Thankless in Death (In Death #37)(98)

“Yes, sir. Where do you want these items?”

“Just put the whole box down there.” Reinhold pointed to the center of the living area. “And go get the rest. Make it fast, Asshole.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll return shortly.”

“You’d better.” Excited, Reinhold sat on the floor and pulled things out of the box.

More rope, more tape, a carving set. He smiled at the shining blade, at the long prongs of the fork. Perfect for a turkey—or whatever you wanted to slice up.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” He pulled out the portable saw, flicked the switch. And grinned as the twin, toothy blades whirred.

“Oh yeah. We’re going to have the best Thanksgiving ever.”

He set the saw down, laid flat on his back, and laughed like a loon.

He honestly, sincerely, had never been happier in his life.

Eve circled, bisected, intersected, detoured, expanded, contracted. She spent more time on the ’link in an afternoon than she normally did in a month.

And couldn’t find him.

Peabody poked her head in the door, correctly gauged her lieutenant’s mood. She might have preferred just slinking off again, but ordered herself to woman-up.

“Dallas.”

“Do you know how many supervisors, managers, landlords, owners, and clerks start their stupid holiday a day early?”

“Not exactly.”

“All of them, or damn near. Everybody’s head’s up a turkey’s ass.”

“Well … lots of people have to travel to—”

“He’s not traveling,” Eve snapped out. “He’s dug in. And he’s got a target. Whoever it is isn’t going to get a nice piece of pumpkin pie tomorrow.”

“We’ve got protection on—”

“We’ve got protection on most of the people we know or have reason to believe may be a target. Most gives him room, and that doesn’t begin to cover ones we’ve missed.”

She shoved at her hair, pulled at it in frustration. “He’s a frigging amateur, Peabody. He shouldn’t have gotten through the first day, and instead, he’s had almost a week free and clear since his first kill.”

“Dallas, we didn’t even know about the first two DBs until Monday. There was no way we could know.”

“That’s the whole thing, isn’t it? He just keeps catching the breaks. We know who he is, we know how he killed every one of them, when he did it, we even know why. We have a reasonable list of possible targets. We believe we know his general area. And we can’t find the son of a bitch.”

“He has a lot of places to hide. Add the money, and it gives him more yet.”

Impatient, Eve shook her head. “I’ve narrowed it down—strongest probability—to this radius.”

Peabody eased in, turned to the screen, blinked in surprise. “You made a graph.”

“Whatever. Highest probability area in red, secondary in blue, and so on raying out from that core. Most likely locations within each area are highlighted on the second map, same color code.”

“That’s a lot of comp work.”

“So?”

“Don’t kick me, it’s not your strength. You’d never say it was.”

Eve hissed because truer words were never spoken. “I had to break down and take a damn blocker because generating this gave me a pisser of a headache.”

“I could’ve helped you with it.”

“I gave you assignments. Speaking of which?”

“No hit on any sports tickets yet. The sales rep I talked to said a lot of the venues offer sales on tickets, including the big ones, on Black Friday. That’s the day after Thanksgiving, and the biggest shopping day of the year.”

“Because people are so juiced up on too much food they feel like they have to go out and spend more money than they’ve got. Friday.” She blew out a breath. “Hit it again on Friday.”

“Nothing on the arcade or the bar, not yet,” Peabody continued. “But I talked to security in both places, and they’re on the lookout. I had uniforms start distributing the images—his, the morph, the droid, throughout the target area. Markets, shops, restaurants. They’re pushing them on building supers, managers. It’s going to take time to hit every location, but the word’s out, Dallas. We’ve got literally hundreds of eyes looking for him now. More like thousands. Someone’s going to spot him and call it in.”

“And the tip line?”

“Not as much as I figured, but that’s probably because people are heading out of town, or dealing with out-of-towners, or shopping for what they forgot to get for tomorrow. Like that.”

Disgusted, Eve slumped in her chair. “I hate holidays.”

“Well … It’s kind of unavoidable, and again, don’t kick me, but you really ought to think about going home and dealing with your own out-of-towners.”

“What?”

“Dallas, it’s already nearly an hour past end of shift.”

“What?” she repeated and looked at the time. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

“I’m just the messenger,” Peabody reminded her as she took a cautious step out of range. “But Feeney had to take off. He’s going to try to get some work in at home. So am I, and McNab. And Callendar. Roarke’s already home, and I know he’s connected with Feeney a few times.”