Brotherhood in Death (33 page)

She drew a breath. “And they're thinking, You watched while your brothers raped us. They watched while you raped us. Now you'll watch your brother die, and know this is what we'll do to you.”

“They could've ended it all here.” Peabody hunched her shoulders as Eve's rundown brought the scene into her head too clearly. “Killed both of them, and gone into the wind.”

“That's not the plan. Easterday has to suffer first. They have things to say to him, things to do to him. He has to beg, the way they begged. He has to know, the way they knew, begging won't stop what's coming.

“Hold here a second.”

She moved over to where Uniform Carmichael stepped in.

“Sorry to pull you back,” she began.

“It's how it goes, Lieutenant.”

“It's how this is going. I want you to supervise the canvass. We need to wake up the whole fucking block, Carmichael, dig down for any information. They had transportation, most likely a van, light colored, on the new side. Make sure every uniform has copies of Yancy's sketches of the suspects. You're going to need to coordinate with and work with the local PSD.”

“No problem. I've got a cousin on the job here. Already gave her a tag, let her know. She'll help smooth the way if I need it.”

“Good. Let the locals secure the scene. But keep an eye. I don't know them.”

She walked back to Roarke, Peabody, McNab.

“We've done a first pass on the electronics,” McNab told her. “Nothing that hits on this. I've got an EDD team taking everything in. You want me on that?”

“No. We're going to hit Blake's residence and office. You and Peabody will take the office, and the civilian and I the residence. That way we've each got an e-man. Anyplace to land the damn copter near Blake's office?”

Since she would have objected, perhaps physically, to an ass pat, Roarke patted her shoulder instead. “There's always a place.”

“Then you'll fly back with us, and get there from wherever that place is.”

“Copter ride. Woo!” Peabody shrugged. “You had to know it was coming.”

“Reo's working on the warrant for the electronics. Stickier when it's a law office, but we've got more than enough to get it now. Until we do, turn the place inside out, but don't touch the electronics or files.”

“Got that.”

“We're done here for now.” She gave the hallway a last glance. “Let's move on.”

—

O
n the short flight back to Manhattan, Eve kept in touch with Reo via 'link texts, read what she could of Baxter's and Trueheart's and Peabody's runs on MacKensie and Downing.

“You can see it now, knowing where to look. They all travel on the same shuttle to Elsi Adderman's memorial—coming and going. They all made annual contributions to a women's crisis or rape center—not the same amounts, not the same center, but every one of them put some
money where their issues are. None of them are in relationships. All but Downing went to Yale, and we'll find her connection. All but Blake either dropped out or hit some skid during college. She hit hers later, that's how it reads to me.”

“Lipski at the crisis center recognized Su, Downing, and MacKensie,” Peabody added.

“And we now know Blake served as legal consultant there. We show Adderman's sketch to Lipski, she'll recognize it, too. They had their convergence there, or through the support group either before or after the memories came tumbling back.”

She turned around as Roarke touched down on a rooftop.

“This is only a block or two from the office, and another two from the apartment.”

“It'll do.” Eve got out, reminding herself she only had to get back in once more.

She turned to Peabody and McNab as the wind buffeted around them, and Roarke bypassed security on the roof access door.

“Wait for the warrant before you hit the electronics. By the book. However you feel about it, these women are serial killers, and the last vic they can get to is already in their hands.”

“Sorry about before,” McNab began.

“Before what?” Eve said, making him smile a little as they went in and started down the stairs.

“Anything to be found, we'll find it—and send up a signal if and when.”

After they parted ways, she hunched against the wind, rubbed her tired eyes. “I can't figure if they'll do him fast or draw it out. They didn't expect to come on him like they did—that's a bonus for them. Will they kill him quick, or savor it? Because if they do him fast, we're not going to have time to stop them.”

“If fast was the goal, you'd have found his body with Betz.”

“Yeah, I tell myself that, then I think—in their place? I'd start calculating how much time, how much risk. If they want to get away with it, they've got to get it done and blow.”

“Have you considered they don't care about getting away?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I have. And that's a bigger problem.”

She studied the building as they approached. Nothing fancy, but solid. No doorman, but what looked like decent security from her take on it. A Thai restaurant and a discount shoe store on street level.

Eve moved to the door of the apartments, let Roarke pop the locks. Then turned on her recorder.

“Until the amended warrant comes through, it's just straight search. Unless, of course, she's here eating soy chips and watching screen.”

She ignored the skinny elevator, took the stairs. “She's on four.”

“I'm aware.”

“She's going to be the one with the second place—the torture chamber. Not here—this isn't set up for that—but she'll have something. We've got to dig deeper there. None of the others have enough scratch to buy or rent another property. I couldn't find anything that indicated any of them inherited a place—or enough scratch to buy or rent.”

A clean, well-lighted stairwell, she thought. And a pretty quiet building. Not fully soundproofed, as she caught the mutter of voices from within an apartment on the second floor. And the backbeat of a party going on when they climbed to three.

On four, she rapped smartly on Blake's door. Gave it a minute, rapped again, added: “Grace Carter Blake, this is the police.”

That resulted in the door across the hall opening a crack.

“She's not home.”

Eve turned, studied the slice of dark face, the suspicious dark eye. She held up her badge.

“Do you know where she is?”

“Nope, but she hasn't been home all day. Don't think she was home last night, either. Maybe took a trip.”

“A trip.”

“Had some suitcases yesterday—and took some stuff out a couple days ago. Maybe three. Closed down her office is what Ms. Kolo said. She's on two, and she said how the office was closed yesterday. Today, too. She in trouble?”

“I need to speak with her.”

“Well, she hasn't been here much the last couple weeks.”

Eve took out the sketches. “How about any of these women?”

