Thankless in Death (In Death #37)(45)

“Run some probabilities on that.”

“Okay. Meanwhile, McNab let me know they’ve just about got the street cam angle worked out. They’re up in the EDD lab.”

“I’ll head up. Run the probabilities, send them to me. Then go home and get some sleep, or catch some in the crib. We’ll start back on this in the morning.”

“What are you going to do?”

Eve dropped her foot to the floor. “That depends on what McNab and Roarke have.”

“I’ll stick here, in case you get something hot. I’ve got a change of clothes in my locker. Maybe just tell McNab I’ll be in the crib.”

Satisfied, Eve headed out and up.

She avoided the EDD bullpen. Even in the middle of the night it jumped and hopped and jiggled with wild colors and constant movement. She steered away, but made a mental note to carve out some one-on-one time with Feeney—her former trainer, partner, and captain of the geek squad.

She spotted Roarke and McNab through the glass walls of the lab, and stepping in almost staggered from the punch of clashing, crashing music.

She recognized Mavis on the vocals, and however much she loved her friend, there were limits.

“How can you think with all that noise?” she demanded.

“Keeps the juices rolling,” McNab claimed, but bowed to rank. “Music end,” he ordered, and cut Mavis off mid wail. The room descended into blessed quiet.

“What have you got?” Eve asked as she stepped toward a screen where images flew by in a blur.

“A puzzle,” Roarke told her. “With the last pieces just in place.” He swiveled on his stool to face her. “In plain English?”

“Yeah, let’s go with that.”

“Starting at the victim’s building, we were able to correlate from various security cam footage Reinhold’s route to, and to a lesser extent from. It took some time and doing as he made a few detours, and far from all buildings in that sector have cams—or working ones in any case.”

“We nailed arrival, Dallas.” McNab sucked from a giant go-cup. “But he hit a residential pocket on departure, out of any cam range, and we haven’t been able to pick him up. He could’ve grabbed a cab or a bus, or kept walking. We’d have him if he headed into a subway. We’ve run all the stations in that sector. But he could’ve gone down somewhere else. We can keep looking.”

“Show me what you have.”

“We just put it together.” McNab ordered the results on screen. “We’ll run it forward, so you can see him arrive, then move into position.”

She watched the Rapid Cab swing out of the tangled traffic, brake at the curb. Reinhold, in his new suit and dark sunshades, hopped out, hefted a long duffel.

“Zoom in there, get me the cab number.”

McNab paused the run, sticking Reinhold as he’d secured the strap of the duffel on his shoulder.

“He’s happy,” Eve stated. “Excited. You can see it on his face. He’s thinking about what he’s going to do to her. How he’ll do it.”

“We got the number,” McNab told her, but ordered the zoom so she could see it herself. “We wanted you to see it before we called it in.”

She pulled out her ’link. “Keep it going,” she ordered, as she contacted the cab company’s central dispatch. “This is Lieutenant Eve Dallas, NYPSD, Homicide. Badge number 43578Q. I need the pickup location of a passenger.”

She relayed the information as she watched Reinhold walk, his movements smoothed out by geek-skill as the cams caught him.

She saw his head turn, imagined his gaze shifting, over, up with the movement. Looking at Lori’s building, her apartment windows, Eve thought. Taking out his ’link, trying to contact her, see if she’s up there. Her day off. He’d know that.

“Outside the Grandline Hotel on Fifth, got it. Thanks. Keep it going,” she said to McNab.

She wanted to watch him.

She studied his face when she could see it, his body language as she contacted the hotel. “Show me what you have on departure,” she told McNab once Reinhold walked into the café.

She repeated her name and identification data to the hotel clerk. “Do you have a Reinhold, Jerald registered?”

“One moment, Lieutenant … We have no one by that name.”

“A checkout? Today.”

“There’s nothing in our records.”

“What time did you come on shift?”

“Nine P.M.”

Too late, Eve thought, but there would be security cams.

“I’m coming in. I’ll need to see your security discs for today, starting at seven-thirty. All of them, all day.”

She didn’t wait for an agreement, just clicked off.

“You’ve got him walking south.”

“Yeah, then we get to this sector here, we catch him for a nano crossing over west, and that’s when we lose him.” McNab took another deep suck of whatever overly sweet drink he’d chosen. “Most building cams here have a shorter range. If he’d gone into any of the buildings, the search would’ve nabbed him.”

“Opposite direction from the hotel where he got the cab,” she considered. “Unlikely he was going back there.”

She paced for a moment. “He knows we’re looking for him, knows we’ll find Nuccio’s body and fairly quickly. Maybe he thinks it’ll be tomorrow, but still quick enough. He’s not going to grab a cab near her place, so he needs to stay on foot long enough to put some distance between any pickup and the crime scene. Smug smile on his face, just strolling along. World’s his clam.”