by J. D. Robb
“I used to take all my stuff to Mr. Ping’s place around the corner from my apartment,” she remembered. “He was good at getting blood-stains out.”
“An essential service in your line of work. I don’t see any today.”
“Day’s not over. I’ve got to set up for the briefing. Things are rolling.”
“I’ve got a few things to finish up, then you can fill me in.”
“Okay.” She paused at the doorway. “You know, I guess there was somebody a few hundred years ago, beating a dirty shirt against a rock in a fast stream, who thought there’s just got to be a better fucking way. If he hadn’t found it, we’d all be wading in rivers on laundry day. Mundane’s got a point.”
She moved into her office. She arranged two boards, one for the murder, one for the investigation on Renee Oberman’s operation, adding data on every cop in Renee’s squad she’d acquired through low-level runs.
She grabbed the sweepers report the instant it came through, studied it and the lab analysis on the illegals taken from the crime scene.
Little pieces, she thought. Tiny little pieces—mundane, you could say.
Once she’d input everything in her computer, she sat back with coffee and considered her approach.
When Roarke came in he went to her boards. “You’ve made considerable progress.”
“I know what she’s doing. I have some ideas on why. I even know how to some extent. I know some of the other players, but not all. I know who killed Keener, why and how and when. But it’s not enough. Yet. I had some face time with her today, got to fuck with her a little.”
“I imagine you enjoyed it.”
“I’d have enjoyed smashing my fist into her face more, but yeah, it wasn’t bad.”
He walked to her desk, took her coffee, drank a little. “Sometimes we just have to make do.”
“I had Peabody contact her, fuck with her a little more. Not only because it’s good strategy, but . . .”
“You can’t beat the monster in the closet unless you open the door. Our Peabody won’t be as unnerved by the woman now.”
“Plus Renee lost that round, so even better. Renee’s overplayed her hand, but doesn’t know it.”
Eve looked at the board again, and again thought, little pieces.
“I’m going to say this first, get it out of the way while it’s just you and me.”
“All right.”
“I’ve got this terrible hate on for her—so many levels of it. It’s Peabody, it’s Whitney, even Mira after I saw her today. It’s the department, and it’s the badge and everything it means.”
“I know. And it’s more.”
He would know, she thought. He would see. “Cop’s daughter. Can be rough, I guess. But screw that. She had two parents, a decent home. No hint of anything under that, and you don’t get to be commander of the NYPSD without making enemies. If there’d been anything, somebody would’ve found it.”
“I’d agree with that. And I imagine you spent some time today looking for any hint of that.”
“Yeah, I did,” she admitted. “No traumas, not one that shows—and I think by now, especially with Mira taking a hard, close look—it would. Normal is what she had. Well, a cop’s house probably has its own brand of normal, but—”
“She was housed and fed, educated, very likely loved, certainly tended to,” Roarke continued. “Her father set an example, held to a code. He didn’t lock her in dark rooms.”
Roarke touched Eve’s cheek, just a brush of fingertips. “He didn’t beat her, didn’t rape her, didn’t terrorize a helpless child night after night, year after year. Rather than value what she was given, she chose to dishonor it. She made a choice, and that choice betrays everything you believe in, everything you’ve made yourself.”
“It sticks in me. I need to get over it.”
“No. You’re wrong. You need to use it. And when you end this, you’ll know that what you made yourself from a nightmare beat what she made herself from normal. More, Eve, you’ll know that’s why you beat her.”
“Maybe.” She laid a hand on his. “Maybe. But right now I feel better, just getting that said. So.”
This time when she took a breath, it worked. “She’s not really worried about me, but more pissed off. More annoyed at the inconvenience, at having me bump up against her authority. She handed me this homicide because she got sloppy, because she surrounds herself with people without ethics, without any respect for the job.”
“That would be key.” Roarke took another sip of her coffee. “To run a successful business, it’s an advantage to hire people with a similar vision, or at least the ability to adapt to your vision.”
