Treachery in Death

Nine

EVE CALCULATED SHE HAD TIME FOR A QUICK shower and change herself. She’d feel better and would be able to turn all the data, statements, and observations over in her mind while she scraped off the grunge from a dead man’s flop.

She began to turn them over even as she walked into the house, into the cool, into the beady stares of Summerset and the cat.

“Have I missed a national holiday? There must be celebrations in the streets for you to be home at this hour of the day.”

“I’m calling it Summerset Goes Mute Day. The city’s gone mad with joy.” She angled for the steps, stopped. “I’ve got a team coming in for a briefing.”

“So I’m informed. You’ll be serving pulled pork barbecue, a cold pasta salad, fresh tomatoes with mozzarella, and green beans almondine.”

“Oh.”

“Followed by peach pie à la mode and a selection of petit fours.”

“We’ll never get rid of them.”

“How is Detective Peabody?” he asked as she started up the steps.

She stopped, shoulders tense. “Why?”

“I’m neither blind nor insensitive, Lieutenant. She was very obviously shaken when she and Detective McNab arrived last night.”

“She’s steady. She’s fine. I also figure you know what goes on in this house, so you know we all went out, two separate vehicles, and came back late. You know Peabody and McNab stayed here, you know Whitney was here early this morning. The circuits are closed on this, closed tight.”

She might’ve been on the steps above him, but Summerset managed to meet her eye and transmit the impression he looked down his nose.

“I don’t discuss your professional or personal business.”

She ordered herself to throttle back. She knew he didn’t gossip. He’d hardly be the man Roarke trusted with, well, everything, if he was a blabbermouth.

“I know that. This is an extremely sensitive and layered investigation.”

“Involving Detective Peabody.”

“You could say. And that’s all I can say.”

“Would you tell me if she’s in trouble? I’m very fond of her.”

She knew that, too—and this time didn’t have to tell herself to throttle back. “No, she’s not in trouble. She’s a good cop. That’s why she’s involved.” Crap. Now she felt obliged. “Listen, I’m sorry I couldn’t spend more time with your friends last night.”

His eyebrows lifted, ever so slightly. “Perhaps it is a national holiday.”

“Anyway.” Leaving it at that, she continued upstairs.

“Go on,” Summerset told the cat. “I expect she’d like the company whether she knows it or not.”

Galahad padded, as briskly as his bulk allowed, after Eve.

In the bedroom, he bumped against her legs as she stripped off her jacket. So she crouched down to give him a rub that had his bicolored eyes slitting in ecstasy.

“I’m going to wrap her up,” Eve told him. “Wrap her up like a smelly fish. Wrap her up, put her in a box, and tie down the lid. Put her in a cage, her and every one of her murdering, cheating, lying, corrupt cops. Jesus, I’m pissed.”

She took a breath, another, as the raw anger she’d managed to cage the entire day threatened to break loose.

“Treacherous whore-bitch cunt using everything and everyone to feed her own pathetic needs. Abusing what she’d promised to honor. Twisting everything she’d been given, everything entrusted to her so she could stroke her bank account and her goddamn sick ego.”

She tried another couple breaths. “Really pissed,” she admitted, “and that won’t help. I should be more like you, more like my cat. Cool and sneaky.”

She gave him a last pat, then removed her weapon, the rest of her clothes. In the shower she let her mind empty, just empty out. And in that calmer space began to test the pieces, calculate the angles, arrange the steps.

Cool and sneaky, she thought again. Good tools when you were planning to take down all or most of a police squad.

Once she’d dressed, she strapped her weapon back on. Hardly necessary inside her own house, but wearing it would be more official. Another symbol, she supposed. And maybe, as silly as it sounded, it offset the casual tone of peach pie à la mode.

She hauled up her file bag and headed to her office.

The door to Roarke’s office stood open. She heard his voice, moved to the doorway. Whoever he spoke with, and whatever they spoke about, utilized the short speak of high-tech that eluded her. It was, she thought, like listening to a conversation in Venusian.

Whatever it was had to do with, she assumed, the weird schematics flashing on-screen—and if she was following the Venusian, the changes Roarke wanted to them.

“Put them in and run a new analysis. I want to see the results tomorrow afternoon.”

“I didn’t know you were here,” Eve said when he’d finished. “What was that thing?”

“What will be the new generation laundry unit.”

She frowned at him. “Like for washing clothes?”

“It’ll do a bit more than that. One self-contained, multi-compartment unit.” In his beautifully cut suit, he leaned back against his desk, studied the schematics with obvious satisfaction.

“It should do everything but tuck your clothes in your drawers and hang them in your closet. And if you want that as well, you could purchase the droid attachment.”

“Okay. I guess it seems a little mundane for you.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you ran out of clean underwear.” He crossed to her, gave her an easy hello kiss. “And people need the mundane every day.”

