“Okay. Well, now that I’m done with you, I’m going back to work.”
He sat where he was a moment as she got up, pulled the tank back on. “I feel so used. I find I like it.”
She rolled her injured shoulder, nodded in satisfaction. “Always more where that came from, ace.”
Eight
In her office she set up a second murder board while the cat sat on her sleep chair and watched her. Through the adjoining door she heard Roarke talking on the ’link. Probably dealing with business he’d postponed during the hovering mode.
Better now, she decided. Both of them were better now. Not just the sex, but the understanding that came with it—or out of it. And the normalcy that went hand in hand.
“Nothing normal about that,” she said as she studied the sketch. “Not a damn thing normal there.”
She circled around to her desk, noticed that her message light was activated. She called up the message, and actually jolted when Trina’s voice spiked into the room.
“Got the ugly bastard and the question. Could do the skin, hair, ears, nose, teeth, no prob. Could do the red eyes, but not so they look like red balloons coming out of the sockets. Couldn’t do the jaw, not that crooked. The answer is I couldn’t make anybody look like that, and I’m the best. You’ve got yourself a freakazoid, Dallas.
“You need a treatment—hair, face, body. The works. Mavis says she and Leonardo and Bella can come to your place for a visit on Saturday afternoon. I’ll be with them, and bring my gear.”
“Why,” Roarke wondered, “do you look more horrified by that than by the face on your board?”
“She’s coming. We have to stop her.”
“Don’t look at me. You could use a treatment.”
“Hey.” Though she was anything but vain, the careless comment gave her another jolt. “Insulting my hair, face, and body won’t get you banged again anytime soon.”
“You know very well I adore your hair, face, and body. You could use a massage, a relaxation treatment, and some downtime with good friends. In fact, so could I. I believe I’ll contact Trina and have her bring another operative. I’ll have a massage along with you.”
“Traitor.” She stomped to the kitchen for coffee, stomped back. “I’m not thinking about it. It’s not Saturday yet. Anything could happen.”
She wiped a hand through the air. “So. Everybody says it can’t be done. Not costuming, not physically. But it has to be one or the other. If it’s physical, maybe it’s long-term. Something he’s learned to live with. Peabody’s circus freak angle. And if that’s it, I eliminate everybody on my list.”
She scowled at her board. “Pisser.”
“Maybe one of your suspects hired the killings.”
“I’m going to run probabilities on that, but it rips up the theory—and it’s more than a theory—that the killer knew the vics. That it was personal.”
“Maybe he just takes pleasure in his work.”
“Crap. Crap. Crap. Somebody’s wrong. Either the medical experts or the cosmetic/costume experts. I like it better if the cosmetics are wrong, but I’ve got to work it both ways. I’ve got to go back to the beginning.”
“You can go back with me over a meal.”
It usually helped to do just that, talk it through with him, bounce theories and angles off him. But this time, she felt she only circled without getting any closer to the center.
“I don’t believe anyone looks like that,” she said. “And if I decided to believe somebody did, I can’t believe he’d stay off the grid. I ran that sketch through every program we’ve got and didn’t get a single hit.”
“Maybe it’s more recent.”
“The hypo-whatever, the multiple organ failure—and why isn’t he dead, if so—and whatever trauma would cause the lower part of his jaw to be so dislocated it’s nearly under his right ear? I don’t think so. If he was a hire, how did anybody know about him—because he’d have popped if he was a pro, even semipro. If he killed them for himself, why doesn’t anyone else know about him? Unless . . . maybe he’s a patient at the Center. Maybe he’s a kind of experiment they’re keeping on the down low.”
“As in botched?” Roarke twirled some seafood linguine on his fork. “As in mad science?”
“Mad, bad. Maybe. It’s something to poke at. Maybe the vics knew him from before, and found out he was there, confronted the mad-bad scientist, or threatened to tell people on the outside.”
“You don’t like that very much.”
“Not as much as one of them slapping gunk on their face, pumping themselves full of a Zeus cocktail, and whaling away, but it’s another route to take.”
She took it, working angles, running probabilities, reformulating, juggling through the pieces. When Roarke finally tugged her out of her chair hours later, she was more than ready to give it up for the night.
Clear her head, she decided. Let it simmer for a few hours.
Shortly after midnight, Eton Billingsly coded himself into Justin Rosenthall’s lab using a cloned key card and a recording he’d made of Justin’s voice.
