Creation in Death (11 page)

“Getting some beeps here.”

“Wipe the mustard off your face, Detective.”

“Oh, sorry.” He swiped at it with the back of his hands. “Started the Ted search at the branch where Rossi works,” he began. “Got guys that fit the height and weight, but not the age, fit the age, but not otherwise. Fanned out to other branches. This Pi’s being really trim about it. But still nothing that really rings the bell. So I moved out to the boroughs.”

“Bottom-line it, McNab.”

“Okay, I’ve got a few—nobody named Ted—but a few who fall into the description you may want to have checked out. But they don’t fit the profile. We got married guys, with kids, grandkids, and no property like we’re thinking listed under their name or names of family members I’ve dug up so far.”

“And those are my beeps.”

“No. I started thinking, hey, let’s try the locales of the other murders. Hit Florida first, and got us a beep.”

He called the data on screen. “Membership in the name of Edward Nave. DOB June 8, 1989—down on the age—and the membership required a workup, so we’ve got his height—down with that—weight—a few pounds lighter, but you gotta figure on some flux. Oh, and Peabody says that Ted’s a nickname for Edward, so—”

“Address.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem. Address is bogus. He lists a Florida addy that would have him setting up in Miami’s Grand Opera House. I checked it out.”

“Bring up his ID.”

“Okay.” McNab pulled at his heavily decorated ear. “Problem number two. I can give you a fistful of Edward Naves, but none of their ID data matches the membership data.”

“Copy me on them anyway. We’ll run them down. How long has he held the membership? When did he pick it up in Florida?”

“Five years. About three months before the first murder there. It’s him, Dallas.” Conviction pushed through McNab’s voice, hardened his face. “Gotta go with the gut on it, but he’s covered it.”

“We’re going to uncover it.” She looked at Roarke. “This franchise in Europe?”

“It is.”

“Start searching the memberships in the other target cities. Maybe, just maybe, this was one of his trolling tools.”

She started to go to her own station. She’d dig into Florida again, she decided, see if she could find any connection between the fitness center and any of the victims there. A member, one of the staff, cleaning crew.

“Eve.” Mira stood up, and the look in her eyes had Eve’s stomach sinking. “I’ve been trying to contact an Ariel Greenfeld. She’s a baker at a place called Your Affair downtown. She doesn’t answer the ’link numbers listed on her information. I’ve just spoken with her emergency contact, a neighbor. Greenfeld hasn’t been back to her apartment since she left for work this morning.”

“Get me the address.” She started to tell Peabody to get moving, then stopped. She’d made a mistake with Feeney, there was no point in giving out another personal slap. “Roarke and I will check it out. Unless notified, all team members are to go the hell home by twenty-three hundred or hit the crib. Report back at oh-eight-hundred for first briefing. Anything, absolutely anything pops meanwhile, I’m the first to know.”

A
s they headed toward Ariel’s apartment, Eve glanced at Roarke. His face was unreadable, but she understood it. Guilt, worry, questions.

“What’s Your Affair?”

“An event shop. Ah…upscale, everything you might need under one roof. A variety of specialty boutiques—attire, floral and planting, bakery, catering, decor, event planners. It was something I thought of when we were dealing with our wedding. Why go to all these places, all these people, if you can go to one location and find effectively everything you’d need. And if you want something else, there are consultants who’ll find that something else for you.”

Eve thought she might actually shop in a place like that. If she fell out of a three-story window, cracked her head on the sidewalk, and suffered severe brain damage. But she said, “Handy.”

“So I thought, yes. It’s doing quite well. She’s worked there eight months. Ariel Greenfeld.”

“And right now, she could be boinking some guy she picked up in a bar.”

He turned his head to look at her. “You don’t think that. I should contact her supervisor, find out what time she left work.”

“Let’s wait on that. Let’s check out her place, talk to her neighbor. Look, do you know why I’m keeping the team on another two hours? She might not be the one. We pull off, push everything into this, maybe somebody else gets taken. First, we get a clearer view of the situation.”

“Yes, a clearer view. How’s the headache?”

“Sulking behind the blocker. I know it’s there, but it’s pretty easy to ignore.”

When they’d parked, he laid a hand over hers. “Where are your gloves?”

“Somewhere. Else.”

He kept her hand in his, opened the glove box. And took out the spare pair he’d bought her on a recent shopping trip. “Wear these. It’s cold.”

She pulled them on, and was grateful for them as they hiked a block to the apartment building. “You never got that sandwich,” she pointed out.

