Salvation in Death (19 page)

“To eliminate the targets. But not, necessarily, to expose them.” She drank more coffee, her eyes narrowed on the board. “In fact, to expose Jenkins puts the business at considerable risk. No one with an interest in that business would want that.”

“There you are.”

“Let’s hope that’s the right track, or we’re going to be looking at some rabbi or monk or whatever in the morgue before much longer. Here comes Peabody, and she’s brought McNab.”

“You’ve got ears like a cat.”

Eve glanced at her sleep chair where Galahad sprawled for his post-breakfast, pre-lunch nap. “Depends on the cat. Reports,” Eve said the minute Peabody and McNab came in.

“Right here.” Her dark eyes still blurry with sleep, Peabody held up discs. “Please, can there be coffee, and food, and maybe a direct transfusion of massive vitamins?”

Eve jerked a thumb toward the kitchen as she crossed over to plug the discs into her machine. She sent copies to Mira and Whitney unread. She’d have to catch up.

 
“While your associates are scavenging, I have some work of my own.” Roarke tipped her head up with a finger under her chin, touched his lips to hers. “Good hunting, Lieutenant.”

“Thanks. Hey, you’ve got a lot of businesses to protect.”

He turned in his doorway. “One or two.”

“Zillion,” she finished. “The point being, you’ve got fail-safes and contingencies and whatever. Various people who’d do various things when in the dim, distant future, you die at two hundred and six after we have hot shower sex.”

“I’d hoped for two hundred and twelve, but yes.”

“And my guess is that you’d have Summerset in charge—coordinating. The one person you know you can trust to juggle all the balls, keep them in the air.”

“You realize that would mean he’d have to live to be about two hundred and forty, but yes. While I could trust you, I wouldn’t expect you to set aside your own . . . balls to juggle mine. Especially when you’re comatose with grief and contemplating the bleakness of your remaining years without me.”

“Right.”

“You’re still liking the manager.”

“We’ll see.”

She went back to her desk, ordered a full run on Billy Crocker. Both Peabody and McNab stepped back in with plates of waffles.

“Carbs,” Peabody said between forkfuls. “Energy.”

“Yeah, it’s a big day for energy. Billy Crocker’s a widower. His wife—only marriage—died in a vehicular accident six years ago. He has two grown offspring. One’s a professional mother, living in
Alabama
with her husband and two minor daughters. The other is on the EL payroll, and is married to a woman employed as a publicist for EL. He’s sitting more than reasonably pretty financially, even while pumping a full twenty percent of his income back into the EL coffers annually. His home back in
Mississippi
is virtually next door to Jenkins, while he maintains a smaller second home near the married daughter.”

Eve sat back. “He’s in charge of booking appearances, clearing the venues, scheduling all Jenkins’s appointments, securing his transportation—or working with the transportation head. To get to Jimmy Jay, you’ve got to go through Billy.”

“Second in command,” Peabody offered.

“Absolutely. Schedules his appointments,” Eve repeated. “I can all but guarantee that both Caro and Summerset know where Roarke is pretty much any given time of the day or night. If not precisely, they know how to reach him, anywhere, anytime. If he was ever stupid enough to cheat on me—”

“I heard that,” Roarke called out.

“They’d know. One or both would know.”

“So Billy knew Jenkins was . . . preaching to the choir?” McNab suggested.

“According to Ulla, the side dish, she and Jenkins had been saying hallelujah for nearly five months. Regularly. I’m betting Billy knew, just as I’m betting Ulla wasn’t Jenkins’s first conversion.”

“So we pin Billy on how much he knew and see what else we get,” Peabody added. “And we see if we can find previous converts.”

“Meanwhile, we’re running the Flores investigation on parallel but potentially intersecting lines. I’ve got the results of a run I started last night before the second homicide. I’ve got about a half-dozen Linos baptized at St. Cristóbal’s during the appropriate time frame, who have not lived in that parish during the last six years. On this first pass, I eliminated those who do, or those who are currently listed as having a spouse, legal cohab, or are incarcerated. If we don’t hit on this pass, we’ll do another with those eliminated. It may be he created a trapdoor cover ID that’s as bogus as he was.”

“A lot more work.” McNab polished off his waffles. “A lot more complicated. Just adding in the tax filing shit wouldn’t make that real practical.”

“So we hope we hit first pass. Can Feeney spare you if I want you on this?”

“I don’t know how he runs EDD without me, but if you ask, he nods, I’m yours. What about the ID search?”

“Can Callendar handle it?”

“She’s almost as good as I am.” He grinned. “And I’ve pointed her in the right direction anyway.”

“I’ll tag Feeney. Meanwhile, get down to Central and start contacting and interviewing these Linos.” She tossed him a disc. “If Feeney can’t live without you, just hang onto it for now. I have a copy. Peabody, with me. And if the two of you have to lock lips before parting ways, make it fast.”

Eve headed out so she didn’t have to watch.

But the rosy flush riding her partner’s cheeks when Peabody caught up told Eve there’d been more than a quick lip bump.

“Where first?”

“Morgue.”

“Waffles, corpses, and slabs. The cop’s trifecta. Did you get any sleep?”

“A couple hours.”

“I wish I could bounce on a couple like you do.”

“I don’t bounce. McNab bounces.”

“Yeah.” Peabody stifled a yawn as they walked out the front door. “I guess you plow, and I’m down to a crawl.” She flopped down in the passenger seat of the vehicle parked at the base of the stairs. “So, the side dish isn’t on your suspect list?”

“Dumb as a cornstalk. Roarke says sweet, and I guess I see that, too. Loyal, I’d say. She may be part of the motive, but she wasn’t part of the execution.”

