Ritual in Death

  “Long night?” Eve asked, and Mika gave her a puzzled look.

  “I . . . sorry?”

  “My wife, Lieutenant Dallas, and her partner, Detective Peabody. I’ve been trying to reach you, Mika.”

  “You have?” She pushed her hands at her hair in an absent attempt to straighten it. “Nothing’s come through. Did I . . .” She pressed her fingers to her temple. “Did I turn the ’links off? Why would I do that?”

  “Sit down.” Roarke took her arm, led her to a chair in as bold a red as her robe. He sat on the glossy black coffee table to face her. “There was an incident at the hotel last night.”

  “An incident.” She repeated the words slowly, as if learning the language.

  “You were on the com, Mika. You ordered Paul to cover the main hotel, though it was already covered. And you dismissed the tech from the screen room, telling them you’d be running some maintenance on the cameras.”

  “That doesn’t sound right.” She rubbed at her temple again. “It doesn’t sound right.”

  Eve touched Roarke’s shoulder, and though impatience flashed into his eyes, he rose. Eve took his place. “Just before sixteen hundred, you shut down the cameras in the VIP lobby and the private elevator for Suite 606. They remained off until approximately twenty-three hundred.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  Not a denial, Eve noted. A sincere question. “A group checked into that suite. The Asant Group. Do you know them?”

  “No.”

  “During the time the cameras were shut down, from your com, a woman was murdered in that suite.”

  Even the sickly color faded from Mika’s cheeks. “Murdered? Oh, God. Sir—”

  “Look at me, Mika,” Eve demanded. “Who told you to turn off the cameras, to send your relief away, to dismiss the tech?”

  “Nobody.” Her breath went short as her pale face bunched with pain. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t. Murdered? Who? How?”

  Eve narrowed her eyes. “Got a headache, Mika?”

  “Yes. It’s splitting. I took a blocker, but it hasn’t touched it. I can’t think. I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Do you remember going to work yesterday?”

  “Of course. Of course I do. I . . .” Her lips trembled; her eyes filled. “No. No. I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything, it’s all blurred and blank. My head. God.” She dropped it into her hands, rocked herself, much as Jackson Pike had. “When I try to remember, it’s worse. I can’t stand the pain. Sir, something’s wrong with me. Something’s wrong.”

  “All right now, Mika.” Roarke simply nudged Eve aside, crouched, and put his arms around the weeping woman. “We’ll take care of it. We’ll get you to a doctor.”

  “Peabody, help Ms. Nakamura get dressed. We’ll have her taken down to Central.”

  “Damn it, Eve.” Roarke shoved to his feet.

  “Dr. Mira can examine her,” Eve said evenly, “and determine if the cause is physical or psychological. Or both.”

  Roarke eased back, turned to help Mika to her feet. “Go with Detective Peabody. It’s going to be all right.”

  “Someone’s dead. Did I do something? If I did—”

  “Look at me. It’s going to be all right.”

  It seemed to calm her. But as she continued to tremble, Peabody put an arm around her to lead her from the room.

  “Same symptoms as Jackson Pike,” Eve commented. “Down the line.”

  “Eve—”

  “I’m cutting you a break by not getting pissed off. Don’t push it.”

  He merely nodded. “I’ll stay until she’s ready to go. Then I’ve other things to see to.”

  “Good.” She took out her communicator to arrange for Mika’s transportation, then contacted Mira’s office. She plowed through Mira’s admin. “I’m pulling rank, are you hearing me? If necessary I’ll go to the commander on this, and nobody’ll be happy about that. I’m ordering a priority. Dr. Mira will clear her schedule as of now. Jackson Pike, currently in custody, will be brought down to her for examination. She has the file. If she has any questions, she can reach me. In an hour, she will examine Mika Nakamura, who will be brought to Central shortly. If you have a problem, you can take it up with me later, but you’ll do exactly what I’ve told you, and you’ll do it now.”

  Eve clicked off. “Ought to hook her up with Summerset.” she muttered. “Couple of tight-asses.” While Roarke watched thoughtfully, she contacted her own division and arranged for two uniforms to deliver Pike to Mira’s office, ASAP. Satisfied, she shoved the communicator back in her pocket.

