Devoted in Death (8 page)

“Do you really think I could have done what was done to him. Torture?”

“No,” Eve said easily, watched Chamberlin blink in surprise. “But it’s early in the investigative process. You tell me who could have done this to him.”

“I don’t know.” The admission had him fisting his hands on the table. “I know a great many of his friends and acquaintances. I know every member of my orchestra. And I don’t know.”

“He was, by your own words, always brilliant, and thought of like a son by the conductor. That could easily foster jealousy, resentment, rage.”

Chamberlin shook his head. “He’d work with anyone who might be having difficulty. He’d come in early, or stay late. He lived for music and for people. Is there competition, conflict, drama, in the orchestra? If not, there’s no passion, and without passion there can’t be brilliance. But I know my orchestra, and no one in it would have done this.”

He leaned forward. “What was done to him? Will you tell me? What did they want from him? If they’d wanted money, he’d have given it to them! What did this maniac want from Dorian?”

His pain, Eve thought. His blood. His death. But she only said, “It’s early in the investigation. I can promise you Dorian has all my attention, and we’re actively pursing all angles.”

“That’s double-talk.”

“It’s truth, and all I can give you. When did you last see Dorian?”

“Two nights ago – three come tonight. At the performance. Mina and I had a late supper afterward with some friends. When we realized the next day he hadn’t come home, we weren’t alarmed, but we were when he missed his call for the next night’s performance. He had never – would never. I explained all this to the detective when we reported him missing.”

“Tell me now.”

“We asked if anyone had seen him. Theo Barron, oboe, said he and a couple others were going to meet Dorian at this club downtown. After Midnight. He often went there to jam, to unwind. But he hadn’t shown up. Theo thought he’d probably just ended up with someone. Drinks, sex. Dorian had a varied sex life. Theo had tried his ’link, left a couple messages, but didn’t think much of it. But then he still didn’t answer, and he hadn’t come home at all.”

“Why didn’t they go down together? This Theo and Dorian?”

“Theo was in a flirtation with one of the altos in the opera company, and he wanted to wait until she’d changed as he’d convinced her to go with him. Theo said Dorian went on ahead.”

“How would he get downtown, generally?”

“A cab. He’d have taken a cab.”

“Okay.” She made a note. “What do you know about Earnestina?”

“Ah.” Chamberlin let out a half laugh. “Pompous little twit. She interviewed me and some of the others – both orchestra and stage – for a paper she claimed to be writing.
Earnest
was a kind word. Pompous, as I said, overbearing, extreme. Dorian was kind to her, likely considered sleeping with her, but she caused a scene at that club he enjoyed. I don’t know the details as I wasn’t there, but she annoyed him. He would never have gone anywhere with her after that.”

“Do you have her full name?”

“Tina R. Denton. I remember it as she insisted on the full name – including initial.” He sat back, pressed his fingers to his eyes briefly. “Lieutenant, she was like a mosquito. A woman who buzzed around until you wanted to give her a good slap, but wasn’t capable of doing more than making you itch a little.”

“Every angle,” Eve reminded him. “Go back to Dorian’s mother now. When Dr. Morris has him ready, you’ll be contacted. If you think of anything else, any detail, I want to hear it.”

As she escorted him out, she saw a woman – early thirties, long blond hair yanked back in a tail, exposing a lovely face, a face splotchy from tears, and deep blue eyes swollen and red-rimmed.

She said, “Maestro,” in a voice that broke.

Chamberlin turned to her and, when she hesitated, held out his arms.

“Maestro,” she said again, flung herself at him to press her face into his chest. “Is it a terrible dream? Can you tell me it’s a terrible dream?”

“No. He’s gone, Ellysa.”

“How?” She reared back, grief and fury warring on her face. “No one will tell us how, no one will tell us why.”

“I will. Ellysa Tesh?”

“Yes. Who are you?”

“Lieutenant Dallas. We’ll talk in here.”

“Do you want me to stay with you?” Chamberlin asked.

“It’s best if I speak with Ms. Tesh alone. In here,” Eve repeated, and opened the door to Interview A.

“I’ll be all right. Mina?”

“I’m going to her now.”

“Should I come? When I can? Should we come?”

