The In Death Collection, Books 30-32

by J. D. Robb

  He grinned at her. “Go, team.”

  “I’m going to trust you, because I’ve gone through doors with you before. If you want to stay for the rest of the briefing, take a seat. I’ll be right back.”

  “No, but I appreciate it. I’ve got things to do before we meet with the commander.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  She walked to Roarke’s office, opened the door, shut it behind her. “Thanks for the space.”

  “You’re welcome. And?”

  “We worked it out. Mostly a combination of parallel but not quite meshing goals and a misunderstanding of motivations.” She went to his AutoChef for coffee. Closed her eyes, rubbed the space between her eyebrows.

  “Take a minute, Eve. Sit.”

  “Better not. I need to get this briefing finished, shut down for some thinking time. Then gear up for these meetings. Christ—Oberman, Tibble, and IAB.” She opened her eyes again. “It’s going to be a rough morning.”

  “You’ve already had one.” He moved to her to gently rub that spot between her eyebrows himself.

  “Opened him up, ear to ear. He was dead before he hit the floor. Fast, fast way to go, and he’d earned slow and painful, in my book. And even so, it’s not up to her to decide who lives, who dies. How. When. It’s not her call.”

  Because she wasn’t who she’d been before, she laid her aching brow on his shoulder. “He’d probably have done the same—to Renee, to me, to whoever. Odds are he walked in there thinking he’d be opening me up, ear to ear. He was an open, festering wound on the department.”

  She straightened again.

  “And Keener? Maybe harmless in the big scheme, maybe he gave his pizza server a nice tip when he was flush. But he lived his life on junk, and peddling it. I don’t imagine he’d have had a quibble if the buyer was twelve, as long as the kid had the scratch. He was a pig, looking for the easy way in and the easy way out.”

  She drank some coffee, set it aside. “But none of that matters. Festering wound, pig, she doesn’t get to decide.”

  Roarke cupped her face. “He’d have killed you if he could, and enjoyed it. Another cop may be primary on his murder, but Garnet’s yours now.”

  “That’s just the way it is.”

  “For you, yes. That’s why Renee Oberman will never understand you.”

  “I understand her.”

  “Yes, I know you do.” He kissed her lightly. “Let’s get this done.”

  With a nod she walked to the door connecting their offices.

  17

  EVE LISTENED TO HER E-MEN EXPLAIN, IN their way, McNab’s idea for a tap and trace. She listened until her ears began to ring.

  She waved a hand in the air to cut off the geek-fest. “Bottom line. If you can do this, we’d have Renee’s disposable—incoming and outgoings on record.”

  “Bottom line,” Feeney agreed. “But that doesn’t credit the juice in the concept or execution—and this one’s loaded with it.”

  “Kudos all around. If you can take it from concept to execution, we need a warrant.”

  Feeney puffed out his cheeks. “Yeah, that would be a little hitch. We’ve got enough for one, Dallas, starting with Peabody’s statement, going right on through your meet with Renee, the financials, the tail last night to dead Garnet. It’s your call whether we go there. IAB could work one.”

  Her call, she thought, and every decision angled off another path. “I’ll get the warrant and inform IAB—after you’ve pulled off your juicy concept. I’ll need to meet with Reo,” she said, thinking of the ADA she trusted. “And before I meet with the commander again. Privately meet with her. Peabody—”

  “Oh man, you want me to tag Crack again.”

  “Him, then Reo. Tell her to meet me there in thirty. Say it’s urgent and confidential. You know what to do.”

  “Yeah,” Peabody said on a sigh.

  “Roarke, Peabody’s going to need a vehicle.”

  “I am? Aren’t I with you? You need me for Reo, then, Dallas, I should be with you for the meet with Commander Oberman, to push with you with IAB.”

  “No. I’ve got your statement for Reo. Dealing with Commander Oberman and IAB, that’s my job. You need to pursue your investigation. You need to stand for Detective Devin, Peabody. You need to get justice for her, and that’s what you’ll do. I have every confidence that’s what you’ll do.”

