Random in Death, page 15
“And okay, like ten tons of the raw opium comes down to, after all this, about one ton of heroin.”
“If he’s making his own, he’s got land or a greenhouse and the facilities to go through the long, exacting process. But he doesn’t need a ton, does he? A couple of pounds would more than do.”
“Maybe he’s just buying it.”
“Cheap synthetic baggies. Pure heroin costs a lot more than a good pair of pants. Add the other drugs in.”
Eve changed angles. “Or, if he could afford but just didn’t know better, it’s science—his science. He had to come up with the formula. He knows his science, and can either make the stuff or peel off enough to experiment with it.”
She pulled into the garage at Central. “Start on the lab angle. I’m going to hit a cash machine, then try EDD, see where they stand.”
She drew out the exact amount Roarke had given her and put it in the pocket opposite the one she’d already pulled cash from.
They’d deal later.
She took the glides and thinking time to EDD, and found McNab and Feeney in the lab.
“We may have him,” Feeney said immediately.
“Where?”
Eve studied the screen and pointed before Feeney could answer. “This guy here. You can’t see his face, or much else because he’s keeping behind these two. Taller. And this one broad with it. He’s what, five-six?”
“That’s my take, and we can verify. We just hit. Time stamp’s twenty-one-twenty-three.”
“McNab, see if you can ID any of the group he’s blending with.”
McNab, bony hips twitching to his inner beat, nodded. “Working that now.”
“Black baggies, I can see that. Can’t see the footwear, the shirt. His fucking face. But … brown hair, right?”
“Reads brown. Can’t get a gauge on the length, ’cept it looks long in the front. This here?”
He froze the screen. “The way the hair falls over his face. Maybe wearing shades from how it falls, but it’s only a partial between the two guys in front of him.
“Can’t get skin color. He’s careful. But we don’t have the baggies, height, hair color, and that front length coming out again, so we may have him.”
McNab did a little dance in his not-cheap canary-yellow baggies. “Got two of them, Dallas. Sending names and contact info to your e’s now. I interviewed these two. They came with a group of five, all guys, between, ah, fifteen and seventeen. Came for the music and the babes.
“Give me a sec.”
He pulled out his portable, checked his notes.
“Yeah, yeah. One of these two, and two others in the group, danced with the vic and her friends. One time. Sort of together but not, but made some conversation.”
“Good. This is good.”
“I want to run all of it, then run it again,” Feeney told her. “Make damn sure.”
“Yeah, but this is good. It’s a strong good. Send me the names, McNab. I’ll contact for follow-up. We know more, so maybe we’ll get more. They’re working on the possible print off the scuff. Harvo said cheap synthetic blend on the fibers. And I’ve got the full formula for the cocktail injected. I’ll copy you on my report.”
“We’ll get the bastard, kid.”
She nodded at Feeney, then headed out.
She believed that. She’d always believed she’d track the bastard down. But would they get him before she stood with Morris over another teenage girl?
She swung into Homicide, and even with her mind elsewhere had to wince at Jenkinson’s tie.
Today’s offering had what she thought might be magic wands scattered all over a bloodred background. Each one shot a different glittery stream of color.
“LT.” He signaled her, forcing her to move closer to the eye burn. “My esteemed partner and I…”
He trailed off as Detective Reineke hiked up his pants leg to show off the white rabbit peeking out of a magic hat.
“Sweet color-blind Jesus.”
“We’re closing one we hit at oh-five hundred this morning.” Jenkinson fluttered his tie. “Investigative magic.”
“So you say.”
“Damn straight. We’re clear if you need any assist on the two girls.”
“Peabody, share the load on the chem lab angle with the two magicians. I need ten minutes—fifteen,” she corrected, “then we’re in the field. Follow-up interviews. We may have him coming in with a group, hiding his sorry ass behind them.”
“That’s big!”
“It’s something. We get more, it’s big. Add in approximately five-six, brown hair. If they get any other details or sightings, we’ll add those.
