“Rape-murder,” she said. “Vic was female, mid-twenties.”
“I remember,” he interrupted. “I was working the South Side back then. It was rough, hadn’t come back far from the Urbans. Scary time.”
“I bet.”
“They’d worked her pretty good. Cap said he sent you the file.”
“That’s right.”
“So, you can see, they worked on her. Took some time to mess her up that bad.”
“You say ‘they.’ The ME reports state it appeared she was struck by both a left- and a right-handed attacker. But it’s not conclusive.”
“The Stallions worked in pairs back then.”
Eve scrolled down to his notes. “The gang that held sway on that area held the illegals and sex trade.”
“The Stallions were the illegals and sex trade on the South Side. They held it more than a decade. She infringed. For them, it was business. Somebody tries to cut into your business, you take them out. Hard.”
“But you looked at the husband.”
“Yeah, we looked hard, too. Seemed overkill even for the Stallions, unless she was cutting big. And if she was cutting big, where was the cut? Rules of play, they’d’ve warned her off first, or if she was any good maybe give her a chance to work for them.”
Pulliti tapped the side of his nose. “It didn’t smell right.”
“You couldn’t tie him in, the husband?”
“Alibied right and tight. Had the kid at home. About the time she was getting the shit raped out of her, he was knocking on a neighbor’s door to ask for help since the kid was sick, and his wife was—he said—at work. Neighbor verified.”
“Yeah, I see that.”
“But it didn’t smell right. We’re knocking on doors and everybody says how he keeps to himself, hardly says boo, stays with the kid at night, takes him off during the day while the woman sleeps, or goes off on his own. But that night, the night he needs an alibi, he knocks on somebody’s door. Sure was convenient.”
“You think he set her up?”
“Thought it, felt it. See, the Stallions, back then, they’d initiate a member, or a business partner. Beat-down or gangbang, take your choice. You take the beating or the banging, then you give them their cut of your business.”
Sex and drugs, she thought. Quick money, big money.
“You think she went with them for that voluntarily?”
“Maybe, or maybe he gave her over. They’d take a trade, especially a woman. I’ll tell you, that’s the way it smelled to me, but there wasn’t one shred of evidence pointing that way. She was the meal ticket from what I can find, not that they had anything much to show for it.”
“Just a couple months’ rent in the financials,” Eve interrupted. “Not hefty chunks.”
“That’s right. Not a hand-to-mouth kind of thing, but not your caviar and bubble wine either.”
“Under the radar,” Eve voiced.
“You could say. So, maybe he gave her over to the Stallions, and things got out of hand. I don’t know, but it was just too damn pat with him. He comes up with the line about how they were having marital problems, and she was having trouble with illegals. But the neighbors said they never heard them fighting. And they looked like a nice little family any time they went out together, except the woman looked kinda worn down.”
As she talked to him, Eve made her own notes, formed her own theories.
“This address, where she and the man and boy lived. What kind of neighborhood was that?”
“Solid middle. Working families, a lot of kids. They had a good apartment in a nice building. Nothing flashy, but nice. The husband, he had some flash.”
“Did he?”
“Expensive wrist unit, shoes. The boy had plenty of trendy toys. They had upmarket electronics. He was working in e-repair, consulting sort of deal, and she was—according to him—a professional mother. But he hardly put in any time on the job, and did most of the looking after the kid, according to the neighbors. I asked him about the wrist unit. Said it was a birthday present from his wife.
“He was off,” Pulliti said. “My gut said he was off, but the evidence said he was clean.”
When Chicago had given her all it could, Eve sat back, closed her eyes. He was off, but came away clean. There was a pattern.
He let the woman take the fall for him—just as he’d let the woman sleep with, live with his own brother, and like he may have let her scoop up johns and marks in gang territory.
Sex, she thought. Did he like her to use sex to scam? Was that part of a thrill?
When had the illegals come into it? When had she started using?
