Obsession in Death (In Death #40)(109)

Names, locations, tasks, techs, investigators – including her – covered his board. A wide shelf under a glow light held several odd-looking plants.

He raised his face from a scope, noted the direction of Eve’s glance. “Carnivorous plants. A hobby of mine.”

“You have meat-eating plants in your office?”

“Frrrosty,” was Peabody’s take as she moved closer to study them.

“Can’t have them at home. My wife laid down the law on it. It’s not like they eat people.” He smiled broadly. “Yet. I’m playing around with a hybrid.”

“I’ll remember that should I have to arrest you for aiding and abetting homicidal vegetation. Recognize her?”

She handed him the sketch.

“This is the one who did Bastwick, Ledo. Heard she tried for Nadine Furst last night. Word travels.” He held the sketch out at arm’s length. “Haven’t gotten in to get my eyes fixed.”

He squinted at it.

“Looks like a lot of anybodies.”

She repeated the routine she’d done with the others. Single, ordinary, bright, organized, and so on.

“You’re not bright, organized, and a little obsessive, you don’t stay on my team for long. I know my people pretty good, Dallas. And that bleeds over to the other departments.”

“Anybody particularly interested in my cases?”

“See that board? We cover every-fricking-body. Not to say we don’t dig in. The one you worked with DeWinter? Everybody got invested in that.” He swiveled gently in his chair, obviously comfortable with his decimated fish and carnivorous plants. “You find the remains of twelve kids? I don’t work with people who don’t get invested in something like that.”

“Think about it,” she asked him. “Post that where people can see it.”

Where, Eve thought, she can see it if she’s here.

She wasn’t there, or at the morgue, or in a cube or on a crime scene.

She’d taken a personal day – the first in more than two years. The work she did now, the most important work she’d ever done, ever would do, needed the time. Needed her focus.

She worked through the pain, leery of blockers. But she coated her burned wrist with ointment, carefully wrapped it.

Pain was nothing, really, but the body’s reaction, even a warning. Purpose outweighed pain.

True, she’d broken down twice in tears. The pain in her body, the pain in her heart. Fear that eked in through the purpose. But the purpose stiffened her resolve, dried the tears.

Everything ended. She knew that, accepted that. Life was a cycle, one that couldn’t refresh until it ended.

So she would end it. Purge, purify, destroy to rebuild.

Careful of her wrist, she shrugged into the combat vest she’d worked on for most of the night. It fit well – heavy, of course, with the charges she wired in.

Still work to be done, but for what else she needed, it had to be Central. She knew just how to get through, get the rest, get it done. In just a few hours, she thought, and turned to the mirror.

She’d added one set of lifts to bring her height up to match Eve’s. She’d had her eyes done professionally, and would no longer need the dulling contacts for work.

That part of her life was already over.

She’d done the hair herself, and it was good. Short, shaggy, brown with lighter tones blended in. Just like Eve’s. All her sources said it was natural, that color. It hadn’t been easy to duplicate.

For over a year, she’d worked out rigorously, building muscle, killing fat. She’d been soft once, in another life. Now she was hard and strong.

Like Eve.

“We’re the same. You’ll understand that soon. There has to be payment for betrayal. Justice must be served. You can’t pay unless I pay. We’re the same. You’ll see.”

For now, she put on the dark brown wig, the blue contacts. Everything she needed was packed in the evidence box.

She put on her coat, hefted the box. She took the time to look around. The photographs, her equipment, her case board. Her life.

She’d never see it again.

It had been a kind of cocoon, she realized. A place where she transformed, in quiet, in safety.

Now she was ready to spread her wings and fly.

22

Eve stepped into the bullpen at Central.

“Listen up! I’ve got grunt work for anybody not on an active and hot, anybody who’s got some time.”

“We make time, LT,” Jenkinson said.

“Grunt work,” she repeated, “so I don’t want it pulling anybody away from a hot.” She nodded toward the handmade banner over the break-room door. “Stick with the motto. Anybody’s free enough, Peabody’s got the data.” She glanced toward Baxter’s empty desk. “Baxter catch one?”

“DB in Greenpeace Park,” Santiago told her. “He and Trueheart just left. Carmichael and I closed one last night. Wife paid her screwup of a lover a grand to off the husband. Guess she didn’t want to go through the trouble of a fricking divorce. The boyfriend rolled on her like snake eyes.”

“What?”

“You know, dice, roll the dice.” Santiago shook his hand to demonstrate. “I’m trying for colorful metaphors. Anyway, we’re pretty clear.”