Reunion in Death (14 page)

"There's no shame in that, Eve, if you're not ready."

"When will I be ready?" It burst out of her, bitter and bright. "Tomorrow, a year from tomorrow? Never? If I let this interfere with standard investigative procedure, where does that leave me next time I ram into something that scares me on a personal level? I won't be a coward. So I'm going to do my job. That's number one. Number two, I get you out of the way for a day or two so I can think it through. The rest... I'll deal with it when I get there."

...

She buried herself in work. Peabody had come through with a reasonably workable list of disbarred doctors who fit the basic criteria, and maintained a residence in New York.

"What are you looking for here to link one of these hundred and twenty disgraced physicians with Julianna?"

"A possible connection to her original source," Eve told Roarke. "Personality type. I figure any doctor who'd supply Mad Munch with enough curare and cyanide to take out the entire Church of Hereafter wouldn't quibble about supplying a psychopathic man-killer with what she needed. Or would know someone who would."

She studied the data as Roarke stood behind her office chair, rubbing her shoulders in that absent and perfect way he had that zeroed in on the exact spot that needed attention.

"If he's not her source, he might know her source. If I crap out on her connection, but ID Doctor Doom, I pass him to the Feds as my good deed for the decade."

"Why don't they already have him?"

"They didn't punch the right button with Mook at the right time and he was the only one left. I always knew he had a little more in his gut, but they thought he'd spilled it all, and I didn't have any juice to push it back then. They roughed him up a little instead of threatening to take away his pain, and when he said he'd told them everything, they figured he had."

"That case was ten years back, wasn't it?" Roarke asked.

"Yeah, I was still in uniform. So?"

"Born a cop," he declared and kissed the top of her head.

"According to Mook the doctor didn't help himself to any lemonade that night. That tells me the religious angle didn't tickle his fancy. So maybe it was the self-termination-as long as it wasn't his own-that pulled him in. I've got three guys here who lost their licenses to practice because they helped patients along to Jesus without their consent."

"Playing God's a weighty business."

"Oscar Lovett, David P. Robinson and Eli Young, in alphabetical order. Those are my three best bets. I'll sic Feeney on them. They don't play out, we'll start working our way down."

Her desk 'link beeped and as she was still frowning at the screen Roarke answered.

"Hello, Roarke." Louise Dimatto smiled silkily. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"Always a pleasure to hear from you. How are you, Louise?"

"If I got much better, I'd be illegal, on the personal front at least. Professionally, I'm overworked, which is just the way I like it. I'd hoped you and Dallas might be able to come by the shelter sometime soon. We've finished and opened three more rooms, and the recreation area's complete. Dochas is already making an impact on lives."

"We'll make sure we stop in when you're on duty."

"That'll be great. Is Dallas available? I have some information for her."

"Right here. Overworking. I'll see you soon, Louise. Best to Charles."

"I'm sure giving him mine. Dallas," she continued, briskly now when Eve came on-screen. "I think I might have something useful for you regarding my little assignment. I remembered hearing bits of scandal discussed in my family when I was a girl. Things I wasn't supposed to hear, of course. Regarding a doctor who'd interned with my uncle. Apparently his private behavior was unseemly, and covered up by the white wall for years. He enjoyed young women, very young women. Some of whom were also patients. The white wall wouldn't stand for him when it was discovered he'd begun to terminate patients without specific and clear-cut authorization."

"Got a name?"

"I didn't, but I called my cousin upstate. And that you owe me for, Dallas, as my cousin Mandy is a thoroughly annoying diva who proceeded to interrogate me about my love life, my social life, and lecture me on wasting my skills on the dregs of humanity at the clinic. Et cetera."

"The name, Louise. You can bitch later."

"Eli Young. He was a chief resident, internal medicine, at Kennedy Memorial before going into private practice." Louise paused, lifted her elegant eyebrows. "And I can see by your expression you already have the data on him. Why did I waste my time?"

"You didn't. You just saved me considerable effort. Appreciate it." Eve glanced toward Roarke, shifted in her head. "Ah, listen, I tapped Charles for a favor today, too, and I feel kind of weird about it."

"The conjugal at Dockport?"

"Oh, well, then... Guess he mentioned it."

"Yes, he told me." Louise let out a quick laugh. "Dallas, loosen up. By the way, Peabody looked wonderful. Love's in the air."