MacMasters said she might have needed them to have sex with her marks.
Maybe so. Not with the brother. It’s kinship in a twisted way. They’d looked alike, and she’d lived the con of making a family.
She pushed up, paced to the window and back. Paced to her board and away.
No, he hadn’t knocked on a neighbor’s door out of sheer coincidence the night of her murder. No way in hell. But it wouldn’t have been just a cover for the cops. Couldn’t be. They’d never have put him at the scene of the murder.
Covering though. Covering his own ass while she was being raped.
He knew something was going to happen to her, something bad. Something that could involve the cops coming to the door. A deal. A setup. A trade.
But the boy grows up and goes after MacMasters, mirroring the crime against his mother on MacMasters’s daughter. Why? Because MacMasters was the arresting officer, in another city, two full years before his mother’s murder?
What kind of sense did that make, even for a sociopath? It didn’t fo llow . . .
She stopped, turned to stare at the board again. Unless . . .
“Dallas, I might have a line on—”
“Who’s the biggest influence in your life?” Eve interrupted. “I mean, who would you say gave you the foundation for what you are, how you think, what you believe?”
Peabody frowned over the question. “Well, I like to think I think for myself, and there are a variety of factors in my life experience—”
“Cut the crap.”
“Okay, at the base? My parents. Not that I go along with everything there, or I’d be in a commune raising goats or weaving flax, but—”
“The base is there. You’re a cop, but with Free-Ager tendencies.” She tapped Yancy’s sketch as Peabody’s frown deepened over the analysis.
“So, who most influenced this one? His mother’s murdered when he’s about four. Who’d be the biggest influence on what he believes, how he views the world?” She jabbed her finger into Pauley’s ID print. “This one. He’s a con artist, an operator. He taps his parents for money time and again, even though they know better. He’s grease, he slides. His own brother has to pretend he doesn’t exist to barricade himself. A smart and devious woman falls for him to the extent she takes an eighteen-month rap so he can skate—and she gets into prossing and illegals after they’re hooked. Not before, after.”
“The wrong guy,” Peabody offered. “Like Trueheart said.”
“Yeah, a really wrong guy. And if he tells the kid how his mother was lost, murdered, because the cops screwed with her, why wouldn’t he believe it?”
“Because they didn’t?”
“That doesn’t matter. The kid’s already predisposed to believe it. He’s lived his whole life believing it, and wanting to even the score. He’s lived his whole life targeting marks, taking what he wants, living on the other side. And liking it. Planning out the ultimate con. Pauley let the woman take the fall for him, but that’s not what the kid hears. Pauley covered his ass on the night she was killed, but that’s not what the kid hears. When you keep hearing the same thing from the person who has the power—and Pauley had the power for years—you believe.”
Her father had held the power, Eve thought. He’d told her she was nothing, told her the police would put her in a dark hole and leave her there to rot.
And for a long time, she’d believed him to the extent she was as terrified of the police, of anyone in the system as she was of the man who beat and raped her.
“Dallas?”
“It’s classic,” Eve concluded. “If you want to create something, someone, to obey, to believe, to become, you repeat, repeat. Punish or reward, that depends on your style, but you drill the message home. They killed your mother. They’re to blame. They need to pay.”
It struck like a hammer in the gut. “They, not he. It has to be they. The system, everyone who had a part in it. It’s the system he hates. Oh, goddamn it. We need a run, now, on every official connected to Irene Schultz’s arrest and incarceration. Her lawyer, the APA, the judge, the warden, the CS rep who removed the kid, the head of CS at the time, the foster home. We need whereabouts, family, family whereabouts.”
Peabody’s dark eyes went huge. “He’s going after someone else.”
“One cop isn’t enough.” Eve launched herself at her unit, ordered an immediate run. “He started it, but others are complicit. It’s their fault his mother went away, their fault she was murdered. Took her away from him, so he’s going to take something away from them. Frisco, the other cop, he went down. He’s out of play. Can’t punish the dead, can’t make the dead suffer.”
