Kindred in Death (In Death #29)(47)

“You get me the names,” she added, “I’ll run them down. Right now, give me the gut. Who pops out?”

With his back to the room, MacMasters took a breath that shuddered. “Leonard and Gia Wentz. They ran a cookshop, used primarily minors for dealers, to drum up trade around schools and vid dens. I had four detectives on that. We ran an op that busted them in January. Leonard drew down, and there was a brief firefight. Two of my men were injured. He’s doing a hard twenty-five, and she’s in for fifteen.”

“I remember that. Mid-January. It’s too close. Nothing this year. He stole the ID New Year’s Eve. He was already planning. Go back more.”

MacMasters turned from the window to pace. “My men do good work. It’s like trying to hold back the tide, but we do good work. We have a solid arrest and conviction rate. Low termination percentage.”

“Don’t overthink it, Captain. Don’t justify it. I’ll get us some coffee.”

Eve moved into the kitchen. It wasn’t going to work, she thought. Not yet in any case. He couldn’t pull himself out and think cop. Why should he? How could he?

But she got coffee together, took it out.

“We ruin lives,” she said. “If you look at it from the other end, some guy’s doing what he does—raping, killing, stealing, dealing, whatever. It’s what he does, or what he did this time for whatever reason. We come along and we stop him. More, we do whatever we can to put him in a cage for it. He loses his freedom, his scratch. Could lose his home or family if he’s got one. Sometimes if things go south, he loses his life.”

She drank coffee, hoping she was getting through. “We ruined it. We’re responsible. You’re responsible. Think about the lives you’ve ruined. Think about it that way, not about doing the job, but the results. From the other side.”

“Okay.” He took the coffee, met her eyes. “Okay. Nattie Simpson. She’s an accountant, nice little place on the Upper East, decent income, husband, one kid. On the side Nattie was dealing illegals and cooking the books for a mid-level operation. When we took it down, we took her down with it. She’s in Rikers doing the last year of five. They lost the nice little place on the Upper East. The husband divorced her two years ago, got full custody of the kid.”

“How old’s the kid?”

“He’d be about ten, twelve.”

“Too young. Maybe she has a brother, a lover. We’ll look at her.”

MacMasters dragged a hand over his hair. She could see him grasping, reaching, trying to come back. “Maybe this was a hired hit.”

“I don’t think so. Give me one more name, off the top.”

“Cecil Banks. Bad guy. Dealt Zeus, hunted runaways and kids who ran the streets, got them hooked, pimped them out. Ran an underage sex business. We worked with SVU on that. When we busted the main operation he tried to rabbit. He went out a window, missed the fire escape, and took a header down four stories. A lot of people lost heavy income and access when we took him and his operations out.”

“When?”

“Two years ago last September.”

“Family?”

“Ah, yeah. Yeah. He had a couple of women, addicts. Both claimed to be his wife. Neither were, legally. He had a brother, younger brother. He did some running for Cecil, but copped a plea down to rehab and community service. Risso. Risso Banks. He’d be about twenty-two, twenty-three.”

“They’re not in your threat file.”

“I was in on the busts, but not as primary. The women made a lot of noise, but nothing that worried me. The kid, the brother? Cried like a baby, which helped him with the plea.”

“Good. We’ll check it out. That’s what I want you to do. Whatever springs, write it down, note the dates, the basic circumstances. We’ll take it from there.”

“Lieutenant, what is the probability Deena’s murder is connected to me, to the job? You’d have run that.”

No way to soften it. And to do so insulted him and his child. “At this time, with the data gathered, the probability is ninety-eight point eight.”

He sat again, and the mug in his hand trembled slightly. “It’s better to know. Better to know. Do I tell her mother? I have to, but how? How do I tell her mother? We’re planning her memorial. Thursday. It seems too fast, too soon. Thursday. We just couldn’t . . . I’ll write it down. But how do I stand it?”

He broke. And watching him shatter twisted her heart, her guts. She stood where she was as Whitney went to him, as her commander gently took the mug of coffee, set it aside, and put his arms around MacMasters.

Whitney looked at her, signaled for her to go.

She left, headed downstairs. She wanted out, just for a moment, just for a breath of air. When Summerset paused on the bottom landing, some of the anger, some of the pity must have shown on her face before she schooled it away.

“The loss of a child goes deeper than any,” he said. “It doesn’t pass the way other losses may. However the loss came, a parent looks inward. What could I have done, what didn’t I do? When the loss comes from violence, there are more questions. Every answer you give him is both pain and comfort, but there can’t be any comfort without the pain.”

“None of the answers I gave him today lead to comfort.”