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Visions in Death (In Death Series #19) by J. D. Robb, Nora D. Roberts
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(Hardcover)
- Pub. Date: August 2004
- 338pp
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: August 2004
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
- Format: Hardcover, 338pp
- Series: In Death Series, #19
- ISBN-13: 9780399151712
- ISBN: 0399151710
Synopsis
On one of the city’s hottest nights, New York Police Lieutenant Eve Dallas is sent to Central Park — and into a hellish new investigation. The victim is found on the rocks, just above the still, dark water of The Lake in Central Park. Around her neck is a single red ribbon. Her hands are posed, as if in prayer. But it is the eyes —removed with such precision, as if done by the careful hand of a surgeon — that have Dallas most alarmed.
As more bodies turn up, each with the same defining scars, Eve is frantic for answers. Against her instincts, she accepts help from a psychic who offers one vision after another — each with shockingly accurate details of the murders. And when partner and friend Peabody is badly injured after escaping an attack, the stakes are raised. Are the eyes a symbol? A twisted religious ritual? A souvenir? With help from her husband, Roarke, Dallas must uncover the killer’s motivation before another vision becomes another nightmare...
Publishers Weekly
Though not as gripping as the previous installments in Robb's mid-21st-century In Death series (Remember When, etc.), this new offering showcases her many talents. New York policewoman Eve Dallas is on the trail of a serial killer who strangles his young female victims with a red ribbon and removes their eyes postmortem. Dallas and her longtime partner, Detective Peabody, pursue the criminal with wisecracking vigor and old-fashioned police work, assisted as well by Eve's handsome husband, billionaire businessman Roarke, and a beautiful psychic who volunteers to share her chilling visions of the murders. Naturally, the determined Dallas gets her man, though her toughness is shaken along the way by memories of her own childhood abuse, the murderer's vicious attack on Peabody and a surprising 11th-hour revelation. The Thomas Harrisesque mystery resolves rather simply, and the story gets less of an energy boost than usual from the romantic power play between Eve and Roarke and the edgy sci-fi detail that made the earlier books so distinctive. (In fact, the Manhattan of 2059 is oddly old-fashioned, with more homey crafts stores than the New York of 2004.) Nevertheless, the book is a sassy, smart-alecky read, possessing the warm characterizations and witty dialogue that have earned Robb/Roberts her huge and loyal readership. Agent, Amy Berkower at Writer's House. (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
One of the most prolific and popular writers in the world, Nora Roberts (who also writes as her edgier alter-ego J. D. Robb) publishes multiple books a year. Not that it’s enough for her fans, who tear through her unconventional romances. With her trademark mix of fantasy, mystery, and romance, Roberts has created her own genre -- and romance fans are grateful for it!
More About the AuthorCustomer Reviews
- Reader Rating:
- Ratings: 46Reviews: 22
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J.D. Robb is great!by Anonymous
Reader Rating:
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July 22, 2009: I always enjoy any of the J.D. Robb stories. Her characters are alive, believable and the plots keep me guessing until the end.
I Also Recommend: Final Truth, Up Close and Dangerous.
Visions in Death by JD Robbby Anonymous
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
June 30, 2009: I have listened to allof the In Death series up to this one and they continue to be captivating, funny, suspenseful, and romantic. The reader of the books, Susan Erickson, gives life to the characters!
Fact File
Name:
Nora Roberts
Also Known As:
J. D. Robb; Sarah Hardesty; Jill March; Eleanor Marie Robertson (birth name)
Current Home:
Keedysville, Maryland
Date of Birth:
1950
Place of Birth:
Silver Spring, Maryland
Awards:
Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame, 1986; Romantic Times Career Achievement Award, 1991; Romance Writers of America Centennial Award, 1997; Romance Writers of America Golden Medallion Award (seven times); Quill Award for Blue Smoke, 2006
Biography
Not only has Nora Roberts written more bestsellers than anyone else in the world (according to Publishers Weekly), she’s also created a hybrid genre of her own: the futuristic detective romance. And that’s on top of mastering every subgenre in the romance pie: the family saga, the historical, the suspense novel. But this most prolific and versatile of authors might never have tapped into her native talent if it hadn't been for one fateful snowstorm.
As her fans well know, in 1979 a blizzard trapped Roberts at home for a week with two bored little kids and a dwindling supply of chocolate. To maintain her sanity, Roberts started scribbling a story -- a romance novel like the Harlequin paperbacks she'd recently begun reading. The resulting manuscript was rejected by Harlequin, but that didn't matter to Roberts. She was hooked on writing. Several rejected manuscripts later, her first book was accepted for publication by Silhouette.