"Something's in the air," Eve grumbled when they ended transmission. "What are you grinning at?" she demanded of Roarke.

"That, despite it all, there are some areas of sex that embarrass you."

"I'm not embarrassed, I'm baffled. But it's none of my never mind."

"The whole point of love is that it has no reason. It just is."

She looked at him. "I guess I've got that one." She pushed away from the desk. "I'm going to go pay a visit to this Eli Young, see what I can shake out."

"I'll go with you. Don't start the civilian routine, Lieutenant. Let's just say I'd enjoy taking a drive with my wife. It's a pretty night. Besides." He draped an arm around her shoulders as they started out of the room. "If memory serves, the bad doctor's address is in one of my buildings. You won't have any hassles getting up to see him with me along, will you?"

...

It did have certain advantages. When the electronic security panel informed Eve that Doctor Young was not in, she held up a hand to hold Roarke back. And pressed her badge against the view screen.

"Not in, or not accepting visitors?"

I AM NOT AUTHORIZED TO PROVIDE YOU WITH THAT SPECIFIC INFORMATION. DUE TO THE NECESSITY OF PROTECTING THE PRIVACY OF OUR RESIDENTS, I CAN ONLY REPEAT THAT DR. YOUNG IS NOT AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. YOU MAY CHOOSE FROM THE FOLLOWING MENU TO LEAVE A MESSAGE FOR DR. YOUNG OR ANOTHER RESIDENT. MY APOLOGIES, DALLAS, LIEUTENANT EVE, FOR NOT BEING ABLE TO ASSIST YOU IN YOUR REQUEST.

"You must admit," Roarke commented, "it's very good security, as well as polite."

"With a warrant stuffed up its electronic butt it might not be so polite."

LOITERING ON THE PREMISES BY NONRESIDENTS OR APPROVED AND AUTHORIZED GUESTS IS DISCOURAGED. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO REQUEST ANOTHER RESIDENT OR LEAVE A MESSAGE, I MUST ASK YOU TO VACATE THIS LOBBY. IN FORTY-FIVE SECONDS, BUILDING SECURITY WILL BE INFORMED OF YOUR FAILURE TO COOPERATE. MY APOLOGIES FOR THIS INCONVENIENCE.

"Would now be a good time?" Roarke asked. "Lieutenant, you know how it excites me when you snarl at me."

"Just get us past this thing, and stop looking so smug." Roarke simply laid his hand on the palm plate, then coded in.

GOOD EVENING, ROARKE. WELCOME. HOW MAY I ASSIST YOU THIS EVENING?

"We'll be going up to the twenty-second floor. Release the elevators."

YES, SIR. ELEVATORS ARE RELEASED. PLEASE ENJOY YOUR VISIT AND THE REST OF YOUR EVENING. PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF I CAN BE OF ANY FURTHER ASSISTANCE.

"Don't you get tired of everything and everyone sucking up to you?" Eve demanded.

"Why, no. Why should I?" He gestured her into the elevator as the mirrored doors opened soundlessly. "Twenty-second floor," he ordered. "Young could very well be out, you know."

"I'll see for myself. There's a reasonable chance he's Julianna's supplier or knows who is. I don't walk away until I talk to him."

She stepped off on twenty-two, turned down the hall to the second door on the right. She rang the bell, kept her badge up so it could be seen through the apartment's security screen.

DOCTOR YOUNG IS NOT IN RESIDENCE AND HAS AUTHORIZED NO GUESTS TO ENTER HIS HOME IN HIS ABSENCE. MAY I TAKE A MESSAGE?

The second computerized response had Eve agitated. Without comment, she turned around and buzzed the apartment across the hall.

It was opened by a woman wearing a red lounging robe, holding a cocktail glass filled with some pale blue liquid. An entertainment screen roared out of the room behind her. "Police? What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, ma'am. I'm sorry to disturb you. Do you know where I can find Eli Young this evening?"

"Doctor Young?" She blinked, then looked over her shoulder. "Marty, the police are here. She wants to see Doctor Young."

"Across the hall." The voice boomed out, over the shouted on-screen argument.

"I know he lives across the hall," Eve said with straining patience. "He doesn't answer his door. Can you tell me when you last saw him?"

