Beside her, McNab continued to rub her thigh, but his pretty, narrow face hardened like stone.
“I can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t risk it because I know if they see me, I’m dead. No way around it. But they leave, they never saw me. I got out, got McNab to get a cab and meet me so I could come here. So I could tell you.”
“Names?” Eve demanded, and Peabody shuddered out another breath.
“Garnet—she called the male Garnet. He called her Renee. Oberman. Renee Oberman. She was in charge.”
“Renee Oberman and Garnet. Description?”
“I didn’t get any sort of look at him, but she’s blond, between five-four and five-five, I think. She was wearing heels, but that’s about right. Caucasian. Strong voice—at least when she’s pissed.”
“Did they ever use their ranks?”
“No, but she said when she made captain, they were going to expand the business. She referred to it as a business several times. And they used to be lovers.”
“Did you run the names?” she asked McNab.
“Not yet. Peabody was pretty shaken.”
“She had somebody named Keener killed—said she had their boy take care of it, and that it would look like an OD. Keener’s a chemi-head, and one of their tools, contacts. He tried to rabbit on them, with this ten K. Garnet was supposed to have him on a leash, but he slipped. That’s what they were fighting about. They got the ten K, too—she let Garnet know that after she’d raked him down. And she was taking ten percent of his cut as a bonus for the boy, the killer. It was a business meeting.”
“Did you get the impression they used that space often for meetings?”
“No. No, the opposite. She was really peeved he’d yanked her in there, let him know there’d be no more meets there. Six years,” Peabody remembered. “She said she’d been running the business for six years. And the way she talked about ‘the boy,’ it was clear this Keener wasn’t the first kill she’d put him on.”
“Did anyone see you enter or leave that facility?”
“No.” Peabody paused, thought it through. “No, I really don’t think so. It’s like a tomb down there.”
“Okay.”
“Crappy report,” Peabody added. “Sorry. I’m jumbled.”
“You got names, a partial description, details of cops running a sideshow—sounds like illegals—and ordering hits. McNab, peel yourself off Peabody and run those names. Try the Illegals Division out of Central first. You’re going to find Oberman, Lieutenant Renee, there—I know who she is, but pin it. And pin this Garnet.”
“You know her?” Peabody demanded.
“I know who she is, and I know her father’s Oberman, Commander Marcus. Retired.”
“Jesus, Jesus, Saint Oberman? He ran Central before Whitney.” Every last remaining ounce of color drained out of Peabody’s cheeks. “Oh God, what did I step in?”
“Whatever it is, it’s a big, messy pile, so we take this slow and easy, and by the numbers.”
“Garnet, Detective William.” McNab glanced up from his PPC. “Second-grade, assigned the last four years to Illegals, out of Central, under Oberman, Lieutenant Renee.”
“Okay, let’s take this upstairs. McNab, you’re going to get me ID shots and any data on these two you can get without sending up a flag. Peabody, you’re going to give me a full, cohesive, and detailed report, on record. This Keener likely started out as a weasel for either Garnet or Oberman. We find him.”
“What do we do with this?” Peabody asked her.
Eve looked her dead in the eye, her own flat and cool. “We put it together in a very tidy package, and we take it to Whitney and to IAB. Other than that, nobody outside of this room hears a whisper of this until we’re otherwise directed.”
“Commander Oberman. He’s like a legend. Like a god.”
“I don’t care if he’s the second coming of Jesus. The daughter’s dirty. She’s a wrong cop, Peabody, and the blue line breaks for wrong cops. Let’s get started.”
“You haven’t eaten,” Roarke interrupted, smoothing a hand over Peabody’s hair.
“No, guess not.”
“She’ll do better with some food in her,” he said to Eve.
“You’re right.” She buried impatience as she’d buried the raging fury during Peabody’s report. “We’ll get some fuel, then we’ll lay it all out.”
“I got the shakes,” Peabody confessed. “After. They keep wanting to come back, but it’s better. I have to tag my mom, thank her.”
“For what?”
“I dropped my sweaty crap on the locker room floor, and I would’ve left it there if I hadn’t heard her voice in my head telling me to respect what belongs to me. If I’d left that ugly sports bra on the floor, they’d have seen it. They’d have found me. And I wouldn’t be here telling you Saint Oberman’s daughter’s a wrong cop.”
“Thank her in the morning,” Eve ordered. “Let’s get to work.”
Now Roarke draped his arm over Peabody’s shoulders when she rose. “How about a steak?”
“Really?”
He kissed the top of her head, made her flush. “Leave the menu to me. You’re a brave soul, Peabody.”
“My soul was scared shitless.”
He kissed her again. “You don’t want to argue with a man who’s about to fix you a steak.”
In her home office Eve set up a case board while Peabody and McNab ate. Roarke had been right about the food, the wine, the shoulder rub—all of it. He was usually on target about those things.
And it was better to give Peabody a little breathing room before opening the door to what would be an ugly and difficult process.
“She’s attractive,” Roarke commented, studying the ID shot of Oberman on the board.
“Yeah, and she has a rep for using it—and using her father’s rep. Just whispers—nothing said too loud. I ...”
Eve shook her head, then stepped out of the room.
“What?” Roarke asked when he followed her.
She kept her voice down. “If they’d found her, they’d have killed her. No way around it. She was right about that.”
“It must have been brutal, being trapped as she was.”
“We had this scuffle with these three assholes today, and one of them gives her a couple pretty good knocks. I told her she had heavy feet, needed to work on her technique, so what does she do? She goes down to that empty shithole of a gym. If it had tipped the other way, that’s where they’d have found her body. She takes a punch in the ear, and I can’t just say everybody takes a knock? I’ve got to tell her to work on it, to do better.”
“Because the next time she might take a knife in the ear. You’re not just her partner, Eve, you’re still training her. And you’ve done a damn brilliant job of it so far, in my opinion. She went down because she wants to improve, and yes, because she wants to meet your standards. It didn’t tip the other way,” he reminded her. “And if it had, though it makes me just as sick as you to think that, it would be on the heads of those bollocks excuse for cops. You know that.”
She sucked in a breath. “You’re still mad at me.”
“I am, and you’re still mad at me. But we both understand there are more important things just at the moment.”
They could count on each other for that, she thought. Count on each other to hold the line when it needed to be held. “So, truce.”
“Agreed. She’s precious to me, too.”
Because her eyes stung, Eve pressed her fingers to them. “Don’t pet me,” she said, anticipating him. “I need to hold it together.” Eve dropped her hands. “She’s counting on me to hold it together.”
“So you will.” He petted her anyway, just sleeking a hand down her hair. Then he gripped one of the short strands, gave it a hard tug.
“Hey. Truce.”
“See, you’re a little pissed again. You’ll work better.” He strolled back into the office.
She held it together, and in short order it took no effort. She simply fell into the rhythm of the work.