Chapter 7

IN YEARS PAST, THE CLOSEST EVE CAME TO real cow-meat steak on a cop’s salary was an anemic soy burger. She’d have matched that with fake fries, burying them in salt and been fine with it. Now a perfectly grilled New York strip sat on her plate, beside actual fried potatoes piled like golden shoestrings, and crispy green beans mixed with slivers of almonds.

Not a bad deal.

But the better one, better than real meat and potatoes, was having someone sitting across from her she could run through the case with. In those years past most of her meals, such as they were, had been eaten alone or on the fly. Maybe she’d catch something with Mavis, and there’d been plenty of crappy food chowed down with another cop.

But sitting in her own home, with a real meal, and a man who not only listened but got it? She’d won life’s trifecta.

“You’ve eliminated a personal motive,” Roarke commented after she’d laid out the basics.

“It was business. I can’t find one whiff of personal for motive or in execution. I’m going to ask Mira for a profile,” she added, referring to the department’s top shrink and profiler. “But this was what I think of as a semi-professional hit.”

“Semi-pro? Not quite good enough for the majors?”

“I’m thinking no, not quite good enough. There was a... bullishness about it. Charging in. She didn’t know she was working late until that afternoon, so not much planning ahead. Still, a decent plan. Stun—though the stun feels unnecessary—snatch, grab, transport, and get her inside for privacy. The killing method, that takes training, and again, it’s impersonal.”

“I doubt the victim thought so.”

“She thought they’d let her go, or she sure as hell hoped they’d let her go, right down to the instant. And he took her from behind, again, impersonal. He—they—got whatever information they asked for, plus whatever she had in her briefcase. Then they used the standard cover of a botched mugging.”

“A homicidal classic.”

“It might’ve worked. But what kind of mugger stuns a mark, smacks her around, then snaps her neck from behind?”

“A particularly vicious one, but no,” he continued before Eve could speak. “If you’re a mugger lucky enough to have a stunner, you stun, take the valuables, and run off to stun another day.”

“Agreed.”

“If you’re particularly vicious, you don’t bother to stun. You’d want to do some damage and you’d inflict it.”

“Also agreed. Plus why? She was a mugger’s dream. A woman walking alone who doesn’t fight back. No defensive wounds. If she’d screamed or shouted for help say, and spooked him, someone would’ve heard it. And in that neighborhood, would likely report it, or at least tell the cops on canvass. And if he was spooked—”

“And had a stunner.” Roarke picked up her train of thought. “Quicker, easier to jam it against her throat and kill her that way.”

“That’s why the stunner doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the marks are on her. And one more plus. She had no business being that far from the office, that far from home. It was too cold and too late for her to walk it, and she’d told her husband she was just walking to the subway—a block and a half from the office.”

“All that, yes. And the blood on the tarp.”

“That’s the big one as it proves she was inside the apartment. To get her inside, they needed the code.”

“Ah, well...” He only smiled, wiggled his fingers.

“If they could afford or had a BE man good enough to get through that security without a trace, they could afford a pro hit.”

“There wasn’t much time to recruit.”

She pointed a finger at him. “Exactly.” Pleased he followed the same line, she lifted her wine to drink. “She gets passed the accounts, the audits, just that afternoon. That’s the most likely motive. Maybe, maybe, it was one of the other, older deals, and she’d just reached some stage on it that sent up the red flag, but the probability’s higher if it was new because it reads like a rush job.”

“New to her.”

This time she toasted him. “Exactly. Word gets back to the client, or the auditee—is that a word?—or the person involved with the business who doesn’t want somebody fresh coming in, can’t afford it. She’s only had a few hours, hell, maybe she didn’t even scratch the surface. But you can’t take the chance. Things are a little confused, a little bogged down at Brewer and company, with the two accountants in a Vegas hospital. It’s a smallish department. Everybody knows everybody. You can bet anybody who needed to know could find out who’s working on what. Nobody’s going to think a thing about a question like, say, who got slammed with Jim’s or Chaz’s work? Or the supervisor told the interested party who’d be handling the audit when they contacted him to express concern.”

“Not to worry, Mr. Very Bad Man,” Roarke began, “Marta’s one of the best. She does excellent work, and in fact, will be burning the midnight oil right here tonight to catch up.”

“As simple as that,” Eve agreed. “Then Mr. Very Bad Man calls in a couple of goons, tells them to find out what Marta knows, get the files, and get rid of her.”

“Which they do, but Lieutenant Very Smart Woman detects the subtle mistakes in their work.”

