Festive in Death (In Death #39)(94)

She turned again, studied the body again, with guilt and regret clawing at her. “What did you know? How do you fit in?”

“Dallas.” McNab came in, passed her a disc. “Got it copied. You can see the vic come to the door. You can’t see who let her in. You’ll see for yourself, but to my eye she looked upset, worried. Rushed in, talking fast.”

“No audio?”

“No, no audio.”

Her eyes on Catiana, Eve slipped the disc into her pocket.

If you knew something, anything why did you come here? Why didn’t you come to me?

But it was too late for that question, she thought.

19

The burly SUV proved a good choice since McNab and Peabody needed to pile in. Eve ignored McNab as he played with controls and options in the back while she worked on her PPC.

Catiana had parents—divorced, mother remarried, living in Brooklyn. Father also remarried, living in Phoenix, Arizona. One sibling, a sister, married, two children, in New Rochelle.

She’d need to go to Brooklyn, do the notification. But that misery would come after she’d checked on Quigley. She needed to . . . Was that chocolate she smelled?

She shifted around in her seat, narrowed her eyes at Peabody. “What’s that on your upper lip, Detective?”

Hastily Peabody swiped at it. “Ah, um. A little whipped cream. It’s hot chocolate. It’s real hot chocolate. I couldn’t help it. McNab did it.”

Unabashed, McNab grinned at her. “Mini AutoChef back here has a full beverage menu. Peabody’s been jonesing for hot chocolate. Want some?”

Yes, Eve thought, but said: “No.”

“Iced squared accessories back here,” he said to Roarke. “The total.”

“We do what we can,” Roarke responded.

“You got your entertainment with vid, straight screen, tunes, books, full D and C capabilities, mapping—solo, duet, or full vehicle modes. Then there’s—”

“He probably knows what’s loaded in this thing,” Eve interrupted.

“Add in the eats and drinks, we could motor to Utah.”

“Next time we plan to go to Utah, I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, we’re a little preoccupied here with murder.”

“Yeah, about that. Got the security disc from the crime scene on here.” His green eyes shifted from hers down to the screen while he took a contented glug of his own hot chocolate. “We might be able to enhance and analyze the shadow of whoever opened the door for the vic. It’s a long shot, but you gotta try it. Lipreading program’s running on the vic. We’ve got a better chance at that, but her face angles away from the cam, and she puts her hand over her mouth once so it’s going to be jumpy.”

Sometimes, Eve thought, she forgot he wasn’t an idiot. “Good. Stay on it. Here’s the play,” she said to Peabody. “We talk to Quigley, if possible, get the details. Odds are slim she’d try to protect Copley at this point, but if she tries, we could run the nine-one-one call for her, push it. DB, spouse in the hospital, no break-in, a fleet of lawyers isn’t going to loosen the noose.”

She glanced at McNab. “If we get lucky with the shadow ID, all the better. Confirm Copley opened the door to the vic, it throws out his claim of being upstairs when this went down. In addition, we tie him into Ziegler—that’ll take more, but we’re going to do it. With Quigley’s statement, we can let him sweat. The victim’s mother lives in Brooklyn. We have to go, notify her.”

“Man, two days—less—before Christmas. It’s always hard, but this is just harder.”

“She has a husband and a stepson living at home, another daughter in New York. That’ll help some. The vic may have talked to her about Ziegler, about Copley. We have to get whatever we can. We’ll need to talk to the Schuberts again, asap, and I want to check in at the morgue, give an official COD, get Morris’s—I’ve already requested him—take on her.”

“That’s a long time sweating,” Peabody said as Roarke worked through the parking garage at the hospital. “A long time for him to come up with a story, for the lawyers to shine it up.”

“It’s not going to shine, not when his wife tells us he attacked her. Not when she gives us a statement from her hospital bed. I get in the box with him, he’s going to break. I’m going to break him.”

She would damn well break him, Eve thought as they piled out, walked to the hospital’s main entrance.

“Lipreading doesn’t give us much, Dallas.” McNab held up his PPC. “It has her saying: Need to talk. Break. Come in. Break. I remembered. And that’s it. Vic moved into the house, out of range.”

“The shadow?”

“Working it, but hell, Dallas, there isn’t much there.”

“Play it out,” she told him.

She crossed the colorful lobby with its busy food court, passed a group of kids in school uniforms singing carols in front of a big tree, and arrowed in on a security guard.

“NYPSD.” She held up her badge. “Here’s what I need you to do, and fast. I need the floor, the room, and the doctor in charge of Quigley, Natasha, brought in earlier this evening via ambulance, with severe head trauma.”

“I’m not supposed to access patient information without my supervisor’s authorization.”