Promises in Death (In Death #28)(16)

“No, it doesn’t. She’s going to get our best, Detective O’Brian.”

“Can’t ask for more.”

“Who should we talk to next?”

“Newman maybe. He’s not going to get dick done today anyway.”

“Would you send him up?”

Peabody waited until the door shut. “Touchstone,” she said again. “He’ll take this the hardest. The boss is the boss, but he’s the team leader.”

“She didn’t have a cop’s gut. He didn’t want to say it because it seems disrespectful. But he knew it might help the investigation. She didn’t have the gut. Got the call, went out. Probably never felt any twinge. She’d been set up—and it doesn’t feel like impulse, but something planned out. But she didn’t feel it. It’s good to know.”

She reviewed her data on Detective Josh Newman.

4

EVE FOUND JOSH NEWMAN SAD, STEADY, AND talkative. The easygoing type, she decided. The sort that did his job, did it competently, then went home after shift and left the job on the job.

Average, was how she thought of him. The family man who just happened to be a cop, who would unlikely make it to detective second grade. And who gave her no new insights on Coltraine.

She moved on and took Dak Clifton. Though he was the squad’s youngest member at twenty-nine, he’d been a cop for eight years, and held his detective’s shield for nearly four of them. She thought of him, within minutes, as the Hot Shot.

His strong, good looks—the warm gold skin, the steel blue eyes and tumbling sun-tipped brown hair—probably served him well with female wits. Just as his aggressive, kick-your-ass interview style might have given some suspects the shakes.

Eve didn’t care to have it directed at her.

He leaned in, pushing into her space, with his eyes hot and bright. “We don’t need outside brass on this. This investigation needs to be handled in this house, in this squad. We take care of our own here.”

“It’s not up to you to say who handles this investigation. It’s done. If you’re going to take care of your own, Detective, you can start by easing back.”

“We worked with her. You didn’t. She’s just another case to you.”

Since his words echoed Cleo Grady’s, Eve gave him the same response. “You don’t know what she is to me. You want to bitch, bitch to somebody else. Now you’ll answer my questions.”

“Or what? You’ll haul me down to Central? Big f**king deal. You’re in here jacking us up when you should be out there hunting down the one who killed her.”

“I’ll tell you what the big f**king deal is, Clifton. Detective Coltraine is dead. You’re here wasting my time and pissing me off when you should be doing everything you can to aid the investigation of a fellow officer.”

Now Eve pushed into his space. “And that makes me wonder. Are you just an ass**le? Or is there some reason you don’t want to answer my questions? Let’s assume you’re just an ass**le, and start with your whereabouts yesterday from twenty-two hundred to twenty-four hundred hours.”

The gold skin went hot as he showed his teeth. “You’re no better than the IAB rats.”

“Consider me worse. Whereabouts, Detective, or yeah, we will continue this at Central, in a box.”

“I was home, with a woman I’m seeing.” Sneering, he sat back, deliberately rubbed his crotch. “Want to know what we were doing, and how many times we did it?”

“Peabody?” she said with her eyes on Clifton’s. “Are either of us interested in what this ass**le did or didn’t do with his c**k between the hours of twenty-two and twenty-four hundred last night?”

“We couldn’t be less.”

“Name the woman, Clifton, and consider yourself lucky I have more important things to do right now than write you up.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“I’m no more interested in your ass than I am your dick. Name, Clifton, or I’ll find the time to write you up, and you’ll take a thirty-day rip for it. You’ll start the rip sweating in a box in my house if you don’t stop screwing with me. Name.”

“Sherri Loper. She’s upstairs in Communications.”

“Tell me about your relationship with Detective Coltraine.”

“We worked together.”

“I’m aware of that. Were you friendly, unfriendly?”

“We got along fine.”

“And occasionally worked cases together?”

He shrugged, stared up at the ceiling. “Some of us actually do the job.”

Eve sat back. “If you keep trying to bust my balls here, Clifton, I’m going to bust yours. Believe me, I’m better at it. I’m rank, and don’t you forget it. Now show some respect for the rank and for your dead squadmate.”

“I said we got along fine, and we did. Hell, Ammy got along fine with everybody. She had that way. She was good with people. You think I don’t want to know who took her down? We all want to know. It doesn’t make any sense.” Some of the bravado cracked as he dragged his fingers through his hair. “Why the hell aren’t you hammering at the people in her building? It had to be somebody in there. She lived in a secure building, and she was careful.”