Treachery in Death (In Death #32)(30)

His face, as comfortably rumpled as his shirt, went grim. “This is a hell of a thing.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve crossed with Oberman’s daughter plenty. Everybody needs EDD. I wouldn’t have figured it.”

“You’re not alone.”

“I took a look at her when she came out of the Academy. Had a shiny record there, so I thought about asking if she wanted Homicide, wanted me to train her.”

Connections, Eve thought. You never knew where they’d come from. “Why didn’t you?”

“Just didn’t seem the right fit. I can’t put my finger on it, even now, except you know when you know. Like I looked at somebody else who came out of the Academy with a shiny record a few years later and knew.” His saggy face moved into a smile. “That was a pretty good fit.”

And if he’d taken Renee, would he have still taken her? Fate, she decided, you never knew where that came from either.

“You’d be running Homicide still if you hadn’t gone over to the dark side.”

“I trained you to run it.” He tapped a finger in the air at her. “Besides, you never did understand or appreciate the power of the geek.”

“Enough to know when to use them.” She sat on the edge of his desk, dipped a hand into his dish of candied almonds. “Fuck, Feeney, I just put us in bed with IAB.”

“No choice, kid.” He opened a drawer. “And no regrets. I’ve got your eyes and ears here. High grade. They won’t show on a scan or a sweep. Running a network like this, she’s probably hooked in for scans. You want to be careful with these. They’re worth double what we make in a month, combined.”

He rose, blew out a breath. And his ears pinked a little. “You gotta strip off the jacket and shirt.”

“Yeah, yeah.” They avoided looking at each other as she did.

“That one, too.”

“Jesus, Feeney, I’m naked under here. It’s a support tank.”

His color spread from his ears to his cheeks; his gaze stayed pinned over her shoulder. “I don’t want to see your tits any more than you want to flash them, but this has to go against skin. So you should’ve thought of that and worn one of those other things.”

“Man.” Mortified, she stripped to the skin, shoved the diamond she wore behind her back.

“You got some tan.”

“Jesus, Feeney.”

“I’m just saying ’cause I’ll need to adjust the tone, blend it in. I can make it damn near invisible even when you’re naked. Stop fidgeting. Talk about the murder.”

She put herself back in the filthy bathroom, which was somehow better than thinking about standing half naked in EDD.

“I think the killer put the new lock on the front door. Why would Keener do that? New locks just dare some ass**le to break it and see what’s worth locking up inside.”

“Wanted him to be found.”

“Yeah. Not this fast, but yeah. If some ass**le found him, it’s probable they’d have messed up the crime scene, riffled through Keener’s junk. He had some clothes, a little cash, a toss-away ’link in the room he’d flopped in. And shoes. They always take the shoes. If it had gone that way, we’d have less to work with. I have a source, which I made up, telling me Keener wouldn’t OD. I play that against his record, his experience with his recreation of choice.”

“How are you going to work her?”

“I’ve got some ideas, but I need a face-to-face to refine them. And I need to talk to Mira. I have to make first contact now, but I want a run-through with Mira.”

“Done.” He immediately turned his back. “Put something on, for Christ’s sake.” He picked up an earbud the size of a baby pea. “When and if you need it, one of us will be able to communicate with you through this.”

“How do I turn the recorder on and off?”

“I’ll set you up key phrases, whatever you want.”

“Ah. Cinnamon donuts. I missed breakfast,” she told him. “I could go for a cinnamon donut.”

He sat, keyed the phrase into a control panel. “That’s on. I could go for a cinnamon donut myself.”

“Who couldn’t?”

“And it’s reading five-by-five. Off phrase?”

“Down the block.”

He keyed it in, tested it. “Those phrases, your voice print. That’s a go. It’ll record into this.” He tapped a mini-monitor. “I’ll be bringing this to Roarke’s lab. We’ll set up another in your office. Peabody will be keyed in the same. The kid okay?”

“Yeah. Can you have McNab hook her up? They can use one of their rendezvous closets and everybody’ll just think they’re groping.”

“I like to pretend I don’t know about the closets and the groping. Yeah, I’ll tell the boy.”

She nodded. “Sixteen hundred, HQ, initial full briefing.”

“I’ll tell the wife not to hold dinner.”

She started out, hesitated. “Do you always remember? To tell her?”

“She doesn’t complain if I have to work a seventy-two-hour stretch, if I crash in the crib because I’m too beat to get home. She’s a damn good cop’s wife. But if I don’t tell her I’m going to be late for dinner, my life isn’t worth living.”