Strangers in Death

  “It takes time.”

  “We can go there and see him. I thought, if she’s up to it, the sooner we do that, the better.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “I’d take her. She needs to…We both need to…” He trailed off, shook his head. “Do you know, can you tell me, if you know…”

  “It’s very early yet, Mr. Forrest. We’re actively pursuing all lines of investigation.”

  “It seems like days. I know it’s only been hours, but it seems like days. Sorry.” He rubbed his fingers over exhausted eyes. “I looked you up. There was something familiar, but I couldn’t think. I just couldn’t think clearly this morning. But I looked you up. Roarke’s cop.”

  “The NYPSD considers me their cop.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s all right.”

  “I mean to say, you’re supposed to be the best there is. You solved the Icove case, and you caught that maniac who was kidnapping and mutilating those women. You’ll find who did this to Uncle Tommy.” Now, riding with grief was a plea. “You won’t give up.”

  “I don’t give up.” Eve looked past him as Ava came into the room.

  “Can’t we have a few hours? Can’t we have any time alone? Must you people be here?”

  “Ava.” Ben rushed to her side, took her weight when she slumped against him. “The police are doing their job. We need them to do their job.”

  “They’ve made him a joke. They’ve made his death a joke.”

  “No.” Ben turned her into his arms, stroked her back. “Ssh, now.”

  “Take me to Brigit’s, Ben. Take me away from here. I can’t bear it. I can’t stay here.”

  “All right. That’s what I’ll do.” He glanced at Eve, who pointed to herself, then upstairs. Nodding, he led Ava away.

  Though she’d have preferred an empty house, Eve walked back to the front door. She imagined the dark, the quality of it in the odd blue glow of the security lights. An efficient killer would have already sealed up, hair, hands, shoes. Extra protection, extra soundproofing with booties over the shoes. No chance of leaving any sort of print.

  Directly upstairs, she thought. Down to business—priority business, she decided as she climbed the stairs. No squeaks, she noted, no creaks. Solid construction. Straight to the master bedroom, no detours. The door would be closed, as it was now. Not sealed though, she thought as she used her master to uncode the police seal.

  She turned the knob, eased the door open. Again, it was soundless. Privacy shields over the windows, she recalled, and heavy blackout drapes over that. Tommy liked to sleep in his snug cave.

  Pitch-black. It would be pitch-black. Even someone knowing the room intimately couldn’t be sure how the victim would be positioned in the bed. A pin light would be enough, she mused. Just a thin beam to show the way.

  Because she didn’t want to be disturbed, she closed and locked the door behind her. “Lights on,” she ordered, and took the time to arrange the room as it would have been for the killer. “Lights off,” she ordered when she stood back at the door, and flipping on a pin light, used it to cross to the bed.

  Syringe first. Knock him out. Did he stir? Feel that quick little nip over the skin? Count to ten—it doesn’t take long—count to ten, slow and steady.

  What are you thinking? she wondered. Excitement, fear? Not rage, can’t be rage. He’s already beyond you, you saw to that, so it’s not rage.

  Turn the lights back on now. No need to work in the dark. “Lights on, fire on,” Eve ordered.

  Did you bring the rope, or did he have that tucked away?

  You brought it. Have to be sure, can’t screw up now. You have to have all the tools at hand.

  Was he nude already, or did you strip him? If you stripped him, where did you put the sleep clothes. A trophy?

  Wrists first. Do you feel his breath, his heavy, drugged breath on your skin when you bind his wrists? They’re limp, deadweight. He’s already helpless, but you have a stage to set. Wrists first.

  Then the ankles.

  Set out the toys.

  Time for the next dose. You want him hard. Slide the rings on his cock. How do you feel, fondling him when he’s helpless? Enjoyment or disgust? Or neither. Is it all just the next step now?

  Takes time, all this window dressing. Takes time, and effort. Have to get into bed with death now to finish it.

  Eve hitched up, braced a knee on the bed. Not enough leverage, she decided, and climbed on until she knelt beside her mind picture of Anders, imagined tying the last rope, winding it around his neck. Heavy head. Secure the second end of the rope and the head falls forward. It practically does the work for you.