The dark eye narrowed, and the door opened another fraction. “Saw her with that one.” One bony finger poked through the crack to point at Su.

“Here?”

“Nope, down the market. Ginaro's. Couple doors down.”

“When?”

“I don't know, maybe last week. Probably last week because I was doing my marketing, and I've got to do it again tomorrow. They were buying a bunch of produce and such, but they didn't bring it back here because what they did was haul it on down the street and around the corner.”

“They walked south to the corner, then . . . west?”

“That's right. If she's in trouble, she keeps quiet about it. Keeps to herself. Doesn't party like that bunch downstairs. I can hear them howling and laughing right through the floor.”

“Ms. . . .”

“Jackson.”

“Ms. Jackson, I have a warrant to search Ms. Blake's residence. We're going to enter it now. If you want, you can verify that by contacting Dispatch at Cop Central.”

“You got the badge,” she said. “I know how to keep to myself, too.” So saying, she shut the door.

Eve used her master, bypassed the three locks—one standard, two additional police issue.

“She needed to feel safe when she was inside,” Eve murmured. “This is the police,” she repeated. “We're coming in.”

As a matter of course, she drew her weapon, swept it as Roarke called for lights.

Modest, was Eve's first thought. Uncluttered with a few nice pieces including a leather sofa she bet Blake bought in her corporate days.

But yeah, she'd taken a few things out.

“Took whatever art was on the wall there—you can see the variation in the tone of the paint, and the hanger's still there. I'm putting it five to one it was one of Downing's. Should be a table over there, right? Why have a chair sitting out there without a table? Nothing to put your drink on, and no light.”

“Easier for a woman to carry out a table than a chair.”

“Yeah, it is. No photos, good wall screen, no mess. Let's clear it.”

They split up, with Eve taking the bedroom and bath off the living space.

They moved systematically: kitchen alcove, smaller room set up as an office—and now without computer or 'link.

“She took clothes,” Eve said as she holstered her weapon. “You can see spaces in the closet. Pretty much cleaned out the bath—no toiletries or enhancers.”

Idly, she opened the drawer in a night table. “Empty.”

Roarke repeated the process on the other side of the wide bed with its simple white duvet. “The same. And the AutoChef in the kitchen is the same as well. Not even a stray bagel.”

“She's had time to plan, and a place to take what she wanted over time. So when she left, she took whatever she had left that suited her.
It'll be the same in her office. She'll have cleared out the electronics. No chances taken. We'll go through it, but it feels like she took her time, thought it through. When you do that, you don't make mistakes.”

“If she has another place, we'll find it.”

Eve nodded, began the search.

The warrant for the electronics came through, for all the good it did. When they left, they walked south, turned west at the corner.

“Parking lot over there. And not the kind that's going to keep their surveillance feed for a damn week. We'll check anyway.”

Dead ends, she thought, one after another, and connected with Peabody.

No electronics in the offices. No files.

“Go home,” Eve ordered. “Get some sleep. Have McNab set up a search on Su's vehicle. Use variations of all their names for it, all five women. Use variations of all her family names. Set an alarm for any hits, and tag me if you get one.”

“I'm not playing mum.” Roarke put an arm around her as they walked back. “But it's common sense to say you need some sleep.”

“What I want is coffee, and something I can twist to bust through one of these dead ends. Maybe we got a hit on the searches while we've been in the field.”

“I've checked. Nothing yet. Some take more time than others.”

She didn't have time. Easterday didn't have time.

—

I
n the copter, she closed her eyes. If she could clear her mind, she thought, maybe something would slide in, something she'd missed or overlooked.

The next thing she knew, Roarke was unhooking her harness.

“Dropped off a minute.”

“Because however much you want to keep at this, your system needs
sleep. So will they,” he reminded her as he slipped an arm around her waist.

“They can take shifts. But yeah, they need sleep, food, conversation.”

It felt like walking through water, getting to the door, moving into the warm.

“They won't kill him tonight. I should've gotten to that. You were right. Fast would mean they'd have done it and left him. They've got him where they want him, and they need to sleep, to talk, to make him pay. The killing's the easy part. Making him pay takes time.”

He led her to the elevator rather than the stairs, and went straight to the bedroom.

“Will you take a soother to ease my mind?”

“I haven't had coffee in hours. I'm soothed enough. I get I need sleep or I'd have to take a booster, and I don't want a booster. I'll go down until five hundred hours. Where's the cat?”

“I suspect with Summerset, as we were among the missing. Do you want him?”

She did, foolishly, but not enough to send Roarke to get him.

“Just wondered.”

She undressed, still in that underwater state. How long had she been up? She couldn't figure it—didn't matter. She'd go down now and start again before dawn. It was all she could do.

She slid into bed, ready, willing to go under, but the minute she closed her eyes, even with Roarke's arm around her, the recording of the gang rape began to play in her head.

“Stevenson—Billy—couldn't live with it, so he killed himself.”

“Hush now. Put it away.”

“I keep seeing her eyes, the terror in them.” She turned over, pressed her face to his shoulder. “And that moment when the terror's too big, so you have to go away. Go inside, go somewhere else. I know what it is when it's too big to stand. When the pain and the fear and the
knowing
you can't stop it is too much to stand. And they just . . . devoured that terror. They wanted it. They wanted it so they kept at it, and found others, so they could revisit their fucking youth. It's like that, isn't it? Like going to a reunion and remembering when you were the hotshot on the field or the king of the goddamn campus.”

“There's no logic or reason to it, darling. There's no humanity in it.”

He was so warm, so solid, his hand stroking her back as if to soothe the dark thoughts away. She could feel her insides begin to shake, sense the wild tears that solved nothing burn closer.