Treachery in Death edahr-40

by J. D. Robb

  Over the next hour, Eve learned she didn’t much care for running an op via ’link. She preferred looking into the eyes of the men she coordinated, seeing in their faces their determination, their humor, their willingness to put it all on the line.

  When the end of shift came and went, she started counting down the clock.

  Step One, she thought. Louise.

  Renee, her face covered with weariness and worry, hurried toward the surgical desk. “I’m Lieutenant Oberman,” she told the nurse in charge. “I’m here to check on one of my people, Lilah Strong.”

  “Lieutenant?” Louise, still in her scrubs, stepped over. “I’m Doctor Dimatto, one of the surgical team. Why don’t you come with me?”

  “Is she out of surgery?”

  “Yes.” Louise kept walking. “Why don’t we go in here and sit down?”

  “Oh God. She didn’t make it? I was told she was very badly injured, but I’d hoped.”

  “She came through very well.” Louise gestured Renee into a small office, shut the door. “Her age and physical condition were on her side. There’s no reason she shouldn’t make a full recovery.”

  “Thank God.” Renee closed her eyes, sat. “We’ve all been so concerned. I’d hoped to get here sooner, but . . . doesn’t matter. Can I see her?”

  “I’m sorry. She can’t have any visitors at this time. Not even family. There’s a serious risk of infection, so we’ve had to quarantine her. In any case, she’s in an induced coma. She did suffer very severe trauma, and we want to give her body time to heal. We have her in the East Wing, on the eighth floor. It’s quiet and closed off from the rest of the wing. Infection is her enemy at this point.”

  “I understand. But is someone with her? If she wakes up—”

  “We hope to try to bring her out of the coma in about twenty-four hours. Meanwhile an ICU nurse will check her vitals and progress every thirty minutes. Rest, quiet are what she needs most now. She should be able to have visitors by this time tomorrow, or the following morning.”

  “Her room number? I want to tell her squad mates. And send flowers when she can have them.”

  “Of course. She’s in Eight-C. I’d be happy to contact you when she’s cleared for visitors.”

  “I’d appreciate that very much.” Renee rose. “Thank you for all you’ve done. Believe me, Detective Strong’s recovery is of deep concern to me.”

  “I understand. I’ll walk you to the elevator.”

  Louise walked her out, waited until the elevator door closed, then took out her ’link. “All right,” she told Eve, “I’ve finished my mix of lies and truth to this Lieutenant Oberman. If you’re done with me, I’d like to go check on my patient.”

  “Thanks, Louise.” Eve clicked off, updated her team. And thought: Step Two. Renee to Freeman.

  With a cat-smile of satisfaction, Renee slid into her car. When she was a block away from the hospital, she engaged her unregistered’link. “She’s in Eight-C, East Wing. Quarantined, checked every thirty by an ICU nurse. Critical condition, induced coma, outlook optimistic.”

  “Not for long.”

  “Finish what Bix started, and take her out quick and quiet, Freeman. I want it to look like complications from her injuries.”

  “I’ve got something with me. I’ve already scoped out the locker room. I can get in as a medical, add this juice to her IV. She’ll just go under. Like putting a sick dog to sleep.”

  “Get it done, then get over to Five-O. I want everybody alibied, just in case.”

  “Just need to set up a distraction so I can ghost in there. If I can work it fast enough, I could come back, help out with Dallas.”

  “No, do what I’m telling you to do. Nothing more, nothing less. Marcell and Palmer have Dallas. They should move on her soon. Contact me when it’s done. Text only. I don’t want to take a ’link call when I’m with my father.”

  “Whatever you say, Lieutenant.”

  Whatever you say, Eve thought, following the conversation through her feed. Add another count of conspiracy to murder on your plate, Renee. “You copy that, Dallas?” Feeney asked in her ear.

  “Every word. I’m going to shut down here, start the next phase.”

  “Keep your ass covered, Lieutenant.” Roarke’s voice sounded in her ear now. “I’m fond of it.”

  “So am I.”

