Chapter 15

Eve studied the names and data her men had passed on, did a probability against the profile, and decided two were worth a personal follow-up.

But first she contacted the list of people she felt might be targets if the UNSUB switched directions. She started with Mavis.

"Benedict Mantal, answering for Mavis Freestone."

"Ben." Eve looked into the clear eyes of Mavis's personal security. "Dallas."

"Hey, LT, Mavis is rehearsing."

"So I hear." Clearly, she heard Mavis advising all—each and every one—to live it up until it's done.

"We got the word," he told her. "Leonardo and the kid are backstage. I've got Grommet in with me, and he's on them. We'll have them covered twenty-four/seven."

"Good to know."

"She'll be wrapping this up if you want to talk to her."

Now join hands, sing with the band. Dance and shout, let it out! Make some noise!

"It's a crowd-pleaser," Ben said with a smile on his sturdy, square-jawed face.

"I hear that. Just let her know I checked in. I'll catch her later. Keep them close, Ben."

"Count on it."

She would, Eve thought as she ended the transmission and made the next.

As she walked into the bullpen to grab Peabody, Santiago swung on his coat. "Caught one," he told her while Carmichael grabbed her own gear. "Guy went splat off the roof of a midrise on Wooster."

"Jumper?"

"To be determined. Move your hot buns, Carmichael." When Eve's eyes narrowed, Santiago held up a hand. "It's okay, she asked me to say that."

"Affirmative." Carmichael hustled up. "Haven't put on an ounce since Thanksgiving. He's giving me motivation to hold that through the end of the year."

"Don't give any motivation in public," Eve ordered, turned to Peabody. "Your hot buns are with me."

"Aw, that's so nice! I've gained two pounds, four ounces since Thanksgiving, but that's actually a personal record—on the good side. Last year—"

"You'll never get motivation again if you say another word about your ass."

Peabody grabbed her coat, jogged to catch up. "Can I say something about Carmichael's?"

"No."

"It was going to be complimentary." Peabody pulled her mile-long scarf out of her pocket—bright pink and green stripes today—and began wrapping it around her neck like a boa constrictor. "Where are we going?"

"Arsenial Investigators. Low-end PI, West Twenty-fourth off Eleventh. We're looking for former detective Gina Tortelli—one of the dirty cops brushed out during the Roth sweep. She's one of their two listed operatives."

"She wrote you?"

"Can't say for certain, but her mother did."

"Her mom?"

"Her mother isn't pleased with the part I played in cleaning Roth's house."

"It damn well needed cleaning," Peabody said with some force as with some flicks of the wrist she twisted the scarf, folded bits of it, and had the boa constrictor loosely knotted and fluffed.

"In her mind I'm a brownnosing, traitorous cunt and godless daughter of a whore with the loyalty of a jackal."

"A mom called you the C word?"

"What's giving birth have to do with it?"

"Well, it's just... a mom."

"This mom wrote a second time after Nadine's book hit the best-seller lists, and in that one I'm a glory-seeking whore-bitch with seeping pus in my heart, and my judgment day won't be far off. Oh, and she prays every night that the day comes when I get true justice and burn screaming in everlasting hellfire."

"Well, wow. She's got a way with words."

"It made for interesting reading. So maybe the daughter's devised a way to answer her mother's prayers."

"But the UNSUB's been obsessed with being your friend and partner, not sending you and your pus-seeping heart into everlasting hellfire."

"Maybe that's bullshit—the friend and partner. Maybe a smart cop could figure out how to send us chasing the wild turkey."

"It's goose, the wild goose. I'm pretty sure wild turkey is some kind of whiskey."

"Kentucky bourbon," said a helpful uniform sardined in the elevator with them. "Good stuff if you can get it. Got family in Lexington. My uncle's been known to chase the wild goose after a few rounds of Wild Turkey."

That got him a laugh from some of the cops before he squeezed off.

"Goose, turkey, they're both weird-looking birds. The messages link me to two murders in the media," Eve continued as they rode the elevator to the garage. "We can look at it as a kind of payback. Long shot," Eve added before Peabody could. "But the mother's letters are full of crazy rage. The daughter's a wrong cop. Maybe she's full of crazy rage, too."

