The In Death Collection, Books 30-32

by J. D. Robb

  She bypassed, drew her weapon. Then eased the door open. “Now, that’s a lovely stench. If this is the flight of the wild goose, that weasel’s going to get a serious scolding. Weapon and light, Peabody. Let’s start clearing.”

  As she had hours before with Roarke, she swept the first level.

  “This was probably a nice place once,” Peabody commented. “You can see some of the original flooring and plasterwork.”

  “Sure. It’s a real fixer-upper. Level one clear,” she said for the record. “Crap, these steps better hold. If you fall through, I’m not hauling you out.”

  “I believe that’s a comment on my weight. I may file an official complaint.”

  Eve snorted out a laugh. “You do that. God, the smell just gets better. It’s like a shit pile bouquet perfumed with ... crap.”

  “Shit is crap.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Peabody, you’ve worked Homicide long enough you should be able to smell a DB even through this. Weasel said in the tub. Clear as you go,” she ordered, and sweeping areas made her way back to the ruined bathroom. “This must be Juicy.”

  “I guess you owe the weasel an apology.”

  “He’ll get his twenty.” Eve approached the tub. “Swimming in puke. An exaggeration, but close enough. Let’s ID him, call it in.”

  “Dallas, it’s bad in here. If we don’t want to spend an hour in the sanitizer, we should put on protective gear.”

  “Got a point.” Eve stepped back, and as Peabody bent to remove the cover-ups from the kit, reached up and behind her for the cam Roarke had positioned. She slid it into her pocket, disengaged, then took out her communicator.

  “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve.”

  Dispatch, Dallas acknowledged.

  She reported the body, the location, the situation, requested uniforms to assist. Done, she unsealed the protective wrap Peabody offered her.

  As before, Eve used her pad for ID. “Victim is identified as Keener, Rickie, age twenty-seven. Mixed race male, five feet and nine inches, one hundred and thirty pounds. Brown and brown. Vic is curled in a broken bathtub, empty needle syringe is in the tub with him. Other illegals paraphernalia also in evidence.”

  “TOD’s coming in at oh four hundred yesterday, Dallas. It’s reading approximate due to time lag and ambient conditions.”

  “ME to confirm TOD.”

  Peabody said what she believed she’d have said if they’d come across the body by a tip. “It looks like an OD. You can see his track marks. He went old school, but it’s not his first trip to Neverland.”

  “Why the tub? There was a mattress in the next room, what could loosely be called a bed. He’s got bruising, a scraped elbow.”

  “He could’ve gotten those seizing, banging against the tub. I think it’s cast iron.”

  “Yeah. He’s got a sheet, and wasn’t a stranger to illegals. Maybe he screwed up his pop, or maybe he got something hotter than he knew.” She shook her head. “He’s got an address on record, and this isn’t it. So why here?”

  “Maybe he came to shoot with somebody, OD’d, and the somebody put him in here and went rabbit.”

  “Those are questions and possibilities. Well, Juicy’s ours now. So we’ll have to get the answers. ME will determine COD, but for now this is a suspicious death, and our case. Let’s get to work.”

  6

  SHE CAUGHT THE GRIMACES WHEN SHE SENT the uniforms out to canvass and knock on doors. It wasn’t the type of neighborhood where cops were greeted with an offer of coffee, or even a pretense of respect. Nor was it likely anyone would admit to seeing anything or anyone even if they’d been a magical fly on the wall of the crime scene.

  But it had to be done.

  When the sweepers arrived, she hunted up the head CSI. “I’m going to want a full-level sweep, all three levels.”

  Eve got the beady eye. “Is this a joke?”

  “No. And I tagged the lock on the front door. I need make, model, and an analysis of when it was installed.”

  “Petrie put you up to this, didn’t he? He’s got a sick sense of humor.”

  “Do you have a problem being thorough, Kurtz?”

  Behind her goggles, the woman rolled her eyes. “Next thing you’ll tell me is that isn’t some dead chemi-head but the Prince of Monaco or some shit.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure he’s some dead chemi-head. He’s also my dead guy, and I need what I need.”