He thought himself very clever.
It was time—past it—to prove to Arianna she was wasting her time and resources on Justin. The man was obsessed with this serum, and far too secretive about it in the last weeks.
Because he was getting nowhere, Billingsly concluded. The financial resources Justin wasted had become intolerable, particularly since they could and should be redirected to his own department. Once Arianna saw the truth, she’d rethink the relationship, and this wedding business.
He went directly to the main comp station, noted Justin had locked it down for the night.
But no problem, or very little of one. He’d worked with Justin long enough to know the man kept such things simple, so his assistant and interns could access data when needed.
Justin called it teamwork. Billingsly called it naivete. One day one of those underlings would steal data and take credit for whatever advance Justin managed to stumble onto.
But in this case, it simply made the job easier.
He tried various names as passwords, working patiently. At one point he thought he heard a sound, froze, turned to look around. Then shook his head at his own foolishness.
He continued until, inspired, he tried Ari102260. The date they’d chosen to be married. Sentimental fool, Billingsly thought as access was granted.
Quickly now, he scanned through file names.
UNQUIET. Justin’s term for the core of addiction. Before he could call it up, something crashed behind him. “What the devil—?”
He whirled, then froze.
“Some might call me that,” the voice ground out, like rocks beneath a boot heel. “But I prefer Chaos. Dr. Chaos.” The creature issued a deep, cape-swishing bow. “At your service.”
“What kind of sick joke is this?”
“My kind. Sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, aren’t you, Billingsly? Well, we’ll just have to take care of that.”
“I have every right to . . .” But he backed up as he spoke, with his heart hammering in his dry throat. “I’m contacting Security.”
“Wanna bet?”
As Billingsly began to run, the creature let out a delighted laugh. Strength, speed, excitement poured through him as he leaped. Billingsly went down under him, screaming.
Chaos used the knife. But before the knife, he used his teeth.
And continued long after the screaming stopped.
The signal of her communicator pulled Eve out of a dream where she chased her killer while he danced down an empty street juggling an ear, an eye, and a tongue.
“Gross,” she mumbled, then called for the lights at ten percent before she answered. “Dallas.”
Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. Report to the Whitwood Center. See building security and officer on the door for access to Laboratory Six.
“Justin Rosenthall’s area.”
Affirmative. Possible homicide.
“Acknowledged. Inform Peabody, Detective Delia. Request that she meet me on scene as soon as possible. Has the victim been ID’d?”
Victim identification is not confirmed.
“I’m on my way. Dallas out.”
She shoved at her hair, saw Roarke was already up, getting dressed. “Shit. Shit. You don’t have to come. That’s hovering, isn’t it?”
“In this case it’s sheer curiosity. The likelihood is it’s your man, and since I’m awake now in any case, I’d like to see for myself.”
It was quicker not to argue. Besides, he had an eye as good as most cops she knew. And drove faster and better.
“Inside job, what did I tell you?” She watched buildings whiz by on the way downtown. “It’s one thing to break into the place on Twelfth, but it takes a lot more to get through the security they have at the Center.”
At his noncommittal sound, she gave Roarke a narrowed stare. “For most people. Rosenthall’s lab. He works late a lot. Shit, shit, shit.”
She was out of the car the instant Roarke parked, flashing her badge at the NYPSD uniform and the building security officer.
“Lieutenant. Security Officer Tweed will take you to the scene. My current orders are to remain on the door.”
“Has Detective Peabody arrived?”
“No, sir.”
“Send her in when she gets here. She knows the way. Tweed?”
“This way.”
“I know the way, too. Who found the body?”
“I did. I was doing a standard cam sweep, and I saw . . . a figure.”
“Green, deformed face, red eyes, wearing a cape?”
“I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.”
“And you’ve got him on disc.”
“Yeah. He was heading down from the second level, east, moving fast in a kind of—boogie. Part of me was spooked, I admit. The other part figured somebody was playing a joke. But we have to check out any unauthorized activity. By the time I got to that sector—along with the other guard I’d alerted—he was gone. I went up, saw the lights were on in Dr. Rosenthall’s lab, so I keyed in, and I saw . . . The place is wrecked, Lieutenant, and there’s a body. It’s male, but I couldn’t tell who it was. The face, it’s, well, wrecked, too. And there’s blood everywhere.”
