Big Jack

Big Jack - Nora Roberts & J. D. Robb

Chapter 1
NEW YORK, 2059

She was dying to get home. Knowing her own house, her own bed, her own things were waiting for her made even the filthy afternoon traffic from the airport a pleasure.
There were small skirmishes, petty betrayals, outright treachery and bitter combat among the cabs, commuters and tanklike maxibuses. Overhead, the airtrams, blimps and minishuttles strafed the sky. But watching the traffic wars wage made her antsy enough to imagine herself leaping into the front seat to grab the wheel and plunge into the fray, with a great deal more viciousness and enthusiasm than her driver.
God, she loved New York.
While her driver crept along the FDR as one of the army of vehicles battling their way into the city, she entertained herself by watching the animated billboards. Some were little stories, and as a writer herself, and the lover of a good tale, Samantha Gannon appreciated that.
Observe, she thought, the pretty woman lounging poolside at a resort, obviously alone and lonely while couples splash or stroll. She orders a drink, and with the first sip her eyes meet those of a gorgeous man just emerging from the water. Wet muscles, killer grin. An electric moment that dissolves into a moonlight scene where the now happy couple walk hand in hand along the beach.
Moral? Drink Silby’s Rum and open your world to adventure, romance and really good sex.
It should be so easy.
But then, for some, it was. For her grandparents there’d been an electric moment. Rum hadn’t played a part, at least not in any of the versions she’d heard. But their eyes had met, and something had snapped and sizzled through the bloodstream of fate.
Since they’d be married for fifty-six years this coming fall, whatever that something had been had done a solid job.
And because of it, because fate had brought them together, she was sitting in the back of a big, black sedan, heading uptown, heading toward home, home, home, after two weeks traveling on the bumpy, endless roads of a national book tour.
Without her grandparents, what they’d done, what they’d chosen, there would have been no book. No tour. No homecoming. She owed them all of it—well, not the tour, she amended. She could hardly blame them for that.
She only hoped they were half as proud of her as she was of them.
Samantha E. Gannon, national bestselling author of Hot Rocks.
Was that iced or what?
Hyping the book in fourteen cities—coast to coast—over fifteen days, the interviews, the appearances, the hotels and transport stations had been exhausting.
And, let’s be honest, she told herself, fabulous in its insane way.
Every morning she’d dragged herself from a strange bed, propped open her bleary eyes and stared at the mirror just to be sure she’d see herself staring back. It was really happening, to her, Sam Gannon.
She’d been writing it all of her life, she thought, every time she’d heard the family story, every time she’d begged her grandparents to tell it, wheedled for more details. She’d been honing her craft in every hour she’d spent lying in bed as a child, imagining the adventure.
It had seemed so romantic to her, so exciting. And the best part was that it was her family, her blood.
Her current project was coming along well. She was calling it just Big Jack, and she thought her great-grandfather would have gotten a very large charge out of it.
She wanted to get back to it, to dive headlong into Jack O’Hara’s world of cons and scams and life on the lam. Between the tour and the pretour rounds, she hadn’t had a full hour to write. And she was due.
But she wasn’t going straight to work. She wasn’t going to think about work for at least forty-eight blissful hours. She was going to dump her bags, and she might just burn everything in them. She was going to lock herself in her own wonderful, quiet house. She was going to run a bubble bath, open a bottle of champagne.
She’d soak and she’d drink, then she’d soak and drink some more. If she was hungry, she’d buzz something up in the AutoChef. She didn’t care what it was because it would be her food, in her kitchen.
Then she was going to sleep for ten hours.
She wasn’t going to answer the telelink. She’d contacted her parents, her brother, her sister, her grandparents from the air, and told them all she was going under for a couple of days. Her friends and business associates could wait a day or two. Since she’d ended what had passed for a relationship over a month before, there wasn’t any man waiting for her.
That was probably just as well.
She sat up when the car veered toward the curb. Home! She’d been drifting, she realized, lost in her own thoughts, as usual, and hadn’t realized she was home.
