Ritual in Death (In Death #27.5)(3)

Eve flipped open the next-to-useless bag she carried, tossed it to Roarke as she pulled out her weapon.

“Drop it. Drop it now.” She sized him up quickly. About five feet, ten inches, roughly one-sixty-five. Caucasian, brown and brown. And the eyes were glazed and glassy. Shock or drugs—maybe both.

“Drop it,” she repeated when he took another staggering step forward. “Or I drop you.”

“What?” His gaze skidded around the room. “What? What is it?”

She considered and rejected just stunning him in a matter of seconds. Instead she moved to him, gripped the wrist of his knife hand, twisted. “Drop the goddamn knife.”

His eyes stared into hers as his fingers went limp. She heard the knife hit the floor. “Nobody touch it. Stay back. I’m the police, do you get that? I’m a cop. What are you on?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. The police? Can you help me? I think I killed someone. Can you help me?”

“Yeah. You bet. Roarke, I need a field kit ASAP, and for you to call this in. I need everyone else upstairs for now. I need you people to clear this room until the situation is contained. Move it!” she snapped when people stood, gaping. “And somebody check on that woman lying in the shrimp balls over there.”

Roarke stepped up beside her. “I’ve sent one of the hotel staff down to the garage to get the field kit out of the boot of the car,” he told her. “I’ve notified your Dispatch.”

“Thanks.” She stood where she was as the naked party crasher sat on the floor and began to shudder. “Just remember, you’re the one who wanted to come tonight.”

With a nod, Roarke planted a foot on the hilt of the knife to secure it. “No one to blame but myself.”

“Can you get my recorder out of that stupid purse?”

“You brought a recorder?”

“If you need the weapon, you’re going to need the recorder.”

When he handed it to her, Eve pinned it to the frothy material over her br**sts, engaged it. After reciting the basics, she crouched down. “Who do you think you killed?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s your name?”

“It’s . . .” He lifted a blood-smeared hand, rubbed it over his face. “I can’t think. I can’t remember. I can’t think.”

“Tell me what you took.”

“Took?”

“Drugs. Illegals.”

“I . . . I don’t do illegals. Do I? There’s so much blood.” He lifted his hands, stared at them. “Do you see all this blood?”

“Yeah.” She looked up at Roarke. “It’s fresh. I’m going to need to do a room-to-room, starting with this floor. He couldn’t have walked around for long like this. We start with this floor.”

“I can arrange that. Do you want security to start on that, or sit on him while you do the room-to-room?”

“Sit on him. I don’t want them to talk to him, touch him. What’s that room over there?”

“It would be a maid’s room.”

“That’ll do.”

“Eve,” Roarke said as she straightened. “I don’t see any wounds on him. If that blood’s someone else’s—that much blood—they can’t possibly still be alive.”

“No, but we push the room-to-room first.”

Two

She needed to move fast. The amount of blood on her naked guy made it doubtful she’d find anyone alive—if she found anyone at all—so she couldn’t putz around. While she didn’t much like leaving her suspect with hotel security, even once she’d clapped on the restraints from her field kit, she couldn’t afford to wait for her uniformed backup, or her partner.

For lack of better, she set her suspect on the floor of the maid’s room, ran his prints.

“Jackson Pike.” She crouched down on his level, looked into the glazed brown eyes.

“Jack?”

“What?”

“What happened, Jack?”

“I don’t . . .” He looked around the room, dazed and stoned. “I don’t . . .” Then he moaned in pain and clutched his head.

“Uniformed officers are on their way,” she said to the pair from security as she straightened. “I want him exactly where I’ve left him, and those people upstairs contained until I get back. Nobody comes in except NYPSD officials. Nobody goes out. Let’s move,” she said to Roarke.

“Guy’s a doctor,” she continued as they started out the door. “Thirty-three years old. Single.”

“He didn’t walk in off the street like that.”

“No. Your hotel. Find out if a Jackson Pike, or anyone with a variation of that name’s registered. How’s this floor set up?”

Roarke pulled out his ’link as he gestured. “Four triplexes, one on each corner. One minute.”

While he spoke to the hotel manager, Eve turned left. “Well, he left a trail. That’s handy.” Moving quickly, she followed bloody footprints over the lush carpet.

“No Jackson Pike, or any Pikes for that matter,” Roarke told her. “There’s a Jackson, Carl, on thirty-two. They’re checking. On this floor Maxia has 600. Six-oh-two is occupied by Domingo Fellini—actor—I saw him at the party.”