“Fifteen. Be ready to roll out.”
In her office, she hit coffee, then updated her board and book. She copied Mira, her commander, Feeney, and McNab on everything.
When she contacted the first boy, she found them both together at their summer job. Working at a deli only a few blocks away.
One more good, she thought, and walked back into the bullpen.
“Let’s go, Peabody. Detective Sergeant.”
Jenkinson looked over, sent her a grin. “Lieutenant, sir!”
“Watch the kids while I’m gone.”
“As always.”
Peabody waited until they were out of earshot. “I actually like today’s tie.”
“Don’t make me hurt you,” Eve warned, and took the glides down.
Chapter Eleven
Eve weighed the four-block walk against the morning traffic and parking issue.
“We’re walking. It’s only four blocks.”
“Okay, sure, but it’s raining.”
“Oh, rain! In that case, we’re walking. We’ll be talking to Hank Kajinski and Devin Spruce, both seventeen, both working at the Corner Deli.”
“I know that place. They make incredible cheese blintzes, and their matzo ball soup’s seriously mag.”
“We’re not going there for lunch, Peabody.”
When they reached the main lobby, Eve headed for the doors, and the rain.
A slow, steady sky drip that turned the city into a sauna.
People huddled under umbrellas—some, Eve thought, bought hastily from a street vendor who sold them at a premium at the first drip. Others, shoulders hunched, trudged along scowling like the wet equaled a personal affront.
She watched a woman, legs scissoring despite the heels, dashing up the sidewalk with a shopping bag over her head.
And vehicular traffic, as she’d predicted, crept inch by inch with horns blasting.
“You’d think a little rain ranked as one of those biblical plagues, like, what is it, locusts.”
“Or water turning to blood.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Wasn’t it? “That’s a plague?”
“It’s a popular one. One of Egypt’s ten, and one of the seven predicted in Revelation.”
“How do you know this stuff?”
“Oh, just things you pick up.”
“I’d put them right down again,” Eve decided. “We have to deal with enough blood without worrying about it spurting out of the shower.”
“Okay, that’s guaranteed to give me daymares the next time I take one.” Peabody jerked her head right. “The guy across the street’s selling fold-up umbrellas for fifty bucks.”
“Yeah, I saw him. Anybody stupid enough to pay that deserves to get hosed. Plus, he’d make us before we crossed the street, and I’m damned if I’m chasing him. And we’re here.”
The Corner Deli actually stood on the corner. Most of the breakfast or bagel-and-schmear-to-go crowd had come and gone, but a few lingered on stools at the spotless white counter, or waited out the rain (good luck with that) over coffee and one of Peabody’s blintzes at an equally spotless postage-stamp-sized table.
The place smelled of baked bread, of pickles and onions and boiled eggs. And somehow it all combined into a single, appealing aroma.
Hank Kajinski was working the display counter and currently boxing up a round of rye for a waiting customer.
Eve judged him as six-one, with youthful vid-star looks, the kind that would cast him as the high school quarterback. Thick blond hair under his clear cap, bright blue eyes, just the hint of a summer tan, square-jawed, and lankily built.
Eve waited until he’d rung up the customer and turned with a flashing smile.
“Good morning. How can I help you?”
She held up her badge.
“Oh, right! Should’ve recognized you guys. I saw the vid. I mean, who didn’t?”
“Who didn’t,” Eve agreed.
“Dev’s in the back. I’ll get him, but I gotta get somebody to cover the counter while—”
He broke off as a woman strode out. Middle sixties, Eve gauged, sturdily built, with improbably red hair filling her cap with curls. Her skin was so white Eve wondered if she glowed in the dark.
“You the cops?”
“Yes, ma’am. We need to—”
She pointed a finger at Eve. “What’d they do? And I don’t want to hear any namby-pamby megillah.”
“They’re not in any kind of trouble.”
“We don’t put up with criminals and deadbeats in here.”