“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.”

“Yes,” Whitney agreed. “I expect she will.”

“I request permission, due to the evidence so far compiled, for EDD to install a tracer and recorder on her vehicle. It’s department issue, sir, and not her personal property.”

“So we slip around the need for a warrant.”

“Slip’s the word,” Webster put in. “She can give you grief on that at the end of the day. It’s questionable, and lawyers love questionable.”

“How about this? Her current vehicle experiences some mechanical problems. She has to requisition a replacement. When she accepts said replacement, she signs a waiver. Who reads those things? We cover it—carefully—and if she signs, she’s agreed to accept said vehicle as it comes to her.”

“That’ll work.”

“Feeney, who can you glad-hand in the vehicle pool to find out what gets earmarked for her?”

“I’ve got a couple guys. That’s not a problem.”

“Can you and McNab get to the vehicle, wire it up so it doesn’t show on a standard sweep?”

He tipped his head down, eyes narrowed on her. “I’m insulted you’d even ask.”

“Fine. Peabody, generate a standard vehicle waiver, and we’ll make a few amendments.”

“How are you going to decommission her vehicle?” Webster demanded. “Much less slip her the doctored form?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Eve told him, careful not to so much as glance at Roarke. “Feeney, just let me know, asap, when you nail down the vehicle—and you could use your geek magic to get me the exact location of her old one.”

He loved to watch her work like this, Roarke thought. How she laid it out, ran it through, timed it—even down to giving the nod for pie to relieve some of the tension in the room.

He looked at her board now, thought of how deliberately she’d added one name, one image at a time so each had its own specific impact. So each mattered as much as the next. Not one melded group of bad cops, but individuals.

Now, with the pie lending a less formal mood, she brought him into it. Clever girl.

“From the conversation between Renee and Garnet Peabody overheard, we know Garnet owns property—tropical, beachy. I’ve asked Roarke, as expert consultant, civilian, to try to locate that property. If Garnet owns a little tropical paradise and has gone to any lengths—perhaps illegal lengths—to conceal that ownership, it’ll help wrap him up. It may help flip him, if and when we need one of her crew to flip on her.”

“Not that I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Webster began, “but anything that scratches too deep at his financials, his assets—without the filter of a warranted search or IAB status, is going to alert him. Even with those, if he’s taken the precautions, he could catch wind of a sniff.”

“Which is why I’ll have to be very quiet about it,” Roarke returned.

“Listen, if you obtain any data by questionable means, the data becomes questionable when the lawyers start on it.”

“I’m aware of that.” Roarke angled his head. “I’m married to a cop. Would you like me to tell you how it might be done, Detective?”

“Go ahead.”

“One might, particularly as a businessman with many interests and investments in transportation, generate a kind of survey. And as an example, we might collect data on how many men, with a certain demographic, travel from New York to a tropical location more than three times a year—the same location. It might be worth our while to increase our transportation services to those locations, and offer incentives to that specific demographic.”

“Yeah.” Webster began to smile. “I could see it might.”

“As our services include private transports, and it always pays to offer perks to those who could afford them anyway, we’d look at those individuals, particularly if we found those individuals owned property. People who own multiple homes and can afford to travel to them regularly are excellent customers.”

“I bet they are. It’s a good angle. If you get a hit, let me know. I could work a filter from there, so you could take it down a few levels.” When Roarke lifted a brow, Webster nodded. “A filter sanctioned by IAB keeps it from edging into questionable.”

“Understood.”

“If that’s all for tonight, I’ve got to take off.” Webster pushed to his feet. “I’m meeting someone.”

“As pertains to this?” Eve demanded.

“No, as doesn’t pertain to this.” He shot Roarke a quick grin. “Thanks for the pie.”

“I’ll thank you, too.” Mira stepped up as Webster left. “I’ll have profiles on the other officers, get them to you tomorrow. I’d suggest you find a way to talk with members of the squad prior to Renee’s command there, get a sense from them.”

“It’s on my slate,” Eve told her.

When the room finally emptied of cops, Roarke leaned back on Eve’s desk. “Alone at last. And I suppose we’ll be leaving shortly so I can decommission Renee’s official vehicle.”

“I figured you’d enjoy it. A nostalgia thing.”

“It would be more enjoyably nostalgic if I stole it.”

She actually considered it for a moment. “No, it’s better to just take it out. But you need to do it so it looks like a regular—but severe—mechanical problem, not tampering. I don’t want her to be able to use it for, say, a week—and I want diagnostics to see it as a normal breakdown.”

“Well then, at least there’s a tiny challenge involved. I’ll need to change. While I do you can tell me how you plan to fix it so Renee signs your doctored waiver.”

“You should know when you need to run a con, you hire a grifter.”