“Neither did you.”

“At least I didn’t shell out hundreds of dollars and not even end up with a pickle chip or a splat of veggie hash.”

“I’ve never understood the appeal of anything referred to as ‘hash.’” Appreciating her, he draped an arm over her shoulders as they walked.

Rather than wait to be buzzed in, she used her master on the front entrance door.

Decent building, she noted. What she thought of as solid working class. Tenants with steady employment and middle-class income. Tidy entranceway, standard security cams, single elevator.

“Third floor,” she requested. “She could walk to work from here, if she didn’t mind a good hike. Catch the subway and save five blocks in crappy weather or if she’s running late. Bakers, they start early, right? What time does the store open?”

“Seven-thirty for the bakery, the café. Ten to six for most of the retail, with extended hours to eight on Saturdays. But yes, I’d think the bakery section would start work before opening hours.”

“Couple hours maybe. So if she had to be there by six…” She trailed off as they reached the third floor. “Neighbor’s 305.”

She walked to it, had just lifted a fist to knock when the door opened. The man who answered was late-twenties, sporting spikey hair of streaked black and bronze. He wore a baggy sweater and old jeans, and an expression of barely controlled worry.

“Hey, heard the elevator. You the cops?”

“Lieutenant Dallas.” Eve held up her badge. “Erik Pastor?”

“Yeah, come on in. Ari’s not home yet. I’ve been calling people, to see if anybody’s seen her.”

“When did you see her last?”

“This morning. Early this morning. She came in to bring me a couple of muffins. We went out last night, a group of us. Ari went home before midnight, because she had to be at work at six this morning. And she figured—correctly—I’d be hungover.”

He lowered to the arm of the couch. The area reflected the debris of a man who’d spent the bulk of the day nursing a long night. Soy chips, soft-drink tubes, a bottle of blockers, a blanket, a couple of pillows were scattered around.

“I only made it as far as the couch,” he continued. “So I heard her come in, groaned at her. She razzed me a little, and said she’d see me later. If I wasn’t dead, she’d pick up a few things on her way home and fix me some dinner. Has something happened to her? They wouldn’t tell me anything on the ’link.”

“You’re tight? You and Ariel?”

“Yeah. Not, you know, that way. We’re friends. We hang.”

“Could she be out with someone she’s more than friendly with?”

“There’s a couple of guys—casual, nothing serious. I checked with them, hell, with every damn body. Plus, she’d have told me.” His voice shook a little, telling Eve he was struggling with that control. “If she says she’s going to come back and fix dinner, that’s what she does. I was starting to worry before you guys called.”

“What time did she get off work today?”

“Ah…give me a minute. Four? Yeah, I think four. It’s her long Sunday, so it’s four. Usually she heads straight back. Short Sundays she might do some shopping, or some of us would meet up for lunch or something.”

“We’d like to look in her apartment.”

“Okay, sure. She wouldn’t mind. I’ll get the key. We’ve got keys to each other’s places.”

“Did she say anything about having an appointment today? About meeting someone?”

“No. Or, God, I don’t know. I had my head buried under the pillow and was praying for a quick, merciful death when she popped in this morning. I didn’t pay attention.” He dug a set of keys out of a drawer. “I don’t understand why she’s not answering her pocket ’link. I don’t understand why you’re asking all these questions.”

“Let’s take a look at her place,” Eve suggested. “Go from there.”

I
t smelled of cookies, Eve realized. Though the kitchen was small, it was organized and equipped by someone who knew what they were doing.

“Some women buy earrings or shoes,” Erik said. “Ari, she buys ingredients and baking tools. There’s a specialty shop in the meatpacking district called Baker’s Dozen? She’ll have an orgasm just walking in there.”

“Is there anything missing that would normally be here if she was just going to work?”

“Uh, I don’t know. I don’t think so. Should I look around?”

“Why don’t you?”

While he did, Eve studied the little computer on a table just outside the kitchen. Couldn’t touch it, she thought, not until there was an official report.

Bending the line of probable cause.

“He might be on there,” Roarke murmured. “Something to do with this might be on there.”

“And she could walk in the door in the next thirty seconds, and I’d have invaded her privacy, illegally.”

“Bollocks to that.” He started to move past Eve to open the computer himself.

“Wait, damn it. Just wait.”

“Her shoes.” Erik stepped out of the bedroom, his face radiating both confusion and concern.

“What about them?”