“You said how we may intersect lines with the Flores case. But I don’t see it.”

“Why?”

“Well, I know it looks like they should cross, or merge. Same method, same basic victim type. Except they’re not basically the same victim type. And if it’s a killer on a mission, why is he keeping the mission to himself? Maybe the vics are connected in another way, but I can’t find it. I spent some time doing background on Jenkins. I just can’t see where he’d have run into the guy posing as Flores, where they’d have common ground.”

“You may not bounce or plow, but you’re crawling pretty well on a couple hours.” She made it nearly five blocks before she hit the first hideous traffic snarl. “Crap. Crap. Why do they call it rush hour when it lasts days and nobody can rush anywhere?”

She engaged her dash ’link to tag Feeney.

She’d barely finished securing McNab to the team when her ’link signaled an incoming.

“Dallas.”

“Lieutenant.” Mira’s admin sniffed on-screen. “Dr. Mira’s schedule is fully booked today.”

“I just need—”

“However, the doctor would be happy to discuss your current cases over her lunch break.
Twelve o’clock
. Ernest’s.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Be on time. The doctor doesn’t have time to wait.”

Before Eve could work up a scowl, the screen went blank. “Like I sit around and play mahjong all frigging day.”

“What is mahjong, exactly?”

“How the hell do I know? Am I playing it? Screw this.” If nothing else, Mira’s dragon’s attitude annoyed Eve enough to have her slapping on the sirens and going vertical.

Peabody
gritted her teeth and gripped the chicken stick as Eve skimmed over the roofs of honking Rapid Cabs and compact commuters, as she veered around the hulk of a maxibus, veered back around the dingy wedge of a delivery van.

“He’s still going to be dead when we get there,” Peabody pointed out in a squeak. Then huffed out a breath of relief when Eve landed the vehicle in a short span of clear road.

“Look at that.” Eve pointed a finger at one of the animated billboards running news headlines.

There, looming over the circus of Times Square, was Jimmy Jay Jenkins, choking out his last breaths, falling like a huge white pine under the ax.

“They’ll be running that clip for days,” Peabody predicted. “And any time they do a story on him for the next forever, they’ll run it. Whoever had the rights to that feed is now a really rich bastard.”

“Stupid!” Eve rapped her fist on the wheel, hit vertical again to zip over another, smaller jam. “Moron. Idiot.”

“Who? What?”

“Me. Who owns the fucking feed? Who gets the juice? Find out. Now.”

“Hold on. Hold on.” Concentrating on her PPC, Peabody stopped visualizing her own mangled body trapped in the police issue after a violent midair collision.

“If it’s not the church, I’m even a bigger moron. Why pass that revenue on to someone else? Even if it’s a different arm, it’s going to be the same body. It has to be the same damn body.”

“I get Good Shepherd Productions.”

“That’s a church thing. Good Shepherd. They aren’t talking sheep. Tag Roarke. He can get it faster.” Eve’s eyes stayed hot and hard on the road as she maneuvered. “Tag Roarke, ask if he can find out if Good Shepherd Productions is an arm of the Church of the Eternal Light.”

“One second. Hi, sorry,” Peabody said when Roarke’s face came on, and she thought, “Gosh, pretty.” “Um, Dallas wonders if you could find out if Good Shepherd Productions is part of Jenkins’s church. She’s currently trying to keep from killing us both in morning traffic, so she’s kind of tied up.”

“If the lieutenant had managed to read the data I added to her case file, she’d find a complete list of the various arms of the
Church
of
EL
, which include Good Shepherd Productions.”

“I
knew
it. Thanks. Later.”

“Okay. Me, too.” Peabody added a smile. “Have a good one.”

“The church is going to make a mint from that feed alone. If we need an estimate, Nadine could give it round numbers.” Eve threaded through traffic, pushing south. “So you lose your figurehead, and the main source of revenue. But you lose it in such a way that brings you an instant spike in that revenue—there is no downswing, no potential loss. But there is the potential, if you’re smart enough, to capitalize on that for years. For, what was it, the next forever.”

“Hey. I said that!” Peabody took a moment to preen—then another to exchange shocked stares with the glide-cart operator they skimmed by with the skin of a soy dog to spare.

“You’ve still got the family, and you’re damn straight you’ve got a replacement already in mind. Plus, your figurehead’s drinking and screwing around. That gets out, the money train’s going to take a long, unscheduled stop. But this? It’s win-win more.”

She rode on that, turning the different angles in her mind until she reached the morgue. Striding down the white tunnel, Eve pulled out her ’link to check one of those angles. Then stopped when she saw Morris standing in front of a vending machine. With Detective Magnolia Blossom.

The detective spotted Eve and Peabody first, and brushed back a silky lock of melted butter hair. “Lieutenant, Detective.”

“Detective,” Eve said with a nod. “You got one in?”

“No, actually, I was just on my way out. Thanks for the coffee,” she said to Morris, with a gleam in her deep summer blue eyes that made it clear she was thanking Morris for a lot more than a crappy soy product.

“I’ll walk you out. One minute,” he said to Eve, then moved with Detective Coltraine side-by-side down the echoing tunnel. His hand reached out, skimmed lightly down her back.

“Wow. They’re, like, touching. Oh, and look. She’s doing the head-tilt thing. That’s a definite invite. I bet they’re going to share a big sloppy one at the door,” Peabody predicted.

“Gee, you think?” The idea of the big sloppy one made Eve want to do a quick check of Detective Amaryllis Coltraine’s on-the-job record. Because the urge annoyed her, Eve put it out of her mind. “He’s a big boy.”