She gathered her notebook, her travel bag. Riding on delight, she overtipped the driver when he hauled her suitcase and carry-on to the door for her. She was so happy to see him go, so thrilled that he’d be the last person she’d have to speak to until she decided to surface again, she nearly kissed him on the mouth.
Instead, she resisted, waved him off, then dragged her things into the tiny foyer of what her grandmother liked to call Sam’s Urban Doll House.
“I’m back!” She leaned against the door, breathed deep, then did a hip-shaking, shoulder-rolling dance across the floor. “Mine, mine, mine. It’s all mine. Baby, I’m back!”
She stopped short, arms still flung out in her dance of delight, and gaped at her living area. Tables and chairs were overturned, and her lovely little settee was lying on its back like a turtle on its shell. Her screen was off the wall and lay smashed in the middle of the floor, along with her collection of framed family photos and holograms. The walls had been stripped of paintings and prints.
Sam slapped both hands to her head, fisted her fingers in her short red hair and let out a bellow. “For God’s sake, Andrea! House-sitting doesn’t mean you actually sit on the goddamn house.”
Having a party was one thing, but this was . . . just beyond. She was going to kick some serious ass.
She yanked her pocket ’link out of her jacket and snapped out the name. “Andrea Jacobs. Former friend,” she added on a mutter as the transmission went through. Gritting her teeth, she spun on her heel and headed out of the room, started up the stairs as she listened to Andrea’s recorded message.
“What the hell did you do?” she barked into the ’link, “set off a bomb? How could you do this, Andrea? How could you destroy my things and leave this mess for me to come home to? Where the hell are you? You’d better be running for your life, because when I get my hands . . . Jesus Christ, what is that smell! I’m going to kill you for this, Andrea.”
The stench was so strong, she was forced to cover her mouth with her hand as she booted open the bedroom door. “It reeks in here, and, oh God, oh God, my bedroom. I’m never going to forgive you. I swear to God, Andrea, you’re dead. Lights!” she snapped out.
And when they flashed on, when she blinked her eyes clear, she saw Andrea sprawled on the floor on a heap of stained bedclothes.
She saw she was right. Andrea was dead.

She’d nearly been out the door. Five more minutes and she’d have been off shift and heading home. Odds were someone else would have caught the case. Someone else would be spending a steaming summer night dealing with a bloater.
She’d barely closed the last case and that had been a horror.
But Andrea Jacobs was hers now. For better, for worse.
Lieutenant Eve Dallas breathed through a filtered mask. They didn’t really work and looked, in her opinion, ridiculous, but it helped cut down on the worst of the smell when you were dealing with the very ripe dead.
Though the temperature controls of the room were set at a pleasant seventy-three degrees, the body had, essentially, cooked for five days. It was bloated with gases, had voided its wastes. Whoever had slit Andrea Jacobs’s throat hadn’t just killed her. He’d left her to rot.
“Victim’s identification verified. Jacobs, Andrea. Twenty-nine-year-old mixed-race female. The throat’s been slashed in what appears to be a left-to-right downward motion. Indications are the killer attacked from behind. The deterioration of the body makes it difficult to ascertain if there are other injuries, defensive wounds, through visual exam on scene. Victim is dressed in street clothes.”
Party clothes, Eve thought, noting the soiled sparkle on the hem of the dress, the ice-pick heels kicked across the room.
“She came in, after a date, maybe trolling the clubs. Could’ve brought somebody back with her, but it doesn’t look like that.”
She gazed around the room while she put the pictures in her head. She wished, briefly, for Peabody. But she’d sent her former aide and very new partner home early. There wasn’t any point in dragging her back and spoiling what Eve knew was a celebration dinner with Peabody’s main squeeze.
“She came back alone. If she’d come back with someone, even if he was going to kill her, he’d have gone for the sex first. Why waste it? And this isn’t a struggle. This isn’t a fight. One clean swipe. No other stab wounds.”
