New York to Dallas (In Death #33)(20)

“Leave New York,” Peabody pointed out, “lose you.”

“He’s already given me a good shot. I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right. It feels too simple, too straightforward. He likes elaborate. He had years to put his plans together, and this is the best he can do? Maybe I’m overthinking, second-guessing.” She rolled her shoulders to loosen them. “I need to consult with Mira. I’d trust her more than a probability run.”

“She was at the ceremony yesterday.”

“Yeah, I saw her.”

“It was nice, seeing so many friends. I owe you big for cutting me loose early yesterday.”

“Consider you won’t be again until McQueen’s back in a cage.”

“Even so. It meant a lot to my parents for me to spend real time with them. Dad took us out to dinner. A real restaurant, too. Not veggie, not vegan, not healthy choice for Free-Agers. We had actual meat. They were sorry you and Roarke couldn’t come. They understood, but they were sorry.”

“It was nice to see them anyway. Give me data, Peabody. We’re nearly there.”

“Special Agent Scott Laurence, twenty-seven-year vet. Recruited while he was in college. String of commendations. On the short list for bureau chief.”

“Interesting. He let her take the lead.”

“Well, she’s no slouch. He’s married—twenty-two years. Two kids. She’s single, got eight years in. Degrees in psych, criminology. First in her class at Quantico.”

She looked up when Eve rattled up to a second-level spot on the street. “Anyway, they look solid.”

“Felt that way. Bracken works nights. Tends bar at a strip joint where she used to peel it off.” Eve gestured. “She lives above her current place of employment.”

Peabody glanced over. “Handy.”

“Had her club LC license pulled when she tested positive on the regulation exam for illegals. She’s fifty-one, no marriages, no official cohabs, no offspring. Spotty employment, a couple of stints for illegals-related charges. Nothing major. Her juvie records show consistent truancy, runaway, petty theft.”

“Sounds like McQueen’s type.”

The neighborhood had probably seen better days, but to Eve’s eye it looked as though it had always been dirty, dreary, and dangerous. The strip joint, cleverly named Strip Joint, hunched against the sidewalk like a gaudy toad. Some street artist had drawn excellently executed and optimistically sized male genitalia onto the naked and also optimistically endowed naked woman on the sign.

As it didn’t look fresh, Eve assumed either the owners didn’t give a rat’s ass or thought it added interest.

She’d have used her master to gain access to the residential door, but the lock was broken. And that did look fresh.

She ignored the smell of stale zoner in the skinny entryway, and the far skinnier elevator. Peabody clumped up the stairs after her. “Why do guys always urinate on the walls of places like this?”

“Expressing their disdain for the facilities.”

Peabody snorted. “Good one. Disdain by pee. I bet she lives all the way up on four.”

“Four-C.”

“Oh well, I ate all my dessert last night and part of McNab’s. I deserve to walk up four flights. I wasn’t going to have dessert, but it was right there, all gooey and sweet. It’s like sex. I mean, when it’s right there, what are you supposed to do? I wasn’t going to have that either—sex—with my parents bunking in the office, but, well, it was right there.”

“I’ll tolerate the gooey and sweet, Peabody, but I’m not thinking about you having sex with McNab, especially in the same sentence as ‘my parents.’ ”

“I think they had sex, too.”

Eve struggled not to wince or twitch. “Do you want me to kick you down four flights of steps and make you walk up again?”

“I’d probably bounce all the way down, too, with all this gooey and sweet in my butt. So I guess not.”

“Good choice.”

No palm plate, no security cam, Eve noted, on 4-C. Just two dead bolts and a manual peep.

She banged her fist on the door.

“McQueen’s partners always kept their own places,” she told Peabody. “Usually worked full- or part-time. We only have information from the vics on the last. She helped him lure, abduct, restrain. She helped him clean them up if he decided to use one he’d had for a while. Then she liked to watch.”

Peabody’s face went cold. “Which makes her as much of a monster as him.”

“Yeah, it does.” Eve banged again.

A door opened across the hall. “Shut the f**k up! People are trying to sleep.”

Eve studied the man glaring at her. He stood buck-naked but for a nipple ring and a tat of a coiled snake. She held up her badge. “I’d call that indecent exposure, but it barely qualifies. Deb Bracken.”

“Fuck. She’s in there. She sleeps like the dead.” He slammed the door.

Eve banged again, kept on banging until she heard somebody cursing from inside 4-C. A minute later she saw the bleary eye through the peep. “What the hell do you want?”

Once again, Eve held up her badge. “Open up.”

“Goddamn it.” The peep flipped closed, bolts and locks rattled open. “What the hell? I’m trying to sleep here.”