Seduction in Death (8 page)

Nadine, already polished for an on-air segment, lifted one perfectly arched brow, let her coral-slicked mouth curve. "You, Lieutenant Locked Lips, are going to, of your own free will and out of a sense of camaraderie, give me data on an ongoing investigation."

"That's right."

"Just a minute." Nadine's face disappeared from the 'link screen for ten seconds. "Just wanted to check with the meteorologist. It appears, despite indications to the contrary, hell has not frozen over."

"Pardon me while I fall into an uncontrollable fit of giggles. You want the data or not?"

"Yeah, I want it."

"A top police source confirms that the investigations of the Bryna Bankhead and the Grace Lutz cases are linked."

"Hold on." Everything about Nadine sharpened as she leaped into full reporter mode. "There's been no confirmation to this point as to whether the Bankhead death was accidental, self-termination, or homicide."

"It's homicide. Confirmed."

"My information is that the Lutz murder was sexual homicide." Nadine's voice was brisk now. All business. "Is that the case in the Bankhead homicide? Did the victims know each other, and are we dealing with one suspect?"

"Don't interview me, Nadine. This isn't a one-on-one. Both victims were young, single women who, on the night of their deaths, met with an individual they had corresponded with via e-mail and online chat rooms."

"What kind of chat rooms? Where did they meet?"

"Shut up, Nadine. Evidence indicates that both victims were given an illegal substance, possibly without their knowledge, during the evening."

"A date rape drug?"

"You're quick. Your source neither denies nor confirms that information. Take the freebie, Nadine, and run with it. That's all you get for now."

"I can get out of here in ninety minutes. I'll meet you wherever you want."

"Not tonight. I'll let you know where or when."

"Wait!" If it had been possible, Nadine would have burst through the 'link screen. "Give me something on the suspect. Do you have a description, a name?"

"All avenues of investigation are being vigorously pursued. Blah, blah, blah." Eve broke transmission on Nadine's curse.

Satisfied, she walked into the kitchen, ordered coffee. Then just stood by the window, looking out at the gathering dark.

He was out there now. Somewhere. Did he already have another date? Was he, even now, making himself into some hopeful woman's fantasy?

Tomorrow, the next day, would there be other friends, more family she would have to shatter?

The Lutzes would never fully recover. They'd go on with their lives, and after a while they wouldn't think of it every minute of every day. They'd laugh again, work, shop, breathe in and out. But there would always be a hole. Just a little hollow inside their lives.

They'd been a family. A unit. She'd sensed that unification in the house. In the comfort and clutter of it. In the flowers outside the door, and the easy give of the sofa.

Now rather than parents, they were survivors. Those who survived lived forever with that echo of what was gone sounding inside their heads.

They'd kept her room, Eve thought now while her coffee sat in the AutoChef going cold. When she'd gone through it, looking for something, anything to add to the sum of Grace Lutz, she'd seen the stages of a life, from child to young girl to young woman.

Dolls carefully arranged on a shelf. Decoration now rather than toys, but still treasured. Books, photographs, holograms. Trinket boxes in the shapes of hearts or flowers. The bed had had a canopy the color of sunbeams, and the walls had been virgin white.

Eve couldn't imagine growing up there, in all that sweet, girlish fuss. Ruffled curtains at the windows, the inexpensive minicomputer on the desk that had been decorated with daisies to match the shade on the bedside lamp.

The girl who's slept in that bed, read by that lamplight had been happy, secure, and loved.

Eve had never had a doll, nor curtains at the windows. There'd been no precious little pieces of girlhood to tuck away in heart-shaped boxes. The childhood rooms she remembered were cramped, anonymous boxes in cheap hotels where the walls were thin and often, too often, things skittered in dark corners.

The air smelled stale, and there was no place to hide, no place to run if he came back and wasn't drunk enough to forget you were there.

The girl who had slept in those beds, trembled in those shadows had been terrified, desperate, and lost.

She jolted as a hand touched her shoulder, and instinctively reached for her weapon as she spun around.

