by J. D. Robb
“I really appreciate it. That’s Jim’s car. There he is. That’s Jim. God, he looks like he’s been through the wringer.”
Eve watched an attendant roll up a wheelchair, and the man—walking cast, pale, drawn face—maneuver from the passenger seat into the chair.
“Jim!” Gibbons pushed forward. “How ya doing? How do you feel?”
“Been better.” Jim took the hand Gibbons offered. “And believe me, a coupla days ago I was worse. I’m so damn glad to be back.”
“It’s good to have you back. They’re going to take good care of you and Chaz. I don’t want you to worry about anything. Anything you need, you just let me know.”
“I just want to get checked out and go home.” His gaze shifted to Eve, crossed over Peabody, and back again. “Police?”
“Lieutenant Dallas,” Eve said, “Detective Peabody.”
“Marta.” His eyes watered up. “I can’t believe it. I don’t know what to think or do. I didn’t tell Chaz,” he said to Gibbons. “I don’t know if I would’ve known how even if you hadn’t told me not to—and the doctors said that was best, too. I don’t know how he’s going to take it, Sly. He’s a hell of a lot more hurt than me. He really took the brunt of it. Where is he?”
“He’s not here yet.”
“They left before we did.” With obvious concern he tried to swivel in the chair, look around. “My wife and I just sat in the car for a few minutes, but they took him off in the ambulance right away. I guess they hit some traffic. Came a different way?”
Uneasy, Eve signaled Peabody. “We have a few questions,” she began as Peabody hurried off.
“We really need to get the patient into exam,” the attendant said.
“I want to wait for Chaz. Honey.” He reached out to a woman, eyes pink from weeping, when she came in. “The ambulance with Chaz isn’t here yet.”
“They must’ve gone another way.” She crouched down beside him. “Don’t worry now. Don’t. He’s fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”
“Lieutenant.”
Peabody’s tone, her face, told Eve the news wouldn’t be good. She stepped over. “What have we got?”
“They can’t reach the ambulance. They don’t answer the dash ’link or the emergency call.”
“I want the names of the medicals sent to pick him up.”
“Got them. Communication’s trying their personal ’links. They have LoJacks on all emergency vehicles. They’re tracking it.”
“Keep an eye on these people,” she ordered, and strode off to Communications. She heard the angry voices before she reached the station.
“And I’m telling you, I got shifted to nine. So did Mormon. Ask him!”
“You’re on log, right here, for the transpo station pickup.”
“I was on the pickup, until I got the schedule change.”
“When did you get the schedule change?” Eve demanded.
“Who the hell are you?”
In answer she pulled out her badge.
“Jesus, now a schedule screwup’s illegal? I got the tag about six this morning. Instead of seven on, and the pickup, I’m nine on and standard rounds. Look.” He yanked out his ’link, pushed incoming, shoved it at Eve.
She read the message. “Where’s this Mormon?”
“We were in the eatery, catching some breakfast. He ran out to get some of that fancy coffee from the van when it showed up. He’ll be back in a minute.”
“Have you located the bus?” Eve asked.
“I’ve just got it. It’s way off route,” the woman said with a frown. “And I don’t know who the hell’s driving it because we’ve clearly got Mormon and Drumbowski on that run, and Drumbowski’s standing right here.”
“It’s not my screwup,” Drumbowski insisted.
“No,” Eve said, “it’s not. Give me the location. Now!”
“What the hell’s going on?” Drumbowski threw his hands in the air.
But Eve just took the location, sprinted away. She already knew Chaz Parzarri wouldn’t be transported to the hospital. But she was damn sure he’d be transported to the morgue.
EVE EXPECTED TO FIND CHAZ PARZARRI DEAD. A dirty accountant, she concluded, could be replaced. Still, she had Peabody call in for uniform response to the GPS location as she ran hot across town.
“Two units responding,” Peabody told her, squeezing the chicken stick in a death grip while she prayed the safety and maneuvering features in her partner’s DLE were all they were touted to be.