  “Someone used her,” Roarke began.

  “Maybe.”

  “Used her,” he repeated. “And a woman’s dead because of it. Mika won’t ever forget that.”

  “You can worry about that now. I can’t.”

  “Understood. We’re not on different sides, Eve. Just slightly different angles. She’s in pain, and afraid, and confused. And she’s mine. You understand that.”

  “Yeah.” She understood that right down to the bone. “And Ava Marsterson’s mine. Do I think your head of security suddenly thought it would be fun to help a bunch of lunatics carve someone up in the name of Satan? No. But there’s a reason they used her, a reason they used your place, that room, that victim. There’s a reason for Jackson Pike.”

  Eve stepped over as Peabody led Mika back into the room.

  “Ms. Nakamura, do you use the West Side Health Clinic?”

  “What? Yes. Aiko’s pediatrician is there, and my doctor.”

  “Do you know Ava Marsterson?”

  “I—” Mika staggered back, one hand pressed to her head. “Who? I can’t think through the pain.”

  Eve glanced at Roarke. “I take that as a yes.”

  “She’s straight, Dallas.” Peabody brooded out the window of the AT. “She could barely stand for the pain, but she fought to push through it. Worried about her husband and kid, sick—seriously sick—at the idea someone died while she had the com.” She glanced at Eve. “Just like Pike. So you have to think, given the circumstances . . . Ritual magic, on the black side, the gathering of, well, power. By all appearances and all evidence, the ability to cause two straight arrows to behave in a way opposed to their character. We could be dealing with a spell.”

  Eve’s brown eyes narrowed. “I knew you were going to get around to that.”

  “It’s not unprecedented,” Peabody insisted. “There are sensitives, unscrupulous sensitives who’ve used their gifts for their own gain, their own purpose. Black magic’s taking those gifts, that power, and distorting it.”

  “Jackson Pike was loaded with drugs.”

  “Add drugs to the mix, it’s easier to bend the will. There was something in that suite, something left over.” Peabody rubbed her arms as if suddenly chilled. “You felt it, too.”

  She didn’t argue, because that much was true. “I’m not buying that some witch can . . .” Eve waved a hand in the air. “And get some normal guy to start hacking someone with a knife.”

  “I don’t think he did. I think he was supposed to be another sacrifice—or maybe just the patsy.” When Eve didn’t respond, Peabody scowled. “You don’t want to buy into the power deal, but going straight logic, why does this group plan all this and include some young doctor who’s only been in New York a couple of weeks, and has no ties, none to anything off prior to that? You don’t bring some newbie in on the big deal. You don’t—”

  “You’re right.”

  “Listen, I’m just saying . . . I’m right?”

  “About Pike, yeah, you’re right. Maybe they were going to off him, too. Or maybe they pulled him in to take the rap. Drugged the shit out of him, left him behind. He’s got no defense. Naked, full of illegals, covered with the vic’s blood, and carrying around one of the knives used on her. Still, they’d have to figure we’d know he didn’t do it alone, and once the drugs wear off, we examine him, work with him, he could start to remember some details.”
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  Peabody pondered on it a moment. “Okay, look, you don’t buy the magic, but you’ll agree that people who get together to light candles, have orgies that end in human sacrifice probably do.”

  “I’ll give you that.”

  “And can be persuasive—especially if they have a gift, are a sensitive, especially if the person they’re persuading is doped up.”

  “Okay.” Eve nodded.

  “So, to dissuade we need someone with a gift, someone who believes, to break the spell.”

  “You want to bring in a witch? Christ.”

  “It’s an option,” Peabody pushed.

  “Mira’s going to examine them, and determine the root of the physical and/or psychological blocks. Let’s stick with reality, for just a little while.”

  She shot up to a slot on a second-level street parking. “Trosky, Brian, on the desk at the time of the group check-in. Let’s see what he remembers, or if he’s got himself a really bad headache this morning.”

  Eve strode across the sidewalk and into the apartment building. As it didn’t boast a doorman or clerk, she went straight to the intercoms, pressed the one labeled Trosky.