For several years, Roberts wrote category romances for Silhouette -- short books written to the publisher's specifications for length, subject matter and style, and marketed as part of a series of similar books. Roberts has said she never found the form restrictive. "If you write in category, you write knowing there's a framework, there are reader expectations," she explained. "If this doesn't suit you, you shouldn't write it. I don't believe for one moment you can write well what you wouldn't read for pleasure."
Roberts never violated the reader's expectations, but she did show a gift for bringing something fresh to the romance formula. Her first book, Irish Thoroughbred (1981), had as its heroine a strong-willed horse groom, in contrast to the fluttering young nurses and secretaries who populated most romances at the time. But Roberts's books didn't make significant waves until 1985, when she published Playing the Odds, which introduced the MacGregor clan. It was the first bestseller of many.
Roberts soon made a name for herself as a writer of spellbinding multigenerational sagas, creating families like the Scottish MacGregors, the Irish Donovans and the Ukrainian Stanislaskis. She also began working on romantic suspense novels, in which the love story unfolds beneath a looming threat of violence or disaster. She grew so prolific that she outstripped her publishers' ability to print and market Nora Roberts books, so she created an alter ego, J.D. Robb. Under the pseudonym, she began writing romantic detective novels set in the future. By then, millions of readers had discovered what Publishers Weekly called her "immeasurable diversity and talent."
Although the style and substance of her books has grown, Roberts remains loyal to the genre that launched her career. As she says, "The romance novel at its core celebrates that rush of emotions you have when you are falling in love, and it's a lovely thing to relive those feelings through a book."
Good to Know
Roberts still lives in the same Maryland house she occupied when she first started writing -- though her carpenter husband has built on some additions. She and her husband also own Turn the Page Bookstore Café in Boonsboro, Maryland. When Roberts isn't busy writing, she likes to drop by the store, which specializes in Civil War titles as well as autographed copies of her own books.
Roberts sued fellow writer Janet Dailey in 1997, accusing her of plagiarizing numerous passages of her work over a period of years. Dailey paid a settlement and publicly apologized, blaming stress and a psychological disorder for her misconduct.
Feature Interview
Excerpted from the March/April 2002 issue of Book magazine.One afternoon when Nora Roberts was four, her two oldest brothers broke into a violent argument while they were baby-sitting her. "I peeked out of the bedroom, and they're beating the hell out of each other," Roberts says. Then her mother walked in, with a grocery bag in each hand. "One bag goes here, one bag goes there, she steps right in the middle of these two six-foot guys and she goes, boom, bam. Two backhands. And both of them go, 'Maaaaaawwwmm.' I thought right then, There's the power. She's the power."
Elly, as her family still calls her, the youngest of five and the only girl, was a quick study. "She bossed her brothers around," says her mother, Eleanor; today, "her brothers have got her on a throne." Roberts reigns over more than her family, which now includes her husband and two sons. Since her writing debut in 1981, she has helped lead American romance away from its clichés of simpering heroines and heroic rapists toward more complex characters and contemporary, multifaceted plots. Of course, sex -- passionate, tender, delayed, avoided, forced, in castles, in fields, in treetops -- continues to be a central hook. And often, the prose remains purple; Roberts herself has a propensity for phrases like "she rocked them both toward madness." But the genre with which her name is synonymous is one -- the only one -- that always puts women at the center of the universe.
***
Two Mercedes -- a Kompressor convertible and an M-Class SUV -- and a Chrysler PT Cruiser are parked outside the rural Keedysville, Maryland, home Roberts shares with her husband. Inside, several gauzy photographs of nude models hang above the bed in the ground-floor master bedroom, and a rendition of the Casablanca movie poster -- with the couple painted in as Ilsa and Rick -- is prominent above the fireplace. Three ebullient dogs and one gnarled old mutt track in dirt and litter the house with deer bones that they've found outside.
Since moving here twenty-nine years ago, Roberts has divorced her first husband, raised their two sons (Dan, now twenty-nine, lives with his wife down the lane; Jason, twenty-six, is just over an hour away) and remarried. She has also added on a few rooms and an indoor pool; a few years ago, she bought twenty adjoining acres so she could continue to shoo deer out of the garden in her underwear without worrying about neighbors. She and her husband own a tiny bookshop in nearby Boonsboro, but Roberts spends most of her time in an upstairs office where she types, smokes and drinks diet colas eight hours a day, five days a week. It's a routine that's produced an average of seven books a year since 1981, many of them bestsellers.