  She eased off the bed again, smoothed out any depression. Study the work, she mused, go over your checklist. How’s his breathing? Is it already changing? Is his system already sending out alarm signals his mind and body can’t answer?

  Pack up the light, the syringes, walk away. Leave the door open.

  Unlike the killer, Eve locked and sealed it. When she walked downstairs, her mind still walking alongside the killer, she saw Greta sitting stiff-spined in a chair in the foyer.

  “Mr. Forrest asked if I’d stay, in case you needed anything. He’s taken Mrs. Anders to Ms. Plowder’s home.”

  “No, I’ve got all I need. You should go home.”

  “Yes, I should go home.” She put on the serviceable coat draped over her arm.

  “Greta, what did Mr. Anders wear in bed?”

  “I beg your pardon!”

  “There were pajamas in his drawer. You supervise the laundry, correct?”

  “I—Yes, of course. Mr. Anders wore sensible pajamas. A fresh pair daily, pressed. No starch.”

  “How many pairs did he have?”

  “At last count, which would have been Monday last, Mr. Anders owned ten pairs of all-cotton pajamas.”

  “Ten pairs. Did Mr. Anders routinely use sleep aids?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m sorry. I have purchased them from time to time, as I do the marketing, the shopping. I can’t say if either Mr. or Mrs. Anders used them, or if that was routine use.”

  “Okay. You’ve been very helpful.”

  Greta fit a gray hat over her head. “Being helpful is what I do.”

  When the door closed behind Greta, Eve stood where she was and let it settle around her. The quiet, the sensation of empty. Turning, she walked through the foyer, took the left hall. Rooms, she thought, the more money somebody had the more rooms he needed to keep the stuff he spent his money on.

  And the more money and more rooms and more stuff, the more security to stop somebody from coming in and robbing you blind.

  Anders’s security room was off the kitchen, another locked door requiring its own keypad or code. Eve used her master, opened it. Inside were the screens for inner security, and those for outer. All ran now. Figuring security could afford a quick breach with a cop in the house, she checked the code EDD had given her, keyed it in. The current disc for the exterior front ejected.

  She tapped it back in, glanced over at the empty disc file.

  Load ’em up, she thought. Cover all contingencies. Go out, lock the room. Why? Just being orderly?

  She strode back to the front door, took a last glance around. Stepping out, she relocked, resealed. Then looked at her wrist unit. Taking time out for the three-minute conversation with Greta, from entry to exit, the reenactment had taken just under forty minutes. Adding in time to strip the victim out of his sensible pajamas, she’d make it a comfortable forty-five minutes.

  Not enough time to hunt up the security room and bypass the code, not in a house this size. Not enough to hunt up the bedroom. The killer knew the layout. Not just where the master slept, but where to find the security discs.

  Closed the security room door, she thought, striding back to her car, but left the bedroom door open. Turned the lights out, but left the fire going.

  In her car she ordered the heat on blast furnace
, then took out her book to make some notes while they were fresh in her mind. And, only ninety minutes past the end of her shift, she bulled her way into traffic and headed home.

  Speaking of a ridiculous number of rooms, she thought after driving through the big iron gates and winding up the drive. Nobody held a candle (whatever that meant) to Roarke. The house was a stunner, lording over sky and city, windows blazing hot, cold stars dripping overhead. A couple of years before, she never would have believed she could live in a place so…spectacular, much less live there comfortably.

  But she did. And pulling up in front of that vast stone beauty, leaving her cop’s ride out in front where Roarke’s majordomo, Summerset, would sneer at it, rated as one of the favorite parts of her day. Any day.

  She climbed out of the stuffy car, jogged through cold air, and into the light-and warmth-drenched house.

  He was there, of course. Lurking. The bony beanpole in a black suit who ran the house, and kept her mildly irritated like a sand-covered pebble in a shoe.

