Obsession in Death

  “Her mother’s not home?”

  “What? Oh, no, we’re . . . not together. She’s away for a few weeks with her . . . I don’t really know what he is. Doesn’t matter. It’s just me and Vanna—and Thea for a couple of days because she didn’t want to go on the little post-Christmas cruise with her parents. Anyway, I’ll get them. God, I’m nervous.”

  He moved to the back of the apartment, took a short jog to the left, knocked on a door. “Vanna? You and Thea need to come out here now.”

  “Dad! We’re jiving with Flo-lo on mega importanto!”

  “Now, Savannah. For the police.”

  The squeals clawed at the walls. Bocco rubbed his eyes, walked back to Eve and Roarke. “I opted out of the soundproofing on her bedroom. You want to be able to hear, in case they need you. But it’s a high price to pay. Hey, how about a Coke? That’s one thing Savannah got in prime on marketing day.”

  “That’d be great,” Eve said, just to give him something to do.

  The girls came out, holding hands, as Bocco stepped into the kitchen. She pegged Savannah as she had her father’s olive complexion, brown hair—though there were violet streaks throughout the girl’s—and his compact build.

  Thea, at sixteen, had the body of a siren. Did they grow sirens’ bodies that young, Eve wondered, or had her parents allowed body enhancements?

  Both girls were pretty in the young, knowing way of teenagers Eve had never comprehended. Both wore wildly colored thick socks, baggy sleep pants, and bright, striped shirts.

  “OMG! It’s totally Roarke and Dallas! Vann! We like saw your vid a zillion times,” Thea went on. “A zillion and one. Matthew Zank is so completely magalicious, even though he went and married Marlo Durn. Not that she isn’t iced, but still. Bogus. This is trip tees! Too totally twee!”

  “Thea.” Bocco came back with two glasses filled with ice and Coke. “Try real English, just for right now.”

  “Dad.” Savannah whispered it. “It’s absotively Roarke and Dallas. Don’t be lame, you know. The Icove Agenda.”

  “Right. I didn’t put it together. I haven’t been to a vid in . . . who knows? I’m reading the book when I get time. Not a lot of that around here.”

  “Nadine Furst lives right upstairs,” Savannah said. “I’ve talked to her and everything, a couple of times. Somebody tried to totally kill her. We rode on the elevator with him. The killer,” Savannah added in dramatic undertones.

  “Her,” Eve corrected, and Thea sent Savannah a smug smile.

  “Told you it was a woman. She was all covered up, but she looked like a girl to me. Dork outfit for sure, and abso dullstown.”

  “Did she say anything to you?”

  “Not a peep. We’d just pranked on Rizz, and were in hilarity over it. She was all pinched and sour.”

  “Gave us the trout eye,” Savannah added.

  “The what?”

  “Fish eye, I’d say,” Roarke put in, amused.

  “Yeah, like . . .” Savannah glowered, tightening her mouth, lowering her eyebrows. “And I thought bite me—like you say in the vid. I thought that. Bite me, mister, we’re in hilarity. Except you say he was a she. And I . . . it’s not because we know she’s bad now, honest it’s not. But she looked mean. Like she wanted to be mean to us.”

  “That’s a true.”

  “I didn’t look at her much because she gave me a wills.” Savannah gave a full-body shudder. “But Thea said, even before the cop came and all that, how the lady—I thought guy—but she said lady—in the elevator was like psycho. How if she hadn’t been with me or somebody, she’d’ve gotten off just to do the distance.”

  “It’s a true,” Thea said.

  “Thea’s a sensitive,” Bocco put in.

  “Mr. B! Am not!”

  “Let’s just say you get feelings, have good instincts.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’m not weird. I just got a feeling, and I was glad to get off and away. Plus she smelled funny.”

  “How?” Eve asked.

  “I didn’t smell anything.” Savannah shrugged. “But Thea’s got super nose.”

  “She smelled funny,” Thea repeated, and hunched her shoulders.

  A teenage sensitive who didn’t want to be one, be any different from the other teenage girls. Just how, Eve wondered, did she press the right buttons?