"Steady, Lieutenant." Roarke ran his hand down her arm, rested it lightly on her weapon hand as he studied her face. "Where were you?"

"Trying to make a circle." She eased away from him, opened the AutoChef for her coffee. "I didn't know you were home."

"I haven't been for long." He laid his hands on her shoulders now, rubbed at the tension. "Did you have a memory flash?"

She shook her head, sipped the cold coffee, continued to stare out the window into the dark. But she knew if she didn't rid herself of it, it could fester. "When you were gone," she began, "I had a dream. A bad one. He wasn't dead. He was covered with blood, but he wasn't dead. He talked to me. He said I'd never kill him, never get away."

She saw Roarke's reflection in the glass, saw her own merging with it. "He had to punish me. He got up. Blood was pouring out of him, but he stood up. And he came for me."

"He is dead, Eve." Roarke took the cup out of her hand, set it aside, then turned her to face him. "He can't hurt you. Except in dreams."

"He said to remember what he'd told me, but I can't. I don't know what he meant. But I asked him why he hurt me. He said because I was nothing and no one, but most of all he hurt me because he could. I can't seem to take that power away from him. Even now I can't."

"You diminish him every time you stand for a victim. Maybe the further away you get from him in reality, the harder it is to pull back in dreams. I don't know." He skimmed his fingers through her hair. "Will you talk to Mira?"

"I don't know. No," she corrected. "She can't tell me anything I don't know."

Are ready to know, Roarke thought, and let it be.

"Anyway, I need her for a consult on the murders."

"Another?"

"Yeah. So I've got to put more hours in."

"Was it the same man?"

She didn't answer, but wandered back into her office. She didn't want the coffee after all. Instead she kept moving, let it all play through her head as she gave him the basic details of the second murder.

"If there's a local source for the illegals used, I could track it for you."

She looked at him, elegant in his dark business suit. It didn't pay to forget there was a dangerous man inside it, one who had once trafficked with other dangerous men.

Roarke Industries might have been the most powerful conglomerate in the world, but it had been born, like its owner, in the dark alleys and grim streets of Dublin's slums.

"I don't want you to do that," she told him. "Not yet. If Charles and Feeney both crap out, I may tag you. But I'd as soon you didn't make a connection with that particular area."

"My connection would be no different than yours, only quicker."

"Yeah, it's different. I'm the one with a badge. You know a lot of women."

"Lieutenant. That portion of my past is a closed book."

"Yeah, right. What I'm saying is, in my experience, most guys generally go for a type. Maybe they like brainy women, or subservient women, or jocks, whatever."

He moved in on her. "What type do you suppose I go for?"

"You just scooped them up as they fell at your feet, so you went for the variety pack."

"I definitely don't recall you falling at my feet."

"And don't hold your breath on that one. You don't count so much because you'd never have to go fishing in the cyber-pool for a date or sex or anything."

"You're not making that sound complimentary."

"But what I'm saying is, people generally have expectations, or fantasy types. Date number one. Savvy, sophisticated, urban female with a romantic bent. Slick dresser, sharp looker. Snappy apartment, sexually active when she can get it. Outgoing, friendly. She likes fashion, poetry, and music. Spends her money on clothes, good restaurants, salons. May or may not be looking for Mr. Right, but would really enjoy a Mr. Right Now."

"And," Roarke put in, "is adventurous enough to audition a candidate over drinks."

"Exactly. Date number two, solid middle-class suburban background. Shy, quiet, intellectual. Hoards what money she has to buy books, pay the rent on an efficiency apartment. Rarely eats out, and spends fifteen or twenty minutes every morning with a female neighbor old enough to be her grandmother. She has no other close friends in the city. She's very young and still a virgin. She's looking for a soul mate. The one man she's saved herself for."

"And is naive enough to believe she's found him without ever having met him."

"One is introverted, the other extroverted. Physically they are nothing alike. In the first case, the murder appeared to have been unplanned, and the killer panicked. There were no signs of violence on the body that were inflicted pre-mortem. Sexual activity was vaginal only."