“Not now. Let me see, and perhaps tomorrow.” He laid his lips on her brow. “Perhaps tomorrow.”

Once she’d taken Ellysa in, reengaged the recorder, read off the Revised Miranda, Ellysa pushed her hands in the air as if shoving all that aside.

“I don’t care about my rights or your recording. What happened to Dorian?”

“You’re here to answer questions. Let’s start with that. When did you last see or speak with Dorian?”

“At the performance, the night he went missing. What happened to —”

“Where did you go after the performance?”

“Oh for God’s sake. I went with Theo and Hanna and Samuel. We cabbed downtown to a club. After Midnight. Dorian went ahead of us, but he wasn’t there. I wanted to go with him, but… I got hung up.”

“Hung up?”

“My mother. She lives in Austin, and she tagged me up right after the performance. My sister got engaged. My mother was so excited, and I got hung talking with her, and didn’t catch up to Dorian in time to tell him I’d go with him. If I had… If I had.”

Her eyes filled again, tears shimmering on the edge. “We must have been close to an hour behind him. Hanna had to change out of her costume, and take off her stage makeup. At least thirty or forty minutes behind him, I don’t know. But he wasn’t there, and Stewie said he hadn’t come in.”

“Stewie?”

“The bartender. We’re regulars – Dorian most of all, but a lot of us go down to listen to music, or to play, to relax. He wasn’t there,” she murmured. “I thought – we thought – he’d run into someone and decided to go somewhere else. Theo tried to tag him, but it went to v-mail. He didn’t come the next night. He’s never missed a performance. That’s when everyone started to worry. We couldn’t find him, but the police said we had to wait before Mina could file a missing persons. If you’d started to look sooner —”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Eve finished. “Did he know you were in love with him?”

Ellysa pressed her lips together, shook her head as her eyes welled yet again. “No. I was careful he didn’t see it. He’d have been kind, and kindness would have crushed me. We slept together now and then, but I knew for him it was sex and friendship. Affection. I liked to think one day, when he was ready, he’d see. He’d see I’d loved him since the first time… Three years, two months, five days. That’s when I joined the company. That’s the first time I saw him, the first time I heard him play. That’s how long I’ve been in love with him.

“Please.
Please
tell me what happened to him. You know. Tell me what happened to Dorian.”

“Who do you know who’d want to hurt him?”

“No one. No one,” she repeated. “Some people have the ability to walk lightly through the world and still leave a deep impression. That’s Dorian. I know who you are. I knew when your partner contacted me. I’ve read the book, I’ve seen the vid. I watch screen. I know you investigate murders. Was it a mugging?”

“No.” It would come out, Eve thought, soon enough. “The current line of investigation indicates he was abducted, held for two days in a currently unknown location where he was tortured and killed.”

“Tor— What do you mean?” Her face froze; her color drained so that for a moment she seemed carved in ice. “What does that mean?”

“Whoever held him against his will hurt him. Do you know anyone who had that kind of grudge against him? Do you know if Dorian had information someone would want enough to give him pain in order to get it? Did he owe money, did he have secrets?”

“No.” The word choked out of her, then she shook her head furiously. “No, no, no. He had secrets, I imagine, as anyone does. He didn’t owe anyone money, not that I know of, and he didn’t gamble particularly, he didn’t do illegals. He didn’t do the sorts of things that put you into debt. Two days? Oh God, two days? All that time, hurting him.”

She shoved up from the table, crossing her arms, hugging herself as she circled the small room. “Two days. God. God. No, no, no. No one who knew him could have done that.”

She spun back to Eve, eyes ravaged. “You’re married. The book, the vid, and what I’ve seen on screen – it makes it clear you’re in love with your husband.”

“My life’s irrelevant.”

“It
isn’t
! You know what it is to love someone, to know them, because to really love, all the way in, you have to know. I know Dorian. No one we know could have done this. Someone else. Some sick, twisted, sadistic bastard. Can you give me a hand, can you spare a few dollars, can you show me how to get to Seventh Avenue – that’s all it would take. He’d help. Dorian would help. He took a cab.”

