“Small island,” Peabody agreed after they’d finished with Moore. “Not many places to hide.”
“Not many ways to get off either. You got air, you got water.”
She stepped out, saw with pleasure the scooter was in place, and apparently untouched. “Pay those guys off.”
“Why do I have to pay them?”
“I lined them up.”
McNab grumbled, but he flipped them a ten before unchaining the scooter.
“You handled that business about the shakedown really smooth.” She wanted to pinch his butt in appreciation, but decided it wouldn’t look professional. So it would wait. Instead, she climbed on the scooter. “Just as glad we’re getting out of this sector before dark.”
“You and me both, She-Body.” Apparently he wasn’t as concerned with professional image as she was ’cause he pinched her butt as he slid on behind her. “Let’s ride.”
Carter Bissel lived in a two-room shack that was hardly more than a tent pitched on a mix of sand and crushed shells. It had what Peabody considered a very slight appeal due to its proximity to the beach, but that same proximity made it a handy target for tropical storms.
She could see where patches had been slapped on, just as she could see from the sagging rope hammock that Carter had preferred to spend his free time swinging rather than worrying overmuch about household maintenance.
Scraggly tufts of beach grass poked up through the shells. An ancient and thoroughly rusted scooter was chained to a dead palm.
“A long way from Queens,” McNab commented as he kicked a broken bottle aside. “He might have beat his brother out on the view, but the rest of the living conditions put him way back on the sib rivalry chart.”
“When you look at this, you can see that he might just walk away.” Peabody took out the key they’d picked up from the local PD. “Everything we’re seeing spells out loser.”
“It doesn’t spell out what Felicity Kade wanted down here.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe they wanted to use him for a setup. It’s not the kind of place you’d expect an HSO branch office or a terrorist cell. And that could’ve been just the point.”
She unlocked the door, creaked it open. Inside, the air was stale and hot. She saw an enormous bug scurry into the shadows and had to bite back a squeal. She was no particular fan of anything that skittered or slithered.
She tried the lights, found them inoperable. Both she and McNab drew out penlights.
“I’ve got a better idea. Hold on a minute.”
She struggled not to cringe when he left her alone. She could almost hear the spiders spinning. She shined her light over the living area.
There was a single couch. One cushion had exploded and left a kind of gray mushroom of filler growing up from the torn fabric. There were no rugs, no art, a lone unshaded lamp on a crate that served as a table. But the entertainment screen was new, top of the line, and, she noted after a quick scan, bolted to the floor.
Not the most trusting of men, she decided. In addition to being a slob and a loser.
The kitchen was along one wall of the living quarters. A counter cluttered with take-out boxes and a blender, a cheap AutoChef and a grimy minifridgie. She’d just opened the fridgie to peruse the contents of home-brew, a withered fuzzy tube that might have once been a pickle, and a golf ball–sized lime when McNab puttered in on the scooter.
The headlight beamed brightly.
“Good thinking,” she decided. “Strange but good.” She opened the lone cupboard and found three glasses, two plates, and an opened bag of soy chips.
“You know, his financials weren’t stellar, but he had enough to live better than this.” She turned around as McNab poked under the cushions of the couch. “And you can bet not all his money was reported.”
“Probably couldn’t hold onto it. Slippery fingers. Spent it on women and illegals.” He held up a small bag of white powder he’d pulled out of the damaged cushion.
“How’d the locals miss that?”
“Didn’t care enough to look. My question is why’d he leave it behind?”
“Because he left in a hurry and planned to come back . . . or he didn’t leave voluntarily.” She started toward the bedroom. “Bring the scooter.”
The bed was unmade. But the sheets, Peabody noted, were prime quality. They matched the entertainment unit more than the rest of the house. The skinny closet held three shirts, two pair of trousers, and one bunged-up pair of gel-sandals. The dresser held four pair of boxers, a dozen T-shirts or tanks, five pair of shorts.
There was a ’link, but it had been turned off. The data unit sat on the floor and looked as if it had been through several wars. She left McNab to fiddle with it while she searched the tiny bathroom.
“No toothbrush, but there’s a half tube of toothpaste,” she called out. “No hairbrush or comb, but there’s shampoo. There’s another set of sheets—whoa, baby, very smelly sheets—stuffed in the hamper in here, along with a moldy towel.”
She stepped back out. “Looks to me like he packed up a few essentials, and before he did, he had company. Female company who earned the fresh, fancy sheets.”
“What’re you doing?” McNab asked absently.
“We’re taking the sheets in for testing. He put them on, but the bed’s not made. That tells me they got used. That says sex, so maybe there’s some DNA.”
He grunted and continued to work with the computer.
“I’ll tell you what else isn’t here, besides his toothbrush and comb. There’s no scrapbook on his brother. That’s interesting.”
“So’s this.” He scooted around until he faced her, with the headlight from the scooter shining on his face. “It’s really interesting that this unit is fried. That it appears to have been infected with the same worm as the ones in New York.”
In New York, Eve paced Roarke’s locked-down office with her secured ’link on privacy mode as she listened to Peabody’s report. It was, she supposed, still possible for someone to copy the transmission even through the lockdown, even through the layers of security, but it would take time and effort.