She picked up a disc from her file, slid it into her computer. "In the second case, the murder appeared to have been premeditated, and the killer was deliberate in the execution. There were signs of violence, bruises, small bites. The victim was repeatedly and roughly raped, and sodomized. It could be theorized that he became... encouraged, aroused, intrigued by the first murder and decided to have the experience again, purposefully, more aggressively this time as the act excited him."

With a nod, Roarke walked over to stand with her. "It could be."

"Image on wall screen," Eve ordered. "I've done a split screen with the security cam feed from the entrance of each victim's building. That's Bankhead on the right. We know the killer is wearing a wig, face putty, and makeup. With this look he goes by the name Dante. On the left is Lutz, and there he goes by Dorian. The face jobs are good. Body type, height, more or less the same. Each can be altered easily enough -- lifts, padding in the shoulders."

She'd already studied the images, over and over. She knew what she was seeing now.

"Note how Dante holds her hand, kisses her fingers, holds the door open for her. The perfect dream date. Dorian's got his arm around her waist. She's looking up at him, starry-eyed as they approach the door. He's not looking at her, no eye contact. It doesn't matter to him who she is. She's already dead."

She switched images. "Here, Dante's coming out. You can see the panic, the sweat. Christ, he's thinking, how did this happen? How will I get out of it? But you see here, the exit from Grace's place. The way he strolls out, almost a swagger, the way he looks back and smirks. He's thinking: That was fun. When can I do it again?"

"The first theory would hold," Roarke commented. "He's building confidence and need and pleasure. A second would be he has different personalities for different looks, for different women. But you've a third theory." Roarke looked away from the screen, looked at Eve. "You think you're after two men."

"Maybe it's too simple. Maybe it's what he wants me to think." She sat, stared at the split screen again. "I can't get inside him. I ran a probability on two killers. It came in just over forty-three percent."

"Computers don't have instincts." He came over to sit on the edge of the desk. "What do you see?"

"Different body language, different styles, different types. But it could be role-playing. Maybe he's an actor. Drinks at an expensive, romantic location, then the return to the victim's apartment. He doesn't dirty his own nest. Candles, wine, music, roses. So he uses the same staging. I haven't got the results back on DNA, but the sweepers didn't find any fingerprints but the victim's and her neighbor's in Grace Lutz's apartment. Not on the wine bottle or the glasses, and not on her body. He sealed this time. Why is that, when he knew we'd have prints from the first murder?"

"If there are two -- in reality or by personality split -- they know each other intimately. Brothers of a sort," Roarke said when Eve looked over. "Partners. And this is a game."

"And they'd keep score. One each. They'd need a tiebreaker. I'm going to set up here to monitor some of the chat rooms where one of the screen names popped before."

"Do it from my office. My equipment's faster, and there's more of it. Plus," he added, knowing she was trying to think of a reason to refuse, "I can give you the list of the wine purchases."

"Can you cross-reference that with purchases of Castillo di Vechio Cabernet, forty-three?"

"I can," he agreed, pulling her to her feet. "If somebody keeps me company and has a glass of wine with me."

"One glass," she said and moved over into his office with him. "I may be at this for a while."

"Just plug in the locations you want to monitor on this unit."

She skirted the long black console, stood for a moment in front of one of his several sleek units. "I have to get them from the file."

"Computer. Access Unit Six, Eve." He perused the wine bottles in the rack behind his office bar. "Just enter the file name you want," he told Eve, "and request copy."

"Is there any point in saying that I keep official NYPSD data on my home unit, and you have no authorization to access that data?"

"None whatsoever. Something light, I think. Ah, this." He drew out a bottle, turned, chuckled at her scowling face. "Why don't we have a bite to eat while we're at it?"

"Remind me to rag on you later."

He opened the bottle. "I'll make a note of it."

CHAPTER SEVEN

She sipped wine, nibbled on caviar, and tried not to think how ridiculous it was. If anyone from Central caught wind of it, she'd never live it down.

