Leverage in Death: An Eve Dallas Novel (In Death #47)(22)

“If hurting them’s the motive, what’s the gain? Unless it’s not about gain, but bullshit screw the rich guys. Or revenge. And fuck me if it feels like revenge.”

She paced the board. “We’re going to dig down, particularly on Quantum employees—current and former. They picked Rogan for a reason. You don’t pick him unless you know him or know enough about him to make him a mark. Maybe there’s a cross in the Econo staff, so we’ll look for it. And we need to find out if anyone outside the two companies knew the exact time, date, location of this meeting. Was that publicized, Baxter?”

“All I read about it was they’d cleared the legal hurdles and it was likely to snap together some time this week.”

“So not in the media, but a lot of employees, and people talk. These two knew how much time they had, knew it was going down Monday morning, gambled—with damn good odds—Rogan would do what they told him to do. At the same time, if he didn’t, they built the plan to walk away.”

“Lieutenant?” Trueheart didn’t raise his hand, but sort of lifted it from the table like he’d been about to. “Would the threat—the home invasion, the attack, strapping Rogan up and having him enter the building—even if he didn’t pull the trigger, wouldn’t it shake the companies anyway? Maybe nobody dies, but it’s bad media.”

“That’s a good point, Detective. If hitting the companies was the motive, if what Dabbling Baxter says holds, they’d have accomplished it. Not as hard, but yeah, bad media reports. Start by finding out who didn’t show up for work—right down the line. Peabody, get on that. Baxter, you and Trueheart get back in the field, wrap up more interviews.”

She turned back to the board. “Wait. Companies like that have food vendors and deliveries come in, right? Even if they have their own vending and break rooms. And they get package deliveries—messengers. Some of the execs probably use a car service. People sit in the back, babble on ’links. I’ll take that end.

“Move out. Peabody, get a lock on this room. We might need it again.”

When her detectives left, Eve pulled out her ’link and pushed her way through the winding process of speaking to Rudy Roe.

He sounded both sleepy and hesitant. “Uh, Lieutenant Dallas?”

“That’s right. I have a question. Did Paul Rogan, or your department, call in particular vendors? For in-office lunches or breaks?”

“Paul liked QT—Quick ’n Tasty. They’ve got a place on the lobby level. Elsa would bring him their muffin of the day at ten.”

“Elsa?”

“I don’t know her last name. Or can’t remember. She handles most of QT’s deliveries for Quantum.”

“Did she deliver to him directly, in his office?”

“Most of the time she’d just drop off the order with me. He came out or called her in sometimes, just to ask how she was doing, but mostly she’d drop off with me.”

“Okay. What car service did he use?”

“All Trans. I always requested Herbert as his driver.”

“Did he use All Trans this morning?”

“I . . . I don’t know. I can check.”

“I’ll do that. Can you tell me who generally made deliveries, which messenger or delivery company?”

“Quantum uses Global Express. For incoming, it depends on what that company uses.”

“Thanks, this is helpful.”

“Sissle. Sorry, I just remembered Elsa’s name. Elsa Sissle.”

“Even more helpful. Get some rest, Rudy.”

Pacing, Eve contacted QT, was told Elsa was out on a delivery. As she started to contact Global, Roarke came in.

“Peabody said you’d likely be here.” As he walked to her, he scanned the board. “A hard day’s work, Lieutenant.” And skimmed a hand down her back.

“I’d rather have a hard day’s work than a permanent day off, like the twelve on the board.”

“The twelve includes Paul Rogan, I see.”

“Dead’s dead.”

“And dead makes him yours as well.”

“Being a victim made him mine.”

“How is he a victim?”

“Let’s take it into my office where there’s real coffee.”

“Did you follow up your rodent soup with any actual food?” he asked as they started out.

“I was going to, but the goddamn Candy Thief found my stash.”

“Only in your world does candy qualify as actual food.”

“You eat it. It tastes good.”

They passed through the bullpen and into her office, where Roarke went to her AutoChef programmed two coffees, and a cup of chicken soup.

“When did chicken soup get in there?”

“When someone who loves his cop decided she might eat actual food if it was handy. You might check your own AC menu occasionally.”

“I programmed the candy as an alfalfa smoothie, but it didn’t work.”

“No one who knows you would fall for an alfalfa smoothie.”

He had her there, so she dropped into her desk chair, ate the soup while she gave him the high and low points of the investigation.

“So he killed himself and eleven others to save his family. How did they know he would?”