Immortal in Death (In Death #3)(40)

She straightened from her search of a bottom drawer and found Peabody staring at her. “It’s like you were there,” Peabody murmured. “I want to be able to do that, to go in the way you do.”

“Walk in to a few more murder scenes, and you will. The hard part’s getting out again. Where the hell is the box?”

“She could have taken it with her.”

“I don’t buy that. Where’s the key, Peabody? She locked this drawer. Where’s the key?”

In silence, Peabody took out her field unit, requested the list of items found in the victim’s purse or on her person. “There was no key taken into evidence.”

“So he got the key, didn’t he? And he came back here and took the box and anything else he needed. Let’s check the security disc.”

“Wouldn’t the sweepers have done that?”

“Why? She wasn’t killed here. All they were required to do was verify her time of departure.” Eve walked over to the security monitor, ordered a replay for the date and time in question. She watched Pandora storm out of the house, stride quickly out of range. “Two oh eight. Okay, let’s see what shakes. Time of death was about three. Computer, advance to oh three hundred, proceed at triple real time.” She focused on the chronometer. “Freeze image. Sonofabitch. See that, Peabody.”

“I see it, time skipped from four oh three to four thirty-five. Someone disengaged the camera. Had to do it by remote. Had to know what they were doing.”

“Someone wanted to get in bad enough, get something out bad enough, to risk it. For a box of illegals.” Her smile was grim. “I’ve got a feeling dead in the gut, Peabody. Let’s go hassle the lab boys.”

CHAPTER NINE

“Why you wanna give me grief, Dallas?”

Huddled in his lab coat, Chief Tech Dickie Berenski — Dickhead to those who knew and loathed him — tested a strand of pubic hair. He was a meticulous man, as well as a monster pain in the ass. Though notoriously slow in testing, his batting average in court was high enough to make him the MVP of the police and security lab.

“Can’t you see I’m buried here? Jesus.” With his fussy spider fingers he adjusted the focus on his micro-goggles. “Got us ten homicides, six rapes, a load of suspicious and unattended deaths, and too many B and Es to think about. I’m not a f**king robot.”

“Closest thing to,” Eve muttered. She didn’t like coming to the lab with its antiseptic air and white walls. It was too much like a hospital, or worse, Testing. Any cop who used maximum force resulting in termination was required to undergo Testing. Her experiences with that particular intrusive routine hadn’t been pleasant. “Look, Dickie, you’ve had plenty of time to analyze the substance.”

“Plenty of time.” He pushed back from the counter, and his eyes behind the goggles were big and bold as an owl’s. “You and every other cop in the city figures your shit’s a priority. Like we should drop every other thing and devote every minute to you. You know what happens when the temperature rises, Dallas? People go bat shit, that’s what happens. All you gotta do is take them down, but me and my team, we gotta shift through every hair and fiber. It takes time.”

His voice shifted into whine and set Eve’s teeth on edge. “I’ve got Homicide breathing down my neck, and Illegals snapping at my heels over some goddamn bag of powder. You got the prelim.”

“I need the final.”

“Well, I haven’t got it.” His flappy lips pouted as he turned back and brought the enhanced view of the hair on screen. “I gotta finish DNA on this.”

Eve knew how to work him. She didn’t like it, but she knew. “I’ve got two box-seat tickets to the Yankee-Red Sox game tomorrow.”

His fingers moved slowly over the controls. “Box seats?”

“Third-base side.”

Dickie tipped down his goggles to scan the room. Other techs were busy at their stations. “Maybe I could get you a little more.” With one shove of his feet, he sent his chair sliding to the right until he faced another screen. Cautious, he engaged the keyboard and brought the file up manually. He tapped slowly, scanning the screen. “Here’s the problem, see? This element here.”

It was nothing but color and foreign symbols to Eve, but she grunted as the data scrolled. The unknown, she imagined, that even Roarke’s unit couldn’t identify. “That red thing?”

“No, no, no, that’s a standard amphetamine. You find it in Zeus, in Buzz, in Smiley. Hell, you can get a mild derivative of that in any over-the-counter pep-up. This one.” He tapped a finger against a green squiggle.

“Okay, what is it?”

“That’s the big question, Dallas. Never seen it before. The computer can’t identify. My best guess is it’s something from off planet.”

“That ups the stakes, doesn’t it? Bringing an unknown from off planet can get you twenty years in maximum lockup. Can you tell what it does?”

“I’m working on it. It appears to have some of the same properties as an antiaging drug, and with some of the same energizers. It beats hell out of free radicals. But there’s some nasty side effects when it’s mixed with the other chemicals found in the powder. You got most of it in the report. Enhanced sexual drive, which is not a bad thing, but that’s followed by violent mood swings. Increased physical strength hooked up to a lack of control. This shit really dances around in the old nervous system. You’re going to feel terrific for a while, practically invulnerable, you’ll want to f**k like a rabbit, but you won’t much care if your chosen mate is interested. When the crash comes, it’s going to be hard and fast and the only thing that’s going to level you out is another dose. Keep taking it, keep flying up and diving down, and the nervous system’s going to go nutso. Then you die.”