“Her good black shoes aren’t here. She wears skids to work. She walks. It’s eight blocks, two of them crosstown, and she’s on her feet all day. Her work skids aren’t here, either. She’d take a change if she was going somewhere after. She’d take other shoes.”

His face cleared. “She took her good black shoes. She must’ve had a date or something, just forgot to tell me, or I was so out of it…. That’s all it is. She hooked up with somebody after work.”

Eve turned back to Roarke. “Open it.”

EVE RELAYED THE NEW DATA TO THE TEAM AT
Central, and ordered Ariel’s electronics picked up. Riding on the fresh spurt of adrenaline, she turned to Roarke. “We’ve got a jump on him.”

Roarke continued to study the little screen with its images of wedding cakes and cost projections. “From the glass-half-empty side, it seems he’s gotten the jump on us.”

“That’s wrong thinking. We’re moving on a lead we didn’t have before this investigation. And we’re moving in the right direction. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have known, not for hours—potentially days—that Greenfeld was missing. We wouldn’t know how he pulled her in.”

“And how does that help her, Eve?”

“Everything we know gives her a better chance of making it through. We know he’s had her about five hours. We have to assume he’s frequented the store where she worked, and contacted her by some method. Five hours, Roarke,” she repeated. “He hasn’t done anything to her yet. Probably has her sedated. He won’t start on her until he’s…”

He looked up then, eyes frigid. “Until he’s finished with Gia Rossi. Until he’s done cutting and carving on her.”

“That’s right.” No way to soften it, Eve thought. No point in trying. “And until we find Rossi’s body, she’s alive. Until we find her body, she’s got a chance. Now, with this, she has a better one. We canvass, we check parking lots, we check public transpo. We talk to her coworkers, her other friends. We have his age, his body type. We didn’t have any of that twenty-four hours ago.”

She stepped to him, touched his arm. “Make a copy of that program, will you? We’ll work this from home. Maybe something will shake loose on the search Summerset’s been running, or on the real estate angle. Something’s going to click into place.”

“All right. But neither of us is working on this until we’ve stepped back for a couple hours. I mean it, Eve,” he said before she could protest. “You ordered your team to take some downtime for good reason.”

“I could use a shower,” she said after a moment. “An hour. Compromise.” She held up a hand, held him off. “You’ve got to admit it beats fighting about it for half that downtime.”

“Agreed.” He copied the data, handed her the disc.

Since she didn’t consider the drive home part of the break, she let Roarke take the wheel and shuffled through her notes, the timelines, the names, the statements.

He’d taken the third target sooner than projected, Eve mused. Two reasons she could think of for that. Either the earlier snatch suited his personal schedule or the target’s. Or Gia Rossi wasn’t holding up well.

She could already be dead—a possibility Eve saw no reason to share with Roarke.

Hours, she thought. If the contact had been made hours sooner, they would have found Ariel Greenfeld before he had her. The right question, the right time. Not only would the woman have been safe, but they’d have had solid data on the suspect.

Off at four, she noted. Planned to make dinner for her neighbor. So, she’d planned to be home from this outside appointment in two or three hours, most likely.

“How long would you budget for a meeting?” Eve asked. “For going over a proposal for wedding cakes and desserts, that sort of thing?”

“From her end?” Roarke considered. “She put together a lot of images, a number of variations of style and type, flavors. A great deal of trouble. I’d guess she’d prepared for a couple of hours. If she assumed—correctly—that many people take every detail of a wedding very seriously, she would have been prepared to give the potential client all the time he needed or wanted.”

“Okay, let’s say two, so that makes it eighteen hundred not including travel time. She tells the guy across the hall she’s going to pick up a few things on the way home to make—actually cook—a meal. That’s got to take some time. The shopping part, the cooking part. Probably, what, an hour?”

“Your guess.” Roarke shrugged. “Summerset would know better.”

“Yeah, well, until we consult His Boniness, I’m figuring an hour. Which puts it at nineteen hundred, again without travel. Late night Saturday, long day Sunday, early to work on Monday. I don’t figure she was prepping a late meal.”

“And what does that tell you?”

“It tells me that, most likely, as far as she knew, she wasn’t going that far for this meeting. Not across the river into Jersey, probably not across the bridge into Brooklyn or Queens. Too much bridge-and-tunnel traffic. Probability is higher he’s in Manhattan. Narrows the search.”

Eve shifted. “She’s tossing a meal together for a friend, not planning a fancy deal for a lover. Just a pal, one she’s hoping she can share this good news with if she copped the job. Picking up a few things on the way home. That says she planned to get herself home. Public transportation or on foot. So she can stop by the market. Decent chance he’s downtown, at least not above midtown.”

