by J. D. Robb
“It would.”
“If this is accurate—the bone structure, the shape of the face, the mouth? Mixed race, but I find myself influenced by the tone of her skin. If I had her skull on the table—”
“I’ll try to arrange that.”
“I wouldn’t blame you,” DeWinter countered, frowning at the sketch. “I wouldn’t be surprised to find Greek in the heritage. Possibly Turkish descent, but not recent. Diluted, as so many of us are, Western Europe—some Anglo-Saxon blood. Her body appears well proportioned. And all of that’s guesswork—most probable conclusions, based on a sketch.”
“I’ll take it. Keep that. Give it a glance now and then, and show it to your people. She’s going to be ordinary, someone who disappears into the scenery. But smart, bright, good at the work, whatever the work is. She has solid e-skills, patience. She’s obsessive, organized.”
“You’ve just described about half the people in this facility.”
So Eve went with the gut. “She probably doesn’t have friends. Even her coworkers don’t think of her when it’s time to go out, have a drink. She’s single, no romantic relationship. She knows my cases inside and out.”
“That narrows it a bit more. There’s a nice camaraderie here. It’s often ugly work we do, so that camaraderie makes it bearable.”
DeWinter studied the sketch again. “I can’t think of anyone, but I will think more. Is it true Nadine was attacked last night?”
“An attempt on her. She’s fine.” And thanks to whatever soother Summerset had talked her into, Nadine had still been out when Eve left the house.
“I don’t know her well, but I like her. I’m glad she’s all right.”
“She’s covered. Anything pops, anyone comes to mind, however out of orbit, I hear it. And . . . I don’t know you, really, but we’ve worked together. She’s going after people I know. You should watch yourself.”
“Well, that’s . . . harrowing.”
“You’re low on the list. You just haven’t been here long enough. But watch yourself anyway.”
“Happy New Year,” Peabody added as they started out.
“Thanks bunches.”
“Let’s hit Dawson,” Eve said, “then we’ll go by the morgue, run it through with Morris.” She checked the time as they walked. “That bar’s not going to be open for hours. We work the searches back at Central until. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
• • •
Dawson had a desk twice the size of Eve’s. It occurred to her when she noted all the glass vials holding insects, bone fragments, soils, stones, and what might have been a decimated fish of some sort she’d never actually been in his office before.
Names, locations, tasks, techs, investigators—including her—covered his board. A wide shelf under a glow light held several odd-looking plants.
He raised his face from a scope, noted the direction of Eve’s glance. “Carnivorous plants. A hobby of mine.”
“You have meat-eating plants in your office?”
“Frrrosty,” was Peabody’s take as she moved closer to study them.
“Can’t have them at home. My wife laid down the law on it. It’s not like they eat people.” He smiled broadly. “Yet. I’m playing around with a hybrid.”
“I’ll remember that should I have to arrest you for aiding and abetting homicidal vegetation. Recognize her?”
She handed him the sketch.
“This is the one who did Bastwick, Ledo. Heard she tried for Nadine Furst last night. Word travels.” He held the sketch out at arm’s length. “Haven’t gotten in to get my eyes fixed.”
He squinted at it.
“Looks like a lot of anybodies.”
She repeated the routine she’d done with the others. Single, ordinary, bright, organized, and so on.
“You’re not bright, organized, and a little obsessive, you don’t stay on my team for long. I know my people pretty good, Dallas. And that bleeds over to the other departments.”
“Anybody particularly interested in my cases?”
“See that board? We cover every-fricking-body. Not to say we don’t dig in. The one you worked with DeWinter? Everybody got invested in that.” He swiveled gently in his chair, obviously comfortable with his decimated fish and carnivorous plants. “You find the remains of twelve kids? I don’t work with people who don’t get invested in something like that.”
“Think about it,” she asked him. “Post that where people can see it.”
Where, Eve thought, she can see it if she’s here.
• • •
She wasn’t there, or at the morgue, or in a cube or on a crime scene.
She’d taken a personal day—the first in more than two years. The work she did now, the most important work she’d ever done, ever would do, needed the time. Needed her focus.
She worked through the pain, leery of blockers. But she coated her burned wrist with ointment, carefully wrapped it.
Pain was nothing, really, but the body’s reaction, even a warning. Purpose outweighed pain.
True, she’d broken down twice in tears. The pain in her body, the pain in her heart. Fear that eked in through the purpose. But the purpose stiffened her resolve, dried the tears.
Everything ended. She knew that, accepted that. Life was a cycle, one that couldn’t refresh until it ended.
So she would end it. Purge, purify, destroy to rebuild.
Careful of her wrist, she shrugged into the combat vest she’d worked on for most of the night. It fit well—heavy, of course, with the charges she wired in.
Still work to be done, but for what else she needed, it had to be Central. She knew just how to get through, get the rest, get it done. In just a few hours, she thought, and turned to the mirror.
She’d added one set of lifts to bring her height up to match Eve’s. She’d had her eyes done professionally, and would no longer need the dulling contacts for work.
That part of her life was already over.
