Treachery in Death (5 page)

And it was better to give Peabody a little breathing room before opening the door to what would be an ugly and difficult process.

“She’s attractive,” Roarke commented, studying the ID shot of Oberman on the board.

“Yeah, and she has a rep for using it—and using her father’s rep. Just whispers—nothing said too loud. I ...”

Eve shook her head, then stepped out of the room.

“What?” Roarke asked when he followed her.

She kept her voice down. “If they’d found her, they’d have killed her. No way around it. She was right about that.”

“It must have been brutal, being trapped as she was.”

“We had this scuffle with these three assholes today, and one of them gives her a couple pretty good knocks. I told her she had heavy feet, needed to work on her technique, so what does she do? She goes down to that empty shithole of a gym. If it had tipped the other way, that’s where they’d have found her body. She takes a punch in the ear, and I can’t just say everybody takes a knock? I’ve got to tell her to work on it, to do better.”

“Because the next time she might take a knife in the ear. You’re not just her partner, Eve, you’re still training her. And you’ve done a damn brilliant job of it so far, in my opinion. She went down because she wants to improve, and yes, because she wants to meet your standards. It didn’t tip the other way,” he reminded her. “And if it had, though it makes me just as sick as you to think that, it would be on the heads of those bollocks excuse for cops. You know that.”

She sucked in a breath. “You’re still mad at me.”

“I am, and you’re still mad at me. But we both understand there are more important things just at the moment.”

They could count on each other for that, she thought. Count on each other to hold the line when it needed to be held. “So, truce.”

“Agreed. She’s precious to me, too.”

Because her eyes stung, Eve pressed her fingers to them. “Don’t pet me,” she said, anticipating him. “I need to hold it together.” Eve dropped her hands. “She’s counting on me to hold it together.”

“So you will.” He petted her anyway, just sleeking a hand down her hair. Then he gripped one of the short strands, gave it a hard tug.

“Hey. Truce.”

“See, you’re a little pissed again. You’ll work better.” He strolled back into the office.

She held it together, and in short order it took no effort. She simply fell into the rhythm of the work.

“We can’t look at their financials, even first-level, without sending up a flag. Much less go digging around for buried accounts and real estate.”

She caught Roarke’s glance, knew he was considering his illegal and unregistered equipment. No flags there. But she sent him a subtle shake of the head. She had to toe every inch of the line on this.

“If we go to IAB with this,” Peabody began, “with what we have, which when I look at it all laid out, isn’t really that much, it could bust open. It could give Renee—I can’t call her Oberman because it makes me think of her father. It could give her and the others time to rabbit, or cover, or ditch. They must have contingency plans, escape routes.”

“I can work that. I’m going to reach out to Webster.” Again she caught Roarke’s glance, the cock of his eyebrow. She supposed it was impossible for Webster’s name to come up in this particular room without both of them seeing Roarke beat the hell out of him.

“I’ll feed this to him, but with conditions,” she continued. “I can work that, especially if Whitney adds his weight. We want to keep this narrow for as long as we can.”

“Keener!” McNab punched a fist in the air, did a little spin in Eve’s chair that had his long, blond ponytail flying. Then he pointed the index fingers of both hands at her computer. “Found him. I did some crosses on some of her closed cases, mixed in others from here and there for cover, skimming wit lists and suspects like a standard search for—”

“Just give me Keener, McNab.”

“Keener, Rickie. Street name Juicy. I can’t dig to see if he’s listed as a weasel without the flag, but he’s got a long sheet. Possession, possession with intent to distribute, other petty shit, and he got busted for selling a primo case of variety packs to a couple of undercovers. One of them, listed as the arresting officer, is our girl Renee.”

“Put the data on-screen,” Eve ordered, and scanned it. “Look there, he gets probation, community service, mandatory counseling. That’s a deal happening there, that’s her turning him weasel as a get-out-of-jail card. With his priors, he should’ve done at least three solid. But he gets time served? Six years ago.”

“That’s how long she said she’d been running the business,” Peabody put in.

