Thankless in Death (In Death 37)

“He only needs one—and so do we.”

Hoping to jog her brain, she angled toward the board, propped her boots on the desk in think mode.

“He can’t stay deep in his old neighborhood, not if he’s got half a brain cell working. Too big a chance even if he alters his looks somebody will make him. Not the ex’s neighborhood either,” she decided. “But somewhere close. He’d want the familiar, the comfort of it, at least while he’s still developing. And it’s more satisfying to lord it over everyone. To have a fancy, expensive place close to where his friends have their cheap ones.

“Run some probabilities on that.”

“Okay. Meanwhile, McNab let me know they’ve just about got the street cam angle worked out. They’re up in the EDD lab.”

“I’ll head up. Run the probabilities, send them to me. Then go home and get some sleep, or catch some in the crib. We’ll start back on this in the morning.”

“What are you going to do?”

Eve dropped her foot to the floor. “That depends on what McNab and Roarke have.”

“I’ll stick here, in case you get something hot. I’ve got a change of clothes in my locker. Maybe just tell McNab I’ll be in the crib.”

Satisfied, Eve headed out and up.

She avoided the EDD bullpen. Even in the middle of the night it jumped and hopped and jiggled with wild colors and constant movement. She steered away, but made a mental note to carve out some one-on-one time with Feeney—her former trainer, partner, and captain of the geek squad.

She spotted Roarke and McNab through the glass walls of the lab, and stepping in almost staggered from the punch of clashing, crashing music.

She recognized Mavis on the vocals, and however much she loved her friend, there were limits.

“How can you think with all that noise?” she demanded.

“Keeps the juices rolling,” McNab claimed, but bowed to rank. “Music end,” he ordered, and cut Mavis off mid wail. The room descended into blessed quiet.

“What have you got?” Eve asked as she stepped toward a screen where images flew by in a blur.

“A puzzle,” Roarke told her. “With the last pieces just in place.” He swiveled on his stool to face her. “In plain English?”

“Yeah, let’s go with that.”

“Starting at the victim’s building, we were able to correlate from various security cam footage Reinhold’s route to, and to a lesser extent from. It took some time and doing as he made a few detours, and far from all buildings in that sector have cams—or working ones in any case.”

“We nailed arrival, Dallas.” McNab sucked from a giant go-cup. “But he hit a residential pocket on departure, out of any cam range, and we haven’t been able to pick him up. He could’ve grabbed a cab or a bus, or kept walking. We’d have him if he headed into a subway. We’ve run all the stations in that sector. But he could’ve gone down somewhere else. We can keep looking.”

“Show me what you have.”

“We just put it together.” McNab ordered the results on screen. “We’ll run it forward, so you can see him arrive, then move into position.”

She watched the Rapid Cab swing out of the tangled traffic, brake at the curb. Reinhold, in his new suit and dark sunshades, hopped out, hefted a long duffel.

“Zoom in there, get me the cab number.”

McNab paused the run, sticking Reinhold as he’d secured the strap of the duffel on his shoulder.

“He’s happy,” Eve stated. “Excited. You can see it on his face. He’s thinking about what he’s going to do to her. How he’ll do it.”

“We got the number,” McNab told her, but ordered the zoom so she could see it herself. “We wanted you to see it before we called it in.”

She pulled out her ’link. “Keep it going,” she ordered, as she contacted the cab company’s central dispatch. “This is Lieutenant Eve Dallas, NYPSD, Homicide. Badge number 43578Q. I need the pickup location of a passenger.”

She relayed the information as she watched Reinhold walk, his movements smoothed out by geek-skill as the cams caught him.

She saw his head turn, imagined his gaze shifting, over, up with the movement. Looking at Lori’s building, her apartment windows, Eve thought. Taking out his ’link, trying to contact her, see if she’s up there. Her day off. He’d know that.