Chapter 1

HE WAS SICK TO DEATH OF HER NAGGING.

Bitch and complain, bitch and complain, and nag, nag, nag every time she opened her damn mouth.

He’d like to shut it for her.

Jerald Reinhold sat at the kitchen table, while his mother’s never-ending list of criticisms and demands rolled over him in dark, swollen clouds.

Every fucking day, he thought, the same thing. Like it was his fault he’d lost his stupid, dead-end job. His fault his girlfriend—another bitch who never shut up—kicked him out so he had to move back in with his whining, mouthy parents. His fault he’d dropped a few thousand in Vegas and had some credit card debt.

Jesus! His fault, his fault, his fault. The old bitch never cut him the smallest break.

Hadn’t he told her that he wouldn’t have lost his job if his prick of a supervisor hadn’t fired him? So he’d taken a few days off, who didn’t? So he’d been late a few times, who wasn’t?

Unless you were a work-droid like his idiot father.

But God, she made it such a big fucking deal. He’d hated the job anyway, and only took it because Lori badgered him into it, but he got all the blame.

He was twenty-six, for Christ’s sake, and deserved a hell of a lot better than working for chump change as a take-out delivery boy.

And Lori gives him the boot just because he’s out of work—temporarily—and goes batshit on him because he lost a few bucks on a trip with some friends?

He could, and would, do a lot better than Lori wide-ass Nuccio. Bitch threatened to call the cops just because he gave her a few smacks. She deserved a lot more than a couple love taps, and he wished like hell he’d given her just what she deserved.

Hedeserved more than a room in his parents’ apartment and his mother’s incessant hammering.

“Jerry, are you listening to me?” Barbara Reinhold fisted her hands on her hips.

Jerry lifted his gaze from the screen of his PPC where he was trying to relax with a game. He spared his skinny, flat-chested, know-it-all mother one smoldering glance.

“How can I help it when you never shut up?”

“That’s how you talk to me? That’s how you show your gratitude for the roof over your head, the food we put in your belly?” She lifted a plate that held a slice of bread, a thin slice of fake turkey. “I’m standing here making you a sandwich since you finally dragged yourself out of bed at noon, and you sass me? It’s no wonder Lori kicked you out. I’m telling you one thing, mister, you’re not getting a free ride here much longer. It’s been almost a month now, and you haven’t done diddly about finding a job.”

He thought: Shut the fuck up or I’ll shut you up. But he didn’t say it. He wanted the sandwich.

“You’re irresponsible, just like your father said, but I said, he’s our son, Carl, and we have to help him out. When are you going to help yourself, that’s what I want to know.”

“I told you I’d get a job. I’ve got options. I’m considering my options.”

“Your options.” She snorted, went back to building the sandwich. “You’ve gone through four jobs this year. What options are you considering while you’re sitting here in the middle of the day in the ratty sweats you slept in? I told you they’re looking for a stock boy down at the market, but do you go and see about it?”

“I’m not a freaking stock boy.” He was better than that. He was somebody. He’d be somebody if people gave him half a break. “Get off my back.”

“Maybe we haven’t been on your back enough.” She layered a slice of bright orange cheese on top of the turkey, and her voice took on the soft, reasonable tone he hated.

“Your father and I scrimped and saved so you could go to college, and you flunked out. You said how you wanted to train so you could learn how to develop those computer games you like so much, and we backed you on that, put the money to that. When that didn’t work, your dad got you a job at his office. He went to bat for you, Jerry, and you screwed around and mouthed off, and got fired.”

She picked a knife from the block to cut the sandwich. “Then you met Lori, and she was the sweetest thing. A smart girl, a hardworking girl from a real nice family. We had such high hopes there. She got you working as a busboy in the restaurant where she works, and she stuck with you when you lost that job. When you said how you could get a messenger job if you had a good bike, we made you a loan, but that didn’t last two months. And you never paid us back, Jerry. Now this last job’s gone, too.”

“I’m tired of you throwing the past in my face, and acting like it was all my fault.”

“The past keeps repeating, Jerry, and seems to be getting worse.”

Her lips pressed together as she added a handful of the Onion Doodles he liked to the plate. “You’re out of work again, and you can’t afford a place of your own. You took the rent money and the tip money Lori had saved up and went off to Las Vegas with Dave and that no-account Joe. And you came back broke.”

“That’s a damn lie.” He shoved to his feet. “It was my money, and I’ve got a right to take a break with my friends, to have some goddamn fun.”

