The in Death Collection Books 11-15 - J. D. Robb [570]
Somebody was going to pay for it, that’s all he knew. Somebody.
Goddamn lazy-assed super hadn’t fixed the climate control. He thought this, with growing anger while his beady, reddened eyes scanned numbers. He sat in his underwear, by the single open window of his one-room apartment. No breeze came through it, but the street noise was horrendous. Shouts, horns, squealing tires on pavement.
He turned up the trash rock he played out of his ancient entertainment unit to drown out the noise. To beat at the pain.
Blood trickled out of his nose, but he didn’t notice.
Louie K. rubbed a lukewarm bottle of home-brew over his forehead. He wished he had a blaster. If he had a goddamn blaster he’d lean out the goddamn window and take out a goddamn city block.
His most violent act to date had been to kick a delinquent client off his airboard, but the image of death and destruction fueled him now as he sweated over his books and madness bloomed in his brain like black roses.
His face was pale as wax, rivulets of sweat pouring down from his matted brown hair, streaming down his narrow cheeks. His ears rang and what felt like an ocean of grease swayed in his belly. Heat was making him sick, he thought. He got sick, he lost money. Ought to take it out of the super’s hide. Ought to.
His hands trembled as he stared at the screen. Stared at the screen. Couldn’t take his eyes from the screen.
He had an image of himself going to the window, climbing out on the ledge, beating his fists at that hot wall of air, at the noise, at the people below. A blaster in his hands, doling out death and destruction as he screamed at them. Screamed and screamed as he leaped.
He’d land on his feet, and then . . .
The pounding on his door had him spinning around. With his teeth bared he climbed back in the window.
“Louie K., you asshole! Turn that fucking music down in there!”
“Go to hell,” he muttered as he hefted the ball bat he often took to recreation areas to insinuate himself with potential clients. “Go to hell, go to hell. Let’s all go to hell.”
“You hear me? Goddamn it!”
“Yeah, I hear you.” There were spikes, big iron spikes drilling into his brain. He had to get them out. On a thin scream, he dropped the bat to tear at his own hair. But the pounding wouldn’t stop.
“Suze is calling the cops. You hear me, Louie? You don’t turn that shit down Suze is calling the cops.” Each word was punctuated with a fist against the door.
With the music, the pounding, the shouts, the spikes all hammering in his head, the sweat drowning him, Louie picked up the bat again.
He opened the door, and started swinging.
Chapter 1
Lieutenant Eve Dallas loitered at her desk. She was stalling, and she wasn’t proud of it. The idea of changing into a fancy dress, driving uptown to meet her husband and a group of strangers for a business dinner thinly disguised as a social gathering had all the appeal of climbing in the nearest recycler and turning on Shred.
Right now Cop Central was very appealing.
She’d caught and closed a case that afternoon, so there was paperwork. It wasn’t all stalling. But as the bevy of witnesses had all agreed that the guy who’d taken a header off a six-story people glide had been the one who’d started the pushy-shovey match with the two tourists from Toledo, it wasn’t much of a time sucker.
For the past several days, every case she’d caught had been a variation on the same theme. Domestics where spouses had battled to the death, street brawls turned lethal, even a deadly combat at a corner glide-cart over ice cones.
Heat made people stupid and mean, she thought, and the combination spilled blood.
She was feeling a little mean herself at the idea of dressing up and spending several hours in some snooty restaurant making small talk with people she didn’t know.
That’s what you got, she thought in disgust, when you marry a guy who had enough money to buy a couple of continents.
Roarke