Her heart did a flip into her throat when they shot vertical, skimmed over the bright yellow snake of Rapid Cabs with a couple of layers of paint to spare. She decided her heart might as well stay where it landed as the car tipped to her side like a banking plane before they boomeranged around a corner.
“It’s stupid to kill him.” Eve slammed back to the street, punched through a hole in traffic. “But they’re stupid. I should’ve factored that in. The goddamn stupidity.”
“He knows a lot,” Peabody began.
“Because he’s dirty. Throw money at him to stonewall me. They don’t know Dickenson made those copies. Stonewall me, doctor the books, then kill him. Or just ship him off. He’s got no real ties here. Ship him off to someplace we can’t extradite him, give him a new identity, and keep him on the payroll. Why bring yet another goddamn number cruncher in? It’s inefficient to kill him. It’s wasteful.”
“Maybe that’s what they’re doing. Trying to get him gone, hide him.”
Eve only shook her head. “They’d have plucked him out in Vegas. No point bringing him here to send him somewhere. And no goddamn point to bring him here to kill him. Why not do it out there where there’s distance between you? Stupid. They’re stupid.”
Murderously stupid.
She fishtailed, righted, then swung beside a black-and-white.
The thunder of traffic roared overhead when she got out of her vehicle. A uniform stood beside the open rear doors of the ambulance, another at the driver’s side. She noted two more talking, or trying to talk to a jittery funky-junkie.
“DB in the back, Lieutenant. He’s still warm.”
She peered in, visually identified Chaz Parzarri. “Peabody, they had to have another vehicle here. See what you can find on any traffic cams in this area. They can’t have more than a fifteen-minute window, probably less. What have we got over there?” she asked the uniform, jerking a head toward the junkie.
“We found him trying to get into the bus. Nothing locked on it, but he’s so strung out he couldn’t work the handle.” The uniform set a hand on his hip under his Sam Browne belt. “Says he was just checking to see if anybody was inside. Just being a good citizen.”
“Right.”
“Yeah, we figure he’s messed up, but a junkie like him can smell drugs a mile off. The guys are working him some, but he claims he didn’t see anything.”
The timing said otherwise, Eve thought as she did a quick scan. She spotted the pile of rubble and trash behind one of the pillars. “Is that his hive over there?”
“That’s what we figure.”
“I’m going to talk to him. Stand by here.”
“Good luck.”
The man wore a filthy army-green coat and torn orange sweatpants over the gaunt frame with the distended belly typical of severe malnutrition. His red-rimmed, watery eyes—sunlight wasn’t the funky-junkie’s friend—skittered over at Eve as she approached, then squinted out of a grimy pair of sunshades with a crack in the left lens.
His hands moved, picking at the ragged fringe of the black scarf wrapped around his neck. His feet moved, shuffling inside scarred army boots with no laces and silver tape holding the soles together.
He could have been anywhere from thirty to eighty with that pale, ravaged, soot-streaked face.
He’d been someone’s
son, might have been someone’s lover once, or father. He’d had a life at some point before he’d offered it up on the altar of funk.
“Just walking by,” he chanted—moving, moving, moving. “Yep, yep, just walking by. Hey, lady, got anything to spare? Don’t need much.”
She tapped her badge. “See this?”
“Yep, yep.” But those ruined eyes watered and blinked.
“It’s a badge. A lieutenant’s badge. It means I’m not a lady. Give me a name.”
“Whose name you want?”
“Yours.”
“Doc. Tic-tock doc, the mouse and the clock.”
“Doc. Do you live over there?”
“Not hurting anybody. Keep myself to myself, right? Check? Double check.”
“Check. Were you at home when the ambulance got here?”
“Just walking by.” Those ruined eyes did their skittering dance again. “Just walking.”
“Where to, where from?”
“Nothing, nowhere. Nohow.”
“You were just walking from nothing to nowhere, and happened to see the ambulance parked there, maybe twenty feet from where you live?”
