“Isn’t that interesting? Look, Feeney’s on his way over there. I want McNab to pick his way through Vernon’s financials. Make certain the son of a bitch didn’t win some lottery or inherit a bundle from one of those dead relatives. Pin down his income and his outlay. I don’t want to give him any wiggle room when I pull him in.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll report to the Kohli residence as soon as our city’s marvelous public transportation system will get me there.”
“Take a cab. Put it on expense account.”
“Do I have one?”
“Jesus, Peabody, put it on mine. Get moving.”
She cut transmission and let her mind wander through the tiers of her case while she cut across town.
There was a corruption problem in the One two-eight. In the Illegals Division and potentially elsewhere. The corruption pointed at Max Ricker, and two of the detectives on the task force formed to take him down were dead. One of them had been in Ricker’s pocket.
IAB had conducted an unauthorized and clandestine operation involving the other of those detectives as a plant.
In Purgatory, she reminded herself. Roarke’s place. What did Ricker have to do with Roarke’s club?
Had Bayliss been fishing there, trying to dig up the old connection? The man struck her as a fanatic, but that was reaching.
Still, IAB had sent Webster, an old connection of hers, to feed her misinformation on Kohli.
The captain of the squad had either let her men get beyond her control or was part of the corruption. She had a problem, or she was one. Either way, Eve had a ranking officer on her short list of murder suspects.
Ricker was a key, maybe the key. He’d lured the cops and most certainly knew which members of the department were on his payroll. His businesses, she imagined, depended heavily on them. If she found enough of them, pulled them out of the loop, would he come out? Come after her?
As much as she’d enjoy that, and emptying the dirty cops out of his pocket, those were second-level goals. Her first was to flush those cops in order to find a killer.
Avenging a loss or betrayal, Mira had said. Not revenge, avenge. And the difference was, in Eve’s mind, another key. Scouring off the badge with blood to purify it.
A fanatic? she wondered. On a parallel line with Bayliss. One who tossed the rules aside when it suited his agenda.
She scouted out a parking place, pleased to find one on street level less than half a block from the Kohli residence.
Even as she pulled in, a car rolled up beside her. Distracted, she glanced over. As the doors of the blocking car swung open, her instincts kicked in. She was out of her vehicle on a forward roll and came up with her weapon drawn.
There were four of them, and she saw with one sweeping glance they were better and more heavily armed than the ones Ricker had sent after her the first time.
“No point in making a fuss here, Lieutenant.” The man on the far left spoke politely and held his long-nosed laser pistol just under the open flap of a natty spring topcoat.
Out of the corner of her eye, Eve saw the one on the far right begin to circle. She considered trying for a stun-sweep; her finger all but quivered on the trigger.
And a boy of about ten zipped behind the group of men on a dented street bike. One of them plucked him off. The bike skidded down the street, and while the boy yelped, the man nudged his stunner against the young throat at the pulse.
“Him or you.”
It was said almost offhandedly, and it enraged her.
“Let him go.” Deliberately, she clicked the power up on her weapon.
The boy’s eyes were wide and terrified. He made sounds like a small cat being choked. She couldn’t risk looking at him.
“Get in the car, Lieutenant. Quietly and quickly, before innocent civilians are injured.”
She had a choice to make and made it fast. The weapon seemed to leap in her hand as she fired it, struck the man holding the boy between the eyes. She saw the kid fall, heard with sweet relief his screams of terror and, diving for cover, fired again.
She rolled under the car, grabbed the boy by the foot, and scraped off a few layers of his skin when she dragged him under. “Stay. Shut up.”
Even as she rolled again to block his body with hers and come out on the other side, she heard the whine of another weapon.