Eternity in Death (In Death #24.5)(22)

“Mr. Sabo, I have to ask. It’s routine. Can you verify your whereabouts between two and four A .M. this morning?”

“In bed, at home. I got Sam. I can’t leave Sam alone at night.” He rubbed at his eyes now before his hands dangled uselessly again. “I have building security. In and out. You can check. Whatever you have to do so you don’t waste time, so you find who hurt Alless. Was she raped?”

Before Eve could respond, he shook his head. “No. No. Don’t tell me. I don’t think I want to know either way. Walk from the subway, after two in the morning, alone. Because of that damn job. Now what am I going to tell our boy? How am I going to tell our Sam his mama’s gone?”

“I can have a grief counselor contact you, one who works with children.”

“Yes. Please. Yes.” His throat worked on a swallow. “I’ll need help. Alless and I, well, we couldn’t stay married, but we were a team when it came to Sam. I’ll need help. I have to get back to my kid. I left him with the neighbor. I have to get back to Sam. Can you let me know when…when I need to do whatever I need to do?”

“We’ll contact you, Mr. Sabo.” Eve watched him walk away. “Peabody?”

“I’ll take care of the grief counselor. Poor guy.”

“Murder kills more than the victim,” Eve said quietly. “We need to wrap up here, get into Central. Feeney may be able to clean up some of her last transmission from my unit. We get even a glimmer of this bastard…”

“I could help with that.” Roarke stepped up beside her.

“You’ve got your own work.”

“I do, but I’d be interested in, let’s say, hammering one of those nails.”

“If Feeney—” She broke off as her ’link signalled. “Hold on a minute.” She moved aside, answered.

Roarke noted the instant change in her body language—the stiffening, the aggressive stance. When she turned back, he saw it mirrored in the temper that heated her eyes.

“DNA doesn’t match Vadim’s.”

“But—”

“No but about it,” Eve cut Peabody off. “There’s a f**king screw-up somewhere. You want in,” she said to Roarke, “you’re in. You can round up Feeney at Central, do whatever the two of you can do with the transmission. Peabody, with me. We’re going to the lab. Contact Morris.” She moved quickly as she snapped out the order. “I want him to personally take the DNA samples from this vic, have them hand-delivered to the lab. That’s red-flagged.”

“Got it.”

Eve glanced back at the building one last time. “No way, no goddamn way he slithers out of this.”

Peabody had to all but leap into the car to keep up. “Maybe he didn’t kill her.”

“Screw that.”

“What I mean is, maybe he had her killed. Set it up.” Peabody jerked her safety harness tight as it looked like they were in for a hell of a ride.

“No. He wouldn’t deny himself the pleasure of the kill.” Monsters didn’t want to watch, to be told . They wanted to do. They wanted the smell of the blood. “He did them both. Kent because it’s what he set out to do, Carter because he was smart enough to know she wasn’t going to hold up his alibi, and it slaps at me. He picked her, put her on the spot, then he took her out. The lab screwed up, or I did. I did if he switched the vials.”

“We were right there. He drew his own blood right in front of us.”

“Hand’s quicker than the eye,” Eve muttered. “He worked as a magician, he’s worked the grift all of his life. He offered the blood sample without a blink because he knew he could swing it so it wouldn’t match.”

And she’d been distracted, she couldn’t deny it. Tight chest, dry throat, pumping heart. Her own fears had dulled her senses.

“Either way,” Peabody commented, “without the match, with Allesseria vouching for him and being unable to recant, we’ve got nothing on him.”

“That’s what he’s counting on. I played into it, and that pisses me off. Dark club, all that movement and noise. Guy draws his own blood at a bar. Not something you see every day.” Looking into his eyes, she remembered. Caught in them for a few seconds too long, shuddering inside at what she’d seen there, and she’s conned. “Son of a bitch.”

She strode into the lab, only to be cut off by the chief, Dick Berenski.

His egg-shaped head was cocked aggressively as he jabbed one of his long, thin fingers at her. “Don’t think about coming into my shop and saying we f**ked up. I ran those samples twice myself. Personal. You want to argue with science, you go somewhere else. I can’t make a match when there’s no match.”

He was called Dickhead for a reason, and it had everything to do with his personality. Eve throttled back. “I think he switched them on me. It’s his DNA on the vic, but it’s not his in the vial you have. I’ve got an idea how he pulled it off, but the question right now is: If it’s not his blood in the vial, whose is it?”

It was obvious Berenski had been expecting a battle. Now, caught off guard, he was more accommodating than he normally would be without a substantial bribe. “Well, if we got the DNA in the system, I can find it for you.”