In the garage she headed for the big All-Terrain. "Then we'll take the other tack with ex-officer Farmer. I don't know how this one got through the screening for a badge in the first place."

Eve strapped in, thought it was a little like sitting at the controls of a fancy tank, reversed out of the slot.

"She's loony. Smart though, which may be how she got through screening. She did the six-week fast track, aced pretty much across the board. But she fell apart once she was on the job. Unless it's true pretty much everyone she has contact with—male, female, cop, suspect, bystander—sexually harasses her. She filed charges about every five minutes, then whined nobody understood her or would work with her."

"Gee, that's really unfair." Peabody rolled her eyes.

"She knows I get it, though, and has contacted me a few times with requests to work as my aide. Failing that, given her experience—for the last eight months as a skip tracer—she could be my main CI."

"She sounds like a real winner. But the sex part doesn't fit."

"No, it doesn't. But the rest does. And still, both the mother and this perennially sexually harassed skip tracer both contacted me through active e-mail accounts."

"Still have to follow them up."

"So we are. Mavis is in rehearsal. Mantal and Grommet are on her and Leonardo and Bella."

"Good hands. We had Delivery Roulette with them a few weeks ago."

"Delivery Roulette?"

"Yeah." Though the temperature had risen enough to turn the ice to slush, Peabody kept a choke hold on the chicken stick. "Mavis tagged us, and we were just hanging, so we went down. We play it every couple months I guess—their place or ours. Easy since we're in the same building. Security was there because she asked them to stay after the gig. What she does is spread out all the delivery menus, then you have to close your eyes, pick one—then pick a number. You have to order from that menu, and that item. It goes down the line. Hilarious when you end up with this mix of Thai, Chinese, Italian, vegan, and whatever. Ben and Steve were good sports about it."

"Trina," Eve remembered.

"Sure, she's been in on it a few times."

"No, you need to contact her because I'm not putting myself there. I want her to watch her ass while this is going on. Just text her, otherwise the two of you will start on hair or something else that makes me want to punch you."

While Peabody made the contact, Eve hunted for parking somewhere in the vicinity of the squat, dumpy building that housed Arsenial Investigators. Giving up—the size of the All-Terrain made it next to impossible to find any suitable street parking—she bumped into a potholed lot, squeezed into a viciously overpriced slot.

"Thirty-two-fifty an hour." She shoved the ticket into her pocket. "Whoever runs this place should be arrested for petty larceny. Make that grand larceny by the end of a single freaking day."

"At least it stopped raining ice."

Bright side be damned, Eve thought as they hoofed the two and a half blocks to the building.

Sidewalk sleepers, most with their beggar's licenses displayed, camped against buildings. One with an explosion of yellow-white hair that made the bony guy look as if he'd been lightning-struck played a mournful tune on a harmonica. A couple of LCs who looked barely old enough to be legal huddled in a doorway in their microskirts and fishnets, shivering.

On the corner a glide-cart smoked. With no takers, the operator leaned against the cart munching a loaded dog.

Eve turned at a skinny flight of stairs, following the helpful pointed finger that announced:

Arsenial Investigators

Third Level

Four Aces, a pawnshop, occupied the storefront, with Madame Curracus, Palm Reader, and Office For Let occupying the second floor.

They climbed to three, buzzed at the old iron door.

At the answering buzz, Eve muscled the door open.

The reception area boasted a spindly desk, with a clunky data and communication center, and the sulky brunette who clunked away on it. The waiting area held a pair of orange plastic chairs and a coin/credit-operated bubbler.

The brunette stopped clunking, looked up with a pout. "You gotta appointment?" she demanded in a voice so nasal she could've warned fog-blanketed ships away from rocky shores.

Eve drew her badge. "I do now."

The brunette shifted, and Eve saw her hand slide under the desk. Cop alert, she assumed.

"Mr. Arsenial is out of the office on an investigation. You can leave your contact information."

"Mr. Arsenial is back in his office, probably with his feet up on his desk while he scratches his ass. I don't care. We're here to see Gina Tortelli."

