Apprentice in Death (16 page)

Once more, Eve gestured to the screen. “It takes longer to travel from any of the highlighted locations downtown to the parlor—add that thirty minutes. But after the first strike, they arrive at the counter, according to the wits, thirty minutes after the first vic's TOD.”

“Their hole's on the East Side,” Jenkinson said. “Probably within walking distance of the parlor. You said it's their place, a father/daughter deal?”

“That's right, and that's right. So we focus on this area. First Avenue to Lex, Fifty-Fifth to Fifteenth. That puts the parlor in the center of that quadrant. They could easily have walked from their nest on Second Avenue to any location in that area.”

“That's a lot of doors to knock on,” Carmichael calculated.

“Which is why the e-geeks will eliminate the unlikelies while the rest of you find the nest.

“We have potential targets in protective custody. You should all familiarize yourselves with the interview recordings conducted today. To summarize, it became clear during the interview with Zoe Younger,
Willow Mackie displays psychopathic tendencies, which include offing her brother's puppy, threatening her stepfather with a knife.”

“The brother, too, sir.” Trueheart flushed as she stopped, turned to him. “I'm sorry to interrupt.”

“Forget that. Go.”

“The kid broke down during Interview.”

“I call it opening up,” Baxter corrected. “He felt safe, and he hasn't. He felt like he could talk to Trueheart, and Trueheart would believe him.”

“That, and I think he felt like she—his half sister—couldn't get to him.” Trueheart glanced at the board. “The kid's been terrorized, Lieutenant. He said sometimes he'd wake up in the middle of the night and she'd be in his room, just sitting there, staring at him. Once she held a knife to his throat, dared him to call for help.”

“He never told his parents?”

“He was afraid to.” After a moment, Trueheart hissed out a breath. “I could see how scared he was, Lieutenant. She said maybe he'd end up going out the window, going splat on the sidewalk like his puppy. Or maybe his father would end up with his throat slit some night if he didn't keep his mouth shut. Or how his mother might fall down the stairs one day, and when the cops came, one of his toy trucks would be there. They'd put him in jail for that. She'd make sure of it. He's just a kid, sir. He believed her.”

“He was right to. She planned to kill all of them once she completed the assignment for her father. Anybody here thinking of her as a child, stop. Until she's in a cage, she's deadly. Anyone thinking of Mackie as a fellow cop, stop. He and his daughter are cold-blooded killers. Find the nest, compile all data and evidence when you do. Anyone assigned to the field, dismissed.

“Feeney, do whatever you can to lower the number of locations for the hole.”

“You got that. You wanna play?” he asked Roarke.

“I do, yes.”

“Come up when you're ready.” Rising, Feeney stuck his hands in his baggy pockets. “Any sense there's anything weird going on with these two?”

“I think being LDSKs— Oh.” Eve's hands slithered into her own pockets. “No, nothing like that.”

“Okay then, he's going to want a place with two bedrooms. She's nearly sixteen, so they maybe share a nest, short term, but for longer term, probably two bedrooms. Guy wants to go to Alaska, he's probably trying to save money where he can, so like you said, nothing upscale. Yeah, we can knock the number down some. McNab, let's get started.”

“I was just thinking.”

“He does that.”

With a half grin, McNab rubbed his earlobe and part of the forest of silver hoops riding on it. “You gotta eat, right? Single dad right off, and you add they're huddled in to work out how to kill a whole bunch of people. Probably not a lot of cooking, even stocking an AutoChef with much more than your basic grab-and-gos.”

“Takeouts, deliveries,” Eve said with a nod. “Pizza, Chinese, subs, those would rank high. And 24/7s, carts.”

“Even thinking with his stomach, that's not bad.” Feeney gave McNab a light punch. “We'll add it in.”

“Lowenbaum, do you have Officer Patroni on tap?”

“I brought him back with me. Do me a solid, Dallas, don't talk to him in Interview.”