“So, this Keener could’ve been her springboard. Her way in.”

She paced in front of the screen. “He knows something. He has more, offers it. Hey, I can give you this and that, but you gotta get me out of this. Alternately, she’s already looking, already getting it off the ground and sees him as an asset. Either way, this is the turn.”

“He’s dead. She was really clear about that,” Peabody added.

“So, we find the body. If ‘her boy’ found him alive, we can find him dead.”

She paced a bit more. “Not in his flop. He was fixing to rabbit, with the money. He had another hole he thought was safe, secret. Take the locations of his busts, his flop, locations of his varied and bullshit employment. According to Peabody’s statement Renee said he hadn’t gotten far. Let’s map out his territory, run some probabilities on most likely locations for his hole.”

“We want to find the body,” Peabody began, “because you think the guy she set on Keener might’ve left some evidence?”

“It’s possible. Unlikely, but possible. We want to find the body, we want to catch this case because Keener’s our weasel now.”

“A con, Peabody,” Roarke told her. “You have the case, you have the controls. And what they’re banking on being an OD becomes a homicide investigation.”

“If I can work it,” Eve agreed. “Either way, she’ll have to come out and ID him as her CI—that’s procedure. If she doesn’t, we can give her a nice slap for it. And we can be bitchy, just by-the-book sticklers and insist on details of their association, information, times, dates—which should all be in her files. Gosh, we’re trying to find out who killed this asshole. A DB’s a DB in my Homicide Division.”

“You want to piss her off.”

“I’m counting on it, and I’m going to enjoy it. Get me the probabilities, McNab, then we’re going on a weasel hunt.”

“You want the body before you go to Whitney and Webster.”

Eve nodded at Peabody. “Now you’re getting it. Keener’s tangible, and dead he’ll be corroborating your statement. With the connection of the arrest to Renee, we’ve got more. She’s a decorated officer. She’s a boss, and a respected, hell, revered, former commander’s daughter. She’s got eighteen years on the force without a blemish.”

“And if I just blow the whistle on her, IAB may end up investigating me.”

“You don’t worry about that,” Eve told her.

“I won’t. I’ve leveled off now, and now I really want to pay her back for every second I was in that freaking shower. I mean, over and above bringing a dirty cop to justice.”

“Naked in the shower,” Eve reminded her.

“With nothing to do but give them an angry towel snap if they slapped open the door.”

“We’ll pay them back,” Eve promised, and looked over to where Roarke and McNab worked together. Roarke in his tailored dress shirt and pants, McNab in pink, multi-pocketed knee shorts and a buttercupyellow tank that sported E-DICK in screaming red letters across his skinny chest.

Geeks were geeks, Eve thought, whatever the wardrobe.

“Your map,” Roarke announced, nodding to the wall screen. “And your most-likelies.”

“Not bad. His type tend to stick to a certain area, to do their business within a handful of blocks where they know the score, the routes, the dodge points.”

“If he was going to rabbit, wouldn’t he move outside his usual turf?”

She shook her head, glanced at McNab. “Look at the time line from the conversation Peabody overheard. The heat’s up, and that says this screwup was fresh. The kill recently ordered and executed. Garnet didn’t even know about it. Add to that, ten thousand on the line. This had to move fast. From Keener’s sheet, he’s not a bright light. Smart enough not to go home, but not, most likely, smart enough to relocate outside his comfort zone. He hadn’t rabbited yet, so he wasn’t finished getting his shit together. We’re going to find him within this area, just like his killer did.”

She studied the map a little longer. “Eliminate anything he’d have to pay for. No tenanted apartments.”

The map adjusted to Roarke’s command.

She knew the area well enough, with its sidewalk sleepers, low-rent street LCs, funky-junkies, ghosts, used-up chemi-heads. Even the gang-bangers had given it up as not worth the trouble.

“I like these five locations. Two-man teams. We’ll get you a vehicle. A nondescript one,” she added when she saw McNab’s face light up.

He shrugged. “I guess it has to be.”

