Vengeance in Death (In Death #6)(58)

They had all been part of the crime community, had all associated with undesirables. Their deaths had been spread out over three years and had all been caused by different means.

Roarke was far from stupid, she mused. He’d taken his time, covered his tracks. All she had to do now was to see that they stayed covered.

If she had one break first, one solid, tangible piece of evidence to indicate a conspiracy. Anything she could put in Whitney’s hand to help convince him to buy the rest.

She heard a shout from the next room and scowled, annoyed that she’d neglected to engage the sound control. But as she rose to do so, the excited voices on the other side of the door drew her through it.

“Okay, what’s the big f**king deal? Did you find a new way to play Space Marauders?”

“I found an echo.” McNab was nearly dancing as he continually slapped Roarke on the back. “I found a goddamn beautiful echo.”

“Take it to the Alps, pal, and you can have lots of echoes.”

“An electronic echo. The bastard’s good, but I’m better. He bounced the transmission from the core system right here in the house, but he didn’t send it from here. No indeed he didn’t, because I have a f**king-A echo.”

“Good job, Ian. Here’s another. See it?” Roarke pointed to a small needle gauge jury-rigged to the ‘link. Eve saw nothing, but McNab hooted.

“Yeah, baby, that’s the way. I can work with this, you bet your ass I can.”

“Wait a minute.” Eve muscled between them before they could slap backs again. “Explain this in terms normal people can understand. No e-jabber.”

“Okay, try this.” McNab inched a hip onto her desk. He was wearing hearts in his ears today. A dozen tiny red hearts Eve tried not to focus on. “The last incoming from mystery boy you received. I tracked it all over the damn place, and into here. Every indication showed the transmission originated from this building.”

“I got that.”

“But we don’t want to believe that, so we open up the system for element scan. It’s like — Do you cook?”

Roarke only chuckled. Eve sneered. “Let’s be serious.”

“Okay, I was going to say like a recipe where you separate the eggs from the sugar and like that.”

“I’m not a moron, McNab, I can follow that.”

“Good, great. When we’re taking the elements for our cake and examining each one for, like, quality, maybe we see one’s off, just a tad off. Like the milk’s turned. So when we figure the milk’s turned we want to know why. Now we find there’s a leak in our refrigeration system. Just a tiny leak, microscopic, but enough to affect the quality, enough to let in germs. Your house system had a germ.”

“What does that have to do with echoes?”

“Ian.” Roarke held up a hand. “Before you whip up a four-course meal, let me explain this. Electronic signals leave a pattern,” he told Eve patiently. “And that pattern can be tracked and simulated. We’ve run the patterns for incomings on this unit for the last six weeks. We also ran patterns for outgoings from the main system for the same length of time. When doing so, and taking it through several levels, we discovered a shift in pattern on one incoming. The one that matters. An echo — or a shadow layered over the consistent pattern — which clearly indicates a different source.”

“You can prove the transmission didn’t originate from here?”

“Exactly.”

“Is this the kind of proof you can put into black and white and I can take to Whitney?”

“You betcha.” McNab beamed at her. “EDD’s used this kind of evidence in hundreds of cases. It’s standard. This one was buried deep and the pattern was nearly smooth. But we found her.”

“You found her,” Roarke corrected.

“I couldn’t have done it without your equipment and your help. I missed it twice.”

“You came through.”

“Before I toddle off,” Eve interrupted, “and leave you two boys to bask in the glow of mutual admiration, would you mind taking just a moment to distill this evidence into hard copy and disc for my pesky report?”

“Lieutenant.” Roarke laid a hand on McNab’s shoulder. “You’re embarrassing us with your praise and gratitude.”

“You want praise and gratitude?” On impulse, she grabbed Roarke’s face in her hands and kissed him hard on the mouth. Then — what the hell — she did the same to McNab. “I want the data within the hour,” she added as she strode out.

“Wow.” McNab pressed his lips together to hold on to the taste, then patted a hand on his heart. “The lieutenant has some great mouth.”

“Don’t make me hurt you, Ian, just when we’re beginning such a beautiful friendship.”

“She got a sister? Cousin? Maiden aunt?”

“Lieutenant Dallas is one of a kind.” Roarke watched the needle give another, barely discernable jerk. “Ian, let’s distill this data for her, then wouldn’t it be fun to see just how far we can follow this echo?”

McNab’s brow furrowed. “You want to try to track an echo this faint? Hell, Roarke, it takes days of man-hours and top equipment to track a solid one. I’ve never heard of anything below the scale of fifteen being tracked.”