She looked back at the body and brought Andrea Jacobs to life in her mind. “She comes back from her date, her night out. Had a few drinks. Starts upstairs. Does she hear something? Probably not. Maybe she’s stupid and she comes upstairs after she hears somebody up here. We’ll find out if she was stupid, but I bet he hears her. Hears her come in.”
Eve walked out into the hall, stood there a moment, picturing it, and ignoring the movements of the crime-scene team working in the house.
She walked back, imagined kicking off those sky-high heels. Your arches would just weep with relief. Maybe she lifted one foot, bent over a little, rubbed it.
And when she straightened, he was on her.
Came from behind the door, Eve thought, or out of the closet on the wall beside the door. Stepped right up behind her, yanked her head back by the hair, then sliced.
Lips pursed, she studied the pattern of blood spatter.
Spurted out of the jugular, she thought, onto the bed. She’s facing the bed, he’s behind. He doesn’t get messy. Just slices down quick, gives her a little shove forward. She’s still spurting as she falls.
She glanced toward the windows. Drapes were drawn. Moving over, she eased them back, noted the privacy screen was engaged as well. He’d have done that. Wouldn’t want anyone to notice the light, or movement.
She stepped out again, tossed the mask into her field kit.
Crime scene and the sweepers were already crawling around the place in their safe suits. She nodded toward a uniform. “Tell the ME’s team she’s cleared to be bagged, tagged and transported. Where’s the witness?”
“Got her down in the kitchen, Lieutenant.”
She checked her wrist unit. “Take your partner, start a neighborhood canvass. You’re first on scene, right?”
He straightened a little. “Yes, sir.”
She waited a beat. “And?”
She had a rep. You didn’t want to screw up with Dallas. She was tall, lean and dressed now in summer-weight pants, T-shirt and jacket. He’d seen her seal up before she went into the bedroom, and her right hand had a smear of blood on the thumb.
He wasn’t sure if he should mention it.
Her hair was brown and chopped short. Her eyes were the same color and all cop.
He’d heard it said she chewed up lazy cops for breakfast and spit them out at lunch.
He wanted to make it through the day.
“Dispatch came through at sixteen-forty, report of a break-in and possible death at this address.”
Eve looked back toward the bedroom. “Yeah, extremely possible.”
“My partner and I responded, arrived on scene at sixteen-fifty-two. The witness, identified as Samantha Gannon, resident, met us at the door. She was in extreme distress.”
“Cut through it. Lopkre,” she added, reading his name tag.
“She was hysterical, Lieutenant. She’d already vomited, just outside the front door.”
“Yeah, I noticed that.”
He relaxed a little, since she didn’t seem inclined to take a bite out of him. “Tossed it again, same spot, right after she opened the door for us. Sort of folded in on herself there in the foyer, crying. She kept saying, ‘Andrea’s dead, upstairs.’ My partner stayed with her while I went up to check it out. Didn’t have to get far.”
He grimaced, nodded toward the bedroom. “The smell. Looked into the bedroom, saw the body. Ah, as I could verify death from the visual from the doorway, I did not enter the scene and risk contaminating same. I conducted a brief search of the second floor to confirm no one else, alive or dead, was on the premises, then called it in.”
“And your partner?”
“My partner’s stayed with the witness throughout. She—Officer Ricky—she’s got a soothing way with victims and witnesses. She’s calmed her down considerably.”
“All right. I’ll send Ricky out. Start the canvass.”
She started downstairs. She noted the suitcase just inside the door, the notebook case, the big-ass purse some women couldn’t seem to make a move without.
The living area looked as if it had been hit by a high wind, as did the small media room off the central hallway. In the kitchen, it looked more like a crew of mad cooks—a redundancy in Eve’s mind—had been hard at work.
The uniform sat at a small eating nook in the corner, across a dark blue table from a redhead Eve pegged as middle twenties. She was so pale the freckles that sprinkled over her nose and cheekbones stood out like cinnamon dashed over milk. Her eyes were a strong and bright blue, glassy from shock and tears and rimmed in red.