Peabody, already working it on her PPC, nodded. “Her lawyer’s still in the city, a partner in a law firm downtown. Divorced, one child. Male, age fifteen.”
“We inform, and get them covered. The APA’s in Denver now, married, two minor children. We contact, inform, inform local authorities.”
As she started down the line, her desk ’link signaled. She glanced, impatient, at the readout. Then her stomach sank.
“Dallas.”
Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve.
Too late, Eve thought as she pulled up outside the SoHo loft. I’m too late. With Peabody she walked past the officers outside the building, and into the elevator.
“We’ll want all security, want to knock on all the doors. Contact Morris.”
“Already done. Dallas, I informed Whitney. He’s moved your media conference to sixteen hundred, and will keep a lid on this as long as possible.”
Eve stepped out of the elevator, into the living area. Upmarket, she thought. Wealthy bohemian. “Who owns it?”
“Delongi, Eric, and Stuben, Samuel. Mid-divorce. The loft is on the market, and currently untenanted.”
“Lieutenant.” One of the officers stepped to her. “No visible sign of break-in, no visible sign of struggle or theft. She’s in the bedroom. A real estate agent found her. He was showing the apartment to a couple of clients. My partner’s got them in the second bedroom.”
“Keep them sequestered. We’ll work the scene first.” She stopped at the kitchen, studied the single go-cup of coffee on the counter. “Was that here when you arrived?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Record and bag, Peabody.”
She moved on, stopped at the bedroom doorway.
Not a child this time, she thought as she studied the body. But young. Early twenties. Whose daughter was she?
“Victim is female,” she began for the record. “Early to mid-twenties. Privacy screens are engaged here, and throughout the living area.” She scanned the room. “There’s no sign of struggle. Victim appears to be fully dressed.”
With her hands and feet sealed, Eve entered to examine the body. “Ligature marks on ankles, facial bruising, bruising around the neck consistent with manual strangulation. ME to confirm.”
She crouched, angled herself to see the victim’s wrists. She expected to see police restraints, as with Deena, but this victim’s wrists were bound with some sort of colorful cord.
“Cording around wrists, deviation from Deena MacMasters’s homicide. Get the ID, TOD, Peabody.”
Blood on the sheets, she noted, consistent with violent rape. She hadn’t been a virgin, not likely, but she’d suffered the same pain and terror.
“Bruising on thighs and around genital area. No underwear. She’ll have been sodomized, too, and smothered, repeatedly. It’s not a fucking copycat. Why did he use cord instead of cuffs?
“Not a cop’s kid,” she concluded. “The cuffs were another symbol. What’s the cord symbolize?”
“Victim is identified as Karlene Robins,” Peabody stated, “age twenty-six, Lower West Side address, with cohab Hampton, Anthony, employed by City Choice Realty. TOD is sixteen-thirty-eight, yesterday.”
Peabody looked over at Eve. “That’s before we had the sketch, before we had a name, before—”
She broke off when Eve held up a hand. “Irrelevant. Look for her bag, her ’link, appointment book. You won’t find them, but look. Flag for ME,” she continued for the record. “Tox screen priority.
“She’s Jaynie Robins’s daughter, the child services agent who removed Darrin Pauley into foster care during the Irene Schultz investigation. She came to show the apartment. He poses as a client, and all he needs to do is be ready when the right property comes up. Not a college student this time. That wouldn’t do the job. No, this sort of property? Young exec, or trust-fund baby. Arty type, for this neighborhood, I’d say. Likes music, or the arts, the scene. He brings her coffee. Nice gesture. Hey, I picked some up for you, too. Takes her out, sets her up, just like Deena. Except for the restraints.”
“It plays for me. Dallas, there’s no bag, no purse, nothing of hers. They’ve got a couple of comps, but they’re for show. The security station’s locked. I mastered it, and the cams are shut down, the discs removed, the drive’s been corrupted.”
