Thankless in Death (In Death #37)(58)

“It’s Roarke’s,” Eve said simply.

“Yeah, I got that. Report’s already sent to your unit.”

“Good. McNab’s going to coordinate with you on the electronics. Keep at it.”

“We’re open all day,” Peabody said and headed back to her desk.

Eve closed herself in her office. She worked with the maps, expanded her board. Then sat, drinking coffee, studying the route he’d taken, his timing.

Scanning Peabody’s reports on his purchases, she cemented her image of him.

Suits, ties, shirts—but beyond that primarily the trendy. Airskids and boots, jeans, a leather jacket, the cargo pockets McNab was so fond of, prime athletic wear, silk boxers.

Clothes, she thought, that reflected his own image of himself. Important, stylish, edgy, and successful.

Rich. He saw himself as a rich man now.

She called up the locations of the stores he’d visited, added them in, calculated the most probable route and timing, added that.

Skirting his old neighborhood. Never going into it, or not deep. Detouring out to the East Side—fresh turf.

He buys things along the route, for his new look, for his new vocations. A suit, shoes, cord, tape, athleticwear, a knife. A new ’link, but a drop ’link at least for now. A tablet? A PPC? Wouldn’t he need to continue to research, to keep up with the media reports while on the street?

ID’s the sticker, she decided. He has to get a new one. Would he, as Roarke suggested, try to create one on his own?

Curious, she brought up his file, ran through his employment and education history. No stellar comp skills or experience, she noted, despite the short, aborted attempt to work in comp game design.

Crapped out there, barely passed basic Comp Science in high school, and that with an extra semester. Skin of his teeth in his two college e-courses.

No, he didn’t have the chops to create a passable ID on his own. He had to pay for one, or find someone to do it for him.

She added every e-instructor he’d had, grade school to his short college career. Lab partners? she wondered. She’d check on them when she contacted the instructors.

Then there was Golde—he had the chops, Eve imagined—but he wouldn’t cooperate with Reinhold. Still, she took the time to contact him, to confirm his safety.

She learned he was still at his parents’, and intended to stay there.

Satisfied with that, for now, Eve looked back at her board. Start at the beginning, she reminded herself.

As soon as she generated what would be a very, very long list of possibles, she was going back to the beginning, and the Reinhold apartment.

It was starting to piss him off.

“You’re stalling, Ms. Farnsworth. I feel a snip coming on.”

Her eyes met his, wearily. “I tried to teach you, Jerry, doing a project right takes time. If you don’t do this right, it won’t pass. If it doesn’t pass, I know you’ll hurt me. I don’t want you to hurt me anymore, Jerry.”

She was stalling, a little. It took time to do a project right, especially when she needed him to carefully insert a beacon that would—she hoped—alert the police if and when the ID was scanned.

Just as she’d needed him to undercode a message into the financial routing she prayed someone with exceptional e-skills would find.

Jerry’s skills were good—wasted potential, she thought—but he was lazy, simply too lazy to look deep, to learn more.

The ID was delicate and complicated work, and he was ham-handed and impatient. But they were nearly there.

And she’d wheedled out a little water, for herself and Snuffy, though he’d dripped it into her mouth, then her dog’s, a few stingy drops at a time.

“I’ve got an appointment, goddamn it. If I miss it because you’re screwing around, you’re losing two fingers, and your ugly dog loses an eye.”

He took out his knife, snapped out the blade, and waved it back and forth in front of her face. “I bet I can pop his eye right out with this.”

Through sheer force of will, she kept her gaze calm and steady on his. “It’s not going to take much longer, Jerry. It’s a lot of data to upload if we’re going to give you a complete background. Now you need to key in the next code, exactly as I tell you.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He checked his wrist unit, one he intended to replace with something mag before he met the realtor. And Asshole was due back any minute with the take from hocking the first round of electronics.

“You’ve got twenty minutes,” he warned her.

“Master Command D, backslash generate …”

It had to be right, she thought, just exactly right, or he’d walk away clean. It had to be perfect, or the program itself would alert him to the addition.

He’d make good on his threat then. Though she could no longer feel her fingers, she wanted to keep them. And Snuffy slept in her lap, a warm weight. His little chest rose and fell. As long as it did, she’d do what she could for him, and for herself.

And if the little bastard killed her, at least she’d die knowing she’d handed him the means to his own end.

“Insert code twenty-five backslash B,” she continued, her voice soft and slow. Her eyes filled with cold, feral hate.

12

EVE BROKE THE SEAL ON THE REINHOLDS’ apartment door and entered. It still smelled of death, with a lacing of the sweeper’s chemicals.