Roberts knows that her work is commercial fiction and doesn't lose any sleep waiting for National Book Award nominations. The high-art literary tradition isn't what's gotten her to where she is; what has is her "real talent for storytelling," as author Jennifer Crusie (Fast Women; Welcome to Temptation) says, and a commensurate skill with plot and pacing. Readers are pulled into her story lines (which often bounce from one continent to the next) and her well-drawn characters. Fans especially admire Roberts' tough, independent heroines. "When they fit with your own circumstances," says Elizabeth Mayfield, a database administrator from Norwalk, Connecticut, "you think, Gee, there's hope for me." Roberts, however, contends that she's not writing to provide role models for anyone. "I'm gonna tell a good, entertaining story," she says. "I'm not looking to change the world."
Roberts was born Eleanor Marie Robertson, and she grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, about an hour from where she lives now. Her father worked as a projectionist at the local movie theater and as a stagehand until 1964, when he started a lighting company -- which is where most of the Robertson family still works. Her mother ran the family. "Mom was a very strict disciplinarian," says Roberts' brother Buzz, who is now the president of his dad's company, "but as long as you followed the rules and were polite, you didn't have a problem." He says Nora had it a little easier than her brothers. "Us boys, we knew we were low men on the totem pole. Mom was tickled pink when she had Nora."
"Her daddy worked two jobs all his life, and during the Depression, I took in roomers," says Eleanor Robertson, who at eighty-five still lives in Silver Spring and is now secretary-treasurer of the company her husband started (Bernie Robertson died in 2000). "She knows how hard we worked to give them an education and a nice home." Roberts went to Catholic schools as a child and credits much of her success to the nuns who taught her -- the discipline and guilt in her formative years did her a lot of good.
In her sophomore year of high school, Roberts transferred to public school, where she met Ronald Aufdem-Brinke; she married him at seventeen, in 1968, right after graduation. The young couple moved to Keedysville and had a small house built in the woods. While Aufdem-Brinke worked at his father's sheet-metal business and later the Robertson lighting company, Roberts took care of their two children and the house. "Oh God, I had craft addictions," Roberts says, taking a drag on a cigarette. (She runs through a pack of Winstons at a pace that doesn't quite catch up to chain-smoking but runs several steps beyond casual.) "You name it, I made it. I macraméd two hammocks once. I did ceramics, I sewed the kids' clothes. I even put flies into overalls -- that is sick. I was a sick woman. I baked bread once a week. I canned jellies and made my own spaghetti sauce using my own tomatoes."
Sometime during the next decade (she calls the period her "Earth Mother" years), Roberts started to read Harlequin novels -- the short books were easy for her to finish while the kids were napping. During a blizzard in 1979, trapped inside with little more than her three- and six-year-old sons and a game of Candy Land, Roberts sat down with a pencil and wrote a manuscript of her own, a romance that she's since described as "very bad." In the next year and a half, while her kids were napping or at T-ball practice, she wrote at least six manuscripts in longhand. She submitted some of them to Harlequin, which at the time was using mainly British writers. Roberts didn't hear back, but her enthusiasm wasn't subdued. "I became a writing junkie," she says. Although she was rejected several times, she continued to write -- but started filing her manuscripts in a back drawer rather than submitting them.
Roberts then heard that a new romance publisher, Silhouette, was looking specifically for American writers, so she sent in her work. In 1980 she got a call from Nancy Jackson, a Silhouette editor, saying she had plucked one of Roberts' manuscripts -- Irish Thoroughbred, a slender love story about an Irish stable hand and her boss -- out of the slush pile. Jackson told Roberts she wanted to publish it. Eleanor Aufdem-Brinke changed her name to Nora Roberts because she says she assumed all romance authors used a nom de plume. The book "didn't make waves when it first came out," says Isabel Swift, her current editor, but it sold well in reprint. Roberts was hooked on the process, though, and published five more books the following year, eight the following and ten the year after that.
Roberts hit it big in 1985 when she wrote the first of her MacGregor family series, Playing the Odds. The book, which focuses on a matchmaking Scottish patriarch and his brood, became an immediate bestseller. Romance readers began associating the name Nora Roberts with multigenerational sagas: In addition to the MacGregors, she has written about the Donovans, a modern family of Irish magicians; the Calhouns, a family of pigheaded sisters in Maine; and the Stanislaskis, tempestuous Ukrainian immigrants.
***
From the beginning, Roberts' heroines were not content to wear aprons or take dictation. In Irish Thoroughbred, though Roberts' heroine was young (early twenties) and virginal (well, she was a virgin), she was a horse groomer with an independent streak. Roberts wasn't alone in giving her female characters more authority in the workforce; other American romance authors -- like Jayne Ann Krentz, Sandra Brown and Elizabeth Lowell -- were doing the same. "I think one of the great things the American writer has brought to the romance novel," Krentz says, "is a modern interpretation of women's roles and women's values." Author Janet Evanovich adds, "The genre reflects the increased power and opportunity afforded today's women. We see more variety in the genre in terms of heroine age and occupation. And today's heroine is stronger, more self-reliant. Of course, Nora was always ahead of the pack. Her heroines were always strong."