“They shouldn’t have taken the coat.” She cut a bite of steak before gesturing with her knife. “It’s a little thing, but it was overkill. Or if they took the coat, they should’ve taken the boots. They were good boots, pretty new. Probably worth more than the coat. And if they wanted it to look like a mugging, they should’ve used a sticker. Messy, sure, but putting a couple of holes in her would read more like a mugging. Using that apartment was convenient, but not smart. It gave us the connection.”

“WIN to Brewer to the vic’s new audits.”

“I know at least eight clients at this point who cross, and three who had audits assigned to Marta on the day of her murder. We may find more yet.” She plucked up a fry, frowned at it. “Too fucking convenient.”

“Why not one of the construction crew? One of them could have finessed the codes.”

“Not impossible, and I need to dig into Peabody’s report more thoroughly. So far, nobody’s popping. And it seems to me one of the crew would be more likely to spread that tarp back out. They’d know how the place looks every morning. Leaving it bunched up just brings more attention to it. And when you straighten it out, you’re more likely to spot the blood.”

“As you did.”

“Yeah. Still, panic equals mistakes.”

“He could’ve assumed you wouldn’t go inside.”

“That’s what’s bone-ass stupid. For Christ’s sake, we find a woman outside an empty apartment, it just follows we’ll go in and look around.”

“Then take a closer look at—who’s the W in WIN again?”

“Whitestone, Bradley.”

“Right. Who also happens to be right on the spot to report the crime.”

“Makes him look suspicious, yeah. And it’s obvious, not so subtle here. Moonie gave me the rundown of her evening with him, and she’s the one who brought up the new building. He didn’t push it. We’ll keep looking at him, but I like the other partners more.”

“Why?”

“If you’re arranging for somebody to be murdered, and you’ve arranged for them to use your place, and you’re an ambitious money guy, do you take someone you’re hoping will be an important client—and one you’d like to bang—to the scene so she discovers the DB with you?”

“Well now, that’s a bit of a circular route, and a foolish one. Still, you could call it an alibi.”

“You could call it an alibi,” she agreed, “but a smarter one, and he comes off smart, is to stick with the potential client, stay away from the area, and find out when the cops come to call.”

“Some like to insert themselves.”

She liked him playing devil’s advocate, making her think through the steps and details.

“Some do, not him. Just not.” She shook her head when Roarke lifted the bottle to pour her more wine. “Added, there’s that ambition. He’s proud of the company, and that building. It can’t be good for business when clients find out some woman got killed—even if we bought mugging—right there, dumped right on his doorstep. It puts people off, and especially people with lots and lots of money.”

“There’s a point.” Roarke leaned back, enjoying her, enjoying the moment despite death. “Aren’t the other partners proud and ambitious?”

“I’d say yes. I also say this was spur of the moment, driven by the moment, and a little panic. We’ve got a place, we’ll use it—the cops will never figure it’s us. It’s just random, just her bad luck. Whoever ordered the hit tells the muscle to make it quick and clean, and make it look like a mugging. Take her valuables. And I’ll bet your fine ass a week’s pay whoever killed her has never been mugged and has never mugged anyone. Or he’d know better how to make it look.”

“Whose week’s pay? Mine or yours?”

“Since you make more in a week than most people make in a bunch of decades, we’ll stick with mine. Which circles back to why you’re so useful. If there’s something hinky with the books, the files, you’ll spot it.”

“Fortunately I like being useful,” and added, “I’m looking forward to the opportunity to poke about in someone else’s financials.” He smiled when she frowned at him. “Using the power for good, of course. Why don’t I get started on that? I’ll work in here. Easier, I think, if I have a question for you, or you for me.”

“Okay. I can use the auxiliary. I need to set up my board, but I’ll get you started first.”

“Are the files on your unit here, or at Central?”

“I told McNab to copy and send, yeah.”

“Then I can be a self-starter.”

Just as well, she thought. As he’d put the meal together, she was stuck with the clearing up. But fair was fair, and like the magic soup, the meal and the reprise had her energy back in tune.

A nap, sex, and a hot shower may have played into that. Either way, she calculated she had a few good hours in her.

She noted that Roarke dived right in, and that the cat watched her suspiciously when she came out of the kitchen to set up her board.

She decided her best tactic there was ignoring Galahad until he pretended nothing was wrong and never had been.

She studied the board as she worked, and went to her auxiliary unit to print out more ID photos. She pinned Candida and Aston to her board, and Alva Moonie’s housekeeper.

