Big Jack Part 9

Fingerprints were Gannon's, Jacobs's, Cobb's. There were no other prints found anywhere in the house. Hair samples found matched Gannon's and the victim's. Eve imagined they'd find some that matched Cobb's.

He'd sealed up, and that wasn't a surprise to her. He'd sealed his hands, his hair. Whether or not he'd planned to kill, he'd planned to leave no trace of himself behind.

If Jacobs hadn't come in, he might have gone through the entire house without leaving a thing out of place. And Samantha would've been none the wiser.

She contacted Maid In New York to check a few details and was adding them to her notes when Peabody came in.

"Gannon had her quarterly clean about four weeks ago," Eve said. "Do you know, the crew's required to wear gloves and hair protectors? Safety goggles, protective jumpsuit. The works. Like a d.a.m.n sweeper's team. They all but sterilize the d.a.m.n place, top to bottom."

"I think, maybe, McNab and I could afford something like that. Once we're in the new apartment, it'd be worth it to have somebody sterilize the place three or four times a year. We can get pretty messy when we're both pumping it on the job-and, you know, doing each other."

"Shut up. Just shut up. You're trying to make me twitch."

"I haven't mentioned s.e.x and McNab all day. It was time."

"The point I was making before you stuck the image of you and McNab doing each other in my head, is Gannon's place was polished up bright a few weeks ago and maintained thereafter. There are no prints other than hers, the maid's, Jacobs's. He sealed up before he went in. He's very careful. Meticulous even. But, unless this was a direct hit on Jacobs, he still missed the house-sitter angle. What does that tell you?"

"He probably doesn't know either the vic or Gannon, not personally. Not enough to be privy to personal arrangements like that. He knew Gannon would be out of town. Could've gotten that from the maid, or from following her media schedule. But he couldn't have gotten the house-sitter angle from the maid or the service because they didn't know."

"He's not inner circle. So we start going outside that circle. And we look for where else Cobb and Gannon and Jacobs connect."

"Baxter and Trueheart are back. We've got conference room three."

"Round them up."

She set up a board in the conference room, pinning up crime-scene photos, victim photos, copies of scene reports and the time line for the Jacobs murder she'd worked up.

She waited while Baxter did the same for his case, and considered, as she programmed a cup of lousy station-house coffee, how to handle the meeting.

Tact might not be her middle name, but she didn't like to step on another cop's toes. Cobb was Baxter's case. Outranking him didn't, in her mind, give her the right to tug it away from him.

She leaned a hip on the conference table as a compromise between standing-taking over-and sitting. "You get anything more out of your vic's sister?"

Baxter shook his head. "Took some time to talk her out of going down to the morgue. No point in her seeing that. She didn't have anything to add to what she told you. She's going to her parents'. Trueheart and I offered to go inform them, or at least go with her. She said she wanted to do it herself. That it would be easier on them if she did. She never met this Bobby character. None of the stoop-sitters or neighbors remember seeing the vic with a guy either. They've got a cheap d and c unit. Trueheart checked it for transmissions."

"She-Tina Cobb," Trueheart began, "sent and received transmissions from an account registered to a Bobby Smith. A quick check indicates the account was opened five weeks ago and closed two days ago. The address listed is bogus. The unit doesn't store transmission over twenty-four hours. If there were 'link trans, to and from, we'd need EDD to dig them out."

"Yippee," Peabody said under her breath and earned a stony stare from Eve.

"You tagging EDD?" Eve asked Baxter.

"Worth a shot. It's probable he used public 'links, but if they can dig out a transmission or two, we might be able to get some sort of geographic. Get a voice print. Get a sense of him."

"Agreed."

"We're going to talk to her coworkers. See if she gabbed about the guy. But from what her sister says, she was keeping him pretty close. Like a big secret. She was only twenty-two, and her record's shiny. Not a smudge."

"She wanted to get married, be a professional mother." Trueheart flushed as all eyes turned to him. "I talked to the sister about her. It, um, I think you can learn about the killer if you know the victim."

"He's my pride and joy," Baxter said with a big grin.

Eve remembered that Trueheart was barely older than the victim they were discussing. And that he'd nearly become a victim himself only a short time before.

The quick glance she exchanged with Baxter told her he was thinking the same thing. Both let it go.

