by J. D. Robb
“The word I got is it’s a weapon featured in a new game, and they made reals so they could create the program.” He leaned a little closer. “I’ve got this friend of a friend thing, who worked in R&D at U-Play. Something hot’s coming, and this weapon features.”
Razor’s eyes tracked right and left. “Something hot’s coming,” he agreed. “I got friends of friends, too, and might be there’ll be a new line of weapons coming, too. But if there was a zapper sword, a real, I’d be the first. You can ask anybody in the game who knows what there is to know. They’ll say Razor.”
McNab pursed his lips, shoved a hand in one of his many pockets. “I don’t know why they’d string me on this. What’s hot is supposed to be, you know, fantastic.”
Razor held a hand up, lowered it. “Keep it down-low. Yeah, I got that word. But weapons are my thing, and there’s no word on what you’re talking about. Plenty of props, toys, models of that kind of thing, but no reals. It’s fantasy, man.”
McNab adjusted his face toward the dubious and disappointed. “How close are the models and props to reals?”
“I’ll show you one so close you’d swear you could slice your opponent in two, and leave the two pieces smoking.”
They spent another twenty minutes testing and discussing different swords. While all of them looked lethal, none of them could have caused more than a minor scratch, if that.
McNab ended up buying a toy replica of the three-bladed sword. “For my nephew,” he claimed. “He’ll get a charge. Listen, if you hear anything about what we were talking about before?” He scribbled down an e-mail contact. “Let me know.”
“Will do, but you’re chasing an urban legend, friend.”
“Or the wild goose,” McNab said to Peabody as they merged back into the crowd. “My gut says if anybody knows about this weapon, Razor knows.”
“My gut’s with yours. He figured you had the want and the means. If he could’ve brokered a sale, he’d’ve jumped. And if he knew about it, I think he’d have let it show. Ego, rep on the line. If it’s out there, it hasn’t hit the grapevine or the underground.”
“Maybe it’s military, top secret.”
“Think about it. Why would the military need swords? Any kind?”
“Gotta point. We hit the egg of the wild goose on this, Peabody.”
“Yeah, but we did the job. I say we continue in character and head down two levels.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Time to play like grown-ups.”
“She-body, you are so my girl.”
“You’re about to prove it.”
In New York, Eve wrote an updated report before running a new series of probabilities. Speculation, she thought, feelings, gut impressions. They were, to her mind, as much a part of police work as hard evidence.
She studied the results, let out a huh, then put her boots up on the desk, closed her eyes, and thought about it.
“Nice work if you can get it.”
She didn’t bother opening her eyes. She’d already heard the click of heels, the rhythm of them, and knew Nadine Furst, Channel 75’s ace on-air, and host of the wildly popular Now stood in her doorway.
“I don’t smell any doughnuts.”
“It’s middle of the afternoon. I used cookies.” She rattled the little box in her hand. “And saved you three—and it wasn’t easy.”
“What kind of cookies?”
“Mega chocolate chunk. I know you, don’t I?”
“And I know you. I’m not giving you anything on the investigation.”
“I’m here for that—though I’d never turn it down.” She dropped the box on the desk. “I had Bart Minnock on my show a couple of times. He was a sweet boy. I hope you roast the balls of his killer.”
Eve opened her eyes, looked into Nadine’s always camera-ready face. Those clever green eyes meant business. “Working on it.”
Nadine gestured to the murder board. “So I see.”
“Shit.” Eve’s boots hit the floor. “That’s off record.”
“How long have we been friends?”
“Not really all that long,” she said and made Nadine laugh.
“God, you’re a hard-ass, which is probably why you’re my friend. I’m here to personally and in person remind you your presence is desired at my book launch party tomorrow night.” She winged up her brows as Eve frowned. “And no, I don’t expect you to remember, but Roarke will. It hits day after tomorrow. The book does. So ...” She ran her fingers through her perfectly styled streaky blond hair—a sure sign of distress. “God, I’m so nervous. No, make that terrified.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why? What if it bombs?”