Her hair was clipped short, even shorter than Eve wore her own, and followed the shape of her head with a little fringe over the brow. She wore enormous silver hoops in her ears, and New York black in pants, shirt, jacket.
Traveling clothes, Eve assumed, thinking of the cases in the foyer.
The uniform—Ricky, Eve remembered—had been speaking in a low, soothing voice. She broke off now, looked toward Eve. The look they exchanged was brief: cop to cop. “You call that number I gave you, Samantha.”
“I will. Thank you. Thanks for staying with me.”
“It’s okay.” Ricky slid out from the table, walked to where Eve waited just inside the doorway. “Sir. She’s pretty shaky, but she’ll hold a bit longer. She’s going to break again, though, ’cause she’s holding by her fingernails.”
“What number did you give her?”
“Victim’s Aid.”
“Good. You record your conversation with her?”
“With her permission, yes, sir.”
“See it lands on my desk.” Eve hesitated a moment. Peabody also had a soothing way, and Peabody wasn’t here. “I told your partner to take you and do the knock-on-doors. Find him, tell him I’ve requested you remain on scene for now, and to take another uniform for the canvass. If she breaks, it might be better if we have somebody she relates to nearby.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Give me some space with her now.” Eve moved into the kitchen, stopped by the table. “Ms. Gannon? I’m Lieutenant Dallas. I need to ask you some questions.”
“Yes, Beth, Officer Ricky, explained that someone would . . . I’m sorry, what was your name?”
“Dallas. Lieutenant Dallas.” Eve sat. “I understand this is difficult for you. I’d like to record this, if that’s all right? Why don’t you just tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know what happened.” Her eyes glimmered, her voice thickened dangerously. But she stared down at her hands, breathed in and out several times. It was a struggle for control Eve appreciated. “I came home. I came home from the airport. I’ve been out of town. I’ve been away for two weeks.”
“Where were you?”
“Um. Boston, Cleveland, East Washington, Lexington, Dallas, Denver, New L.A., Portland, Seattle. I think I forgot one. Or two.” She smiled weakly. “I was on a book tour. I wrote a book. They published it—e, audio and paper forms. I’m really lucky.”
Her lips trembled, and she sucked in a sob. “It’s doing very well, and they sent—the publisher—they sent me on a tour to promote it. I’ve been bouncing around for a couple weeks. I just got home. I just got here.”
Eve could see by the way Samantha’s gaze flickered around the room that she was moving toward another breakdown. “Do you live here alone? Ms. Gannon?”
“What? Alone? Yes, I live by myself. Andrea doesn’t—didn’t—Oh God . . . ”
Her breath began to hitch, and from the way her knuckles whitened as she gripped her hands together, Eve knew this time the struggle was a full-out war. “I want to help Andrea. I need you to help me understand so I can start helping her. So I need you to try to hold on until I do.”
“I’m not a weak woman.” She rubbed the heels of her hands over her face, violently. “I’m not. I’m good in a crisis. I don’t fall apart like this. I just don’t.”
Bet you don’t, Eve thought. “Everybody has a threshold. You came home. Tell me what happened. Was the door locked?”
“Yes. I uncoded the locks, the alarm. I stepped in, dumped my stuff. I was so happy to be in my own space again. I was tired, so happy. I wanted a glass of wine and a bubble bath. Then I saw the living room. I couldn’t believe it. I was so angry. Just furious and outraged. I grabbed my ’link from my pocket and called Andrea.”
“Because?”
“Oh. Oh. Andrea, she was house-sitting. I didn’t want to leave the house empty for two weeks, and she wanted to have her apartment painted, so it worked out. She could stay here, water my plants, feed the fish . . . Oh Jesus, my fish!” She started to slide out, but Eve grabbed her arm.
“Hold on.”
“My fish. I have two goldfish. Live fish, in my office. I didn’t even look in there.”