"Oh, several days ago, I suppose." She lifted the glass, sipped. From the glow on her face, she'd been sipping steadily for some time. "Oh, wait a minute, he's gone out of town. Could be gone a couple weeks."

"Did he mention where he was going?"

"No. Actually he didn't tell me. His niece did."

"Niece," Eve repeated as her mind went on alert.

"Yes, she was coming out of his apartment the other day as I was coming in from shopping. A very nice young woman, too. She said that she'd just been visiting her uncle, and how pleased she was that he was going to travel back to visit her parents with her. In Ohio. Or Indiana. Or maybe it was Idaho." She slipped again. "A nice long visit, she said."

"What did she look like?"

"Oh, young and pretty. Brunette, short, very chic do."

Eve pulled out her PPC, called up Julianna's picture as Janet Drake. "Does she look familiar?"

The woman angled her head, then beamed. "Why yes! That's Dr. Young's niece. I was caught by surprise as I didn't realize he had any family at all."

"Thanks." Eve stuck the PPC back in her pocket. "Do you ever watch the news media, ma'am?"

"News? With Marty it's thrillers and sports, sports and thrillers. I'm lucky if I get the screen for ten minutes a day to watch the fashion report."

"You might want to take a look at it tonight. Thanks for your help."

Eve turned away from the woman's puzzled look, and switched on her recorder. "I have positive ID that prime suspect, Julianna Dunne had contact with Eli Young at this location. Subject Young does not answer, and there is suspicion of foul play. I have probable cause to enter this residence and determine the well-being of Young and/or his complicity with Julianna Dunne. With me is Roarke, owner of the building. He has agreed to this procedure, and will witness same."

"That should cover it," Roarke commented.

Eve stepped to the door, used her master to uncode the locks. "Recorder on," she said as she drew her weapon, a subtle warning in case Roarke had armed himself without her knowledge.

She pushed open the door to the dark.

But she didn't need the lights to smell death.

"Christ." She hissed it between her teeth as her mouth filled with the rank air. "We've got a bloater. Stay in the hall. There's nothing you can do. Lights on full," she ordered.

The lights flashed on, revealing a lavishly appointed living area, its privacy screens shut tight over a wall of windows. Young was on the sofa, and the fabric would never be the same.

He wore what might have been a robe, but as the gases inside him had expanded, and the bodily fluids leaked, it was hard to tell.

There was a bottle of brandy and a wineglass on the coffee table, and a snifter on the rug where his ringers, fat as sausages now, had dropped it.

"You'll want your field kit," Roarke said.

"Yeah."

"And here." He handed her a handkerchief so she could cover her mouth and nose. "Best I can do for now."

"Thanks." She used it, staying at the doorway until he could return with her sealant, recording the scene. She pulled her communicator out of her pocket, and called it in.

...

She'd had sex with him first. Perhaps they'd been lovers before, but Eve thought not. Julianna had simply used her most effective method to distract a man, and then had killed him with the very poison he'd procured for her.

It was logical, clean, cold. It was Julianna.

They would find her on the building's security discs. Once at least before Pettibone's murder when she'd bought her initial supply. She'd been a redhead then, Eve mused.

Then once again, a brunette, coming back to tie off the loose end.

Very likely, they would find transmissions on the victim's 'link from her, to her. But she wouldn't be foolish enough to have taken them at home, or on a personal 'link. They would follow it up, of course, but find the chats were made on public 'links.

He'd been dead four days. Four very nasty days. She'd strolled in, fresh from one kill, and topped herself off with another.

The body was gone now, but the air would reek of its decomposition for quite some time. Even after crews came in to clean the air, it would be there, a thin, evil underlayer.

"Lieutenant." Peabody came up behind her. "I have the security discs."

Absently, Eve took them. "I'll have copies in the file. I'll take a look at them tonight, but I don't imagine there will be any surprises.

"She came up the day after she killed Pettibone. Sporting her new hairdo, feeling fine and frisky. He let her in. Maybe they could do more business. She told him about the kill. Who better to share it with than the man who'd sold her the weapon, a man who'd be dead before she left the apartment? It would've amused her to tell him. Then she seduced him."

She stepped toward the bedroom. The linens had been stripped away, sent to the lab, but her scope had found traces of semen. "Easy enough. I'm so wired up, so energized. All those years in prison, those lonely years. I need someone to touch me. You're the only one I can be with, the only one who knows what I'm feeling right now."