“As far as I know, ma’am, they’re neither. They may have seen an individual we’re looking for, and have fully cooperated in our investigation. This is a follow-up interview, as we’ve uncovered new information.”
“About these two?”
“Indirectly only.”
“Jeez, we didn’t do anything. I told you—”
Now that finger pointed at Hank. It bore a sharp, murderously red nail Eve imagined capable of slitting a throat with a single swipe.
“Hush! Go get Devin.” She pointed across the room. “Take that table. I’ll bring you a nosh.”
“We’re fine, thank you, but—”
“You sit in my place, you have a nosh.”
Better to move things along, Eve decided, and walked to the table.
“Whatever it is,” Peabody told her, “it’ll be really good nosh.”
Hank came out of the back with his friend. If Hank represented the high school quarterback, Devin could have stood as his defensive lineman, with his broad shoulders, tough build. He had smooth golden brown skin, a long blade of nose, and big, dreamy brown eyes. His hair, a kind of brassy gold at the crown, fell into pure black twists.
Both boys yanked off their caps as they sat, as if they weighed half a ton each.
“Sorry about that, Officers.”
“Lieutenant,” Eve corrected Hank. “Detective.”
“Yeah, still sorry about that. My bubbe’s a hard-ass.”
“That’s your grandmother?”
“Yeah.” Hank flashed the smile. “She says it’s her job to keep me, and Dev, too, on the straight and narrow, so we don’t end up putzes like her sister’s first ex-husband.”
“We didn’t tell her about being at the club that night, you know.” Devin hunched his broad shoulders. “She’d worry. We told the other guy … Sorry, the other detective guy we’d seen the dead girl—I mean before,” he said quickly. “Before that happened.”
“Understood. You danced with her.”
“Sort of.” He glanced at Hank.
“There were three of them. Excellent babe-age.”
From behind him, his bubbe gave him the flat of her hand over the back of his head. “You don’t talk about girls that way. You show respect.”
“Bubbe, it just means they were pretty. Like you.” That smile blasted out. “You have the most excellent babe-age.”
She gave him the flat of her hand again, but this time lightly, with affection. Then she set the tray she’d balanced on one hip on the table.
“You’ll have some babka, fresh this morning, and some sweet tea.”
Devin looked at her with those big, dreamy eyes. “Thanks, Bubbe.”
She stroked a hand over the brassy crown of his head. “Now, you tell the police whatever they need to know. With respect! Then you get back to work. We don’t pay for you to sit and eat babka.”
When she walked away, Hank forked up a bite. “It’s extreme. You gotta eat it, or she’ll give you all kinds of grief. Plus, extreme.”
“You danced with the victim and her two friends.”
“Sure, and a bunch of other babes. We weren’t there to hook, you know? Just swim. The music was tight and total. They, the babes, a unit, right, Dev?”
“Check it. I think Chaz danced with one of them again, just the one, but a unit. We didn’t hang with them, or anything like that.”
“Let’s go back to when you got to the club. You came as … a unit.”
“Five of us,” Hank confirmed. “Me, Dev, Chaz, Orlo, and Jonah.”
“When you got there, to the door, did anyone else come in with you?”
Dev shrugged, looked at Hank. “Maybe. We were all talking, and ribbing Orlo because he was supposed to come separate with his girlfriend, but she dumped him the day before. Harsh, man.”
“Maybe someone who was right behind the two of you. Your three friends were just ahead of you. We have Chaz opening the door, going in first.”
“I guess. I didn’t pay attention. We were pretty jacked about seeing Avenue A for free. No cover or anything. We all went last summer, so we knew it would slay.”
“The little guy?” Frowning, Hank squinted his eyes as if trying to see something in the distance.
And Eve felt the buzz.
“A little guy. Shorter than you, than both of you.”
“Yeah.”
“Can you describe him?”
“I didn’t really see him—I mean, pay attention. I only sort of noticed because when Chaz opened the door, he kind of blocked it for a couple seconds.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Devin confirmed. “He did this drama pause, said like, ‘Now it begins.’”