  She shut down her comp, rolled her shoulders. Now, she got to play. Step Three, Dallas to garage.

  “On the move,” she said into her mic.

  She walked out of her office, through the bullpen, where Carmichael and two uniforms glanced up.

  “Good night, LT.”

  “Good night, Detective. Officers.”

  She took the glides, giving Carmichael and the uniforms time to move into position, time for her shadow to report she was on the way.

  She switched to an elevator for the ride underground, listened to Feeney.

  “They tweaked the other cars, so they’ll stop two floors above your level. Anybody planning on coming down to yours will have to wait or take the stairs. We got the source. Roarke’s redirecting the glitch. Armand’s going to expect to be blind, to hold until Marcell or Palmer gives him the clear. But we’ll have you here.”

  She nodded, and she walked into the garage when the doors opened.

  They couldn’t move on her until she’d reached her vehicle, uncoded the locks. Then they’d hit her from behind. If she was wrong about any of it, she’d take a hit.

  Hell, she’d probably take one anyway.

  Her bootsteps echoed as she strode to her car, entered the code.

  From behind, she thought again when she heard the faint, faint sound. Window going down, vehicle behind and just to the right.

  It happened fast. It happened smooth, and exactly as she’d hoped.

  Her men poured out from everywhere, weapons drawn. Now voices as well as bootsteps echoed. She took the hit—probably as much reflex as intent on the shooter’s part—and felt the spread of heat, the faint but annoying sting through the protective vest under her jacket.

  Her own weapon was out as she pivoted and saw Jacobson stick his right in Marcell’s ear.

  “Drop the fucking weapon, you fucking motherfucker or I’ll fucking scramble your fucking brains. Hands up! Hands where I can fucking see them, you fucking cocksucker. You fucking breathe wrong, you fucking blink wrong, and I will fuck you up.”

  While Reineke and Peabody dragged Palmer out the other side, Eve stepped back, let Jacobson deal with Marcell.

  “That was some very creative and varied use of the word fuck, Detective.”

  “Fucker.” Jacobson snarled it as he shoved Marcell to the ground. “On your fucking face, you fucking shit coward. Stream my lieutenant in the fucking back? Fuck you.”

  There was a distinctive snap followed by a scream.

  “I seem to have misjudged my step, Lieutenant, and stepped on one of this motherfucker’s fingers. I believe it’s broken.”

  “Could’ve happened to anyone.” She crouched down as Jacobson yanked Marcell’s hands behind his back and restrained them. “Your own partner. Detective Jacobson has already eloquently expressed my feelings. I can’t think of anything else to say to a cop who would take part in murdering his own partner.”

  “I want a deal.” Sweat poured down Marcell’s face as she stripped him of his badge, his com, his ’link—and the disposable.

  “I bet you do.” I’ll see you in hell first, Eve thought. “You’ll roll on Renee for me, Marcell? Roll like a good dog? Get him out of my sight. Both of them, separate cages, no contact. Read them their rights. Get a medical to treat this asshole’s finger.” She rose, made herself take a calming breath, then looked at her men, made eye contact with each and every one.

  “Thank you. Good work.” She leaned back against her car as her men hauled Marcell and Palmer away, and Peabody joined her.

  “Are you okay?” Peabody asked her. “I hear a stun stream can hurt through a vest.”
r />   “He had it on high. That’ll add a punch—through a vest and right into the charges against him. Feeney, get your team to take Armand. We’re clear here.”

  “They’re moving in now.”

  “Copy that. Time for Marcell to give his boss an update.”

  “We’ll do that here,” Roarke told her.

  “We’ll be heading up then. Let’s put the rest in play.”

  Step Four, she thought. Freeman.

  In the scrubs and ID he’d lifted from a locker, Freeman slipped up the stairs to the eighth floor. He prided himself on his ability to blend in, considered himself a human chameleon.

  He eased the door open, scanned right and left, then slid into the corridor and into the room across it.

  Machines beeped and hummed, monitoring whatever poor bastard lay in the bed. Staying out of the range of the camera, he slithered against the wall until he could aim the jammer he carried.