"The theory is the killer used a romantic involvement to lure her." She waited until Baxter nodded. "Your case and ours come together through her. She was Samantha Gannon's maid, and as such had knowledge of the security codes to her residence and knew, intimately, the contents and setup of that residence. She was aware that the owner would be out of town for a two-week period. But she was unaware that there would be a house sitter. Those arrangements were last minute and, as far as we can know, between Jacobs and Gannon."

"Lieutenant." Trueheart raised a hand like a student in the cla.s.sroom. "It's hard for me to see someone like Tina Cobb betraying security. She worked hard, her employment record's as clean as the rest of it. There isn't a single complaint filed against her on the job. She doesn't seem the type to give out a security code."

"I gotta go with the kid on this one," Baxter confirmed. "I don't see her giving it out willingly."

"You've never been a girl in love," Peabody said to Baxter. "It can make you stupid. You look at the time line, you see that the break-in and Jacobs's murder were prior to Cobb's murder. And, when you calculate the time between her last being seen and time of death, there isn't a lot. He'd been working her for weeks, right? Smoothing her up. It seems to me he'd be more sure she was giving him the straight scoop if it was willing pillow talk or something than if he tried to beat it out of her."

"My pride and joy," Eve said to Baxter and earned a chuckle. "He beats or threatens or tortures, she might lie or just get mixed up. He eases it out of her, it's more secure. But . . . "

She paused while her pride and joy wrinkled her forehead. "He seduces it out, she might talk, or get the guilts and report the lapse to her superior. That's a risk. Either way, if we're right about this connection, he got it out of her. Then after he broke in, killed Jacobs, he had to cover tracks. So he killed Cobb, dumped her. Killed and dumped her in such a way that identification would be delayed long enough for him to tidy up any connection between himself and Cobb."

"What's Gannon got that he wants?" Baxter asked.

"It's more what he thinks she has or has access to. And that's several million in stolen diamonds."

She filled them in and gave them each a disk copy of her file. Without realizing it, she'd straightened and was standing. "The more we find out about this old case, and the stolen gems, the more we know about our current cases. We'll learn more, faster, if we coordinate our time and effort."

"I got no problem with that." Baxter nodded in agreement. "We'll shoot you both copies of our file on Cobb. What angle do you want us to work?"

"Track Bobby. He didn't leave us much, but there's always something. We'll see what EDD can dig out of the vics' 'links."

"Somebody should go through her personal items," Peabody added. "She might've kept mementos. Girls do that. Something from a restaurant where they ate."

"Good one." Baxter winked at her. "The sister said he took Tina to an art gallery and a play. We'll work on that. After all, how many art galleries and theaters are there in New York?" He slapped a hand on Trueheart's shoulder. "Shouldn't take my earnest sidekick more than a couple hundred man-hours to find out."

"Somebody saw them together somewhere," Eve agreed. "Peabody and I will continue to work Jacobs. We pool all information. For homework a.s.signment, read Gannon's book. Let's know all we can know about these diamonds and the people who stole them. Cla.s.s dismissed. Peabody, you're with me in ten. Baxter? Can I have a minute?"

"Teacher's pet," Baxter said, tapping his heart and winking at Trueheart.

To stall until they were alone, Eve wandered to the board, studied the faces.

"Are you giving him that drone work to keep his a.s.s in the chair?"

"As much as I can," Baxter confirmed. "He's bounced back-Christ, to be that young again. But he's not a hundred percent. I'm keeping him on light duty for now."

"Good. Any problems combining these investigations under me?"

"Look at that face." Baxter lifted his chin toward the ID photo of Tina Cobb. Even the cheap, official image radiated youth and innocence.

"Yeah."

"I play pretty well with others, Dallas. And I want, I really want to find out who turned that into that." He tapped a finger on the crime-scene still of Tina Cobb. "So I got no problem."

"Does it sit right with you if Peabody and I go through your vic's things? Peabody's got an eye for that kind of thing."

"All right."

"You want to take the club where my vic was last seen?"

"Can do."

"Then we'll have a briefing in the morning. Nine hundred."

"Make my world complete and tell me we're having it at your home office. Where the AutoChef has real pig meat and eggs from chickens that cluck."

"Here-unless I let you know different."

"Spoilsport."

Eve headed back uptown in irritable traffic. A breakdown on Eighth clogged the road for blocks and had what seemed like half of New York breaking the noise pollution codes in order to blast their horns in pitiful and useless protest.

Her own solution was a bit more direct. She hit the sirens, punched into vertical and skimmed the corner to take the crosstown to Tenth.

They were fifteen blocks away when her climate control sputtered and died.