There was a sheen in her eyes—not of tears, not of anger, but of disappointment. It made him want to punch, punch, punch that sheen away.

“It was the rent money, Jerry, and the money Lori saved up from her tips. She told me.”

“You’re going to take her word over mine?”

On a sigh, she folded a napkin into a triangle as she had for him when he was a boy. Her dented heart came clearly through the sound, but all he heard was accusation.

“You lie, Jerry, and you use people, and I’m worried we let you get away with it for too long. We keep giving you chances, and you keep throwing them away. Maybe some of that’s our fault, and maybe that’s part of the reason you think you can talk to me the way you are.”

She set the plate on the table, poured a glass of the coffee-flavored drink he liked. “Your father and I were hoping you’d find a job today, or at least go out and look, make a real effort. We talked about it after you went out with your friends again last night. After you took fifty dollars out of my emergency cash without asking.”

“What are you talking about?” He gave her his best shocked and insulted look. “I didn’t take anything from you. You’re saying I’m stealing now? Ma!”

“It wouldn’t be the first time.” Her lips compressed when her voice wavered some, and she came back with the no-more-bullshit tone he knew drew a deep, hard line.

“We talked it over, decided we had to take a stand, Jerry. We were going to tell you together when your father gets home, but I’ll tell you now so you’ll have that much more time. We’re giving you until the first of the month—that’s the first of December, Jerry—to find work. If you don’t get a job, you can’t stay here.”

“I need some time.”

“We’ve given you a month, Jerry, and you haven’t done anything except go out at night and sleep half the day. You haven’t tried to get work. You’re a grown man, but you act like a kid, and a spoiled, ungrateful one. If you want more time, if you want us behind you, you eat your lunch, then you go out and look for a job. You go down to the market and get that stock boy job, and as long as you’re working and show us you’re trying, you can stay.”

“You don’t understand.” He forced tears into his eyes, a usual no-fail. “Lori dumped me. She was everything to me and she threw me over for some other guy.”

“What other guy?”

“I don’t know who the hell he is. She broke my heart, Ma. I need some time to get through it.”

“You said she kicked you out because you lost your job.”

“That was part of it, sure. That asshole at Americana had it in for me, from day one. But instead of taking my side, she flips me over because I can’t buy her stuff. Then she tells you all these lies about me, trying to turn my own mother against me.”

“Eat your lunch,” Barbara said, wearily. “Then get cleaned up, get dressed, and go down to the market. If you do that, Jerry, we’ll give you more time.”

“And if I don’t, you’ll kick me out? You’ll just boot me to the street like I’m nobody? My own parents.”

“It hurts us to do it, but it’s for your own good, Jerry. It’s time you learned to do what’s right.”

He stared at her, imagined her and his father plotting and planning against him. “Maybe you’re right.”

“We want you to find your place, Jerry. We want you to be a man.”

He nodded as he crossed to her. “To find my place. To be a man. Okay.” He picked up the knife she’d used to cut his sandwich, shoved it into her belly.

Her eyes popped wide; her mouth fell open.

He hadn’t planned to do it, hadn’t given it more than an instant’s conscious thought. But God! It felt amazing. Better than sex. Better than a good, solid hit of Race. Better than anything he’d ever felt in his life.

He yanked the knife free. She stumbled back, throwing up her hands. She said, “Jerry,” on a kind of gurgle.

And he jammed the blade into her again. He loved the sound it made. Going in, coming out. He loved the look of absolute shock on her face, and the way her hands slapped weakly at him as if something tickled.

So he did it again, then again, into her back when she tried to run. And again when she fell to the kitchen floor and flopped like a landed fish.

He did it long after she stopped moving at all.

“Now that was for my own good.”

He looked at his hands, covered with her blood, at the spreading pool of red on the floor, the wild spatters of it on the walls, the counter that reminded him of some of the crazy paintings at MOMA.

An artist, he mused. Maybe he should be an artist.

He set the knife on the table, then washed his hands, his arms, in the kitchen sink. Watched the red circle and drain.

She’d been right, he thought, about finding his place, about being a man. He’d found his place now, and knew exactly how to claim his manhood.

He’d take what he wanted, and anyone who screwed with him? They had to pay. He had to make them pay, because nothing else in his life had ever made him feel so good, so real, so happy.

He sat down, glanced at where his mother’s body lay sprawled, and thought he couldn’t wait until his father got home.

Then he ate his sandwich.