“It does. Roarke and I will take these two, Peabody and McNab these two. If we zero, we’ll converge on location five. We get nothing, we’ll widen the map again. Do either of you have a clutch piece on you?”

At the negative, Eve rolled her eyes. “We’ll get you that, too. There are some people in this sector who just aren’t very nice.

“We’ll seal up. I don’t want to leave any trace we’ve been there. Keep any disturbances to the locations to a minimum, and don’t talk to anybody. Don’t ask questions. Go in, go through, get out.”

“If we find the body?” Peabody asked.

“Get out, signal me, and get gone. We’ll meet back here where I’ll be getting an annoying anonymous tip about a dead guy. Records on, boys and girls, the whole time, so keep the chatter down, too. Records will be turned over to command and IAB.”

She blew out her breath as she studied McNab. “You’re not going on a covert op in that getup. Roarke, have we got anything we can put on this geek?”

“Actually, you’re more his size.”

Eve closed her eyes. “Jesus. I guess I am.”

She found jeans and a black T-shirt, and after she’d tossed them at McNab, closed the bedroom door so both she and Roarke could change.

“I’m partially sorry,” she said.

“Oh?”

“I’m partially sorry because I did start to tag you about being so late, then got interrupted and forgot. But I almost always remember, so I think I could get a goddamn pass on it.”

“I wasn’t angry, and I’m not angry about you not calling—particularly. I don’t give you grief about that sort of thing, Eve.”

“No, you don’t, but I feel guilty about it because you don’t.”

“Ah, my fault again.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“There goes the truce.”

“You could be partially sorry.”

“But I’m not, not a bit, for enjoying the evening with Summerset and his very interesting friends—who I’d never met before either.”

“You’re better at that than I am. And I’m just saying if I’d known I wouldn’t have come home with this other plan, and then had this to deal with.”

“What other plan?”

“I just ...” She felt stupid about it now, and dragged on her weapon harness. “I just thought we’d have dinner, that you’d have waited for me because that’s what you usually do. And I was going to pick it out and fix it up.”

“Were you?” he murmured.

“We haven’t had much downtime in the last couple weeks, and I had this idea that we’d eat up on the roof terrace—the works, you know? Wine, candles, and just us. Then we could watch one of those old vids you like, except I’d put on sexwear and seduce you.”

“I see.”

“Then I come home and you’re already having wine and candles and dinner on the terrace—not the roof one, but still. And it’s not just us, and I’ve got asphalt crap on my pants, and former criminals in my house—I figured. A couple of people Summerset’s probably already told I suck at the marriage thing, and come home with dirty clothes or trailing blood half the time. And I didn’t want to have to squeeze in and end up being interrogated.”

“First, you don’t suck at the marriage thing, and Summerset never said anything of that kind. In fact, he mentioned to them at dinner, when it was clear you’d be late, that you were the first cop he’d had contact with who worked so tirelessly or cared so much about real justice.”

He crossed to her now, cupped her face. “Second, that was a lovely plan you had, and I’d have enjoyed it, very much. And now, I am partially sorry.”

She touched his wrist. “If we put those together, it would be one all-the-way sorry.”

“It would, and that’s a deal.”

She kissed him to seal it, then stood for a moment, snug in his arms. “It’s a good deal,” she decided. “Now let’s go find a dead junkie.”

4

EVE GOT BEHIND THE WHEEL SO ROARKE COULD do more research with his PPC.

“Let me ask you this,” he began. “How many dealings have you had with Lieutenant Oberman?”

“None, really. I know
of
her, but we haven’t had any cases cross so I’ve never worked with her. Illegals has its own unique setup. There’s a lot of undercover work, some of it deep, some of it rotating. You’ve got squads who focus entirely on the big game—import/export, organized crime. Others stick primarily to street deals, others manufacturing and distribution. Like that.”

“There has to be overlap.”

“Yeah, and each squad is set up sort of like—what do they call it—a fiefdom?”

“I see, with its own culture and hierarchy.”