In his place, Eve thought, she'd have asked for the same for any of her men. “We'll talk in the lounge. The three of us. Why don't you go get us a table?”

“I appreciate it.”

“Peabody, I want you to check that all the civilians we brought in are now secure. And it's that needle-in-the-hay-pile thing—”

“Stack.”

“Whatever. Run the initials of the yet to be identified against every fricking lawyer in the city. Start with ones who advertise, who specialize in personal injury and wrongful-death suits.”

“That's a teeny little needle in a lot of haystacks, but I'm on it.”

With only Eve and Roarke left in the room, Whitney rose. “Lieutenant, HSO is inquiring about your investigation.”

She actually felt her spine turn to a rod of steel at the mention of the Homeland Security Organization. “Inquiring, sir, or looking to take it over?”

“Inquiring with the concept, we'll say, of taking it over.”

“It's a murder investigation, Commander.”

“That could be considered domestic terrorism. And, in fact, is being labeled that by much of the media.”

Part of her brain might have been raging
Politics, fucking politics
, but her tone held cool and even. “That may be, sir, but the evidence clearly indicates the motive here is murder, and targeted murder. The rest is, or was, nothing but an attempt to cover the specific target.”

“It may be possible to tap some HSO resources without them taking the lead.”

“Respectfully, sir, I feel we don't have time to jump through those hoops. If I come to believe those resources are more valuable than that time, or that we are unable to move the investigation forward, I would welcome the assistance.”

“Agreed. It's your case, Lieutenant. And you're clear for as much overtime as you deem necessary. The proper paperwork on same will have to be submitted in a timely manner.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Shut them down, Dallas. Shut them down.”

When he walked out, Eve pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Fucking HSO. Fucking paperwork. Fucking fuck.”

“Have you eaten anything since this morning?”

“For Christ's sake.”

He pulled a nutribar out of his pocket. “Eat this and I won't add
fucking nagging
to your list.”

“Fine, fine.” She ripped off the wrapper, took an annoyed bite. Maybe the fact that something that bland tasted delicious meant she needed the damn
nutri
part of it.

“And since you won't actually want cop coffee, you could drink a bottle of water during this next meeting. I'm with Feeney, but I'd like to know if you go into the field.”

He caught her face in his hands, kissed her, firm and hard, then left her.

On a sigh, she polished off the nutribar—half wished she had another—as she gave the board one more study.

In the lounge, she saw Lowenbaum at one of the tables with another cop.

Vince Patroni—mid-forties, dark hair cut high and tight over a sharp-boned face—brooded into a cup of cop coffee. Since Roarke had it right, she went for water, and was almost disappointed when Vending burped out the bottle without a hitch.

“Lieutenant Dallas,” Lowenbaum began as Eve and Patroni eyed each other. “Tactical Officer Patroni.”

“The lieutenant says you're sure, a hundred percent, on Mac.”

“That's right.”

“And his kid, his girl.”

“Right again. Do you need me to run it down for you?”

“No.” Patroni lifted a hand, rubbed his fingers over his eyes. “We were both Army, me and Mac, both weapons specialists, trained at the one-nine-seven. We didn't train at the same time, but we knew some of the same people from back then.”

“You connected.”

“Yeah. I got a boy, ten, from a busted relationship, and he had Will. We'd have a brew a couple times a week, catch a game, hit the range. He'd bring Will whenever he had her—to the range, I mean. Girl's got some serious skill, I mean she's a killer on the . . .”

Obviously he heard his own words. “Jesus.”

“Let it go,” Eve told him. “You went with them to the practice range regularly.”

“Yeah, not for the last year or so, but before. I brought my own kid a few times, but he's not interested much. Wants to be a scientist. And anyway, our kids didn't much hit it off.”

“Age difference?”

