Treachery in Death (In Death #32)(22)

“What’s her status?”

“She’s pretty solid. I thought maybe she’d have nightmares, but I guess she was too wiped.”

Wiped was how she’d describe him now. The bright clothes, the shine of the earrings crowding his earlobe didn’t disguise the strain and worry clouding his face.

“Ah, you look ... I guess the word’s formidable. In a styling way,” he added.

Score for Roarke, she thought.

“Anything I can do?” he asked her.

“There will be, but for now we’re on hold. I checked the monitor. Everything’s five-by-five there. Get some coffee,” she said when he just stood in front of the board she’d set up, jingling whatever he had in his multitude of pockets. Then she remembered who she was talking to. “And some food.”

“Maybe I’ll put something together for Peabody.” He started toward the kitchen, then stopped in front of her desk. His green eyes burned cold. “I want blood. I know I’ve got to get over, got to get straight, but f**k it, Dallas, that’s what I want. It’s not because—or just because—she was in a situation. The job puts you in situations, that’s what it is. But it’s not supposed to come from other cops.”

“A badge doesn’t make you a cop. Get over, get straight, McNab.” She’d already told herself the same. “That’s how we’ll make this right.”

While he fiddled in her kitchen, Eve rose to check the board again, to be certain she’d forgotten nothing. She heard Peabody come in behind her. “McNab’s fixing food. Go get some.”

“Stomach’s a little jumpy. The idea of going through it with Whitney.”

Eve turned. Not altogether solid, she noted. “Do you trust your commander, Detective?”

“Yes, sir. Without reservation.”

She used the same brisk tone she had with McNab as she gestured toward the kitchen. “Then get some food, shed the nerves, do the job.”

Turning away, she checked the monitor again—unnecessarily, she knew, and logged the time as Peabody moved by her.

Moments later she heard McNab’s voice. She couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was sly, teasing. And Peabody laughed. Eve felt the tension in her own shoulders ease.

To satisfy her own needs she ordered Renee Oberman’s ID photo and data on her comp screen for another long study.

Age forty-two, blond and blue, five feet four inches, one hundred and twenty pounds. Attractive, as Roarke had said. Flawless ivory skin with a hint of roses, classic oval face with sharply defined eyebrows several shades darker than her hair.

Dark eyebrows, Eve noted, and a dark forest of lashes—which probably meant Renee had a clever hand with facial enhancements. She’d left the face unframed, pulling her hair back for her official photo, but Eve had studied others with the long, straight-as-rain fall of it sleeked to the shoulders.

Vanity, Eve thought. Maybe another area to exploit.

The only child of Marcus and Violet Oberman, who’d been married forty-nine years. Father, police commander (retired) with fifty years on the job. Mother, a waitress, had taken six years as a professional mother after the daughter was born, then found employment as a sales manager in a women’s upscale boutique until retirement.

Renee Oberman, one marriage that had lasted two years, one divorce. No offspring. Cross-reference had shown her that Noel Wright had remarried, and the second, six-year union had produced two offspring, a boy age five and a girl age three. The ex owned and operated a bar in the West Village.

She filed it all away. You never knew what might be useful, she thought.

“Lieutenant,” Summerset announced through the house ’link. “Commander Whitney has just been cleared through the gates.”

She’d already decided against going down to meet him, to escort him upstairs made it more like home, less like a work space. “Send him right up. McNab! Program a pot of coffee. The commander’s on site.”

But she stood, deliberately flanking Peabody with McNab when Whitney strode in.

He wore command, she thought, on his wide shoulders, on his tough face, in the cold beam of his eyes.

He stopped at her board. She’d positioned it so he would see it immediately, so Renee Oberman’s face, Garnet’s, Keener’s, the crime scene ranged together, connected.

And she saw a quick flare of heat flash through the cold.

Without asking, Eve poured him coffee, crossed over to offer it. “I appreciate your quick attention to this matter, Commander.”

“Save it.” He moved past her, zeroed in on Peabody. “Detective, I will review your statement on record, but at this time, I want to hear it from you.”

“Yes, sir.” Instinctively Peabody shifted to attention. “Commander, at approximately twenty hundred hours I entered the workout facilities in sector two.”

Whitney went at her hard, hard enough to put Eve’s back up, hard enough she had to shoot McNab a warning glare when she saw the temper light up his face.

Whitney questioned her ruthlessly, interrupting, demanding, forcing her to backtrack, repeat, overlap.

Though she paled, and Eve clearly heard the nerves skittering under the words, she never faltered, never changed a single detail.

“You were not able to make a visual identification of either individual?”