“Why would it bomb?”
“Well, Jesus, because it sucks?”
“It doesn’t suck. You made me read it. I mean, you asked me to read it,” Eve amended, on the chance there was a friendship rule about “made me.” “For accuracy since the Icove case was mine. Which I did. It didn’t suck, and it was accurate.”
“Great, it doesn’t suck.” Nadine tossed up her hands. “Fabulous. I wonder if I can get them to put that as a PR quote. ‘Lieutenant Eve Dallas says this book doesn’t suck.”’
“Do you need written permission?”
Nadine plopped down in a chair.
“Oh, make yourself the fuck at home. Can’t you see I’m working on a murder here?”
“Can’t you see I’m having a breakdown here?” Nadine snapped back, and gave Eve pause.
“Okay.” Because it was rare to see Nadine so jittery, Eve rose and went to the AutoChef. “You can have coffee, pull yourself together, then you’re out of here.”
“Oh, thanks a bunch.”
“Listen, I told you it was good when you made me”—shit—“asked me to read it.” Eve pushed the coffee at Nadine. “The reviews say it’s good.”
Nadine blinked. “You’ve read the reviews?”
“I maybe saw one or two, somewhere. The point is, you did a solid job. More than, if it matters what I think. You made it human and important, and you didn’t sentimentalize it—if that’s a word. You got it accurate, and that matters, but you made it real. And that’s probably just as important. So stop being a big baby about it.”
“I knew I’d feel better if I came by here. You bitch.” She grabbed Eve’s hand. “I’d really like you to be there tomorrow night, even if you can’t stay long. I might need you to kick me in the ass again.”
“What’re friends for? Look, I’ll try. I’ll plan on it, but if something breaks on this case—”
“Remember who you’re talking to. I know the priorities of the job. Anyway, if you’re roasting the balls of whoever did this instead of kicking my ass and drinking champagne, I’ll be fine with it.” She sat another minute, finishing the coffee. “Okay. All right. That should hold me for a couple hours.”
“Go bother somebody else if you need a booster shot.”
“I do have other friends, you know.” She glanced at the board again. “Go get them, Dallas.”
Eve sat again. After a moment, she opened the box and took out a cookie. She studied it a moment, then took a bite, sighed at the rush of sugar.
And she thought about friendships.
11
STILL THINKING OF FRIENDSHIPS, SHE LEFT her office and stepped into the bullpen. There cops manned desks and cubes, worked the ’links and comps, followed up leads, pecked away at the never-ending paperwork.
The familiar sounds, beeps, clatters, voices, Reineke’s off-key whistle, crisscrossed in the air.
There were friendships here, she knew, born out of the badge and nurtured in some cases by other shared interests or copacetic personalities. Competition, too, but she deemed that a good thing, a healthy and productive element of any group. The last thing she wanted was a bunch of easygoing, complacent cops.
Friction, an inevitable by-product, rubbed on personalities who worked long hours, and lived with the stress of the job. Only droids operated without friction, and she preferred
men and women who sweated and bled and occasionally pissed each other off.
Her division ran smooth not only because she demanded it, but because—she felt—she trusted her people and didn’t hover over every case or every step of an investigation.
They lived with murder. They didn’t need her to remind them what she, the department, the victim expected of them.
Some were partners, and that ran deeper even than friendship, could be a more intense and more intimate relationship than lovers. A partner had your back, shared the risks, the work, spoke the language, knew your thoughts, kept your secrets.
If you were a cop, a partner trusted his life to you, and you did the same with yours. Every day, every minute.
Trust, she thought, was the foundation and the safety net of any partnership.
She started out—a second trip up to EDD in one day might implode her nervous system, but it had to be done. Before she reached the door, the whistling Reineke hailed her.
“Yo, LT.” He hauled himself up and over. “We’re on that pizza murder.”