Roarke did the same, and prepared to enjoy it. "Key in the screen names you want to watch for."

"Dante NYC," she said. "Dorian NYC. Feeney's running names ending with NYC, but -- "

"Yes, we can run another search. You'll end up with millions, I imagine, but we might get lucky."

"What about the account name? He may cruise with other screen names, or ditch the old ones when he's done."

"Here, nudge over." He scooted her chair a few inches to the left, then sat beside her. "Computer, run continuous search for all activity under account name La Belle Dame."

Beginning search...

"Feeney said you had to go through the privacy blocks and account protocol in order to..." She trailed off, lifted her glass when Roarke merely quirked his eyebrows in her direction. "Never mind."

"Computer, notify if and when activity under said account takes place, and locate source of activity."

Search in process. Notification will be given. Working...

"It can't be that simple."

"Not usually, no." He leaned over and kissed her. "Aren't you lucky to have me? A rhetorical question, darling," he said and stuffed caviar into her mouth. "Just let me put that consumer list on-screen."

He did so manually, with a few deft taps on a keyboard. Eve watched them scroll on, blew out a breath.

"It could be worse," she decided. "It could have been cheap wine, then we'd have, oh, a hundred times as many names."

"More than that, I imagine. We can break these down into individual sales and restaurant orders. Now we'll see what we can find on the Cabernet."

"Is that your label, too?"

"No, a competitor's. But there are ways. This will take a few minutes."

Because she thought it slightly tacky for a member of the NYPSD to sit and watch a civilian severely bend the law, she rose and wandered closer to the wall screen. "Computer, display single male consumers on screen four."

That whittled it down some more, she noted. She couldn't and wouldn't discount the restaurant, the female, and the joint accounts, but she'd start with the two hundred recorded sales to single men.

"Computer. Display, screen five, multiple purchases of product by single men. Better," she mumbled as the number went down by another eighty-six.

"You got that data yet?"

"Patience, Lieutenant." He glanced up, then just looked at her in a way that made her skin tingle and her thigh muscles go loose.

"What?"

"You're such a study, standing there -- all cop. Cool-eyed and grim with your weapon strapped on. It makes my mouth water." With a half laugh he went back to work. "Baffles me. Here you are, split on screen three."

"Do you say that sort of thing to get me stirred up?"

"No, but it's a pleasant side benefit. You're also quite a study when you're stirred up. My red edged out the competition's red by a few hundred sales in the area over the past twelve months."

"Big surprise," she said sourly, and turned around to repeat the same breakdown. "Computer, cross and match, all consumer purchases of both brands in given time period. Less than thirty." She pursed her lips. "I figured more."

"Label loyalty."

"We'll start with these. Standard run, eliminate males over fifty for a start. Our guy, or guys, are younger. Then I have to re-factor. Could be daddy who buys the wine, or uncle, or big brother. Or," she added, glancing back at the screen with joint accounts. "Mom and Dad. But I don't think so." She began to pace. "I need Mira's profile, but I just don't think so. Seems to me it's not romantic, it's not sexual if your parent or parents buy the wine. Then you're a child again and you're, by Christ, a man and you can prove it.

"You can pluck a woman right out of the pack," she continued. "Pick of the litter, and your choice. Women are merciless, from the poem. They'll crush you if you give them the chance. So you won't. You're in charge this time."

She stared at the names, moved away from them, then back again. "Women. Bitches, whores, goddesses. You desire them, sexually, but more than that, you want power. Absolute power over them. So you plan, hunt, select. You've seen her, but she hasn't seen you. You have to see her, have to make absolutely certain she is attractive enough, that she hasn't created the fantasy of herself the same way you've created yourself. She has to be real. She has to be worthy. You wouldn't waste your time on anyone or anything that's less than you deserve."

Fascinated, Roarke sat back. "What does he do?"

"He selects. He arranges. He seduces with words, with images. Then he prepares. The wine. One that suits his taste, his mood. No one else's. Candles, scented to please his senses. The illegals, so that he has control. He won't be refused. More, he'll be desired. Desperately desired."