Connections, she thought, and began to make them. Candida to Alva—former friends, lovers. Both rolling it in. Candida to the vic through the audit. She added Candida’s money man, and a note to do a run on him.

She aligned the vic’s family on one side, her coworkers on the other. And took a good look at James Arnold and Chaz Parzarri, making another note to contact the hospital and get the rundown on injuries and prognoses.

Roarke, she saw, was in work mode. With his hair tied back, sleeves pushed up, he looked relaxed about it. Who knew why some people found numbers so damn fascinating.

She sat at her auxiliary unit, and dived into what she considered the much more interesting prospect of digging into people’s lives.

Arnold, James, age forty-six. On his second marriage, nine years in. The first gave him two children, one of each variety, and hefty child-support payments. He’d added another kid—female—with the second marriage.

He looked like an accountant, she decided. At least the clichéd image of one. Pale, a slightly worried expression on his thin face, faded blue eyes, thin sandy hair.

The sort who looked both harmless and boring. And, she knew, appearances were often deceiving.

He had an advanced degree, and had been a teacher’s assistant and a dorm monitor in college.

Nerd.

He’d worked for the IRS for six years, then had gone into the private sector with a brief and unsuccessful two years between trying to run his own business out of his home.

He’d been with Brewer for thirteen years.

Decent salary. She figured anyone who crunched numbers all damn day probably deserved one. Good thing, as his oldest kid’s college tuition took a greedy bite.

No criminal, but a shitload of traffic violations, she noted. And, hmmm, the second kid had some juvie knocks. Shoplifting, illegal possession, underage drinking, vandalism. A long stint in rehab. Private rehab. Pricy.

His wife had recently given up her professional parent stipend to go back to work as a paralegal.

While finances balanced, as far as she could tell, money had to be tight. How did it feel, poring over all those accounts loaded with cash, stocks, trusts, whatever, while you had to work and calculate just to make the mortgage?

Interesting.

Chaz Parzarri, age thirty-nine, single, no offspring. He had the kind of dark, sulky looks some women went for. Chiseled bone structure, a lot of wild curls. He didn’t, to her mind, look like an accountant. But he, too, had the advanced degree and the government experience—was all that required?

She glanced up, over to Roarke, wondered if he knew, but didn’t think it was important enough for the interruption.

His education advanced largely on scholarships—Chaz was a bright boy, she mused. Born in New Jersey to a waitress and a cab driver, with three siblings. Tight money again, at least in his background.

He’d turned that around, steady work, smart investments—she assumed—and had himself a condo on the Upper East Side only blocks from work.

No criminal. Traffic knocks, too, but not in Jim Arnold’s league. Mostly speeding.

Some people were always in a hurry. Maybe Chaz was in a hurry to get rich.

She put them aside to let them stew and read Peabody’s report on her interview with Jasper Milk, then Carmichael’s on her and Santiago’s interview with the interior designer.

Still letting it stew, she got up, programmed coffee, and came out to set a mug on the desk for Roarke.

“Thanks.” He leaned back to look up at her. “What’s the cost?”

“A couple of answers and/or opinions.”

“I can afford that.”

“Are you getting anywhere?”

“Of course.” He smiled, picked up the coffee. “Let me tell you up front, this is unlikely to be a snap. Two of these are big companies with subsidiaries, charitable foundations, payrolls, expenses, depreciations, and so on. I’ll need a basic overview on all of them. Don’t expect I’ll find a handy column marked Monies I’ve Embezzled or Misappropriated or That Were Never There in the First Place.”

“What does that last one mean?”

“That sometimes companies or people within them fudge in the opposite direction to mollify stockholders, potential clients, or investors and their BODs—and hope to make up those numbers. It’s... optimistic cheating,” he decided. “And usually flawed.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve one audit here due to a potential merger, another due to bylaws, another by court order. It appears your victim had done the same as I’m doing here. She got a feel for them first. She has some questions noted, on all three of these. Nothing major, but she hadn’t worked on them very long.”

“Is your opinion she didn’t—at least at the time of her death—know anything particularly damaging?”

“I can’t say absolutely, but I think that’s probably accurate.”

“Okay. I’ve got a handful of suspects. Let me run one by you. This guy owns his own company, a generational deal. About a dozen years ago, things got very, very thin. He held out, but barely. Had to take out loans, sell off some assets. He took a lot of smaller jobs, and sometimes lost money on them.”

“Keeping his hand in. Employees?”