The brunette sniffed through her honker of a nose. "And the nature of your business?"

"Isn't any of yours."

"Sheesh, why you gotta be so bitchy?"

"It's the nature of my business. Now if Mr. Arsenial's that skittish about cops coming by, he's probably got a reason. I can also make it the nature of my business to find out why and make his life a living hell, or you can produce Gina Tortelli."

"Why'nt you give me a minute? Sheesh." She turned to the 'link, punched private, picked up the handheld. "Yo, Gina. A coupla badges out here wanna see you, won't say why. Yeah, sure. Nuh-uh. 'Kay." She disengaged. "She's coming out. You can sit down if you want."

Eve glanced at the plastic chairs, imagined what kind of asses may have warmed them.

"No, thanks."

Tortelli came out with attitude. Her data listed her at five-eight, and the laced boots added another couple inches with their thick stubbed heels. She wore her blond-streaked brown hair in short dreads. Eve thought of Hastings's description of the attacker's skin tone.

Café au lait, heavy on the lait.

It fit.

Tortelli's dark eyes narrowed, flattened as recognition flickered over her face.

"Slumming, Lieutenant?" She said Eve's rank with a verbal sneer.

"Working. You want to do this out here?"

Tortelli fisted one hand on her hip, gave a go-ahead flick with the other. "You got something to say, say it."

"Two people are dead, another was assaulted last night. You fit the description, pretty much down the line."

Tortelli's lips parted on a quick, indrawn breath, but she recovered quickly. "That's bullshit. I saw the sketch you released. It fits half the people in New York."

"You were on the job long enough to know we don't release everything to the media. Whereabouts, December twenty-seventh between seventeen hundred and nineteen hundred hours."

"I'm not telling you dick without a rep."

"Fine, contact one, have your rep meet us at Central."

"And I don't have to go anywhere with you."

"You want to play it that way, we'll play. We'll go talk to your mother."

"What the fuck!" Tortelli exploded as Eve turned toward the door. "You don't go near my mother."

"I can go near her, and I can haul her into Central, put her in a box. I can charge her with threatening a police officer, cyber bullying, and hold her on suspicion of conspiracy to murder."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Saying nothing, Eve pulled out her PPC, brought up the first e-mail from Tortelli's mother, held it out.

The combative stance broke a bit as Tortelli read. "Oh, for Christ's sake." Now she twisted a chain around her neck that held a silver cross. "Just spouting off, that's all, and that was damn near two years ago."

"There's more. This is just the first. I talk to you, or I talk to her. Choose."

"Gina? You want I should get somebody?"

Tortelli glanced at the receptionist as if remembering she was there. "No, no. It's okay. It's nothing. It's nothing. Back here," she said to Eve, turning away.

She led the way into an office even smaller than Eve's with a slit of a window. A match to the spindly desk held as creaky a DC as in reception. But the office was rigorously clean and organized.

"Look, my ma's got a temper, okay? And I'm her only daughter. I'm going to talk to her about this, tell her to knock it off, but for Christ's sake, anybody on the job gets a rash of shit from somebody every fricking day."

"Whereabouts."

"Couple of days after Christmas." She turned to the comp, ordered up a calendar. "I've been tailing a woman. Husband thinks she's cheating, and he ain't wrong. I was on her from fourteen hundred hours, twenty minutes on the twenty-seventh to nineteen-thirty, when she went back home. Husband tagged me at thirteen-fifty when she said she was going out, and I followed her. I got it right here in my log."

"Your log, Tortelli."

"Yeah, my log—and the tags from the client are on my 'link log. Subject exchanged some Christmas stuff, then went straight to the Swan Hotel over on Park. Got on the elevator. Had luck 'cause they've got glass ones. She gets off on the fourteenth floor. I go up, look for what rooms have the privacy light on that time of day, and I find it—1408. It's in the log."

"Did anyone see you? Did you talk to anybody?"

"The whole point is nobody sees me, and doesn't remember me. I sat on her for two hours solid, down in the lobby, watching the elevator. She comes out, but not alone. She's with somebody, and they tickle tonsils on the way down, then she goes one way, he goes the other. I stayed on her until she walked back in her own door. I was on her last night, too. I was just writing the report, because I identified the guy she's rolling with. It's her fucking brother-in-law. Her sister's husband."

