Forgotten in Death(69)

And though the writing was nearly illegible, she read the last day Alva spent in that prison, read of the beating. She hadn’t felt well—he cited lazy, ungrateful—so hadn’t cleaned the house to his standards, didn’t have the evening meal ready, embarrassed him by not weeding the flower bed in front of the house so the neighbors could see how stupid and lazy she was.

The rape followed the beating, though he called it his right, her duty.

“Dallas.”

She looked over, saw Peabody. She hadn’t heard her. How could she have heard her when she’d been living a nightmare?

“Alva Quirk’s—or Alva Elliot’s—brother and sister are here. They just got on a shuttle and came.”

“Take them to the lounge. Stay with them. I’ll be right there.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m, ah, I’m going to text Morris to expect them. Get them settled in the lounge.”

Alone, she sat back, breathed it out. Should she tell them about these books? No, she didn’t think so. Not now.

But she very deliberately printed out Garrett Wicker’s ID shot and, rising, added it to her board.

“Once I put her killer away, you miserable, sadistic fuck, I’m coming for you.”

She got a tube of water, drank half of it to relieve her dry throat. She looked back at the books, then picked up the last one. The one Alva had filled with peace, happiness, growing confidence.

They could read some of it now, maybe take some comfort in their sister’s words. Eventually, when it was done, when justice was served, she’d send it to them.





14





Eve gave them as much time as she could spare, told them as much of the progress as she felt necessary. In the end, she arranged for them to be taken to the morgue.

“They won’t be able to take her home yet,” Peabody said as they walked back to Eve’s office.

“No.”

“Before you came in, I found out they hadn’t even booked a hotel or anything, so I gave them a couple of recommendations. They just wanted to get here, just wanted to see her.”

“Morris’ll take care of it.”

“These are her books, from before.” Peabody looked at the stacks on Eve’s desk. “A lot of them. Do you want me to take some?”

“No, I’ve got this, and she’s very detailed on the abuse. So there’s that after we close this end of it down.”

“Are we going to Oklahoma?”

“When we close the investigation of her murder and Delgato’s, the timing of that depends on how quickly DeWinter gets us what we need on our other victim. But we won’t be going to him. Not his turf, Peabody. We’ll get him on ours.”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing Oklahoma—you know, cowboys—but I like that better.” She looked at the stacks again. “How bad was it?”

“As bad as it gets. He’d have killed her eventually. In a way, he did. I’ve got Nadine on tap for this, and she’s getting other reporters on tap. I’m feeding her what I can.”

“She’ll dig up the rest.”

“Exactly. When we’ve got him in the box, when we start sweating him, I’m giving her the go. He deserves that,” she murmured. “He deserves having his officers, his neighbors, absolute strangers know who he is. What he did to her.”

“I’m hungry.”

“What?”

“Let’s have some lunch.”

Sincerely stunned, Eve watched Peabody go to her AutoChef and bring up the menu of choices.

“Hey, you’ve got grilled rosemary chicken sands with pepper jack cheese. We should spring for fries with that.”

When she punched through the shock, it hit her.

“Are you playing Roarke?”

“I can’t match the accent or the mmm sexy, but being your professional and platonic partner, I’m taking his lead. You need the boost if we’re going to kick some Russian gangster’s ass, and follow it up—soon—by kicking that fucking abuser’s ass. And I get one, too. That’s a good deal for me.”

Peabody took out the plates, passed one to Eve. Taking her own, Peabody looked at the visitor’s chair.

“I’m sitting on the floor.”

Once she’d ordered two tubes of Pepsi—diet for herself—she did just that.

Eve sat, ate a fry. “Reo’s getting a search warrant for Tovinski’s residence and his office—or will when the accountant comes through. I hit Feeney up for McNab and Callendar to take the electronics.”

“His uncle’s going to hear about all this.”

“Counting on it. It just might bring him to our turf.”

“No trip to the Hudson Valley? Big sigh!” Peabody nibbled on her sandwich. “I’d love to see the Hudson Valley.”

“You may yet. The elder Singers need to chat with us. Singer senior might have a hand in the skimming. He was a crap CEO.”

Eve, no nibbler, bit into the sandwich and her incoming signaled.

“Accounting,” she said with her mouth full. “I told them to send me an alert if they found anything. Very preliminary,” she read. “Discrepancies re invoices, material, and equipment changes. Unaccountable income stream. This is good.”