Survivor in Death (In Death 20)

At his first sight of the nirvana of Roarke’s game room, Kevin let out a shout, dumped Galahad on the floor, and raced to the closest arcade game.

“I’ll take it from here,” Elizabeth told Eve. “I’ve become an expert in this arena.”

With considerable relief, Eve left her to it. And took the opportunity to head back upstairs.

This time, Webster was leaning over Peabody’s shoulder.

“Stop crowding my partner,” Eve snapped.

Webster straightened, but held his ground. “I have to head downtown shortly, give my report.”

“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. What’ve you got?” she asked Peabody.

“Looks like you hit on something with the properties. I’ve got what you call a townstone on the Moss’s block. Purchased three months after the custody resolution in the name of the Triangle Group. No financing, so they plunked down the whole—considerable—shot. No income until six weeks after Moss’s death. Got rentals coming in after that. Tenants are clean and unconnected as far as I can tell. Triangle Group also owns, since March 2054, a two-family building two blocks south of the hospital where Brenegan was murdered. Tenants in and out, every six months like clockwork. I think we might find some of the names from Cassandra or Doomsday in here.”

“Kirkendall, Clinton, Isenberry. Triangle Group. Cute. We tie them to it.”

“It’s a tangle, Dallas.”

She paced away, paced back. Webster was a solid cop, she knew. But he was still IAB. Overtime was racking up, and nothing made the review board, the brass, the nut crunchers bitch like unauthorized OT.

But there were ways around it.

“You’re past shift,” she said to Peabody. “You and the rest of the team. Clock out.”

“But we’ve got—”

“You’re off the clock.” She smiled thinly at Webster as she spoke. “What you do with your own time, in your own home, isn’t my business. Or the department’s. You want to do something useful,” Eve told Webster. “Go file your report. Get them off my back for the next forty-eight.”

“I can do that. Give the detective her orders. I’ve gone suddenly and strangely deaf.”

“Shoot this to your desk unit and get down to Central.”

“Do you want to move on these buildings?”

“Tomorrow. Try for at least six hours’ downtime. We’re going to put this in place tomorrow. We move this team back to Central, avoid inquiries from IAB about what the hell we’re doing here. Get a conference room booked for seven hundred tomorrow. Tell the rest of the team to do the same or work from home.”

She could see it, and in her head was already outlining strategy.

“Start looking for other properties under that name or similar ones. Under any of the tenants’ names who lived in the building near the hospital. I want their base. We get their base, we change this op around, and that’s where we move on them.”

“Will you work from here?”

“I’ll be pursuing the same data. I want your unit talking to mine. Something breaks, I’ll come downtown. Got all that?”

“Got it.”

“Then get all these cops out of my house.”

“Dallas.” Webster stopped her as she turned to the door. “Nobody’s business what I do on my own time, either. If I happened to get copies of this data Detective Peabody’s finessed, I could entertain myself by seeing if I could beat her, or you, to the rest.”

“Peabody, have you got any problem having a race with an IAB suit?”

“I thrive on competition.”

“There you go. Beat his ass.”

Better yet, she thought as she walked out. She’d get Roarke to work unraveling. And she’d work with him, and they’d ring the goddamn bell. There had to be enough civilians in the damn house to ride the controls on a couple of kids while she worked.