“There’s building security on a place like this, too. We’re going to roll her, then I want you to check that out. I’ll start on the wits when I’m done here.”
When they rolled the body over, Eve bent down to examine the cords. “Some kind of bungee cord?”
“For kids.” Peabody blew out a breath. “You use it to hang stuff from their cribs or strollers so they can pull. Bright, primary colors and designs usually. Stimulate the eye.”
“Child services. Symbolic, like the cuffs.” He’d had fun with this, she thought. The little jabs and pokes. “Check out building security, and make sure EDD’s on the way.”
She moved to the second bedroom, signaled the officer on duty to step out. All three people began to speak at once. Eve simply held up a hand, then pointed at the man sitting alone.
“You. You’d be the real estate agent. I’m Lieutenant Dallas. Name, please.”
“Chip Wayne. I work for Astoria Real Estate.” He took out a card, passed it to Eve. “I had an appointment this morning with Mr. and Mrs. Gordon, to show them this loft. It’s just gone back on the market, and—”
She held up a hand again. “How do you gain access?”
“It’s a code. All listing agents are given a code for access, and have to input their own ID code. I just—”
“What time did you arrive?”
“We met outside just after eleven. We had an eleven o’clock showing. We—we came up together, and began with the living area. Ah, Mrs. Gordon wandered off to look at the bedrooms. We encourage clients to look around, and then she—”
Eve stopped him again. “The place is furnished, but the records show it’s been untenanted for three months.”
“It’s staging. Rented by the owners. To, ah, give the prospective buyers a better feel for how it looks, lived in. I don’t know how that woman . . . I don’t know how she can be here. The log says the agent from City Choice showed it yesterday, and logged out at twelve-thirty.”
“Is that so?”
“The building is well secured.” He looked almost pleadingly toward the couple huddled together in a chair. “It’s prime property. Quiet, safe.”
“Yeah, safe.” Eve looked over at the woman. Not much older than the victim, she judged. Shaking, teary. “You found the body.”
“I—I wanted to see the bedrooms. Especially the master. We want a large master, with a view if we can get it.
So I . . . And she was there, on the bed. Dead. She looked dead. I screamed for Brent, and I ran away from the—from her.”
“Did you go into the room? Any of you?”
“Nobody went in. I play a cop on screen.” Gordon smiled weakly. “City Force, maybe you’ve caught it.”
“Sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter. Brash young detective, maverick. Anyway, a lot of it’s bullshit, I guess, but you get how you have to secure a crime scene. So we didn’t go in, or touch anything after Posey found the woman. We called nine-one-one.”
“Okay. Mr. Wayne, how far in advance do you make these appointments for showings?”
“It depends. In a case like this one, fast as you can. There was a contract on it, but it fell through. We heard about it yesterday, but City got the jump on us. They must have somebody on the inside, somebody at the lending company who gave them the head’s up. I contacted the Gordons as soon as I got word, but we couldn’t make it in until this morning.”
“Why them, particularly?”
“It’s just what they’re looking for. The location, the property, the price range. It’s exactly what you’ve been looking for.”
Gordon gave him a look of quiet disbelief. “Chip, you’ve got to be kidding.”
“The owners are bound to be willing to renegotiate the price, considering. We can—”
“Brent, I want to go. Can’t we leave? Please.”
“Give me your contact information,” Eve told them, “and you’re free to go. We may need to talk to you again.”
Eve walked the loft again, made notes, ran it through her head while the sweepers began their part of the job.
“Cams off on building security, too, and the virus . . . it looks like it infected that system. They’re linked up with the individual security. It’s not the same system as the first murder,” Peabody continued, “but it’s the same brand. A commercial model. Also, the other residents aren’t home. Word is everybody works days. The building is typically empty from around nine in the morning to around five in the afternoon, weekdays. I started a background on the other residents. I’m not getting anything that clicks.”