“Mugging off Greene.” Just because she didn’t hover didn’t mean her detectives’ caseloads were off her radar.
“Yeah. Guy goes to pick up a veggie pie and gets coshed with a pipe wrench. Mugger took his wallet, and the pie.”
“No point wasting a pie.”
“You got that. Wife’s at home, see, waiting for him to bring it. Gets worried after he’s gone, like, an hour. Tries his ’link, but he can’t answer being dead and all. Tries the pizza joint, but they’re closed by that time. Tries to tag him a couple more times, and finally calls it in. Respondings found him three blocks away, tossed down some steps.”
“Okay. Where are you on it?”
“No prints on the pipe, no wits. He took the hit right in the face, then a second for luck that opened his head up. Take the wallet, kick him down the steps for good measure, and walk away. But how come you take a twenty-dollar pie and leave a seventy-five-dollar pipe wrench? And how come dead husband’s out picking up the pie that time of night when they deliver? It smells.”
She couldn’t argue when she smelled it herself. “You’re looking at the wife.”
“Yeah. Neighbors say they never fought. Never.” He shook his head, his eyes cynical, and all cop. “You know that ain’t normal. And coincidentally, there’s a call on the house ‘link, about five minutes before she tried to tag the dead husband. Wrong number, the guy says, sorry about that. And it came from a clone ’link so we can’t trace it back.”
“Yeah, that smells pretty ripe. Insurance?”
“He upped it six months ago. It’s not a bundle, but it’s sweet enough. And for a couple months more than that, she’s been going out two nights a week. Pottery class.”
“With the thing.” Eve made a vague outline of a wheel with her hands. “And the gunk.”
“Yeah. You put the gunk on the thing and shape it up into something and put the something in the cooker. I don’t know why the hell, because if you want a vase or some shit, they’ve got ’em right in the store.”
“Feeney’s wife took pottery classes. Maybe she still does. She makes stuff then gives it away. It’s weird.”
“Yeah, but they got classes for every damn thing. We checked it out, and the wife, she’s registered. Never misses a class. But the thing is, it’s an hour class, and a couple of the neighbors who pay attention say how she leaves those nights before the husband gets home and doesn’t get back until ten, sometimes later. Class runs from seven to eight, but she’s out of the house before six. So you ask yourself, what’s she doing with those extra three hours when the class is a five-minute walk away? Instructor lives in the studio, and that’s pretty handy.”
“Sounds like they’re doing more than making vases. Priors?”
“Both of them clean up to now.”
“What’s your play?”
“We’re trying to track the pipe, and we could bring them in, sweat them, but at this point they gotta figure they got away clean, and she’s used to making those vases a couple times a week, and maybe she’d get a little antsy for a lesson. Seems like she’d want to, you know, get her hands in the gunk again. No classes tonight—we checked. Seems like a good time for some personal instruction, if you get me.”
“I’ve deciphered your complex code, Reineke. Go on and sit on her for a night, see if she’s compelled to take a spin on the pottery wheel. Either way, bring them in tomorrow and work them.”
“Will do.”
She started out again, stopped again. “If he’s got no priors, and he killed for her, he’ll be harder to crack. She’s at home, fully alibied while he does the dirty work. He’s going to start off trying to protect her. She’s the cheat. She’ll roll first.”
Marriage, she thought as she made her way up the glide, was a minefield.
Following hunch and hope she bypassed the chaos of the EDD bullpen and tried the lab. She wondered what compelled e-types to work in glass boxes. Were they innately claustrophobic? Closet exhibitionists? Was it a need to see out, or a need to be seen?
Whatever the reason, Feeney and his team manned the comps and stations inside the glass, movements and voices silenced by the clear barrier. It was a little like watching a strange species in their natural habitat.
