Vendetta in Death (In Death #49)(91)

“I want her in the box.” Eve turned back. “I need a reason to get her there. I’m working on that.”

“Then I’ll leave you to it.” Mira straightened. “So far, her violence has focused on men, and specifically men who have wronged women in her support group. But that violence would, unquestionably, spread to anyone who attempts to stop her from enacting her form of justice. So while, for the moment, she sees you as a kind of colleague, that will change.”

“Yeah. I figure to give that one a little push later today.”

“Then be careful.”

“One question,” Eve said as Mira started out. “Is a bag of soy chips some sort of lunch?”

“No,” Mira said, and kept going.

“Damn it.”

Eve considered pizza, and also the consequences if the scent escaped into the bullpen. Chaos, rioting. Besides, she just wasn’t hungry enough to waste a good slice.

She tried soup—noted she had several kinds. Roarke was a sneaky son of a bitch, too. She opted for a cup of minestrone—and a bag of soy chips.

Peabody came in as she was downing it. “The next …” Peabody sniffed the air. “That’s not Vending soup. That’s real soup.”

“So?”

“Well, it’s just … Smells really good.”

Eve turned, programmed another cup. “Here, and shut up about it.”

“Man, thanks. Mae Ming’s here, and I shot you the basic details from the Brinkman run.”

“Take Ming. I’ll take the morgue, and swing by the lab for Harvo.”

“Good deal for me.”

“Depending on timing, you take the other two we have coming in. Then tag Brinkman, get her in here. If you get more names, get them in here.”

“You can count on it.”

Eve grabbed her coat, dropped the bag of chips in her pocket. “I am. Don’t touch my AC.”

She walked out to the bullpen, scanned her cops, scanned the board, and noted Baxter and Trueheart had indeed caught one. In fact two, as they’d caught a murder/suicide.

She glanced toward Trueheart, who sat grim-faced at his desk working on a report. He’d lost a lot of the green, she thought, but part of what made him a good cop was his ability to feel the weight of the job.

She could see a lot of weight on his face at the moment.

She had a serial killer on her hands, Eve thought, but she had men who needed a boss.

She walked to his desk. “Detective.”

“Sir.”

“Where’s your partner?”

“He’s in the break room, getting some coffee. We just got in from—”

“Yeah, I see the board.”

“It looks like a domestic dispute. They were in the middle of a contentious divorce and custody deal. Two kids, eight and ten. He went to her place. No forced entry, so it looks like she let him in. He stabbed her multiple times, then slit his own throat.”

“The kids?”

“In school, that’s a blessing. A neighbor heard her screaming, couldn’t get in because he’d bolted the door. Neighbor called it in, but it was too late. She had a sister. The kids are with the sister.”

“Trueheart, sometimes there’s nothing for us to do but write it up. There’s nobody to hunt down, bring in, put in a cage. We can only write it up and close it.”

“I know it, Lieutenant. Baxter said the same.” He let out a breath. “I’m writing it up.”

All they could do, she thought again as she headed out. Dealing with the times that was all you could do was part of the job. And you hoped it pushed you to do everything you could when you could.

She let New York roll over her as she drove to the morgue. Nowhere near peaceful now as its noise, hurry, color, anger, amusement rolled. You couldn’t live and work in a city with all of that, with the intensity of all of that, and not hit times when you could only write it up. And times, she needed to believe more times, you could and would do everything.

So she walked that white tunnel for the third day running determined. Committed. And seriously pissed off.

Morris walked out of the double doors before she reached them.

“Dallas. You just caught me on the way to lunch.”

She pulled the chips out of her pocket. “Trade you for a quick summary.”

“I do have a fondness for chips.” He stepped back in; she followed.

And saw three bodies on three slabs.

“Murder-suicide,” Morris said when he saw her study the other bodies.

“Yeah, I know. Baxter and Trueheart. The husband’s way of settling a divorce and custody dispute.”

“She fought. I can tell you, even before my full exam, she fought. She didn’t go down easy.” He patted Eve’s arm, stepped over to Kagen.

“On the other hand, he didn’t fight. Couldn’t, as he was drunk, then drugged. My summation includes the belief that the initial stimulant to bring him around failed. He was too far under. It’s the same barbiturate, the same stimulant as the other two victims. It’s simply in this case, the victim had consumed nearly three pints of beer and three shots of rye whiskey prior to the addition of the barbiturate.”

“It’s why she didn’t do as much damage as she did with the second victim. Maybe. The broken arm, that’s symbolic, as he’s left-handed, beat his wife.”