J. Robb: Born In Death

She stepped out, reexamined the living area. Bad breakup, she’d expect the ex to bang on the door awhile. Come on, Nat, goddamn it! Let me in. We gotta talk. Guy’s pissed enough, and the door’s flimsy enough, most likely kick it down. But you never knew. She went into the kitchen. Good-sized, and from the looks of it, a place the vic had used. A knife block, with one missing, sat on the spotless white counter.

She worked her way into the second bedroom, set up as a home office. Lifted her brows. The place had been thoroughly tossed. The data- and-communication center Eve imagined had sat on the glossy steel desk was missing.

“No d-and-c unit in the office,” she told Peabody.

“What kind of office is that?”

“Exactly. Not a single disc in there, either. As other electronics, just as easily lifted and hocked, are still on-scene, the comp was the target. The comp and the vic. So what did Natalie have that someone else wanted?”

“Not only enough to kill her, but to make sure she hurt first.” Pity edged Peabody ’s voice as she glanced back toward the body. “Nothing on this ’link but the call from the sister, ten this morning, and a call out, at seven-thirty A.M., to Sloan, Myers, and Kraus. She called in sick. It’s an accounting firm, offices on Hudson. Entries prior to this – actually yesterday morning – were deleted. EDD can dig them out. You want to listen to what there is?”

“Yeah, but let’s take them in. I want a run at the sister again.”

On the way to Central, Peabody read off background data on the victim from her PPC. “Born, Cleveland, Ohio. Parents – both teachers – still married. One sib – the sister, three years younger. No criminal. Accountant with Sloan, Myers, and Kraus the past four years. No marriages, no cohabs on record. Resided the Jane Street address past eighteen months. Previously on Sixteenth in Chelsea. Previous to that was Cleveland, parents’ addy. She worked for an accounting firm there, part-time. Looks like a kind of internship while she was in college.”

“Numbers cruncher, moves to New York. What’s the lowdown on the firm here?”

“Hold on. Okay, big-deal firm,” Peabody began, reading the data from her PPC. “High-dollar clients, several corporations. Three floors at the Hudson Street addy, employing about two hundred. Been around for over forty years. Oh, the vic was a senior account exec.”

Eve chewed on it as she angled into the underground parking at Cop Central. “Guess she could get the skinny on some of those high-dollar clients. If somebody was running a second book, laundering. Tax evasion. Mobbed up. Another employee skimming. Blackmail, extortion, embezzlement.”

“Firm’s got a good rep.”

“Doesn’t mean all their clients or employees do. It’s an angle.”

They parked, headed toward the elevators. “We need the name of the boyfriend – past or present. Do the knock-on-doors at her building. See what she may have mentioned to her sister about work, or personal troubles. Way it looks, the vic was expecting or prepared for a problem – and one she didn’t want to report, or hadn’t decided to report. To the cops, anyway.”

“Maybe to a coworker, though, or a superior, if it was work-related.”

“Or a pal.”

The higher they rose in the elevator, the more people jammed on. Eve could smell minty soap from someone coming on tour, and old sweat from someone going off a long one. She muscled her way off on her level.

“Let’s set up an interview room,” Eve began. “I don’t want to talk to her in the lounge. Too many distractions. She needs the grief counselor, she can have him with her.”

Eve swung through the bull pen, and on into her office first. Ditched her coat, then did a check on the witness’s alibi. Palma Copperfield had worked the shuttle in from Las Vegas, and had been touching down in the downtown flight center just about the time her sister was strangled.

“ Dallas.”

Eve glanced over at Baxter, one of the detectives in her squad. “I haven’t had coffee in two hours,” she warned. “Or maybe three.”

“I heard you had a Palma Copperfield up in the crib.”

“Yeah, witness. Sister was strangled early this morning.”

“Ah, shit.” He scooped a hand back through his hair. “I was hoping I got it wrong.”

“You know them?”

“ Palma, a little. Not the vic. Met Palma a few months back – friend of a friend of a friend – at a party. We went out a couple times.”

“She’s twenty-three.”

He scowled. “I’m not filing for frigging retirement any time soon. Anyway, it was nothing major. Nice woman. A real nice woman. Was she hurt?”

“No. Found her sister dead in the sister’s apartment.”

“Rough. Damn it. They were tight, I think. Palma said how she stayed with her sister when she came to New York. I dropped her off at the building – Jane Street – after we had dinner once.”

“You still involved?”

“No – we weren’t. Went out a couple of times, that’s all.” As if he didn’t know quite what to do with them, Baxter slid his hands into his pockets. “Listen, if a familiar face would help, I can talk to her.”

“Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Peabody ’s setting up an interview room. Lounge is too public for this. She was in bad shape when I took her initial statement. She mention if her sister was involved with anyone?”

“Ah, yeah. Had a guy – money manager, broker, something like that. Serious, I think, maybe engaged. Can’t say that I paid much attention to that. I wasn’t after the sister, you know?”

“You catch the wit, Baxter?”

“Nah.” He smiled a little. “Like I said, she’s a nice woman.”

Which translated to they hadn’t slept together, and made it less sticky to have him in on the interview. “Okay, let me get Peabody working the ’link. We’ll take the wit.”

Eve let Baxter walk into Interview ahead of her, studied Palma ’s tear-splotched face when the woman looked over. She blinked a few times as if trying to process new information, then a series of emotions streaked over her face. Recognition, relief, dismay, and finally the grief settled on it again.

“Bax. Oh, God.” She held out both her hands, so when he crossed to the table, he took them in his.

“ Palma, I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know what to do. Nat. My sister, somebody killed her. I don’t know what to do.”

“We’re going to help you.”

“She never hurt anybody. Bax, she never hurt anybody in her whole life. Her face…”

“This is hard. The hardest thing. But you can help us help her.”

“Okay. Okay, but you can stay, right? He can stay?” she asked Eve.

“Sure. What I’m going to do is turn the recorder on, and ask you some questions.”

“You don’t think that I…You don’t think that I hurt her?”

“Nobody thinks that, Palma.” Baxter gave her hand a quick squeeze. “We have to ask questions. The more we know, the faster we can find the person who did this.”

“You’re going to find them.” She said it slowly, as if that, too, had to process. Then she closed her eyes for a moment. “You’ll find them. I’ll tell you everything I can.”

Eve engaged the recorder, read in the necessary data. “You landed in New York early this morning, is that correct?”

“Yes, on the Vegas run. We got in around two, clocked out, I don’t know, about twenty minutes later maybe. That’s about right. Then Mae – she had the run with me – we stopped at the bar in the airport for a glass of wine. Unwind a little. We shared a cab into the city. I dropped her first. She keeps a place with a couple other attendants, over on the East Side. Then I went on to Nat’s.”