She studied the building as they approached. Nothing fancy, but solid. No doorman, but what looked like decent security from her take on it. A Thai restaurant and a discount shoe store on street level.
Eve moved to the door of the apartments, let Roarke pop the locks. Then turned on her recorder.
“Until the amended warrant comes through, it’s just straight search. Unless, of course, she’s here eating soy chips and watching screen.”
She ignored the skinny elevator, took the stairs. “She’s on four.”
“I’m aware.”
“She’s going to be the one with the second place—the torture chamber. Not here—this isn’t set up for that—but she’ll have something. We’ve got to dig deeper there. None of the others have enough scratch to buy or rent another property. I couldn’t find anything that indicated any of them inherited a place—or enough scratch to buy or rent.”
A clean, well-lighted stairwell, she thought. And a pretty quiet building. Not fully soundproofed, as she caught the mutter of voices from within an apartment on the second floor. And the backbeat of a party going on when they climbed to three.
On four, she rapped smartly on Blake’s door. Gave it a minute, rapped again, added: “Grace Carter Blake, this is the police.”
That resulted in the door across the hall opening a crack.
“She’s not home.”
Eve turned, studied the slice of dark face, the suspicious dark eye. She held up her badge.
“Do you know where she is?”
“Nope, but she hasn’t been home all day. Don’t think she was home last night, either. Maybe took a trip.”
“A trip.”
“Had some suitcases yesterday—and took some stuff out a couple days ago. Maybe three. Closed down her office is what Ms. Kolo said. She’s on two, and she said how the office was closed yesterday. Today, too. She in trouble?”
“I need to speak with her.”
“Well, she hasn’t been here much the last couple weeks.”
Eve took out the sketches. “How about any of these women?”
The dark eye narrowed, and the door opened another fraction. “Saw her with that one.” One bony finger poked through the crack to point at Su.
“Here?”
“Nope, down the market. Ginaro’s. Couple doors down.”
“When?”
“I don’t know, maybe last week. Probably last week because I was doing my marketing, and I’ve got to do it again tomorrow. They were buying a bunch of produce and such, but they didn’t bring it back here because what they did was haul it on down the street and around the corner.”
“They walked south to the corner, then . . . west?”
“That’s right. If she’s in trouble, she keeps quiet about it. Keeps to herself. Doesn’t party like that bunch downstairs. I can hear them howling and laughing right through the floor.”
“Ms. . . .”
“Jackson.”
“Ms. Jackson, I have a warrant to search Ms. Blake’s residence. We’re going to enter it now. If you want, you can verify that by contacting Dispatch at Cop Central.”
“You got the badge,” she said. “I know how to keep to myself, too.” So saying, she shut the door.
Eve used her master, bypassed the three locks—one standard, two additional police issue.
“She needed to feel safe when she was inside,” Eve murmured. “This is the police,” she repeated. “We’re coming in.”
As a matter of course, she drew her weapon, swept it as Roarke called for lights.
Modest, was Eve’s first thought. Uncluttered with a few nice pieces including a leather sofa she bet Blake bought in her corporate days.
But yeah, she’d taken a few things out.
“Took whatever art was on the wall there—you can see the variation in the tone of the paint, and the hanger’s still there. I’m putting it five to one it was one of Downing’s. Should be a table over there, right? Why have a chair sitting out there without a table? Nothing to put your drink on, and no light.”
“Easier for a woman to carry out a table than a chair.”
“Yeah, it is. No photos, good wall screen, no mess. Let’s clear it.”
They split up, with Eve taking the bedroom and bath off the living space.
They moved systematically: kitchen alcove, smaller room set up as an office—and now without computer or ’link.
“She took clothes,” Eve said as she holstered her weapon. “You can see spaces in the closet. Pretty much cleaned out the bath—no toiletries or enhancers.”
Idly, she opened the drawer in a night table. “Empty.”
Roarke repeated the process on the other side of the wide bed with its simple white duvet. “The same. And the AutoChef in the kitchen is the same as well. Not even a stray bagel.”
“She’s had time to plan, and a place to take what she wanted over time. So when she left, she took whatever she had left that suited her. It’ll be the same in her office. She’ll have cleared out the electronics. No chances taken. We’ll go through it, but it feels like she took her time, thought it through. When you do that, you don’t make mistakes.”
“If she has another place, we’ll find it.”
Eve nodded, began the search.
The warrant for the electronics came through, for all the good it did. When they left, they walked south, turned west at the corner.
“Parking lot over there. And not the kind that’s going to keep their surveillance feed for a damn week. We’ll check anyway.”
Dead ends, she thought, one after another, and connected with Peabody.
No electronics in the offices. No files.
“Go home,” Eve ordered. “Get some sleep. Have McNab set up a search on Su’s vehicle. Use variations of all their names for it, all five women. Use variations of all her family names. Set an alarm for any hits, and tag me if you get one.”
“I’m not playing mum.” Roarke put an arm around her as they walked back. “But it’s common sense to say you need some sleep.”
“What I want is coffee, and something I can twist to bust through one of these dead ends. Maybe we got a hit on the searches while we’ve been in the field.”
“I’ve checked. Nothing yet. Some take more time than others.”
She didn’t have time. Easterday didn’t have time.
—
In the copter, she closed her eyes. If she could clear her mind, she thought, maybe something would slide in, something she’d missed or overlooked.
The next thing she knew, Roarke was unhooking her harness.
“Dropped off a minute.”
“Because however much you want to keep at this, your system needs sleep. So will they,” he reminded her as he slipped an arm around her waist.
“They can take shifts. But yeah, they need sleep, food, conversation.”
It felt like walking through water, getting to the door, moving into the warm.
“They won’t kill him tonight. I should’ve gotten to that. You were right. Fast would mean they’d have done it and left him. They’ve got him where they want him, and they need to sleep, to talk, to make him pay. The killing’s the easy part. Making him pay takes time.”
He led her to the elevator rather than the stairs, and went straight to the bedroom.
“Will you take a soother to ease my mind?”
“I haven’t had coffee in hours. I’m soothed enough. I get I need sleep or I’d have to take a booster, and I don’t want a booster. I’ll go down until five hundred hours. Where’s the cat?”
“I suspect with Summerset, as we were among the missing. Do you want him?”
She did, foolishly, but not enough to send Roarke to get him.
“Just wondered.”
She undressed, still in that underwater state. How long had she been up? She couldn’t figure it—didn’t matter. She’d go down now and start again before dawn. It was all she could do.
She slid into bed, ready, willing to go under, but the minute she closed her eyes, even with Roarke’s arm around her, the recording of the gang rape began to play in her head.
“Stevenson—Billy—couldn’t live with it, so he killed himself.”