J. Robb - Kindred In Death

“On the third? Why is your replacement for the fifth?”

“Ah… Well, you know you report and apply, and… crap. Okay, okay, so I slicked on the third. I just figured I’d left it back here or something.”

“Slicked?”

“I, ah…”

He glanced at Luce for direction, but she was staring hard at Eve. “She doesn’t care about that, Dar. She’s not going to care about slicking.”

“Okay, yeah, well, I got another student to pass me through on his ID. You’re not supposed to but, it’s not against the law. Is it?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I looked everywhere when I got back. No go. Then, okay, I slicked my early classes the next day, cut a couple so I could go back to the stores where we bought stuff, in case I left it there. No go again. I reported it, end of day on the fourth, so it got issued on the fifth.”

“Where do you keep the ID?”

“In the wallet, or sometimes just in my pocket ’cause it’s easier. You show it a lot, so it’s handy in the pocket.”

“Where was it on the night of the party?”

“I don’t know. My pocket? Maybe. Or I maybe tossed it in my room, which is why I tore the place up when I realized it wasn’t on me. It costs seventy-five for a reissue, plus the forms. It’s a hassle.”

“I’ll need a list of who was at the party.”

“Lady-”

“Lieutenant.”

“Whoa, seriously?” Surprised respect goggled in his eyes. “Lieutenant, I couldn’t do it if you put me in cuffs and hauled me in. We jammed. People came and went, and I didn’t know half of them. Somebody from somewhere brings a friend. You know how it is? We got a corner suite here, so it’s the biggest on the floor. We get banged when we party. Jamie was here,” he remembered. “You could ask him. We were wall-to-wall and then some, so… Shit. I’m stupid. Somebody lifted it that night. Damn it, people suck wind.”

“They do,” Eve agreed.

“And someone used it to do something illegal,” Luce put in as Darian paled. “Something that happened last night. Something between six p.m. and four a.m. It wasn’t Darian.”

“No, it wasn’t Darian. I may need to talk to you again, but for now I appreciate your cooperation.”

“Aren’t you going to tell us what he did, whoever took it?” Darian asked.

They’d find out soon enough, Eve thought. No point in it now. “I’m not at liberty.”

“It’s about that girl,” Darian murmured. “She did something or something happened to her.”

Eve signaled Roarke and started to the door. “Take better care of your ID.”

“Lieutenant? Is Jamie all right? Is he okay?”

“Yeah.” She glanced back, the dark-haired boy and the pale, pretty girl. “Jamie’s all right.”

She brooded over it a bit as they drove home. “So, the kid, Darian, throws a party on New Year’s Eve, and the killer just happens to walk in and cop the ID? Just too fucking lucky in my world.”

“Agreed, though it’s not impossible it was a moment of opportunity. More likely, your killer had his eye on Darian, or a few candidates including Darian, then took the opportunity to slip into the party, among the crowd. Not difficult to snag the ID then, whether it was on Darian’s person, or left in his room. People in and out, jammed together, undoubtedly alcohol or some illegals in the mix.”

“He knows the campus, he blends there. He’d targeted Deena, so he had to know she was tight with Jamie, who goes there.”

“You’re thinking Jamie knows him, or has at least brushed up against him at some point. A friend of a friend of a friend.”

“It fits, doesn’t it? He might’ve even used some names she was vaguely familiar with to make her more comfortable with him right off. Those two kids recognized Deena and put her with Jamie. So the killer mentions their names, or others. She automatically feels safe. He’s had the ID for months before he first approaches her. Patient as a fucking spider.”

She went back to work to write up the interview with Darian, and to begin the laborious process of studying the results from her search of MacMasters’s case files.

It was nearly two in the morning when Roarke found her nodding over the data.

“You can’t work in your sleep,” he pointed out. “It’s time both of us were in bed.”

“I’ve got a handful of possibles.” She pressed the heels of her hands to eyes gone fuzzy. “Connections to people MacMasters sent over for long stretches, ones who bought it in prison. He’s got no terminations in the last five years. I need to go back further, maybe. And I need to talk this through with him.”

“Which is for tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is.” She pushed up. “Why are you still awake?”

“Working on digging out wiped data, which with the system MacMasters has is like trying to find a ghost in a dark room while wearing a blindfold.”

Since they were both too tired for the stairs, he called for the elevator. “And running the analysis on the copy of the recording. And that would be a hell of a lot more concise with the bloody original. There’s no reflection. He’s not in her eyes.”

“Would’ve been too lucky.” She yawned her way into the bedroom. “I set up a briefing here for seven hundred, since Peabody and I are going to hit the park. Feeney can take the disc in, log it, start the analysis.”

She stripped on the way to the bed. “I’ll meet with Mira, she’ll have a profile. And I’m going to pick Jamie’s memory. This guy will have been around, on the fringe, blending in, but he’s been around. He’s not a ghost. There’ll be tracks.” She flopped facedown on the bed. “There are always tracks somewhere.”

“You’ve found some in less than twenty-four hours.” He slipped in beside her, wrapped an arm around her to tuck her close. “You’ll find more.”

“Maybe it was a vic.” Her voice slurred. “And he figures MacMasters didn’t do enough… blame the cop, punish the cop. Maybe…”

In the dark, Roarke stroked her back as she went under, as Galahad plopped on the bed at her feet. And he thought, Here we are, all safe and sound for the night.

She dreamed of dark rooms, and of tracks dug into the hard streets of her city. Following them as things scrabbled away in the shadows. She dreamed of the young girl watching her with dead eyes.

As she tracked, an animated billboard sprang to life, stories high and filled with the image of the girl weeping, defenseless, bleeding. Her voice filled the dark with pain, with fear.

He was there with her-she felt him behind her, beside her, in front of her. Breathing, waiting, watching while the girl begged and bled and died.

He was there while the image changed to another girl, a girl in a room smeared with red light. There, while the girl Eve had been begged and bled and killed.

So she ripped herself out of the dream with her heart stuttering and the air trapped in her lungs. She forced the air out. “Lights. Lights on, ten percent.”

Her hands shook lightly as she stared at them, turned them over, looking for the blood.

Not there, of course it’s not there. Just a dream, and not so bad. Not so bad. Closing her eyes she willed her heartbeat to slow, to steady. But she couldn’t will away the cold, and Roarke wasn’t there to warm her.

Her teeth wanted to chatter, so she gritted them as she got up, found a robe. She checked the time, saw it was just shy of five-thirty. Going to the house monitor, she cleared her throat.

“Where is Roarke?”

Good morning, darling Eve. Roarke is in his main office.

“What the hell for?” she wondered, and went off to find out.

Stupid, she told herself, just stupid to be too uneasy to go back to bed, catch the half hour she had left. But she couldn’t face it, not alone.