Rebecca Sullivan, a heroine in Roberts' latest romantic suspense, Three Fates, is a quintessential Nora Roberts lead: She runs the family business (giving boat tours off the western coast of Ireland) and engineers the search for the family's lost treasure. Rebecca's a smart, capable lady with a sense of humor. In the course of the story, she falls in love with a computer expert who eventually marries her -- the book ends in Ireland with the assumption that the husband will help her with the business. "I'm not interested in telling stories about weak women," Roberts says. "Or if they're weak, I want to show how they grow and how they become strong. I'm not writing about Cinderella sitting waiting for her prince to come and take her away. She'll get out of it herself. The prince is a bonus, a completion, another element -- but it's not the answer to all of her problems."
***
Perched on a stool next to her kitchen counter, Roberts doesn't look like a purveyor of dreams. She could be any of a million women, taking a break from a million jobs, looking toward the end of a million days. Right now, her husband is outside, working in the yard before heading to town. Later on, he'll pick up groceries, and Nora will cook dinner; favorites are pasta with red sauce or Cajun chicken. Around 7:30, the two will retire for the evening, probably settling down for a while in front of the television -- it's Thursday, so they'll probably tune in for some of Friends or ER. And that's a typical end to a typical day for the world's most popular romance author. "I always wonder if they asked Agatha Christie if she was homicidal," Roberts says with a laugh. "I don't have a romantic lifestyle."
Still, she says, it's romance books she turns to when she wants to escape reality, so maybe the queen of the realm is, finally, one of its true citizens as well. Roberts, after all, spends her days holed up in her office, writing, researching and investigating the backgrounds for her books. She loves it, she says, but it's work. And when she's done, she's done. "When I read for pleasure," she says, "give me a story."
If today's romance is escapism, millions of its readers would argue that it is also girl-power between pastel covers: adventures that belong to characters who are at their strongest -- and sexiest -- because they are women. So Roberts essentially shrugs off the contempt reserved for romance novels as sexist and ignorant. Still, she recognizes that the genre carries a lot of baggage -- even she finds herself sneaking reads when she's out in public. A lot of the embarrassment, she says, has to do with the way the books look. "It's mostly hard for me when she's falling out of her dress, and he has his mouth on her tit," Roberts says, describing what she calls "nursing mother" covers. She taps her lighter against the counter and rolls her eyes. "To sit on an airplane and read that?"
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble Review
Whether she's writing her trademark women's fiction or the futuristic police procedural mysteries she creates under her recently revealed pseudoymn of J. D. Robb, the quality of Nora Roberts's writing is crystal clear.
It's never easy for New York City police detective Eve Dallas to shift gears between her career as aa hard-hitting homicide cop and the role she's recently assumed as a corporate wife and society hostess for her wealthy, powerful and handsome-as-sin husband, Roarke. In Visions in Death, Eve's tricky balancing act gets tougher than ever.
Eve had been hoping that the change of seasons would cool things off after the long, hot, unusually violent summer of 2059. But the chilling tableau she finds in Central Park at the scene of a sex-related homicide is definitely not the sort of "cool" Eve had in mind. In addition to brutally assaulting the victim and carefully arranging the death scene, the killer has cold-bloodedly removed the dead woman's eyes…and every cop instinct Eve possesses tells her she hasn't seen the last of this murderer.
She's got a great arsenal of investigative tools at her disposal -- from Roarke's off-the-record high-tech gadgets to top-notch forensic techniques, perceptive psychological profiling, media manipulation, and her own and her partner Peabody's meticulous police work. And though Eve's not much of a believer in visions, she even agrees to accept help from a psychic who claims to have somehow connected with the victims of this serial murderer. Faced with a killer who is as horrifying as the nightmares that haunt her own life, Eve will stop at nothing to see justice done. Sue Stone
From the Publisher
On one of the city’s hottest nights, New York Police Lieutenant Eve Dallas is sent to Central Park — and into a hellish new investigation. The victim is found on the rocks, just above the still, dark water of The Lake in Central Park. Around her neck is a single red ribbon. Her hands are posed, as if in prayer. But it is the eyes —removed with such precision, as if done by the careful hand of a surgeon — that have Dallas most alarmed.
As more bodies turn up, each with the same defining scars, Eve is frantic for answers. Against her instincts, she accepts help from a psychic who offers one vision after another — each with shockingly accurate details of the murders. And when partner and friend Peabody is badly injured after escaping an attack, the stakes are raised. Are the eyes a symbol? A twisted religious ritual? A souvenir? With help from her husband, Roarke, Dallas must uncover the killer’s motivation before another vision becomes another nightmare...