She sat back. “Focus there to start. Fan out, sure, but we start there, focus there.”

She worked the problem the rest of the way home, adding in factors, playing with angles. Urban Wars, body ID method, Lower West or East Side clinics.

He almost certainly had some sort of transportation, but it would also serve if he could stalk any or all of his victims on foot.

People tended to shop and frequent restaurants in their comfort-zone. The soap and shampoo—downtown store was very likely the source unless he web-shopped or brought it into New York with him. Starlight was in Chelsea, the bakery downtown, the first dumping spot in this round on the Lower East. Gia Rossi worked midtown.

Maybe he wasn’t traveling far from home this time around.

Maybe.

She plugged her knowns and unknowns into her PPC, intending to transfer the information to her desk unit and run probabilities.

“I want whatever Summerset’s worked up on disc and on my unit,” she began as they drove through the gates. “We can get his take on the timing as far as shopping/cooking, but I want to check out what markets and stores Greenfeld most usually frequented. And other specialty places below Fiftieth. The way her neighbor talked, she’d have gotten a charge out of wandering some new food place. We’ll interview the others she went out with Saturday night. Maybe she let something slip about her Sunday plans.”

They got out on opposite sides of the car, but Roarke put a hand on her arm when they reached the base of the steps of home. “You never thought there was a chance for Rossi.”

“I never said that, and there’s always a chance.”

“Slim to none. It didn’t stop you pushing—hard and in every way you could push, but you knew her chances were all but nil, and on some level accepted it.”

“Listen—”

“No, don’t misunderstand me. That’s not a criticism. It’s a small, personal revelation that came to me on the way home. Watching you work, listening to you even when you weren’t speaking. Your mind says volumes. You don’t feel the same way about Ariel Greenfeld.”

He slid his hand down her arm until he found hers, linked fingers. “You believe there’s a real chance now. Not only in finding him, stopping him. That you have to believe every minute or you’d never be able to do what you do. But you believe you’ll find him, stop him before it’s too late for this woman, and because of it Gia Rossi’s chances have gone up from slim to none to slim. It has to energize you, and at the same time, it must weigh all the heavier. They have a chance. You’re their chance.”

“We,” Eve corrected. “Everyone working the case is their chance. And we’d better not let her down.”

She expected Summerset to materialize in the foyer and intended to have Roarke take point with him. But the minute they stepped in, she heard laughter in the parlor, and the bubbling sound of it was unmistakable.

“Mavis is here.”

“There’s your hour of downtime.” Roarke slipped Eve’s coat from her shoulders. “Difficult to find a more entertaining or distracting way to rest the brain cells than a portion of Mavis Freestone.”

It was tough to argue the point. But when Eve stepped to the parlor doorway, she saw Mavis had brought Trina along. If that wasn’t scary enough, they’d hauled the baby out for the evening.

Most terrifying, at the moment, the infant Belle was being held by Summerset, and having her chin chucked by his skeletal fingers.

“I’m traumatized,” Eve stated. “He’s not supposed to smile like that. It’s against the laws of man and nature.”

“Don’t be such a hard-ass.” Roarke gave her a little poke in the ribs. “Ladies,” he said in normal tones, and had the group looking over.

“Hey!” Mavis’s already glowing face brightened. “You’re back! We were about to head out, but Bella wanted another Summerset smoochie.”

Which, to Eve’s mind, confirmed the innate oddity of babies and kids.

Mavis bounced over, sending the short, flirty skirt she wore swirling over polka-dot tights. The skirt was candy pink, the tights pink on brilliant blue. She’d gone for the blue in her hair, too, Eve noted, in a few wild streaks against silvery blond.

She grabbed one of Roarke’s hands, one of Eve’s, and pulled them into the room. “Leonardo had to shoot out to New L.A. for a client, so Trina and Belle and I had a total girl day. Ended it with some Summerset time. Look who’s here, Belle. Look who came to see you.”

With little choice Eve looked down at the baby still tucked in Summerset’s arms. Most, Eve supposed, would say the kid looked like a doll. But to Eve’s way of thinking, dolls were just creepy.

The fact was, the baby was a knockout—if you discounted the drool—pink, pretty, and plump. A lacy white ribbon was tied around her hair, as if she’d been wrapped like a gift. The dark blue eyes were lively, maybe a little too lively. They made Eve wonder just what went on inside the brain of a human the size of a teacup poodle.

