“Yes.” Rosa stood up. “Hurry,” she said to Eve.
Eve hurried to her office, barely slowing her stride when Peabody sprang from her desk in the bullpen. “McNab said—”
“Work the list. McNab’s enough for this. We get anything, you’ll know.”
Eve grabbed her coat, arrowed down to the garage. McNab loped up half a minute behind her.
Eve simply bulleted out of the slot, hit the lights and sirens, and sped out of the garage.
“Yee-haw” was McNab’s reaction, but he tightened his safety harness. “Not to dampen down, Dallas, but he’s not going to be there.”
“I know it.”
“Okay then. This sucker moves. So this fuckhead escalates to murder on one hand, devolves to taunts on the other.”
“Why ‘devolve’?” she asked as she swerved around a sedan whose driver obviously decided sirens meant nothing to him.
“It’s small time, right? Sure, it keeps a former target on edge, or brings back that edge, but he’s on to bigger now.”
“Ask yourself why this target? Why this woman? The first.”
He asked himself as she hit a clear stretch on Tenth, and the city blurred by. “She’s still important. She, especially, means something to him.”
“He didn’t include the husband on the text—it wasn’t a couple thing. He didn’t threaten violence. He taunted, yeah, but it’s ‘Let’s do it again.’ The sick part of him that twists this into actual sex wants to do it again. With her. That’s my conclusion until and unless the rest of the victims get the same.”
McNab thought it through. Nodded. “That’s why you’re the LT.”
“Fucking A. Still in that location?”
“Hasn’t budged. I got a lock on it.” He studied the read on on his PPC.
He guided her in as they got closer, then cursed.
“Shit, fuck, damn, it shut down.”
“Turned off?”
“Shut down,” he repeated. “Vanished. I’ve got the lock on the location, but the ’link’s shut down. Left here, half a block. Shit. Ten feet, south side. Stop. We’re right on it.”
Eve cut the wheel, double-parked. And saw the blueprint of it all the minute she stepped out of the A-T into the blast of angry horns.
“Recycler.” She pointed, jogging to it. “It’s still humming, goddamn it.”
“Smash-and-churn schedule’s right on it.” Frustrated, McNab kicked the bin. “Started up five minutes ago. Not just shut down, Dallas. Crushed and shredded.”
18
She waited with McNab, cleared the proper paperwork, and stood by while a city drone unlocked and opened the bin.
And looked into the open bin at the god-awful, compacted mess.
“Well.” McNab shoved at his purple-and-green earflap cap. “I like a challenge.”
“You’ve got one. Take it in, do what you do.” She considered the logistics of him carting a big bag of compacted trash and garbage on the subway, dug into her pocket. “Cab it back.” She shoved money into one of his many pockets as his hands were currently busy working with the city drone to transfer the contents of the recycler to a large green bag.
“Thanks.”
“What are the odds?” she asked him.
“Pretty much zilch, but you never know. Maybe it gets lodged in a little pocket, and just gets compressed instead of shredded.”
“Good luck with that.” She started back to the car.
“Ten minutes sooner, I could’ve jammed the sucker, and we’d have it whole.”
She nodded as she climbed into the car because that had already struck her as a very interesting point.
Heading toward the hospital, she used her wrist unit to shoot off a quick text to Roarke:
Got a little delayed. I’m heading toward the hospital to check on Daphne Strazza. Home after that. I’ve got a long night coming—sorry.
Even as she asked herself if she was taking time here better spent elsewhere, she navigated the now-familiar route to Daphne’s room. She found her—white pajamas and robe, hair groomed—standing with Del Nobel.
“Lieutenant. Jacko’s keeps sending food. I’m trying to convince Dr. Nobel to take a share of today’s chicken Alfredo. It’s wonderful.”
“You look good. Stronger.”
“The nurse—Rhoda—she convinced me to, well, clean up a little. I do feel better. They said I can leave tomorrow, but—” She pressed her lips together, looked pleadingly at Del.
“I can stretch it another day, but it’d be good for you to get out of here.”
“I just don’t know where … My husband’s lawyer came by to see me. He was very, very kind. He gave me a debit card, for expenses until … until everything’s settled. I just can’t go back to that house. I just can’t go back there.”
As if her legs had given out, she sat.
“I can sell the house whenever Mr. Wythe says I can do that, but I can’t go back there.”
“Do you remember anything else?”
Daphne shook her head, but her fingers twisted together, and her eyes cut away.
“Do you remember walking outside?”
The fingers untwisted. Daphne looked at Eve. “No. I don’t. Not even like a dream. Dr. Mira said she’d come here tomorrow. If I’m not here—”
“She’ll come wherever you are,” Eve told her. “Mr. Wythe told me you’re allowed to get a hotel, and whatever you need. I can get you a room at the Palace. I can make sure you’re safe and secure there.”