a series of codes—so you must have those e-cops—that will shut down the systems on those specific buildings.”
“Then they can keep moving, keep jamming, keep shutting down while the backup comes in behind them.”
“That would be your part of it to calculate.”
“And I can do that.”
“This doesn’t factor patrols.”
“I’ll have that handled, keep going.”
“Each building will have locks, and those require yet another series of codes.”
“Okay.”
“As you’d expect, both the prison and the main house have more layers.”
She nodded, as she had expected. “Top e-man on the prison, you and me on the main house. It’s going to take more than an hour, closer to two to shut it down, and to move in the takedown teams.”
“I’m going to work on that, but I doubt we can do it all in less than an hour or seventy-five minutes.”
“Slow and steady’s fine with me. The main house is going to be one of the last to shut down the way it’s situated. But by then, we’ll have backup. We go in, and now the takedown teams pour in. I can see how I can work it.”
She considered. “When all law enforcement’s inside, can you reactivate the wall?”
“That would be the easy part.”
“Good. Ants can’t scatter if they can’t get out of the hill. And here’s another question.”
She asked, rejected, accepted. He refined; she fleshed out.
And when she felt she had it solid, she went to her commander, coordinated with Abernathy, then with Teasdale, then with Reo.
20
With Roarke back in EDD, working out any kinks with Feeney, she sat down at her desk to think, to pick at any flaws.
Boots up, coffee in hand, she flipped through the various stages of her many-pronged operation on her wall screen.
Baxter tapped on her doorjamb. “Want good news, boss?”
Since he carried evidence bags in his hands, Eve swung her boots off the desk. “Have you got something in there that nails Mirium Wilkey to Ariel Byrd’s murder?”
“How about three nails, like motive, means, opportunity?”
“Those work. Let’s have it.”
He set the bags on her desk. “Can I get in on that?” he asked, and gestured to her coffee.
“Go.” She rose, unsealed the first bag.
“Trueheart’s writing it up, but I figured you’d want to see this part of it. That’s a copy of recordings we found on the comp in her home office. Audio and video. They go back ten months, and some of them are, we’ll say, intimate. My young partner may have a permanent blush.”
“From Gwen Huffman’s phone.”
“She labeled them, date, time, content—very organized. We got recordings of the originals for the record, since we couldn’t bring anything in. The last one’s dated the night of Byrd’s murder. It’s got the romance, the sex, the texts from Merit Caine, and the ensuing argument—pretty heated—between Byrd and Huffman. You’ve got Huffman storming out, and subsequently calling for a Rapid to pick her up. Pickup a couple blocks from Byrd’s residence.”
Since he’d previously experienced the bite of her visitor’s chair, he stood and drank his coffee.
“She wiped her security feed for the night in question, from twenty-two hundred to twenty-three-forty-five.”
“Covering her leaving to kill Byrd, returning to clean herself up, then leaving again to get to the compound for cover. We need EDD on that.”
“Done. Trueheart took the original disc straight up. We had to risk she wouldn’t look at that if she goes back to that location.”
“That’s the right call. Feeney will find the wiped data.”
“She kept the key card, LT. We left it, but recorded it. She had it in her desk drawer. We found data on Byrd on her comp—copied that, disc in the next bag. Her background, her financials, her contacts. And a recording of Byrd’s apartment, inside, room by room.”
“She plans. Wanted to study the space in case.”
“Dallas, it looks to me like she was working out a way to snatch Byrd up, transport her to Realignment.”
“Huh. Sure, of course she was. Money in the bank.”
“It looks like she planned to keep Byrd on the island. There’s a lot more in the other bags on Natural Order, procedure, finances. And financially, we probably need an accountant but it looks to me like they’re not exactly hemorrhaging money, but they’re oozing it.”
Eve nodded. “Jibes with Roarke’s take.”
“And Mirium felt the same. She’s got calculations on how to generate more income. Gwen Huffman’s a big factor—blackmail.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I’m not telling you anything you hadn’t figured there.”
“It’s money. It’s planning for the next stage. Blackmail’s more insurance.”
“Then there’s the senior Huffmans—and she has