped out of the van, moved fast. The suspects could be back any minute—or not for hours. Any data she could dig up might pinpoint their next target. Even now they might be holed up in some hotel room, some flop, some empty office space, preparing to strike again.

  Nothing fell out of the sky now as the ugly day headed toward a bitter evening. Streetlights shimmered on, cutting the gloom with chilly white pools of light. As she walked, she studied faces. Pedestrians hurrying home, or to meet up for drinks, to get in more shopping. Others huddled at a cart that smelled of soy dogs and really terrible coffee.

  They could walk here, she thought, father and daughter, back to the apartment, out to grab a slice. They would have walked here at some point, from the townhouse to the apartment.

  Had they plotted along the way? Who to kill and when?

  A block and a half from Zoe Younger’s townhouse, Roarke stepped up beside her. “Lieutenant.”

  “I want to hit the kid’s room. Whitney got the warrant for the whole place, but we’re going to focus on the girl’s room. It’s unlikely the rest of this family are involved, or she’d leave handy clues in the living area.”

  “Understood.”

  When he took her hand, she linked her fingers with his. On duty, yeah, but no cops around to see.

  “We will take a pass at any and all electronics—and flag them for EDD.”

  “I expect I’ll be entirely more useful there than tossing a teenage girl’s room.”

  She frowned up at him as they swam across the crosswalk with the tide of people. “You were a teenage boy—there can’t be that much difference between male and female at that age.”

  “Oh, only worlds, I imagine.” With her, he made the turn, walked up the five steps to the front right door of the pretty duplex. As he spoke, he took out his tools—quicker than her master, she thought, eyeing the security.

  “You were a teenage girl.”

  “Not so much, or only sort of.”

  “As I was not so much, or only sort of a teenage boy, how well we suit. They have excellent security,” he added, sliding through it like a knife through warmed butter.

  “We clear it first.” Eve drew her weapon. “Just in case.”

  After his nod, they went through the door together.

  “NYPSD,” she called out, sweeping left. “We’ve entered the premises duly warranted.”

  “No one’s here—you can feel an empty house,” Roarke said. “Ah, there was a day when a B and E into an empty house was my favorite thing.”

  “Now you get to do it legally.”

  “Not nearly the same.”

  While she agreed with the empty, she cleared the first level—living area, kitchen, dining, a home office, and a kind of family entertainment area.

  The house smelled of the spicy rust-and-pumpkin-colored flowers on the dining room table. Some sort of board on the kitchen wall held kid art—weird stick figures, trees with blobs of green representing leaves. A kind of chart that listed duties—chores, she corrected—like clearing the table, setting it, making beds.

  Beside the chart someone had pinned a Christmas photo. Zoe Younger, Lincoln Stuben, Zach Stuben, and Willow Mackie in a group in front of a festive tree, presents stacked beneath.

  All smiled but Willow, who stared into the camera with hard green eyes and the faintest hint of a smirk.

  “Arms folded.” Eve tapped the picture. “There’s defiance there. The boy? He looks happy enough to do handsprings for a few hours, and the parents look happy, content. Her? That’s a fuck-you stare.”

  “Indeed it is, and I suspect Mira would add she’s separated herself—the folded arms, the bit of distance while the other three are all touching. Then again, fifteen? It’s an age, isn’t it, to consider your parents the enemy.”

  “Hard for us to say. The ones we had were the enemy. But, on the surface anyway, it looks like these two worked to give happy and stable. The house is clean, but it’s not sterile or perfect. Kid-type cereal box on the counter, a couple dishes in the sink, the boy’s skids under a chair in the living area, somebody’s sweater on the back of a chair over there.”

  He glanced over—hadn’t noticed. “You’re a wonder.”

  “I’m a cop,” she corrected. “You’ve got this task chart—everybody does their share, and that’s probably a good thing. Kid’s weird drawings displayed. The family Christmas picture.”

  She took one more look around. “Reads normal, except it isn’t. Under the surface, it isn’t.”

  They went upstairs to the second floor, cleared that: the master suite, the attached office, the boy’s room—a minor disaster area with strewn toys, vid games, clothes. A guest room identified as such by its pristine, unlived-in feel, then the girl’s.

  And there was a third floor, a kind of casual family area for watching screen, hanging out—which the scatter of games proved they did—with a small kitchenette and a half bath.

  Eve headed straight back down to Willow’s room.

  Bed, sloppily made, and with none of the fussy pillows or weird stuffed animals Eve had encountered in other teenagers’ rooms. A desk and comp under the window, a lounge chair, some shelves.

  Posters on the walls. Some music group all in black with snarling faces and lots of tats. The rest were weapons, or someone holding weapons. Knives, banned guns, blasters.

  “Clear where her interests are,” Eve commented, moving to the closet.

  A few girlie dresses—some with the tags still on them. Most of the clothes ran to black or dark colors, rougher styles.

