J. Robb - Creation In Death

“We hit these,” she said as he complied. “Blanket warrant-Feeney, make that happen. Three-man teams at each location, communication open throughout. Hit private and/or employee-only areas first. Get statements, get data, get every fucking thing.”

“I have two prior business locations,” Roarke put in. “Buildings that were sold. One was severely damaged during the war, torn down and rebuilt as an apartment building. The second was intact, but sold by this Lowell’s father twenty-three years ago. He bought it shortly after the Urbans.”

“I’ll take those two. Fire up my eyes and ears, Feeney. Peabody and two uniforms can shadow me. Ten-block minimum. I move out in five.”

Roarke got up to follow her out, and after scratching his head, Feeney went after both.

“Three-man teams,” Roarke commented. “Except for you.”

“You know why.”

“I don’t have to like it. You can spare a uniform. I’ll shadow with Peabody.”

She shook her head. “I need you here. Out there, you’re just weight. In here, you may make the difference.”

“That’s a hell of a thing.”

“Can’t be helped.” She swung into her office for her coat, spotted Feeney when she started to pull it on.

“Let’s check you out, kid.”

“Oh. Right.” She depressed and turned the button on her jacket to activate. “System’s a go?”

He glanced at his hand monitor. “That’s affirmative.” Then he looked up at her. “We’re closing in. You get that, too?”

“Yeah. Another twenty-four, maybe thirty-six, we’ll pin him. I don’t want it to go that long, Feeney. He probably started on her this morning, bright and fucking early this morning. Been at her now ten or twelve hours, I’d say. Maybe she can make another twenty-four or thirty-six. Maybe she can’t. I can’t make him go for me, but I’m going to be out there the next few hours, giving him the chance to try.”

Feeney’s glance drifted to Roarke, then back to her. “Not enough for him to try.”

“No. I’ve got to get inside, got to get him to take me where she is. I know how to handle it. I know how to handle it,” she repeated, looking directly at Roarke. “If he gives me the chance. If he doesn’t, I need the two of you here, digging out the next piece that brings us to him. If we had this much nine years ago, if we believed he might move on me then, Feeney, what would you have done?”

He puffed out his cheeks. “I’d’ve sent you out.”

“Then I’d better get going.”

Roarke watched her go, and when he was back at his station, split his work screen with her camera. He could see what she saw, hear through his ear bud what she heard.

That would have to be enough.

She took the second location he’d given her first. Private home, higher probability. While his searches ran he focused all his attention on the building she approached. Urban and attractive, he decided, tucked in among other urban and attractive buildings.

When the door was opened by a woman with a dog yapping at her feet and a toddler on her hip, he relaxed. The probability had just dipped very low.

Still he kept her on split screen as she went inside, sidestepping the dog the woman shooed away.

He let bits of the conversation wind through his head as he put the bulk of his concentration on the work. Everything the woman said to Eve confirmed the official data on the property. A family home owned by a junior exec and his wife, professional mother, who lived there with their two children and a very irritable terrier.

“Nothing here,” Eve said as she moved back outside toward her vehicle. “Heading to second location. No tails spotted.”

S he was cold. She was so awfully cold. It was probably shock, Ariel told herself. In vids when somebody went into shock, they put a blanket over them. Didn’t they?

Parts of her had gone numb, and she didn’t know if that was a blessing or if it meant those pieces of her had died. She knew she’d lost consciousness the second-or had it been the third?-time he’d hurt her.

But then he’d done something, something that had shot her back into the nightmare. Something that had jolted her like a hot blue electric current.

Sooner or later, he wouldn’t be able to bring her back. A part of her wanted to pray for that, so she buried that part, that weeping, yielding part.

Someone would come. She would stay alive, then someone would come.

When he came back, she wanted to scream. She wanted to scream and scream until the force of the sound shattered all those glass walls. Until it shattered him. She could imagine it, how that kind and quiet face of his would shatter into pieces like the walls of glass.

“Could I…May I please have some water?”

“I’m sorry, but that’s not allowed. You’re getting fluids through the IV.”

“But my throat’s so dry, and I was hoping we could talk some more.”

“Were you?” He wandered over to his tray. She wouldn’t let herself look, didn’t dare look at what he picked up this time.

“Yes. About music. What’s the music that’s playing now?”

“Ah, that would be Verdi. La Traviata.”

He closed his eyes a moment, and his hands began to move like a conductor’s. “Brilliant, isn’t it? Stirring and passionate.”

“Did-did your mother sing this one?”

“Yes, of course. It was a favorite of hers.”

“It must have been so hard for you when she died. I had a friend whose mother self-terminated. It was terrible for her. It’s…it’s hard to understand how anyone could be so sad or so lost that it seems to them death is the answer.”

“But of course, it is, just that. It’s the answer for all of us in the end.” He stepped closer. “It’s what we all ask for when our time comes. She did. You will.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“You will,” he said again. “Just as she did. But don’t worry, I’ll give you that answer, and that gift, just as I did for her.”

O ther chatter came and went as teams reported in from their destinations. Roarke drank coffee and painstakingly scraped layers off old records, pried out ragged bits of data, and tried to sew them together into answers.

The second building had a basement. Though Eve knew the chances were small, she did a walk-through.

Not his kind of place, she decided. Too modern, too ugly, too crowded, and with too much security. A guy couldn’t comfortably drag a terrified or unconscious woman inside without annoying the neighbors.

Still she questioned a few, showed Lowell’s picture.

What if she was off, she wondered, about him working out of the city? Maybe he’d bought a damn house in the suburbs, and used Manhattan for hunting and dumping. How much time would she have wasted looking for the right building among thousands if he was killing women in some ranch in White Plains or Newark?

She got back in the car. She’d go back to the bakery, back to Greenfeld’s apartment. Maybe she’d missed something. Maybe they all had. She’d do another sweep of each victim’s home and place of employment.

Swinging out into traffic, she relayed her intentions back to base. “It’ll keep me out on the street a couple more hours, keep me in the open. And it’ll look like what it is. Like I’m chasing my goddamn tail.”

“I’ve got another possibility,” Roarke told her. “It was a sewing machine factory, regentrified into lofts in NoHo late in the twentieth. I’ve got a bit about it being used for barracks during the Urbans, taking some considerable hits. It was repaired and sold for lofts again in the early thirties.”

“Okay, I’ll check that one. Give me the location.” She pursed her lips when he gave her the address. She’d gone from west to east, and now would cross west again, head north. “Peabody, you copy that?”