···

Lieutenant Eve Dallas strapped on her weapon harness. She’d had a short stack of waffles for breakfast—something that tended to put a smile on her face. Her husband, unquestionably the most gorgeous man ever created, enjoyed another cup of superior coffee in the sitting area of their bedroom. Their cat, who’d just been warned off the attempt to sneak onto the table, sat on the floor washing his fat flank.

It made a nice picture, she thought: Roarke, his mane of black hair loose around his wonderfully carved face, that beautiful mouth in a half smile, and his wild blue eyes on her. The dishes from their meal together on the table, and Galahad pretending he didn’t want his nose in the syrup added to the “at-home and liking it” ambience.

“You look pleased with yourself, Lieutenant.”

“I’m pleased,” she said, and added that musical murmur of Ireland in Roarke’s voice to her list of morning enjoyments. “I’ve had a couple of days without a hot one so I’m nearly caught up on paperwork. The quick scan of the weather for today told me I won’t be freezing my ass off, and I’m heading out with a belly-load of waffles. It’s a good day, so far.”

She hooked a brown vest over her shirt—both Roarke approved—then sat to pull on her boots.

“Generally you’d prefer several hot ones over paperwork,” he pointed out.

“We’re heading into the holidays, end of year 2060. You start on that season, you get the wackies. And the nearer I am to finishing my year-end report, the better. The last couple of days have been a walk, so if I get a couple more like that, I—”

“And now you’ve done it.” Shooting her a look of pity, he shook his head. “You’ve jinxed any chance you had.”

“Irish superstition.”

“Common sense. But speaking of Irish and holidays, the family’s coming in on Wednesday.”

“Wednesday?”

“That’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving,” he reminded her. “Some of the cousins are switching off so those who couldn’t come last year will. You said you were fine with it.”

“I am. No, really, I am. I like your family.” He’d only recently found them. He’d lived most of his life, as she had, without blood kin—and the comfort or problems family bring. “I’m just never sure what to do with so many people in the house who aren’t cops.”

“They’ll be busy enough. Apparently there are many plans in the works for shopping, sightseeing, theater, and so on. You’re unlikely to have all of them at once except on Thanksgiving itself. And then there’ll be all the others.”

“Yeah.” She’d agreed to that, too—and it had seemed like a fine idea at the time. All the people who’d come for dinner the previous year, in addition to her partner, Peabody, and Peabody’s main man, McNab, who’d opted not to travel this year.

“It worked okay before.” Shrugging, she got to her feet. “What is it—the more the crazier?”

“I believe it’s merrier, but either way. And with that in mind, I’d like to add four more.”

“Four more what?”

“Guests. Richard DeBlass and family. Elizabeth contacted me just yesterday. He and Elizabeth are bringing the children into New York for the parade.”

“Talk about crazy. Who wants to jump into that crowd?”

“Thousands, or it wouldn’t be a crowd, would it? They’ve booked a hotel suite along the route. I thought it would be nice to invite them to share Thanksgiving dinner. Nixie, especially, wants to see you.”

Eve thought of the girl, the lone survivor when her family had been slaughtered in a home invasion. “Is it a good idea, bringing her back here, to where everything happened over a traditional family holiday?”

“She’s adjusting well, as you know, but she needs the connection. They’ve made a family, the four of them, but they don’t want Nixie to forget the family she lost.”

“She’ll never forget.”

“She’ll not, no.” And he himself would always carry the image of the little girl in the morgue with her head resting on her father’s unbeating heart. “It’s not like you going back to Dallas.” Now he rose, stepped to her. “Revisiting, reliving all that pain and trauma. She had a family who loved her, and was taken from her.”

“So the connection’s important. Okay with me, but nothing’s going to induce me to go to that parade.”

“So noted.” He drew her in, kissed her. “We’ve a lot to be thankful for, you and I.”

“And a houseful of Irish relatives, plus a ravaging horde after turkey and pie are part of that?”

“They are indeed.”

“I’ll let you know on Friday if I agree with that. Now I’ve gotta go.”

“Take care of my cop.”

“Take care of my gazillionaire.”

She left the house resigned to the coming invasion.

···

What was it with people? Eve wondered. Clogging up her streets, flooding her sidewalks, jamming on glides, swarming crosswalks. What made them pack into New York for holidays?

Didn’t they have homes of their own?

She fought through three nasty knots of traffic on the trip downtown to Cop Central while ad blimps blasted the news from overhead of:

BLACK FRIDAY MEGA-SALES!