  “Lieutenant,” he said in a tone that scraped along the back of her neck like nails over a blackboard. “You’re late, as usual.”

  “You’re ugly, as usual. But I’ve learned to make allowances.”

  As she stripped off her coat, the fat cat Galahad gave Summerset’s skinny ankle a last body rub, then padded over to Eve. She tossed her coat over the newel post, bent to give the cat a quick scratch between the ears. Duties done, she headed upstairs, with Galahad at her heels.

  In the bedroom Roarke was stripped down to trousers and holding a black sweater. “Now there’s timing,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t bother with this.” He wagged the sweater. “And see how fast I can get you half naked instead.”

  Eyes narrowed, she pointed a finger at him. “How long have you been home?”

  “About ten minutes, I’d think.”

  “See that! See!” Now she pointed a finger of both hands. “Why am I late according to His Boniness, but you’re only minutes ahead of me and don’t get sneered at.”

  “How do you know I wasn’t sneered at?”

  “Because I know. Were you?”

  “I wasn’t, no. But then I did have a message sent home that I’d be a bit late.”

  She sniffed. “Suck-up.”

  He smiled. “Come over here and say that.”

  “I’m not bouncing on you now. I’ve got notes to organize.” She pulled off her weapon harness, draped it over the back of a chair. “Media shit’s hit the public fan over how Anders died. I need to try to plug some holes.”

  “I made a statement myself.”

  “You what? A statement? What? Why? Why didn’t you run it by me before—”

  “I knew the man, and his corporate headquarters is in my building. I know how to make a statement, Eve. I had some experience in the process before I met you.”

  “Right. Right.” She rubbed a spot between her eyebrows. “It’s just. The whole thing smells.”

  “Of?”

  “Overkill. I gotta…” She twirled a finger in the air. “Until something settles into place for me.”

  “You can”—he mimicked her gesture—“with me. I suppose you can bounce on me later, and for now we can have a meal at your desk.”

  “I could use the ear.” She studied him as he pulled on the sweater. It was kind of a shame he needed one. “Are we supposed to date?”

  “Date what?”

  “Each other.”

  He sent her a look that combined amusement, charm, and bafflement. She wondered how he managed it. “As in I take you out, there is some form of activity, then I drop you off at the door with a long, hopeful good-night kiss?”

  “No.” She frowned. “We never did that anyway.”

  “I knew I forgot something.” He skimmed a finger down the cleft in her chin. “Should I ask you out on a date, darling Eve?”

  “Look, I just wondered about it, that’s all. Peabody started this whole thing about could she take an hour’s personal to get polished up because she and McNab had this date-night deal going so they wouldn’t lose the juice.”

  “That’s very sweet. Are you wondering if we’re low on juice?” He took her hand, drew it to his lips.

  “No.” Why such a deliberately romantic gesture caused tingles straight up her arm, she didn’t know. “I just wondered if that’s the sort of thing you’re supposed to do when you’re married awhile. And you spend a lot of evenings with work.”

  “We like work, don’t we?”

  “Yeah, we do.” She moved in, grabbed his hair with her fists and pulled his mouth to hers. She put some heat behind it—it was the least she could do—and felt the tingle up her arm arrow to her belly. She ended the kiss with a quick, light nip.

  “Plenty of juice in reserve,” she decided. She laid her hands on his cheeks a moment, then stepped back. “And I always hated dating.”

  Kicked back at her desk, sharing a bottle of wine and the comforting goodness of homemade chicken pot pie struck her as just about perfect. Summerset might be a pain in her ass but the man could cook.

  As they ate, she rewound the facts and impressions in her head, and played them out for Roarke.

  “So on one hand, you’ve got a guy who appears to dick around on his wife of nearly sixteen years, likes the kink, and when things go wrong, the kink partner runs. But that’s bogus.”

  “Because he was drugged.”

  “That’s the big one, but it’s not all. Accident, even if the killer was hired sex, there would have been some attempt to revive. The very least, you take the rope away. Then there’s the pajamas.”

  “There is?”