“I’m going to pull strings, and pull them hard with the locals,” she told Peabody. “And get you cleared to transport any and all items from that location that you deem applicable to this investigation. It may take a few hours, but I’m going to see to it that you and those items are on a transport in the morning. Sit tight. I’ll be back to you.”
She broke transmission, then paced a moment longer as she calculated how best to start the wheels turning.
“If I may suggest,” Roarke put in. “I could have a private shuttle bring them back, circumventing any of the red tape with the local police.”
She frowned, but considered it. “No. I don’t want to circumvent. It’ll take a little more time this way, but we’ll keep it clean. When this comes out, and I’m going to make damn sure it does, I want our end to sparkle. I’ll start by playing diplomat with the local chief, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll toss him to Whitney. But it should work. What do they care if we haul off a busted data center and some sheets?”
“Then I’ll leave you to it and go back to our company. Some grilled meat should set you up for the ordeal yet to come.”
“Don’t remind me. I don’t like the way Trina was eyeballing me.”
He lifted the lockdown and left her alone. Once she’d re-established it, she sat down at his workstation. She could stay here all night, she mused. Locked in, nice and safe, away from hair products. There was access to food, to drink, to communications. It would be so . . . soothing to hunker down and work alone again.
Then she thought of Mavis, who’d bounced in twenty minutes before with a beaming Leonardo.
At times like this, Eve decided, alone was nothing but a fond and distant memory.
She engaged the ’link and prepared to grease the wheels.
13 EVE CONSIDERED IT strength of character not to keep the room sealed, with her ins
ide. But she braced herself, went downstairs, then wound her way through the house to the back patio.
And stared at the scene.
She knew her scenes. Normally, there would’ve been a corpse somewhere in the vicinity, but she still knew how to read a scene where death wasn’t part of the landscape.
There was a bird singing a two-note repetitive chirp that was both cheery and insistent. Butterflies with wings of bold orange and black massed like a fanciful army on the purple spires of a bush that fountained just beyond the west corner of the stone patio.
Roarke’s newest toy, an enormous silver monstrosity on wheels, was smoking away, with the man himself at the helm with a long-handled spatula. The smoke smelled like meat—real meat from real cows. Several individuals were currently chowing down on it in the form of thick burgers on buns.
They were seated at tables or standing around chatting, in full party mode.
The city’s medical examiner was swigging beer from the bottle and having what appeared to be an amusing conversation with Mavis. Mira—and where the hell had she come from—was seated at a table scattered with food and flickering candles while she held some sort of confab with Leonardo and the terrifying Trina.
The captain of EDD stood munching a burger one-handed and giving Roarke advice on the mysteries and mystiques of outdoor cooking.
Everyone seemed pretty damn jolly and well-fed, and to Eve’s mind out of place. Hadn’t she just left a sealed room where she’d spent considerable time picking her way through red tape and the land mines of diplomacy and palm greasing? Wasn’t she in the messy middle of a murder investigation involving covert organizations and state secrets?
Now it was burgers and beer in the twilight with birds and butterflies.
Her life, she decided, was just plain strange.
Leonardo spotted her first, and with a wide grin splitting his big caramel-colored face, glided over to her in what Eve supposed was his casual cookout-wear of shimmery white pants and a bright yellow shirt that crossed over his impressive chest in a skin-tight X. He bent down, his soft, curling hair brushing her cheek just before his lips.
“Mavis told me she’d been upset, and came to you. I wanted to thank you for being there for her, for giving her this time tonight to feel normal and steady again.”
“She just needed to spew.”
“I know.” Then he wrapped his big arms around Eve, pressing her hard against the rock wall of his chest. This time when he spoke, his voice was thick and shaky. “The baby moved.”
“Yeah.” She wasn’t quite sure what response was called for, and gingerly patted him somewhere on the miles of exposed skin of his back. “She said. So, ah, everything’s good now.”
“Everything’s perfect.” He heaved a sigh. “Perfect.” He drew back, and his gold eyes were gleaming. “Good friends, the woman I love with our child inside her. Life is so precious. I realize that now more than ever before. I know Dr. Mira needs to speak with you, but I just wanted to have a moment first.”
Drawing her close to his side he all but carried her to the table where Mira sat.
“Now don’t start.” He wagged a finger at Trina. “Dallas needs to speak with Dr. Mira, and to have a moment to relax.”
“I can bide my time.” Trina grinned, a wide magenta smile that sent a chill up Eve’s spine. “I have plans. Lots of plans.” She scooped up her plate and wandered off on six-inch platform sandals.
“Oh my God.”
With a look caught between sympathy and amusement, Mira patted the chair beside her. “Sit. What a gorgeous evening. I’m stealing an hour of it to be here, on what was supposed to be a quick professional call. Now I’m having this lovely glass of wine and this rather magnificent hamburger.”
“Did he actually cook it?” Eve glanced back at Roarke. “On that thing?”
“He did. I’m probably telling tales out of school, but he talked to my Dennis at some length about how to use the grill.” Mira took another bite. “He seems to have figured it out.”
