Golden in Death (In Death 50)

While she did, Roarke sat at the steel-and-leather desk. It took him less than two minutes to melt through the password on the computer. And hardly more to find Whitt’s work.

“Darling? Spare a minute?”

She came back, her ’link pressed, screen down, to her chest. And hissed, “Don’t call me darling when I’m talking to cops.”

“Sorry, Lieutenant Darling.”

She rolled her eyes. “What?”

“At seventeen-oh-eight, a number of files on this unit were deleted.”

“Son of a bitch!” She strode over, scowled over his shoulder. “Can you get any of them back?”

He merely shifted his gaze up to hers. “Such insults don’t deserve a darling.”

“Just…” She waved at him, lifted the ’link. “Yeah, tell the e-geeks to contact that science nerd in the lab. Ah, Siler. Once they get the rest unencrypted, he can verify whatever the hell it is.”

“Dallas,” Peabody said, “it’s after midnight.”

“It’s— Shit. Get some rack time, everybody. Tag the science nerd at eight hundred. I want somebody to sit on Whitt. I don’t think he’s going to rabbit—not when he thinks he’s free and clear. But I don’t want to risk it.”

“Got it. Harvo found twelve hundred and sixteen human hairs.”

“Are you fucking with me?”

“I am not fucking with you. She was revved up, and since it took her for-nearly-ever, the sweepers are really just getting going.”

“Have them seal up. Rack time.” She clicked off. “Do what you can with that,” she told Roarke. “I’m going to go through the place. We can take the unit with us, log it out. I can get the e-team to finish the recovery in the morning.”

“No darling for you, she of little faith,” he replied, and kept working.

She went through the bedroom—the well-situated single man’s motif with deep colors, straight lines, no fuss but a lot of status.

The goodie drawer by the bed told her he at least had the occasional sex partner. Wardrobe told her he liked to spend money on his duds. All designer, right down to the socks and underwear.

She found his stash of illegals, noted some of them were hand-labeled just as the ones at the warehouse had been.

Probably cooked up there, she mused, bagged them, sealed them.

In the second, smaller closet, she found his sports equipment. The golf clubs, tennis rackets, golf shoes, tennis shoes, and the wardrobe deemed stylish for same. She also found his old uniforms—summer and winter—from Gold Academy.

And found that oddly sad.

Even as she thought it, she glanced up. Frowning, she stepped back, rose on her toes, and just caught the edge of a box—dark blue, on the high shelf.

She had to hunt up a chair, drag it in, climb up to reach. The fine layer of dust told her it hadn’t been opened in some time.

She climbed down, opened the lid.

Photos—a lot of them. Photos of Cosner, Whitt, Hayward, others in their younger days. Mugging photos, obviously stoned photos, photos from sporting events. Clippings from same. School bulletins and announcements for dances, events. Bits of memorabilia.

Sad, she thought again, and dug through.

Found the thick notebook on the bottom. Not electronic, but the kind you wrote in. And, she realized as she flipped through, Cosner had written quite a bit in his very poor, cramped printing.

“Eve.”

“Listen to this,” she said without looking over. “‘We beat the hot shit out of that faggot Rodriges last night. Jerkwad actually believed we wanted him to tutor us, but me and Steve tutored the hell out of him. Talked about finishing him—who’d miss the little fucker? But we decided just to dump his sorry ass, then go have a few brews.’”