Judgment in Death (In Death #11)(75)

He sipped his bright drink and looked out over the grounds, a man satisfied and still vital. "I'll accomplish that," he said again, "and have his cop begging for mercy."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In the sealed room of Roarke's private office, the equipment was state of the art, expansive, and unregistered. The wide, searching eye of CompuGuard was blind to it. Nothing generated on it or scanned from it could be detected by any outside factor.

And in the hands of a man with Roarke's talents, there were no data that could not, eventually, be unearthed.

Despite the fact that besides Roarke, only Eve and Summerset had ever been through the secured doors, and the purpose of the area was business, it was a handsome room with generous privacy-screened windows and a floor of beautiful tile.

She'd often thought the glossy U-shaped control deck resembled the bridge of a particularly well-designed spacecraft. And when he was behind those controls, Roarke was very much captain of the ship.

Here, she would bend the rules. Or let Roarke bend them for her.

"Roth first," Eve began. "Her story is her husband's been bleeding out her financial accounts, setting up a nest egg for himself and his on-the-side piece. Roth, Captain Eileen. Her address is -- "

"That isn't necessary."

He enjoyed this type of work nearly as much as he enjoyed the annoyed look on Eve's face when he easily danced through the blocks and obstacles even the brains and talents in EDD couldn't budge. He put the data on a wall screen rather than commanding the computer to read it off.

"Not a very impressive nest egg," he commented. "But enough, one supposes, to set himself and his on-the-side piece up cozily enough. He's an unemployed writer. Some women are attracted to the struggling artist type. All those pale, Byronic moods."

"Is that so?" Eve said in a voice dry as dust.

"Indeed. In my experience. She isn't his first," he added, shooting more data to a second screen. "He has two marriages and three cohabitations under his belt, and repeats this pattern of tapping into his partner's financial resources toward the end of the run."

"You'd think she'd be too smart for that kind of con. Christ, she's a cop."

"Love," Roarke said, "is blind."

"The hell it is. I see you clear enough, don't I?"

His grin was quick and gorgeous. "Why, Lieutenant, you've made my heart flutter." He grabbed her hand, kissed her knuckles lavishly.

"No funny stuff." She slapped him aside, an absent gesture that only made him smile again.

It was good, he thought, to be back in synch.

"She's got two payments to a Lucius Breck," Eve noted. "Three thousand a pop. Who's Breck?"

Because she hadn't realized he'd cued her into the system, she nearly jumped when the computer's polite voice answered.

Breck, Lucius. Substance abuse counselor. Private practice. Office address 529 Sixth Avenue, New York City. Residence -- -

"Never mind. That jibes with the story she gave me. Jesus, she's close onto flat busted financially and still paying through the nose for private counseling when she could get it through departmental sources for nothing. And she's going to lose anyway. She won't keep her squad command when this all washes down."

And she thinks I'm bucking for her desk. Eve shook her head. No, thanks. Eve would wear captain's bars one day, but damn if they'd drag her off the street by them.

"You can't find any other accounts linked to her?"

"I can't find what's not there," Roarke said reasonably. "As you've seen for yourself, your Captain Roth is very nearly in financial ruin. She's borrowed from her retirement account in order to pay Breck's fee. Her living expenses are otherwise frugal."

"So she's clean, and her squad's dirty, which may go to motive. She commanded both victims and had visited Kohli at Purgatory. Her probability scan's still fairly low, but that could change if I can add in her personality analysis from the department files and my own take on her."

"And your take is?"

"She's hard, got a mean temper, and she's been so busy rising up the ladder, she's been missing details. She's covering up personal mistakes in a scramble to protect her position. Could be she's covered up more, in her squad, to keep her superiors from yanking her out. A lot of temper went into that first murder. Like I said, she's got a mean one."

She turned back to Roarke. "Vernon, Detective Jeremy. I've already got enough on him to haul him in -- after I let him sweat awhile."

"What do you need from me?"

"I want to connect the money to Ricker. Getting it this way, I won't be able to use it as evidence. But I can make him think I can. I break Vernon, I've got new lines to tug. He's connected to both victims and to Roth. And to Ricker."

"Ricker's going to be insulated, thickly. Any funds he disperses in that manner would have been washed."

"Can you find it?"

His brow winged up. "That is, I assume, a rhetorical question. It'll take time."

"Then why don't you get started? Can I use this subunit to check a few other names?"

"Hold on." He issued some commands she didn't understand, keyed in something manually. The computer acknowledged him and began a low hum. "It'll sift through the initial layers on auto," he explained, "as quickly as I could do it. What are the other names?"