Obsession in Death(110)

Still work to be done, but for what else she needed, it had to be Central. She knew just how to get through, get the rest, get it done. In just a few hours, she thought, and turned to the mirror.

She’d added one set of lifts to bring her height up to match Eve’s. She’d had her eyes done professionally, and would no longer need the dulling contacts for work.

That part of her life was already over.

She’d done the hair herself, and it was good. Short, shaggy, brown with lighter tones blended in. Just like Eve’s. All her sources said it was natural, that color. It hadn’t been easy to duplicate.

For over a year, she’d worked out rigorously, building muscle, killing fat. She’d been soft once, in another life. Now she was hard and strong.

Like Eve.

“We’re the same. You’ll understand that soon. There has to be payment for betrayal. Justice must be served. You can’t pay unless I pay. We’re the same. You’ll see.”

For now, she put on the dark brown wig, the blue contacts. Everything she needed was packed in the evidence box.

She put on her coat, hefted the box. She took the time to look around. The photographs, her equipment, her case board. Her life.

She’d never see it again.

It had been a kind of cocoon, she realized. A place where she transformed, in quiet, in safety.

Now she was ready to spread her wings and fly.





22

Eve stepped into the bullpen at Central.

“Listen up! I’ve got grunt work for anybody not on an active and hot, anybody who’s got some time.”

“We make time, LT,” Jenkinson said.

“Grunt work,” she repeated, “so I don’t want it pulling anybody away from a hot.” She nodded toward the handmade banner over the break-room door. “Stick with the motto. Anybody’s free enough, Peabody’s got the data.” She glanced toward Baxter’s empty desk. “Baxter catch one?”

“DB in Greenpeace Park,” Santiago told her. “He and Trueheart just left. Carmichael and I closed one last night. Wife paid her screwup of a lover a grand to off the husband. Guess she didn’t want to go through the trouble of a fricking divorce. The boyfriend rolled on her like snake eyes.”

“What?”

“You know, dice, roll the dice.” Santiago shook his hand to demonstrate. “I’m trying for colorful metaphors. Anyway, we’re pretty clear.”

Carmichael nodded. “We’re up for grunt.”

“Spread the joy, Peabody,” Eve said, and headed to her office.

She’d opted to take the results from a narrowing geographic search. Since the location was her hunch, she’d… roll the dice.

Why did they call it snake eyes? They were a dot on a cube. Snakes didn’t have dot eyes, so why…

“Stop it,” she ordered herself, programmed coffee, and sat.

After an hour at the grunt, she’d culled her list down to fifty-six possibles. Those she broke into two groups to start. Those with criminal records – any dings at all – those without.

Logically, the murderous type would have dings, even minor ones. But… instinct told her not this time. Following instinct, she was left with forty-three.

She closed her eyes a moment, considered.

Wannabe law enforcement – definite maybe.

Former law enforcement, retired or kicked. Also maybe.

Current? Also possible.

Current, she thought again, would equal easier access to case files. Then again, the UNSUB showed sharp e-skills, so some possibility the files had been hacked.

Separate again, she decided. Wannabes, former, current.

As she worked, Peabody came in. “I might have something. Loreen Messner. She’s… Can I?” Peabody asked, pointing to Eve’s computer.

“Go.” Eve angled back, gave Peabody room.

“She lives in Tribeca, so that’s out of the target zone, but —”

“That’s a hunch.”

“Here she is,” Peabody said as the image came on Eve’s comp screen.

“Familiar,” Eve noted. “A little familiar. I’ve seen that face.”

“She just hit the far edges on the facial recognition, but the ID shot’s nine months back – I checked. So maybe she lost a little weight in the face since. Hair’s long, but she could’ve cut it. Brown and brown, five-eight, a hundred-forty-two. She’s a bailiff at the courthouse, so you’ve seen her there. Her father was on the job, went down in the line three years ago. See here, her mother lives in New Mexico, parents divorced. She had the same address as the father, so they lived together. No sibs.”

“Bailiff,” Eve mused, and brought a picture of Messner – in court uniform – into her head. “Yeah, I’ve got her. Okay. Loses the father, the cop, the one who raised her. What happened to the cop killer?”

“Two guys, robbery. Officer Messner pursued on foot, and one of them bashed his head in with a bat, stomped on his face after he was down. The other flipped, got a deal. One went into an off-planet cage, the flipper got two years for the robbery – first offense – and got out in eighteen months.”

“That could piss you off,” Eve stated.

“I did a little digging. She’s been on post multiple times when you’ve testified. Dallas, she was the bailiff on the Jess Barrow trial.”