Vendetta in Death (In Death #49) - J. D. Robb Page 0,101
black-tie event this evening, and has bookings for a massage, with his stylist, in his home beginning at half-four.
You’re welcome. Eat.
“Okay, okay, that’s good.” Now she scowled at her AC, then turned back as she heard the brisk clicks of heels heading for her office.
It didn’t surprise her to see Mira, or to see her looking pretty as spring in a suit of soft blue.
“I didn’t mean for you to have to squeeze this into your day,” Eve began.
“Not such a squeeze. I’m heading out for a lunch meeting—with Natalia Zula—so I have a few minutes first. And I wanted to ask you if you’re bucking for my job.”
“What?”
With a smile, Mira came the rest of the way in, took a scan of the board. “Your profile of Darla Pettigrew is very astute. Your correlation to her relationship with her grandmother, what her own ambitions, emotional development, expectation may have been, may be through that relationship, strikes as accurate.”
Mira eased a hip on the corner of Eve’s desk. “Your summation there, and theory, lean heavily on your belief she’s killed. How confident are you that’s the case?”
“I’ve run probability scans that—”
“No, not what a probability scan calculates. How confident are you?”
“Ninety-five percent. I’d say a hundred, but there’s always a chance I’m wrong, and I have to factor that in.”
As she spoke, Eve turned to her board, hooked her thumbs in her belt loops, studied Darla’s photo.
“I have to factor in that she buzzed for me right off. Straight off, and I can’t shake it. So because I’ve looked at her from the start, that could influence the rest.”
“I’d love a chance to speak with her, evaluate her myself.”
“I want her in the box.” Eve turned back. “I need a reason to get her there. I’m working on that.”
“Then I’ll leave you to it.” Mira straightened. “So far, her violence has focused on men, and specifically men who have wronged women in her support group. But that violence would, unquestionably, spread to anyone who attempts to stop her from enacting her form of justice. So while, for the moment, she sees you as a kind of colleague, that will change.”
“Yeah. I figure to give that one a little push later today.”
“Then be careful.”
“One question,” Eve said as Mira started out. “Is a bag of soy chips some sort of lunch?”
“No,” Mira said, and kept going.
“Damn it.”
Eve considered pizza, and also the consequences if the scent escaped into the bullpen. Chaos, rioting. Besides, she just wasn’t hungry enough to waste a good slice.
She tried soup—noted she had several kinds. Roarke was a sneaky son of a bitch, too. She opted for a cup of minestrone—and a bag of soy chips.
Peabody came in as she was downing it. “The next…” Peabody sniffed the air. “That’s not Vending soup. That’s real soup.”
“So?”
“Well, it’s just … Smells really good.”
Eve turned, programmed another cup. “Here, and shut up about it.”
“Man, thanks. Mae Ming’s here, and I shot you the basic details from the Brinkman run.”
“Take Ming. I’ll take the morgue, and swing by the lab for Harvo.”
“Good deal for me.”
“Depending on timing, you take the other two we have coming in. Then tag Brinkman, get her in here. If you get more names, get them in here.”
“You can count on it.”
Eve grabbed her coat, dropped the bag of chips in her pocket. “I am. Don’t touch my AC.”
She walked out to the bullpen, scanned her cops, scanned the board, and noted Baxter and Trueheart had indeed caught one. In fact two, as they’d caught a murder/suicide.
She glanced toward Trueheart, who sat grim-faced at his desk working on a report. He’d lost a lot of the green, she thought, but part of what made him a good cop was his ability to feel the weight of the job.
She could see a lot of weight on his face at the moment.
She had a serial killer on her hands, Eve thought, but she had men who needed a boss.
She walked to his desk. “Detective.”
“Sir.”
“Where’s your partner?”
“He’s in the break room, getting some coffee. We just got in from—”
“Yeah, I see the board.”
“It looks like a domestic dispute. They were in the middle of a contentious divorce and custody deal. Two kids, eight and ten. He went to her place. No forced entry, so it looks like she let him in. He stabbed her multiple times, then slit his own throat.”
“The kids?”
“In school, that’s a blessing. A neighbor heard her screaming, couldn’t get in because he’d bolted the door.