She’d done the hair herself, and it was good. Short, shaggy, brown with lighter tones blended in. Just like Eve’s. All her sources said it was natural, that color. It hadn’t been easy to duplicate.
For over a year, she’d worked out rigorously, building muscle, killing fat. She’d been soft once, in another life. Now she was hard and strong.
Like Eve.
“We’re the same. You’ll understand that soon. There has to be payment for betrayal. Justice must be served. You can’t pay unless I pay. We’re the same. You’ll see.”
For now, she put on the dark brown wig, the blue contacts. Everything she needed was packed in the evidence box.
She put on her coat, hefted the box. She took the time to look around. The photographs, her equipment, her case board. Her life.
She’d never see it again.
It had been a kind of cocoon, she realized. A place where she transformed, in quiet, in safety.
Now she was ready to spread her wings and fly.
Eve stepped into the bullpen at Central.
“Listen up! I’ve got grunt work for anybody not on an active and hot, anybody who’s got some time.”
“We make time, LT,” Jenkinson said.
“Grunt work,” she repeated, “so I don’t want it pulling anybody away from a hot.” She nodded toward the handmade banner over the break-room door. “Stick with the motto. Anybody’s free enough, Peabody’s got the data.” She glanced toward Baxter’s empty desk. “Baxter catch one?”
“DB in Greenpeace Park,” Santiago told her. “He and Trueheart just left. Carmichael and I closed one last night. Wife paid her screwup of a lover a grand to off the husband. Guess she didn’t want to go through the trouble of a fricking divorce. The boyfriend rolled on her like snake eyes.”
“What?”
“You know, dice, roll the dice.” Sa
ntiago shook his hand to demonstrate. “I’m trying for colorful metaphors. Anyway, we’re pretty clear.”
Carmichael nodded. “We’re up for grunt.”
“Spread the joy, Peabody,” Eve said, and headed to her office.
She’d opted to take the results from a narrowing geographic search. Since the location was her hunch, she’d . . . roll the dice.
Why did they call it snake eyes? They were a dot on a cube. Snakes didn’t have dot eyes, so why . . .
“Stop it,” she ordered herself, programmed coffee, and sat.
After an hour at the grunt, she’d culled her list down to fifty-six possibles. Those she broke into two groups to start. Those with criminal records—any dings at all—those without.
Logically, the murderous type would have dings, even minor ones. But . . . instinct told her not this time. Following instinct, she was left with forty-three.
She closed her eyes a moment, considered.
Wannabe law enforcement—definite maybe.
Former law enforcement, retired or kicked. Also maybe.
Current? Also possible.
Current, she thought again, would equal easier access to case files. Then again, the UNSUB showed sharp e-skills, so some possibility the files had been hacked.
Separate again, she decided. Wannabes, former, current.
As she worked, Peabody came in. “I might have something. Loreen Messner. She’s . . . Can I?” Peabody asked, pointing to Eve’s computer.
“Go.” Eve angled back, gave Peabody room.
“She lives in Tribeca, so that’s out of the target zone, but—”
“That’s a hunch.”
“Here she is,” Peabody said as the image came on Eve’s comp screen.
“Familiar,” Eve noted. “A little familiar. I’ve seen that face.”
“She just hit the far edges on the facial recognition, but the ID shot’s nine months back—I checked. So maybe she lost a little weight in the face since. Hair’s long, but she could’ve cut it. Brown and brown, five-eight, a hundred-forty-two. She’s a bailiff at the courthouse, so you’ve seen her there. Her father was on the job, went down in the line three years ago. See here, her mother lives in New Mexico, parents divorced. She had the same address as the father, so they lived together. No sibs.”
“Bailiff,” Eve mused, and brought a picture of Messner—in court uniform—into her head. “Yeah, I’ve got her. Okay. Loses the father, the cop, the one who raised her. What happened to the cop killer?”
“Two guys, robbery. Officer Messner pursued on foot, and one of them bashed his head in with a bat, stomped on his face after he was down. The other flipped, got a deal. One went into an off-planet cage, the flipper got two years for the robbery—first offense—and got out in eighteen months.”
“That could piss you off,” Eve stated.
“I did a little digging. She’s been on post multiple times when you’ve testified. Dallas, she was the bailiff on the Jess Barrow trial.”
“That’s a lot of weight. Do you have a location?”
“She’s in court.”
“She definitely needs a talking-to. Print out the picture. Let me finish setting this last search up in case this craps out— Jesus, Santiago and his colorful dice metaphors. We’ll take the shot by the bar and grill on the way, see if they recognize her. This is a good pop, Peabody.”
“Feels good.”
• • •
While Eve and Peabody headed out from Central the woman they hunted for walked in.
She felt good. Resolved. Right. Her coworker’s ID scanned, logged her in as Charis Cannery.
Just a precaution. If the searches they ran spit out her real name, they wouldn’t find her logged in at Central.
She submitted to the body scan, the scan of the evidence box. Nothing would show. She knew how to mask any questionable items from a standard scan.
The timing couldn’t have been more in her favor. Security, just like everyone else, wanted the day over so they could go out, celebrate. And an official ID rang no bells.
