Echoes in Death (In Death 44)

“As I suspected, the text came from a drop ’link.”

“What does that mean?” Rosa demanded.

“They can’t identify it, Rosa,” Kyle explained. “It’s not registered.”

“Oh, but—”

“We do have a location. I’m going there now. I can take you down to our lounge to wait for Mr. Patrick.”

Kyle checked his wrist unit. “Damn it. He’s still about ten minutes out. Don’t wait. Go. I’ll tag him back, and we’ll meet him downstairs. He’s nearly here, Rosa. We’ll go meet him.”

“Yes.” Rosa stood up. “Hurry,” she said to Eve.

Eve hurried to her office, barely slowing her stride when Peabody sprang from her desk in the bullpen. “McNab said—”

“Work the list. McNab’s enough for this. We get anything, you’ll know.”

Eve grabbed her coat, arrowed down to the garage. McNab loped up half a minute behind her.

Eve simply bulleted out of the slot, hit the lights and sirens, and sped out of the garage.

“Yee-haw” was McNab’s reaction, but he tightened his safety harness. “Not to dampen down, Dallas, but he’s not going to be there.”

“I know it.”

“Okay then. This sucker moves. So this fuckhead escalates to murder on one hand, devolves to taunts on the other.”

“Why ‘devolve’?” she asked as she swerved around a sedan whose driver obviously decided sirens meant nothing to him.

“It’s small time, right? Sure, it keeps a former target on edge, or brings back that edge, but he’s on to bigger now.”

“Ask yourself why this target? Why this woman? The first.”

He asked himself as she hit a clear stretch on Tenth, and the city blurred by. “She’s still important. She, especially, means something to him.”

“He didn’t include the husband on the text—it wasn’t a couple thing. He didn’t threaten violence. He taunted, yeah, but it’s ‘Let’s do it again.’ The sick part of him that twists this into actual sex wants to do it again. With her. That’s my conclusion until and unless the rest of the victims get the same.”

McNab thought it through. Nodded. “That’s why you’re the LT.”

“Fucking A. Still in that location?”

“Hasn’t budged. I got a lock on it.” He studied the read on on his PPC.

He guided her in as they got closer, then cursed.

“Shit, fuck, damn, it shut down.”

“Turned off?”

“Shut down,” he repeated. “Vanished. I’ve got the lock on the location, but the ’link’s shut down. Left here, half a block. Shit. Ten feet, south side. Stop. We’re right on it.”

Eve cut the wheel, double-parked. And saw the blueprint of it all the minute she stepped out of the A-T into the blast of angry horns.

“Recycler.” She pointed, jogging to it. “It’s still humming, goddamn it.”

“Smash-and-churn schedule’s right on it.” Frustrated, McNab kicked the bin. “Started up five minutes ago. Not just shut down, Dallas. Crushed and shredded.”

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