“You don’t think the two of them are involved?”
“No, but I can’t prove it. If I thought they were involved, I couldn’t prove it. Let’s get data.”
Eve glanced at the time. “Aw, gee, I missed the media conference. That’s a shame.”
“That statement hits the red zone on the lie-o-meter.”
“But it feels good. I want thirty minutes in my office to check incomings and status, then we’re going back to the crime scene.”
“Do you think they’re not involved—the Lester brothers—for the same reasons as me?”
“Probably not.” Eve headed out, moving fast so Peabody had to hustle to keep pace. “Devon’s not stupid. Roarke doesn’t have stupid people managing any of his interests. But when I push him on buying the place—would he if he could—he’s all pissed off, damn straight. Smarter to say it’s tainted, his friends died there. Smarter, too, to go straight to pissed or shocked when I led him to our looking at him and his brother. Instead he’s just confused at first. He didn’t have an answer for everything. He didn’t have the right answers for everything. If he had, I wouldn’t bump him down the list.
“The brother’s smart, real smart, and a lot more cynical. He caught on fast. I want to look at his research, his experiments, I want a feel for what he does and how he does it. But it would be stupid for him to kill a whole bunch of people in his brother’s bar. If he were going to do it, he’d have done it somewhere else, not so readily connected.”
“Part of your reasoning’s like mine. It’s the kind of people they are—the stand-up-for-your-brother people.”
“Half a point.”
“Three-quarters.”
“Three-quarters because I’m too busy to argue.”
“Yay!” Peabody said as Eve swung off and into her office.
She’d barely started on the first report when Baxter came to her door.
“Need a minute.”
“Take it,” she told him.
“Adam Stewart. We just finished up with him. He’s alibied for the time line, and I’ve got nothing that puts him in that bar yesterday, or at fucking all.”
“But?”
“He’s a bad bastard, Dallas, and he’s cagey. Bad and cagey fits whoever did this.”
She saw his eyes flick toward her AutoChef. Under the circumstances, she thought, what the hell. “Go ahead, but don’t spread it around you got coffee in here.”
“To the grave.” He moved quickly before she could change her mind, programmed a mug for each of them. Knowing its miseries, he sat on the edge of her visitor’s chair.
“But,” Eve prompted again.
“With him being a bad bastard and a cagey son of a bitch, I figure he’s capable of doing this. But I don’t think he had the means or opportunity. Plus, poking around, the sister—that’s Amie Stewart—didn’t go in there routinely. Now and then, sure, but she wasn’t a regular. How’d he know she’d be there? They weren’t close, didn’t hang out together, or make regular contact. But …”
Baxter let it hang a moment while he drank coffee. “He’s sweaty in Interview. He’s evasive, and not doing such a hot job of pretending to be sorry his sister’s dead. I had Trueheart drill down into his financials, and they don’t add up. It looks like he found a way to siphon off some funds from the trust deal, so with a little work we could get him there.”
“We don’t have time to poke at some bad bastard for embezzlement right now.”
“I get that, but there’s more. The trustee who oversees all that stuff went missing two weeks ago. Being a detective, I detect two ways, the trustee was in on it with Stewart and went on the lam, or the trustee found out what Stewart was up to, and Stewart made him disappear. Either way …”
“Yeah.” She calculated. “Do you have any problem turning this over to Carmichael and Sanchez?”
Baxter winced, comforted himself with coffee. “I gotta say, I want to see it through. The fucker’s dirty, and he just makes my ass twitch. But I can live with passing it on, at least until we clear this case.”
“Do that, and move to the next.”
“That’d be Callaway, then Weaver. They’ve been in meetings all morning, but we’re going over to the offices, corner them, separately, try to follow up with some of the others. That place lost five people.”
He rose, set aside the empty mug. “I wish it was Stewart, because he needs to go away.”
She made a note to stay on top of Stewart, then toggled back to continue with the reports, read Strong’s, and saw the Illegals detective currently pushed on a lead on sources for large or regular purchases of LSD.
Back to the beginning, Eve decided, and returned to the bullpen. “Peabody, with me. Unless otherwise notified, I want everybody in that briefing at sixteen hundred. I’m in the field.”
“I went to Reo for the warrant,” Peabody told her on the way to the garage. “She doesn’t see a problem getting it, and quick. Everybody’s on full alert on this one.”
“I want at least two men on that, with experience and knowledge in Lester’s field. Send in a request to Whitney.”
“Dickhead would have people.”
Eve sighed. “Yeah, he would. Copy him on the request, further requesting Dickhead handpick two of his people to examine Lester’s records, his lab—and I want reports on same in plain English.”
“I talked to McNab for a minute.”
“I don’t want to hear your perverted sex chats,” Eve warned as they got into the car.
“We only spent like ten seconds on that part. They’ve about finished with the ’links. They got a couple more who were on when they were infected, and a couple more who made calls directly after becoming infected. It’s ripping, he said, listening to it. They’ve been going over any and all recovered electronics. Memo books, notebooks, PPCs. Some of them were in use, too. It doesn’t look as if they’ve got anything that’s going to help. Nothing that pops as a communication with or from the perpetrator. But it shows, again, how fast and how strong the vics were affected.”
“How about the door surveillance?”
“They went back forty-eight hours. There’s no break in the time scan, no anomalies. They ID’d some of the vics—I guess regulars— who went in and out the day before approximately the same time frame, and they’re working on a search for any of the people who connect to vics or survivors to see if any showed up within the last couple days. They’ll have those for you at the briefing. Some coworkers. The after-hours activity is just what you’d expect. Staff leaving, either alone or in groups. Last one out the two nights before the incident was Devon Lester, and that coincides with the work schedule for the week.”
Normal day-to-day, Eve thought. Until the world ends.
“Whoever’s responsible knew about the door cam, which means anybody as it’s right there in plain sight. If they didn’t jam it, then they just walked in as staff or customer, and left the same way.”
“McNab says no jamming. They’ve run it through every analysis, including Roarke’s. Feeney’s also put a couple of his uniforms on listening detail. They’re monitoring sites globally, and off-planet. Listening for any chatter on the incident. Any hint of any individual or person with prior knowledge, or claiming credit. Lots more chatter—it’s the big buzz—but nothing that stands out.”
“He/they? There’s going to be a reaction to the media conference. Lots of chatter and buzz, but Whitney’s statement, and his delivery? It’s going to strike as a challenge. Whitney’s confident, stoic, steady. He might let some of the anger show, but that’s just juice for this type.”
“You think he’ll make some sort of contact.”
“That’s what I’m hoping for.” But not what she feared.
When they got to the bar, Eve broke the seal, then took a moment to clear her mind. She stepped in, scanned the dimly lit space.
The ugly and all too familiar scent of blood and chemicals, of death and sweepers’ dust, clung to the air. She cleared her mind of that, too.
“Lights on full,” she ordered, and imagined what it would have looked like at opening. Rather than broken chairs and tables, shattered glass, floors and walls stained with blood and gore, there would have been the shine and clean of closing mopping.