  When no response came, Eve bypassed the elevator lock. “Third floor,” she ordered.

  The music blasted out the moment the doors opened on three. A woman stood beating on the door of 305, Trosky’s apartment. “Brian, for chrissake, turn it down.”

  “Problem?” Eve asked at close to a shout.

  “Yeah, unless you’re frigging deaf. He’s had that music blaring like that for over an hour. I work nights. I gotta get some sleep.”

  “He doesn’t answer the door? Did you try his ’link?”

  “Yeah. It’s not like him, I gotta say. He’s a nice guy. Good neighbor.” She beat on the door again. “Brian, for chrissake!”

  “Okay, move aside.”

  When Eve pulled out her master, the woman goggled. “Hold on, hold on a minute. You can’t just go breaking into somebody’s place. I’m calling the cops.”

  “We are the cops.” Eve nodded at Peabody as she used the master, and Peabody pulled out her badge.

  “Oh, wow, oh, shit. Is he in trouble? I don’t wanna get him in trouble.”

  Eve pushed open the door, felt her eardrums vibrate at the force of the music. “Mr. Trosky, this is the police!” she shouted. “We’re coming in. Music, off,” she ordered, but the roar of it continued. “Peabody, find the source of that noise and kill it. Trosky! This is the NYPSD!”

  She drew her weapon, but kept it down at her side as she scanned the living area—trashed—then the bump-out of the kitchen. She moved to the open bedroom door.

  He lay across the bed, tangled in the bloody sheets. She swept the room and the adjoining bath, though instinct told her Brian Trosky hadn’t been attacked, that the hammer that had caved his skull—to stop the pain?—had been wielded by his own hand.

  Six

  Same side, Roarke thought as he walked into Spirit Quest, different angles. Eve would always search for the logical, the rational. He was a bit more flexible. And so he’d come to talk to the witch.

  The shop was pretty, even festive in its way with its crystals and stones, its bells and candles, its colorful bowls and thriving herbs. Its scent was spring meadow, he thought, with a hint of moonlight.

  In the small space with the murmur of harps and flutes as background, people browsed. He watched a woman in a flowing white dress carry a ball of smoky crystal to the counter where the young, fresh-faced clerk instructed her solemnly on how to charge the ball by moonlight, how to cleanse it.

  When the purchase had been made, wrapped and bagged, Roarke took a step toward the counter. He needn’t have bothered, as she stepped out of the back room with an awareness in her dark eyes that told him she’d sensed him—or in the more pedestrian method, had seen him on a security screen.

  “Welcome back.”

  “Isis.” He took the hand she offered, held it—and yes, felt that frisson of something. Some connection.

  “You’re not here to shop,” she said in her warm, throaty voice, “which is too bad considering the depths of your pockets. Come upstairs, we’ll be comfortable and you can tell me what you need to know.”

  She led the way, through the back, up the stairs. She moved gracefully, athletically, an Amazon goddess of considerable height and generous curves. Her flaming hair fell in mad curls nearly to the waist of the snug white top she wore, just teasing the back of the first of the many layers of her skirt, a rainbow of hues. She turned at the door, smiled at him out of those onyx eyes. Her face was bold, broad featured with skin of a dull, dreamy gold.

  “Once, in another life, we sought comfort together for more than talk.” Her smile faded. “But now it’s death, again it’s death that brings you here. And weighs on you. I’m sorry.”

  She stepped into the living area of an apartment as exotic and appealing as her shop. “Your Eve is well?”

  “Yes. Chas?”

  She let out a laugh. “Snuck down to the deli for coffee,” she said, referring to her lover. “We pretend he’s having a walk. But you can’t live with and love another and not know at least some of their secrets.”

  He stared into her dark eyes, so compelling—so eerily familiar. “Did I know yours, once upon a time?”

  She gestured to a chair, took her own. “We knew each other, and loved very well. But I was not your love, your only. You found her then, as you’ve found her again. And always will. You knew when you first saw her. At the first scent, the first touch.”

  “I did. It was . . .” He smiled a little, remembering his first contact with Eve. “Annoying.”