When he smiled, he offered Eve a full view of the unfortunate results of really bad dental hygiene. “Yep. Yep. Check.”
“I don’t think so, Doc. I think, you were tucked up at home. Wrapped up warm on a cold day like this, not walking around without more gear. I bet you’ve got more layers over there you put on when you head out to look for spare change, when you go out to find some funk.”
“Just walking,” he insisted with his voice creeping toward a whine. “Didn’t see nothing, nowhere, nohow. I don’t see good. I got a condition.”
Yeah, she thought, called chronic addiction. “Wait here.”
She went to her car, checked the glove box. As expected she found a couple pair of sunshades either Roarke or Summerset had stocked as she constantly lost them.
She imagined either pair cost more than Doc saw in ten years of panhandling on the street, but grabbed one. She walked back, waved them at Doc.
“Want these?”
“Sure! Sure!” Something desperate came into his abused eyes. “Wanna trade?”
“Yeah, but not for your sunshades. You can have these if you tell me what you saw. No bullshit. Tell me the truth, and they’re yours.”
“I know a true! Stop clock, tic-tock—true two times every day.”
“How about that? No.” She pulled the shades out of his reach. “I want the true about what you saw here. About that ambulance.”
“I didn’t go in. Just looking. Just walking.”
“Who got out?”
He stared at her, bumped his shoulders up and down.
“Okay.” She started to turn away.
“Make the trade!”
“There’s no trade until you tell me. You tell me the truth, I give you the shades. That’s the deal.”
“White coats get out. What you think? White coats in the am’lance. Not gonna take me, no way no how. I set down.”
He skimmed his palms on the air in a downward motion. “Don’t need no white coat, no am’lance.”
“How many white coats got out?”
“Two. Prolly two. I don’t see good. Two. Then no white coats. In the trunk.”
“What’s in the trunk?”
“The white coats’ coats, what you think? In the trunk of the big car that’s here when I wake up. Big car. Shiny. Smooth. Can’t get in, all locked tight. Just to look,” he said quickly. “Just wanna look, but locked up tight. White coats with no white coats in the big shiny car, and drive away!”
“What did they look like?” A long-shot question, considering, but she had to ask. “The white coats without white coats who got in the big shiny car?”
“One’s big, one’s small. Don’t see good, but one’s big.” Doc spread his arms wide as he lifted them into the air and gave Eve an unfortunate whiff of amazing body odor.
“Okay, how about the car? Was it like white or like black?”
“Dark, dark. Maybe black. Dunno. Shiny. All true. Trade.”
“Okay.” Calculating she’d mined all she could expect, she passed him the glasses. “No, you keep those, too,” she said when he offered his broken ones. “We’re trading truth for shades. We’re done.”
When she stepped away one of the uniforms fell into step beside her. “Do you want us to take him in, Lieutenant? To a rehab shelter?”
It’s what—technically—should be done, and maybe, she thought, morally. But realistically? He’d be out within a week, have lost his turf, and very likely be worse off than now.
He sure as hell wouldn’t be better off.
“No, let him go. Maybe cruise down here once in a while, take a look at him.”
The uniform nodded. “He’s got a halfway decent spot here, mostly out of the weather and it looks like the hyenas leave him alone. It’s about the best he’s going to get.”
Sometimes, Eve thought, you had to settle for that.
Peabody jogged over as Eve started back to the ambulance.
“I had EDD patch with traffic. We’ve got a vehicle coming out eastbound at eight-twenty-three. They thought about the traffic cams, Dallas, smeared up the license plates, front and rear. But we’ve got the make and model. Black Executive Lux 5000, current year. The windows, including windshield, were privacy screened—and that’s illegal—but it also means we’ve got nothing on the occupants.”
“See if McNab has time to run it, against Alexander personally and the company for a match. And I need another run from traffic. They had to get it here, and I’m guessing very early this morning. So another vehicle followed it in.”