“Yeah. They’d built up to about fifty, and in the thin went down to about twenty. I’m no business expert, but it looks like he’d have been smarter cutting that by half. He wouldn’t have had payroll eating up the profit so he lost money on some of those jobs.”

“He kept as many of his people as he could working. It may not be sound business in the short-term, but it is in the long. You know who’s working for you, they know they can count on you.”

“All right, I can get that. He’s got thirty-two employees now, and some of them are from before the thin, ones he had to let go.”

“Loyalty? He’d done well for them while he could, brought them back in when work picked up.”

“Maybe.”

“Is the company private or public? Are there stockholders?” he asked.

“No, it’s his deal. His family’s deal. The construction guy.”

“Ah. About a dozen years ago things were thin in that area. In real estate, in housing. The bubble burst.”

“What bubble?”

“The housing bubble. And not the first time. People lost their homes, and when that happens people who service homes and buildings, who rehab them, repair them, build them don’t have the work. It’s a hard time for many, and for those willing to take the risk, an opportunity.”

“For what?”

“For taking some risks and reaping rewards—long-term. I acquired a lot of real estate during the thin. You don’t think this man killed your victim.”

“No, at least I’m not sold on the idea. But like you said he or one of the crew could’ve been paid to pass on the code.”

“You don’t like that one either, less now that you’ve looked into this man more thoroughly.”

“No, I don’t like it. Not enough time, as far as I can see, to find the right person, offer the right incentive. Unless they were already involved, and I can’t see that connection.”

She edged her hip on the corner of the desk as she sampled her own coffee. “I get the same, basically, from the interior designer. Good rep, up front with the cops I set on her, what appears to be a good relationship with the construction guy, and with the clients—the partners.”

“Then even if you don’t—or can’t—absolutely eliminate them, they’re well down the list.”

“Yeah, unless inadvertently they passed the codes.” She shifted around to look at her board. “That leaves me, so far, with the three partners and the accountants whose work the vic took over. Or one of the others in the accounting firm, but from what you just told me, that doesn’t hit the mark.”

“They’d have known she had nothing to speak of, and there was no reason to kill her. Arrange to mug her and take the briefcase, the handbag in case she took files home. Then, if they had access to the offices as employees, it’s not that difficult to access a locked office after hours, corrupt files on her comp. Easier, cleaner than murder.”

“That’s my take. That leaves me with the partners, clients who cross, and the two accountants in Vegas. One couldn’t talk to her as he was in a coma, and the other could only speak to her in a limited way. Too much curiosity, and it looks off. Plus he’s pretty banged up.”

“Hard for either of them to order the hit.”

“Yeah. I can’t quite see some accountant calling in a hit from his hospital room in Vegas. The hit came from somewhere else, but if it came due to the files, one or both are in this. They’re too good at what they do not to have seen something off.”

“Have you looked at their financials?”

“Yeah, and one of them lives close financially. Two marriages, three kids, one with a hefty college tuition, another who’s been in some trouble and did a stint in expensive private rehab.”

She pointed to her board and Arnold’s photo.

“He’s got a house in Queens and three vehicles he’s paying for. To want something you have to know about it, see it, imagine it—and if you see it a lot, deal with it a lot, and it’s always someone else’s?”

“You want it more, or some do. I did.”

“Yeah. On the surface, he looks like an average guy, but that’s surface. The other’s single, came from blue-collar, hard-scrabble, studied. Got a good ride on scholarships.”

Again she gestured, zeroing in on Parzarri.

“He’s made money with his money, which you ought to be able to do when you know money, I guess. He’s not swimming in it like a money pond, but he’s solid. Scholarship kid, going to good schools, really good schools and coming home to a tough neighborhood in Jersey. You see how the other half lives, and that can be rough. You’re the one who’s there because you’re smart, not because you’ve got money. You don’t have the nice clothes, you take the bus instead of driving the car Daddy bought you. It can piss you off.”

“So you’ll make sure you’ll eventually be the one with money, with the nice clothes and the fancy car?”

“Maybe. They look clean, but...” She tapped her computer. “There’s something there.”

“But no pressure.”

She laughed, shook her head. “You’ll find it. But meanwhile, I need some input. You’re the expert.”

“On greed and avarice?”

“On how the greedy and avaricious work. If there’s something in there, and there damn well has to be, would the accountant in charge of the account know, or am I just assuming and suspicious?”

“You’re suspicious, but yes, almost certainly the accountant in charge would know. There’s some wiggle room there if the person—if it isn’t indeed the accountant skimming, cooking or finagling on his own—who’s finessed the numbers managed to do so without having it show. A thorough audit’s bound to turn over some of those rocks.”

