"You never saw him before? He hasn't come around since?"
"No, just that one time. A couple—no three nights back. Just the once." Ledo swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. "I didn't do nothing."
"You ought to get that tattooed on your forehead, Ledo, then you wouldn't have to say it every five minutes. I'm done for now, but I want to be able to find you, real easy, if I need to talk to you again. If I have to hunt you up, it's going to piss me off."
"I'll be around." His relief was so great, his eyes went shiny with tears. "Everybody knows where to find me."
He started to dash out, then froze like an icicle when Eve clamped a
hand on his arm. "If you see the suit again, Ledo, or one like him, you get in touch. You don't say anything to put the suit off, then you get your ass on your 'link and call me." She bared her teeth in a smile that made his bowels loosen. "Everybody knows where to find me, too."
He opened his mouth, then decided that cold look in her eyes meant he shouldn't attempt to negotiate weasel pay. He bobbed his head three times and sprang through the door when she opened it.
• • • •
The muscles in Peabody's gut didn't unknot until they were back in their vehicle and three blocks east. "Well, that was fun," she said in a bright voice. "Next, let's find some sharks and go swimming."
"You held, Peabody."
The muscles that had just loosened quivered with pleasure. From Eve, it was the staunchest of cop compliments. "I was scared right down to the toes."
"That's because you're not stupid. If you were stupid, you wouldn't be riding with me. Now we know they wanted Snooks in particular," Eve mused. "Not just any sleeper, not just any heart. Him. His. What made him so damn special? Pull up his data again, read it off."
Eve listened to the facts, the steps of a man's life, from birth to waste, and shook her head. "There has to be something there. They didn't pull him out of a damn hat. A family thing maybe…" She let the theory wind through her mind. "One of his kids or grandkids, pissed off about the way he dropped out, left them flat. The heart. Could be symbolic."
"You broke my heart, I'm taking yours?"
"Something like that." Families, all those degrees of love and hate that brewed in them, confused and baffled her. "We'll dig into the family, run with this idea for a bit, mostly just to close it off."
She pulled back up at the scene, scanning the area first. The police sensors were still in place, everything secure. Apparently, there was no one in this neighborhood with the skill or knowledge to bypass them to get to whatever was left in Snooks's crib.
She spotted the pair of glide-cart vendors on the corner, huddling unhappily in the smoke pouring off the grill. Business was not brisk.
A couple of panhandlers wandered aimlessly. Their beggars' licenses hung in clear view around their scrawny necks. And, Eve thought, they were likely forged. Across the street, the homeless and the mad crowded around a barrel fire that appeared to let off more stink than warmth.
"Talk to the vendors," Eve ordered Peabody. "They see more than most. We could get lucky. I want another look at his crib."
"Ah, I bet they'd talk looser if I were to buy a soy-dog."
Eve arched a brow as they climbed out of opposite doors. "You must be desperate if you're willing to risk putting anything that comes from this neighborhood in your mouth."
"Pretty desperate," Peabody agreed and squared her shoulders, strode purposefully toward the grill.
Eve felt eyes on her as she uncoded the sensors long enough to pass through. The eyes burned into her back: anger, resentment, confusion, misery. She could feel all of it, every degree of despair and hope that slithered its way across the littered street to crawl over her skin.
She struggled not to think of it.
Pulling back the ratty blanket, she ducked inside the crib, hissed once through her teeth at the lingering stench of waste and death.
Who were you, Snooks? What were you?
She picked up a small bouquet of paper flowers, coated now with the thin layer of dust the crime team sweepers had left behind. They'd have sucked up hair, fibers, fluids, the dead cells the body sloughs off routinely. There would have been grime and muck and dirt to sift through. A scene as nasty as this one would take time. Separating, analyzing, identifying.
But she didn't think the findings there would lead her to the answers she needed.
"You were careful," she murmured to the killer. "You were neat. You didn't leave any of yourself here. Or so you thought."
Both victim and killer always left something. An imprint, an echo. She knew how to look and listen for it.