Obsession in Death (In Death 40)

“We’ll check out the travel on the other five on the list.” Eve wound her way through traffic, aiming for the lab. “Confirm they’re out of town, do the interviews via ’link if necessary.”

“I’ll take that.” Peabody studied her own notes. “I’m guessing we’re not going to get much of anything new. She didn’t really have friends. Not real friends. Everybody’s sorry and shocked, but Dallas, nobody knew her well enough to feel much else. It’s almost like we talked to them about somebody they met casually at some party, or had a few surface conversations with.”

“Her choice. It strikes her work was her life, and the rest just there.”

It troubled her because she knew what that was like, that choice, that life. She knew exactly what it was like.

“Efficient. That’s what you called her murder. Clean and efficient, no passion to it. It’s like she wasn’t really important, but you . . .”

“I’m what’s important. You can say it, Peabody. I get it.” Eve didn’t snap, but it was close. “We’re still going to cover all the angles. Stern rakes in her share of the firm, so we look at him, his financials, his personal relationship with the victim. Maybe one of her fuck buddies wanted more, and got pissed off, and just made sure to keep the kill clean. Maybe a client she’d repped got out of prison and went for some payback. Mira needs to analyze the threat file.”

“Absolutely.”

“And we start looking at who might want to give me a dead lawyer as a fucking holiday gift.”

She let that hang a moment as she waited at a light. The latest ad blimp, she noted, had switched from post-Christmas sale to a RING OUT THE OLD, RAKE IN THE SAVINGS end-of-the-year theme.

The glide-cart operator on the far corner raked in his own, smearing bright yellow mustard on hot pretzels for some sort of tour group. All of them wore bright blue parkas and white caps.

The light changed, she drove on. Moved on in her head.

“The correspondence, my own case files. We go through it all.” She let out a breath. “Cops. Cops who might feel they owe me something and hate lawyers.”

“I gotta say that’s going to be a lot of cops. But it’s not just owing you something, Dallas. It’s admiration.”

Now she really wanted to snap, reined it in. Because Peabody wasn’t wrong. “Why Bastwick and why now? Those are other questions. A holiday gift might not be wrong. But this was planned well in advance, so what flipped the switch?”

“Could be the Icove thing, the exposure. For some people, the book, the vid, it romanticizes you, and the job.”

“Yeah,” Eve muttered as she found herself blocked in behind a farting maxibus. “This is romance.”

Eve went straight to chief lab tech Dick Berenski. He’d earned the name Dickhead, many times over, but that didn’t mean he didn’t excel at what he did.

“I need everything you’ve got.”

He held up one of his long, skinny fingers, kept his egg-shaped head with its slick, shiny skin of black hair bent over a scope another moment.

“What I got is nada. Hold it.” He pointed that finger at her before she could snarl. “Nada should tell you something. No fibers, no prints, no DNA, not a fricking hair in the place didn’t belong to the vic. Tells me she didn’t have a lot of company, or made everybody who came in seal up head to foot. Sure as hell tells me the killer did.”

He angled around, craned his neck. The goatee he’d recently started sporting didn’t look any more flattering to Eve than it had the week before.

“What?” Eve demanded.

“Thought maybe you brought me a little Happy New Year gift, is all.”

“Don’t push me, Dickie.”

“Chill it. We flagged this, top priority, and this time of year we’re swimming in work. Harvo went over to the scene herself ’cause she got it in her head maybe the sweepers missed a hair, a fiber. I’ve been working on the murder weapon. I’m giving it high probability for a 0.020-inch spring steel. Piano wire, that’s tempered high-carbon steel. That’s your most likely. But unless you pick up a guy with a piano wire garrote in his pocket, it ain’t much help. You can get the wire all over hell and back.”

He swiveled down his counter on his stool. “We can give you the make, model, and fricking dye lot of the marker used to write the love note to you.”

He tapped his screen as Peabody hissed, as Eve fisted her hands in her pockets.

“Common Sanford fine-point permanent marker. Your everyday Sharpie. Standard black.” He pulled one out of the drawer of his counter. “Like this one. Like you’d find in a million drawers and retail outlets, all over hell and back like the wire. I can tell you our blood guys go with Morris on how it went down. Vic’s sitting up, garroted from behind, laid down. That’s it, Dallas. You want more from us, give us more.”

“Okay.” Eve ordered herself to relax her hands. “All right.”

“Knew the vic,” Berenski said casually.