  “Greta—who strikes me as spookily efficient as the Nazi downstairs, states the vic wore pj’s. And had ten pairs. Count is nine. Where’s pair number ten? I have to figure the killer took them, either for a trophy, or to dispose of them away from the scene. If he’s expecting company, he either has them on so the company can undress him, or he leaves them folded in the drawer where the other nine pairs were. If he’s wearing them, and it was an accident, why grab them up when you run? Doesn’t follow.”

  “Maybe the killer worried there was DNA or other forensic evidence on them.”

  “The sweepers didn’t find anything anywhere else in the room. Doesn’t follow. Killer was sealed. Had to be sealed. The only prints in the room were Anders’s, the wife’s, and the housekeeper’s. The few stray hairs in the bed were all his.”

  “Putting that aside for a moment, and given it’s long odds considering what I know of Anders, there are some who get off on the idea of rape. Some who might enjoy the idea of being taken, forced, while they’re unconscious. The ultimate submissive.”

  “People are sick in all kinds of ways,” Eve commented. “But even if he was sick that way, would anyone in their right mind go into that kind of liaison without complete trust in the partner? And with that kind of trust, would the partner leave him choking to death? He was still alive when the security booted back up. I don’t see it. But on the other hand…”

  She paused to scoop up more pot pie. “The other hand is premeditated murder. Someone who’s been in the house, or had access to the setup. The killer knew where Anders slept, where the security room was, knew how to override the security. I timed it, and there wasn’t room for hunting around.”

  She walked Roarke through, step by step, as she had done. “It’s cold, vindictive, ugly—you don’t just want him dead, you want to mess him up after he’s dead. But something’s missing in that. Where’s the springboard? You’re that vindictive, there has to be anger or hate. If you’re controlled enough to strap those down, why aren’t you controlled enough to handle the details? The hefty dose of barbs—it’s off. You want to humiliate him, but you don’t have anything to say to him. You’re alone in the house—a light tranq would be enough, give you enough to wrap him up. Don’t you want him to hear why—don’t you have something to say, don’t you want him to know?

  “So that??
?s the third hand. The sham. The killer didn’t care if the stage fell apart after the curtain. The killer had nothing to say to Anders. But that’s missing something. Why put on the show if you can’t take the bows with a captive audience? What do you gain? What’s the damn point?”

  “He’s dead. Whatever the window dressing, mission accomplished.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded, gesturing with her fork. “And what have I got? A devoted nephew, a loving wife, steadfast friends, the efficient housekeeper. Somebody’s hiding something. That somebody knew he’d be alone in the house that night. Had to be sure of it. So…I dig deeper into financials—see if Anders was paying for it, or if I can find he paid for a subscription to Bondage Weekly. See if the wife, the nephew had any money troubles. Gambling, illegals. Sports betting’s big,” she considered. “Maybe Ben got in too deep.”

  “It won’t be Ben.”

  “Doesn’t feel like Ben. Doesn’t mean it won’t be connected to Ben.” Eyeing him, she polished off her wine. “You want to sign on, expert consultant, civilian, and poke into some bank accounts?”

  “I live for these moments.”

  “Take the wife. I’ll take Ben. Then maybe we’ll split up Anders.”

  “Assignments, always exciting. I’ve one for you. Tend to the dishes. I’ll get the coffee.”

  It was hard to argue, especially since he’d come up with the pot pie idea. She carted the dishes, stacked them in the little washer in her office kitchen, then turned and found him studying her.

  “What?”

  “Awfully domestic, isn’t it? A moment. Dish duty, coffee fetching, the two of us in the kitchen after a meal.”

  Eve glanced down to where Galahad was sniffing his bowl, obviously hoping for seconds. “That would be the three of us.”

  “Ah yes. Our little family.” Reaching out, he brushed the tips of her choppy hair. “A nice settled moment between the business of the day and the puzzle of the evening. It occurs to me these are moments I live for.”

  Her heart simply melted. “I always wonder why they’re enough for you.”

  He laid his lips on hers, soft, sweet. “You shouldn’t.”