  “There’s an order in here,” she observed. “She knows where she puts her things, wants everything in its place. And if her mother or her brother poke around in here, she knows it.”

  Roarke had already started on the computer. “She has this passcoded, and fail-safed. A very intricate job for someone her age.” He pulled out the desk chair and sat to work.

  Eve started on the dresser. Plain underwear, winter socks, sweaters, sweats, all organized without looking overly so.

  Purposely, she thought. Yes, she’d know if her mother shifted a pair of socks in the drawer.

  “Keep going on that, but she wouldn’t leave anything in here she didn’t want her mother to find.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “She put a slide lock on the inside of the door—they took it off.” Eve nodded toward the door and the telltale marks. “Everything in here is arranged in a kind of system. I always did the same—in foster care, in state. You want to know where your things are so, if necessary, you can grab what matters most, is needed most, and run. Or so you know when they’ve done the look-through. I’m betting her mother does the regular look-through. Mother swallows the posters,” Eve continued as she kept searching. “Mak
ing the girl take them down only entrenches the interest, drives it deeper under. So she swallows that. But she’s had the room painted in this pale, pretty blue, buys dresses that aren’t worn—unless she forces that issue. She comes in, looking for something, anything, to give her more insight into her daughter. Or—more and—because she’s worried she’ll find illegals or weapons or a journal full of ugly thoughts.”

  “Did you have one? A journal.”

  “No, I kept my ugly thoughts to myself because they always . . . The brother’s room!”

  When Eve walked out, Roarke arched his eyebrows. He finished bypassing the fail-safe, then rose to see what his cop was up to.

  She sat at the boy’s comp in the middle of his boy mess.

  “I didn’t always keep my thoughts—ugly or otherwise—to myself. That’s learned behavior, that’s experience. Sometimes you’re just writing a paper for school, and they get into your comp, and you get punished for writing how you like riding an airboard. So you start doing those papers in school, mostly. Or you’re bored and unhappy and you write down some stupid wish list, and they find that, and you get your ass kicked over it.”

  Roarke brushed a kiss over the top of her head, said nothing—which said everything.

  “It’s not about me, it’s just about . . . A couple of times when I needed to write something down—when you just need that tangible act—I figured out how to sort of hide it on another comp. One they didn’t bother with. You’ve got a real kid—I mean the foster’s real kid—in the house, and he’s gold in their eyes, you can use that. The thing is, if she used that method, she’s probably a hell of a lot better at it than I was—than I am.”

  “Let me.”

  When she rose, he took her by her shoulders, looked into her eyes. “What did you need to write down?”

  “I kept a calendar—almost always, wherever I was—marking time till I could get out. For good. How many years, months, weeks, days, hours sometimes, before I could. How I was going to get out, go to New York. New York seemed so big and full, so I focused on New York pretty early. And the Academy. How I was going to be a cop because cops took care of themselves, and everyone else. Good cops, anyway, and I was going to be a good cop, and no one was ever going to tell me what and when to eat, what to wear—”

  “And now I do.”

  She shook her head. “Not the same. Not close to the same. No one loved me, and maybe along the way that became my fault as much as the system’s, but no one loved me. No one said eat something because I love you, because you matter. I was just another number until I earned the badge. I was just a badge, mostly just a badge, until I earned you.”

  She took a breath. “I could have been this girl, Roarke.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, or at least something like her. If Feeney had been a different kind of cop, a different kind of man. If he’d been like Mackie, broken and twisted like Mackie. He saw me. Really saw me, and he pulled me out of the rest, paid attention, gave me time, gave me him. No one had, ever, offered me what he did. No one, ever, saw me like he did. I wanted to make him proud of me, wanted to be the kind of cop he’d be proud of. It drove me.

  “And doesn’t it look like she wants to be what her father wants? That is part, a big part, of what drives her.”

  “If the last part of that’s true, it means she’s turned her back on everything else she has. A mother, a brother. A good home from the looks of it.”

  “Maybe, but looks don’t always mean dick. We’ll see about that. But perception’s truth, right? If nothing else, she perceived no one sees her, gets her, cares about her—not like her father. And she’s killing for him. Killing because he’s trained her, taught her to see that as her right, or at least as an answer.”

  She shook it off, had to shake it off. “It only matters why right now if the why helps us find them, stop them. So yeah, you take a look. Given his age, they probably have parental controls on this unit, but she could have hidden her own files in there.”

  “Easily enough.”

  “If so, you’ll find them. I’m going to go back to her room.”

  Eve checked in with Peabody—no movement—then stood in the center of Willow Mackie’s bedroom. A good space, fully triple the size she’d been able to claim at the same age. Nicely, comfortably furnished. The clothes all good quality.

  No photographs, not of herself, her family and friends. Not even of her father. Maybe some on her computer, Eve thought, and she’d look there.

  She searched through the three drawers in the desk, found a few school-type supplies. No junk. None of the weird junk teenage girls—and boys, for that matter—collected.

