„Did you hear that voice?“ Peabody sent a cautious look over her shoulder. „It sounded, you know, unearthly.“
„Funny, sounded computer-generated to me. But maybe that’s because I know ghosts don’t make ‘link transmissions, or shoot guns. Because – and this may be news to you, Peabody – ghosts don’t exist.“
Peabody only shook her head, sagely. „Oh yeah? Tell that to my great-aunt Josie who died eight years ago and came back half a dozen times to nag my great-uncle Phil about fixing the leaky toilet in the powder room. She left him alone after he called the plumber.“
„And how much does your great-uncle Phil drink?“
„Oh, come on. People see ghosts all the time.“
„That’s because people, by and large, are whacked. Let’s work the case, Peabody. It wasn’t a ghostly finger that pulled the trigger here. Or lured the vie to an empty building in the middle of the night. Let’s do a run. Spouse, family, beneficiaries, business partners, friends, enemies. And let’s keep it to the corporeal.“
Eve re-examined the body, wondering if he’d brought whatever it was. „They can bag and tag. Start checking doors and windows. Let’s find out how the killer got out of the building. I’ll have another talk with the first on scene.“
„You want me to stay in here? To wander around in here. Alone?“
„Are you kidding?“ One look at Peabody ’s face told Eve her partner was absolutely serious. „Well, for God’s sake. You take the first on scene. I’ll take the building.“
„Better plan. You want crime scene in now, and the body transported?“
„Get it done.“
Eve took a visual sweep on the main floor. Maybe it had been a hot spot in the last century, but now it was derelict. She could see where some of the work had begun. Portions of the grimy walls had been stripped away to their bones to reveal the old, and certainly out-of-code, electrical wiring. Portable lights and heating units were set up, as well as stacks of materials in what seemed to be tidy and organized piles.
But the drop clothes, the material, the lights all had a coat of dust. Maybe Hopkins had started his rehab, but it looked as if there’d been a long lag since the last nail gun popped.
The remains of an old bar hulked in the center of the room. As it was draped with more dusty protective cloth, she assumed Hopkins had intended to restore it to whatever its former glory might have been.
She checked the rear exit door, found it too secured from inside. Through another door she found what might have been a store room at one time, and was now a junk heap. The two windows were about big enough for a cat to squeeze through, and were riot barred.
The toilet facilities on the main level were currently pits, with no outside access.
„Okay, unless you’re still here, waiting for me to cuff you and read you your rights, you found a way up and out.“
She glanced at the ancient elevator; opted for the spindly iron stairs.
The sweepers were going to have a hell of a time finding usable prints or physical evidence, she thought. There were decades of dust, grime, considerable water damage, what seemed to be old scorching from a fire.
She recorded and marked some blurry footprints smudged on the dirty floor.
Cold, she thought. Freaking cold in here.
She moved along the second floor landing, imagined it packed with tables and people during its heyday. Music pumping out to shatter ear drums, the fashionable drugs of the time passed around like party favors. The chrome safety railings would have been polished to a gleam, flashing with the wild colors of the lights.
She stood as she was a moment, looking down as the ME drones bagged the body. Good view from there, she mused. See whatever you want to see. People ass to elbow below, sweating and grinding on the dance floor and hoping somebody was watching.
Did you come up here tonight, Hopkins? Did you have enough brains before they got blown out to come early, scope the place out? Or did you just walk in?
She found the exit at a second story window, unlocked and partially open, with the emergency stairs deployed.
„So much for mat mystery. Suspect most likely exited the building,“ she stated for the record, „from this point. Sweepers will process the window, stairs and surrounding areas for prints and other evidence. And lookie, lookie.“ She crouched, shined her light on the edge of the win-dowsill. „Got a little blood, probably vic’s. Suspect may have had some spatter, or transferred some blood to his clothing when he moved in for the head shot.“
Frowning, she shined the light further down, onto the floor where something sparkled. „Looks like jewelry. Or… hmm. Some sort of hair decoration,“ she amended when she lifted it with tweezers. „Damn if it doesn’t look like diamonds to me, on some kind of clip. About a half inch wide, maybe two inches long. No dust on it – stones are clean and bright in what I’d guess to be a platinum setting. Antique-looking.“
She bagged it.
She started to head back down, then thought she heard the floor creak overhead. Old buildings, she reminded herself, but drew her weapon. She moved to the back wall, which was partially caved in, and the old metal stairs behind it.
The sound came again, just a stealthy little creak. For a moment she thought she heard a woman’s voice, raw and throaty, singing about a bleeding heart.
At the top of the stairs the floors had been scrubbed clean. They were scarred and scorched, but no dust lay on them. There was old smoke and fire damage on some of the interior walls, but she could see the area had been set up into a large apartment, and what might have been an office.
She swept, light and weapon, but saw nothing but rubble. The only sound now was the steady inhale, exhale of her own breath, which came out in veritable plumes.
If heat was supposed to rise, why the hell was it so much colder up here? She moved through the doorless opening to the left to do a thorough search.
Floors are too clean, she thought. And there was no debris here as there was in the other smaller unit, no faded graffiti decorating the walls. Eve cocked her head at the large hole in the wall on the far right. It looked as though it had been measured and cut, neatly, as a doorway.
She crossed the room to shine her light into the dark.
The skeleton lay as if in repose. In the center of the skull’s forehead was a small, almost tidy hole.
Cupped in the yellowed fingers was the glittery mate to the diamond clip. And near the other was the chrome gleam of a semi-automatic.
„Well son of a bitch,“ Eve murmured, and pulled out her communicator to hail Peabody.
Two
„It’s her. It’s got to be her.“
„Her being the current vic’s ancestor’s dead wife.“ Eve drove through spitting ice from the crime scene to the victim’s home.
„Or lover. I’m not sure they were actually married now that I think about it. Gonna check on that,“ Peabody added, making a note in her memo book. „But here’s what must’ve gone down: Hopkins, the first one, kills Bobbie, then bricks the body up in the wall of the apartment he used over the club.“
„And the cops at the time didn’t notice there was a spanking new brick wall in the apartment?“
„Maybe they didn’t look very hard. Hopkins had a lot of money, and a river of illegal substances. A lot of connections, and probably a lot of information certain high connections wouldn’t want made public.“
„He bought off the investigation.“ Whether it happened eighty-five years ago or yesterday, the smell of bad cops offended Eve’s senses. But… „Not impossible,“ she had to admit. „If it is the missing wife/girlfriend, it could be she wasn’t reported missing until he had everything fairly tidied up. Then you got your payoff, or classic blackmail regarding the investigators, and he walks clean.“
„He did sort of go crazy. Jeez, Dallas, he basically locked himself up there in that place for over ten years, with a body behind the wall.“