"Classy."

"Wait!" Tortelli threw up a hand. "I got a receipt from the lobby bar. I nursed two club sodas so I could sit there. I got a receipt for it, and it's got the date. I got the pictures I took, and we use time stamps. I can prove I was where I say I was.

"Lay off my mother."

"December twenty-ninth between five and six hundred hours."

"I was home, in bed, alone. Asleep. Alone because the guy I'd been with three years and I split after I got demoted, and the shit hit. My life went down the toilet, okay? Happy? I got this crapper of a job because I'm marked. But I'm not going to stay in the toilet. Once I get some distance and some backing, I'm going to start my own agency. Lay off my ma, goddamn it. You got your pound of flesh already. I was fourth-generation police. I'd've made lieutenant in a few years. Now I'm in this shithole."

"If you were fourth-generation, you sure as hell should've known better."

"Easy for you to say, married to money."

Before she realized her temper snapped, Eve slapped her hands on the desk, hard enough to make it shudder. "I was ten years on the job before I set eyes on him. You think it's about money for me? You think it's about money for any cop worth the badge? You're a fucking disgrace."

"You don't know what it was. You don't know anything. Everybody did it, a little here and there. It's right there, and where's it going? You think, what does it hurt? You think, I risk my life every damn day. You think that because it's easy. You think I haven't asked myself every damn day why I didn't walk away from it? I knew Taj. I knew him."

Tortelli drew a shuddering breath as she spoke of a dead cop, a good cop. "I didn't have anything to do with what happened to him. None of that. Just took some here and there. It's why I only got demoted. I only got demoted because I spilled my guts to IAB after it went down. And I couldn't live with that, either, so I'm in this shithole."

Tears wanted to come. Eve could see them fighting behind the anger. "You think I blame you for it? Yeah, on good days I can talk myself into that. On bad days I can barely look at myself in the mirror. I didn't kill anybody. You've got no cause to drag me into this, drag my family through this again."

"Show me the receipt, from the lobby bar."

Tortelli opened a file already on the desk, took it out.

"Okay." Eve handed it back. "You're clear."

"It was only five or six thousand over a couple years," Tortelli said as Eve started out with Peabody. "Six grand tops."

Eve glanced back. "Your badge should've been worth more." And kept walking before she said something else.

"I feel sorry for her."

Eve stopped on the steps, the cold snatching at the hem of her coat, to burn a stare back at Peabody.

"Okay, don't toss me off the stairs. Everything you said to her was right. Everything. And you could've said more and worse and been right. But I feel sorry for her because she knows it, and she's living with it."

"You're wasting your sympathy."

"What I'm saying is she was good enough to get her detective's shield, to close cases, maybe make a difference. And she tossed it, all of it, for a few thousand dollars."

"Double that, minimum. She's still lying, still justifying."

On the street, Eve jammed her hands in her pockets because she actively wanted to punch something, someone—and her partner didn't deserve it.

"And it's not the money, it's never just the money. It's the idea you're entitled to it. Some DB had a wad of cash on him, what's he going to do with it? Hey, that's a nice wrist unit, and he's got no pulse, so I might as well have it. Shit, that was a big illegals bust, and I got a little bloody on it. The department's just going to light it up, so what's the harm if I take a chunk, sell it to some mope? I bust my ass, risk my ass, I deserve it. The first time you think that, do that, pocket something from a crime scene, dip into the pockets of a DB, you're done. You're finished, and rolling on cops as dirty as you won't make you clean again."

"She'll never be what she wanted to be, could've been. She traded that for money. It doesn't matter if it was ten dollars or ten thousand." Peabody hunched her shoulders. "She knows it."

Eve passed the harmonica player again. A jumpy tune now. She didn't know how he had it in him to play something so insanely cheerful while he huddled in the cold.

She doubled back, dug into her pocket for what she thought of as her bribe cash, pulled out a fifty, crouched so he could see it, her badge, her eyes.