GOBBLE UP BARGAINS WHILE THEY LAST!

DOOR-BUSTER HOLIDAY SALES AT THE SKY MALL

She wished to God they’d all go to the sky mall and get out of her city. Snarling with equally pissed drivers at yet another tangle, she watched a quick-fingered street thief make hay with a gaggle of oblivious tourists crowded around a smoking glide-cart.

Even if she hadn’t been packed in among Rapid Cabs and a farting maxibus, the odds of catching him were slim. As fast-footed as fingered, he zipped away, richer by three wallets and two pocket ’links by her count.

The early bird catches the loot, she supposed, and a few less people would be hitting the sky mall.

She spotted a thin fracture in traffic, gunned it, and ignoring the rude blat of horns, wound her way downtown.

By the time she walked into Central, she had her plan. She’d hit the paperwork first, clear off her desk—righteously. Then she could spend some time reviewing the active cases of her detectives. Maybe she’d toss the expense reports to Peabody, let her partner handle the numbers. There might be room to pull out a cold case, give it another hard look.

Nothing much more satisfying than catching a bad guy who thought he’d gotten away with it.

She stepped off the glide—a tall, leanly built woman in a leather coat—turned toward Homicide. Her short, choppy brown hair framed an angular face accented with a shallow dent in the chin. Her eyes scanned, as cop’s eyes always did, long, golden brown and observant as she strode down the busy sector to her department.

When she turned into her bullpen she spotted Sanchez first, his feet propped on his desk as he worked his ’link. And Trueheart, spiffy and innocently handsome in his uniform, industriously at his comp. The room smelled of bad cop coffee and cheap fake sugar, so all was right with the world.

Jenkinson strolled out of the break room with a giant mug of that bad cop coffee and a lumpy-looking doughnut. He wore a gray suit the color of tarnish with a tie of nuclear blue and green curlicues on a screaming pink background.

He said, “Yo, LT.”

“That’s some tie, Jenkinson.”

After setting the mug on his desk, he flipped it. “Just adding a little color to the world.”

“Did you steal that from one of the geeks in EDD?”

“His mama bought it for him,” Sanchez said.

“Your mama bought it for me, as a thank-you for last night.”

“It’s so she can see you coming from two blocks away and get gone.”

Before Jenkinson formed a witty repartee, Baxter walked in, slick in a dark chocolate suit, expertly knotted tie that picked up the color with minute checks of brown and muted red.

He stopped as if he’d hit a force field. “Jesus, my eyes!” He pulled out a pair of fashionable sunshades, slid them on as he studied Jenkinson. “What is that around your neck? Is it alive?”

“Your sister bought it for him.” Still quietly working at his comp, Trueheart didn’t even look up. “A token of her esteem.”

The kid was coming along, Eve thought, amused, and left her men to their byplay.

In her office with its single narrow window and miserably uncomfortable visitor’s chair, she aimed straight for the AutoChef. Thanks to the Roarke connection she didn’t have to settle for bad cop coffee. She programmed a cup, hot and black, settled with it at her desk, prepared to be righteous with paperwork.

Her communicator signaled before she’d taken the first sip.

“Dallas.”

Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. See the officer 735 Downing Street, Apartment 825. Two DBs, one male, one female.

“Dallas responding. Will contact and coordinate with Detective Peabody en route.”

Acknowledged. Dispatch out.

Well, shit, she thought, gulped down coffee—burned her tongue—she had jinxed it. And grabbing the coat she’d just taken off, she headed out.

Others had arrived in the bullpen, and Jenkinson’s tie remained the topic of the day. Peabody, still wearing her coat, added her opinion that the tie had jazz.

But then Peabody loved the neon-sporting McNab.

“Peabody, with me.”

“What? Where? Already?”

Eve just kept walking so Peabody had to trot after her in her pink cowgirl boots.

What was her department coming to, Eve wondered, with pink ties, pink boots. Maybe she should ban pink from Homicide.

“What did we catch?”

“Looks like a double.”

“A two-for-one start of the day.” As she waited for the elevator, Peabody took a scarf out of her pocket, looped it around her neck.

Pink and blue checks, Eve noted. She definitely had to work on the logistics of banning pink.

“It’s a totally gorgeous day, too,” Peabody continued, her square face wreathed with a smile, her dark eyes shining.

“Were you late because you grabbed morning sex?”

“I wasn’t late. Two minutes,” Peabody amended. “We got off the subway early to walk it. You won’t have many more days like this.”

