Haunted in Death (In Death 22.50)

Still, the stage was set, she thought. If her hunch was off, she’d have wasted a lot of departmental time, manpower and money. Better that, she decided, than to play into the current media hype that the curse of Number Twelve was still vital, still lethal.

"You’ve got to admit, it’s creepy." Beside Eve, Peabody scanned the club room. There was a lot of white showing in her eyes. "This place gives me the jeebies."

"Keep your jeebies to yourself. We’re set. I’m going up to my post."

"You don’t have to go up right this minute." Peabody’s hand clamped like a bundle of live wires on Eve’s wrist. "Seriously. We’ve got plenty of room on the timetable."

"If you’re afraid of the dark, Detective, maybe you should’ve brought a nice little teddy bear to hold onto."

"Couldn’t hurt," Peabody mumbled when Eve pulled free. "You’ll stay in contact, right? I mean, communications open? It’s practically like you’re standing beside me."

Eve only shook her head as she crossed to the stairs. She’d gone through doors with Peabody when death or certainly pain was poised on the other side. She’d crawled through blood with her. And here her usually stalwart partner was squeaking over ghosts.

Her bootsteps echoed against the metal steps - and okay, maybe it was a little creepy. But it wasn’t creaking doors and disembodied moans they had to worry about tonight. It was a stone killer who could come for letters from the dead.

There were no letters, of course. None that she knew of, no vault to hide them in. But she had no doubt the prospect of them would lure Rad Hopkins’s killer into Number Twelve.

No doubt that killer was descended from Bray and Hopkins. If her hunch didn’t pay off tonight, she was going to face a media storm tomorrow - face it either way, she admitted. But she’d rather deal with it with the case closed.

Funny how Bygones had old-timey photos of the desert. Maybe they were Arizona, maybe not, but she was laying her money that they were. There’d been old photos of San Francisco, too, before the quake had given it a good, hard shake. Others of New York during that time period, and of L.A. All of Bobbie’s haunts.

Coincidence, maybe. But she agreed with one of the detectives in her squad on a case recently closed - a case that also included switched identities.

Coincidences were hooey.

She crossed the second tier, and started up to the old apartments.

Eve didn’t doubt Roarke had played his part, and played it well. With the bait he’d dangled, she was gambling that Radcliff C. Hopkins’s killer, and Bobbie

Bray’s murderous descendent, would bite quickly. Would bite tonight.

She took her position where she could keep the windows in view, put her back to the wall. Eve flipped her communications channel to Peabody’s unit, and said, "Boo."

"Oh yeah, that’s funny. I’m rib-cracking down here."

"When you’re finished with your hilarity, we’ll do a check. Feeney, you copy?"

"Got your eyes, your ears and the body-heat sensors. No movement."

"You eating a doughnut?"

"What do you need electronic eyes and ears for, you can tell I’m eating a cruller from in there?" There was a slurping sound as Feeney washed down the cruller with coffee. "Roarke bought the team a little something to keep us alert."

"Yeah, he’s always buying something." She wished she had a damn cruller. Better, the coffee

.

"You should have worn the beads, Lieutenant." Roarke’s voice cruised on. "I think they might have appealed to Bobbie."

"Yeah, that’s what I need. Baubles and beads. I could use them to - "

"Picking up something," Feeney interrupted.

"I hear it." Eve went silent, and as she focused, the sound - a humming - took on the pattern of a tune, and a female flavor. She drew her weapon.

"Exits and egresses," she murmured to Feeney.

"Undisturbed," he said in her ear. "I’ve got no motion, no visual, no heat-sensor reading on anything but you and Peabody."