“A writer, I’d say,” Peabody answered.
Samantha let out a half laugh. “Well, I guess so. I’ve made a list, everyone I could think of. People I’ve talked with about the book. Odd communications I’ve had from readers or people claiming to have known my great-grandfather.” She drew a disk out of her bag. The enormous one Eve had noted the day before. “I don’t know if it’ll help.”
“Everything helps. Did Tina Cobb know you’d be out of town?”
“I let the service know, yes. In fact, I remember telling Tina I’d be away and asking her to check the houseplants and my fish. I wasn’t sure Andrea would be able to stay, not until just a couple days before I left.”
“Did you let the service know you’d have a house sitter?”
“No. That slipped by me. The last few days in New York were insane. I was doing media and appearances here, packing, doing holographic interviews. And it didn’t seem important.”
Eve rose, extended a hand. “Thanks for coming in. Detective Peabody will arrange for you to be taken back to your hotel.”
“Lieutenant. You didn’t tell me how Tina Cobb was killed.”
“No, I didn’t. We’ll be in touch.”
Samantha watched her walk out, drew a long breath. “I bet she wins, doesn’t she? I bet she almost always wins.”
“She won’t give up. That comes to the same thing.”
Eve sat at her desk, input the data from the Cobb case into a sub file, then updated her files on the Jacobs homicide.
“Computer, analyze data on two current case files and run probability. What is the probability that Andrea Jacobs and Tina Cobb were killed by the same person?”
Beginning analysis…
She pushed away from the desk as the computer worked and walked to her skinny window. Sky traffic was relatively light. Tourists looked for cooler spots than stewing Manhattan, she imagined, this time of year. Office drones were busy in their hives. She saw a sky-tram stream by with more than half its seats empty.
Tina Cobb had taken the bus. The sky-tram would’ve been faster, but that convenience cost. Tina’d been careful with her money then. Saving for a life she’d never have.
Analysis and probability run complete. Probability that Andrea Jacobs and Tina Cobb were murdered by the same person or persons is seventy-eight point eight.
High enough, Eve thought, given the computer’s limitations. It would factor in the difference in victim types, the different methodology, geographic location of the murders.
A computer couldn’t see what she saw, or feel what she felt.
She turned back as a beep signaled an incoming transmission. The sweepers had been quick, she noted, and sat to read the report.
Fingerprints were Gannon’s, Jacobs’s, Cobb’s. There were no other prints found anywhere in the house. Hair samples found matched Gannon’s and the victim’s. Eve imagined they’d find some that matched Cobb’s.
He’d sealed up, and that wasn’t a surprise to her. He’d sealed his hands, his hair. Whether or not he’d planned to kill, he’d planned to leave no trace of himself behind.
If Jacobs hadn’t come in, he might have gone through the entire house without leaving a thing out of place. And Samantha would’ve been none the wiser.
She contacted Maid In New York to check a few details and was adding them to her notes when Peabody came in.
“Gannon had her quarterly clean about four weeks ago,” Eve said. “Do you know, the crew’s required to wear gloves and hair protectors? Safety goggles, protective jumpsuit. The works. Like a damn sweeper’s team. They all but sterilize the damn place, top to bottom.”
“I think, maybe, McNab and I could afford something like that. Once we’re in the new apartment, it’d be worth it to have somebody sterilize the place three or four times a year. We can get pretty messy when we’re both pumping it on the job-and, you know, doing each other.”
“Shut up. Just shut up. You’re trying to make me twitch.”
“I haven’t mentioned sex and McNab all day. It was time.”
“The point I was making before you stuck the image of you and McNab doing each other in my head, is Gannon’s place was polished up bright a few weeks ago and maintained thereafter. There are no prints other than hers, the maid’s, Jacobs’s. He sealed up before he went in. He’s very careful. Meticulous even. But, unless this was a direct hit on Jacobs, he still missed the house-sitter angle. What does that tell you?”
“He probably doesn’t know either the vic or Gannon, not personally. Not enough to be privy to personal arrangements like that. He knew Gannon would be out of town. Could’ve gotten that from the maid, or from following her media schedule. But he couldn’t have gotten the house-sitter angle from the maid or the service because they didn’t know.”
“He’s not inner circle. So we start going outside that circle. And we look for where else Cobb and Gannon and Jacobs connect.”
“Baxter and Trueheart are back. We’ve got conference room three.”
“Round them up.”
She set up a board in the conference room, pinning up crime-scene photos, victim photos, copies of scene reports and the time line for the Jacobs murder she’d worked up.
She waited while Baxter did the same for his case, and considered, as she programmed a cup of lousy station-house coffee, how to handle the meeting.
Tact might not be her middle name, but she didn’t like to step on another cop’s toes. Cobb was Baxter’s case. Outranking him didn’t, in her mind, give her the right to tug it away from him.
She leaned a hip on the conference table as a compromise between standing-taking over-and sitting. “You get anything more out of your vic’s sister?”
Baxter shook his head. “Took some time to talk her out of going down to the morgue. No point in her seeing that. She didn’t have anything to add to what she told you. She’s going to her parents’. Trueheart and I offered to go inform them, or at least go with her. She said she wanted to do it herself. That it would be easier on them if she did. She never met this Bobby character. None of the stoop-sitters or neighbors remember seeing the vic with a guy either. They’ve got a cheap d and c unit. Trueheart checked it for transmissions.”
“She-Tina Cobb,” Trueheart began, “sent and received transmissions from an account registered to a Bobby Smith. A quick check indicates the account was opened five weeks ago and closed two days ago. The address listed is bogus. The unit doesn’t store transmission over twenty-four hours. If there were ’link trans, to and from, we’d need EDD to dig them out.”
“Yippee,” Peabody said under her breath and earned a stony stare from Eve.
“You tagging EDD?” Eve asked Baxter.
“Worth a shot. It’s probable he used public ’links, but if they can dig out a transmission or two, we might be able to get some sort of geographic. Get a voice print. Get a sense of him.”
“Agreed.”
“We’re going to talk to her coworkers. See if she gabbed about the guy. But from what her sister says, she was keeping him pretty close. Like a big secret. She was only twenty-two, and her record’s shiny. Not a smudge.”
“She wanted to get married, be a professional mother.” Trueheart flushed as all eyes turned to him. “I talked to the sister about her. It, um, I think you can learn about the killer if you know the victim.”
“He’s my pride and joy,” Baxter said with a big grin.
Eve remembered that Trueheart was barely older than the victim they were discussing. And that he’d nearly become a victim himself only a short time before.
The quick glance she exchanged with Baxter told her he was thinking the same thing. Both let it go.