Indulgence In Death Part 11

"No. I t doesn't appeal to me."

"Mostly I don't get why people want to tramp around the jungle or the woods, or wherever in the stone b.i.t.c.h of nature just to kill some stupid animal who's just hanging around where it lives. You want meat, you can buy a dog on the street."

"That's not meat."

"Not technically."

"Not in any reasonable sense. I expect it's the primal charge with hunting, the pitting yourself against the stone b.i.t.c.h of nature and so on."

"Yeah, but you'd be the one with the weapon." She frowned a moment. "Maybe this is kind of the same deal. Houston-or whoever might've been driving-is in his natural habitat, so to speak. You're sitting in his s.p.a.ce, maybe it's the back of a fancy limo, but you're hunting. Primal charge, maybe."

"But hardly sporting," Roarke pointed out. "He shot an unarmed man from behind. Most animals have what you could term a weapon at least.

Tooth and fang-and the advantage, to some extent, of instinct and speed."

"I don't think he's worried about being fair. Maybe a hunter, maybe, and maybe a little bored with shooting four-legged mammals. Trying for bigger game? Something to think about."

She thought about it in her home office while she set up a second murder board. She programmed coffee, glanced at the door that joined her office with Roarke's. He had work to catch up on, she knew, and it felt homey in their own strange way to be working in connecting rooms.

She set up her computer to start runs, and while it worked began to add to her case notes.

Hunter. Bigger game. Thrill kill. Unusual weapon, elaborate setup = attention. Attention = trophy? Who has access to Sweet's data and hunts?

Motive for involving Sweet?

She paused, glancing over at an incoming transmission. "Reo comes through," she murmured, and called the incoming file, now unsealed, on- screen.

Vandalism, shoplifting, illegals possession, truancy, she read. Two stints in juvie, with another illegals pop for dealing and destruction of private property in between. Mandatory counseling, all before Houston hit sixteen.

Tipping back in her chair, she read social workers' reports, counselors' reports, judges' opinions. Basically they'd labeled him a wild child, a troublemaker, a chronic offender with a taste for street drugs.

Until somebody'd bothered to dig a little deeper, somebody'd bothered to take a good look at his medicals.

Broken bones, blackened eyes, bruised kidneys-all attributed to accidents or fighting. Until just before his seventeenth birthday he'd beaten his father unconscious and taken off.

Her stomach shuddered with memory, with sympathy. She knew what it was to be broken and battered, knew what it was to finally fight back.

"They went after you, didn't they? Yeah, hunted you down, tossed you in a cage for a while. But somebody finally took a good, hard look."

She read his mother's statement, read the fear and the shame in it, but felt no sympathy there. A mother was meant to protect the child, wasn't she? No matter what. This one had hidden all those breaks and bruises out of that shame and fear, until the right cop, the right moment, and they'd pulled it out of her.Supervised halfway house, more counseling-that, she thought, and maybe the power of finally fighting back had turned a teenage boy around, and helped build him into a man.

And last night, someone had taken that from him.

"His juvenile record," Roarke said from the doorway.

"Yeah."

"The system worked for him, maybe not as soon as it should have, but it worked for him." He came to her, kissed the top of her head. "And so will you. How can I help?"

"You said you had work."

"I 've caught up with some, and have a few things running that can go on their own for a bit."

He thought of her, she understood, when he read the file. And he thought of himself, too-of being kicked and punched, broken and battered by his father.

I t connected him-she understood that as well-to a man he'd never met.

"I t's grunt work now, mostly. I 'm doing runs on a portion of the staff at Dudley, and the transpo company's employees. I 'm going to cross-reference those with any members.h.i.+p in hunting clubs or that kind of travel, licenses and permits for crossbows. And I want to dig on Sweet's PA's financials, just because the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d is off somewhere."

"Why don't I take the financials? I can do them faster."

"Show-off."

"But I do it so well." He pulled her in for a moment. "T ake that down now." He studied the data on-screen as she did. "I t reminds you, and that upsets and distracts you."