Publishers Weekly
Though not as gripping as the previous installments in Robb's mid-21st-century In Death series (Remember When, etc.), this new offering showcases her many talents. New York policewoman Eve Dallas is on the trail of a serial killer who strangles his young female victims with a red ribbon and removes their eyes postmortem. Dallas and her longtime partner, Detective Peabody, pursue the criminal with wisecracking vigor and old-fashioned police work, assisted as well by Eve's handsome husband, billionaire businessman Roarke, and a beautiful psychic who volunteers to share her chilling visions of the murders. Naturally, the determined Dallas gets her man, though her toughness is shaken along the way by memories of her own childhood abuse, the murderer's vicious attack on Peabody and a surprising 11th-hour revelation. The Thomas Harrisesque mystery resolves rather simply, and the story gets less of an energy boost than usual from the romantic power play between Eve and Roarke and the edgy sci-fi detail that made the earlier books so distinctive. (In fact, the Manhattan of 2059 is oddly old-fashioned, with more homey crafts stores than the New York of 2004.) Nevertheless, the book is a sassy, smart-alecky read, possessing the warm characterizations and witty dialogue that have earned Robb/Roberts her huge and loyal readership. Agent, Amy Berkower at Writer's House. (Aug.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Naked in Death features Lt. Eve Dallas of the NYPD as she searches for a serial killer of prostitutes. It hints at the isolation, neglect, and sexual abuse that Eve suffered as a child, memories that she tries to suppress. The adult Eve is slow to trust and awkward when faced with affection and kindness. Yet over the course of this series, she acquires a husband, Roark; a partner, Peabody; and a varied host of friends-hard-boiled reporter Nadine, humanitarian doctor Louise, and worldly wise, bursting with life, rock star Mavis, all characters who also appear in Visions in Death. The culprit in Visions is raping, murdering, and mutilating women seen by a psychic in her dreams. Susan Ericksen renders each individual with proficiency; indomitable Eve and spunky Peabody's verbal sparring is adroitly delivered, and she moves easily and distinctly between the two women. Ericksen is equally successful with the male characters. Both books are great fun to listen to, but buy the whole series.-Juleigh Muirhead Clark, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Lib., Colonial Williamsburg Fdn., VA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Loading...Product Details
- Pub. Date: August 2004
- Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
- Format: Hardcover, 338pp
- Series: In Death Series, #19
- ISBN-13: 9780399151712
- ISBN: 0399151710
Table of Contents
Read an Excerpt
1She'd gotten through the entire evening without killing anyone. Lieutenant Eve Dallas, cop to the bone, figured the restraint showed enormous strength of character.
Her day had gone smoothly enough. A morning court appearance that had been as routine as it was tedious, paperwork both extensive and mind-numbing. The single case she'd caught had involved pals and their dispute over who had dibs on the last of the illegals-a party mix of Buzz, Exotica, and Zoom-they'd been toking on while lazing around on the roof of an apartment building on the West Side.
The dispute had been resolved when one of the afternoon partyers had taken a header off the roof, clutching the last of the illegals in his greedy fist.
He probably hadn't felt much, even when he'd splatted onto Tenth Avenue, but it sure as hell had broken the party mood.
Witnesses, including an uninvolved Good Samaritan from a neighboring building who'd called in the nine-one-one, all stated that the individual who'd been scooped off the sidewalk and into a bag had leaped of his own volition onto the roof ledge, danced an energetic keep-away boogie, lost his precarious balance, and taken flight with a giggling wee-haw.
Much to the surprise-and possible entertainment-of the afternoon passengers on an airtram who'd also witnessed the last dance of one Jasper K. McKinney.
One inappropriately delighted tourist had managed to capture the entire incident on his pocket vid.
It all jibed, and the books would close on Jasper as death by misadventure. Unofficially, Eve labeled it death by stupidity, but there wasn't a place on the sheet for that particular observation.
As a result of Jasper and his eight-story dive, she'd clocked out of Cop Central barely an hour past end-of-duty, only to get bogged down in ugly midtown traffic because the temporary vehicle some sadist in Requisitions had tossed at her limped along like a blind, three-legged dog.
She had rank, for God's sake, and was entitled to a decent ride. It wasn't her fault she'd had two units destroyed in two years. Maybe she'd forget strength of character and go maim somebody in Requisitions in the morning.
It sounded like fun.
And after she'd gotten home-okay, almost two hours late-she'd had to transform herself from kick-ass murder cop to fashionable corporate wife.
She was a good cop, she reminded herself, but more than a little shaky in the corporate wife arena.