Nobody looked at her. Nobody knew how special she was. How immortal she was about to become. It would happen, everything as it was meant to happen, in this house of law and order.
She took the elevator down, edging back into the corner out of habit. A woman in a red dress talked to a stocky uniformed cop about their plans for the big night.
She had plans, too. She wouldn’t spend New Year’s Eve alone, not this time. Not this last time.
She got off, instinctively hunching her shoulders to make herself smaller as she squeezed between passengers. Then she remembered why she was here, straightened, drew her shoulders back proudly.
She walked into the nearest restroom, checked all the stalls, then pulled off the wig—Charis’s color—shoved it and the contacts into the recycler.
For a moment, she studied herself, saw Eve.
But not yet, she reminded herself. She pulled on a black cap that hid the hair—enough of it—rearranged her scarf.
Then picked up the box again, almost forgetting her own name as she carried the box to Evidence.
She knew the cop on duty, but she’d prepared for that. He was old enough to be her father, friendlier than most. He smiled at her from behind his protective screen.
“How’s it going?”
“Oh, well.” Cameras on her now, cameras recording. But it wouldn’t matter. “I’ve got this to bring in, and I’m supposed to pick up the Dobey boxes. Ah . . . I’ve got the order here.”
She held up the order she’d meticulously forged, nudged it into the scanner. Then swiped the ID.
“Order’s verified. You got the wrong ID swipe—it’s Lottie, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I don’t know what you . . .” She turned the ID over, stared at it as if in shock.
She’d practiced.
“Oh no! I have Charis’s. She must have mine. We were in the locker room just before I left. She must have picked mine up by mistake.”
She lifted her face, looked into his eyes. “This is terrible. She’s gone for the day. She took personal time to get this party put together. What should I do? I’m supposed to take the Dobey boxes in for reprocessing.”
“No problem. Order’s verified, and I know you, so we’ll pass it through. Make sure you get in touch with Charis, and asap, get it straightened out.”
“Oh, thank you! I will.”
The locks buzzed, the glass door slid open. She let herself be Lottie—if she had mixed up IDs she’d have been flustered, upset. Mistakes were so awful. Mistakes were so upsetting. So she fumbled with the box, dropped the ID.
He was a nice man, as men went. She was sorry to hurt him.
When he bent to pick up the ID, she lowered as well. And drawing the stunner, dropped him.
“I won’t kill you,” she told him. “I could. It would be easy. I want to. It feels good to know I could. But I won’t. You’ll tell them how smart I was, how smooth. How I got in so easy. I want people to know. It’s time I got some credit.”
She restrained him, gagged him, set her wrist unit to alert her in thirty minutes. She’d give him another jolt, keep him out until she was finished and gone.
For now, she secured the doors, shut down the lights on the desk.
Evidence might come in, but it would be put in Holding until the lockers opened up again.
She knew how it worked.
She took the box, used the ID to access the next set of doors.
More cameras, of course, but the person monitoring them was currently unconscious.
So many things, she thought, scanning the long, high shelves. So much evidence of crime. And too many would go cold and dusty, with justice never served.
Wrongs never righted.
She knew what she needed here, systematically
climbed the ladder to the boxes she needed, rifled through them for components.
Taking off the vest, she began to work. With the right tools, the right skills, it really wasn’t that hard to create explosives. With some rudimentary calculations, she could—would—build a bomb vest that would take out all of Homicide.
• • •
Lolo took one hard look at the ID shot, shook her head. “Never seen her before. Somebody comes in here more’n once, I know the face. You come in three times, I know where you wanna sit, what you wanna drink. You eat that soup?”
“Yeah, thanks, it was good. So was the pie. Maybe she’s been in when you’re off shift.”
Lolo snorted. “Not likely. I’m here damn near round the clock. Go ahead, show it around, but she ain’t been in here, not more’n once anyway.”
Once they’d gotten the same reaction from the rest of the staff, Eve walked back out.
“You got pie?” Peabody demanded.
“Save it. Maybe she just got lucky, jumped into the place on instinct. I’m gaining, she’s looking for cover.”
But it went against the grain.
“Or she just looks different enough, made herself look different enough,” Peabody suggested. “What kind of pie?”
“Apple,” Eve said absently. “Let’s show her around in a few other places. If we can put her in this area, we’ve got more weight.”
But waiters, shopkeepers, the guy on the cart, all gave them thumbs-down.
Going with what they had, they tracked Messner down at the courthouse, had to cool their heels until the lunch recess.
“Flank her,” Eve ordered Peabody as they approached. “In case she tries to rabbit. Loreen Messner.”
“That’s right. Oh, hey, Lieutenant Dallas. Didn’t see you on the docket.”
It took only that, the casual acknowledgment, the relaxed shoulders, to tell Eve they were on the wrong path. But they had to follow it through.
“We’re here on another matter. You knew Bastwick.”
“Anybody works this courtroom knew Bastwick. Slick one. Sorry about what happened to her.” Messner snuck a glance at her wrist unit, reminding Eve she was on lunch break. “What can I help you with?”