“Like that,” she agreed. “Uniforms and detectives reporting to a lieutenant heading that squad, with those lieutenants reporting to a smaller group of captains.”

“Which means a lot of politics,” Roarke surmised. “And when you have politics, you have corruption.”

“Possibly. Probably,” she corrected. “There are checks and balances, there’s a chain of command. Screening—regular screening not only for burnout but for use and addiction. A lot of the undercovers burn out, get made, or get a little too fond of the merchandise.”

“And would have fairly easy access to the merchandise,” Roarke concluded.

It rubbed her wrong, not the statement but that he seemed to expect and accept cops on the take. She knew it happened. But she didn’t, wouldn’t accept it.

“Cops have access to a lot of things. Stolen merchandise, confiscated funds, weapons. Cops who can’t resist temptation don’t belong on the force.”

“I’d argue there’s a gray area, but once you step into the gray, it’s a short trip to the black. Still, easy access,” he repeated. “A cop busts a street dealer, pockets half the stash. The dealer’s not going to argue about how much weight he was carrying.”

“That’s what the lieutenant’s for. To know her men, to supervise, assess. It’s her job—her duty—to stay on top of it. Instead she’s orchestrating it.”

“She’s betrayed her men, from your view, as well as her badge, the department.”

“In my view, she’s a treacherous bitch.” Eve shrugged it off, but it burned in her belly. “As for confiscated product, there’s an accounting division attached to Illegals that’s supposed to keep track of it, paraphernalia, payloads—as it comes in, as it’s used in trial, as it is subsequently destroyed. They have their own Property Room to handle it.”

“And a clever, ambitious woman like Renee could recruit someone from that accounting division to help her skim. Using that, her own squad, her father’s connections, to pluck the department’s pockets. Resell product listed as destroyed.”

“It’s one way. Another would be to deal directly with suppliers, manufacturers, even street dealers—negotiate a fee to keep their business running smooth.

“Have to pick and choose,” Eve considered. “You’re not going to make rank, even with a daddy boost, if you don’t close cases, don’t lock up some bad guys. She has to keep her percentages up—arrests that lead to conviction.”

She braked at a light. “How would you work it?”

“Well now, I’m not as schooled in the running of a division or squad as you.”

“You run half the industrialized world.”

“Ah, if only. But be that as it may, if I were looking for long-term profit—not the quick grab, but to establish a steady profit-making business in this area, I’d take a bit from each level. Street deals—that’s quick and easy, and with the right pressure and incentives you could establish enough loyalty and fees in the low-level runners to finance and establish the next level. Runners get their junk from somewhere else unless they’re self-reliant. And even most of those have to work within the system—fight for their turf or pay a fee to whoever runs the turf.”

“You’d need soldiers to go out, establish that loyalty and fear. Negotiators to move it up the levels. Six years?” Eve shook her head. “She’s got a network. Cops and crooks. Some lawyers she can flip if one of her crew gets squeezed, probably somebody in the PA’s office, at least one judge.”

“She needs a treasury,” Roarke added. “There would be palms to grease, other expenses.”

“It’s not just the money. It’s hardly ever just the money,” Eve decided. “She has to like it. The kick, the power, the dirt, the edge. She’s twisting and demeaning everything her father stood for. Stands for.”

“That may be part of the point.”

“Father issues? Boo-hoo. Dad was so busy being a cop he didn’t pay enough attention to me, or he was too strict, expected too much. Whatever. So now I’ll take my own badge and smear shit all over it. That’ll teach him.”

“I suppose you and I have little patience or sympathy for father issues that don’t involve violence or real abuse.” In understanding, he laid a hand over hers briefly. “But it may be part of this, and may be something you can work with.”

“Once I inform the commander and IAB, I may be out of it.”

“In a pig’s eye.”

She had to laugh. “Okay, I intend to fight—hard and dirty if necessary—to have a part in the investigation. I’m going to need Mira,” she mused, thinking of the department’s top shrink. “Her clearance will put her on board, and I want Feeney. We need EDD. McNab’s already in it, but he’ll need Feeney not only to give him the time and the space to work this, but to help.”

