“One-twenty-eight a.m. on time of death,” he said. “On-scene examination indicates the fatal blow was a head wound inflicted with our old favorite—the blunt object. Nothing in the room, at my scan, matches. The other bodily injuries are older. Twenty-four hours or more. I’ll get you more exact once I’ve got her in my house.” His eyes stayed level on hers. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“I’ll let you know what I know when I know it.”
“Thanks.” Eve walked back into the crime scene, signalled one of the sweepers. “I’m looking, particularly, for a pocket or hand ‘link, her personal communication device.”
“Haven’t got one yet.”
“Let me know when and if.” She moved straight to the window, glanced back at Peabody. “We’ll go down this way.”
“Oh, man.”
Eve ducked through and out the window, dropped lightly on the narrow evac platform. She hated heights, freaking hated them, and had to wait a moment for her stomach to stop rolling. To give her system time to adjust, she concentrated on the platform itself.
“Got blood.” She hunkered down. “Nice little dribble of a trail. Over the platform.” She hit the release, watched the steps jut out. “And down.”
“Logical route out and away,” Peabody commented. “Sweepers will get samples, and we’ll know if it’s the vic’s.”
“Yeah.” Eve straightened, studied the access to other rooms on the floor.
Tricky, she decided, with the gaps, but not impossible if you were athletic or ballsy enough. A good strong jump would do it, which she’d have preferred over the tiptoe route along the skinny spit of ledge. Which meant the killer could have come from inside or outside the hotel.
But logic said in and out the emergency route. Down and away, to ditch the weapon just about any damn where.
She looked down, breathed through her teeth as her head went light. People crawled along the sidewalk below. Four floors, she thought. She probably wouldn’t pull a Tubbs if she fell, and kill some innocent pedestrian.
Then she crouched, examining a splat of pigeon dung. She cocked her head up as Peabody stepped out beside her. “See this flying rat shit.”
“What a lovely pattern, abstract yet compellingly urban.”
“Looks smeared to me, like somebody caught the side of it with a shoe.” She poked her head back in the window. “Yo! Got some blood and some pigeon crap out here. I want it scraped up and bagged.”
“We get all the class work,” one of the sweepers commented.
“Mark it, Peabody,” Eve ordered, then started down the zig-zagging stairs. “I want the hotel’s recyclers, and any recyclers in a four-block radius, searched. We got some luck there, it being Sunday.”
“Tell that to the team pawing through the garbage.”
“Emergency evac makes basically every room this side of the building accessible to the other. We’re going to want to take a look at the copy of the registration disc.”
“No security cams in the hallways, stairways,” Peabody added. “If it’s an inside job, why not just go out the door when you were finished?”
“Yeah, why not? Maybe you don’t know there aren’t any cams.” Her boots clanged on metal as she went down, and her stomach began to level out. “Maybe you’re really careful and don’t want to chance being seen by Mr. and Mrs. Tourist, who may be strolling in from a night on the town.”
At the last platform, she hit the second release, and the short ladder rattled out. Steady now, she swung out, used the rungs, then dropped to the sidewalk.
Peabody clambered down after her.
“Couple of things,” Eve began as they skirted around to the front of the building. “Lombard went to Roarke’s office on Friday to try to shake him down.”
“What? What ?”
“It needs to go in the report. It needs to be out there, up front. He met her, booted her out. End of story, but it needs to be up front. Sometime after that and several hours before she got bashed, she ran into trouble. It’s easy for both Roarke and myself to account for our time and our whereabouts at the time of her death, and should be just as easy to account for the period between her leaving his office and TOD.”
“Nobody’s going to be looking at either of you.”
Eve stopped. “I’d be looking at me if I didn’t know I was alibied. I wouldn’t be above smacking her in the face.”
“Killing her?”
Eve shook her head. “Maybe whoever tuned her up wasn’t the same person who killed her. Maybe she was working with someone, hoping to fall into easy money through Roarke. When she didn’t pull it off, he or she tuned her. It’s something to look at.”
“All right.”
“Here’s the deal.” She turned to Peabody and gave what she considered a statement. “We had a houseful of caterers and decorators and God knows crawling all over the house all day Saturday. All day. When Roarke has outside contractors on the premises, he keeps cams on, full. You’re going to contact Feeney, request that he pick up those discs, examine the equipment, and verify we were both there, all day.”
“I’ll take care of it. I’m going to repeat: Nobody’s going to look at you.” She held up a hand before Eve could interrupt. “Neither would you, Dallas, after five minutes. A face punch, sure. You’re not above it. And so what? But that was more than a punch that left her face messed up. More than a fist, and you are above that. She tries to shake Roarke down? Shit, she had to be bird stupid. He’d scrape her off like, well, like you’d scrape flying rat shit off your shoe. It’s a nonissue. Trust me, I’m a detective.”
“Been a while since you’ve managed to work that into a conversation.”
“I’ve grown mature, and selective.” As they rounded the corner, Peabody dipped her hands into her pockets. “He’s going to have to be interviewed, you know.”
“Yeah.” She could see him leaning up against the side of her vehicle— where had that come from—and working on his PPC. “I know.”
He looked over, spotted her. His eyebrows lifted, and he tucked his PPC away. “Out for a stroll?”
“You never know where cop work’s going to take you.”
“Obviously. Hello, Peabody. Recovered this morning?”
“Barely. It was a hell of a party.”
“Give us a minute, will you?” Eve asked her.
“Sure. I’ll go talk to people, and get those discs.”
When they were alone, Eve gave her vehicle’s tire a little boot. “How did this get here?”
“A bit of sleight of hand. I assumed you’d want your own.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“I contacted Mira, let her know what was going on and that you’d be tied up for a while.”
“Mira? Oh, right, right.” She shoved a hand through her hair. “Forgot. Thanks. What do I owe you?”
“We’ll negotiate.”
“I’ve got to ask you for one more. I need you to come down, make an official statement regarding your conversation with the victim on Friday at your office.”
Something sizzled in his eyes. “Am I on your short list, Lieutenant?”
“Don’t pull that. Don’t.” She drew a breath in, slowly. Released it, slowly. “Another investigator catches this, we’re both on the short list until we clear it up. We both had motive to cause her pain, and someone caused her plenty. We’re out regarding the murder. Can’t kill someone in Midtown when you’re partying with the chief of police in another part of town. Still, we’ve both got connections, and the wherewithal to hire somebody to do it.”
“And we’re both smart enough to have hired someone who wouldn’t be quite so obvious and sloppy.”
“Maybe, but sometimes obvious and sloppy is purposeful. Added to it, somebody busted up her face earlier. We need to cover that, too.”
“So, you don’t think I murdered her, but as for beating her up—”
“Stop it.” She jabbed a finger into his chest. “Hitting me with this attitude isn’t helping.”
“Which attitude would you prefer I hit you with? I have several available.”
“Goddamn it, Roarke.”
“All right, all right.” He waved a hand in dismissal. “It just pisses me off, having my wife interview me over assault.”