“Nothing much gets over on Roarke. A professional call?” she prompted.
“Yes. I could’ve waited until tomorrow, but I thought you’d like to know as soon as possible that Reva Ewing passed her level-three.”
“Thanks. How’s she doing?”
“A little shaky and tired. Her mother took her straight home. I think she’s in good hands there.”
“Yeah, Caro’s another who always seems to know what she’s doing.”
“She’s afraid for her daughter, Eve. However efficient and steady she is on the surface, under it, she’s desperately worried. I could speak with her, or Roarke could. I’m sure he will. But the fact is you’re the one in authority. And you’re the one whose thoughts and opinions she’d respect most in this.”
“Did you come by to tell me about the level three, or to tell me I should talk to Caro?”
“Both.” Mira patted her hand. “Also, I looked over the results of her blood tests taken just after she was taken into custody.”
“There was nothing. No chemicals, illegal or otherwise. And the medicals found no trauma to indicate she’d been physically knocked out.”
“No.” Mira picked up her wine. “But we both know there are some anesthetics that can debilitate quickly, and dissipate without a discernible trace within two or three hours.”
“The sort of thing Homeland would have in its pantry.”
“I imagine so. When I had Reva under, I took her back through the steps and stages of that night. She recalled a movement to her left as she was facing the bed. She doesn’t remember this, not clearly, except under hypnosis. A movement,” Mira went on, “then a scent, something strong, bitter, and the taste of it in the back of her throat.”
“Probably sprayed her.” Eve looked over the gardens, but she wasn’t seeing the busy butterflies now, or hearing the insistent bird. She saw the candlelit bedroom, the bodies curled close together on bloody sheets. “Waited for her to come up, came in on her on her off-side, hit her with the spray. Set the rest of it up while she was out.”
“If so, it was organized thinking. Cold and organized. And still . . . much of what was done was overly dramatic—beyond the violence that shows the capability for brutality, there were added steps, complications that were unnecessary for the result we’re assuming was desired.”
“Because he was having fun with it.”
“Yes.” Pleased, Mira enjoyed her hamburger. “He was. Several misjudgments and flourishes—when simplicity would have served his purposes better—indicate to me that he gets caught up in the role he’s playing. Enjoying it, and perhaps wanting to prolong it.”
“Adding touches to a pretty tight and simple plan that unbalance the whole. What do they call it? Ad-libbing.”
“Very well put. You have organized thinking but impulseiveness as well. I doubt he was working alone. I also doubt that the one who conceived the core of the plan was the one to carry it out. Now I’m going to pass you to Morris so you can get the business over with and enjoy some of your evening.”
“It’s a little tough to enjoy anything when I know Trina has plans.” But Eve rose, walked over to Morris. “Got something for me?”
“Dallas!” Mavis popped up. “Did you know Morris played the sax?”
“The what?”
“Saxophone,” Morris said. “Tenor. It’s a musical instrument, Lieutenant.”
“I know what a saxophone is,” she muttered.
“He used to play with a band in college,” Mavis went on. “And sometimes they still get together for private gigs. They’re The Cadavers.”
“Of course they are.”
“We’re going to jam sometime, right?” Mavis asked Morris.
“Name the time, name the place.”
“Too mag to lag!” she danced off and into Leonardo’s arms.
“That’s a very happy young woman.”
“You wouldn’t’ve thought so if you’d seen her two hours ago.”
“Gestating ladies tend to swing. They’re entitled. Want a beer?”
“What the hell.” She snagged one from the cooler. “What’ve you got for me?”
“Nothing as wonderful as this cow patty. Chloe McCoy. No evidence of recent sexual activity. But . . . it would appear she’d expected some as she’d inserted protection. An over-the-counter product called Freedom. This coats the vaginal area with both spermicide and a lubricant, which protect against STDs and conception.”
“Yeah, I know what it is. You can use it up to twenty-four hours before you rock. When did she use it?”
“My best guess? An hour, possibly two premortem. And she’d also ingested fifty milligrams of Sober-Up at approximately the same time.”
“Well now, isn’t that interesting?”
To show their unity on that point, he tapped his bottle of beer against hers. “At least one hour before she ingested the termination pills. And if those were purchased on the black market, someone has a very valuable source. They weren’t generic or clones or homemade. And, the kicker: They were dissolved in the wine before they were ingested.”
“So she protects herself against pregnancy or STD, sobers herself up, cleans her apartment, gets herself a sexy outfit, and does her face and hair. Then drops a couple of fatals in her wine and offs herself.” Eve took a long pull on the beer. “And you said you didn’t bring me anything as interesting as that burger.”
“You haven’t tasted the burger yet.”
“I’ll get to it. What’s the ruling on this matter by the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City?”
“Homicide, staged to look like self-termination. That girl didn’t knowingly eat those pills.”
“No, she didn’t.” And that made Chloe McCoy hers. “Termination pills require a prescription—after considerable testing and counseling. If she didn’t get them that way, and she didn’t, and they weren’t black market, would you say that a strong possible source for meds of that type and potency would be a covert government organization?”