Obsession in Death (41 page)

“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.” Santiago 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?”

“You popped up on a search in the course of our investigation.”

“Me? On Bastwick?” Messner started to laugh, then sobered quickly. “No shit?”

“None. Make it easy all around, give me your whereabouts for December twenty-seventh, between seventeen hundred and nineteen hundred hours.”

“Easy. I was in Disney World with a couple friends. None of us have much in the way of family, so we took a few days, picked a spot, and went. Road trip. We headed out early Christmas Eve, came back on the twenty-seventh – didn’t get back to New York until about seven that night, took turns at the wheel, then caught dinner. I’ll give you the names and contacts, the hotel we booked, whatever.”

“I’d appreciate it. Cover it all, will you? The morning of December twenty-ninth around six hundred hours.”

Now two high red flags bloomed on her olive-toned cheeks. “Crap. We polished off the mini-vaca with some clubbing the next night. I met somebody, and she came home with me. She didn’t leave until about eight the next morning. Look, I’ve got her name and contact, but if she gets a call from the cops on me, it might screw things up. I really like her.”

“How about the evening of the twenty-ninth? About nineteen hundred?”

“I took her out to dinner. The Olive Branch, on Reade. Seven o’clock reservations. I’ve got the receipt on that, and they’d have the booking. Jesus, Lieutenant.”

“Just elimination, Messner. We’ll check the first, the last, and when they check out, we’ll leave out the middle.”

“I’d appreciate it. I don’t get how I popped in this.”

“It’s a broad search, and we’re following every lead. Give the contact information to Detective Peabody. And Messner, I’m sorry about your father.”

“He was a good cop. A great dad. Miss him every day. Okay, you want to talk to Marisol Butler,” Messner began.

“That bombed,” Peabody said as they exited the courthouse.

“We can cross her off, and that’s something. The alibis are going to hold, but check them anyway.”

She listened with half an ear as she drove and Peabody spoke with Messner’s alibis.

The check on health clinics had tanked, the first really promising lead, another tank.

She’d try again, Eve thought. She had to. Bigger this time? More violent, more bloody? Or would she go the other way, with the misses shaking her confidence? Go smaller, simpler. Go back to someone like Ledo, which was like stepping on an ant.

“That’s not what I’d do.”

“What?”

Eve shook her head. “I’d go bigger on my next target. Make a statement. She has to prove herself, to me, to herself. I let her down, right? I wasn’t who she thought I was, who she wanted me to be. All that time and emotion invested, and I screw with her. She should come after me now.”

“It’s a big jump to you. She profiles as a coward.”

“People evolve.”

And things change, she remembered, no matter how hard you try to hold them in place.

“She didn’t run from Nadine – not until she was hurt. Now she’s been wounded in battle. She didn’t go crawling away, and I’d say that’s some evolution, but headed straight over to Jamie’s, tried for another. She’s found her passion, her courage. She should come after me.”

Eve pulled into Central. “Keep running the search. Pull anybody who looks good. We follow up. We’ll take the top five, say, from everybody’s results. Scattershot, but we’ll cover it.

“We’re not wrong on this,” she added as they rode up the elevator. “I can almost see her.”

“If I wanted to do something big, I’d do it tonight. Times Square.”

“For what? Oh, right, right. New Year’s Eve. Ball drop.” Mavis, she thought, and felt her stomach clutch. “Too much security. Cameras and people everywhere. But… if you’re going big, you want that, don’t you? You want to prove you can get through security, you’re not afraid of crowds, of cameras.”

“You’d go big, but trying something like that? Something in front of, basically, the world? Suicide mission.”

“You’d be important,” Eve considered, rolling it through as they pushed off the elevator. “Is that what she’s been missing? She’s not important to anyone. She was supposed to be important to me, but I twisted that on her.