  “You’ll get what you need, but it’d be better all around to just burn everything in here. Purify.”

  “Don’t light the match until after the sweep.”

  That, at least, got a smile out of Kurtz before Eve left the scene to the sweepers and the body to the morgue team.

  On her way out she sent a text to Morris, the chief medical examiner, requesting he take the body himself.

  “There’s going to be some muttering about going top level on this,” Peabody commented once they were outside, recorders off.

  “Just what I had in mind.”

  She got behind the wheel and headed off to a sex club to rat out Renee Oberman.

  When she walked into the Down and Dirty, Crack stood huge behind the bar. His shaved head gleamed like polished onyx, and his chest, his muscled arms, bared but for a sleeveless vest, rippled with tattoos.

  He shot her a steely stare. “You screwed my beauty sleep, white girl.”

  “Black man, just how much prettier do you want to be?”

  “Smart answer.” He inclined his head toward a corner table. “Got a rat in the house.”

  “Yeah.” She’d already spotted Webster. “I’ve got reasons. I owe you one, Crack. I’ll owe you two if you keep the place shut until I’m done.”

  “This time of day that ain’t no thing. Figure one and a half. Want coffee?”

  Experience told her the coffee here was as lethal as the booze. “Maybe water?”

  He snorted, but pulled two bottles from under the bar, then after a moment’s hesitation added a third. “Rats get thirsty, too.”

  “Appreciate it.” Eve passed a bottle to Peabody, carried the other two across the room to Webster.

  “Too early for entertainment,” he commented.

  She glanced toward the stage. In a couple hours a holoband would set the rhythm for the strippers on early shift, and the scatter of customers would insult their deteriorating stomach linings with hard drinks and cheap brew.

  By midnight, the place would be ass-to-ass and elbow-to-elbow under swirling lights. Upstairs in the privacy rooms people—many who’d just met—would be humping away at each other like crazed rabbits.

  “I could ask Crack to put on a couple virtual strippers, but I think what we’ve got for you is entertaining enough.”

  “It better be. How’s it going, Peabody?”

  “I guess we’re going to find out.”

  “We’re here with the commander’s full knowledge and authorization, and with his directive that, at this time, the information we’re about to give you isn’t reported to anyone else.”

  “We’re not lone wolves in IAB, Dallas.”

  She figured he had a recorder running. And also figured if he didn’t agree to terms, she’d give him nothing to record.

  “Yeah, I get that Bureau is short for bureaucracy, but that’s the directive.”

  “My captain—”

  “Is not to be apprised at this time.”

  He sat back, a good-looking man with cop’s eyes even, Eve thought, if he’d traded the streets for internal sniffing. He’d thought he’d loved her once, which had been an embarrassing and ... fraught situation.

  But at the moment he studied her with cold impatience.

  “Even the commander can’t dictate IAB procedure.”

  “You don’t want to play, Webster, I’ll find somebody who does. There are reasons,” she added, leaning forward. “And if you’d yank the red tape out of your ass, agree, and listen, you’d understand the directive.”

  “Try this. I’ll agree, and
I’ll listen. Then I’ll make the determination as to whether that directive holds.”

  She sat back.

  “Dallas, maybe we should just wait until—”

  Eve cut Peabody off with a shake of the head. Sometimes, she decided, you had to trust.

  Besides, if push met shove, she’d get the recorder off him.

  “I’m going to sum it up for you. I have a copy of the record of my partner’s statement, and will have copies of all data pertinent to the homicide which relates. You’ll get those records, Webster, when and if you give your word to adhere to Whitney’s directive. To begin,” she said, and laid it out.

  She took him through it dispassionately, watching his reactions. He played a decent hand of poker, she remembered, but she recognized his shock, the calculation.

  His gaze tracked to Peabody and back again, but he didn’t interrupt.

  “That’s the nutshell,” Eve concluded. “Your ball, Webster.”