“Yeah, I think she’s got that down. But when your business is living a lie, you have to take what you get. Hotheads like Garnet, brutes like Bix. Plus, her ego’s a problem. She doesn’t look for the smartest, but the most malleable, the most easily corrupted. It’s most important for her to stay on top, to be in charge. To her way of thinking, as I see her, if she recruits the best and the brightest, somebody might outsmart her, out think her, maybe figure Why should I listen to her?”
“If she can’t grasp or accept it’s not essential to be the smartest person in the room, but to be sure the smartest person in the room is working for you, she was destined to fail.”
“She’s had a good run up till now.” Eve took the coffee back. “She runs her squad precisely—dominating by forbidding any sort of personality. No personal items, no genuine partnerships. Every man for himself,” Eve murmured. “That’s what I felt in there.”
She rose to walk to the board, to tap her finger on Bix’s photo. “She recruited him, and I’m going to bet she helped work his transfer to her unit—because of his skill set. Military, combat trained. Both parents also military. He takes orders, he’ll kill on command. He’s her dog.”
“How does she turn him?”
“I want Mira’s take, but I see it could be done a couple of ways. Maybe he was a good soldier, and good soldiers are often ordered to do harsh things for the greater good, or good or not, the mission. Illegals is an endless war. She could convince him this is another way to fight it. Or she recognized in him a need, a predilection to hurt, maim, kill, and channeled it to meet her requirements.”
“It could easily be both.”
“Yeah, it could. Garnet? She used sex and greed, and likely appealed to a Why the hell shouldn’t we get ours? That’s her play for a lot of it, I think, with variations on Why the hell should we do what we do, risk what we risk, step in what we step in, and settle for a cop’s lousy pay? We’re the ones holding the line. We deserve more.”
“She couldn’t play on the weaknesses if they weren’t there.”
“Everybody’s got weaknesses. You give in to them, you cross the line and do exactly what you’ve taken an oath to stop?”
The anger bubbled up again, the hot surge of it.
“You don’t deserve to be a cop, and you need to be taken down harder than the assholes the rest of us risk what we risk to stop. I’ve been up against wrong cops before. Something the size of the NYPSD? It’s inevitable. But she’s more.”
Eve drilled a finger into Renee’s photo. “She’s worse. A choice, you said, and that’s a goddamn bull’s-eye. It’s not that she’s weak, not that she’s greedy or needy—or not just. She chose to be a cop, then she chose to be dirty. To make a fucking business out of it. Deliberate. Calculated.
“I want to hurt her for it. I want to make the choice—just as deliberate, just as calculated—to burn her for it.”
He smiled at her. “And that, Lieutenant, is how you use it to beat her.”
Peabody and McNab arrived first.
She handed off some new runs to Peabody, gave McNab the same names.
“I want a property search—one that doesn’t show yet. Just a standard inventory check. What you’re looking for are check-ins of these illegals. I want who was on the property desk, who generated the invoices for them. I
want those crossed with the officers who confiscated, and with their reports. Just Central for now. We’ll keep it focused.”
“What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” Roarke asked her.
“Garnet has property in the tropics—which covers a lot of area. I need to find it. I need to find it without sending up any flags—and not using unregistered equipment,” she added, lowering her voice. “I figure if you’ve got nice beach property, you go there whenever you can manage it, which means you have to use transportation.”
“You would, yes. That’s quite an interesting puzzle. I believe I’ll enjoy it.”
“He’ll have a vehicle at that location—something high end. Probably a boat. And almost certainly an alternate ID to cover all of it. I figure it’s a long-term project, picking out the pin in a pretty massive haystack—”
“That would be needle.”
“Whatever. It would be good information to have at some point.”
“I’ll get started.”
“The rest should be here in about twenty. I guess I’ll have them chow down first, so they’re not distracted by the thought of food. Might as well have them temporarily distracted by actual food.”
