J. Robb - Glory in Death

Frowning, Eve walked over to the spacious closet, scanned the automatic racks, the motorized shelves. "He doesn't even live here."

"Dude's rich, right?" To Beaver that explained everything. "He's got a couple suits in here ain't never been worn. Shoes, too." He reached down, picked up one of a pair of leather half boots, turned them over. "Nothing, see?" He skimmed the sensor over the unscuffed bottom. "No dirt, no dust, no sidewalk scrapes, no fibers."

"That only makes him guilty of self-indulgence. Goddamn it, Beaver, get me some blood."

"I'm working on it. Probably tossed what he was wearing, though."

"You're a real optimist, Beaver."

In disgust, she turned toward a U-shaped lacquered desk and began to rifle through the drawers. The discs she would bag and run through her own computer. They could get lucky and find some correspondence between David Angelini and his mother or Metcalf. Or luckier yet, she mused, and find some rambling confessional diary that described the murders.

Where the hell had he put the umbrella? she wondered. The shoe? She wondered if the sweepers in N. L. A. or the ones in Europe were having any better luck. The thought of backtracking and searching all the cozy little homes and luxury hideaways of David Angelini was giving her a bad case of indigestion.

Then she found the knife.

It was so simple. Open the middle drawer of the work console, and there it was. Long, slim, and lethal. It had a fancy handle, carved out of what might have been genuine ivory, which would have made it an antique – or an international crime. Harvesting ivory, or purchasing it in any form had been outlawed planetwide for more than half a century after the near extinction of African elephants.

Eve wasn't an antique buff, nor was she an expert on environmental crime, but she'd studied forensics enough to know that the shape and length of the blade were right.

"Well, well." Her indigestion was gone, like a bad guest. In its place was the clear, clean high of success. "Maybe three wasn't his magic number after all."

"He kept it? Son of a bitch." Disappointed in the foolishness of a murderer, Beaver shook his head. "Guy's an idiot."

"Scan it," she ordered, crossing to him.

Beaver shifted the bulk of the scanner, changed the program from clothing. After a quick adjustment of his lenses, he ran the funnel of the arm up the knife. The scanner beeped helpfully.

"Got some shit on it," Beaver muttered, his thick fingertips playing over controls like a concert pianist's over keys. "Fiber – maybe paper. Some kind of adhesive. Prints on the handle. Want a hard copy of 'em?"

"Yeah."

'"Kay." The scanner spit out a square of paper dotted with fingerprints. "Turn her over. And bingo. There's your blood. Not much of it." He frowned, skimming the funnel along the edge of the blade. "Going to be lucky if it's enough for typing, much less DNA."

"You keep that positive outlook, Beaver. How old's the blood?"

"Come on, Lieutenant." Behind the sensor lenses, his eyes were huge and cynical. "You know I can't give you that from one of the portables. Gotta take it in. All this little girl does is identify. No skin," he announced. "Be better if you had some skin."

"I'll take the blood." As she sealed the knife into evidence, a movement caught her eyes. She looked up and into the dark, damning eyes of Marco Angelini.

He glanced down at the knife, then back into her face. Something moved across his, something wrenching that had the muscle jerking in his jaw.

"I'd like a moment of your time, Lieutenant Dallas."

"I can't give you much more than that."

"It won't take long." His eyes flicked to Beaver, then back to the knife as Dallas slipped it into her bag. "In private, please."

"All right." She nodded to the uniform who stood at Angelini's shoulder. "Tell one of the team to come up and finish the hands-on search in here, " she ordered Beaver, then followed Angelini out of the room.

He turned toward a set of narrow, carpeted steps, his hand trailing along a glossy banister as he climbed. At the top, he shifted right and stepped into a room.

An office, Eve discovered. Sunwashed now in the brilliant afternoon. Light beamed and glinted off the surfaces of communication equipment, struck and bounced from the smooth semi-circular console of sober black, flashed and pooled on the surface of the gleaming floor.

As if annoyed with the strength of the sunlight, Angelini hit a switch that had the windows tinted to a soft amber. Now the room had shadows around pale gold edges.

Angelini walked directly to a wall unit and ordered a bourbon on the rocks. He held the square glass in his hand, took one careful sip.

"You believe my son murdered his mother and two other women."

"Your son has been questioned on those charges, Mr. Angelini. He is a suspect. If you have any questions about the procedure, you should speak with his counsel."

"I've spoken with them." He took another sip. "They believe there's a good chance you will charge him, but that he won't be indicted."

"That's up to the grand jury."

"But you think he will."

"Mr. Angelini, if and when I have arrested your son and charged him with three counts of first-degree murder, it will be because I believe he will be indicted, tried, and convicted on those charges, and that I have the evidence to ensure that conviction."

He looked at her field bag where she'd put some of that evidence. "I've done some research on you, Lieutenant Dallas."

"Have you?"

"I like to know the odds," he said with a humorless smile that came and went in a blink. "Commander Whitney respects you. And I respect him. My former wife admired your tenacity and your thoroughness, and she was not a fool. She spoke of you, did you know that?"

"No, I didn't."

"She was impressed by your mind. A clean cop's mind she called it. You're good at your job, aren't you, Lieutenant?"

"Yeah, I'm good at it."

"But you make mistakes."

"I try to keep them to a minimum."

"A mistake in your profession, however minimal, can cause incredible pain to the innocent." His eyes stayed on hers, relentlessly. "You found a knife in my son's room."

"I can't discuss that with you."

"He rarely uses this house," Angelini said carefully. "Three or four times a year perhaps. He prefers the Long Island estate when he's in the area."

"That may be, Mr. Angelini, but he used this house on the night Louise Kirski was killed." Impatient now, eager to get the evidence to the lab, Eve moved a shoulder. "Mr. Angelini, I can't debate the state's case with you – "

"But you're very confident that the state has a good case," he interrupted. When she didn't answer, he took another long study of her face. Then he finished the drink in one swallow, set the glass aside. "But you're wrong, Lieutenant. You've got the wrong man."

"You believe in your son's innocence, Mr. Angelini. I understand that."

"Not believe, Lieutenant, know. My son didn't kill those women." He took a breath, like a diver about to plunge under the surface. "I did."

Eve had no choice. She took him in and grilled him. After a full hour, she had a vicious headache and the calm, unshakable statement from Marco Angelini that he had killed three women.

He refused counsel, and refused to or was unable to elaborate.

Each time Eve asked him why he had killed, he stared straight into her eyes and claimed it had been impulse. He'd been annoyed with his wife, he stated. Personally embarrassed by her continued intimacy with a business partner. He'd killed her because he couldn't have her back. Then he'd gotten a taste for it.

It was all very simple, and to Eve's mind, very rehearsed. She could picture him repeating and refining the lines in his head before he spoke them.