"I hate technology. I hate Maintenance. I hate the G.o.dd.a.m.n stupid NYPSD budget that sticks me with these pieces-of-s.h.i.t vehicles."

"There, there, sir," Peabody crooned as she hunkered down to work on the controls manually. "There, there."

After the sweat began to run into her eyes, Peabody gave up. "You know, I could call Maintenance. Yes, we hate them like poison, like rat poison on a cracker," she said quickly. "So I was thinking, I could ask McNab to take a whack at it. He's good with this kind of thing."

"Great, good, fine." Eve rolled down the windows before they suffocated. The stinking, steamy air outside wasn't much of an improvement. "When we finish at Cobb's, you drop me home, take this rolling disaster with you. You can pick me up in the morning."

When she reached the apartment building she considered, actively, the rewards of giving one of the stoop-sitters twenty to steal the d.a.m.n car. Instead, she decided to hope somebody boosted it while they were inside.

As they started inside, she heard Peabody's quiet whimper. "What?"

"Nothing. I didn't say anything."

"It's those shoes, isn't it? You're limping. G.o.dd.a.m.n it, what if we have to pursue some a.s.shole on foot?"

"Maybe they weren't the best choice, but I'm still finding my personal look. There may be some miscues along the way."

"Tomorrow you'd better be in something normal. Something you can walk in."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Peabody hunched her shoulders at Eve's glare. "I don't have to say 'sir' all the time because, hey, look, detective detective now. And we're partners and all." now. And we're partners and all."

"Not when you're wearing those shoes."

"I was going to burn them when I got home. But now I'm thinking of getting a hatchet and chopping them into tiny, tiny pieces."

Eve knocked on the apartment door. Essie answered. Her eyes were red and swollen, her face splotchy from tears. She simply stared at Eve, saying nothing.

"We appreciate your coming back from your parents to let us go through your sister's things," Eve began. "We're very sorry for your loss and regret having to intrude at this time."

"I'm going to go back and stay with them tonight. I needed to come and get some of my things anyway. I don't want to stay here tonight. I don't know if I'll ever stay here again. I should've called the police right away. As soon as she didn't come home, I should've called."

"It wouldn't have mattered."

"The other cops, the ones who came to tell me? They said I shouldn't go down to see her."

"They're right."

"Why don't you sit down, Essie." Peabody moved in, took her arm and led her to a chair. "You know why we need to go through her things?"

"In case you find something that tells you who did this to her. I don't care what you have to do, as long as you find who did this to her. She never hurt anybody in her whole life. Sometimes she used to p.i.s.s me off, but your sister's supposed to, right?"

Peabody left her hand on Essie's shoulder another moment. "Mine sure does."

"She never hurt anybody."

"Do you want to stay here while we do this? Or maybe you have a friend in the building. You could go there until we're done."

"I don't want to talk to anybody. Just do what you have to do. I'll be right here."

Eve took the closet, Peabody the dresser. In various pockets, Eve found a tiny bottle of breath freshener, a sample-size tube of lipdye and a mini pocket organizer that turned out to belong to Essie.

"I got something."

"What?"

"They give these little b.u.t.tons out at the Met." Peabody held up a little red tab. "It's a tradition. You put it on your collar or lapel, and they know you paid for the exhibit. He probably took her there. It's the kind of thing you keep if it's a date."

"The odds of anybody remembering her at the Metropolitan Museum are slim to none, but it's a start."

"She's got a little memento box here. Bus token, candle stub."

"Bag the candle stub. We'll run for prints. Maybe it's from his place."

"Here's a pocket guide for the Guggenheim, and a theater directory. Looks like she printed it out from online. She's circled the Chelsea Playhouse in a little heart. It's from last month," she said as she turned to Eve. "A limited run of Chips Are Down. Chips Are Down. He took her there, Dallas. This is her 'I love Bobby' box." He took her there, Dallas. This is her 'I love Bobby' box."

"Take it in. Take it all in." She moved over to the dented metal stand by the bed, yanked on the single drawer. Inside she found a stash of gummy candy, a small emergency flashlight, sample tubes and packs of hand cream, lotion, perfume, all tucked into a box. And sealed in a protective bag was a carefully folded napkin. On the cheap recycled material, written in sentimental red, was: Bobby First Date July 26, 2059 Ciprioni's Peabody joined Eve and read over her shoulder. "She must've taken it out to look at every night," she murmured. "Sealed it up so it didn't get dirty or torn."

"Do a run on Ciprioni's."