“Fact: Devin wasn’t one of Renee’s handpicks. She was a newly minted detective, and according to our source—DS Allo, who strikes me as very grounded—she was solid. In my scan of her records, her evals were the same. Solid. Until assigned to Renee where they took a dip.”
“And that’s pattern with Renee.”
“Add in Mira’s profile, which says Renee has a problem with females. Conclude with another fact. Less than a year under Renee’s command, Devin goes down in a raid. The only officer to go down.”
“How did she go down?”
“The official report states she got separated from her team during the confusion and was found with her neck broken. Read the file, examine the evidence. Dig. Then I want you to tell me if Renee had Devin killed.”
“It could’ve been me. If they’d found me in that shower stall.”
“And you have to put that to the side and study, access, investigate objectively. If there was a cover-up, you uncover it.”
Eve engaged her ’link and contacted Webster.
Twelve
WEBSTER CLICKED OFF THE ’ LINK HE’D PUT ON privacy mode and looked across the table where he’d been enjoying a late lunch. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s not a problem.” Darcia smiled at him. “Do you have to go?”
“Soon.” He reached over, took her hand. “I’d rather stay.”
“There’s tonight. If you’re free, and interested.”
“I’m both. What would you like to do?”
“I happen to have two orchestra seats for a play—a musical. Broadway musical is on my New York checklist.” She lifted the glass of champagne she’d indulged in. “You weren’t. But I made an addendum.”
“Luckiest day of my life.” He was still riding on the thrill of it. “If I were to visit Olympus, what should I put on my checklist?”
“Hmmm, drinks rooftop of the Apollo Tower. The view is stunning. Horseback riding along Athena Lake, with a picnic in its young forest. Me. Will you visit Olympus?”
“Will you have drinks with me on the rooftop, ride with me along the lake, picnic with me in the forest?”
“I will.”
“I have some time coming. There’s something I have to wrap up first. Once I do, I’ll put in for it.”
“Then I’ll show you my world.” She looked down at their joined hands. “Is it foolish, Don, what we’re doing here, what we may be starting here?”
“Probably.” He tightened his grip on her hand. “I don’t care, Darcia.”
“Neither do I.” On a half laugh, she shook her head. “It’s so unlike me. I’m a practical woman.”
“And the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
She laughed fully, delightedly. “Your eyes are dazzled—I suppose mine are, too. I’m sitting here in this lovely restaurant in this exciting city, and all I can think is I’m sitting here with this handsome man who can’t take his eyes off me.”
“There’s nothing I’d rather look at.”
“Handsome, charming man,” she added. “But looks, even charm, are only the surface.”
“You’ve got an amazing surface, and I like everything I’ve found under it so far.”
“It’s only our second date,” she reminded him, and her eyes sparkled like her wine. “There’s more.”
“I’m looking forward to discovering you, Darcia. We don’t have to rush it. Well, hard to rush it anyway when we’ll be on two different planets—or a planet and a satellite—in a few days.”
“I like to take things slowly, carefully. The job, as you know, can be difficult, demanding, so in my personal life I prefer the uncomplicated.”
She lifted her champagne again, smiling at him over the pale gold bubbles. “I didn’t ask you into my hotel room last night because this—you and I—this will be complicated.”
“I’ve been taking a break from complicated myself, in the personal area. But I want to see you again, spend time with you. I want to see what happens next.”
“I’ve given some thought to what happens next. And since I know what I’d like that to be, I’ll be asking you into my room tonight.”
He smiled back at her. “I was hoping you would.”
With the data Webster passed to her, Eve ran an analysis of Accounting for Renee’s squad. Then an analysis of the analysis. The flood of numbers, the puzzlement of percentages gave her a headache. And still she couldn’t see a clear pattern. She couldn’t see enough to point a finger at anyone in charge of the accounts.
She toggled away from that—maybe if she let the numbers rest they’d make more sense to her—and took another sweep through Renee’s squad. There she believed she saw a pattern, where Detective Lilah Strong, a rookie uniform, and two other detectives stood as abnormalities.
She needs clean cops, Eve calculated. To handle the piddly stuff, to turn in legit reports—and as fall guys when she needs or wants them. Use them, then lose them. One way or another.
She thought of Gail Devin, glanced at Peabody.
Her partner was in it deep and would stick, Eve knew, no matter how long it took, no matter how many layers needed to be shifted through.
She looked at her board.
On one side, Rickie Keener. Loser, criminal, junkie, low-life pig. But he was hers now.
On the other, Detective Gail Devin, by all reports a good cop with good instincts—and with the moral code to talk to an older, experienced cop she respected about her concerns over her boss.
Two sides of the scale, Eve decided, but she knew—she knew that while Renee may not have plunged the syringe or snapped the neck, she’d killed them both.
Added to one side of that scale, Detective Harold Strumb—stabbed to death in an alley while his partner and a squad mate walked away unharmed.
They wouldn’t be the only ones. And unless Renee went down, they wouldn’t be the last.
She opened Allo’s case notes, began to read.
She liked his style—terse, even pithy, but thorough. She noted he’d questioned Sergeant Runch’s invoices regularly. And when she correlated with Allo’s file under Renee’s command she found the lieutenant’s notations citing him as malingering or conflicting with fellow officers.
Eve started her own file on Allo’s cases during the seven-month period, the invoices, the evals. Not wanting to disturb Peabody, she sent her a memo to do the same on Devin, and to follow it, as she was with Allo, with a probability analysis.
While it ran, she began to study the Geraldi files she’d forced Renee to send her.
She put it on hold when Webster came in.
“You’ve got something?” she demanded.
“Nothing major. Why?”
“You look like you’ve got something. You look happy.”
“I’m a happy guy.”
She waved that away. “What have you got that’s minor then?”
“Marcell—partner of Strumb, the one who went down. IAB’s got a file on him.”
“Over Strumb?”
“No. Deals with before that. They interviewed and investigated him over a questionable termination—five years ago. There were witness reports claiming Marcell fired on full, twice, after the suspect had dropped his weapon and surrendered.”
“The determination?”
“Cleared him. The witnesses were two other dealers, so their statements were given the fish-eye. The suspect did have an illegal weapon and had discharged it. Marcell stuck to his story. The suspect remained armed and was again preparing to discharge. Reconstruction couldn’t disprove. However, there’s a note in the file—the one I had to slide out without notification. A big, fat question mark. Updated after both wits met violent ends.”
“Like Strumb and those wits.”
“Yeah. Marcell had an alibi in both cases. Solid.”
“For the wits on Strumb, yeah,” Eve agreed. “Solid but bogus. What did he use on the wits on the older deal?”
“He was on a stakeout with another officer. Freeman, coincidentally.”
Webster dropped into a chair. “I know he’s wrong—Freeman, too. You know it. The pattern’s saying they’re wrong in big, shiny letters. But we’re not there yet.”