“I’ll tag him.” Peabody looked at the sketch again. “She doesn’t stand out. Her work might, but …”
“Try it. I’m going to set an alert on the search and go up to harass Feeney on his.”
She can’t wait long, Eve thought as she headed up to EDD. The last chapter didn’t go as she’d written. She knew she had a cop on her heels. Up until now Strongbow had hidden in plain sight, and it worked for her. But under the crazy, she had a brain, and had to know the plot had twisted on her.
So, no, she wouldn’t wait long.
Eve walked into the colorful circus of EDD. She took a quick moment to look through the dancing, prancing e-geeks to see McNab hard at work at his station.
Hard at work, she judged, as his shoulders bopped, his fingers snapped, and his head did a kind of jive that had his multitude of ear-hoops glinting.
She dived for the sanity of Feeney’s office.
He leaned on the side of his desk in his shit-brown suit. He had what might’ve been a coffee stain on his shit-brown tie, but it was hard to tell.
His face, like his suit, looked comfortably baggy. She figured he’d had a recent trip to his barber, as his silver-threaded ginger hair sprang out to about half of its known capacity.
He shifted his basset hound eyes from his screen to her face.
“No point pushing us, kid. We’re working it.”
“I’ve got a face.”
“Got a name and location to go with it?”
“Not yet.”
“We’ll get her. Problem on this end?” He flicked a finger at the screen. “Her writing samples hit dead average, even some below in some of them. So we’ve got a hell of a lot of maybes.”
Eve glanced at the screen, saw words, phrases skimming by, along with figures that looked like code, and numbers that looked like math.
Altogether, it looked impossible. Which was why she wasn’t trying to do the damn search herself.
“Average or just below is what she is, with a couple of exceptions. She can tailor, and she can kill.”
She showed Feeney the printout of the sketch
.
“You got forty to forty-five, white, brown and brown. No distinguishing anything. If she’s not in the system for a bump or two, you’re going to be awhile on facial.”
“Yeah, I got that. Hides in plain sight. A fader. That’s the best term for her. Jake called her a fader.”
“Jake? You got a new man in your division?”
“No.” Eve frowned at the sketch, trying to see more. “Jake Kincade. Nadine’s tangling with him.”
“Didn’t know she had a …” Feeney straightened, shoved a finger at Eve. “Jake Kincade? Avenue fucking A?”
“Yeah, she met him at the Garden during the assault. I guess they hit it off.”
Feeney jabbed a finger again, this time made sharp contact. “You had Jake fucking Kincade in the house?”
“Yeah. He’d seen—”
“In. The. House. Jake Kincade. And you don’t think to tag your old pal, your old partner? The one who pulled you off street duty and into Homicide?”
His eyes looked a little fierce, a little wild. Eve eased back a step before she got poked again. “No. I was kind of busy trying to get the face of a serial killer so I could, you know, discourage her from killing the next person on her list. Anyway, how was I supposed to know you’d want to meet him?”