Treachery in Death (In Death #32)(40)

“She did.”

“I don’t think she was too happy about it.” Peabody shrugged. “I guess some handlers are pretty territorial about their weasels, even when the weasel’s dead.”

“Maybe even more so. Did the lab ID that lock?”

“I’ve got the make and model. The report says it hadn’t been installed more than a couple of days. It’s actually an interior lockset—cheap and available in pretty much any place that deals in locks. It hadn’t been picked or tampered with,” Peabody continued. “I’ve got the full report.”

“Sweepers, interior?”

“Not in yet. You asked for a second level.”

“Right. How pissed was Renee?” Eve asked when they got in the vehicle.

“I’m going to say controlled fury. She didn’t like getting the nudge, and my take is liked it less getting it from your subordinate. What she really didn’t like was my very courteous—as directed—statement that you had copied and informed the commander.”

“Good.” Perfect, in fact. “She’ll be stewing over that for a while.”

Pleased with the idea, Eve drove through thickening traffic to the ugly slab of a building squatting between a low-rent sex club and a windowless bar.

“Not much better than the hole he died in,” she decided. “And less than three blocks away. Not a bright bulb, our Juicy, even when he was breathing.”

The lock on the entrance of the building was still intact. No point busting it, she thought. Who’d want to break into a place where nobody had anything anyway?

She mastered it open, started up the stairs directly across from the door.

The tags on the walls were all sex or drug related, and the scent hanging in the overheated air reeked of both, with a sticky thread of old garbage weaving through. Someone’s choice of music banged on the walls like hammers against someone else’s choice of a screaming game show. On the second level a rail-thin cat hardly bigger than a rat sprawled.

“Oh, poor little kitty.” Even as Peabody reached out a hand, the cat leaped to its feet, arched its back, bared its teeth with a throaty hiss.

Peabody missed having her hand raked open to the bone by inches.

“Jesus. Vicious little bastard.”

“That’ll teach you to be so soft-hearted and friendly.”

Eve moved up to the third level, down the grimy corridor—taking her time for the benefit of anyone peering through a peep.

“Record on.” She bypassed Keener’s locks.

His flop was a few shaky steps up from his final resting place. But even that was a vast improvement. It stank of sweat, rolled with heat, and carried the added perfume from the mostly empty takeout cartons and boxes.

“Chinese, Thai, pizza, and what I think used to be a gyro. A regular U.N. of disgusting, undiscarded food. Juicy was a pig.” She eyed the unmade daybed. “Still that looks more comfortable than the ratty mattress in his hole, so he definitely made a few sacrifices to hide out.”

Single room, Eve thought, no bigger than her office. No AutoChef, no Friggie, no bathroom attached—which meant the flop and all or most of the others on the level shared one, likely at the end of the hall.

Still he had eight locks and bolts on his door, another set on the single window.

“Okay, let’s toss it.”

“Yuck” was Peabody’s opinion.

“I bet you’re not the first cop in here today with that sentiment.”

They found ancient underwear, one of a pair of holey and amazingly smelly socks, several pounds of dust, enough dirt to plant roses, empty brew bottles, broken syringes, the torn empty baggies dealers used to store their wares.

“There’s nothing here.” Peabody mopped at sweat. “If he was getting ready to rabbit, he must’ve taken everything he had—except for dirty underwear—with him.”

“I’ll tell you what we found,” Eve corrected. “Rickie lived like a rabid rat. Lived with this smell rather than dumping his trash. Probably because he stayed high as much as possible. The locks inside the door aren’t new, so he probably kept some of his junk in here, whatever he made off dealing and weaseling. And he stuck to his territory. It’s also interesting what we didn’t find, here or at his hole.”

“A minimal level of hygiene?”

“That’s missing, and so is any kind of client book, memo book—nothing like that on his disposable ’link. He might’ve dealt on the lower levels, but he had contacts. He was a weasel, and a weasel’s useless without them. I’m not buying he kept names, locations, numbers in his rabid rat head.”

“Shit. I hate when I miss something like that. He’d have taken it with him.”

“More valuable to him than clean underwear, I guarantee. And Bix relieved him of it. He and Garnet had to come through here today, just to make sure Bix didn’t miss something after I put a little heat on the deal. We’re going to make that their mistake.”

“We are?”

“Let’s knock on doors.” She stepped out, rapped on the one directly across the hall. No answer, which wasn’t unexpected even if there’d been a crowd of twelve inside. But she heard no sound.

The music lover’s unit was a different matter. She pounded, then pounded and kicked, until she finally beat out the banging of drums.