Possession in Death

Eight

She got her shower, got her coffee. She told herself she was calm — would be calm. Panic wouldn't help; raging might feel good, but in the end wouldn't help either.

“There are options,” Roarke told her.

“Don't say the E word. No exorcisms. I'm not having some priest or witch doctor or voodoo guy dancing around me, banging on his magic coconuts.”

“Magic . . . Is that a euphemism?”

“Maybe.” It helped to see him smile — to think she might be able to. “But I'm not going there, Roarke.”

“All right then. What about Mira?”

“You think she can shrink Szabo out of me?”

“Hypnosis might find some answers.”

She shook her head. “I'm not being stubborn. Or maybe I am,” she admitted when he cocked his eyebrows. “Right now I'd rather not bring anybody else into this. I just don't want to tell anybody I invited a dead woman to take up residence in my head, or wherever she is. Because that's what I did.”

She shoved up, began to pace. “I said sure, come right in. Maybe if I'd been paying attention to what she was saying, what she meant, I'd have locked the door. Instead I'm all, yeah, yeah, whatever, because I'm trying to keep a woman science says was already dead from bleeding out. It doesn't make any sense, goddamn it. And because it doesn't, I have to set it to one side. I have to,” she insisted. “I have to work the cases — cases — with my head, my gut. Fucking A mine. Which I damn well would've done anyway if she'd left me the hell alone.”

“So you'll fight this with logic and instinct?” He decided they could both use a glass of wine.

“It's what I've got. It's what's mine. And if there's any logic to this other part, the part that makes no sense, when I find the killer, when I find Beata, it — she — goes away. If I don't believe that, I'm going to lock myself in a closet and start sucking my thumb.”

He took her the wine, touched her cheek. “Then we'll find the killer and Beata. And for now, we'll keep the rest of it between you and me. Twenty-four hours. We'll work it your way, and I'll find someone who can undo what was done. If this isn't resolved in twenty-four hours, we'll work it my way.”

“That sounds like an ultimatum.”

“It most certainly is. You can waste time arguing, or you can get to work. I'm not going to share my wife with anyone for more than a day.”

“I'm not your possession either, pal.”

He smiled again. “But you belong to me. We can fight about it.” He shrugged, sipped his wine. “And you'll have wasted part of your twenty-four. Still, it might fire you up, so I'm open to it.”

“Smug bastard.”

“Maybe you'd like to swear at me in Russian or Hungarian.”

“And you said I was mean. Twenty-four.” She took a slug of wine, considered how she's push for more if she needed it. “Let's look at the runs.”

Roarke ordered data on-screen, leaned a hip against the side of her desk. “Your prime suspect,” he began. “You had most of this, but the second-level run added a bit, and I extrapolated from your notes. Allie Madison's apartment, where it's verified Alexi Barin began the day, is an easy ten-minute walk to the alley — considerably less if a healthy, athletic man took it at a jog, even a run. It's about the same from the restaurant where he had brunch. As is his own apartment,” Roarke added, ordering the map he'd generated on-screen. “These locations are clustered, more or less, in the general area.”

“So he could've slipped out, slipped away, put on a mask, sliced Szabo up, and gotten back. Which would involve knowing she'd be in the alley at that convenient moment, and wearing something for the blood spatter. Because you don't hack somebody up the way she was hacked and walk away clean and fresh to take your alibi to brunch.”

She paced in front of the screen. “He could have set a meet with her, pinning the timing. Told her he had some information on Beata. It's a lot of planning for an impulsive guy with a temper.”

“Something set him off at the brunch if we go with your TOD, or prior if we stay with science,” Roarke suggested. “He went to confront her, saw her in the alley — he'd have come from this direction, so he'd have passed the alley. He snaps, pulls the knife, goes in.”

“Why is he disguised?”

“She could have seen his face, Eve. The condition she was in when you found her? It's not a stretch to believe she wasn't lucid.”

“She didn't see it. She saw the devil.” Eve paused a moment. “I know. It's what I saw. I had . . . a moment in the alley. I know what she saw.”

“All right.”

Because she'd expected an argument, even yearned for one, she rounded on him. “I don't know whether to be grateful or pissed off that you accept so easily.”

“Not as easy as it might seem, just easier than you. So if you say you saw what she saw, I know you did. The occult, on some level, is involved — even that's logical.”

“If you're a superstitious Irish guy.”

“If you're currently able to curse in Hungarian and make goulash,” he countered — and shut her up. “It could be your suspect has some power of his own.”

“I'm not going there. Logic, facts, data. So while it's possible Alexi slipped out, did the murder, it's low on the logic and probability scale with the data we have at this time. Give me the guy Beata worked with. The one who walked out of the restaurant with her the night she was last seen.”

“David Ingall, twenty-two, single. He's had two bumps. One for an airboard incident where he lost control and mowed down a group of pedestrians in Times Square, and another for manufacturing and using false ID — he was underage and got into a sex club before an undercover busted him. He dropped out of NYU and takes a couple of virtual courses a semester, lives in a one-bedroom apartment a few blocks from the restaurant with two roommates. He's worked at Goulash for three years.”

“Doesn't sound particularly murderous.”

“In addition, the file from your Detective Lloyd has a statement from one of the roommates confirming his arrival home — and the drunken night of computer gaming that followed, on the night Beata Varga went missing.”

“Roommates make it harder for him to take Beata, hold her, unless they're complicit.”

