Kindred in Death (In Death #29)(89)

“It doesn’t diminish the truth, or what you’ll do.”

“A day late for her, and a hell of a lot more than a dollar short.”

She would think that way, he knew. It made her what she was. “I hear—as the grapevine climbs quickly—that you were already taking steps to inform and protect those connected to this old MacMasters arrest when you were called to the scene of this second murder.”

“I knew it was connected to MacMasters, something on the job. I knew it was personal, and I believed it was a mirror of another crime. But it took me two days to find it.”

“Eve, don’t do this. The data wasn’t there to be found. There was no Irene Schultz to show up on your search of rape-murder victims. The very nature of who these people are—were—may be tomorrow—makes it tricky and time-consuming to find them. Consider the fact you found this connection at all, and will save the lives of other targets.”

“I know you can’t save them all. I know it. But when you have to swallow that hours would have made the difference, it doesn’t go down easy. She was getting married on Saturday. Robins.”

“Ah. Well.” Following instinct he put his hands on her shoulders, drew her in.

“I’m standing in that apartment where she lived with the man she was marrying in a couple days, and I’m seeing all that wedding junk. Like at Louise’s. Goddamn it, Roarke.”

He said nothing. There was nothing to be said.

“I know you can’t save them all,” she repeated. “I know you can’t catch them all, and even some you catch will slither through the system. But this one’s not going to. Sick, smug son of a bitch.”

“All right then. What’s next?”

She stepped away. “We interview all those involved in the Irene Schultz matter, and we find out if he’s made contact with anyone’s daughter, son, sister, brother, mother, father, second cousin twice removed. We set up for tomorrow’s memorial. We work the case. We push on the electronics. And why aren’t you huddled with your EDD pals?”

“We’ll discuss that at the briefing.”

“Then let’s get started.”

In the conference room, Eve gave a brief overview of the investigation for the benefit of the members she’d added to the team. She followed it with a report on the early steps of the Robins case.

“Peabody.”

“After the notification to Hampton, I went to City Choice. I spoke with the vic’s supervisor and two of her coworkers. None of them could identify the suspect by the pictures we have. It’s not unusual for a client not to come in to the offices, and in fact, more usual for the real estate agent to meet same at a property or another location.”

“Handy for him.”

“All three individuals I spoke with recall the vic speaking of a Drew Pittering, and one, specifically recalls the vic telling her she’d tapped a new client when he contacted her. Her office log lists a contact from Pittering on May fifteenth, with the note he was looking most specifically for space in SoHo, and his preferences for same. It also lists meeting him at two properties in that sector, and providing him with two virtual tours of other locations. Finally, it lists her appointment with him at the SoHo loft for nine-thirty a.m., yesterday.”

“Reineke, Jenkinson, you’ll follow up with the other properties, knock on doors, show the photo. Peabody,” she repeated.

“EDD has all the electronics from her home and her work space, as well as those from the crime scene. With a grief counselor I notified the victim’s parents.” She let out a breath. “Um. When questioned, Jaynie Robins did not immediately recall Irene Schultz or the case. She agreed to come into Central today to speak with the lieutenant, and stated she would look through her archive of case notes and files to try to refresh herself on the matter. The fact is, she was pretty shaken up, and I’m not sure she was taking in any of the details on this old case. I left them with the grief counselor, and they’ll be escorted in shortly.”

“Okay. Good work. Feeney, progress?”

“I’m going to pass this to the civilian.”

When Eve looked toward Roarke, Feeney shook his head. “Wrong civilian. Brief the lieutenant, Jamie.”

“McNab and I have been putting in some long hours on this, and back with Feeney and Roarke and a couple of the others upstairs. But we just couldn’t figure any way to speed the cleaning process. Not with the extent of the corruption. Then Roarke said something about trying to split another matrix clone on a second JPL and merge texels with the corrupted pixels and stir up the ppi to def*ck the bitmapping.”

“Did you say def*ck?” Eve asked. “Is that a technical term?”

“Ah, it just sort of expresses the procedure. See, for this particular application, the regions are made up of supixels, and when infected the standard triad—”

“Stop the madness.” She resisted, barely, just slapping her hands over her ears. “I’m begging you.”

“Well, it’s frosty max if you get how it works and why. When Roarke talked about the clone and merge, I started thinking maybe we could go rad and do a merge and ramp, input an HIP to counteract, then extrapolate, do the clone, and restart the def*ck from that point.”

“Makes me proud,” Feeney said as Eve pressed her fingers to her eyes.