She supposed she'd been fashionable, since her husband had the entire getup-down to the underwear-set out for her. Roarke knew clothes.
She just knew she was wearing something green with sparkles all over it, and where it wasn't green and sparkly, it showed a lot of skin.
There hadn't been time to argue about it, but only to dive into the outfit and shove her feet into shoes-also green and sparkly. With high enough, needle-thin heels, she'd been nearly eye to eye with her man.
It wasn't a hardship to be eye to eye with Roarke. Not when his were that wild, unearthly blue in a face drawn by artistic angels. But it was tough being social with strangers when you were worried you might tip over and fall on your ass any second.
But she'd gotten through it. Through the quick-change, the quick shuttle trip from New York to Chicago, through the cocktail hour where her brains were nearly bored to suet despite truly excellent wine, and the corporate dinner with Roarke entertaining about a dozen clients, with her playing hostess.
She wasn't quite sure what kind of clients they were since Roarke had his fingers in every pie known to man or beast, so she didn't attempt to keep up. What she did know was that most of them could take the prize for most tedious during the four-hour ordeal.
But there had been no casualties.
Points for her.
What she wanted now was to get home, get out of the sparkly green thing, and fall into bed to sleep for the six hours she'd have before the clock started ticking again.
The summer of 2059 had been long, hot, and bloody. Fall, with its cooler temperatures, was coming. Maybe people wouldn't be as inclined to kill one another.
But she doubted it.
She'd barely settled into her seat on the plush, private shuttle when Roarke lifted her feet into his lap and slipped off her shoes.
"Don't get any ideas, pal. When I finally get out of this dress, I'm not getting back in."
"Darling Eve." His voice was a purr that echoed of Ireland. "That's the sort of statement that gives me ideas. However lovely you look in that dress, you'd look even lovelier out of it."
"Forget it. No way I'm dragging this thing back on, and I'm surely not getting out of this shuttle wearing what you laughingly call underwear. So just...Oh, sweet baby Jesus."
Her eyes crossed, then did a slow roll to the back of her head when he pressed his thumbs into her arch.
"I owe you a foot rub, at the very least." He smiled as she let her head fall back and moaned. "For services above and beyond. I know you detest the sort of thing we did tonight. And I appreciate you not pulling out your weapon and stunning McIntyre over the canapés."
"The guy with the big teeth who laughed like a donkey, right?"
"That would be McIntyre. He's also a very important account." He lifted her left foot, kissed her toes.
"So thanks."
"It's okay. Goes with the package."
Hell of a package, she thought, studying him through barely open eyes. All gorgeously wrapped six Feet two inches of him. Not just the lean, muscled build or the heart-stopping face framed with the sweep of black silk hair. But the brains, the style, the edge. The whole shot.
And best of all, he not only loved her, but he got her. Of all the things they fought about-and it was never hard to find something-they never butted heads over this.
He never expected any more of her in the corporate wife area than she could give. A lot of people would, and she got that. Roarke's enterprises included holdings, properties, factories, markets, and God knew, on and off planet. He was absurdly rich, with all the power that went with it. A lot of men in his position would expect a spouse to be at their beck, to drop everything and drape themselves over his arm at a moment's notice.
He didn't.
For every business event or social occasion she managed to attend as his wife, there were probably three she missed.
Moreover, there were countless times he arranged his schedule to suit hers, or put in time as consultant on a case.
In fact, when she thought about it, he made a much better cop's husband than she made corporate wife.
"Maybe I owe you a foot rub," she considered. "You're a pretty good deal."
He skimmed a finger down her foot, from toes to heel. "I certainly am."
"But I'm still not getting out of this dress." She scooted down in her seat, closed her eyes. "Wake me up when we land."
She'd only started to drift when the communicator in her evening bag signaled. "Oh, come on." She didn't open her eyes but reached out, clamped a hand on the bag. "What's our ETA?"
"About fifteen."
With a nod, she pulled out the communicator and engaged. "Dallas."
Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve. Report to Belvedere Castle, Central Park. Officers on scene. Homicide, single victim.
"Contact Peabody, Detective Delia. I'll meet her on scene. My ETA is thirty minutes."
Acknowledged. Dispatch out.
"Shit." Eve dragged a hand through her hair. "You can dump me and go on."
"I dislike dumping my wife. I'll go with you and wait."
She scowled down at the fancy dress. "I hate going to scenes in these getups. I hear about it for weeks."
It was worse because she had to put the shoes back on, and then navigate in them over the grass and onto the paths of the city's greatest park.
The castle sat at the highest point of the park, with its skinny tower rising up into the night sky and the rocky ground giving way to the lake at its feet.