They squeezed into the elevator with a boxful of cops. “I love fall when everything’s all crisp and breezy, and they’re roasting chestnuts on the carts.”

“Definitely had sex.”

Peabody only smiled. “We had a date night last night. Just on the spur, you know. We got dressed up, went dancing, and had grown-up cocktails. We get so busy we forget to do the ‘just you and me’ thing sometimes. It’s nice to remember.”

They corkscrewed out on the garage level.

“Then we had sex,” Peabody added. “Anyway, it’s a really nice day.”

“Too bad the two DBs on Downing can’t enjoy it.”

“Well... yeah. It just goes to show.”

“Show what?”

“You should get dressed up, go dancing, drink grown-up cocktails, and have sex as much as you can before you’re dead.”

“That’s a philosophy,” Eve said as she slid behind the wheel of her vehicle.

“It’s almost Thanksgiving,” Peabody pointed out.

“I’ve heard rumors.”

“We had this tradition, my family. We’d write down all the things we were grateful for, and put them in a bowl. And on Thanksgiving, everyone would pick out a few. The idea is, it reminds you of things you should be grateful for, or what other people appreciate. Like that. It’s nice. I know we’re not going out to be with the family this year, but I’m sending them my grateful notes.”

As she battled downtown traffic, Eve considered. “We’re murder cops. That must mean we have to be grateful for dead bodies or we wouldn’t have a job. But contrarily, the dead bodies aren’t likely to be grateful.”

“No. We’re grateful we have the skill and the smarts to find and arrest the person or persons who made them dead bodies.”

“The person or persons we catch and arrest aren’t going to be grateful. Somebody’s got to lose.”

“That’s a philosophy,” Peabody muttered.

“I like to win.” Eve pulled up behind a black-and-white on Downing. “I appreciate winning. Let’s go do that.”

Hefting her field kit, she started for the entrance, badged the cop on the door.

“We’re on eight, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah, I got that. Building security?”

“You have to buzz in, but you know how that goes. Cams on the door, but none internal.”

“We’ll want the door discs.”

“Building manager’s on that.”

With a nod, she moved to the elevator. Decent building, she thought. Minimal security, but clean. The floor of the cubbyhole lobby shined, and the walls looked recently painted. And the elevator, she noted with some relief, didn’t clang or clunk when it opened.

“Easy to gain access,” she commented. “Follow somebody in, or get someone to buzz you in. No lobby security, no internal cams.”

“Easy out, too.”

“Exactly. The place is well maintained, so that says decent tenants and responsible management to me.”

She stepped out on eight, approached the cop standing in front of 825. “What have we got, Officer?”

“Sir. The woman in 824 gained access to 825 at approximately seven-twenty this morning. She has a key and the code.”

“Why did she go in?”

“She and the female victim had a regular Monday trip to the local bakery, leaving sharp, according to her statement, at seven. She became concerned when no one answered the door or the ’link, and let herself in where she discovered the bodies she identified as Carl and Barbara Reinhold, listed as residents of this unit.”

“Where’s the wit?”

“With a female officer in her apartment. She’s pretty broken up, Lieutenant. It’s rough in there,” he added, jerking his head toward 825.

“Keep the wit handy.” Eve pulled a can of Seal-It from her bag. “And stand by.” She switched on her recorder.

With their hands and boots sealed, Eve and Peabody went inside.

Rough was one word for it, Eve thought. The living area remained tidy. Sofa pillows plumped, floors whistle clean, magazine discs neatly arranged on a coffee table. It made an eerie contrast to the smell of death—far from fresh.

A few steps in the room jogged slightly to the right where a table served as a demarcation between living area and kitchen.

And where the line between tidy life and ugly death dug in deep.

The man lay beside the table, his head, shoulders, and one outstretched arm under it. In death he was a bloody, broken mass in what had been a dark blue suit. Blood spatter and gray matter bloomed and smeared the walls, the kitchen cabinets—and the baseball bat that lay in the congealed river of blood beside him.

The woman lay facedown on the floor between the opposite side of the table and a refrigerator. Blood soaked through her shirt and pants so their true color had become indiscernible. Both were ripped and shredded, most probably by the kitchen knife driven through her back to the hilt.

“They’ve been slaughtered,” Peabody stated.

“Yeah. A lot of rage here. Take the woman,” Eve ordered, and crouching by the man, opened her kit.

She let the pity come, then let it go. And got to work.