  “I’m not even sure I’m going down the right roads,” Peabody began.

  “You’ll find out.” She glanced at Roarke, and he nodded.

  “I’ll see to the vehicle. Feeney, why don’t I meet you and McNab in the lab here? I’ll be right along.”

  McNab gave Peabody a quick, supportive shoulder squeeze before he went out with his captain.

  “Don’t give her anything flashy,” Eve called out to Roarke.

  “Maybe just . . .” Peabody held up her thumb and forefinger, a half inch apart.

  Roarke sent her a wink and left them alone.

  Eve pointed Peabody to a chair, then walked to the buffet, poured coffee.

  “You brought me coffee.”

  “Don’t get used to it.”

  “It’s usually my job.”

  “Because I’m the lieutenant.” Eve sat. “I pulled you into Homicide because I looked at you, and I thought, that’s a cop. Solid, a little green, but solid. And I could help her be a better cop. I have.”

  Peabody stared into her coffee, said nothing.

  “You have a cop’s work to do for Devin. I put that in your hands because, well, I’m the lieutenant. I have to know my men—their strengths, weaknesses, style. I have to know them, and I have to trust them to do the job. Or I haven’t done mine.”

  Eve sipped her coffee, considered her words. “Meetings like I’ve got set up? That’s cop work, too, but it’s the drag of command, Peabody. It’s the politics and deal making, the pissing contests. It has to be done, and I have to do it.”

  “Because you’re the lieutenant.”

  “Damn right. I’ve thought a lot about what it means to be in command, to have rank since Renee Oberman. Not just about what it means to be a cop, but to be a boss. The responsibilities, and the influence, the obligations to the badge, to the public, to the men and women under your command. I wanted it, and I worked for it. I had to be a cop. It’s all I could be. I’d been a victim, so I knew I could stay broken, or I could fight. I could learn and train and work until I could stand for the victim. We all have our reasons for being a cop.”

  “I wanted to make detective, so bad. Being a cop ... it meant I could help people who needed it, and that was important. Making detective, well, for me, it meant I was good, and I’d get better. You got me there.”

  “I helped get you there,” Eve corrected. “I didn’t want the rank for the office, for the pay raise.”

  “You’ve got one of the crappiest offices in Central,” Peabody told her. “It makes us proud.”

  “Seriously?” Surprised, then foolishly pleased, Eve shook her head.

  “You don’t care about the fancy, you care about the job. And your men. Everybody knows it.”

  And that, Eve realized, didn’t merely please. It warmed her, in the deep.

  “Anyway,” Eve continued, “I wanted it because I knew I could do it. I knew I’d be good, and I’d get better. I know when I walk into that bullpen I can depend on every man there. But it’s just as important, maybe more, that every man there knows he can depend on me. That I’ll stand for them and with them, and if necessary, in front of them. If they don’t know that, have absolute faith in that, in me, I’ve failed.”

  “You haven’t failed.” Peabody sniffled a little. “We’ve got the best damn division in Central.”

  “I happen to agree. Part of that’s me, and I’ll take credit for it. I’m a damn good boss, and the boss sets the level. Renee set hers, Peabody, and some cop who maybe—maybe—would have done the job, would have respected the badge chose to use it and to dishonor it because the pers
on responsible for them said it was okay. Because the person responsible for them dug down for the weakness and squeezed it.”

  “I never thought of that, or thought of it like that, I guess.”

  “Other cops, good cops like Devin, died because the person responsible for her, the person she should have been able to have absolute faith in, made that call.

  “You’re going to bury her for it.”

  Peabody looked up again, blinked at the sudden fierceness in Eve’s tone.

  “I’m the lieutenant, and I’m telling you you’re going to stand for Detective Gail Devin, and you’re going to get her justice.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, set up the meet with Reo.”

  “Can I just run a couple things by you, on the avenues I’m taking?” Peabody smiled a little. “Because you’re the lieutenant.”

  “Make it quick. I’ve got politics and pissing contests on my slate.”