It was a pretty enough spot, she supposed, for tourists to take their snaps and vids during the day. Once the sun set, areas like this were the natural habitat of the street sleepers, chemi-heads, unlicensed companions on the troll, and those with nothing better to do than look for trouble.
The current city administration made a lot of noise about keeping the parks and monuments clean. And to their credit they even tossed money at the process with some regularity. There would be volunteers as well as city workers combing the park for litter, blasting off graffiti, sprucing up gardens and such.
Then everyone would get cozy and comfortable and put their efforts into other matters until it all went to hell again.
At the moment it was in decent shape with hardly enough litter to make the predawn cleanup crews work themselves into a lather.
With Roarke beside her, she strode as best she could toward the barricades the cops had already put in place. The castle was lit up like day with crime-scene lights.
"You don't have to wait," she told him. "I can catch a ride."
"I'll wait."
Rather than argue, she shrugged and pulling out her badge, went through the barricades.
No one made any comments about the dress or shoes. She'd figured her rep for ass-kicking would have kept the uniforms quiet, but it surprised her not to detect a single grin or snicker behind her back. It surprised her more when her partner stepped toward her without a smart remark on her wardrobe.
"Dallas. It's bad."
"What've we got?"
"Female, caucasian, about thirty. I got the scene recorded. I was about to run her for ID when they told me you'd arrived on scene." They walked together, Peabody in her comfortable airskids, Eve in the arch-killing heels. "Sexual homicide. Raped and strangled. But he didn't stop there."
"Who found her?"
"A couple of kids. Jesus, Dallas." Peabody stopped a moment, stood in her hastily thrown-on clothes, rubbing a hand over her tired face. "Snuck out of the house, thought they'd have a little adventure. Sure as hell got more than that. We've contacted the parents and child services. We've got them in a black-and-white."
"Where is she?"
"Down there." Peabody led the way, then pointed.
She lay on the rocks, just above the dark, still water of the lake. She wore nothing but what looked to be a red ribbon tied around her neck. Her hands were clasped together between her breasts, as if in prayer, or plea.
Her face was smeared with blood. Blood, Eve thought, that had spilled out of her when he'd taken her eyes.
She had to ditch the shoes or risk breaking her neck. Using the can of Seal-It from the field kit Peabody handed her, she coated her hands, her bare feet. Even so, it wasn't an easy climb down in the party dress, and she imagined she looked completely ridiculous, completely uncoplike sparkling her way over rocks toward a body.
She heard something rip, and ignored it.
"Oh, man." Peabody winced. "You're going to ruin that dress, and it's totally iced."
"I'd give a month's pay for a goddamn pair of jeans and a normal shirt. A pair of fucking boots." Then she put it out of her mind, set her feet solidly, and turned to the body.
"Didn't rape her down here. There's going to be a secondary scene. Even a lunatic doesn't rape a woman on a heap of rocks when there's all this grass. Raped her somewhere else. Killed or incapacitated her somewhere else. Had to carry her down here. Had to have some muscle and bulk to manage that-unless there was more than one of them. She's what, maybe a hundred and thirty pounds anyway. Deadweight."
More to protect the scene than the dress, Eve hitched the skirt up. "Let's get an ID on her, Peabody. Find out who she is."
While Peabody used the Identi-pad, Eve studied the position of the body. "Posed her. Praying? Begging? Resting in peace? What's your message?"
She crouched to examine the body. "Visual evidence of physical and sexual assault. Facial bruises, torso, forearms-those look defensive. She's got some matter under her nails. Tried to fight, scratched at him. It's not skin. Looks like fibers."
"Her name's Elisa Maplewood," Peabody said. "Central Park West address."
"Not so far from home," Eve stated. "She doesn't look uptown. No pedicure. Hands aren't smooth and pampered. Got calluses."
"Lists employment as a domestic."
"Yeah, that's more like it."
"She's thirty-two. Divorced. Dallas, she's got a four-year-old kid. A daughter."
"Oh, hell." Eve drew it in, then set it aside. "Bruises on her thighs and the vaginal area. Red corded ribbon around her throat."
It was dug into her skin so the bruised flesh puffed around it, then the tails draped down to her breasts.
"Time of death, Peabody?"
"Getting it." Peabody drew back the gauge, studied the readout. "Twenty-two twenty."
"About three hours ago. And the kids found her?"
"Just after midnight. First on scene responded, dealt with the kids, took a visual from above, and called it in at quarter to one."
"Okay." Steeling herself, she took the microgoggles, slipped them on, then bent over the ruined face. "Took his time here. Didn't hack at her. Neat, precise cuts. Almost surgical, like he was doing a fucking transplant. So the eyes were what he was after. They were the prize. The beating, the rape, those were just the prelude."
