Brotherhood in Death (In Death #42)(83)

“‘Come home,’” Eve murmured.

“Got your field kit.” McNab brought it in, set it beside the box. “We could scan that thing and work on getting it open back at Central.”

“Give me a minute.”

From the field kit, Eve took a small leather wallet (a gift from Roarke), opened it, and selected lock picks.

“Extra frosted,” was McNab’s opinion.

“We’ll see about that.” She went to work and, as Roarke had taught her, used her ears, her instincts as much as the feel.

“Step back.” Annoyed, she rolled her shoulders. “You’re crowding me. Just stop breathing all over me.”

Maybe Roarke would have had it open in a finger snap, but she felt enormous satisfaction when after three struggling minutes, the lock fell.

“New skills,” Peabody said.

“I’ve been practicing.” Eve opened the lid, looked at the two large, old-fashioned keys and the two twenty-first-century key swipes resting on dark blue velvet.

“Little hidey-hole to hold the keys to bigger ones. Old doors,” Eve decided. “Those are too big for anything but doors—I think. And new doors.”

She used tweezers to pick up one of the swipes, turned it. “No logo, no name or code. Probably a code buried in it, right? Can you get that out, Feeney?”

“I’d have to turn in my bars if I couldn’t.”

McNab pulled a scanner out of one of the dozen pockets in his neon orange baggies, offered it to Feeney.

“Let’s have a look.”

Feeney ran it, frowned. “Got a shield, and we can break that down. This kind of code and protection? It’s probably a bank box or a secured area. He’s a chem guy, right? So maybe a secured area, lab deal. Let’s see the other.”

He repeated the process. “Shielded, but thinner—this isn’t the high-security level.”

He did something to McNab’s scanner that made it whine, picked up and put on Eve’s goggles. He scanned the first swipe again.

“Security code for the swiper. And . . . Can just make it out. LNB. FKB. Ah . . . 842.”

“FKB—Franklin Kyle Betz. LNB. That’s not the name of his company. Maybe a bank?”

Feeney nodded. “More likely. Too simple below the shield for a high security area. So, bank box, I’m thinking. Liberty National’s my best guess. They got branches everywhere.”

“And the number, that would be the box.” Eve nodded, looked ahead. “We’re going to need another warrant. Peabody, tag Reo. We need authorization, enough to pry out whether or not Betz has a box in the branches we’re going to be contacting. And the authorization to go into said box when we locate it. What about the other one?” she asked Feeney.

“Back up once. We take this in, we maybe can ID the branch. It’s too deep an embed for a handheld. Save you making half a million contacts.”

“Do that,” Eve agreed.

“And this one.” He repeated the process. “Got his initials again, and numbers: 5206.”

“Just that? But not another bank?”

“Doesn’t read bank to me. Maybe a mail drop or a locker. Or an address. People lose their swipe, they cancel, get another. What you don’t want is data embedded that leads somebody where it goes so they can use it before you cancel. We’ll take them back to the shop, see what else we can dig out.”

He looked back in the box at the keys. Studied them with his basset-hound eyes, rubbed his chin. “Those? That’s a whole different kettle. Lab might be able to tell you what kind of lock, give you the age. But location’s on you.”

“Yeah. I’ve got some ideas on that.”

She pulled Baxter and Trueheart in, continued to search the house while she waited for them. But her gut told her they’d already hit the mother lode.

She let them in herself. “Give me what you’ve got.”

“It’s not much. Lots of shock, and a few tears at Wymann’s offices. We got the warrant and Callendar and another e-geek came in to take the electronics. The admin says she thinks the biographer approached Wymann, maybe at a party. He made the follow-up appointment himself, had the admin put it in his schedule. She herself never saw the woman or spoke with her. It seems spur-of-the-moment.”

“Any sense he was dipping in the office pool?”

“Nope. But Trueheart turned his earnest young detective’s face on the admin and eased a couple names out of her. No cross with your first vic’s ladies. We talked to both of them, and the alibis look solid.”

He looked around. “Is that a koi pond? Who has a koi pond twelve steps inside their front door? Then again, who has a fat baby orgy on their front door?”

“You haven’t seen half of it. Here’s where we stand.”

She gave him the progress.

“I’ve got to see this bathroom.”

“You’ll have time. The two of you need to sit on the house in case the killers decide to bring him back and hang him over the koi pond. I need to get back in the field, check out a couple leads. Most likely is they bring him back in after dark, but you sit on it, and I’m getting backup on the off chance they come before I can get back.”

She held up a finger when her ’link sounded. “Dallas,” she began, pacing away.