Kindred in Death (In Death #29)(79)

“Yeah, she does. Not the beautiful, vibrant type Vinnie Pauley remembered just a couple years before.”

“The wrong guy.” Trueheart blinked when all eyes shifted to him. “Um. I mean to say, the, ah, longer-term exposure to Pauley, the wrong guy. His influence maybe started her on a downturn.”

“It could fit. The timing, the changes. What we know,” Eve added, “is between the Inga Vinnie Pauley knew and the Illya who died bad in a Chicago sex flop, there was a big slide. And it would appear that for a chunk of that, and for years after, Vance Pauley had influence over Darrin Pauley. How about the security imaging on the victim’s house?”

“I’ve got that.” McNab rose, held up a disc. “Okay if I plug it in?”

“Go ahead.”

He went to her desk. “Display, screen three. You can see there’s more definition,” he began.

“I can?”

“It’s slow. It’s not like a routine clean and enhance, and can’t work at that pace. We were able to capture and lock the image, but it’s severely corrupted. The pixels have to be repaired every level, every step. Feeney and I captured and locked two more last night, using the same procedure we worked out. And we’ve got those in process. I think that’s all we’re going to retrieve.”

“We’re going to work on a way to speed the process,” Feeney put in. “We’re on that, but no promises.”

“I’m meeting with Whitney and MacMasters at nine, and hope to pick through MacMasters’s memory of the arrest of Irene Schultz, any other data he might have. Peabody will pursue the shoes/ wardrobe angle. Baxter and Trueheart will recanvass the area around the crime scene with the sketch. At noon MacMasters will issue a statement to the media, as will I. I will briefly take questions. I’ve initiated another search, with the current results over thirteen thousand possibles.”

When she explained it, Trueheart cleared his throat. “Maybe, if they own the security system, the father bought it. Used one of his aliases.”

“Good thought. Run that. We brief at Central at sixteen hundred, at which time I’ll have selected the other members of the team to cover the memorial. We’ll rebrief—unless we have this f**ker by then—at seven hundred tomorrow, full team. Now get out there and find this bastard. Baxter, one minute.”

She walked into the kitchen, came back with a bag, which she tossed to him.

When he looked inside his face beamed like the sun. “Holy shit, we got us some Alabama barbecue. I love this woman.”

“Save the love for Roarke. He dealt with it. Move out. Peabody, with me.”

Peabody waited until they were out of the house, in the car, and Eve sped down toward the gates. “Okay, I know we’re in deep investigative mode, and we have a lot of threads to tug, then tie together. But everyone has their specific thread or threads. I’ll be all over the retail outlets asap.”

“And?”

“And so, I thought we could take just a few minutes to talk about the wedding.”

“Louise has a handle on that. I know because I went by and talked to her about it. I did that duty.”

“You really did, and more. She filled me in, totally,” Peabody said with a happy gleam in her eyes. “Inviting her to stay Friday night, and have the rest of us was abso mag of you, Dallas.”

“It was a moment of weakness.” One Eve prayed she wouldn’t regret as she swung downtown. “What is, exactly, ‘the rest’?”

“You know, the usual. Me, Mavis, Nadine, Trina. Maybe Reo if she can make it,” she added, thinking of the APA. “And, ah, Trina’s bringing another consultant so we’ll all get beautified. But the best part is, we’ll all be there for Louise. With her. So I was wondering if we could set up a kind of bridal suite for her.”

“What does that mean? I’m not going to have her camp on the lawn. She’ll have a room. A suite. Whatever.”

“Yeah, yeah, but can we sort of bride it up? Flowers, champagne, candles—I’ve got some my cousin made that are really soothing—girl food, music. Set the mood.”

Eve said nothing for a moment. “I should have thought of that, right?”

“No. That’s what I’m here for. It’s all going to be mag, and this is just like a bonus round for her.”

“It’s fine. All fine.”

“Okay! I thought we could—”

“No, that was the few minutes. I want Jenkinson and Reineke on the memorial detail. Make sure they get the details on the time and place of the briefings. I’m going to ask MacMasters for recommendations on two of his detectives for that duty as well. And we’ll want half a dozen uniforms, at least half of them from MacMasters’s division.”

“Getting cops from MacMasters’s division’s a good move.”

“Any cop who can make it will be there anyway. I want that place covered, but we need to keep the watch for the suspect tight. The more cops who know his face, the better chance one of them will try for him, tip him off, or scare him off.”

“He has to know the place will be packed with cops there to pay respects. That might scare him off anyway.”

“I don’t think so.” Eve wormed through a gap between a maxibus and a Rapid Cab. “He’ll like it. Like the idea of being able to walk right in. Another needle in the eye. As far as he knows, we’ve got nothing.”