Reunion in Death (In Death #14)(78)

"That's lucky for both of us." He strolled away to get himself another cup of coffee.

To stop herself from saying something nasty she might not be able to back up, she stuffed her mouth with the muffin, then sat on the edge of her desk. "I need to be brought up to speed on the guy who clocked me yesterday, and the airboard vid-kid."

"I took those." Feeney polished off a Danish then took out his memo book for reference. "Sidewalk sleeper's Emmett Farmer, licensed beggar. Trolls the sector around Central, hangs around intersections and does the windshield gag to pick up loose change. A lot of the uniforms know him, and reports are he's excitable but basically harmless."

He glanced up at Eve, pursed his lips as he eyeballed her face. "Don't guess you'd agree with the harmless part under the circumstances. His statement is the blonde gave him five dollars and told him he was supposed to wait for your vehicle, do the windshield, and you'd give him another five. She told him he had to keep you by the vehicle or he wouldn't get paid. Farmer tends to be really insistent about being paid."

"So she'd picked him specifically-smear the windshield so my vehicle's blinded and I can't pursue that way. Pit me against Gibraltar so she buys enough time to get a good lead on me."

Feeney nodded. "And if you get kicked around in the process, so much the better. Statement the airboard kid, Michael Yardley, gave you on-scene's what he's sticking to. Given his age, the fact he's never been in trouble, it holds. She claimed to be a vid producer, set the scene for him. Kid lapped it up. He's scared brainless he's going to go to jail for taking you down."

"A lot of flaws in the plan." Eve frowned as she drank her coffee. "Timing's off, just a little, either one of her stooges doesn't follow through, or doesn't follow through hard enough to immobilize me, she's the one eating pavement."

And oh, she thought as she rolled her achy shoulder, what a glorious day that would have been.

"But she took the risk," Eve continued. "That tells me the interview with Nadine got under her skin."

"She wanted to hurt you." Peabody could still see Farmer's slab of a hand flying out, striking, lifting Eve clear off her feet.

"Yeah, but more, she wanted to psych me out. Shake my confidence. It's personal."

Idly she picked up the alabaster statue Phoebe had given her, turned it in her hand. "Everything's personal with Julianna. She set me up, and she did it fast. So, how did she know when I was leaving Central? She couldn't afford to keep the sleeper and the kid hanging around long. They get bored, she loses them. Couldn't afford to stand around Cop Central herself, or some uniform might make her."

"Not that hard to find out your shift," McNab put in.

"No, but how often do any of us come and go on shift schedule? I didn't yesterday. So, she was watching me. She's been watching me, so she can get a pattern. Getting patterns is one of her best things."

She set the statue down again. "McNab, get me the buildings that face my office at Central. Get me a visual."

"Do you think she's been staking you out?" Peabody asked as McNab hopped up to comply.

"She stakes out her victims, learns all she can about them. Their routines, their habits. Where they go, what they do. Who they are." Eve glanced at Roarke. How much, she wondered, could Julianna Dunne find out about Roarke?

Only as much, she decided, as he allowed any of the public to know. And half of that was fiction.

"She'd see it as an advantage to keep my office under surveillance." Eve turned to the screen as the grid of streets began to come up.

"Like a game?" Peabody asked.

"No, this isn't a game, not to her. First time around it was business. Now, it's war. And so far, she's taken all the important battles." She picked up a laser pointer from her desk, ran its needle-point light over the screen. "These three buildings would give her the best access to my office window. We need a tenant list."

She caught the look that passed between Feeney and Roarke, then shot Feeney one of her own as Roarke slipped into his own office.

"He'll get it faster." Feeney lifted his coffee cup, but not quite in time to hide the grin.

She let it pass. "We'd be looking for a leased space, short-term. Month-by-month is probable. She wouldn't spend a lot of time there. She'd have surveillance equipment set up, feed it into another location where she could comfortably study and assess. But she was there yesterday, personally, because she'd decided to move on me."

Eve saw herself, standing at her office window, looking out. She put herself back there, behind that narrow glass, and studied the buildings and windows across the street.

"This one gets my vote." She ringed one of the buildings in light. "Or if there wasn't space available on one of these levels..." She ran a line through five stories. "This building. Those are her best angles. Hold on a minute."

She walked into Roarke's office where he sat at his desk while his equipment hummed with efficiency. "I've got a priority location," she told him. "I want you to list that one so I can run a probability."

"I'm running probabilities, on all three. Though I think that's your location."

She glanced at his screen where he had the same visual up, and the building she'd earmarked highlighted.