Treachery in Death (In Death 32)

“Okay, but there’s always a first time. Which isn’t this time,” Peabody continued, “due to the delicacy of the investigation.”

“That would be correct. Update me when you have something worth telling me. I appreciate the loaner for my partner,” Eve told Roarke, “and apologize if she drools on the upholstery.”

“Go get your warrant.” He kissed her lightly. “I want to go play with my friends.”

“Well, enjoy.” She got into her vehicle, shook her head as Peabody stroked the shiny blue fender and purred. “I like mine better,” she muttered, and drove off in her ugly but loaded DLE.

When Eve walked into the sex club, Crack gave her what she could only interpret as the stink eye. Reo sat

at the bar, chatting with him, looking like a lost ray of sunshine in the dim and dinge.

“Sorry.” Eve set down the box she’d loaded from the buffet table in her office. “I brought you pastries—and real coffee.”

Crack opened the lid, studied the contents. “Not a bad payoff, white girl. Plus, lucky for you, I like Blondie’s company. Give you some room.” He set another bottle of water on the bar and took his payoff box down to the other end.

“I don’t get pastries?” Reo demanded.

“Maybe he’ll share. Sorry I’m a little late. I got hung up.”

“It better be good. I had to reschedule my nine o’clock. So, what’s urgent and confidential?”

Eve opened her water. Reo was a curvy little blonde with a hint of Southern in her voice. She looked and sounded like a lightweight, a fact she used expertly to disarm, then skewer, defense attorneys, defendants, and opposing witnesses.

“If you can’t move on what I tell you respecting that urgency and keeping a seal on the confidential, I can’t tell you.”

“I can’t suck up urgent and confidential unless I know what I’m sucking up.”

“Yeah, that’s the trick, isn’t it? Give me this. Do you trust your boss without qualification, without hesitation?”

“Yes. He’s a good PA, a good lawyer, and a good man. Do I agree with him a hundred percent of the time? No. But if I did, it wouldn’t say much about either of us.”

“That’s a good answer.” In fact, Eve decided, she couldn’t think of a better one. “If I ask you if you’ll speak to no one but him about what I’m going to tell you, what I need from you, can you agree to that?”

“Yes. But I can’t promise to agree with what you need, or to recommend to him he agree.”

“You will.” Eve took a long drink of water, then laid it out, start to finish.

It took time. When dealing with a lawyer, Eve knew, everything tangled with questions, arguments, points of law. Reo took out her book, made notes, demanded Eve backtrack and go over already covered ground.

And all of that assured Eve she’d gone to the right person.

“This is going to be a massacre,” Reo murmured. “And the blood that stains the ground is going to sink in deep. Everything she’s touched, Dallas, everything her squad’s touched is going to carry that stain. The legal ramifications ... arrests, confessions, plea bargains, convictions. Every one will go in the sewer.”

“I know it.”

“Oh, she’s going down. We’re going to take her down hard. I’ve had her on the stand. Her, Garnet, Bix, some of the others. Had them on the stand—witnesses for the prosecution. I’ve put people away who damn well deserved to go away, and because of this, those people get the door opened. She’s going down,” Reo repeated, her eyes like blue steel. “How many cops do you suspect she’s had executed?”

“If you count Garnet—”

“I don’t,” Reo snapped.

“Okay then, two I’m sure of. I have what we’ve got for you.” She pushed a disc across the bar. “You’re not just here because the e-geeks want to try a new angle and we need the warrant. You’re here because I wanted you to be prepared, to give you time to start putting your end of it together.”

“Believe me, we will.”

“Reo, I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but I have to say it. You have to be absolutely, unquestionably sure of the judge you go to on this. She could have one in her pocket, or have a bailiff, a clerk. She could have somebody in your office.”

“God, that pisses me off. It pisses me off that this makes me worry that might be true. I’ll go to my boss, and we’ll work this out. That has to be done first, so it’ll take some time to get that warrant.”