“Sit.” Eve held up a finger to hold Samantha in place, then got up, stepped to the door and signaled to one of the sweepers. “Check out the home office, get me the status on a couple of goldfish.”
“Huh?”
“Just do it.” She went back to the table. A tear was tracking down Samantha’s cheek, and the delicate redhead’s skin was blotchy. But she hadn’t broken yet. “Andrea was staying here while you were gone. Just Andrea?”
“Yes. She probably had someone over now and again. She’s sociable. She likes to party. That’s what I thought when I saw the living area. That she’d had some insane party and trashed my place. I was yelling at her machine through the ’link when I started upstairs. I said terrible things.” She dropped her head into her hands.
“Terrible things,” she murmured. “Then there was that horrible smell. I was even more furious. I slammed into the bedroom, and . . . she was there. She was there, lying on the floor by the bed. All the blood, that didn’t even look like blood anymore, but, you know, somehow, you know. I think I screamed. Maybe I blacked out. I don’t know.”
She looked up again, and her eyes were shattered. “I don’t remember. I just remember seeing her, then running down the stairs again. I called nine-one-one. And I was sick. I ran outside and got sick. And then I was stupid.”
“How were you stupid?”
“I went back in the house. I know better. I should’ve stayed outside, waited for the police outside or gone to a neighbor’s. But I wasn’t thinking straight, and I came back in and just stood in the foyer, shaking.”
“You weren’t stupid, you were in shock. There’s a difference. When’s the last time you talked to Andrea?”
“I’m not sure. Early in the tour. From East Washington, I think. Just a quick check.” She dashed a second tear away as if irritated to find it there. “I was awfully busy, and I didn’t have a lot of free time. I called once or twice, left messages. Just to remind her when I was heading home.”
“Did she ever say anything to you about being concerned? About anyone giving her trouble, making threats?”
“No. Nothing like that.”
“What about you? Anyone making threats?”
“Me? No. No.” She shook her head.
“Who knew you were out of town?”
“Ah . . . well, everyone. My family, my friends, my agent, publisher, publicist, editor, neighbors. It wasn’t a secret, that’s for sure. I was so juiced about the book, about the opportunity, I pretty much told anyone who’d listen. So . . . It was a burglary, don’t you think? God, I’m sorry, I can’t keep your name in my head.”
“Dallas.”
“Don’t you think it was some sort of burglary, Lieutenant Dallas? Somebody who heard I was gone and figured the house was empty, and . . . ”
“Possibly. We’ll need you to check your belongings, see if anything’s missing.” But she’d noted the electronics, the artwork any self-respecting burglar would have taken. And Andrea Jacobs had been wearing a very nice wrist unit, and considerable jewelry. Real or knockoff, it hardly mattered. A B-and-E man wouldn’t have left them behind.
“Have you had any calls, mail, any contact of an unusual nature recently?”
“Well, since the book was published, I’ve gotten some communications. Mostly through my publisher. People who want to meet me, or who want me to help them get their book published, or want me to write their story. Some of them are pretty strange, I guess. Not threatening, though. And there’s some who want to tell me their theory about the diamonds.”
“What diamonds?”
“From the book. My book’s about a major diamond heist in the early part of the century. Here in New York. My grandparents were involved. They didn’t steal anything,” she said quickly. “My grandfather was the insurance investigator who took the case, and my grandmother—it’s complicated. But a quarter of the diamonds were never recovered.”
“Is that so.”
“Pretty frosty, really. Some of the people who’ve contacted me are just playing detective. It’s one of the reasons for the book’s success. Millions of dollars in diamonds—where are they? It’s been more than half a century, and as far as anyone knows, they’ve never surfaced.”
“You publish under your own name?”
“Yes. See, the diamonds are how my grandparents met. It’s part of Gannon family history. That’s the heart of the book, really. The diamonds are the punch, but the love story is the heart.”
Heart or no heart, Eve thought cynically, a few million in diamonds was a hell of a punch. And a hell of a motive.
“Okay. Have you or Andrea broken off any relationships recently?”