“Three vehicles for one accountant? That’s a stupid way to do this.”
“Yeah, it is, but they are.”
“They’re lucky the one they drove out wasn’t busted to shit and stripped.”
“If Doc, that’s the funky-junkie currently wearing my sunshades, had stirred up his brain cells, he’d have busted the window to scavenge. Smarter to have a third party meet them or just walk the hell out and hail a damn cab. It tells me the one giving the orders doesn’t have a freaking clue how things work on the street—or under them. It’s all about privilege.”
She sealed up as she spoke, then boosted herself into the back of the ambulance. “Let’s get the sweepers on their way, and have EDD go over to the hospital, see what we can get from security on when and how that ambulance was taken.”
Though she knew his identity, certainly knew the approximate time of death, Eve used her tools and gauges to confirm. With her recorder on she studied the lockdown straps, wrists and ankles, the broken blood vessels in the eyes, the bruising around the nose and mouth.
Like his live associate, he’d been pale and banged up. From the older bruising, the signs of medical treatment, the portable IV, she’d say considerably more banged up than Arnold.
Lifting the top lip, she studied where the teeth had ground into the soft flesh, the smears of blood.
She’d miscalculated, she thought. She’d planted seeds, wanting to tangle the money manager in some vines. Give him something to sweat.
But she hadn’t considered anyone would be stupid enough to hand her yet another link in the chain, would order murder rather than bribery or a bonus. Would so quickly discard a well-honed tool.
“Bruising and lacerations on the wrists and ankles,” she stated. “Looks like he twisted, strained, twisted.”
Rising, she bypassed a secured locker with her master. The drugs inside would have been worth a nice chunk on the street, as would the medical equipment, some of it very portable.
No time, or no inclination to make some extra, to take a nice little bonus. Do the job, move on.
She moved into the cab of the vehicle, using
a penlight to search under the seats, under the dash, hoping for some little mistake. A candy wrapper, a go-cup, a scrap of anything.
Finding nothing, she sat back on her heels, studied the dash. She checked the log, ran the last outgoings.
Base, this is Mormon with Drumbowski, Unit Seven, confirming pickup at East Side Metro Transportation Center of Parzarri, Chaz. Sheet shows private shuttle from LVI, tail number Bravo-Echo-Niner-Six-Three-Niner.
This is base, confirming. Advise when you’re loaded and en route for return.
Roger that Unit Seven out.
As she listened, Eve tapped her fingers on her knee.
Base, Unit Seven, loaded and running.
Copy that. Condition of patient?
Stable. He ran through what Eve assumed was an acceptable range of blood pressure, pulse, other vital signs, then signed off.
Peabody opened the side door. “McNab’s looking now. Sweepers and the meat wagon on the way.”
“Has to be the hacker,” Eve said, as much to herself as Peabody. “The driver. He’d have to know who was on, the unit number assigned to the pickup, the basic give and flow of how they communicate. Hack into the hospital system, get the log, listen to a few runs. Hospital dispatch isn’t expecting a hijacking. They’ve got no reason to push the communication. It’s all A-fucking-OK.”
She marked the communication center for EDD. “And now we have his voice print. Stupid asshole. I want to see if EDD can enhance as well as print. See if they pick up any chatter from the back.”
Peabody nodded as she texted the instructions. “Do you have a line on COD?”
“Smothered him. Strapped him down, covered his mouth, pinched his nose. The bruising’s like a signpost for it. Face-to-face this time,” she considered. “They knew each other. It’s more personal. Still business, just doing the job, but it’s like firing a coworker. It’s got that personal element. I want this area secured. We need to find Jake Ingersol.”
“You don’t think—”
“I didn’t think they’d kill the accountant.” She shoved at her hair. “Listen, I’ll find out where Ingersol is. You contact Gibbons. He should know Parzarri’s dead. And we’re going to have the media hum this time, as soon as they put together that two accountants from the same firm were murdered within days of each other.”