"Get a goddamn meal. If I find out you took this to the liquor store down the block, I'll kick your ass. Got that? No," she said when she saw Peabody reach in her own pocket. "This is enough—and you still owe me on payday. Got that?" she repeated to the sidewalk sleeper.

"'Preciate it." He tucked the fifty into a fold of his coat.

"Get a meal," she repeated.

Annoyed with herself—why not just light a match and burn the fifty?—she headed to the overpriced lot and her vehicle.

"Now I'm short till payday," she muttered, and swiped her card, got the receipt for parking for her expense report.

"I'll spring for lunch, if we get it. As long as it's cheap."

With a half laugh Eve stopped at a light. Then just lowered her head to the wheel a moment. "You weren't wrong—about Tortelli. I can't feel it, but you're not wrong to. Fourth-generation cop, and she's taking vids of some woman diddling her brother-in-law. You think, maybe they were all dirty along the way—that's what she's done, that's the smear on her family legacy, and she knows that, too."

"You weren't wrong either. Her badge should've been worth more."

The light changed; Eve drove.

"I can't remember ever wanting to be anything but a cop. When I woke up in that hospital in Dallas, everything that happened blurry, or too bright to look at, the cops were there. They scared me some—he'd put that in me, how the cops would throw me in a dark hole with spiders. But they were careful with me, and nobody had been. The doctors, the nurses, they were careful, too, but I didn't think how maybe they'd fix everything the way I thought about the cops. One of them brought me a stuffed bear. I'd forgotten that," she realized. "How could I have forgotten that? Lost in the blur."

She shook her head, made a turn. "I can't remember ever wanting to be anything but a cop," she repeated. "I'm betting it was the same for Tortelli. Maybe the difference is she thought it was her right, the badge was just her right. So she didn't value it until she lost it."

···

Though it involved another hunt for a street slot, and another overpriced lot, they tracked Hilda Farmer, formerly Officer Farmer out of the Twelfth Precinct, to a basement unit a few blocks from the bail bondsman she worked for.

Eve pressed the buzzer. Moments later, she saw the electronic peep—a costly addition to security—blink. Hearing the distinct eek! through the door, Eve brushed back her coat, laid a hand on the butt of her weapon.

Locks thudded, snicked, clunked, then opened.

The tall, curvy brunette said, "Dallas! Finally! Hey, Peabody, how's it going? Come on in!"

"Hilda Farmer?" Eve glanced around the small, tidy living space serving as an office. No clunky equipment here. A pair of slick DC units sat on a central workstation facing a trio of wall screens.

One of the screens displayed the photo and data of one Carlos Montoya, a hard-faced man with a thick mustache and scowling eyes.

"Skip I'm tracing." Farmer waved a hand at the screen. "Spine breaker. Assault with a deadly. He beat some schmuck half to death with a ball bat because he couldn't come up with the vig. Should never have made bail, you ask me, but if he hadn't, I wouldn't be working. Have a seat! I'll make coffee. I've got some of your brand for special occasions."

"Hold off on that."

"Sure, whatever you want. Hell of a thing, isn't it, Bastwick and Ledo—and that attack last night on the photographer. Assholes in the media trying to work an angle that ties you up in it. I'm here to help."

She patted the seat of a chair, took another for herself. "I don't have as much of a jump on the research as I'd like, but I've been on another job for a couple days. Whatever I have is yours. You got my e-mails. You know I'm more than ready to work for you."

"You're not a cop anymore."

"I admire you—both of you, really—for sticking it out, working against the rampant sexual harassment in the department. I stood up for myself. I mean, even my lieutenant made remarks and overtures. Go out and bust some balls? Is that any way to talk to a female officer? Telling me I needed to clear any OT with him—like I didn't know he meant I'd have to put out for him to clear it? And he wasn't even the worst."

"Imagine that," Eve mumbled.

"You know what it's like. I like the work I'm doing. A skip tries anything like that, a kick in the groin takes care of it. You can't take care of things like that on the job. But I'd come back in a heartbeat under you, Dallas. You don't have an aide since you made Peabody your partner.

