“For some of the vehicles and machines.” Roarke nodded. “As it’s inconvenient to transport it from one of the stations outside the city, you might use a storage compartment on-site or nearby. You’ve a fee to pay for that as well.”
“Then we follow that down, too.”
“Bureaucrats in Permits and Licensing are going to make you jump through hoops,” Feeney reminded her.
“I’ll deal with it.”
“You’re going to need to put the arm on these guys, get the warrants and assorted paperwork and other bullshit. We get lucky with the matches, you’ll cut back on that.” Feeney considered, pulled on his nose. “But you got a lot to wade through one way or the other. I can put my leave off a few days, until this is closed.”
“Leave?” She frowned at him until she remembered his scheduled vacation. “Crap. I forgot all about it. When are you going?”
“Got two more days on the clock, but I can juggle some things around.”
She was tempted to take him up on it. But she paced it off, heaved out a breath. “Yeah, fine, you do that and your wife will eat both our livers for breakfast. Raw.”
“She’s a cop’s wife. She knows how it goes.” But there wasn’t much conviction behind his words.
“Bet she’s already packed.”
Feeney offered a hangdog smile. “Been packed damn near a week now.”
“Well, I’m not facing her wrath. Besides, you’ve already juggled enough to give me this much time. We can handle the rest of it.”
He looked back at the board, as she did. “I don’t like leaving a case hanging.”
“I’ve got McNab and this guy.” She jerked a thumb toward Roarke. “If we don’t wrap it before you have to go, we’ll keep you in the loop. Long distance. Can you give me a couple more hours tonight?”
“No problem. Look, why don’t I get back to it, see if I can work some magic?”
“Do that. I’ll see if I can wrangle some warrants. Okay with you if we brief here tomorrow, oh-eight hundred?”
“Only if it comes with breakfast.”
“I’ll be right along,” Roarke told him, and waited until he was alone with Eve. “I can save you time with the red tape. A little time on the unregistered, and I can have a list of permits for you.”
She jammed her hands into her pockets as she studied her murder board, as she looked at the faces of the dead. Roarke’s unregistered equipment would blind the unblinking eye of CompuGuard. No one would know he’d hacked into secured areas and nipped out data with his skilled hands.
“I can’t justify it for this. I can’t shortcut this just to save myself a little time and a lot of aggravation. Gannon’s secure. To my knowledge she’s the only one who might be in immediate jeopardy from this guy. I’ll play it by the book.”
He stepped up behind her, rubbed her shoulders as they both looked at the images of Jacobs and Cobb. Before and after.
“When you don’t play it by the book, when you do take that shortcut, it’s always for them, Eve. It’s never for yourself.”
“It’s not supposed to be for me. Or about me.”
“If it wasn’t for you, or about you, in some sense, you wouldn’t be able to go on day after day, facing this and caring, day after day. And if you didn’t, who would pick up the standard for people like Andrea Jacobs and Tina Cobb and carry it into the battle?”
“Some other cop,” she said.
“There is no other like you.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “There’s no other who understands them, the victims and those who victimize them, quite like you. Seeing that, knowing that, well, it’s made an honest man out of me, hasn’t it?”
She turned now to look him straight in the eye. “You made yourself.”
She knew he thought of his mother, of what he’d learned only a short time before, and she knew he suffered. She couldn’t stand for Roarke’s dead as she did for those of strangers. She couldn’t help him find justice for the woman he never knew existed, for the woman who’d loved him and died at the brutal hand of his own father.
“If I could go back,” she said slowly, “if there was a way to twist time and go back, I’d do everything I could to bring him down and put him away for what he did. I wish I could stand for her, for you.”