  “I’ve a young nephew with super ears.” Roarke pumped the Irish, just a tad, added a quick, charming smile.

  Eve all but heard the two teenage hearts shudder and shake.

  “You could be speaking in a whisper two rooms away, and he’d catch every word. I expect it’s like that with a canny nose such as yours, Thea. What did the smell make you think of?”

  “The bathroom at school after somebody boots. I don’t mean the booting part, because if she’d smelled like that we wouldn’t have gotten on with her.”

  “Sick!” Savannah giggled.

  “Complete. It’s like it smells after they clean it up. Sort of like a hospital smells. All sterile and chemically.”

  “That’s good. That’s good information,” Eve told her. “Can you think of anything else? Any other details?”

  The girls shrugged in unison.

  “Did you ever see her before? In the building, on the street?”

  “I don’t think so.” Savannah looked at Thea, who shook her head. “She was on the dull train so you don’t notice, and we were all about telling Flo-lo about pranking Rizz since she couldn’t be on it.”

  “Flo-lo’s grounded,” Bocca explained.

  “Way bogus, but she’s getting sprung tomorrow. Her mom said, so can we go to the ball drop, Dad? Please?”

  “Sure, when you’re twenty-one.”

  “Dad!”

  “Totally negativo.” He smiled in the way Eve imagined a weary and indulgent father might. “And Thea’s parents already nixed that, so don’t push it.”

  “Then can Flo-lo sleep over?”

  “Sure, why not?” He rubbed his eyes again. “The more the merrier.”

  As they rode down to street level, Eve gave Roarke an elbow poke. “Sure and me young nephew back in Ireland has the ears of a two-headed bat.”

  “Your Irish accent’s mired in a bog, Lieutenant.”

  “Yours bumped up a couple notches—worked, too, so that’s good thinking.”

  “She wants to be like everyone else, as is typical, I suppose, for the age.”

  “I don’t know. At that age I was sick of being like everyone else and was counting the days until I could be on my own.”

  “At that age I was boosting rides, lifting locks, and picking pockets. But then we never were like everyone else at the core, were we?” He grabbed her hand, kissed it.

  “She can make herself look like, behave like everyone else, but she’s not. And she doesn’t want to be.”

  “The killer, not Thea, I’m guessing.”

  “She wants to be important, special, noticed.” She pulled out her ’link as they stepped out into the cold, then frowned at it. “I was going to check on Jamie and his mother.”

  “But we’d both feel better if we did that in person. It won’t take long.”

  “Unnecessary, but yeah. It’ll be off my brain. The smell,” she began as they got into the car. “Sealant maybe. Sealed up, top to toe, that could be it. Or part of it.”

  “There’s a whiff of chemical in it, if you’re sensitive enough to smells, but you don’t use sealant when you clean vomit—and she was specific there.”

  “Disinfectant, some of that. Chemicals. Maybe treated the coat. Maybe had disinfectant in the bag? Clean up anything that needed cleaning. Antiseptic? Subtle, because the other kid didn’t catch it. Maybe more a sixth sense than one of the five. The same that told her female, and gave her the sense of meanness where the other, Savannah, just saw a dull, dork
y-looking person, a little annoyed maybe with a couple of girls in—what’s it?—hilarity.”

  Eve scanned the streets as Roarke drove.

  “She’s hurting, unless she got medical treatment—and so far no one’s reported anyone matching her description seeking it—and she’s shaken. Angry, in pain, confidence blown. Three misses in two days. What will she do now? Crawl into her hole, lick her wounds? Or find release somewhere else?”

  “If she’s really hurt, I’d think she’d tend to herself first.”

  “Maybe. But rage and revenge are damn good painkillers.”

  When they arrived at Jamie’s the lights on the main level blazed. The holiday tree shone defiantly through the glass. And through the glass Eve saw the living room screen, all color and movement.

  The uniform who answered the door looked a little abashed. And no surprise, Eve thought, considering the volume of the basketball game running on screen, and the shouts of the other uniform and Jamie at a three-point swish.

  “Ah, we thought we’d keep him entertained,” the uniform said.

