J. Robb - Kindred In Death

“At Powders’s.”

“At Powders’s. Tells us she was there solo, and hey, why not, so she put a little hit on him. He wasn’t into it. Believe me, a man would be crazy not to be. Right, Trueheart?”

“She’s very pretty.”

“Hot. Steaming, finger-burning hot.” He sighed the sigh of a patient tutor. “My work is never done with this boy.”

“Write it up.”

“That’s where the boy’s work is never done. So we hied ourselves-”

“What yourselves?”

“Hied ourselves over to Powders’s, and got confirmation. He, his roommate, and his unfortunately underage twist all recognized him. Just somebody they’d see around now and then. But the girl noticed him party night. She said she always notices frosty guys-and gave our own Trueheart a little flutter.”

“Sir, she did not-”

“You need to be more observant, my young apprentice. So we’ve got wits put him in Powders’s on the night the ID was lifted. It’s good.”

“It’s good.”

“Dallas, it’s too damn late to go knocking on doors at MacMasters’s.”

“It’s only… shit.” An hour gained, an hour lost. She just hated it. “You’ll hit it after the briefing tomorrow.”

“We’ve got a couple more maybes here and there. Shilly’s the solid.”

“Shilly.”

“I know, she even has a steaming, finger-burning name. About that barbecue.”

She cut him off.

“The PA’s going to be pleased with that when we take him down,” she said to Roarke. “It’s nice case-building. If you manage to clean up that hard drive, get me that picture of him going in the door-”

“And we will.”

“We’ll put him away. But we have to find him first. Got his face,” she mumbled. “Got a name. Not the one he’s using now, no, not the one he used with Deena. That was David. But a name. Got his connection, got his kinship.”

She noted they were about to enter the transpo station. “I can start the search for Inga-whatever name she was using-on the way home.”

“I could find her faster, I’d wager. If you’d like to pilot.”

“Ha-ha.”

“You’d enjoy flying more if you’d learn the controls.”

“I’d rather pretend I’m on the ground.”

Roarke sent her a quick smile. “And how many vehicles have you wrecked, had blown up, or destroyed in the last, oh, two years?”

“Think about that, then imagine it happening when I’m at the wheel at thirty thousand feet.”

“Good point. I’ll do the flying.”

“Do that, ace.”

He parked. “They had something, the Pauleys. A solid base, a strong connection to each other. Each of them solid in their own right, from my perception, and more yet together.”

“I wouldn’t argue. He feels responsible, and feels a kind of grief over Darrin. Even though it’s very unlikely he’s the father.”

“Blood still, either way. Blood’s a strong tie. Kinship, as you said. And a good man like that, he’d feel it regardless.”

“A bad man can feel it, too,” she said and got out of the car to fly home.

SHE’D BEEN IRENE SCHULTZ-AT LEAST IN June of 2039 when a young Jonah MacMasters had collared her for fraud, possession of illegal substances, and soliciting sex without a license.

Her male companion, one Victor Patterson, had been questioned and released though MacMasters’s case notes indicated his complicity. Lack of evidence against him, and the woman’s confession made it impossible to hold and charge him.

A male child, Damien Patterson, had been removed by child services into foster care during the investigation, and subsequently returned to his father. Schultz had taken a deal, and had done eighteen months.

Case closed.

“It has to be her,” Eve said as she and Roarke walked back into the house. “Everything fits. Two months after her release, she poofs, and so do Patterson and the kid. Vanish, no further data on record.”

“Picked up new identities.”

“That’s the pattern.” She headed up the stairs. “Change ID, move locations, start a new game. But here’s a new angle. From the case notes, it’s clear MacMasters believed Patterson-or Pauley-was part of the fraud. He let her take the rap, and she let him. She went down for it. More, Vinnie said nothing about illegals. His brother’s got no illegals bumps on his record. That’s new. Where’d it come from?”

It didn’t fit, it didn’t play, Eve thought.

“And the solicitation? Those are stupid risks for these kind of grifters. Stupid, and it doesn’t come off she’d been stupid. The woman played Vinnie for a year. She knows-knew-how to run a game, long and short. Then, boom, she goes down not just for fraud, but possession and solicitation? It’s off.”

“Sex and drugs are quick money if you need it,” Roarke commented. “And big money if you know how to play them. That’s telling.”

Eve paused on the stairs, considered. Quick and big. “It might fit Pauley. Greed, impatience. It might.”

“And it’s telling,” Roarke added, “that when she made this deal for the eighteen, she didn’t roll on Pauley. It would be SOP, wouldn’t it, to offer her a still lighter sentence if she implicated her partner?”

“Yeah, it would. And there would have been some sympathy for her. Young mother, clean record-or so it appeared. She went with a public defender.” She moved into her office, straight to her computer. “I’ve got the name, and the name of the APA from MacMasters’s case notes. But he wouldn’t have the negotiations in here. I need his memory on this.”

“She didn’t die in prison.”

“No, she didn’t die in prison. Why is MacMasters to blame for her death, whenever and wherever and however it happened? It’s illogical, and in his twisted way, he’s logical.”

She paced to the board, around it. “Something not in the case files, the notes, something not on record? But he’s a kid, hell almost a baby really, right? So how does he know what happened, how does he know MacMasters has to pay?”

She pinned up Irene’s mug shot.

“Because Pauley tells him,” she concluded, studying the photograph, the harsh and weary eyes of the woman. “Pauley tells him how it went down, from his point of view anyway. Or how he wants it to play. It can’t be, yeah, I let your mother take the full rap while I walked. No, it can’t be that.”

As she circled, spoke, talked it out, Roarke eased a hip onto the corner of her desk. He loved watching her work, watching her re-create, dig down.

“What kind of man lets the mother of his child take the hit? How can you stand back, let her fall while you walk?”

She thought of Risso Banks. “I looked at this guy, had to check him out. Young guy. His older brother made him an addict, played him into the sex game, then when the bust came, left the kid and tried to save himself. And that’s how he remembers his brother, leaving him and trying to save his own ass.”

“Darrin Pauley would have been too young to remember.”

“Yeah.” Eve nodded. “Yeah, so Vance Pauley can write the story however he wants. They worked together, no question, but she goes down alone. He can’t let it come off like that to his son, or he’s a coward, a user. MacMasters railroaded her? You can make that play, you can always make it play that the cops screwed with you. And still…”

“A year and a half in prison against the rape and murder of the cop’s child twenty years later?” Roarke looked at the photos, the stark differences, on her board. “Very imbalanced.”

“Symbols. Mira said it was all symbolic. So there’s more, has to be. Something between her release and her death, something that Pauley can point back to? Something about her arrest, her time in that led to her death?”