She eased along the mean streets now, where streetlights—when they worked—shone on oily piles of garbage, and deals for sex, for drugs thrived in the shadows.

“It’s going to be a fucking mess, Roarke. Not just the investigation, the media fallout when it hits. But the repercussions? They’ll have to review every one of her cases, and the cases of whoever she sucked into this. Retrials or just being straightjacketed into springing bad guys because of the old fruit of a poisoned tree. Taking her and her network down means opening up cages. There’s no way around it. I could kick her ass for that alone—after I strip the skin off it for Peabody.”

She pulled to the curb. Parking wasn’t an issue here. If you didn’t have weight in this sector, your vehicle would either be gone or stripped down to its bones if you left it for five minutes.

“Oh, forgot. The alarm works great,” she told him. “Some mope tried to boost it—when I’m barely fifty feet away. Landed on his ass and limped away without his tools.”

Like her he scanned the shadows, the deep pits of dark. “It’s nice to know we won’t be walking home from here.”

“Seal up.” Eve tossed Roarke the can of sealant, engaged her recorder.

“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Roarke,” she began, and listed the address. “Date and time stamp on record.”

The building had likely been a small warehouse or factory at some point, and scooped up in the rehab-crazed pre-Urbans. Since, it might have served as sorry shelter for itinerants or a chemi-den—probably both at one time or another.

The rusted and broken chain and padlock drooping from the door proved security measures had been half-assed to begin with, and long since breached.

But the shiny new lock caught her interest.

“Cold weather hole,” Eve said. “Nobody much wants to be inside the dirt and stink in high summer. Still ...” She nodded at the lock. “Somebody put that on recently.” She started forward, digging for her master.

The man who jumped out of the shadows boasted a half acre of wide shoulders. He bared his teeth in an ugly grin that demonstrated dental hygiene wasn’t high on his list of priorities.

Eve imagined it was his six-inch sticker and what he took as a couple of easy marks that put the grin on his face.

“Take care of that, will you?” she asked Roarke.

“Of course, darling.” He gave the man currently jabbing playfully at him with the blade a pleasant smile. “Something I can do for you?”

“Gonna spill your guts all over the street, then I’m gonna fuck your woman. Gimme the wallet, the wrist unit. Ring, too.”

“I’m going to do you a favor, as even if you managed to spill my guts all over the street—and odds are against you—if you tried to touch my woman she’d break your dick off like a twig then stick it up your arse.”

“Gonna bleed.”

When the man lunged, Roarke danced easily to the side, pivoted with an elbow jab to the kidneys. The responding
oof!
had the ring of surprise, but the assailant spun around with a vicious slice Roarke evaded with another pivot. He followed it by slamming his foot against the big man’s kneecap.

“Stop playing with him,” Eve called out.

“She tends to be strict,” Roarke commented, and when the man—grimacing now—lunged again, he kicked the knife arm, sharp at the elbow. Even thugs can scream, he thought, and caught the knife as it flew out of the man’s quivering hand.

“And here comes the favor.” No longer pleasant, no longer smiling, Roarke’s iced-blues met the man’s pain-filled eyes. “Run.”

As the footsteps slapped down the sidewalk, Eve watched Roarke press the mechanism on the sticker to retract the blade.

“If you’re thinking of keeping that, you’d better dump it in an autoclave first chance. Ready?”

Roarke slipped the knife in his pocket, nodded as he joined her at the door.

She drew her weapon, rested it across her flashlight, angling away so the recording wouldn’t show Roarke doing the same.

They went through the door, swept left, right.

She kicked aside trash to clear a path. Mold laced with stale urine and fresher vomit smeared the air. She judged the main source as a pile of blankets, stiff as cardboard and too hideous to tempt even a sidewalk sleeper.

“Clear the level.”

They moved in, sweeping lights, weapons. Doors, wiring, sections of floorboard and stair treads—anything that could be used or sold—had been torn out, pulled down, and hauled off, leaving raw holes, toothy gaps.