She pressed her hands to her face. “What time, what time? It couldn’t have been much past eleven-thirty. He’d have gone right out front, hailed a cab. You find out. You need to find out if he got in a cab or whoever did this, if they took him right from Lincoln Center. Or if he got downtown, and they took him from there. You need to —”

“I’ll do my job, Ms. Tesh, I promise you.”

“You didn’t know him.”

“That doesn’t matter. He’s mine now, and he’ll get my best.”

“Are you as good as they made out you are in the book, in the vid?”

“He’ll get my best,” Eve repeated.

5

Eve walked back to the bull pen and Peabody’s desk.

“Give me what you’ve got. We’re going to switch off.”

“FBI’s in it. The agent in charge is Carl Zweck. They’re following up a lead in Branson, Missouri, but have already connected with the primary in Pleasant Acres, New Jersey, on the murder last week. I just finished talking to her,” Peabody continued. “Detective Francine Lupine. They’re small town, Dallas, and don’t have a lot of resources or experience with serials. She’s looking for all the help she can get.

“Transferring notes to your computer right now. I reached out to the two primaries in Pennsylvania. Working my way back. FBI’s profiled a team, the romantic angle, just where we’re leaning.”

“Suspects? Descriptions?”

“They got nothing.” Peabody lifted her hands. “I’m wading through reams of reports and federal doublespeak, but it comes down to not so much. It looks like the unsubs switch vehicles here and there, and the ones recovered – in the cases where the owner was a vic – are wiped clean. Dozens of interviews over the past couple months, and conflicting reports¸ as you’d expect. A man and a woman, two males, various races, age ranges. The probability run is higher on the hetero couple, and the profile is giving an age range of twenty-five to thirty-five.”

Which was, Eve agreed, not so much.

“I’ll work with this. The interviews here indicate the vic left after the performance, with plans to go downtown to After Midnight. Several friends were to join him. Earnestina is Tina R. Denton. She’s not going to play into this, but we’ll follow up.”

A follow-up wasn’t wasting time, Eve thought, even when it felt like it.

“The most likely now is Kuper caught a cab, went downtown, and they grabbed him. Random choice, wrong place, wrong time. You’re looking for insight from the remaining interviews, and corroboration on the timeline and movements on the night the vic went missing. And if I’m wrong, any sense he was stalked or threatened prior.”

“You’re not going to be wrong. Everything I’ve got here says these two breeze into a town, a community, choose a vic, have their fun and move on. Identified areas so far are usually remote areas or, in more urban areas, an abandoned building. Two or three days, they’re done. They could already be done here, Dallas, and gone. That’s the pattern.”

“We follow through. Look at the route, Peabody. They were aiming for New York. This is where they wanted to be. Let’s find out why.”

In her office, she reviewed Peabody’s notes, and set up a second board. For once as she arranged the data on previous victims, she wished for bigger office space.

It took some doing, but she tracked the cab. Her vic had hailed one on Broadway, and taken it downtown where – at his request – the cab dropped him at the corner of Perry and Seventh – a few blocks shy of the club.

Why? Eve wondered. Nice night?

She did a quick back check on the weather, nodded.

“Nice night,” she murmured. “Take a little walk, stretch your legs, get some air. You know the neighborhood. How’d they mark you?”

She sat again, put her boots on the desk, shut her eyes.

The female, she thought – because she believed the probability of a hetero couple – use the female to lure him.

Excuse me?
Try flirty but flustered, just a little helpless. Certainly harmless.
Could you help me? I’m lost.

Yeah, maybe, maybe just that simple.

Or the ploy Dahmer used – that classic had proven to do the job in all the decades following.

Lone woman struggling to lift something heavy into the back of a vehicle.

Can I give you a hand?
 

Oh, golly. Would you mind? I just can’t quite get it up there.
 

Vic does the good deed, and the male comes up behind, bashes him. They drag him into the back of the vehicle – van or all-terrain – one jumps in with him to restrain, the other gets behind the wheel.

She opened her eyes again, studied the board.

Can’t hold him in the vehicle for two days. Got a hole somewhere, got a place. How’d they get it? Downtown, highest probability. It’s where they took him, it’s where they dumped him.

She ran the route, the drive time from Perry to Mechanics Alley. Highlighted the sector on her map.

Possible kill location, she thought. Somewhere in that sector.