She wore some sort of outfit with feet and a kind of sweater deal over it that may have been trimmed in actual fur. Over it all there was a bib—due, Eve supposed, to drool—that proclaimed:

MY DADDY IS ICED
!

“Cute,” Eve said and would have stepped back, but Roarke blocked her as he studied the baby over Eve’s shoulder.

“I think gorgeous is more accurate. What nice work you do, Mavis.”

“Thanks.” The former street urchin and current music vid sensation stared down at her daughter with sparkling eyes of unearthly blue. “Sometimes I look at her and just can’t believe she came out of me.”

“Do you have to bring up that part of it?” Eve asked and made Mavis laugh again.

“Maybe we could hang a little while more, unless you’re too tired. You guys look pretty whipped.”

“Could use a treatment,” Trina commented.

“Stay away from me.” Eve jabbed a finger in the consultant’s direction.

“We could use a meal.” Roarke smiled at their guests. “Why don’t you join us?”

“Summerset already fed us until we popped, but we could stick, keep you company. It’s off knowing our big daddy won’t be home when we get there, isn’t it, Bellarama?”

“I’ll prepare something right away.”

Eve saw Summerset shift and—anticipating—was quick and cowardly. She sidestepped, hip-bumped Roarke, leaving him in the line of fire.

She loved her man, would unquestionably risk her life for his. But when it came to babies, he could sink. She was swimming.

His arms came out instinctively, as a man’s might when something fragile or potentially explosive was about to be dropped into them. “I don’t…I should…Oh, well then,” he muttered as Summerset deftly made the transfer.

“Is there anything in particular you’d like?” The faintest wisp of a smile touched Summerset’s lips as Roarke’s eyes burned a hole through him. “For supper?”

“Something quick,” Roarke managed. He’d once diffused a bomb with seconds to spare, and had felt less panic.

“I was hoping to see you.” Mavis beamed at him, then dropped into a chair, leaving Roarke standing on what felt like very unsteady ground. “Just about dropped all the belly weight now, and got the full-steam from the docs. I’ve got a boat of new material, so I thought I could get in the studio, rock it out, cut some vids.”

“Yes. That sounds…all right.”

“Mag. I figured to bring Bella in with me. She’s completely about music. If it doesn’t work, Leonardo and I’ll figure something.”

“Doesn’t want a nanny,” Trina commented.

“Not yet anyway. I just want her to be all mine right now. Mine and her daddy’s. But I’ve got the itch to get back to work, so I want to see if I can do it on my own.”

“I’m sure you’ll do fine.” Roarke glanced down at the baby and saw Belle’s eyes were drooping. As if the thick, dark lashes were too heavy for the delicate lids to hold. “She’s going to sleep.” His own lips curved as what he held went from being mildly terrifying to quietly sweet. “Worn out from all the partying, are you now? Is there something I should do?”

“You’re doing it,” Mavis told him. “But we’ll put her down. There’s a monitor in her travel bed.” Mavis rose. “Receiver right here.” She tapped a flamingo-shaped pin just above her right ear. “Just lay her right in here. If she wakes up a little, you just pat her belly for a minute. She conks.”

It was something like a small, portable sleep chair, Roarke noted, well padded in Mavis’s—or Bella’s, he supposed—signature rainbow hue. Though setting her down in it seemed fairly straightforward, he actually felt sweat pool at the base of his spine.

When she was down, and he straightened, the relief and satisfaction was very nearly orgasmic.

Mavis crouched, fussed with the blanket. “She’ll be fine right here, won’t you, my baby girl?”

“The cat. Isn’t there something about cats and babies?”

Mavis smiled up at Roarke. “I think it’s bogus, but anyway, Galahad’s scared of her. He took one look and lit. If he comes snooping around her, I’ll hear it. I can actually hear her breathing through the receiver.”

After giving the blanket one last fiddle, Mavis stood. “You should eat in the dining room like we did. There’s a nice fire in there, too. You’ll relax more. You guys really do look wrung. We won’t stay long.”

“We’re taking an hour down.” Now that all danger of being expected to hold the baby had passed, Eve moved back to Roarke. “Let’s go eat.”

They settled in the dining room where the fire roared and a dozen candles were lit. To give Summerset his due, he’d managed quick and tasty. There were thin slices of roast chicken in some sort of fragrant sauce, fancy potatoes, and something that might have been squash but was prepared so it wasn’t really objectionable.