  Even as the alarm sounded he was out and into the next room before the ICU team came running. He repeated the process, grinning as the medicals ran by. He hit a third for good measure, then made the dash to 8-C.

  By the time they determined it was an electronic glitch, rebooted, did whatever they did for the poor bastards in beds, he’d have done what he’d come to do and be gone.

  He moved into 8-C. They kept the lights dim, he noted. Rest and quiet was the order of the day. Well, she’d get plenty of both where he was sending her. He moved to the bed, pulled out the vial in his pocket.

  “Should’ve kept your nose out of our business, stupid bitch.”

  Baxter stepped out of the shadows, put his weapon to Freeman’s head.

  “Who’s the bitch now?” Baxter said as Trueheart stepped between Freeman and Strong. “Who’s the bitch now?”

  “Freeman’s secured,” Eve reported.

  “They’ve got Runch,” Peabody told her. “And the accountant, Tulis, Addams. They’re rounding up her people like ducks in a pond.”

  “With Janburry and Delfino spending some quality time with Bix, I’d say it’s time for the finale.”

  Renee sat in her father’s study, loving him with every inhale. Hating him with every exhale.

  “You don’t know what it’s like working Illegals today,” she insisted, but kept her tone, her face respectful. “I can’t afford to throw a man to the rats because of a slip. And at first, that’s what I thought was happening with Bill Garnet.”

  “Renee, when one of your men uses the very thing you’re fighting against, you have to take action. You’re responsible for the code of your squad.”

  Go ahead, she thought, give me the lecture on Marcus Oberman’s standards . I’ve heard it all before.

  “I know that perfectly well. Loyalty is vital, you know that, too. I spoke with Garnet, kept it out of his file, but I ordered him to get into a program. It wasn’t until a few days ago that I began to suspect him and one of my other detectives . . . Dad, I have reason to believe two of my people were using my CI to obtain product—for use and profit. I have reason to believe they killed my CI before he could contact me.”

  “Bix.”

  “No, not Bix. Garnet was using Bix for cover. I think he might have tried to set Bix up for the fall. Lilah Strong.” She rose to pace. “She must have realized I was getting close. It must be why she tried to run today. Two of my people, Dad, betraying their squad, the department, me. Their badges.”

  She willed tears to sparkle in her eyes. “It’s my fault.”

  “Fault and responsibility aren’t always the same. Renee, if you believed this, if you had any evidence, why didn’t you so inform Lieutenant Dallas?”

  “I did.” She spun around. “Just today. She brushed me off, just brushed me off. She’s so focused on Bix—and me. She’s so damn self-righteous.”

  “She’s a good cop, Renee.”

  She’s a dead cop now, Renee thought. “Better than me, I suppose.”

  “That’s not what I said, or meant. You need to take this information to your commander. You should already have done so. You need to contact him and request a meeting, with Dallas included, and give them everything you know, everything you have on this.”

  “I wanted to be sure before I ... I’ve been working it on my own. My responsibility,” she reminded him, since it was one of his favorite words.

  “Dad, I think they got in deeper than Keener. He was just a weasel. I think they moved up, and it got Garnet killed. I have a line on that. I wanted to follow it through. I know it’s Dallas’s case, but for God’s sake, Dad—Garnet, Strong, even Keener, they’re mine, and I wanted to handle it.”

  “I understand that. Command can be lonely, Renee, and it can be hard. But you’re part of a whole, part of a system. You can’t step outside that whole, that system, for your own needs. You owe it to your men to show them true leadership. Two of your people went bad. Now show the rest there’s no tolerance, no half measures.”

  “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. I’ll contact the commander, request the meeting.”

  “Do you want me to be there?”

  She shook her head. “I need to do this on my own. I shouldn’t have brought you into it. I need to go, need to put my thoughts together. Thank you for hearing me out. I’ll make this right.”

  “I trust you will.”

  “I trust you will,” she muttered as she slammed her car door. It was just like him to lecture and pontificate, to give her that disapproving look because she hadn’t followed straight down the Saint Oberman path.

