Glory in Death (In Death #2)(59)

Nadine had to use both hands to keep the glass even partially steady. She would, she realized, have preferred brandy, but that would have to wait. "I see this kind of thing all the time, not so different from you."

"You saw the body," Eve snapped. "You went out on the scene."

"I had to see." With eyes still swimming, she looked back at Eve. "That was personal, Dallas. I had to see. I didn't want to believe it when word came up."

"How did word come up?"

"Somebody heard Morse yelling to the guard that somebody was dead, that somebody had been murdered right outside. That drew a lot of attention, " she said, rubbing her temples. "Word travels. I hadn't finished my second call before I caught the buzz. I hung up on my source and went down. And I saw her." Her smile was grim and humorless. "I beat the cameras -- and the cops."

"And you and your pals risked contaminating a crime scene." Eve swiped a hand through the air. "That's done. Did anybody touch her? Did you see anybody touch her?"

"No, nobody was that stupid. It was obvious she was dead. You could see -- you could see the wound, the blood. We sent for an ambulance anyway. The first police unit was there within minutes, ordered us back inside, sealed the door. I talked to somebody. Peabody." She rubbed fingers over her temples. Not because they hurt; because they were numb. "I told her it was Louise, then I went up to prep for broadcast. And the whole time I was thinking, It was supposed to be me. I was alive, facing the camera, and she was dead. It was supposed to be me."

"It wasn't supposed to be anyone."

"We killed her, Dallas." Nadine's voice was steady again. "You and me. "

"I guess we'll have to live with that." Eve drew a breath and leaned forward. "Let's go over the timing again, Nadine. Step by step."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sometimes, Eve thought, the drudge of routine police work payed off. Like a slot machine, fed habitually, mindlessly, monotonously, so that you're almost shocked when the jackpot falls in your lap.

That's just the way it was when David Angelini fell into hers.

She'd had several questions on small details of the Kirski case. The timing was one of them.

Nadine skips her usual break, Kirksi goes out instead, passing the lobby desk at approximately 23:04. She steps out into the rain, and into a knife. Minutes later, running late, Morse arrives at the station lot, stumbles over the body, vomits, and runs inside to report a murder.

All of it, she mused, quick, fast, and in a hurry.

As a matter of course, she ran the discs from the security gate at Channel 75. It wasn't possible to know if the killer had driven through them, parked a car on the station's lot, strolled over to wait for Nadine, sliced Louise by mistake, then driven off again.

An assailant could just as easily have cut across the property from Third on foot, just as Louise had intended to do. Gate security was to make sure that there were parking facilities for station employees and that guests weren't infringed upon by every frustrated driver looking for a place to stick his car or minishuttle off the street.

Eve reviewed the discs because it was a matter of routine, and because, she admitted to herself, she hoped Morse's story wouldn't gel. He'd have recognized Nadine's raincoat, and he'd have known her habit of cutting out for some solo time before the midnight broadcast.

There was nothing she'd have enjoyed more, on a basic, even primal personal level, than nailing his skinny butt to the wall.

And that's when she saw the sleek little two-passenger Italian model cruise like a shiny cat to the gate. She'd seen that car before, parked outside of the commander's home after the memorial service.

"Stop," she ordered, and the image on screen froze. "Enhance sector twenty-three through thirty, full screen." The machine clicked, then clunked, wobbling the image. With an impatient snarl, Eve smacked the screen with the heel of her hand, jarring it back on course. "Goddamn budget cuts," she muttered, and then her smile began, slow and savoring. "Well, well, Mr. Angelini."

She took a deep breath as David's face filled her screen. He looked impatient, she thought. Distracted. Nervous.

"What were you doing there?" she murmured, flicking her glance down to the digital time frozen at the bottom left corner. "At twenty-three oh two and five seconds?"

She leaned back in her chair, rifling through a drawer with one hand as she continued to study the screen. Absently, she bit into a candy bar that was going to pass for breakfast. She'd yet to go home.

"Hard copy," she ordered. "Then go back to original view and hard copy. " She waited patiently while her machine wheezed its way through the process. "Continue disc run, normal speed."

Nibbling on her breakfast, she watched the pricey sports car whiz past camera range. The image blinked. Channel 75 could afford the latest in motion-activated security cameras. Eleven minutes had passed on the counter when Morse's car approached.

"Interesting," she murmured. "Copy disc, transfer copy to file 47833-K, Kirski, Louise. Homicide. Cross reference to case file 47801-T, Towers, Cicely and 47815-M, Metcalf, Yvonne. Homicides."

Turning from the screen, she engaged her 'link. "Feeney."

"Dallas." He stuffed the last of a danish into his mouth. "I'm working on it. Christ, it's barely seven A. M."