J. Robb - Possession in Death

“That's not what you think,” Eve said, watching his eyes.

“Nope. I think between here and home she ran into trouble. Somebody snatched her. I think she's been dead since that night. You know as well as I do, Lieutenant, we don't always find the bodies.”

No, Eve thought. “If she's dead, then someone she knew killed her. Why else try to make it seem like she took off? Why pack clothes?”

“I lean that way, but I can't find anything.” Frustration rippled around him. “It could be whoever did her used her ID for her address, had her key — she carried all that in her purse. Tried to cover it up. I'm still working it, when I can, as an MP, but my sense is it's more in your line.”

He glanced around as he sipped his drink. “The old woman didn't buy it for cheap,” he said. “Claimed she talked to the dead, and if the girl was dead, she'd know. I don't buy that for free, but . . . Now the old woman gets murdered? People get dead in the city,” he added as he set his glass down. “But it's got a smell to it. I'd appreciate you giving me what you've got on it. Something or somebody might cross somewhere.”

“You'll get it,” Eve promised. Because something or somebody would cross.

The ballet studio ranged over the fourth floor of an old building on the West Side. Under the glare of streetlights the pocked bricks were dull and grayed with time and pollution, but the glass in every window sparkled.

Out of Order signs hung on the chipped gray doors of both elevators. Students, staff, and visitors had expressed their opinions on the situation with varying degrees of humor or annoyance by tagging the doors with obscenities, anatomically impossible suggestions, and illustrations on how to attempt the suggestions. All in a variety of languages.

“Guess they've been out of order for a while,” Peabody commented.

Eve just stared at one of the series of strange symbols and letters while her mind — something in there — translated it with a kind of dry humor.

“Fuck your mother,” she murmured, and Peabody blinked.

“What? Why?”

“Not your mother.”

“But you just said — ”

Eve shook her head impatiently. “It's Russian. A classic Russian insult.” She reached out, ran a fingertip over the lettering on the door. “Yob tvoiu mat.”

Peabody studied the phrase Eve traced and thought it might as well be hieroglyphics. “How do you know that?”

“I must have seen it somewhere else.” But that didn't explain how she knew — knew — the elevators had been down for weeks. Turning away, she started up the stairs.

Nor could she say why her heart began to beat faster as they climbed, passed the other studios and classrooms. Tap, jazz, children's ballet sessions. Or why, as she approached the fourth floor, the music drifting out hit some chord inside her.

She followed the music, stepped into the doorway.

The woman was whiplash thin in her black leotard and gauzy skirt. Her hair, wildly red, slicked back from a face that struck Eve as thirty years older than her body. Her skin was white as the moon, her lips red as her hair.

She called out in French to a group of dancers at a long bar who responded by sliding their feet from one position to another — pointed toes, flat feet, lifted leg, bended knees.

In a corner of the studio a man played a bright and steady beat on an old piano. He seemed to look at nothing at all with a half smile on his face, dark eyes dreamy in a sharp-featured face surrounded by dark hair with wide, dramatic white streaks.

As Eve and Peabody entered the room, one of the dancers, a man in his twenties, dark hair restrained in a curling tail, turned his head a fraction to stare, to scowl.

Interesting, she thought, a guy wearing a leotard and ballet shoes would make a couple of cops so quickly.

The woman stopped, planted her hands on her hips. “You want lessons, you sign up. Class has started.”

Eve merely held up her badge.

The woman sighed hugely. “Alexi, take the class.”

At the order, the scowling man tossed his head, sniffed, then strode out from the bar. The woman gestured them into the hallway.

“What could you want?” she demanded in a voice husky, impatient, and thick with her homeland. “I'm teaching.”

“Natalya Barinova?”

“Yes, yes. I am Barinova. What do I want with police?”

“You know a Gizi Szabo?”

“Yes, yes,” she said in the same dismissive tone. “She looks for Beata, who ran off to Las Vegas.”

“You know Beata Varga went to Vegas?” Eve demanded.

“Where else? They think, these girls, they go make big money showing their tits and wearing big feathers on their heads. They don't want to work, to sweat, to suffer, to learn.”

“Beata told you she was leaving?”

“No, she tells me nothing, that girl. But she doesn't come back. She's not the first, will not be the last. Her old grandmother comes — a good woman — looking for this flighty girl who has talent. Wasted now. Wasted.”

The way she cut her hand through the air made her anger clear.

“I tell her this, tell Gizi, Beata has talent. Needs discipline, needs practice. Should not waste so much time with the tap and the jazz and the modern business. I tell Beata the same, but she only smiles. Then poof, off she runs.”

“When did you last see Madam Szabo?”

“Ah . . . ” Barinova frowned, waved a hand in the air. “A day ago, I think. Yes, on yesterday. She comes often. Sometimes we have tea. She was a dancer in her day, she tells me, and we talk. She's a good woman, and Beata shows no respect to her. She thinks harm has come to Beata, but I say how could this be? Beata is strong and smart — except she's stupid to run to Las Vegas. So, she asked you to come? Like the other police?”

“No. Madam Szabo was killed this afternoon.”

“No.” Barinova held out both hands as if to push the words away. “No. How does this happen?”

“She was stabbed in the alley outside her apartment building.”

Barinova closed her eyes. “Such cruelty. I will pray she finds peace and her killer roasts in hell. Beata must bear some blame for this. Selfish girl.”

“When did you last see Beata?”

“Ah.” She cut a hand through the air again, but now there were tears in her eyes for the old woman and disgust for the young. “Weeks now, maybe months. She comes to class excited about a part in some musical. She works hard, this is true. I give her the pas de deux with Alexi in our autumn gala. My son,” she added. “She dances well with him in practice, then she says she has this part — maybe she does, maybe she doesn't. But soon after, she doesn't come to class anymore. I have my brother Sasha to call her on the 'link, but she doesn't answer. We tell all this to the police when they come.”

“Did Madam Szabo tell you she was concerned about anyone? That she had any leads on Beata?”

“She said the last she was here she believed Beata was close. She was Romany, you understand, and had a gift. Me, I have Romany in my blood, but from long ago. She used her gift and said Beata was close, but trapped. Below, behind a red door.” Barinova shrugged. “She was very old, and gifted, yes, but sometimes hope and wishes outweigh truth. The girl ran off as girls do, and now a good woman is dead.”

“It would be helpful if we could talk to your son and brother, maybe some of the students who took classes with Beata.”

“Yes, yes, we will help. I will miss tea with Gizi and our talks.” She turned back into the studio, moved to her son. She spoke quickly in Russian, gestured, then took his place as he strode out.

“You're interrupting my practice.” Unlike his mother, he had no trace of an accent. What he had was attitude.