Promises in Death (In Death #28)(106)

“I’m not sure I do. She looks like someone I saw around, during that time. With Rod. We were becoming friends, real friends. I saw him with her a few times, or someone who reminds me of her. I asked him about her, since we were starting to hang quite a bit—and, frankly, I liked the look of her. He was cagey, wouldn’t say more than she went to Stuttgart. I only remember because I called her Miss Mystery. Just a lame joke between us that lasted for months. Long enough that I remember it, and her. She’s not my sister.”

“Because?”

“Because I don’t have a sister. Do you think I wouldn’t find out? That he—my father—wouldn’t use it against me in some way? He’d—”

He broke off, and again Eve waited while he thought it through.

“You think my father sent her to Rod. To recruit him, to enlist him as a spy. To get close to me. That all this time, right from the beginning, Rod was my father’s dog?”

He pushed up from the table, walked to the two-way glass, and stared through his own image. “Yes, I see. I see how that could be, how he could and would orchestrate that. It doesn’t make this woman my blood. My sister. It just makes her another of Max Ricker’s tools.”

Peabody’s communicator signaled. She glanced at the text, nodded to Eve.

“We’ll be able to verify that shortly. If you’re being square with me on this, and if you were being square with me on wanting to know who killed Coltraine and why, you’ll do what I tell you now.”

“What are you telling me?”

“To stay here. It’s going to take some time to wrap this, and I want you inside.”

Alex continued to stare through the glass. “I’ve nowhere I have to be.”

Eve stepped out to the corridor to confer with Peabody. “Morris pulled it off.”

“McNab signals a go there. She left Coltraine’s. We’re on her, and she’s heading back to work. That’s a big plus as they’re not done at her apartment. I’m getting like a zillion signals during the Ricker interview. Her comp’s passcoded and it’s got a fail-safe. They’re bringing it in to Feeney. They haven’t found, as yet, a toss-away ’link.”

“She’d keep it with her. That’s what I’d do.”

“If she kept Coltraine’s ring, it’s not with her other jewelry. They haven’t found it yet. Callendar’s shuttle’s on schedule. Morris is taking the sample to the lab, personally.”

“Dickhead won’t mess with him,” Eve muttered, thinking of the chief lab tech. “Not with Morris. I want to pick her up, but we don’t have it. Not yet. Need the DNA, need the ring, the ’link. Any one of them would do it.”

“We could get her down here. Use the Sandy homicide with the Alex Ricker connection. We believe he’s responsible for both murders. We want to pick her brain, anything she might know, any take she might have. How we’re trying to put him away, but we’re hitting walls.”

“Not bad, Peabody. Make it happen. Set up a conference room away from Interview. I don’t want her running into Rouche when Callendar delivers him.”

She turned away to contact Baxter herself. “Why haven’t you found what I need?” she demanded.

“Working on it. We found a passcode. False bottom of her weapon’s lockbox. It’s a bank box. And before you tell me to contact Reo, I already did. We can’t stretch the warrant to the bank box. We need a separate warrant, and we don’t have enough for that.”

“Damn it.”

“Second that. There’s nothing here so far that doesn’t jibe with a cop’s life, a cop’s salary. No high-end electronics, jewelry, art. She’s got some pretty serious weaponry though. Six pieces over and above her departmental issue. A freaking army of knives. Not all under the legal limit either, but she’s got a collector’s license. We checked for prints, for blood. They’re showroom clean. She takes care of her tools.”

“Is there a stiletto?”

“Several. We culled them out for forensics.”

“Keep digging.”

She clicked off as Peabody came back. “Grady’s clearing it with her lieutenant. She’s juiced, I could see it. The idea of coming in and bailing us out, of finding a way to put the screws to Alex. She’s pumped.”

“Good. Keep on Dickhead, will you? But not enough to put his back up. I’m going to move Alex to one of the visitor rooms, put a babysitter with him. We’ll be working Grady, Rouche, and Zeban simultaneously, the way it’s panning. You take Zeban. He’s low rung, but that means he’s going to flip. He just helped out his drinking buddy, and now he’s in the soup. Work him quick and hard, Peabody. Scare the shit out of him.”

“Oh, boy, oh, boy.” Bouncing on her toes, Peabody rubbed her hands together. “Who’s juiced now?”

Eve moved Alex, arranged for Cleo to be taken straight to the conference room upon arrival.

She paced awhile as she worked out the best strategy. And was ready when she got word Detective Grady was in the house. She grabbed a mug of coffee, a file bag, and timed it so she swung into the conference room a few minutes after Peabody.

“Appreciate you coming down.” She kept her voice clipped, just a hair over into resentful.