"Is it about sex?"

She shook her head, still studying names. "Desire. That's different. To be desired by his choice. That's as vital as his control over her. She must want him. He goes to too much trouble to make himself an object of desire for it to be only about control and power. He has a need to be the focus, the center because it's his moment. His game. His victory."

"His pleasure," Roarke added.

"Yes, his pleasure. But he needs her to think it's hers as well. He stands at the mirror and makes himself into what he'd like to be, and what he believes a woman wants. Dashing, sexy, stunningly handsome, but elegant. The kind of man who quotes poetry and woos with roses. The kind who makes that woman believe she's the only woman. Maybe he believes it. Or did, with the first one. Maybe he deluded himself into believing it was romance. But under it's calculation. He's a predator."

"Men are."

She glanced back. "That's right. Humans are, but sexually men are more basic. Sex is more easily viewed as a function where women, in general, prefer an emotional rush along with it. These women did, and he was aware of it. He took the time to know them first, to discover their weaknesses and their fantasies so he could play on both. Then he controlled them. Like a droid, only they were flesh and blood. They were real, so the thrill was real. When it was over, they were spoiled. He'd made them whores again, so they stopped being worthy. He'll need to find the next."

"You were wrong when you said you couldn't get inside him. I wonder how you can be so much what you are and still look so clearly, so coldly, through the eyes of the mad and the vicious."

"Because I won't lose. I can't lose or they all win. Right back to my father."

"I know it." He rose, walked to her. Wrapped his arms tight around her. "I've never been sure if you did."

Notification of activity, account La Belle Dame...

Eve jerked her body free, whirled. "Screen name of user and location of activity."

User name OberonNYC, location Cyber Perks, Fifth Avenue at Fifty-eighth...

She was running for the door when Roarke pulled it open. "I'll drive," he told her.

She didn't bother to argue. Any one of his vehicles would be faster than hers. She grabbed her communicator on the race down the steps.

"Dispatch, this is Dallas, Lieutenant Eve."

Detailing orders, she snagged her jacket and headed out the front door.

It took them six minutes and twenty-eight seconds from the notification to Roarke's swing to the curb in front of Cyber Perks. She timed it. And she was leaping out of the car before the brakes stopped squealing.

At a run, she spotted the black-and-white and the uniforms she'd ordered.

"No one leaves," she snapped, flipping out her badge, then sliding it shield out into the waistband of her trousers.

The noise blasted her the instant she walked through the doors. Cyber-punk rolled like a tidal wave, swamping the voices of patrons and beating violently against eardrums.

It was a world she'd yet to explore, and it was jammed elbow to groin with a motley throng who sat at counters, tables, cubes or airskated between stations. But even in the stupendous confusion, she saw the order.

Freaks with their painted hair and tongue rings were strewn across a section of color-coded table space. The geeks, earnest faces and sloppy shirts, were huddled in cubes. Giggly teenage girls skated in herds and pretended not to notice the packs of teenage boys they sought to allure.

There were students, most of whom were gathered in the cafe area trying to look sophisticated and world weary. Pocketed with them were a smatter of the standard urban revolutionaries, uniformed in sleek black, which students worshiped.

Scattered throughout were the tourists, the travelers, the casual clientele who sought the atmosphere, the experience, or were simply scoping out the place as a possible fresh hangout.

Where would her man fit?

Tracking the room, she strode to the glass kiosk marked Data Center. Three drones in red uniforms sat on swivel chairs in the center of the tower and worked consoles. They kept up what appeared to be a running conversation through headphones.

Eve zoned in on one, tapped on the glass. The boy, with a smattering of fresh pimples on his chin, looked up. He shook his head, attempted to look stern and authoritative, and gestured to the headphones on Eve's side of the glass.

She shoved them on.

"Don't touch the tower," he ordered in a voice that was just waiting to crack. "Stay behind the green line at all times. There are open units in the cafe. If you prefer, there is currently one cube available. If you wish to reserve a unit for -- "

"Kill the music."