“That’s it, so when I had to stop short, the little guy bumped into me from behind. No big, but I thought, Jesus, man, we got all night.”
“How do you know it was a guy, or he was short?”
“Oh, right? I sort of halfway saw him slide in behind me and Dev when we were all walking up the block.”
“What did you halfway see? Any detail at all.”
“Well. Sad, sad baggies. Crap kicks, too. That sounds harsh, ’cause maybe that’s the best he could do, but that’s what I thought when I halfway saw him slide behind us.”
“Can you estimate his height?”
“I dunno … maybe … About as tall as my sister. Maybe about.”
“How tall is she?”
This time he just lifted his shoulders, and Eve glanced at Peabody.
When Peabody pulled out her PPC, Eve turned back to Hank. “Skin color?”
“A white guy. For sure, on that. I guess I saw his arms. Yeah, yeah, I did. Really white, so he was wearing a T-shirt. Maybe a tank type deal. I didn’t pay attention.”
“Hair color, eye color?” Eve asked, and Hank began to look distressed.
“Is this the guy who killed that girl?”
“It’s someone we want to identify.”
“Jesus, Jesus, I don’t want to guess on something like this. I don’t want to be wrong on it. I didn’t pay attention. I just gave him a glance back, that’s all. You didn’t notice?” he asked Devin.
“Sorry, man, I didn’t. I didn’t see him at all.”
“Hank.” Peabody pulled out her trust-me voice. “You’ve already helped us by what you did notice.”
“But he was our age. Shit, I don’t know that for sure, either. I just figured. I don’t know if I saw his face. I don’t think so. I’ve got nothing in the banks that says I did. I more noticed his bags, right? And thought something like, here comes a doof.”
Time to back off, Eve thought.
“I’m going to confirm what Detective Peabody just said. You’ve helped us a lot, you’ve told us details we didn’t have. We appreciate your time and cooperation.”
“Okay. Sorry that’s all I got. And, um, you could maybe eat some of the babka? Bubbe’ll be pissed if you don’t.”
“Right.” Eve broke off a piece with her fork and sampled. And found herself eating a small bite of heaven.
“Well, God.”
Hank gave her a weak version of his smile. “Told ya. We gotta get back.”
The boys rose together and, pulling on their caps, headed back to the counter.
“I ate my entire slice,” Peabody confessed. “I couldn’t stop myself.”
“Easy to see why. Height?”
“Hank’s sister’s ID lists hers at five-five.”
“We’ll call it, for now, between five-five and five-seven. He’s white. Hank confirmed the cheap-ass baggies. Apparently to go with the crap kicks. And he told us more than he realized.”
“That the guy who slid in behind him wasn’t worth noticing.”
Eve took a second bite of cake. The streusel topping it hit a grand slam.
“My pride nearly exceeds the magnificence of this babka. The minute he noticed the sad baggies, the one wearing them sank beneath notice.”
Eve pulled some cash out of her pocket, laid it on the table.
“You’re not leaving that half a slice of babka.”
“We need to get back.”
Peabody solved the issue by wrapping it in one of the disposable napkins. “I’ll give it to McNab,” she said as she slid it into her pocket.
They started the rainy walk back.
“We can confirm approximate height and race. That’s not nothing. Contact the other three friends. It’s doubtful they noticed him at all. Hank barely did and only because he walked up behind him. I’ll add these details and contact Arlie’s group. We could get lucky.”
Her ’link signaled.
“Mira. She’s got a window now. I’m taking it. Try Jenna’s group on it, too,” Eve said, and quickened her pace.
She finger-scooped some of the wet from her hair as she stepped back into Central. Ignoring the elevators, she took the glides to Mira’s level.
Where the dragon waited.
“Dr. Mira will see you now. Don’t you own an umbrella, Lieutenant?”
“Probably.” Eve walked by the admin’s desk, knocked briefly, then walked into Mira’s office.
The NYPSD’s top profiler and shrink sat behind her desk, but stood when Eve walked in.