"I'll give you my résumé," she continued before Eve could speak. "You can talk to Charlie—Charlie Kent, the bondsman I work for. Charlie's okay, so far, but I work out of my own place so he doesn't get the idea he can move in on me."

"Like everybody does."

Farmer rolled her eyes, cast them to the ceiling. "I don't know what's wrong with people. But back to you and me, I'm willing to work as a civilian aide or we can request I be reinstated. I'm not picky on it. Clearly, the important thing is that we work together. But I'll thank you not to stare at my breasts. My face is up here."

With a thin smile, Farmer tapped her cheeks.

As Eve had been looking at her face, and only her face, she just lifted her eyebrows. "Okay. You've been researching my current investigation."

"As always. You're the reason I joined the force. I requested assignment to Central, to you, but didn't get it. A lot of jealous people in the department, but I accepted that. Pay the dues, I told myself. But the harassment was so relentless. I actually think it was deliberate, a way to push me out before I could be reassigned to you.

"So! We should have that coffee if you want to discuss the investigation. I'll bring up my notes."

"We'll pass on the coffee," Eve told her. "Regarding the investigation, I have a couple of questions that should wrap this up."

"I'm at your disposal. Professionally," Farmer added, ticking her finger at Eve.

"Since you've followed the investigation, I'd like your whereabouts at the time of the two murders and the assault on Hastings."

"Dallas." Huffing out a breath, Farmer sat back. "Let me make this very clear. My personal life is personal. However closely we'll work together, however intimate that relationship is, I won't allow the line into personal to be crossed. I realize you and Peabody bend those rules, and while I don't approve of the sexual free-for-all between a detective and her direct superior, I can overlook it."

Peabody said, "Huh?"

"You don't have to worry I'll usurp your... dynamic, we'll call it in polite company. I'm not interested. There will be no threesomes here."

"Gosh, I was counting on that. I even had the outfit."

"Peabody." Eve's voice remained firm and flat despite the laugh tickling the back of her throat.

"Let's put all the sex aside," Eve began.

"I couldn't agree more! Now—"

"No, now," Eve corrected. "Your whereabouts for the times in question are pertinent to the investigation. I have no personal interest in you whatsoever. If you'd check your calendar, we'll wait."

"Are you suggesting I'm a suspect?"

"I'm suggesting you state your whereabouts so we can stop wasting each other's time."

"Fine. I don't have to check anything." Farmer tapped her head. "On the evening of the twenty-seventh, I was in Miami, tracking, and apprehending, Janet Beaver. I returned with her to New York on the eight-fifteen shuttle—North-South Transportation. On the night of the twenty-eighth through the morning of the twenty-ninth, I was following up a lead on Montoya, which turned out to be a dead end. I stayed in the Motor Court Lodge, off Exit 112 on 68 in Pennsylvania. I used my credit card for expenses, and I did the same when I had breakfast in their coffee shop at six hundred on the twenty-ninth. For the last, I was here, working, but I ordered a pizza—personal size, pepperoni and mushroom. It was delivered about seven-thirty. The delivery girl was about eighteen, five feet, four inches, one twenty, pink hair, green eyes. Mama Mia's Pizzeria, West Twenty-third off Seventh."

"We'll verify, and that should be that." Eve got to her feet.

"I can see I misplaced my admiration and ambitions with you."

"Yeah, you did. You should seek help, Farmer. It might clue you in you're just not an irresistible sex magnet. Besides"—on impulse she slung an arm around Peabody, cuddled her stunned partner in—"my partner's got the better tits."

"I'm filing a complaint!" Farmer shouted.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

Eve strode out, pleased to be amused this time instead of depressed and angry. "Let's check in with Charlie, just to close the door, but she's not who we're after."

"Everybody's after her."

"Must be a constant trial." Eve opted to walk, let the cold blow her brain clear again. "She's smart enough, and she has strong e-skills, but she's too obsessed with sex. No sexual component at all in the kills, and with her there would be."

Eve stopped at a cart along the walk. "I've still got enough to spring for a cart lunch."

"You're just paying to distract me. Because you want to ogle my tits."

"Always, Peabody. Always."