  Eve glanced at the spread of chips, soft drinks, Christmas cookies, some sort of chunky salsa.

  “I can see that.”

  Jamie, young, fit, his sandy hair a little longer than the last time she’d seen him, jumped up from his slouch on the sofa. He’d caught Eve in a hug before she could stop him. Which offset, she guessed, catching two uniforms gorging on junk food and sports.

  He gave Roarke the same treatment, then shook back his hair. “Good you came by, but you didn’t have to. We’re all tucked. Appreciate the badges, too, but nobody’s getting in I don’t want in. They made Mom feel better though.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I finally talked her into going to bed. About twenty minutes ago.”

  “She can sleep through this?”

  “Gave her a soother, and earplugs.” He grinned. “Glad I was home when this went down, but like I said, nobody was getting in. Even a master would set off an alarm. I rigged up a system,” he told Roarke. “Full-house program—motion, weight shift, light sensitive, with the master alert. Layered it over your basic shutdown and scream.”

  “Did you now?”

  “A prototype—experimental yet. I’ve been working on it with your R&D on winter break. Deal’s a deal.”

  “It is indeed.”

  Roarke paid for Jamie’s college, in exchange for the work as he considered the boy a blooming genius in electronics.

  “Glitch is—I hadn’t thought of it,” he continued, “using a master that doesn’t work. I’m going to fiddle with that some. If it had worked, the secondary locks would’ve engaged, and the alarm would’ve sounded. As it was, you took care of that.”

  “You’ve got cams?” Eve asked.

  “Oh, damn straight.” He pulled a micro disc, sealed, out of his pocket. “Got your copy here. I viewed the feed. Can’t see much of her face, but maybe you can enhance that. She’s favoring her right arm, and you’ll see her left’s shaking some when she tries the master. Shoves it in twice, then actually thumps her fist on the door a couple times. That’s what alerted me—just before you tagged Mom. I was up working—sort of—and the contact with the door set off an alert. No big, I figured. I got some friends might come by anytime. I switched my screen to the cam—nobody there. Hey, you want a drink or something? Mom stocked up on everything for the holidays. We’re flush.”

  She could see that from the coffee table spread. “No, thanks.”

  “Well, anyway, I was going to go down, check the system, and that’s when you tagged my mom. I could hear her, tell she was freaked over something. I got the gist, hit total lockdown—and full lights.”

  He grinned.

  “Neighbors might be a little steamed, but if anybody was out there, still thinking about trying to get in, that would make them think a lot more.”

  “I’d like a look at the system,” Roarke told him.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Later.” Eve held up a hand to stop the two geeks. “I’m leaving the uniforms, keep your mother feeling settled. And I’m going to add a patrol, but I don’t think you’re going to get another visitor. She missed twice tonight, so if she hits again, it’s not going to be a place as secure as the freaking Pentagon.”

  “Twice?”

  “She tried for Nadine.”

  “Nadine.” The excitement whisked out of Jamie’s face. “Is she okay? Was she hurt?”

  “Shaken up, not hurt. Safe, secured.”

  “This is the UNSUB—Bastwick and Ledo. I follow,” Jamie said to Eve. “Bastwick wasn’t a fan. I figured you busted Ledo a time or two.”

  “His chops, sure.”

  Jamie nodded, and his eyes no longer looked so young. He had cop in there, Eve thought, however Roarke might wish the boy would stick with R&D. “Nadine, and now me and Mom. She did the switch. She’s trying for people you care about now.”

  “That’s the theory, so take precautions. Nobody comes in the house you don’t know. You don’t open the door, period, to anyone you don’t know. No exceptions. Not for a cop I don’t personally clear, not for a city worker yelling gas leak, not for a delivery, not for anything.”

  “Got it. I won’t take chances with my mom, you can believe it.”

  She did—he was a good son, and all his mother had, so she did. But she was still leaving the cops.

  • • •

  By the time they got home, Eve felt she’d been gone for days. She needed her office, and an hour, one hour to get everything down, and in order, and out of her head.

  Roarke picked up a memo cube from a table in the foyer.

  Summerset’s voice droned out.