She shook her head. "Not until I do a search for the father. Maybe he wanted payback after all these years. Maybe he got enough money for some sort of hit, or ... I have to cross it off."

"All right. I 'll look into the money on the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

I t made her laugh. "Thanks."

She did the grunt work, sorted through runs, sieved the data, ran probabilities until a low-grade headache brewed behind her eyes.

"I can't find one person in the mix with a hunting connection, at least not that shows. No permits, no licenses, no purchases of that nature. I tried crossing with sporting-people do the d.a.m.nedest things, and there's compet.i.tions for archery and s.h.i.+t. Legal ones. Nothing there, either."

"Well, I had better luck."

"I knew it." Eve slapped a fist on her desk. "I knew that little b.a.s.t.a.r.d was wrong. What did you find?"

"An account he'd buried under a few layers. Not a bad job of it, really, and it would likely have remained buried if no one had a reason to dig.

You'll note, as I did," Roarke continued, "he's been careful not to give anyone a reason to dig. Clean record, bills paid in a timely fas.h.i.+on, taxes all right and tight. I transferred the account data to your machine. Computer," he ordered, "display Mitch.e.l.l Sykes's financials on screen two."

Acknow ledged ...

When the data flashed on, Eve picked up her coffee, narrowed her eyes. "That's a nice chunk. Heading toward half a million." But she frowned.

"Am I reading this right? Deposits in increments over-what?-a two-year period."

"Nearly three, actually."

"Doesn't smell like payoff for a murder, unfortunately. The last deposit was a little over a week ago, in the amount of twenty-three-thousand dollars and fifty-three cents. That's a weird number."

"All the deposits are uneven amounts, and all under twenty-five thousand."

"Blackmail, maybe, and he deposits odd amounts to try to stay under the radar, which he has."

"Possibly."

"Or some corporate espionage, selling Dudley data to compet.i.tors. He's PA for one of the top security guys, so he'd have some access there."

"Another possibility."

"They're pretty regular, aren't they?" Hands in pockets, eyes narrowed, she studied the figures. "Every four or six weeks, another little b.u.mp in the nest egg. Withdrawals are few and far between, and pretty light. Living within his means, using a little extra here and there no one would blink at.

Still, the amounts are ... Wait, he's got a cohab, double the amount of deposits and it makes more sense." She glanced over. "And you've already gone there."

"As it happens. Computer, secondary financials, split screen."

"Karolea Prinz, nearly the same amounts, nearly the same dates. Now we've got something. She works for Dudley," Eve added. "I ran her.

Pharmaceutical rep." She sipped her coffee. "So, I 'll tell you what you've already figured out. They're skimming drug supplies, which she'd have access to, and selling them on the street or to a supplier. Every month or so."

"I t reads that way to me."

"Nothing to do with Houston. In fact, this b.u.mps them down below bottom, unless I find out Houston or someone connected was a customer. But the fact is, using his boss's data would bring just this sort of attention. Why go there when you've got such a nice sideline? You don't want to s.h.i.+ne any lights."

"They've been successful, so I 'd agree, bringing the cops to their own doorstep would be monumentally stupid."

"T oo bad, but it'll be fun to get him in the box and sweat the snot out of him." In fact, remembering his curled lip and down-the-nose smirk, it gave her a warm little thrill.

"Between this and the use of Sweet's data, it doesn't look like that arm of Dudley's is as secure as it should be." And that, she thought, was interesting, too. "Where there's one hole, there's probably another. Houston's killer's in one of those holes."

"Nothing on the victim's family connections?" Roarke asked her.

"The father's dead. Beat some neighbor kid, got a stretch in the T ombs. Picked the wrong con to mess with inside, and ended up bleeding out in the showers, thanks to the s.h.i.+v in his gut. The mother moved back to Tennessee where her family's from. There's nothing there."

She puffed out her cheeks, blew out the breath. "I 've run the partner, the partner's wife, the vic's wife, even the vic's kids back, forth, sideways.