“Andrea didn’t have relationships—per se. She just liked men.” Her white skin turned flaming red. “That didn’t sound right. I mean she dated a lot. She liked to go out, she enjoyed going out with men. She didn’t have a serious monogamous relationship.”
“Any of the men she liked to go out with want something more serious?”
“She never mentioned it. And she would have. She’d have told me if some guy got pushy. She generally went out with men who wanted what she wanted. A good time, no strings.”
“How about you?”
“I’m not seeing anyone right now. Between the writing and the tour, juggling in the day-to-day, I haven’t had the time or inclination. I broke a relationship off about a month ago, but there weren’t any hard feelings.”
“His name?”
“But he’d never—Chad would never hurt anyone. He’s a little bit of an a*shole—well, potentially a major a*shole—but he’s not . . . ”
“It’s just routine. It helps to eliminate. Chad?”
“Oh Jesus. Chad Dix. He lives on East Seventy-first.”
“Does he have your codes and access to the house?”
“No. I mean, he did but I changed them after we broke up. I’m not stupid—and my grandfather was a cop before he went private. He’d have skinned me if I hadn’t taken basic security precautions.”
“He’d have been right to. Who else had the new codes?”
Samantha scrubbed her hands over her hair until it stood up in short, flaming spikes. “The only one who had them besides me is Andrea, and my cleaning service. They’re bonded. That’s Maid In New York. Oh, and my parents. They live in Maryland. I give them all my codes. Just in case.”
Her eyes widened. “The security cam. I have a security cam on the front door.”
“Yes. It’s been shut down, and your disks are missing.”
“Oh.” Her color was coming back, a kind of healthy-girl roses and cream. “That sounds very professional. Why would they be so professional, then trash the house?”
“That’s a good question. I’m going to need to talk to you again at some point, but for now, is there someone you’d like to call?”
“I just don’t think I could talk to anyone. I’m talked out. My parents are on vacation. They’re sailing the Med.” She bit her lip as if chewing on a thought. “I don’t want them to know about this. They’ve been planning this trip for nearly a year and only left a week ago. They’d head straight back.”
“Up to you.”
“My brother’s off-planet on business.” She tapped her fingers against her teeth as she thought it through. “He’ll be gone a few more days at least, and my sister’s in Europe. She’ll be hooking up with my parents in about ten days, so I can just keep them all out of this for now. Yeah, I can keep them out of it. I’ll have to contact my grandparents, but that can wait until tomorrow.”
Eve had been thinking more of Samantha contacting someone to stay with her, someone to lean on. But it seemed the woman’s initial self-estimate was on the mark. She wasn’t a weak woman.
“Do I have to stay here?” Samantha asked her. “As much as I hate the idea, I think I want to go to a hotel for the night—for a while, actually. I don’t want to stay here alone. I don’t want to be here tonight.”
“I’ll arrange for you to be taken anywhere you want to go. I’ll need to know how to reach you.”
“Okay.” She closed her eyes a moment, drew in a breath as Eve got to her feet. “Lieutenant, she’s dead, Andrea’s dead because she was here. She’s dead, isn’t she, because she was here while I was away.”
“She’s dead because someone killed her. Whoever did is the only one responsible for what happened. You’re not. She’s not. It’s my job to find whoever’s responsible.”
“You’re good at your job, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. I am. I’m going to have Officer Ricky take you to a hotel. If you think of anything else, you can contact me through Cop Central. Oh, these diamonds you wrote about. When were they stolen?”
“Two thousand and three. March 2003. Appraised at over twenty-eight million at that time. About three-quarters of them were recovered and returned.”
“That leaves a lot of loose rocks. Thanks for your cooperation, Ms. Gannon. I’m sorry about your friend.”
She stepped out, working various theories in her mind. One of the sweepers tapped her shoulder as she passed.
“Hey, Lieutenant? The fish? They didn’t make it.”
“Shit.” Eve jammed her hands in her pockets and headed out.