  “Renee Oberman. Saint Oberman’s baby girl.”

  “That’s the one.”

  He took a long pull from the bottle of water. “Rough go for you, Detective,” he said to Peabody.

  “It was a moment.”

  “You’ve gone on record with these assertions?”

  “I’ve gone on record with these facts.”

  “And it was your choice to, after this incident, inform your cohab, then your partner—and her civilian husband, then after considerable time passed, your commander. All of that prior to relating this information to Internal Affairs.”

  Eve opened her mouth, shut it again. Peabody would have to handle more than some deliberate baiting.

  “It was my choice to get the hell out of the situation as quickly as possible without detection. I believed, and continue to believe, if I’d been detected I wouldn’t have been in a position to inform anyone because I’d be dead. My cohab is also a cop, and I strongly believed I was in need of assistance. My partner is also my direct superior who I trust implicitly, and whose instincts and experience I rely on. Her husband is also a frequent expert consultant for the department.”

  She took a breath. “It was our decision to determine if the Keener referred to by Oberman and Garnet existed, and if so, if he was alive or dead. He’s dead, and as Lieutenant Oberman asserted in the conversation I heard, his death was set up to appear as an OD. I went up the chain of command, Lieutenant Webster, and with that chain gathered and confirmed facts that are now reported to a representative of Internal Affairs. You can criticize my decisions, but I handled it as I deemed best. And would do exactly the same again.”

  “Okay then.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Renee Oberman, for Christ’s sake. What are the odds of you proving Keener was murdered?”

  “We will prove it,” Eve told him, “because he was, in fact, murdered.”

  “I’ve always admired your confidence, Dallas. She’s got, what, a ten-man squad?”

  “Twelve.”

  “If she ordered this hit, as per Peabody’s statement, it could be any of them, save Garnet.”

  “‘Their boy,’” Eve reminded him. “Two of the squad are female. Which leaves nine. She also has a rotation of uniforms at her disposal, which adds. It’s also possible, even likely, she’s recruited beyond her own squad. We’ll handle the homicide, Webster, but I can only access basic data on her, on her squad, or anyone else who might catch my attention without sending up a flag. I’m going to draw her off with Keener, focus her attention and concern on me, but I don’t want her getting antsy, not right off the jump, thinking that I’m looking at her, specifically, or any of her people for it.”

  “We’ve got ways of digging without flags, but that’s dicey without a nod from my captain.”

  “You’ll have to work around that—and you can’t use your own e-men,” she added. “You’ll have to work with Feeney and McNab.”

  “And you figure everybody will assume I’m hanging around EDD for the coffee and donuts?”

  “There’re more fizzies and PowerBars up there. My place is primary HQ on this. We have a comp lab as well-equipped as EDD’s, and my home office is sufficient for our purposes.”

  “Yeah, I remember your home office.”

  She met his look equably. “Then you won’t have any problem finding it.”

  “This process would move more efficiently with the full resources of IAB.”

  “You’re so sure everyone in or associated with IAB is clean, Webster? Have you ever gone sniffing around Renee before—and because I’m betting from your reaction the answer’s no, can you guarantee she doesn’t have somebody inside looking out for her interests?”

  “Nothing’s guaranteed, but I know the people I’ve worked closely with, and that goes without a shadow for my captain.”

  “I don’t know them. If you share the recording you’ve made of this conversation, and it gets back to Renee or Garnet, you’ve put Peabody’s ass on the line.”

  She waited a beat, and now her voice was coolly matter-of-fact. “I’ll break your arm if you try to walk out of here with the recorder you’ve got on you unless I have your word on this. If you take that broken arm to your captain or anyone else and repeat this conversation, if you do anything to jeopardize my detective, my partner, I’ll bury you. You know I mean it.”

  His gaze locked on hers; he took another pull of water. “Yeah, Dallas, I know you mean it. And I mean this. I don’t put a good cop’s ass on the line.”