There's no buzz, no pop. The wife gets Houston's share of the business, but essentially she already had it. This killing just wasn't about Houston particularly. And nothing about the company, so far, brings up any questions. I f there's a connection, Dudley's the most likely source. Even then ..."

She shook her head.

"Even then?""I t's playing more and more like it was for the thrill. Just for the rush. And if that's the way it is, he's already looking for the next thrill."

The scream ripped out of the shadows, high and wild. Behind it chased a gurgle of maniacal laughter. For a moment, Ava Crampton caught a glimpse of her reflection in a smoky mirror before the ghoul burst out of the false gla.s.s, claws dripping blood.

Her squeal was quick and unplanned, but her pivot toward her date, the urgent press of her body to his, was calculated.

She knew her job.

At thirty-three she'd clocked over twelve years' experience as a licensed companion, and had worked her way steadily up the levels to the pinnacle.

She invested in herself, folding her profits back into her face, her body, her education, her style. She could speak conversationally in three languages, and was diligently working on a fourth. She kept her five foot six inch frame rigorously toned, was, in fact, an advanced yogini-the practice not only kept her centered but gave her a superb flexibility that pleased her clients.

She considered her mixed-race heritage a gift that had provided her with dusky skin (which she tended as rigorously as she did her body), cut- gla.s.s cheekbones, full lips, and crystalline blue eyes. She kept her hair long, curled, artfully tumbled in a caramel brown that set off that skin, those eyes.

Her investment paid off. She was one of the highest-rated LCs on the East Coast, routinely commanding a cool ten thousand an evening- double that for an overnight. She'd trained and tested and was licensed for a menu of extras and specialties to suit the varied whims of her clients.

Her date tonight was a first-timer, but had pa.s.sed her strict and scrupulous screening. He was wealthy, healthy, and boasted a clean criminal record. He'd been married for twelve years, divorced for eight months. His young daughter attended an excellent private school.

He owned a brownstone in the city and a vacation home in Aruba.

Though his looks struck her as dead average, he'd grown a trendy goatee since his last ID shot, had grown out his hair. He'd also put on a few pounds, but she considered him still in good shape.

Trying on a new look with the little beard and longer hair, she thought, as men often did after a divorce.

She could feel his nerves. He'd confessed, charmingly she thought, that he'd never dated a professional before.

At his request, she'd met him at Coney Island-he'd provided a limo. Since he'd steered her almost immediately to the House of Horrors, she a.s.sumed he wanted the adrenaline rush, and a female who'd gasp and cling.

So she gasped, and she clung, and remembered to tremble when he worked up the nerve to kiss her.

"I t all seems so real!"

"I t's a favorite of mine," he whispered in her ear.

Something howled in the dark, and with it, on a rattle of chains, something shambled closer.

"I t's coming!"

"This way." He tugged her along, keeping her close as overhead came the flutter of bat wings. The wind from them stirred her hair.

A holo-image of a monster wielding a bloodied ax leaped forward and she felt the air from the strike s.h.i.+ver by her shoulder. He yanked her through a door that clanged shut behind them. On a yelp of surprise and disgust, she swiped at cobwebs. Caught up, she spun to try to escape them, and came face-to-face with a severed head on a spike.

Her scream, completely genuine, ripped out as she stumbled back. She managed a nervous laugh.

"G.o.d, who thinks of this stuff?"

She thought fleetingly that her last date had been a romp on silk sheets with a follow-up in an indoor wave pool. But no one knew better than Ava that it took all kinds.

And this kind got his kicks in the torture chamber of an amus.e.m.e.nt park.

The light fluttered, a dozen guttering candles with the red glow of a fire where a hooded man, stripped to the waist, heated an iron spike.

The air stank, she thought. They'd made it just a little too real, so it reeked of sweat and p.i.s.s and what she thought was blood. The scream and prayers of the tortured and the d.a.m.ned crowded the room where stones dripped and the eyes of rats glowed in the corners.

A woman begged for mercy as her body stretched horribly on the rack. A man shrieked at the lash of a barbed whip.

And her date for the evening watched her with avid eyes.