  “You advised me to treat it like a cold case, so I’ve studied the file, the reports, the wit statements. The investigation was minimal because there were statements from cops—Renee’s cops—that Devin peeled off during the raid, lost her cover. And during that time was assaulted and killed. She got some streams off, took down a couple of the bad guys before she went down.”

  “And?” Eve prompted.

  “It reads like a cover, Dallas. An obvious cover. Like she screwed up, but her team edged from that so she’d get the posthumous honor. It reads blue line. No point putting she fucked up in her record since she’s dead—but it’s there, you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can’t reinterview the wits without alerting them and Renee. So I’m reinterviewing the victim.”

  Eve kept her smile inside. “Okay.”

  “Her record previous to Renee’s command, her instructors in the Academy, cops she worked with when she was in uniform, after she made detective. Her family, friends, DS Allo. I’m working down the line. I told them, except for Allo, I’m working on something that crosses with the raid, so I’m just back-checking.”

  “Good.”

  “She wasn’t a fuckup, and hearing what Mira had to say in the briefing, I can follow the dots on how they set her up to look like one.”

  “Where are you going from here?”

  “I wanted to talk to her mother,” Peabody told her, “but her mother doesn’t want to talk to me. She doesn’t want to revisit, and has a serious hard-on for cops. She had a breakdown after it happened, and from what I’ve got she’s never come all the way back. They were tight. I think she might have something and not know it. Something Devin said or did that could bounce me to the next step. I don’t know how hard to push.”

  “If your gut tells you she’s got something, you push. You find a way. You know how to work people, Peabody, how to relate, empathize, slide into their skin a little. Your eyewits are liars, so you’re looking for people who have no reason to lie. That’s good strategy.”

  “I’ll go see her this morning. But ... it’s possible that if we can flip this doctor, put some pressure on the cops in the raid, we could get her for Gail Devin without anything else.”

  “Possible. Do you want possible?” Eve demanded. “Listen, you may not be able to wrap it all the way, but you keep going, and you’ll know you did your best by her. That’s what she deserves, it’s what I expect, and it’s what you’ll be able to tell yourself when it’s done. One way or the other. Now set up my damn meet.”

  “All over it.” Peabody rose. “You were my hero.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “When I was at the Academy, when I got into uniform, I studied you, your cases like you were some mythical figure, and I was on a quest. I wanted to be like you. When you took me on as aide I was so happy, and I was so fucking scared.”

  Remembering, Peabody let out a half laugh.

  “Those were the days,” Eve said, and made Peabody’s laugh full.

  “It didn’t take long for me to learn you weren’t a mythical figure, or the kind of hero who stun streams bounce off of. You bleed just like the rest of us, but you still go through the door. That makes you, and the rest of us who do the same, damn good cops. I learned I’d rather be a damn good cop than a hero. I learned I didn’t want to be like you. You taught me to want to be me. You taught me and helped make me a damn good cop because you’re the lieutenant.”

  Peabody pulled out her ’link to set up the meet.

  In short order Eve stood outside studying the spiffy little compact in sapphire blue.

  “What part of not flashy did you miss?” she asked Roarke as Peabody let out a happy woo-hoo.

  “You consider anything this side of ugly flashy. This vehicle is serviceable, handles very well, and has an excellent electronics package Peabody might find useful.”

  “Woo-hoo!” Peabody said again. “It’s uptown mag! For a serviceable vehicle I will treat with great respect,” she added.

  “Wait ten minutes after I’m through the gate before heading out,” she told Peabody. “If they’ve set up a tail, they’ll follow me, and you’ll be clear.”

  “Do you think I can’t shake a tail?”

  “How many times have you done so?”

  “Okay, but there’s always a first time. Which isn’t this time,” Peabody continued, “due to the delicacy of the investigation.”

  “That would be correct. Update me when you have something worth telling me. I appreciate the loaner for my partner,” Eve told Roarke, “and apologize if she drools on the upholstery.”

  “Go get your warrant.” He kissed her lightly. “I want to go play with my friends.”

