Leverage in Death: An Eve Dallas Novel (In Death #47)(10)

“She thinks maybe they had a cam in her room, too. And she said the one who stayed with her more made her cry into the ’link a couple of times. He made her say: ‘Please, Daddy, help me.’”

“Yeah, into a ’link. That’s for recording. They had the poor bastard wear an earbud, had his kid crying in his head. Probably recorded the wife, too. And I’m betting they put a recorder on him so they could watch. He makes a move to contact the police, he wavers, his amazing girls scream in his head.”

“From the way Melody talks, I lean toward the one who spent more time with her father, instead of the one with her, being in charge.”

Eve continued up to the bedroom level. “Why leave them alive? Once Rogan did what they wanted, why not finish the wife and kid? No wits then. Nobody left to give us an accounting.”

She walked into the master. Blood-spotted, rumpled sheets, clipped zip-tie restraints littered the floor. More blood on a chair where she imagined Rogan struggled.

“How well did they know the house before Saturday night?” she wondered. “Had one or both of them been in here before, as a guest, as a repairman. Deliveries, some maintenance deal? Not necessarily,” she continued as she moved around the room. “They gave themselves two full days with the family. Time to pick their spots, to find the master and the kid’s room. They didn’t tear things up,” she added. “Didn’t take valuables—didn’t compromise or take electronics. Cecily had a wedding set thing on. Not a real flashy diamond, but it looked like an easy few thousand, but they didn’t take it.”

She stepped into the walk-in closet—a large his and hers—found, as she’d expected, a small wall safe.

“Safe’s locked, and I’m betting whatever was in it still is.”

She tapped her fingers on the lock pad.

“Wow, you’re getting really good at that.”

Eve spared Peabody a glance. “Not that good.” Not Roarke good, she thought. “I got the combo from Cecily. And here we have some cash, some decent if not flashy jewelry, and a couple of high-end, dressy wrist units, passports, and so on.”

She shut the safe again. “They didn’t care about a few thousand here and there, however easy the pickings. Or what they could get fencing the art and e’s. Focused, one purpose. Patient.”

She wandered into the master bath, out again.

“Patient, focused, purposeful.” As she spoke, she went out, found her way to Melody’s room. Girlie, but not obsessively, Eve thought. Neat—except for the broken glass, the scattered solar system—but not regimented.

“Did he forget to strap her back to the bed, to bind her ankles, or did he want her to be able to get up? Kept her hands tied,” Eve mused.

“Just a kid. He wasn’t worried about her, that’s how I see it. Once they had what they wanted, this one just wasn’t worried about the kid. Not in charge.”

Nodding, Eve turned to Peabody again. “I agree. The one in charge of her wasn’t and isn’t the leader. This one left a loose thread. He loosened her ties—maybe a soft spot for kids. Only a kid, but not an idiot, and strong and smart enough to figure out how to get attention. Maybe it didn’t matter to them we found them so fast. We’d have found them in short order anyway. But it might’ve taken another hour. Didn’t matter.”

She walked over to the broken window. “Really didn’t. Long gone by then. Off to Fat City.”

“Which is not an overweight urban area,” Peabody put in.

“How does blowing up a marketing exec, a meeting, a merger, and/or the head of Quantum lead to Fat City?”

“Sounds like a Roarke question.”

“Yeah, it does. Here come the sweepers,” Eve said as she saw two vans pull up. “Let’s get them started.”





3

As the domestic lived in a building within easy walking distance of the Rogan/Greenspan home, Eve decided to have a talk with Iris Kelly before moving on to the injured. Eve mastered them inside, stepped across the small lobby.

One of the two elevators let out a pair of women speaking rapid Spanish, both carting handbags the size of baby elephants. The younger pushed a thumb-sucking baby in a stroller with little animals dangling—including a baby elephant. The kid’s eyes looked glassy with pleasure as it snacked on its own thumb.

“What do they get out of that?” Eve wondered as they stepped into the vacated elevator. “How good could your own thumb taste?”

“It’s not the taste, it’s the sucking action. Oral satisfaction and comfort.”

“So, basically, they’re giving themselves a blow job?”

For a couple of seconds, Peabody’s mouth worked silently. “I . . . I can’t possibly answer that without feeling really dirty and weirded.”

With a shrug, Eve rode up to the fourth floor. Decent building, Eve thought, decent security. Solid working class with residents who took enough pride of place not to litter up the lobby, elevators, hallways.

She pressed the buzzer on Kelly’s door, waited.

The intercom hummed as it engaged. “Yes?”

“Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody.” Eve held up her badge. “NYPSD. We’d like to speak to you, ma’am.”

Locks clicked, the door opened, and Eve saw Iris had already gotten the news. Sky-blue eyes, swollen and red-rimmed, dominated a face the color of Irish cream. Sunshine hair was sleeked back in a long tail. She wore straight-legged black pants, a shirt shades quieter than her eyes and a simple black cardigan.