Or there’s more than one of them, and they took turns. He had to leave about the same time the wit did. Hefty blonde, black pants and jacket. I want to see everyone coming and going about five minutes before up to five minutes after the wit.”
“I’m heading back now. Do you want to keep McNab?”
“If he’s got the electronics, take him with you. Otherwise I’ll send him in as soon as he has them all bagged.”
Baxter met her on her way back in. “They’re loading up the last of the survivors. We have fourteen from inside.”
“I counted sixteen.”
“Two didn’t make it. I peeled off to talk to a couple of them who were lucid enough. It’s running like the bar, Dallas. Having lunch, serving it or cooking it, headache, hallucinations, most with feelings of anger or fear along with the headache.”
“We’ve got one who got out, left with the headache.”
“Good.” He glanced toward the cafe, the blood on the sidewalk. “She’s lucky.”
He rooted in the pocket of his snazzy top coat—always the smart dresser, that Baxter. And came up with a PowerBar. “Want half?”
“No. Maybe. What kind is it?”
“Yogurt Crunch.”
“That’s a no.”
With a shrug he unwrapped it, bit in. “I’ve had worse. McNab and two e-geeks have most of the electronics. We’ve got IDs on the survivors, and about half the DBs so far.”
“Take Trueheart and what you’ve got, go back and start running the names. I want lists of anyone with employment at any of the businesses involved in the first incident. There’s going to be some cross. Another crossing the connections.”
It was going to come down to relationships and geography, she concluded. Who he knew and where he knew them.
“This is his comfort zone, his place. People tend to eat and shop in the same area, especially when they’re on a schedule. Look for businesses between the two crime scenes. Use a two-block radius on both ends, list who lives in that sector who’s connected to any survivor, any vic, or who we pin leaving either scene before the hit.”
Baxter took another bite of the bar, chewed thoughtfully. “It won’t be fast.”
“Get started. Briefing rescheduled for eighteen hundred.”
“LT.” Jenkinson hustled up. “Lydia’ll go in for exam, but I had to tell her Reineke and I would take her.”
“Get it done. Start interviewing survivors while you’re there. Briefing’s now at eighteen hundred. Don’t waste time.”
Taking her own advice, she moved fast, walked back into the building, and spotted Morris kneeling beside one of the dead.
“You didn’t have to come in,” she told him.
“You’ll want confirmation as quickly as possible you’re dealing with the same COD. There are tests I can run here.”
“And?”
“The same. I can give you solid confirmation within the hour, but it reads the same.”
She crouched down beside him. “We’re going to try to keep a lid on how and what. We won’t, not for long, but do what you can.”
“Depend on it.”
“I am.” Still crouched, she scanned the room. “Was it already planned? Both hits? Bang-bang. He went smaller. Impulse or planning? He’s not impulsive, so … Why this place?” She tracked the bodies. “Who in this place?”
As he understood she was thinking out loud, Morris remained silent.
“Is he a familiar face, a regular? I bet he is. Pleasant enough guy, knows how to interact, but it’s all surface. Probably speaks to the counter guy or the waitress whenever he comes in. Just a ‘How ya doing?’ kind of thing. He
She shook her head, continued to study the room. “Someone in here or something that happened in here mattered enough for this. Because it’s not random.
“He’s going to need to brag,” she decided. “
By the time she’d finished, rounded up Peabody, and gone back to Central, she had a new batch of photos for her board.
“Post these,” she told Peabody, “then check in with the lab.”
She moved straight into the bullpen, to Baxter’s desk.
“Still working on it,” he said before she could speak. “You were right. We’ve already found some vics who worked at the same places previous vics worked. Crossing survivors, too. There’s a decent percentage, so far, who live in the area you designated.”
“Any connections between the vics in the two locations? Personal connections.”
“Still working on it.”
“Bring in a couple of e-men Feeney picks to help you run it. And tell him I’m heading up to talk to Callendar.”
She went straight up. Easier to go to, she calculated, then to send for.
She pushed into the color and chaos of EDD, scanned the neons and patterns, the busy movements for Callendar. When she didn’t see her, Eve turned toward Feeney’s office.
One of the e-geeks jogged by her. “He’s in the lab.”
She veered out again, turned toward the e-lab. She saw Feeney hunkered at a station on one end of the big, glass-walled area, and Callendar standing, doing some sort of dance, in front of another.
“Yo, Dallas. Got some bits and pieces.” Callendar stopped dancing, gestured toward a screen. “Putting it together.”
“Anything I should know now?”
“Other than the Red Horse cult was full of crazy sickheads? Not so much, but I’m working on it. I dug up a handful of names—abducted kids who got out or were recovered. Moving on it.”
“Keep moving.”
Taking her literally, Callendar went back to dancing.
“What do you see?” she asked Feeney.
“Something that might be interesting.” He, too, gestured to a screen.
“See for yourself.”
She watched him play back the door security disc, noted the time stamp. The busy sidewalk, people moving, moving, moving. Then the woman—brown and brown, early twenties, in a Cafe West shirt, unzipped navy jacket— came into the frame. She stopped, grinned at someone to the left; her mouth moved as she called out something. And she waved as she walked inside.
“Time’s right,” Eve murmured.
“Yeah. It’s fourteen minutes, thirty-nine seconds after the wit and the two with her went in. Wit leaves …” He ran it forward, and Eve watched Lydia, her teeth clenched, her face rigid with fury, stomp out.
“Five minutes, fifty-eight seconds after the woman in the Cafe West shirt goes in. Gets bitchy, gets headache, gets out. Yeah, the time’s right.”
“I’m guessing if the wit had stayed inside another ten, twenty seconds, she wouldn’t be a wit.”
“Her lucky day. Go back to the woman going in. What’s she saying? Did you translate?”
“We don’t have her full face, but the program reads her lips at eighty-five percent probability.”
He ordered it up.