Since Peabody and McNab were on her comp and auxiliary, she went into the kitchen and used the mini on the counter to run a few probabilities.
Sneaky, calculating, deliberate. Could she be all that, she wondered, and drive it through with this fire of rage and loathing burning in her belly?
“I guess we’ll find out,” she murmured.
When she heard voices, she stepped out again.
Time to get the party started.
Damn good chow,” Feeney commented, and chomped into a pulled pork sandwich. “I hear there’s pie.”
She wondered if there was a cop in the universe, including herself, who didn’t have a weakness for pie. “Pie’s for after the formal briefing.”
He gave her a sorrowful look. “That’s harsh, kid.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She moved to the front of the room. “I’m going to begin while all of you finish licking your plates clean. If you’ll direct your attention to the boards, and the two separate but connected cases.”
It was brief, as most of the team had already been updated on the steps and progress. She called on Mira to present personality profiles on Renee Oberman, William Garnet, Carl Bix, and the victim.
“What is your opinion, Doctor Mira, in determining if the Keener case is homicide, accident, or self-termination?”
“Self-termination isn’t consistent with any of the victim’s actions. He moved himself and his possessions to another location. On the night of his death he had a meal and spoke with his server. According to her statement his mood was pleasant, even expansive, and he spoke about relocating.
“Accidental overdose is always a risk with an addict,” Mira continued. “However, the massive dose injected isn’t consistent with the victim’s previous habits. In my judgment, based on facts, statements, and personality, this was homicide.”
“Renee’s going to have a hard time arguing with that,” Feeney put in.
“That’s the plan. I’m going to have to ask her opinion on how her weasel, a low-rent street dealer, got his hands on that much of a high-grade illegal substance. And I’m going to want to know who deals in that substance. I’m going to need to talk to anyone in her squad—then the department—who made a bust involving that substance.
“Which takes us to Property. McNab.”
He swallowed pasta. “At the lieutenant’s direction, I initiated an inventory run on specific illegals invoices in Central’s property room. Do you want to see the work, or just the results?” he asked her.
“The work’ll go into the file, be copied to all team members. Let’s have the results here and now.”
“Illegals squad under Lieutenant Harrod. Detectives Petrov and Roger had a pretty nice bust about six weeks ago. They confiscated a number of illegals, including a large batch of street name FYU. I should add that Detective Roger and two uniformed officers were injured during the bust. In Detective Petrov’s report, he estimated the FYU at thirty keys. That’s a street value of about two hundred and fifty thousand. They also bagged what he estimated to be ninety keys of Dust and five hundred capsules of Exotica.
“I took the majors first, Lieutenant,” McNab explained. “I haven’t had time to do a thorough run. Petrov checked the confiscated substances into Property for weighing, registering, and invoicing. On-site estimates are over a lot of the time. They’re just eyeballing them and, well, who doesn’t like bigger numbers? The official count after check-in was twenty-two keys of FYU, eighty-four of Dust, and three seventy-five caps of Exotica.”
“That’s quite a discrepancy.”
“Yes, sir, it is. Roger was being transported to the hospital, so Petrov didn’t wait for the weigh-in.”
“Who received and weighed said substances?”
“Runch, Sergeant Walter.”
“Computer, display on-screen data on Runch, Sergeant Walter. I conducted a standard background and ran an analysis of Property officers,” Eve continued when the data came up. “She needs a man on the desk or else she’s limited to her own men, and watching all that profit swim right by her. An analysis of Runch in the two years, four months he’s been on the desk shows that his weigh-ins are regularly under the estimate—his percentages of those discrepancies increase when said estimate is outside Renee’s squad.”
“When the cop on the bust is one of hers,” Feeney put in, “he takes the weight off the estimate before weigh-in.”
“That’s what plays,” Eve agreed. “Not every time, not even most of the time, but with regularity and most particularly when dealing with major busts.