  “Well, enjoy.” She got into her vehicle, shook her head as Peabody stroked the shiny blue fender and purred. “I like mine better,” she muttered, and drove off in her ugly but loaded DLE.

  When Eve walked into the sex club, Crack gave her what she could only interpret as the stink eye. Reo sat at the bar, chatting with him, looking like a lost ray of sunshine in the dim and dinge.

  “Sorry.” Eve set down the box she’d loaded from the buffet table in her office. “I brought you pastries—and real coffee.”

  Crack opened the lid, studied the contents. “Not a bad payoff, white girl. Plus, lucky for you, I like Blondie’s company. Give you some room.” He set another bottle of water on the bar and took his payoff box down to the other end.

  “I don’t get pastries?” Reo demanded.

  “Maybe he’ll share. Sorry I’m a little late. I got hung up.”

  “It better be good. I had to reschedule my nine o’clock. So, what’s urgent and confidential?”

  Eve opened her water. Reo was a curvy little blonde with a hint of Southern in her voice. She looked and sounded like a lightweight, a fact she used expertly to disarm, then skewer, defense attorneys, defendants, and opposing witnesses.

  “If you can’t move on what I tell you respecting that urgency and keeping a seal on the confidential, I can’t tell you.”

  “I can’t suck up urgent and confidential unless I know what I’m sucking up.”

  “Yeah, that’s the trick, isn’t it? Give me this. Do you trust your boss without qualification, without hesitation?”

  “Yes. He’s a good PA, a good lawyer, and a good man. Do I agree with him a hundred percent of the time? No. But if I did, it wouldn’t say much about either of us.”

  “That’s a good answer.” In fact, Eve decided, she couldn’t think of a better one. “If I ask you if you’ll speak to no one but him about what I’m going to tell you, what I need from you, can you agree to that?”

  “Yes. But I can’t promise to agree with what you need, or to recommend to him he agree.”

  “You will.” Eve took a long drink of water, then laid it out, start to finish.

  It took time. When dealing with a lawyer, Eve knew, everything tangled with questions, arguments, points of law. Reo took out her book, made notes, demanded Eve backtrack and go over already covered ground.

 
And all of that assured Eve she’d gone to the right person.

  “This is going to be a massacre,” Reo murmured. “And the blood that stains the ground is going to sink in deep. Everything she’s touched, Dallas, everything her squad’s touched is going to carry that stain. The legal ramifications ... arrests, confessions, plea bargains, convictions. Every one will go in the sewer.”

  “I know it.”

  “Oh, she’s going down. We’re going to take her down hard. I’ve had her on the stand. Her, Garnet, Bix, some of the others. Had them on the stand—witnesses for the prosecution. I’ve put people away who damn well deserved to go away, and because of this, those people get the door opened. She’s going down,” Reo repeated, her eyes like blue steel. “How many cops do you suspect she’s had executed?”

  “If you count Garnet—”

  “I don’t,” Reo snapped.

  “Okay then, two I’m sure of. I have what we’ve got for you.” She pushed a disc across the bar. “You’re not just here because the e-geeks want to try a new angle and we need the warrant. You’re here because I wanted you to be prepared, to give you time to start putting your end of it together.”

  “Believe me, we will.”

  “Reo, I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but I have to say it. You have to be absolutely, unquestionably sure of the judge you go to on this. She could have one in her pocket, or have a bailiff, a clerk. She could have somebody in your office.”

  “God, that pisses me off. It pisses me off that this makes me worry that might be true. I’ll go to my boss, and we’ll work this out. That has to be done first, so it’ll take some time to get that warrant.”

  “The e-work’s probably not a snap anyway.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  Alone, Eve sat at the bar for a minute, turning the water bottle in circles. Crack walked back down, took a long look at her.

  “Still working the hard one.”

  “Yeah. I want to be pissed off—mostly am. But now and again I lose that edge, and then I just feel sick.”

  “Maybe I say something, piss you off. Give you the edge back.”