“Okay.” She nodded to the uniform outside the lab doors. “Key me in, Tweed, then I’m going to want those discs. The originals.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“And stand by,” she told him.
Wrecked was a mild word for it, Eve thought as she scanned the area. Smashed comps lay on the floor on a sea of broken beakers, dishes, specimen bowls. The body lay faceup—what was left of the face. Blood stained the hacked and ripped clothes, spread over the floor, left its obscene abstract art on the sides of a counter.
And on the top, in blood, his message.
Memo to: Lt. Dallas.
Nobody liked him anyway.
You’re welcome!
Sincerely, Dr. Chaos.
“It’s Billingsly.”
“How can you be sure?”
“That’s the suit he had on this morning.” She took a can of Seal-It out of her kit, used it, tossed it to Roarke. “This takes him off the suspect list.”
“I doubt he’d feel grateful.”
“What was he doing in here? He doesn’t strike me as the type who’d come by for a late-night visit with Rosenthall, and this isn’t his area. He’s another floor up, in the other wing.”
“He might have been lured here.”
“Yeah, maybe. But it’s late, way after hours. Why is he in the building, and where’s Rosenthall? I need to know who keyed in before Security.”
“Would you like me to see to that area?”
“Yeah, that would save time.”
“His nose is gone.”
“It sure is. What does that mean? Smell no evil? No, that’s just stupid. To me it says nosy. You’re nosy, Billingsly; now you’re dead.”
She turned as Peabody came in.
“Wow. Another day, another slaughter.” Peabody eased out a breath. “McNab’s with me. I had him start on Security. I thought maybe Roarke would be here, so we’d have two e-men on it.”
“Then I’ll go hook up with Ian.”
“What do you see?” Eve asked Peabody when they were alone.
“I see Billingsly’s off the suspect list.”
Despite the circumstances, Eve smiled a little. “And?”
“He’s been stabbed a whole bunch. It might even be more than Bickford, but it’s hard to tell. He’s missing his nose.”
“What does that say to you?”
“It’s another quiz. This time I want a grade. It says to me Billingsly won’t be sniffing around anymore. Maybe around Arianna, maybe around something else—something lab related. The note’s addressed directly to you this time, so he knows it’s our case—and that Billingsly wasn’t a popular guy around here.”
“I’d say A minus.”
“A minus?” Both insult and sulk piped through Peabody’s voice. “I want A plus.”
“For an A plus you’d need to observe, identify, and relate the teeth marks in the vic’s face and throat.”
“Teeth . . . oh jeez.” Observing and identifying them now, Peabody swallowed hard. “He ate him.”
“Just here and there. He’s accelerating,” Eve concluded. “This time blood wasn’t enough. He wanted a taste of flesh.” She scanned again, noted the open door on an empty cabinet. “Did the killer walk in on the vic, or the other way around?”
“If this is extra credit, I want a review of my earlier grade. Let me think.” To help herself do that, Peabody looked away from the body. “I can’t think why Billingsly would be here. He and Rosenthall aren’t pals, and this isn’t his area—not only sector-wise, but professionally. Maybe if Rosenthall asked him to come in—but I don’t buy it. He’s not going to do his competitor any favors. He’d come if Arianna asked him, but that puts her in this, and it just doesn’t fit well for me.”
Pausing, she made herself look at the body again. “If he came here—which, okay, obviously, he did—it was to get something on Justin, or screw with something, or poke around looking . . . Poke his nose in!”
Eve took the cloned key card and recorder out of Billingsly’s pocket. Hit Play.
“Justin Rosenthall.”
“Billingsly tried a little B&E,” Peabody commented.
“That’s an A plus.”
“Yay!”
“Billingsly keys in using the dummy card and the recorder. He’s poking around. The killer is already here—looking for something, doing something, waiting for something. Billingsly sees him, and that’s the end of Billingsly. The killer chews on him, stabs him, amputates his nose, wrecks the lab, takes time to leave the message, then boogies out. They’ve got him on disc, so we’ll be able to track his movements.”
“That’s a break.”
“For us, not for Billingsly.” Eve opened her field kit again, crouched by the body. “Let’s verify ID, get TOD.”
“If there are bite marks, they should get some saliva, and the impressions, too,” Peabody began.
“We got better.” Eve lifted Billingsly’s lifeless hand. “We got skin under the nails. Billingsly got some flesh, too.”