She studied the open elevator shaft. “How the hell did they get the elevator door out of here, and what did they do with it?”

“Mind your step,” Roarke said as she started up the stairs, striding over the wide holes.

On the second level she shined her light over broken syringes, bits of utensils, and pots eaten through by chemicals and heat. She considered the splintered stool, the tiny, scorched table, the shattered glass and starbursts of burns on the floor, the walls.

“Somebody had a little lab accident,” she commented.

She jerked her chin toward the bare mattresses stained by substances she didn’t particularly want to think about. Remnants of fast-food containers lay scattered where she imagined they’d been picked over by vermin of the two- and four-legged varieties.

“Living where they worked, for a while.”

Roarke studied the filth. “I can’t say I love what they’ve done with the place.”

She toed a discarded Chinese takeout container. “Somebody ate here in the last couple days. What’s left in this isn’t moldy yet.”

“Still enough to put you off your moo goo.”

“I think it used to be chow mein.”

She followed the amazing stench to what had once been a bathroom. Whoever had attempted to rip out the toilet had fallen victim to impatience or incompetence so the broken bowl lay useless on its side. They’d had better luck with the sink, and some enterprising soul had smashed through the wall and managed to cut out most of the copper pipes.

They hadn’t bothered with the tub, maybe daunted by the weight and bulk of the ancient cast iron. Chipped, stained, and narrow, it served as a deathbed for one Rickie Keener.

He lay curled in it, knees drawn up toward the bony chest coated with his own vomit. A syringe, a couple of vials, and the rest of his works sat on the lip of the windowsill.

“The victim matches the description and ID photo of Rickie Keener, aka Juicy.” She drew the print pad out of her pocket, holstered her weapon. Crossing to him, she carefully pressed the pad to his right index finger. “ID is confirmed,” she said when the pad verified the identification. “Roarke, signal Peabody. Tell them to break off. We’ve got him.”

She stood where she was, breathing through her teeth, letting her light run over the body. “This corroborates Detective Peabody’s statement vis-à-vis the overheard conversation in the sector-two locker facilities. Visual exam shows some minor bruising, arms, legs. Right elbow is scraped. A more detailed examination will have to wait until command clears the matter. My determination at this time is on-record verification only. To preserve clarity of investigation on Oberman, Renee, and Garnet, William, I cannot secure this scene, but will instead install a recorder for monitoring purposes.”

She turned to Roarke. “Can you put it above the doorway?”

“Already done. If anyone comes through here, your comp and your PPC will signal. You’ll be able to monitor the scene from any location you choose, until you officially open the investigation.”

“That’ll work.” She glanced back at the dead. “Let’s get out of here.”

Out on the street she took a couple of breaths to clear out the worst of the stink, then checked the time. “The scene’s as secure as we can make it, and there’s no point in contacting the commander at this hour. Better to get a couple hours’ sleep, and start the process in the morning. Dallas and Roarke leaving monitored location,” she said for the recorder, then shut it off.

“Fuck.” She breathed it out.

“Did you think we wouldn’t find him?”

“No, I knew we’d find him, but—like I said—a body’s tangible. No getting around it now. No stopping it. We have to take her down.”

She got in the passenger seat so Roarke could take the wheel. He gave her a few moments with her thoughts as he navigated the route back uptown.

“Have you decided how you’ll structure this for Whitney?”

“Straight, start to finish. Once Peabody chilled, her statement of events was cohesive, so we have that on record. By tomorrow, she’ll have steadied more, and she’ll stand up when Whitney questions her.”

“So you’re taking a couple hours down as much for that as to give your commander a full night’s sleep.”

“Maybe. Yes,” she admitted. “Off the record. We’ll lay out the steps we took to locate Keener, and show Whitney the record of the discovery. It’ll be up to him what comes next, but I’ll be able to present him with the most logical and practical plan. We have to keep the investigation taut and tight. It’s not just corruption, it’s murder. And Keener’s not the first.”