for rehab or assistance. Or the one who ODs on tranqs, or the ones who mix the chemicals to get high. Or the ones, you fuckhead, who resell to kids on street corners.”
“We’re not responsible for—”
“Cut the crap. You’ve confessed, on the record. I don’t need your sob stories and justifications.”
“You can’t seriously believe I killed that driver.”
“Oh, hell no. I just said that so you’d spill your guts on the rest. Good job.” She checked the time. “Now we can both get out of here. Me to work, you to your cell.”
“But . . . I want a lawyer.”
“No problem. They’ll let you contact one on your way to booking. Thank you for your cooperation. Interview end.”
She rose, opened the door, and hailed the waiting uniforms. “Walk him through, let him contact his lawyer.”
She walked into Observation and watched Peabody wrap up a weeping Karolea Prinz.
“She cried a lot,” Peabody said when they headed down to the garage. “I mean a lot. She says, or thinks, she’s in love with the asshole. Didn’t want to roll, but—”
“Push comes to shove, love goes down.”
“I guess, except when it’s really love. Do we get to go look at shoes now?”
“We’re not looking at shoes. We know the shoe already. I want to make this quick.”
“Shoes are fun.” Peabody gave a little bounce of enthusiasm on her own. “It’ll be good to have the side benefit of fun after all that crying. See, it’s a nice combo. Shutting down a small, yet profitable prescription drug scam, running down a lead on the investigation, and getting to gaze longingly at shoes I’ll never be able to afford, but imagining I could.”
“You know what happens to people who longingly imagine having things they can’t afford?”
“Happy dreams?”
“A life of crime.”
As she drove, Eve considered that possibility as applied to the case. “Maybe this guy gazes longingly at fancy limos and high-priced LCs, and it just pisses him off he can’t order them up like pizza. So he vents the anger and frustration by killing them. Which isn’t bad as theories go except for the shoes. When you’ve got three thousand to spend on a pair of designer loafers, you’re not hurting.”
“Maybe he stole them,” Peabody suggested. “Or got them as a gift, or blew a wide chunk of his savings just to have them for his own.”
“All possible, and ors that shouldn’t be dismissed. But he’d also have to spend a chunk on a crossbow and bolts—pricey ones, and an antique bayonet. Unless he scammed someone else’s ID to acquire those. He still has to connect somewhere to the two corporations. Otherwise, why go through all the layers on the security there?”
It kept coming back to the companies, Eve concluded. “If he’s just a homicidal hacker, he could’ve accessed any IDs and credit lines—and he could afford all the fancy limos and high-priced LCs he wanted anyway, so it doesn’t jell.”
Eve twitched her head toward the dash comp when it signaled incoming data.
“It’s from the lab,” Peabody told her. “A report on the weapon. Antique is right. It’s mid-twentieth century. Dickhead’s got make, manufacturer, even a serial number. Pretty thorough.”
“You be thorough, start a search. Find us the owner.”
It gave Eve a few minutes of quiet. Who was next on his list? she wondered. What type? Maybe a top-drawer salon tech, private shuttle pilot, some hot, exclusive designer.
She thought of Leonardo, her oldest friend’s husband. And Mavis herself, Eve thought with a clutch in her belly. Famous music vid star. She’d make a point of checking in with them, putting them on alert.
No private gigs until she cleared it.
“It’s not registered.” Peabody looked up as Eve hunted for a parking spot. “It hasn’t been sold by any legit vendor in the last twenty years. Something that old could’ve been bought twice that long ago, before weapons of that kind had to be registered. It could’ve been passed down through a family or something. It’s military, and there’s no way to trace the original owner back a hundred years. There’s no records on that kind of thing.”
“Okay.” She hit vertical, causing Peabody to yelp, and squeezed into a second-level spot. “So he already owned it, skipped the registration—thousands do—or he picked it up on the shady side. More thousands do.”
They walked down to street level, and the half block to the shoe boutique. As they passed the display window Peabody let out a distinctive yummy noise.