“As you see, Runch was assigned to Property after receiving a rip for busting up a bar while beating the hell out of his bookie after he lost five large over a three-point spread in Arena Ball. Runch has a little gambling problem and was given the opportunity for counseling and reassignment, which he accepted.”
Eve picked up the photo she’d already printed out, added it to Oberman’s board.
“You already had him?” McNab asked.
“I had the probability. You put the bow on it. What does IAB have on Runch?” she asked Webster.
“I didn’t work him, but if there’s more, I’ll find out. I have interviewed her detective Marcell, regarding a termination. He and a Detective Strumb, both under Lieutenant Oberman, were covering an undercover, Detective Freeman. Freeman was up as a buyer, had been working this deal for a couple weeks, and it was due to go down. It should’ve been a play-by-play, but it went south. Dealer brings along his muscle, and his woman. The woman makes Freeman, screams how he’s a cop, how he busted her for possession. Everybody draws down, Marcell and Strumb move in to assist. Freeman’s wounded, Strumb and the dealer end up dead. Muscle’s wounded according to Freeman and Marcell, but he and the woman managed to get in the vehicle and escape—with the money and the product.”
“Handy,” Eve commented.
“It added up. Freeman’s and Marcell’s statements meshed. Freeman ID’d the woman, and he had busted her for possession six months prior. Crime scene reconstruction played out as the officers reported. Marcell acknowledged terminating the dealer, citing self-defense and defense of his partner as Strumb was down. He went through Testing, and the results corroborated.”
“What did you think?”
“What I thought was he probably terminated the dealer out of revenge for his partner—but I didn’t have it on him. Three days later, the bodies of the muscle and the woman were found in a motel off the turnpike, throats slit. No money, no product. And I thought he might have gone after them. We looked at him for it, but he had a solid alibi. He was with his lieutenant, Detectives Garnet and Freeman at TOD, in the back room of a bar, holding a private wake for their fallen comrade.”
Webster nodded at the screen. “Put it together with what we know now? It smells.”
“Peabody, generate Freeman’s and Marcell’s ID shots, put them up. That’s four in her squad, one in the property room. Generate Lieutenant Harrod’s Detective Roger.”
“The wounded officer?” Peabody asked.
“I’m wondering if the estimate would’ve been so far off the weigh-in if he hadn’t been wounded and therefore unable to do the estimate himself. He’s a possible. She’s got more,” Eve added. “Weighing Mira’s personality profile, I did an analysis on her history as boss of the squad. Within six months of her assignment, three officers were transferred to other squads or divisions. In two of the cases, Renee was able to request specific detectives to replace them. One of those was Freeman, the other Detective Armand, who came in from Brooklyn PD, where he’d worked in their E-Division.”
Eve added his ID shot. “She needs an e-man. The third detective transferred out in under a year, as did another from the original squad. One of the later replacements who transferred in, female—went down in a multi-squad bust eight months after joining the squad. Another remains under her command. Detective Palmer previously worked three years with a squad focused on organized crime. She needs the contacts,” Eve said, and added his photo.
“How many are you looking at?” Whitney demanded. “How many of that squad?”
“It won’t be all of them, Commander. She needs scapegoats, fall guys, sacrifices—as it may turn out both Strumb and the female transfer were. She has to have at least one man in Accounting, for the same reason she needs one in Property. The numbers have to add up to keep her squad under the radar. It’s likely she has at least one in another squad—and I’m looking at Roger—or has someone who she’s cultivated who’ll just gossip—somebody who passes information about investigations, planned operations.”
She glanced at Mira. “I’m adding Doctor Addams, as she requested him for her psych, and my check indicates her entire squad now uses him.
“The homicide investigation puts pressure on her, and it infuriates her. Keener was supposed to be a speck of lint she flicked off her sleeve. Now he’s a stone in her shoe. I’m going to insist, as is my right as primary, to interview everyone in her squad. I expect she’ll file a complaint with command.”