“Okay.” Eve ordered herself to relax her hands. “All right.”
“Knew the vic,” Berenski said casually.
“What?”
“From court. We’re always testifying around here. Liked how she looked – who wouldn’t? – but you ask me, she was a stone bitch. Went up against her plenty, and my work held. My work holds,” he said, a little fiercely. “We do our jobs here, just like you. You won’t find any fans of the vic around here.”
Eve glanced around. Lots of counters, cubes, glass walls. Lots of people, most in white coats over street clothes, doing things she could never quite comprehend with tools and machines and computers.
“She screw anybody here?”
“I don’t ask my people who they sleep with. Mostly.”
“Not that way. In court. Did she fuck anybody up on the stand, get their work tossed?”
“Maybe fucked up some, she was good, and good at head games, and twisting things up. You know it.”
Yeah, Eve thought, she knew it. “Anyone get reprimanded, fired, suspended, lose it on the stand? Do you know anyone who threatened her, or took it personally?”
He showed his teeth under the excuse for a mustache. “You’re not looking at my people for this.”
“I’m looking at everybody for this. You’re in charge here, I want you to go over your records, to think back, and I want a list of anybody who had any sort of a run-in with her.
“The kill was clean, Dickie.” He was a pain in the ass at the best of times, but she understood standing up for your people. “Who’d know better how to keep a scene pristine but people who work evidence?”
“Fuck that.”
“I don’t like it any more than you do, but get it done.”
She walked away before he could argue, let his curses roll off her back. But took her time. She knew a handful of the lab techs and field techs by name, another handful by face. But mostly they were lab geeks to her.
But maybe one of them thought there was more to the relationship than cop and geek.
4
She went back to Homicide, then, finding a message from Feeney, went straight up to EDD to meet with its captain and her former partner in EDD’s lab.
She saw through the glass he was working alone, in wrinkled shirtsleeves the color of anemic coffee. Silver sproinged its way through the bush of ginger hair topping the face of a loyal basset hound.
When she stepped in, he gave her a quick, hard study, nodded.
“This is fucked up.”
“That’s what I was missing. I couldn’t quite put my finger on the right term. ‘Fucked up’ it is.”
With another nod, he walked over to the AutoChef. “I’m programming us a couple of spinach smoothies.”
“I’ll pass. For the rest of my natural life.”
“Just what you need,” he insisted, tapped buttons manually. And came out with two cups of coffee.
“It doesn’t look like spinach.” It only took one sniff. “Smells like coffee. Real coffee. Roarke coffee.”
“I got connections. Programmed it in as spinach smoothie. Not one of my kids is going to touch that option should lives depend on it. It ain’t loaded with sugar or caffeine, they ain’t going near it.”
“Smarts like that are why you’re captain.”
“Damn straight.”
She looked up at the wall of screens. He had different views of the crime scene security run on each. “What can you tell me about the UNSUB?”
“Could be wearing lifts, but if not, we got a height of five-ten. Boots are Urban Hikers, chestnut, come in unisex sizes. Those are 39. That’s on the high side for female, a little on the small side for a male. They’re popular, middle-of-the-road footwear. Lots of delivery people wear them. Decent support, decent traction, decent price. These don’t look new.”
“No, they don’t. There’s some wear on them.”
“Can’t give you weight, wouldn’t be close to accurate. Can’t ID the gloves, not confirmed. But I’ve got them down to three most likelies. All common, middle-of-the-road brands.”
He eased down on a stool. “We got a little piece of him, left temple. Enhanced and analyzed, the computer’s split between Caucasian and mixed-race. Can’t give you sex, we just don’t have enough of an image. Hands and feet skew small side for male, but not much. Height tall side for female, but not much. And that could be augmented with lifts.”
“So we eliminate black, Hispanic, Asian. And we’ve got a tall woman with biggish feet or a guy with smallish hands and feet, Caucasian or mixed race.”
“Of indeterminate age. Right-handed. Probability ninety-six and change from my run on the handwriting. Used the right on the security panel, and the right to pull what we gotta figure was the stunner from the pocket. The crime lab hits about the same probability on that.”
“Okay. Okay, that’s more than I had when I came in. What about the vic’s ’links and comps?”
“I’ve got McNab on them,” he said, referring to Peabody’s main man. “We got communications with her office, with clients – he’ll have a rundown for you, with her mother and sister on Christmas, and with Discretion – that’s a licensed companion agency. She ordered up an LC for Christmas.”
“At her place?”
“Nope, arranged it at The Four Seasons. She booked the room herself, stayed there Christmas Eve, had the LC come at midnight.”