Big Jack Part 13

"You don't have a lead pipe," Peabody pointed out.

"I'll get one." She slid her eyes over as she drove toward the gates. "Why do you wear something that's wrinkled all to s.h.i.+t?"

"It's the natural state of the natural fabric. My sister wove this material."

"Well, why didn't she smooth it out or something while she was at it? And I can't believe how much time I waste these days discussing your wardrobe."

"Yeah. It's kind of frosty." Her smile turned to a frown as she looked down at her legs. "Do you think these pants make my calves look fat?"

"I can't hear you because something just burst in my brain and my ears are filled with blood."

"In that case, McNab and I will return to our rudely interrupted gooey talk." She yipped when Eve snaked out a hand and twisted her earlobe. "Jeez. Just checking."

Eve considered it a testament to her astounding self-control that she didn't kill either one of them on the way to Central. To keep her record clean, she strode away from them in the garage, nabbing the elevator alone. She had no doubt they'd have to exchange sloppy words or kisses before each separated to check in with their squad.

And judging by the sleepy, satisfied look in Peabody's eye when she strolled in, Eve a.s.sumed there'd been some groping added to the lip locks.

It didn't bear thinking about.

"Briefing in fifteen," Eve said briskly. "I have some new data and need to skim over it. I want to bring Feeney in, if he can manage it. To pursue one angle, we're going to need a person search that goes back over fifty years."

Peabody sobered. "The diamonds. We're looking for one of the thieves? Aren't they all dead?"

"Records would indicate. We're looking for the ex-wife and son of Alex Crew. They went into the wind shortly after the divorce and weren't mentioned in Gannon's book. I want to know why."

"Do you want me to contact Feeney?"

"I'll do that. You contact Gannon, schedule a meeting with her."

"Yes, sir."

After loading the disk Roarke had given her and getting coffee, Eve called Feeney's office in EDD.

His familiar, droopy face came on screen. "Seventy-two," he said before she could speak, "and I'm outta here."

She'd forgotten he had vacation coming up and juggled the time factor in with her other internal data. "Got time for a person search before you clock out with your sunscreen and party hat?"

"Didn't say I wasn't on the job until. Besides, you need a person search, I can put one of my boys on it." All his department were boys to Feeney, regardless of chromosomes.

"I'm looking for brilliance on this one, so I'm asking you to see to it personally."

"How much b.u.t.ter you got to slather on me to grease me up for it? I've got a lot of i i's to dot before I take off."

"It involves multiple homicides, a s.h.i.+tload of diamonds and a vanis.h.i.+ng act going back over half a century. But if you're too busy packing your hula skirt, I can order up a couple of drones."

"Hula skirt's the wife's." He drew air in and out his nose. "Fifty years?"

"Plus a few. I've got a briefing down here in about ten."

"The one you hooked McNab for?"

"That's the one."

He pulled on his lips, scratched his chin. "I'll be there."

"Thanks." She cut off, then opened Roarke's file to familiarize herself with the data. While it played, she made copies, added them to the packs she'd already put together for the team, made up another for Feeney.

And thought fondly of the days when Peabody would've done all the grunt work.

As a result, she was the last one in the conference room.

"Detective Peabody, brief Captain Feeney on the investigation to date."

Peabody blinked. "Huh?"

"All those things in your ears clogging your hearing? Summarize the case, Detective, and bring Captain Feeney up to speed."

"Yes, sir."

Her voice squeaked a bit, and she stumbled over the initial data, but Eve was pleased Peabody found her rhythm. It would be a while yet before she had the stones to lead a team, but she had a good, agile mind and, once she got past the nerves, a straightforward and cohesive method of relaying data.

"Thank you, Detective." Eve waited while Feeney finished up making notes. "Baxter, anything from the club on Jacobs?"

"No leads. She was a regular. Came in solo or with a date, with a group. Night in question it was solo, and that's how she left. Hit the dance floor, had some drinks, chatted up a couple guys. Bartender knows she left alone because she talked to him over the last drink. Told him she was in a dry spell. n.o.body she met lately did it for her. We got some names, and we'll check them out today, but it looks like a bust."

"Well, tie it up. Pursuant to the information gathered re Cobb, I flashed her picture around the restaurant Ciprioni's, where it's believed she had a date with the man we know as Bobby Smith."

"You went to Ciprioni's?" Peabody exclaimed.

"I needed to eat, I needed to follow up the lead. Two birds."

"Other people like Italian food," Peabody whined.

Eve ignored her. "I found the waitress who had their table in July. She remembers Cobb, and I've set her up with a police artist to try to jog her memory a little more on her description of Cobb's date. We can check the museums, galleries, theaters we believe they visited. Somebody might remember them."

"We'll take it," Baxter told her. "We've knocked down a few already."

"Good. Now that the media's announced the possible connection between these murders, our quarry is aware, almost certainly aware, we've made the link and are investigating concurrently. I don't see this as a deterrent to the investigation."

She waited a beat. "In your packs you'll find data relating to Alex Crew, one of the diamond thieves, and the only one of the four who demonstrated violent behavior. My source related that Crew had an ex-wife and a son. Both of these individuals vanished between the divorce and the heist. I want to find them."

"Crew might have killed them," Peabody suggested.

"Yes, I've considered that. He didn't have any problem killing one of his partners, or attempting murder on another partner's daughter. He'd done some time previously and was suspected of other crimes. He was into the life. Killing an ex wouldn't have been beyond his pathology. Neither would harming or killing a child. His child."

Fathers did, she thought. Fathers could be monsters as easily as anyone else.