"What?" His eyes darted like nervous birds. "Stay behind the green line or I'll call security."

"Kill the music," Eve repeated, then slapped her badge on the glass. "Now."

"But -- but I can't. I'm not allowed. Whatzamatter? Charlie?" He whipped around in his chair. And all hell broke loose.

The roar that burst out of the crowd outdid even the computer-generated ferocity of the music. People leaped off stools, out of cubes, screaming, shouting, cursing. A wave of them charged the data kiosk like peasants storming the king's palace. Full of fear and fury and blood lust.

Even as she reached for her weapon, she took a wayward elbow on the chin that rapped her head back against the kiosk and exploded a fountain of white, sizzling stars in front of her eyes.

And that seriously pissed her off.

She kneed a green-haired freak in the groin, stomped hard on the instep of a wailing geek, then fired three blasts at the ceiling.

It served to stop most of the momentum, though several bodies tumbled or were simply flung in the general direction of the kiosk.

"NYPSD!" She shouted it, holding up badge and weapon. "Kill that fucking music. Now! Everybody back off, go back to your seats or stations immediately or you'll be charged with rioting, assault, and creating a public hazard."

Not all of it got through, and some of her orders were lost in the swarm of voices and threats. But the more civic minded, or cowardly, slunk back.

One of the teenage girls lay sprawled at Eve's feet, airskates tangled. She was bleeding from the nose and weeping in jerky hiccoughs.

"You're okay." Eve nudged her as gently as she could with her foot. "Sit up now."

The shouts from various sections were gaining strength again. Civic duty and cowardice wouldn't hold on for long against mob passion.

"Nothing will be resolved until I have order, until I have quiet."

"This is a guaranteed virus-free zone," someone shouted. "I want to know what happened, I want to know who's responsible."

So, apparently, did a number of other people.

Roarke cleaved his way through the crowd. Like, Eve thought as she watched him, a sleek blade slicing through a jumble of rock.

"A virus was uploaded into the system," he said softly. "Corrupted the units. All of them, and from all appearances, simultaneously. You've got a couple hundred very angry people on your hands."

"Yeah, I got that part. Get out of here. Call for backup."

"I'm not leaving you in here, and don't waste your breath. Let me talk to them while you call in the troops."

Before she could argue, he began to speak. He didn't raise his voice. It was a good technique, Eve thought as she slipped out her communicator. A lot of people stopped yelling to try to hear what he was saying.

She could hear him fine, but she didn't understand half the cyber-speak he was rattling off.

"Lieutenant Dallas. I have a situation at Cyber Perks, Fifth Avenue, and require immediate assistance."

As she detailed the circumstances, she watched another portion of the mob quiet, slip back to tables. By her head count they were down to about fifty hard cases, spearheaded by the revolutionaries who were blathering about conspiracies and cyber-wars and communication terrorists.

It was time, she decided, to change tactics again. She zeroed in on one man. Black shirt, black jeans, black boots, with a shock of gilded, deliberately disordered hair.

Eve stepped up in his face. "Maybe you didn't hear me tell you to go back to your table or station."

"This is a public place. It's my civil right to stand and speak."

"And it's within my authority to deny you that right when you use it to incite a riot. When you or anyone claiming that right is responsible for bodily harm or property damage." She gestured to the young girl who sat up, still weeping quietly as a friend mopped at the blood on her face. "They look like terrorists to you? Or him?" She jerked a thumb back to where the boy she'd spoken to had his terrified white face pressed against the kiosk glass.

"Pawns are used and discarded."

"Yeah, and kids get hurt because people like you want to masturbate your ego in public."

"The NYPSD is nothing but a soiled tool used by the hands of the right-wing bureaucrats and demigods to crush the will and freedom of the common man."

"Come on, stay on target. Is it communication terrorists and cyber-war or is it bureaucratic demigods? You can't cover all the bases at one time. Tell you what. You go sit down and I'll have somebody come over to listen to all your fascinating theories. But right now there are some people in here who require medical assistance. You're hampering that, and my investigation of what transpired here tonight."