When they got into the elevator for the ride down, Peabody turned to Eve. “I know one thing for certain about Cosner.”
“What one thing would that be?”
“He’s a lying SOS.”
“Oh yeah. He is that. And for somebody who’s been a lying SOS most if not all of his life, he really sucks at it.”
“Right, that makes two things I know for certain about him.”
Eve shifted when the elevator stopped to let more people on. “The lying’s autopilot with him, and not very skilled. He lies about the obvious and inconsequential, so by the time he gets to the big stuff it’s just red-faced blather.”
A woman in a business suit and sunshades glanced at Eve. “Sounds like my ex-husband. Some people plan a lie. Others?” she continued as the doors opened to let yet more people on. “It’s involuntary instinct, like breathing.”
“Tell me about it,” someone else piped up. “I dated this guy once who’d lie if you asked him his name. He just couldn’t help himself.”
One of the new passengers let out a snort. “It’s worse when they believe the lie—convince themselves it’s true, keep beating you over the head with it until you start wondering if you’re the one who’s crazy.”
“They all sound like my ex,” the first woman commented as the doors opened on the lobby level.
“He gets around,” Eve said, and heard the woman laugh as she and Peabody strode to the doors.
“That was interesting,” Peabody decided as they walked back to the car. “Lying liars unite strangers in elevator. Dateline New York.”
“Everyone knows at least one lying sack.”
“That’s really true. I’ll check his alibis to see if they were a crock, too. Being such a crappy liar, he’s never going to be even a halfway decent lawyer.”
“Add deeply stupid. He’s sitting at a fancy desk with a slew of lawyers all around—plus he has the family name—and he doesn’t stop the interview, pull in a lawyer to run interference?”
“That makes three. A lying sack who can’t lie worth crap, and a complete schmuck.”
“I’ll give you all three,” Eve agreed. “The fact is, he’d have been better off agreeing to meet at Central, with his legal rep. Take time to prepare,” Eve continued when they reached the car. “Have a seasoned mouthpiece with him. So a deeply stupid, terminally arrogant lying SOS schmuck.”
Peabody settled into the passenger seat. “A killer?”
“Yet to be determined. Plug in Whitt’s location, and let’s finish this up. Cosner’s got the grudge going.” Eve watched for an opening in traffic, zipped out. “Rufty equals tyrant because he laid down rules, enacted consequences. Any kids at Gold on scholarships? Just didn’t belong and deserved whatever they got. Cooking and trafficking in illegals, pounding on some other kids? Youthful indiscretions. Killing people responsible, in his twisted, fucked-up mind, could be justified payback.”
“You like him for it?”
“I like his arrogance for it, and the strong possibility he has some knowledge and skill with chemicals, very likely has connections who have more. He is not, remotely, rehabilitated when it comes to illegals.”
“You think he’s still using?”
“Why would he stop? He’s entitled to do whatever the hell he wants, isn’t he? Fuck the law, the law’s for suckers and poor people. You run down the names he gave you as alibis, and I’ll bet you a month’s pay the bulk of them will have illegals busts and/or rehab experience.”
“No bet. But…”
“Keep going.”
“I don’t think he’s cagey enough—that’s the word, cagey—to have planned all this out. Lifting credit data, the shipping, the timing, the research. Or the patience to wait years for the payback. He hits me as more I want it now. The kind who might see Rufty crossing the street and try to mow him down—and any innocent bystanders in the way—with his shiny car.”
“Got it in one, but there are actually two. No, he’s not cagey enough to have planned this out. And he also lacks the ugly instinct to destroy what the enemy loves rather than the enemy. Mowing down the target with his car—just his style. And then it’s all, the vehicle had a glitch, or he stepped in front of me, or I saw a tall, dark stranger push him in front of me and couldn’t stop.”
“So you don’t like him for it?”
“Can’t say yet. But if he’s a part of it, someone else is running the show. He’s a follower,” Eve decided. “He couldn’t lead himself out of a room made of doors.”
The hunt for parking netted zero, so she settled on an overpriced lot—which reminded her she still hadn’t hit a machine for cash. Being overpriced and in the Financial District, the lot had one near its gate.