Connections in Death (In Death #48)(15)

“It was right before I left to meet Wilson for dinner. It was right after the contract came through. I think about seven. I think.”

“Yes, I sent the contract about seven,” Roarke confirmed.

“He’d just gotten home. He’d worked the lunch shift and the happy hour. He had his first night off in eight nights. He was tired and happy. He was happy. He was happy for me. And he said he was going to clean up, go to a meeting, then over to mooch leftovers from Gram, bunk there tonight. He wouldn’t do this.”

“Okay. I need you to go somewhere and wait. Crack, your place isn’t far. Why don’t you take Rochelle there?”

“No. Please. I need to be here. I can’t leave him alone.”

“You need to get out of the cold,” Eve told her, “and wait. I’m going to look after Lyle. He won’t be alone.”

“You need to trust her, Ro. You come on home with me, then Dallas is going to come over in a little while. I’ve got the keys here.” Crack pulled them out of his pocket, handed them to Eve.

Between her master and her master thief, she didn’t need them, but she took them.

“I need to tell my brothers, my grandmother.”

“Why don’t you hold off on that? You’ll be able to tell them more when I’ve finished here.”

With visible effort, Rochelle pulled herself together, and her eyes went fierce as they met Eve’s. “I know one thing I’ll tell them. He didn’t do this to himself. I know the signs like I know my own name. Depression, evasion, withdrawal, agitation, anger. I know what I saw in my brother, and he wasn’t using again. Don’t you go up there looking at him like he was some loser. Don’t you do that.”

“He’s a victim, one way or the other. And he’s mine now. I’ll do my best for him.”

“Come on now, Ro, we’re going to walk awhile. It’ll do you good to walk awhile.” With an arm wrapped around her waist, Crack led her away.

Eve let out a breath, took the field kit Roarke had already retrieved from the trunk. “Whatever I find up there, it isn’t going to be easy for her.”

“You’ll find the truth, and that’s all she can ask for.”

She studied the building. A squatting piece of crap with no cameras, no visible security, and what she assumed would be a couple of half-assed locks on the exterior doors. A buzz-in system to make even the half-assed locks useless.

A basement unit where litter scattered over the pad of concrete, and the streetlights left deep shadows.

The perfect place for dark deeds.

She noted a street LC picking up a john near the east corner, and the guy hovering in a doorway toward the west corner who was practically wearing a sign announcing: Illegals Dealer Waiting for a Mark.

A couple of boys trying to look tough swaggered by across the street, hoods up, hands in pockets. Aiming for the dealer, she concluded.

Might as well gum up those works.

“Hey!” She held up her badge. “NYPSD!”

The boys took off in a non-tough trot. The dealer melted away.

“You know they’ll be back inside the hour.”

“Sure.” She shrugged that off. “But those assholes have to go change out of the pants they just pissed in first.”

She walked to the building, shook her head at the locks. “Why bother?”

Before she could try one of the three keys, Roarke took out a tool, went through the locks in seconds.

The entranceway—small, dark, smelling of old piss—had a stairway straight up, and a chain over the skinny door of an elevator that likely hadn’t operated since they’d thrown up the building.

“She’s on the second floor,” Roarke said as they started up a stairway just as dark and smelly as the entrance.

Someone had cared enough to try to paint over the graffiti tagging the walls, and she caught a whiff of something like bleach, so maybe the same somebody had tried to eradicate the stewing germs.

As they moved above the first floor she heard music banging, a screen show muttering, an argument in midstream.

On the second, she heard someone laughing in what sounded like genuine enjoyment, a buzz of voices.

She studied the locks on the Pickering door.

“They’re decent.” She engaged her recorder. “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Roarke, entering the premises with the permission of the tenant to investigate a suspicious death.”

For the record, she used the keys, opened the door.

It smelled of lemon-scented cleaner and death.

The lights were on full. The living area held a sofa, two chairs, a couple of tables, some photos, and dust catchers. It stretched—barely—to include a tiny eating area off what she assumed was a kitchen.

Lyle Pickering slumped in one of the chairs and, as Crack had told her, had a syringe in his lap, a homemade tourniquet on his left arm where the sleeve of his sweatshirt had been shoved up.

The sweatshirt announced him as a Knicks fan. He wore baggies and well-worn high-tops. Vomit, crusting, ran down the shirt.

She turned from him to study the locks. “No sign of forcing, locks or jamb. No signs of struggle in here.”

Out of the kit, she took a can of Seal-It, sprayed her hands, her boots, handed it off to Roarke.

“Must I?”

“Yeah. Take a look at the kitchen, then the bedrooms while I deal with the body.”