  No discs, she realized. Data or music. No other electronics. No PC, no tablet.

  Because she carted them with her, one week here, one week there?

  Her gaze passed over the posters. Weaponry, violence. Would a teenager so focused on weapons live every other week without access to any?

  She stepped back into the closet. A smallish space with that same sense of organization. The fussy clothes—obviously the mother’s pick—in the back. And there, still in their boxes, a pair of heels, a pair a boots—both clearly, even to her eye, meant to go with the dresses or more stylish pants.

  And both, she determined, studying the soles, never worn.

  In the toe of a well-worn boot she found a little stash of cash. Just a couple hundred, which made Eve feel as if it had been put there deliberately, something her mother could find.

  In the pocket of a hoodie she found a notebook and, engaging it, heard a girl’s voice—a shock how young—complaining about her brother, her mother, her stepfather. How they didn’t understand her. And on and on.

  Also so her mother could find it, Eve thought, bagging it for evidence. They’d listen to all the whines and complaints, but the last entry at least had been clearly designed to make her mother feel guilty if she searched and found it.

  So she wouldn’t hide anything important in the closet, Eve determined.

  Though she didn’t believe she’d find anything in usual places, she checked them anyway.

  She went over the closet floor, the walls, even the ceiling, looked under the bed, between mattresses, checked the cushions of the desk and lounge chairs, under and behind the desk.

  She judged the dresser too heavy to be moved out without showing scuffs on the floor, but tried it anyway, looked under it, pulled the drawers out, looked under them.

  As she slid the bottom drawer back into place, the design beneath it caught her eye. A kind of braiding, about two inches high, ran along the base. And when she’d slid that drawer in, pulled it out, there’d been the slightest need to tug, and the faintest little click.

  Nothing that out of the ordinary, but . . .

  She took the bottom drawer out again. It was a well-made piece of furniture, sturdy, nicely crafted of engineered wood.

  The bottom drawer rested on a slab of that wood.

  Curious, she ran her fingers over the twisted braid of decoration along the base, pushing, prying. Felt one twist give, just the tiniest bit.

  She tugged. Nothing.

  She kept working along the braid, found another twist give, then a third.

  She didn’t have to tug. The narrow hidden drawer slid out toward her.

  Empty, she noted. Empty but for the cushioning foam with cutouts for two knives and two hand weapons. Blasters by her eye. Another cutout, a rectangle, would easily hold several IDs, maybe more cash, Eve thought.

  “She’s not coming back here,” she murmured.

  “I agree,” Roarke said from the doorway. “You’ll want to see this. You were right about using the younger brother’s unit. The file I found was cleverly hidden. And even then,” he continued as they walked back to the brother’s room, “she was careful. This isn’t a rash or impulsive young girl.”

&
nbsp; “Not even close.” Eve studied the first document on screen. “It’s their hit list. Just initials, not full names, but there’s BM, KR—Michaelson, Russo—there’s MB—and I’m betting on Marta Beck, Michaelson’s office manager, there’s BF, that’s going to be Fine, the driver who hit the second wife. One of these others—AE, JR, and MJ—is likely the lawyer we haven’t identified. And two others. Two down, five to go.”

  “There’s a second page to this document.” Roarke ordered it on screen.

  “Zach Stuben—that’s her brother. Lincoln Stuben, her stepfather. Christ, her mother’s on here. Rene Hutchins, Thomas Greenburg, Lynda Track—we need to identify them. And this one with initials. HCHS.”

  “It’s her high school—I’m sure of it, as I found this document as well.” Roarke called up a blueprint of Hillary Clinton High School. “Certain classrooms, certain areas were highlighted, egresses marked.”

  “Jesus, Jesus. She plans to hit her school.”

  “And already has her nest chosen. Closer this time than the other two attacks, but still an appreciable distance.”

  Eve looked at the next image. “The roof of her father’s apartment building. She has these hidden here because this isn’t her father’s agenda. It’s hers. When they finish his mission, she can begin her own. How hard did you have to look to find this?”

  “A bit of work, but more to the point, I likely wouldn’t have found it if I hadn’t been specifically looking for it. It was shielded under a perfectly harmless school report on George Washington.”

  Eve paced. “Okay, let’s get back. We need to access Mackie’s apartment. It’s likely he’s got cams set up, is monitoring anyone going in or out of the building, certainly his own space.”

  “I can take care of that.”

  “Counting on it. We need to get in, see who’s next. When and where. They may have moved straight to the next nest, and there are three people on his agenda we haven’t ID’d. And we have to ID the unknowns on her list.”

  “There’s more on hers. She’s listed her kills. Animals,” he said quickly. “The type, the place, the distance, the weapon, the date, the time. It appears her father’s taken her hunting—illegally very often—into Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, the Dakotas, even into Mexico, Canada. She’s listed over two dozen kills in the last seven months.”