She eased back and took off the goggles. "Let's turn her, check the back."
There was nothing but the darkened flesh from the settling of blood, and what Eve identified as grass stains on the buttocks and down the thighs.
"Came at her from behind, that's what he did. But it didn't matter to him if she saw him. Knocked her down-sidewalk or pavement. No, gravelly path. See the scrapes on her elbows? Smacks her around. She tries to fight him off, tries to scream. Maybe she does scream, but he's hauling her away, somewhere he can have his fun without anyone trying to interfere. Drags her, across the grass. Beats her into submission, rapes her. Ties the cord around her neck, kills her. When that part of the job's over, it's time for the real business."
Eve replaced the goggles. "Strip off what's left of her clothes, take her shoes, anything else she was wearing. Jewelry, anything that individualizes her. Carry her down here. Pose her. Take the eyes-carefully. Check the pose, make any necessary adjustments. Wash off all that blood in the lake if you want. Clean up, take your prize, and be on your way."
"Ritual killing?"
"His ritual anyway. They can bag her," Eve said as she straightened. "Let's see if we can find the kill site."
Roarke watched her slide her feet back into the shoes. She'd have been better off barefoot, he mused, but that wasn't an option the lieutenant would consider.
Despite the heels, the glamorous dress-worse for wear now-the glitter of diamonds, she was every inch the cop. Tall, lean, steady as the rocks she'd just climbed on to view some new horror. You wouldn't see the horror in her eyes, those long, golden brown eyes. She looked pale in the harsh lights, and the glare of them only accentuated her sharp features. Her hair, nearly the same color as those eyes, was short, choppy, and mussed now from the breeze off the water.
He watched her stop, hold a brief conversation with a uniform. Her voice would be flat, he knew, and brisk, and reveal nothing of what she felt.
He saw her gesture, and saw the stalwart and more comfortably dressed Peabody nod. Then Eve was peeling off from the group of cops, and heading back to him.
"You're going to want to go on home," she told him. "This is going to take some time."
"I suspect it will. Rape, strangulation, mutilation." He lifted a brow when her eyes narrowed. "I keep my ear to the ground when it involves my cop. Can I help?"
"No. I'm keeping civilians-even you-out. He didn't kill her down there, so we need to find where he did. I probably won't make it home tonight."
"Would you like me to bring you, or send you, a change of clothes?"
Since even with his amazing powers, he couldn't just snap his fingers and put her in boots and trousers, she shook her head. "I've got spare stuff in my locker at Central." She glanced down at the dress, sighed at the smears of dirt, the small tears, the stains from body fluid. She'd tried to be careful, but there you go, and God knew what he paid for the damn thing.
"Sorry about the dress."
"It's not important. Get in touch when you can."
"Sure."
She struggled-knew he knew she struggled-not to wince when he skimmed a finger down the dent in her chin, when he leaned down and brushed his lips to hers. "Good luck, Lieutenant."
"Yeah. Thanks."
As he walked back to the limo, he heard her raise her voice. "Okay, boys and girls, fan out. Teams of two. Standard evidence search."
He wouldn't have carried her far, Eve deduced. What would be the point? The added time, trouble, the additional risk of being seen. Still, they were talking Central Park, so it wasn't going to be quick and easy unless they ran into incredible luck.
She did, inside of thirty minutes.
"Here." She held up a hand to stop Peabody, then crouched. "Ground's torn up some. Hand me the goggles. Yeah, yeah," she said after she'd strapped them on. "We got some blood here."
She went down on hands and knees, her nose nearly to the ground, like a hound scenting prey. "I want this area cordoned off. Call the sweepers. I want to see if they can find any trace. Look here."
She got tweezers out of the field kit. "Broken fingernail. Hers," she decided when she held it up to the light. "Didn't make it easy for him, did you, Elisa? You did what you could."
She bagged the nail, then sat back on her heels.
"Dragged her over the grass. You can see where she tried to dig in. Lost a shoe. That's why she's got grass stains and dirt on one foot. But he went back for it. Took her clothes with him."
She pushed to her feet. "We'll check bins in a ten-block radius in case he dumped them. They'll be torn, bloody, dirty. We'll see if we can get a description of what she was wearing, but even without it, we'll look. Kept them though, didn't you?" she murmured. "Kept them as a memento."
"She lives a couple blocks from here," Peabody commented. "Grabbed her close to home, dragged her here, did the job, then carried her over to the dump site."
"We'll canvass. Let's get this coordinated, then take her residence."
Peabody cleared her throat, studied Eve's dress. "You're going like that?"
"Got a better idea?"
--from Visions In Death by J. D. Robb, Copyright © 2004 J. D. Robb, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., all rights reserved, reprinted with permission from the publisher.
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