  He’d never know just how far she’d strayed, or how wide she’d beaten her own path. But now he was, again, a useful tool.

  When they found Dallas’s body, when Strong expired from her injuries, and she told Whitney what she wanted him to believe, dear Dad would confirm she’d told him all of it. That she had pointed Dallas toward Strong and been rebuffed.

  It was all falling neatly into place.

  She took out her ’link, pleased to see a trans from Freeman. Within seconds, though, she’d jerked her vehicle to the side of the road to read the text again.

  Can’t get to her. Can’t get near her. Surrounded by medicals. Bringing her out of coma tonight. Orders?

  “Goddamn incompetence. Do I have to do everything myself?” She beat her fists on the wheel until she could think.

  Abort, she ordered.

  Didn’t matter if Strong lived, she told herself. She would be discredited. Who’d believe a third-grade detective—and with evidence and doubt planted—against her lieutenant? Against Saint Oberman’s daughter?

  No one.

  They’d have to look at the safe, of course, when the traitorous bitch told them about it. Renee pulled back onto the road. They’d have to verify what the nosy bitch told them. So she’d clear out the safe, put in copies of the reports she’d put together with her suspicions and evidence linking Garnet, Strong, and Keener.

  She’d just tidy up the rest of this mess herself, and then, she thought, in a couple of weeks she’d be taking a well-deserved vacation.

  Twenty-Three

  RENEE WALKED THROUGH CENTRAL TO TAKE care of business. She wanted a long, hot bath—with the oils she’d bought on her last trip to Italy. And one of her bottles of wine from the vineyard she’d invested in.

  She could soak while she toasted Strong’s disgrace and probable imprisonment—and most important, most gratifyingly, the demise of Lieutenant Eve Dallas.

  Sentimental bitch wore a wedding ring, she recalled. Interesting piece, unique design. That would be a perfect item to pass to the scapegoat she had in mind—a particularly violent chemi-head who would pawn it at the first opportunity.

  It would be easy to pin Dallas’s murder on him, and Garnet’s.

  Loose ends snipped, she thought as she got off the elevator on her floor. Better, she’d find a way to be the arrow that pointed the investigators to the goat. That would erase any lingering tinge from the Garnet/ Strong problem, and very likely give her a littl
e boost toward those captain bars.

  Really, things were working out even better than she planned.

  She breezed through the night-security glow of the squad room, unlocked her office. She called for lights and went straight to the portrait.

  “Screw you and everything you stand for.”

  She lifted the frame, then spun around at the sound behind her.

  Eve swiveled the chair around, smiled. “That’s not a nice way to talk to your father, Renee. Gosh, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “What are you doing in my office? My locked office? You have no right—”

  “You’re fast on your feet. I’ll give you that. Faster than the dogs you sicced on me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Please, Renee, they rolled all over you. Marcell was crying for a deal before we had the cuffs on him, and Palmer wasn’t far behind. And even without that?” Eve reached out, tapped her recorder.

  Renee’s voice filled the room, arranging for Eve’s death, for Lilah’s.

  “Detective Strong’s fine, by the way. Freeman? Not really. He’s pondering his options from a cage right now, like the pitiful pair you ordered to kill me. So’re Armand, Bix, Manford, and at last count five more of your motley crew. You are so completely fucked.”

  “You’re bluffing, or you wouldn’t be here alone. So I believe I’ll just contact—”

  Eve drew her weapon, aimed it at the middle button of Renee’s power suit jacket. “You’re going to want to pull that piece out very slowly, then set it on the desk and step away. I know you’ve never terminated anyone. Never so much as fired that weapon in your bag or any other—at least not on record. I have, and trust me when I say I wouldn’t hesitate to put you on the ground.”

  Renee threw the purse on the desk. “You think you’ve won this? You think I can’t fix this?”

  “That’s right. I think I’ve won this. I think you can’t fix this.”

  “You haven’t; and I will. It’s your head that’ll roll.”