Feeney, his hair sticking up in mad tufts, popped one of his favored candied almonds in his mouth. Callendar, hips jiggling, fingers snapping, paced in front of a screen that scrolled incomprehensible codes. Someone she didn’t recognize—who could tell them apart?—rode a wheeled stool up and down a counter, his baggies and skin tank red and orange blurs, his ring-studded fingers flying over keys and controls.
And Roarke.
He’d shed his suit jacket and rolled the sleeves of his black shirt up to his elbows. The twist of leather restraining his hair at the nape indicated full work mode. He, too, sat on a stool, but unlike his companions remained almost preternaturally still but for the rapid movements of his fingers on controls.
She knew he was focused, utterly, on whatever task he worked on. If it gave him trouble he’d be thinking in Irish, and muttering curses in the same.
He’d filed away whatever business he’d done that day, whatever he would deal with that evening, or the next. Which would be considerable, she thought. He did that not just for the man—the boy as he thought of him—he’d enjoyed, nor for the pleasure he gained from the work, the puzzle of it. He did it for her.
Whether or not they always agreed on the ways and the means of the work, that single fact shone through the gray between them. In her life no one had ever put her so completely, so absolutely first.
And as she knew him, she knew the moment he sensed her. His fingers paused; he turned his head. Those brilliant eyes locked on hers as they had the very first time at a funeral for another of the dead they’d shared.
Her heart opened, and it lifted, weightless and free.
Marriage was a minefield, she thought again, but she’d risk every sweaty, breathless step for moments like this.
He rose, evading the orange and red blur, skirting around the pacing Callendar, and came out to her.
She didn’t protest when he tilted up her chin and brushed his lips against hers.
“You had such a look in your eyes, a ghrá.”
“I was thinking about people. Friends, lovers, partners. You get a check in the all-of-the-above column.”
He took her hand, a light link of fingers. “Conclusions?” “Sometimes you get lucky with who you let in your life. Sometimes you don’t. I’m feeling lucky today.”
His lips curved slowly as he brushed hers again.
Feeney shoved open the door. “If that’s all the two of you can think about doing, go up to the crib and get it over with. Some of us are working.”
If she’d been the blushing type, she’d have turned scarlet. Instead mortification hunched her shoulders even as Roarke laughed.
“I’d be up for a break.”
“You’
d be up for eternity if you could manage it,” she muttered. “No sappy stuff on duty.”
“You started it.”
She couldn’t argue so she said nothing and went inside the glass box. “Progress?” she said in a crisp cop’s voice.
“We’re peeling the layers off the vic’s holo-system,” Feeney said in the same tone. “Looking for any shadows, echoes, and signs of tampering. So far, it’s coming up a hundred percent on all levels. Same with his droid. No sign of tampering, no breaks in time or programming.”
“Holo-room security’s clean as well,” Roarke told her. “We’re picking it apart, bit by byte, but there’s no indication anyone left or entered that room after Bart and before the droid bypassed the lock the next morning.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say the kid’s head just magically chopped itself off.” Feeney puffed out his cheeks. “I sent a team over there this morning. Had them scan and manually search every inch of that room, looking for another access. It’s tight.”
“I’ve got some semi-good,” Callendar told her. “I’ve done analysis on the logs from the office holo-room and the vic’s. Serious player. He could easily put in ten—twelve hours on a series of games in a day, and pulled a few all-nighters. A lot of solo play in there, too, but he logs in with a variety of partners, home and office.”
She took a swig from a tube of Orange Sweet. It made Eve’s teeth ache.
“He logged in a lot of time on the new game over the last several months, again solo and office. And this isn’t the first time he took a demo disc home to give it a whirl.”
“Is that so? Always logged it before?”
“Always. Like a half-dozen home whirls before the last one. Crossing it with his home unit it was always solo play. The thing is, it’s different stages and versions of the game.”
“Improvements,” Eve concluded. “He’d take it home to test it out with the tweaks, or maybe add some from there.”
“That’s how it reads. Early days, they called it Project Super X.”
“You’re kidding.”