Obsession in Death (In Death #40)(70)

She didn’t expect the UNSUB to be waiting, maybe picking through one of Ledo’s grimy skin discs, but interior booby traps still held some concern.

“Watch your step,” she ordered Peabody. “We do the sweep and clear slow.”

“There’s a new message, Dallas.”

“I see it. Clear first. She might have left us a surprise.”

But they found nothing but dirt, sweeper’s dust, dried blood, and a battalion of annoyed cockroaches.

“McNab, have the droids canvass the building. Start with across the hall. Misty Polinsky. She might – Shit.” She glanced at Roarke. “Did you follow up on getting her a place at Dochas?”

“She moved in yesterday.”

“Yeah, yeah, good deeds kick you in the ass. Have them canvass.”

Then she holstered her weapon, studied the latest message.

This time the letters were huge, written in red rather than black. Uneven, Eve mused.

Angry.

IT MATTERS!

I MATTER!

SHOW ME IT MATTERS OR I CAN’T BE

YOUR TRUE FRIEND

“She’s losing it. She misses Hastings, can’t follow through there, and now she’s losing it. Just that quick, just that easy. One mistake, and she starts falling to pieces.”

“It’s like…”

Eve turned to Peabody. “What? Finish it.”

“It just strikes me as middle school. You know, when you’re about twelve and you get mad at your best friend. You get all pissy, and it’s okay, I’m not going to be your friend anymore unless you – whatever.”

“A long-winded way of saying immature?”

“Yeah, but it’s a little more. That’s the stage when your hormones are zapping around, and everything’s so emotional. Your connect with your BFF is so intense, and a breakup is more traumatic even than a romantic breakup. It feels like life and death.”

Eve had never dealt with any of that. The hormones, sure, she thought, she had some vague recollections of mood swings, quick anger, the sudden, hateful urge to cry over nothing. But she’d never had a BFF during puberty. She hadn’t wanted one, hadn’t wanted that kind of connection.

“So she’s breaking up with me?”

“It sounds like she’s giving you a chance to stop her from breaking up with you.”

“It’s a girl thing,” McNab observed. “Boys just punch each other a few times, then they’re done with it and off riding their airboards.”

Peabody sent him a withering look, but Eve thought the “boy” way entirely more sensible.

“I’m going to send this message to Mira now so she can factor it in. Take a look at the police seal, will you? How did she get through it?”

“Should be a code.” McNab pulled a mini-reader out of one of the many pockets in his bright pants, scanned the lock on the seal. “Yeah, got a code, time of entry, six hundred hours seventeen minutes, this morning. Code read Zero-Eight-Zero-Echo-Five-Three-Delta-Niner. Running that for holder… Shit, Dallas, it’s yours.”

“That’s not my master code.” Eve dug her master out. “That’s not my code, and this is my master. Scan it. Run it. On record, McNab. Let’s keep it clean.”

“Yes, sir.” He took her master, did the scan. “Code reads Three-Eight-Two-Tango-Zero-One-Alpha-Zero. Not even close. And the run makes it yours.”

“She got her hands on a dummy – or someone else’s master,” Roarke speculated. “Neither would be that difficult. She programmed it with a code, assigned it to you.”

“She’d have to register the code. It would have to clear.”

“Someone in law enforcement, or doing their research, would know that,” Roarke pointed out. “And she has the skills to figure out how to do it.”

“She’s a geek?”

McNab made an iffy sound. “She’s got skills, but my ten-year-old cousin, Fergus, has skills at least on par with what we’re seeing here. She did a lot of fancy work to reroute the e-mail, but it took us under fifteen to track it here.”

“She wanted us here,” Eve pointed out.

“Yeah, there’s that.” Looking unhappy, McNab stuck his hands in the pockets of his long red coat. “You’re going to want to look at EDD. I’ve got to say that anybody there, including the greenest shoot, could probably do what we’re seeing. The thing is, you’re going to find plenty in any department or division who could.”

“I’ve got to look. And I’ve got to consider if I’d been in my usual routine, I’d have been at Central or en route there when the e-mail came in. That means it would’ve taken longer than the under fifteen. If I’d been en route, considerably longer. If I’d been right at my desk, as I was at home, I’d still have had to shoot it up to Feeney – if he was already in – and get the trace going. She wanted time to get out of the flop, the building, the sector, before we pinned it and I could send officers.”

Eve looked back at the fresh message. “Angry, and yeah, immature. But still controlled, still careful, still planning things out. Peabody, let’s find out when that master code was registered – and get it canceled on my authority.”

“Maybe there’s a way to put an alert on it,” Peabody suggested. “So if it’s used you get instant notification.”