“The information on the roommates is as benign as this one.”

“Switch to the theater,” Eve decided. “Where she was understudying. What did Peabody get?”

She studied the data as it scrolled, listened to Roarke's summaries. And paced.

None of them popped for her. Holding a woman against her will for an extended length of time required privacy, sound-proofing, supplies, and time.

Maybe she was wrong — maybe the old woman had been wrong — and the girl was dead. And the thought of that pierced her so deep, she shuddered.

“Eve — ”

“No, it's nothing. Keep going. I need to set up a murder board. I should've done it already.”

She pinned up her photos, let the information Roarke provided wind through while she arranged what she needed on the board.

“Work and the school,” Eve said. “Her most usual and regular spots other than her apartment. We focus there. She went out on auditions, and that'll be another level if we bomb here. Work, school, her neighbors. Then the theater, then audition sites, shops, and so on.

“Let me see the map again.”

She moved closer to the screen. “She takes this route basically every day. Home to morning class. Then from class to work if she was scheduled. Back to class, back to work or an audition. Evening class three nights a week, and work again four nights.”

“A regular customer at the restaurant,” Roarke suggested. “Someone she waited on routinely. Wanted her, took her.”

She nodded. “Possible. Someone she knew is most probable. Someone who could lure her where he wanted her to go. Doesn't make the ripples a forced abduction would. Had to have a place. Underground. A basement? A cellar?”

“The underground itself,” Roarke commented. “There are places under the streets no one would pay attention to a woman struggling, screaming, calling for help.”

“Too many,” Eve agreed. “But it'd be risky. Someone could take her from you. Private,” she said again. “Can you get the blueprints for the building — the dance school?” When his answer was simply a long look, she rolled her eyes. “Go ahead, show off. Let me see the uncle's data. Sasha Korchov.”

“I've got deeper data on Natalya Barinova as well.”

“It's a man. Go with the man first.”

Benign. That was the word Roarke had used to describe Beata's coworker and his roommates. It was a word that came to mind with Sasha. Dreamy eyes, she remembered — a little like Dennis Mira there — and indeed his ID photo showed the same, along with the soft smile.

But the images Roarke had dug up from before the accident that had cost him his career and his lover showed a dynamic, intense, passionate man. Leaping, spinning a long, leanly muscled body showcased in dramatic costumes. The mane of hair coal black, the eyes on fire.

“How do you lose that?” she murmured. “Lose that energy, that passion, that fierceness? It must be almost like death or losing someone to death. Something breaks, something more than a leg, an arm. Something gets crushed, more than a foot, more than ribs.”

How do you get over the anger — that's what she'd asked Lopez about survivors, about families who lost someone to murder.

“You lost your badge once,” Roarke reminded her. “What did it do to you?”

“Destroyed me. Temporarily. Cut me off from what I was. But I had you to help bring me back, and I got my badge back. He lost his woman, too. His woman,” she repeated. “Another dancer. And look here, they danced the Diabolique ballet together. The Devil was his signature role. Son of a bitch. I should've seen it.”

“The building has a basement,” Roarke told her. “It runs the length and width of the building and holds a number of rooms, listed as storage and/or utility and maintenance on the plans.”

“Who owns the building?”

“Funny you should ask. He owns it. He made quite a bit of money during his career and was awarded a large settlement after the accident.”

“He's got no record anywhere. Unless it got covered up. No history of violence.”

“Money can smooth the way.”

“Yeah.” She angled her head at Roarke. “It can. But you can usually find a few bumps in the media. Speculation, gossip. A man might not be charged and still be guilty.”

“I'll see what I come across, and it's telling, I think, that he gave no interviews I can find, no public statements or appearances after the accident.”

“He went underground,” Eve murmured. “So to speak. Lost everything that mattered to him? That could be it. Had his sister, and she left her home and possibly the remains of her career to come here with him, bringing her infant son. Dreamy eyes,” she recalled. “Medication? His medicals show extensive injuries from the accident, the kind a man's lucky to live through. Had to have a lot of pain.”

More than physical, she decided, thinking of losing her badge again. Much more than physical pain.

“He sits in that studio now playing music for others to dance to. For this beautiful young woman who's about the same age, the same build and coloring as the woman he loved. She's going to dance that same role with his nephew.

“Would that piss him off, make him sad? They go to Vegas.” She stopped as her gut twisted. “Natalya said they go to Las Vegas to be showgirls. Maybe Beata's not the first.”

She strode to the auxiliary comp, started a search for missing persons, female of the same age group, coded in ballet.

“There's some speculation and juice regarding a young Sasha Korchov and his temper. Storming off stage at rehearsals, berating other dancers — neither of which is particularly unusual,” Roarke added. “And more, here and there, about wild parties and breaking up hotel rooms and such. Before he met and danced with Arial Nurenski. She, it's speculated here, was balm to his troubled spirit and other romantic analogies. She changed him, calmed him, inspired him. They were to be married two weeks after the accident that killed her.”

“Vanessa Warwich, age twenty-two, last seen leaving a café to go to rehearsal at the West Side School for the Arts. She was to dance the role of Angel in their autumn gala — just like Beata. That was two years ago. There are more.” She looked over at Roarke. “I need to cross-reference, find a connection with the school or Barin, or the role.”

“Send me your list. I'll take half.”

She shot the data to his computer. “Roarke, if he's been taking these women, holding them, trapped in a basement? He is a devil.”

They found eight.