  Ms. Furst is in the Gold Suite as it’s a favorite of hers. I was able to convince her to take a mild soother and allow me to treat the minor injuries to her arm and her calf. While she indicated she would be up, working, when you arrived home, I believe the soother will counteract that intention.

  I hope both of you will follow her example and get a reasonable night’s rest.

  Eve tossed her coat over the newel post. “It’s good she’s out—assuming he’s right on that. I don’t want to have to deal with her tonight. She’ll have questions, and I don’t want to hear them.”

  Roarke tossed his coat on top of Eve’s. “I’ll check on the searches, program another with the images from tonight.”

  “I need to look at the feed from Nadine’s, from Jamie’s.”

  “I’d like to see those myself. Let’s do that first.” He held out a hand for the discs. “I’ll set it up. You get the coffee. One condition,” he added.

  “I don’t like conditions.”

  “That’s a pity, but here’s mine. You’ll take a soother before you go to bed. You’re pale, Eve, and you’re tired—mind and body. So I won’t push you not to work, and I’ll help you with it. But when it’s done, you’ll take the soother.”

  “I’ll take one if you take one.”

  “That’s a deal then.” He gave her butt a pat as they walked into her office. “Into the kitchen now, darling, and make us some coffee.”

  “You think that’s cute?”

  “It’s adorable, at least at this time of night.”

  Whatever time it was, there was work. So she made the coffee, and added a handful of her secret stash of cookies.

  Roarke’s eyebrows lifted when she brought it all out. “Well now, this must be love. You sharing the biscuits.”

  “They’re cookies. Biscuits are hot bread you smother in butter or gravy. Remember which side of the Atlantic you’re on, ace.”

  “Whatever they’re called, they’re welcome.” He took one, bit in. “Computer, run first disc.”

  Cradling her coffee, Eve watched the UNSUB buzz at Nadine’s exterior door. Head and face averted, but not covere
d this time. That straggle of hair showing. No audio, so again the voice was lost. No chance of running a voice print.

  “Nothing on the clothing. No labels, emblems, logos. But Nadine’s right. Not five-ten. Five-eight’s about right. Knows the building again,” Eve continued. “Knows how to angle herself to keep her face off camera. We’re going to find somebody who saw her in there. Somebody’s going to have seen her.”

  “Here come the girls.” Roarke sipped his coffee as he watched them. “And that is what being in hilarity looks like.”

  It looked like being piss-faced drunk, Eve thought, the way they leaned into each other, eyes bright, laughing.

  “Look at her hands,” Eve said. “Balling into fists. Angry. At the girls? At life? The girls annoy. All that laughing and talking. They infuriated. Jesus, she’s reaching in her pocket. Right pocket. And yeah, her hand’s shaking some.”

  “Barely holding on to control.”

  The girls clumped toward the opening elevator door. Eve caught Thea glancing back—just a quick swivel.

  “Sensitive enough to have felt something dark, something dangerous,” Roarke said. “Relieved to be away from it.”

  “She’s trying to relax again. Slowly flexing, unflexing her fingers, breathing in and out, shaking out her arms.”

  When she exited the elevator Eve cursed the lack of hall cams. “Run it forward, will you? Let’s see if she shows more when she leaves.”

  “Computer, skip feed until subject reappears.”

  Subject does not appear in any further elevator feed. Exterior cam only.

  “Run it.”

  She burst out of the door. Eve saw only the back of her, shoulders hunched, right arm tucked in.

  “Run it again, slow it down.”

  Top of the head for a second, back for a few more. Shaking, clearly shaking all over and favoring her right arm.

  “Nothing much we can use there. Let’s see Jamie’s.”

  Roarke cued it up, then grinned like a boy, gestured toward the screen with his coffee. “Look at the resolution there, would you? Like crystal it is, and this from a unit he cobbled together himself.”

  “It may be crystal, but she’s still smart enough, still has herself in control enough to keep her face off cam. Damn it. But yeah, yeah, she’s hurt. Nadine did a number on her with a fricking herbal lighter. Maybe a quick stop en route for an ice pack or a blocker, something, because there’s a time lag.”