Calculated in Death (In Death 36)

“Two. Prolly two. I don’t see good. Two. Then no white coats. In the trunk.”

“What’s in the trunk?”

“The white coats’ coats, what you think? In the trunk of the big car that’s here when I wake up. Big car. Shiny. Smooth. Can’t get in, all locked tight. Just to look,” he said quickly. “Just wanna look, but locked up tight. White coats with no white coats in the big shiny car, and drive away!”

“What did they look like?” A long-shot question, considering, but she had to ask. “The white coats without white coats who got in the big shiny car?”

“One’s big, one’s small. Don’t see good, but one’s big.” Doc spread his arms wide as he lifted them into the air and gave Eve an unfortunate whiff of amazing body odor.

“Okay, how about the car? Was it like white or like black?”

“Dark, dark. Maybe black. Dunno. Shiny. All true. Trade.”

“Okay.” Calculating she’d mined all she could expect, she passed him the glasses. “No, you keep those, too,” she said when he offered his broken ones. “We’re trading truth for shades. We’re done.”

When she stepped away one of the uniforms fell into step beside her. “Do you want us to take him in, Lieutenant? To a rehab shelter?”

It’s what—technically—should be done, and maybe, she thought, morally. But realistically? He’d be out within a week, have lost his turf, and very likely be worse off than now.

He sure as hell wouldn’t be better off.

“No, let him go. Maybe cruise down here once in a while, take a look at him.”

The uniform nodded. “He’s got a halfway decent spot here, mostly out of the weather and it looks like the hyenas leave him alone. It’s about the best he’s going to get.”

Sometimes, Eve thought, you had to settle for that.

Peabody jogged over as Eve started back to the ambulance.

“I had EDD patch with traffic. We’ve got a vehicle coming out eastbound at eight-twenty-three. They thought about the traffic cams, Dallas, smeared up the license plates, front and rear. But we’ve got the make and model. Black Executive Lux 5000, current year. The windows, including windshield, were privacy screened—and that’s illegal—but it also means we’ve got nothing on the occupants.”

“See if McNab has time to run it, against Alexander personally and the company for a match. And I need another run from traffic. They had to get it here, and I’m guessing very early this morning. So another vehicle followed it in.”

“Three vehicles for one accountant? That’s a stupid way to do this.”

“Yeah, it is, but they are.”

“They’re lucky the one they drove out wasn’t busted to shit and stripped.”

“If Doc, that’s the funky-junkie currently wearing my sunshades, had stirred up his brain cells, he’d have busted the window to scavenge. Smarter to have a third party meet them or just walk the hell out and hail a damn cab. It tells me the one giving the orders doesn’t have a freaking clue how things work on the street—or under them. It’s all about privilege.”

She sealed up as she spoke, then boosted herself into the back of the ambulance. “Let’s get the sweepers on their way, and have EDD go over to the hospital, see what we can get from security on when and how that ambulance was taken.”

Though she knew his identity, certainly knew the approximate time of death, Eve used her tools and gauges to confirm. With her recorder on she studied the lockdown straps, wrists and ankles, the broken blood vessels in the eyes, the bruising around the nose and mouth.

Like his live associate, he’d been pale and banged up. From the older bruising, the signs of medical treatment, the portable IV, she’d say considerably more banged up than Arnold.

Lifting the top lip, she studied where the teeth had ground into the soft flesh, the smears of blood.

She’d miscalculated, she thought. She’d planted seeds, wanting to tangle the money manager in some vines. Give him something to sweat.

But she hadn’t considered anyone would be stupid enough to hand her yet another link in the chain, would order murder rather than bribery or a bonus. Would so quickly discard a well-honed tool.

“Bruising and lacerations on the wrists and ankles,” she stated. “Looks like he twisted, strained, twisted.”

Rising, she bypassed a secured locker with her master. The drugs inside would have been worth a nice chunk on the street, as would the medical equipment, some of it very portable.

No time, or no inclination to make some extra, to take a nice little bonus. Do the job, move on.