Leverage in Death (In Death 47)

“I need to know as soon as you get anything, even a maybe.”

She ended transmission and spent the rest of the drive calculating what a drawing of a naked person had to do with murder and money.

13

She went straight to her office, made herself ignore her board. With coffee, she spent the thirty minutes she’d given herself before shift to catch up on her department’s caseload—open and closed. She read reports, signed off on requisitions, and dealt with the top skim of the most urgent administrative duties.

The rest could wait.

When Eve walked into the bullpen, Peabody stood at her desk unwinding one of her boa constrictor scarfs. A single glance—and the fact that her eyes didn’t start to melt—showed her Jenkinson and his tie, Reineke and his socks weren’t at their desks.

“They just caught one,” Peabody told her. “Construction crew on Tenth found a DB in their dumpster. You clocked in early.”

“Paperwork.” She tossed a disc onto Peabody’s desk. “That’s your half of currently viable suspects. Start a second run, see if you can eliminate any, or bump any up the list. Baxter and Trueheart are picking up the art gallery woman.”

“Suspect?”

“Not at this time. I want her to look at the artwork again, her records. Why did they take a figure-study deal? Which one did they take? Who drew it?”

“I figured souvenir. Potentially valuable.”

“Then why not take it out of the frame on-site? Why take it across the hall to remove it?”

“Maybe . . . once he got it over there, he realized it would be easier and safer to take the rolled canvas than the whole deal.”

“Possible,” Eve conceded. “It’s possible he was that stupid and impulsive.”

“But you think he was buying time.”

“Why not drop your ass down from Banks’s apartment? Why break into another and go down from there—after removing the artwork from the frame, ditching it in the other apartment?”

“The empty apartment,” Peabody agreed. “One where the residents aren’t coming back until later today, so it would be a day, potentially, before we realized the artwork was taken.”

“It’s what plays. I think he took what he’d come for. The electronics, anything that linked him and his partner to Banks. And the artwork.”

Taking her seat, Peabody spitballed back. “Banks owned a gallery, worked with artists. Maybe one of the killers is an artist, or connected to one. He could be the artist, and wanted his own work back.”

“Keep that in mind when you work on the list. Detective Carmichael, Santiago, I’ve got Baxter and Trueheart in the field. Next DB’s yours.”

Eve went back into her office, locked the door. The trouble with working in a small space, she thought as she glanced around, was the limited hidey-holes. But for this project, she’d use that to her advantage.

She got out the candy bar she’d brought from home, stood on her desk to attach it to the inside of a ceiling tile. An easy find, oh yeah, but . . .

She fastened a button alarm, carefully, so carefully, to the joint of the tile. Lift that sucker a fraction, and the shrieking whistle should scare the unholy crap out of the thief even as its blue dye exploded all over the fucker’s face.

Satisfied, looking forward to retribution, she jumped down, unlocked her door.

Armed with more coffee, she settled down to work on her half of the list.

She got a solid ninety minutes in, shifting several names to what she considered a secondary list: low probability. And a third list she termed possible.

That left her with more than sixty as most likely.

Still too many, but they’d set up interviews and get some face-to-face.

She reread the tox report on Banks, who’d been flying high on wine, Erotica, and Zoner when he’d wandered like an idiot into Central Park at three in the morning.

She’d eliminated the delivery girl who’d brought Paul Rogan muffins, his driver (though no car service utilized on the day of the bombing) as connected.