  “Does she know you’ve come?”

  “No. We don’t always follow the same lines, even though we usually end in the same place. I don’t know if you can help, or if I have a right to bring death to your door.”

  “Not ordinary death.” Isis took a long, slow breath. “Has someone used the arts to cause harm?”

  “I don’t know. They have, at least, used the illusion of them to kill an innocent woman. You haven’t heard of this?”

  “We’ve only just opened this morning, and I don’t listen to the media reports.” Rings glittered and gleamed on her fingers as she laid her hands on the arms of her chair, settled back. “What would I have heard?”

  He told her then, watched her lovely skin pale, her eyes go darker yet. “Do you know of them? The Asant Group?”

  “No, and I would have.” Her fingers stroked the smooth blue stone of the pendant she wore, as if for comfort. “I hear both the dark and the light. Suite 606. Or 666 with such little change. You didn’t know this girl?”

  “No.”

  “You brought nothing of hers, nothing she owned, wore, touched?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  Still pale, Isis nodded. “Then to help you, you need to take me there. To where they sacrificed her.”

  Eve shot over to the West Side Clinic. “They had to troll for the victim here. Scoop up the new doctor, connect with Mika. Somebody on staff, a patient, one of the goddamn cleaning crew.”

  “Do you really think Pike or Mika might try to kill themselves like Trosky?”

  “Mira’s notified. It won’t happen. It’s not even noon,” Eve replied.

  “Sure could use lunch though.”

  “Maybe he did slip out on them, or came to sooner than they figured. Walked into the party. Impromptu party, Maxia just planned it the day before. Couldn’t know he’d walk right in to another penthouse. Couldn’t know a cop and the owner of the hotel would be right there, that we’d find the body minutes later.”

  “Without the party he might’ve wandered around the floor for hours, or . . . gotten down to a lower floor, even the lobby,” Peabody agreed. “Nobody would’ve zeroed right in on 606.”

  “What you’d get is a lot of civilian screaming, running, security taking him down. Cops get called in. At some point, they’re going to check the discs, but th
ey don’t know the exact time frame, so it’d take a while, and a while longer to pinpoint 606 and find her. If three of the key players kill themselves before we interview them thoroughly, before they’re examined by a professional, what’ve we got?”

  “What looks like the new guy in town luring a pretty girl to her death, and being in league with the other two, being part of a cult.”

  “Yeah, you could waste some time on that. They may not be ready for us.” Eve swung toward the curb, coldly double-parking. “Not quite ready.” She flipped on her On Duty sign, stepped out, and walked to the clinic.

  Babies cried. Why, she wondered, did they always sound like invading aliens? People sat with the dead-eyed stare of the ill or the terminally bored. Eve crossed over to the check-in desk where a brunette looked at her with tear-ravaged eyes.

  “I’m sorry, we’re not taking walk-ins today. I can refer you to—” She broke off when Eve laid her badge on the counter. “Oh. Oh. Ava.” Tears popped out, fat and fast. “It’s about Ava.”

  “Who’s in charge here?”

  “I—I—Ava really managed the clinic. She really handled everything. I don’t understand how—”

  “Sarah.” Another woman in a smart suit stepped up, touched the receptionist’s shoulder. “Go on into the break-room for a little while. It’s all right.”

  “I’m sorry, Leah. I just can’t stand it.” She rose, fled.

  “I’m Leah Burke.” The older brunette held out a hand, gave Eve’s a firm shake. “One of the nurse practitioners. We only heard about Ava a couple of hours ago. We’re all just . . . Well, we’re reeling. Please, come back. I need to find someone to cover the desk. We can use Dr. Slone’s office, he’s with a patient. Left, then right, then the third door on the right. I’ll be right with you.”

  Eve tried to ignore the images of what might be going on behind the closed doors of examination rooms. She hated clinics, hospitals, doctors, MTs. If they were medicals, she wanted them to keep their damn distance.

  Slone’s office was polished and prim. Diplomas in black frames made the walls important, while a photo of a hot blonde on the desk added that personal touch. Sturdy, straight-back chairs ranged in back and in front of the wide desk.