"Dead or alive, I want to find them. We have their birth names, and their locations prior to their disappearance. Peabody and I will talk to Gannon this morning." She c.o.c.ked a brow at Peabody.

"Eleven hundred at the Rembrandt."

"It's possible she has more information on them gathered through her family or her research for her book. I also want her reasoning for leaving them out of that book when others are named. Feeney, you're on the search?"

"On it."

"Ah . . . Roarke has offered to a.s.sist, if necessary, as civilian consultant. As he gathered the current data for me, he has an interest in following through."

"Never a problem for me to use the boy. I'll tag him."

"McNab, I want anything you can get me off Cobb's d and c, her 'links. Gannon's and Jacobs's communications equipment are already in-house. Check with the officer a.s.signed to clearing those units."

"You got it."

"I've urged Gannon to consider private security, and she appears to be amenable. We'll keep a man on her as long as the budget allows. This perpetrator is very specific in his goal. Very specific in his targets. Both victims connected to Gannon. If he feels she's in his way, or has information he wants, he won't hesitate to try for her. At this point, we have nothing that leads to him but a fifty-year-old crime. Let's get more."

On the way back to the division, Eve watched idly as two plainclothes muscled along a restrained woman who weighed in at about three hundred pounds and was flinging out an impressive array of obscenities. Since both cops had facial cuts and bruises, Eve a.s.sumed the prisoner had flung more than curses before they'd cuffed her.

G.o.d, she loved the job.

"Peabody, my office."

She led the way in, closed the door, which had Peabody sending it a puzzled look. Then she programmed two cups of coffee, gestured to a chair.

"Am I in trouble?"

"No."

"I know I didn't handle the briefing very well. It threw me a minute, that's all, to do the stand-up. I-"

"You did fine. You want to work on focusing on the data instead of yourself. Self-conscious cops don't lead teams. Neither do cops who second-guess themselves every two minutes. You earned the s.h.i.+eld, Peabody, now you have to use it. But that's not what this is about."

"The clothes are . . . " She trailed off at Eve's stony stare. "Self-conscious again. Putting it away. What is this about, then?"

"I work after s.h.i.+ft a lot. Regularly. Go back out into the field to tug on a lead, work up various scenarios or do 'link or comp work in my home office. Bounce the case off Roarke. It's how I work. Are you going to have a problem with me not hooking you in every time I do?"

"Well, no. Well . . . I guess I'm trying to find the partner rhythm. Maybe you are, too."

"Maybe I am. It's not because I'm flipping you off. Let's get that clear. I live the job, Peabody. I breathe it and I eat it and I sleep with it. I don't recommend it."

"It works for you."

"Yeah, it works for me. There are reasons it works for me. My reasons. They're not yours."

She looked down into her coffee and thought of the long line of victims, and they all led back to herself, a child, bleeding and broken in a freezing hotel room in Dallas.

"I can't do this any other way. I won't do this any other way. I need what this gives me. You don't need the same thing. That doesn't make you less of a cop. And when I go out on my own on something, I'm not thinking you're less of a cop."

"I can't always put it away either."

"None of us can. And those who can't find a way to deal with that burnout get mean, get drunk or off themselves. You've got ways to deal. You've got family and outside interests. And s.h.i.+t, I'll say it this once, you've got McNab."

Peabody's lips curved. "That must've hurt."

"Some."

"I love him. It's weird, but I love him."

Eve met her eyes, a brief but steady acknowledgment. "Yeah, I get that."

"And it does make a difference. And I get what you're saying, too. I can't always put it away, but sometimes I have to. So I do. I probably won't ever be able to spin it around in my head the way you do, but that's okay. I'm probably still going to b.i.t.c.h some when I find out you went out without me."

"Understood. We're all right then?"

"We're all right."

"Then get out of my office so I can get some work done before we see Gannon."

She wrangled for a consult with Mira and after some heated negotiations with the doctor's admin, was given a thirty-minute during lunch break at Central's infamous Eatery. Eve couldn't figure out why anyone with Mira's cla.s.s would suffer the Eatery's indignities, but she didn't argue.

She managed, with considerable footwork, to delay her report to Commander Whitney until late that afternoon.

Another call included threats of doubtful anatomical possibility and a bribe of box seats at a Mets game. The combination netted her the promise from the chief lab tech of a full report on both cases by fourteen hundred.

Considering her 'link work a job well done, she grabbed her files, signaled Peabody and went into the field.

[image]

Peabody fisted her hands on her hips. "This is returning to the scene of the crime way, way after the fact."

"We didn't commit a crime, so technically we're not returning." Eve ignored the people who trooped or stalked around her as she stood at the corner of Fifth and Forty-seventh. "I just wanted a look at the place."

"Got hit pretty hard in the Urban Wars," Peabody commented. "Easy target, I guess. Conspicuous consumption. The haves and have-nots. All that fancy jewelry show-cased while the economy took a nosedive, illegals were sold on the street like soy dogs and guns were strapped on like fas.h.i.+on accessories."

She edged closer to one of the displays. "s.h.i.+ny."

"So three guys walk in, do a little switch-and-grab with the fourth, and walk out with pockets full of diamonds. n.o.body's prepared for it as the inside guy's long-term, trusted, considered above reproach."

Eve studied the window displays as she spoke, and the people who stopped to huddle at them, dreaming over that s.h.i.+ne. Gold and silver-metals; rubies and emeralds, and diamonds bright as the sun-stones. Since they couldn't be consumed for fuel, didn't keep you warm in the winter, it was tough for her to relate to the pull.

Yet she wore a circle of gold on her finger and a bright, glittering diamond on a chain under her s.h.i.+rt. Symbols, she thought. Just symbols. But she'd fight for them, wouldn't she?