“So the person doing the audit would know, or find what’s under them.”

“In a firm like Brewer? You could count on it.”

“Would the financial guy—the money managers, brokers, whatever term you use for WIN—would he know?”

“Again, there’s that wiggle room, particularly if the client and the accountant worked it together. But to make more? To keep it smooth, and actually simpler? You’d want the money manager in the pocket as well.”

“At least three people,” she considered. “Simpler maybe, but it gets sticky. The more people who know, the easier for something to slip.”

“Didn’t it?” he returned. “Someone’s dead.”

“Yeah.” She looked back toward the board. “Someone is.”

“It’s business,” he continued. “As you said about the murder itself. Not personal, just business. Cheating, stealing, shifting funds, kickbacks, payoffs, burying profits—whatever it might be—it’s business. To do business, and do it well, to do it profitably, you need advisers, managers, workers. And, to keep it smooth, again simple, you’d want those people to have a foot in each door—the legal business, and the criminal.”

“Yeah, okay, that’s how I was leaning. I thought about Oberon, how she ran her department, all those cops—and used her handpicked to run her dirty cop sideline. You need some in each camp, to keep the legit business going, and to use that legit business for the dirty one.”

She considered it as she finished her coffee. “And if it runs like that, if that’s a good comparison, the money guy, the accountant, they’re not in charge—they’re tools. The one in charge,” she tapped her computer again, “is in there.”

“But no pressure,” Roarke repeated.

“You eat pressure for breakfast, ace.”

“Some days a man just wants a full Irish.”

“Me? I get that every day.” She rose, walked back to the board. “He—or she—or them. Not up here yet. Not yet. But the tools are. I just need to figure out which ones up here do the cooking.”

She went back to her auxiliary, and back to work.

···

He saw the moment she started to flag, how she rubbed at her eyes, scrubbed at her hair, as if it would keep her awake and alert.

He thought he could manage another hour or so. It was all so bloody interesting, how others set up their businesses, their books, their investments. He’d find what she needed, nothing else would do the way she’d put her faith in him. Challenged him, of course, very purposefully, he knew. Put his ego and his competitive spirit on the line.

He wouldn’t have it, or her, otherwise.

But he wouldn’t find it tonight. He’d found some potential questions, but as he wasn’t a shagging accountant, he’d have to check some tax codes.

Tomorrow.

For now, he rose, walked over, pulled her to her feet.

“I’m just—”

“Going to bed. With the exception of your short nap, you’ve been up and doing nearly twenty-four hours. And so have I. We both need some sleep.”

“Did you get anywhere?”

“I need to check some codes tomorrow, and I want to start a separate search for secondary, unreported accounts. That would be fun.”

“Anybody stand out?”

“Not as yet. And for you?”

She shook her head as she fought to stay upright on the way to the bedroom. “The accountants haven’t been cleared, medically, for travel. Parzarri’s had some BP spikes, and some other medical crap I don’t quite get. But they’re both stable, just not cleared for travel for another couple days. I want face-to-face.”

“We can go to Vegas. Sweat accountants and gamble.”

“I don’t have enough to sweat them. Yet.” But boy, she’d enjoy making them sweat. “If I made the trip, whoever’s in charge would know or suspect I know, and I want him thinking he’s clear.”

In the bedroom she undressed, dragged herself to the bed. And realized as soon as she hit the sheets, he was right. She needed some sleep.

Dreamless, she hoped, though the last hadn’t been bad, hadn’t been a nightmare. Those were fading again. But it was still death and dying and murder. And mothers, she mused, trying to turn it off as Roarke slid in beside her, drew her in.

But it nagged.

Who was right? Was she right claiming Marta had thought of her kids, of her family, when terrified, when hurt? Or was Stella right, and she’d only been able to think of herself and survival?

It didn’t matter, and the answer couldn’t be known.

Put it away, she ordered herself.

Then it came so clear. She’d missed it, too wrapped up in the rest of the investigation.

“She thought of them.”

“Hmm?”

“Marta—the vic. She thought of her kids, her husband, when they had her. She thought of them because she didn’t tell them everything. I figured she’d told them everything, but she didn’t. She didn’t tell them she’d copied the files to her home unit. They hurt her, they scared her, they threatened her and in the end they killed her. But she protected her family.”

“What she loved most,” he said and brushed his lips over her hair. “Sleep now. Rest that brain.”

For reasons she couldn’t understand, knowing she’d been right, the mother had protected the children, she closed her eyes and slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.