  “Then give me your word. I’ll take it and we move from here. Otherwise I tag Whitney right now. He may not have the authority to directly interfere with IAB procedure, but he can sure as hell transfer you to fucking Traffic Control in fucking Queens.”

  He set the water down, leaned forward into her space. “Don’t threaten me, Dallas.”

  She mirrored his move. “Too late.”

  He shoved away from the table, strode to the bar where Crack sat working silently in a notebook. In a moment Webster came back with a mug of coffee Eve knew would kick and burn like hot battery acid.

  “You’ve got my word, not because you worry me, but because, I repeat, I’m no more willing to put a good cop’s ass on the line than you are.”

  “Said ass appreciates it,” Peabody muttered.

  Webster drank some coffee, hissed, and swore. “Christ, this is bad. I need copies of every byte of data you’ve got, will get, hope to get.”

  “You’ll have it.”

  “Every briefing’s on record for IAB files.”

  “No. I can’t agree to that, Webster,” she said before he could argue. “All results, all operational and investigative plans will be written up and recorded, but I’m not having my people have to censor every word or risk a poke from IAB. My contacts and conversations with Renee Oberman, William Garnet, and anybody else I believe is potentially connected will be recorded and copied to you for IAB. I’ll be wired, as will Peabody.”

  “You’re going to get in her face with Keener.”

  “I’m going to crawl up her ass with Keener.”

  “How?”

  Okay, Eve thought, she had him now. Invested, he’d not only assist, but he’d keep her team covered from any internal backlash.

  “I’ve deduced he was her weasel by reading his file—which happens to be true. Plus, my mythical weasel knew him. I know how to handle that end.”

  “And I know how to handle mine. I have to tell my captain something. So . . . I’ve got a possible line on something major, but need some time to suss it out further before involving the Bureau. He’ll press me some, but he won’t box me in if I tell him I need the room.”

  She argued a little for form’s sake. “How much room is he going to give you after you dangle a hint of something major under his nose?”

  “Enough. I won’t lie to my captain, Dallas—and more—by informing him to that extent, it puts my part of the investigation on record. That’s going to matter when we nail her and her merry men.”

  “Okay.”
/>   “Now, since this coffee didn’t kill me, I’m going to get started.”

  “Sixteen hundred, HQ,” Eve told him.

  “I’ll be there.” He stood. “You did the right thing, Peabody. Right down the line, you did right. That’s going to matter, too.”

  Peabody sat another moment after Webster walked out. “God, I’m glad that part’s over. Dallas, would you really have broken his arm? Or tagged Whitney and tried to get Webster transferred to Queens?”

  “Yeah—maybe I’d’ve gone for his nose and Yonkers.” She shrugged. “But I’d’ve been a little sorry about it.”

  Back at Central she told Peabody to start the board and book on Keener. “I’m going up to EDD, get wired, then pay Renee a visit.”

  “Shouldn’t I go with you?”

  “We’re going to initiate this as a kind of courtesy call—LT to LT, weasel handler to weasel handler. I want her to know we’re giving the case our best effort, and my detective is laying the foundation before we check in with the morgue.”

  “Do you think she already knows we found him?”

  “It’s going to be interesting to find out. Get it started, Peabody, then take one of your little ‘breaks’ with McNab and get wired up.”

  All innocence, Peabody widened her eyes. “What little breaks?”

  “Do you really think I don’t know what goes on in my own department?”

  Eve split off, took the glide up to EDD.

  She ignored the noise, the eye-searing colors, the incessant movement as best she could and ducked into Feeney’s blissfully normal office.

  He sat at his desk, comfortably rumpled, stoop-shouldered, alternately tapping his fingers on a screen, and raking them through his bush of wiry ginger red hair.

  His basset hound eyes tracked to hers.

  “I’ve got to close out that noise. How the hell do you stand it?” She shut the door, and for a moment neither spoke.

  His face, as comfortably rumpled as his shirt, went grim. “This is a hell of a thing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve crossed with Oberman’s daughter plenty. Everybody needs EDD. I wouldn’t have figured it.”