"I'd say the lady has a hard head. Jan?" He took out his memo pad. "Nurse at the clinic? I'll pick her up."
Eve slid her hand away, shoved it into her pocket as she battled impotence. "Will you let me know?"
His eyes met hers over Louise. "First thing."
"Good. Great. I'd better get out before I'm tagged." She stopped with her hand on the door. "Feeney?"
"Yeah."
"Peabody's a good cop."
"That she is."
"If I don't get back, ask Cartright to take her."
His throat closed, so he swallowed hard. "You'll be back, Dallas."
She turned, met his eyes again. "If I don't get back," she said evenly, "ask Cartright to take her. Peabody wants Homicide, she wants to make detective. Cartright can bring her along. Just do that for me."
"Yeah." His shoulders slumped. "Yeah, okay. Goddamn it," he muttered when she'd slipped out the door. "Goddamn it."
Roarke gave her the silence he thought she needed on the drive home. He was certain, in her mind, she was riding with Feeney and Peabody, standing beside the door of Jan's apartment, issuing the standard police order and warning.
And because she'd need to, kicking in the door.
"You could use some sleep," he said when they were home and inside. "But I imagine you need to work."
"I've got to do this."
"I know." The hurt was back in her eyes, the weariness back in her face. "I've got to do this." He drew her into his arms, held her.
"I'm okay." But she wallowed in him, for just a moment. "I can deal with whatever happens as long as we close this one out. I couldn't accept whatever I'll have to accept if we don't put this one away."
"You will." He stroked a hand over her hair. "We will."
"And if I start to sulk again, just slap me around."
"I do so enjoy beating my wife." He closed his hand over hers and started upstairs. "Best to use the unregistered equipment. I've had a unit working on searching for buried records at the lab. We may have hit."
"I've got the disc Louise made. I didn't give it to Feeney." She waited while he uncoded the door. "He didn't ask for it."
"You've chosen your friends well. Ah, hard at work." He glanced at the console, smiling slowly as he scanned the readouts from his scan of the lab at the Drake. "And it appears we've found something. Some interesting megabites of unregistered, unaccounted-for data. I'll need to work on this. He'll have covered this well, as he did his own log, but I know how his mind travels now."
"Can you run this on the side?" She handed him the disc. When he popped it into a secondary unit, then sat down at the main controls, she frowned. "Pop the Friend information on one of the screens. And I guess you want coffee?"
"Actually, I'd rather a brandy. Thanks."
She rolled her eyes and went to retrieve it. "You know, if you'd bring in some droids instead of leaving everything to that tight-assed snot Summerset – "
"You're moving perilously close to sulking."
She clamped her mouth shut, poured brandy, ordered coffee for herself, and sat down to work with her back to him.
She studied the data on Westley Friend's death first. There had been no suicide note. According to his family and closest friends, he had been depressed, distracted, edgy during the days before his death. They had assumed it was due to the stress of his work, the lecture tours, the media and advertising schedule he kept to endorse NewLife products.
He'd been found dead in his office in the Nordick Clinic, at his desk, with the pressure syringe on the floor beside him.
Barbs, she mused, eyes narrowed. The same method as Wo.
There were no coincidences, she told herself. But there were patterns. There were routines.
At the time of his death, she read, he had been heading a team of prominent doctors and researchers involved in a classified project.
She noted with grim satisfaction that Cagney's, Wo's, and Vanderhaven's names were listed as top team members.
Patterns, she thought again. Conspiracies.
Just what was your secret project, Friend, and why did it kill you?
"It goes deep," Eve murmured. "It goes long, and they're all in it."
She turned back to Roarke. "Hard to find a killer when they come in bulk. How many of them have a part in this or knew and turned a blind eye? Close ranks." She shook her head. "And it doesn't end with doctors. We're going to find cops, politicians, executives, investors."
"I'm sure you're right. It won't help you, Eve, to take it personally."
"There's no other way to take it." She leaned back on the desk. "Run Louise's disc, will you?"
Louise's voice slid out. "Dallas, looks like you owe me five hundred K. I can't say I'm positive what – "
"Mute that, would you?" Roarke picked up his brandy and worked the keyboard one-handed. "It's distracting."
Eve gritted her teeth, hit mute. This taking orders crap, she decided, had to stop. The sudden thought flashed that they might reinstate her but bust her down to detective or uniform. She barely resisted lowering her head to the console and screaming.
She took a deep breath, then another. Then focused on the monitor.
I can't say I'm positive what it all means, but I have some theories, and don't like any of them. You'll see from the records that follow that regular calls have gone out from the main 'link here at the clinic to the Drake. While we might contact some department there on occasion for a consult, there are too many, too often, and all from the main 'link. Rotation doctors use this office 'link. Only nurses and clerical staff use the main regularly. There are also calls to the Nordick in Chicago. Unless we had a patient who had used that facility and whose records would be there, we would have little reason to contact an out-of-state. Possibly, in rare cases, to reach a specialist. This same principle applies to the centers in London and Paris. You'll find only a few calls there.
I've checked, and the contact numbers for each facility are the organ wings. I've also checked the logs here for who was on duty when these calls were made. There's only one staff member whose schedule fits the time frame. I'm going to have a little chat with her after I file this. I can't think of an explanation she can come up with that'll satisfy me, but I'm going to give her a chance before I call the cops.
I assume, when I do, I'm to keep your name out of it. How about a bonus? We won't call it blackmail. Ha ha.
Get these murdering bastards, Dallas.
Louise.
"Didn't I tell you just to get the data?" Eve mumbled. "What the hell were you thinking, hotshot?"
She glanced at her wrist unit, calculated that even now Feeney and Peabody would be hauling Jan's butt into interview. She thought she would cheerfully give up a decade of her life to be inside that room and in charge.
No sulking, she reminded herself and began to scan the 'link logs when the one beside her beeped.
"Dallas." She frowned as she saw Feeney's face. "You get Jan into interview already?"
"No."
"You've picked her up?"
"More or less. She's about to be bagged and tagged. We found her in her apartment, dead and still fresh. Whoever took her out did it fast and neat. Single blow to the head. Prelim time puts it less than thirty minutes before we got to her door."
"Hell." Eve closed her eyes a minute, shifted her thoughts. "That puts it under that same amount of time after Louise regained consciousness. Defensive wound indicated she'd seen her attacker and could identify."
"Somebody didn't want Jan to talk." Feeney pursed his lips, nodded. "Follows."
"That puts it back at the Drake, Feeney. Wo's out. We need to find out where the other doctors on the short list were in that hour period. You've got the security discs and logs from Jan's building."
"Peabody's confiscating right now."
"He wouldn't have done it himself. He's not stupid. You're going to find a droid, six two, two ten, Caucasian, brown and brown. But somebody had to activate and program."
"Droid." Feeney nodded. "McNab hit something interesting when he scanned for data on the self-destruct units. Senator Waylan headed the subcommittee that studied their military uses."