“Not really. Owen, he gets on with everybody, old, young, whatever, but he didn't like her. He told me after the couple of times I took him along that he didn't want to hang with Mac when she was around. He didn't like the way she looked. I was surprised, because like I said he gets along with people. I said how he couldn't judge people by how they look. But he said it wasn't the way she looks. It was
how
she looked. At him, at people,” Patroni explained. “She had too much mean in her eyes. He said when she shot at a target, she saw people, and liked imagining them dead.”

“That's pretty perceptive for a kid.”

“Yeah, well, he's got that, you know, extra. We think. We haven't had him tested yet, both his mother and I think he's too young for it. But he's got that extra, so when he said he didn't want to hang with her, I stopped taking him. Mostly, I put it down to Will not liking anybody pulling her dad's attention off her, and Mac really likes Owen. Mac's crazy about Will, don't get me wrong, but he wanted a son. I guess he sort of thinks of Will that way. Not much girlie about her, you know?”

“He got married again.”

“Yeah, Susann was the love of his life, no question. He said Will loved her, too.”

“He said?” Eve prompted.

“Yeah, well . . .” After shifting in his seat, Patroni frowned into his coffee. “My perspective, Will was okay with Susann. From what I could see Susann never got between Mac and Will, encouraged them to have time together. And he was looser, happier, with Susann. Over the moon when she got pregnant. When she died . . . Broke him to pieces, took him down into the dark, man, deep down. Drinking till he blacked out, every night. I couldn't talk to him. He shut out everything and everybody but Will. I hauled him out of bars a few times, but then he started just drinking at home, locked in.”

“You didn't report that behavior to me, Patroni.”

Patroni looked up, met Lowenbaum's eyes. “It got bad after you had him take the hardship leave, LT. I didn't see what good it would do to report he was drinking himself sick on leave. And I honestly didn't think he'd come back on the job. He wasn't ready to come back on the roll, LT, you knew it. He'd pulled it together some. He was careful there, but we all knew it. You gave him desk work because you knew it, and nobody was surprised when he took his twenty and stepped out. But after that, after he put in his papers, I think he did more than drink himself blind.”

His ex-wife thought the same, Eve remembered. “What more?”

“I went over a few times. He'd lost a lot of weight, looked sick. He had hand tremors, and his eyes . . . Even in the early stages, even when it's just a little use, you can start to see it in the eyes.”

“You think he went on the funk,” Eve said.

“Goddamn it, Patroni, why didn't you tell me?”

“He was retired,” Patroni said to Lowenbaum. “You weren't his lieutenant anymore. And I couldn't prove it. I knew it in my gut, but I
couldn't prove it. When I tried to talk to him about it, he denied it. I went back a couple times after that, but Will was there, said he was sleeping, said he was doing better, was pulling out, how she'd talked him into taking some time away with her, out west.”

“She talked him into it.”

“Camping, she said, fresh air, change of scene. She had it all worked out. The fact is, he'd taken her out to Montana, maybe up to Canada a couple of times before, and Alaska maybe more than a couple.”

“When's the last time you saw him?”

“A while now, maybe three or four months. He made it pretty damn clear he didn't like me dropping by, and I couldn't say, ‘Hey, let's go have a brew.' I tagged him a couple times about catching a game, or hitting the range, but he put me off, always had something going with Will. Or she'd answer his 'link, tell me he was busy, he'd get back to me, but he wouldn't.”

“Did he ever talk about payback, for Susann?”

“Not in the I'm-going-to-kill-a-bunch-of-people sort of way. He's my friend, Lieutenant Dallas, but I'm a police officer, and I know my duty. If he'd made serious threats or if I'd suspected—”

“I get that, Patroni.”

“Right.” He scrubbed a hand over his hair. “When he was still talking to me, drinking heavy, he'd talk about how somebody had to pay. I think he hired a lawyer.”

“What lawyer?”

“He never said. But he talked about hiring one. He'd say stuff like his wife and baby had been murdered, and where was the justice? How he'd served his country, served this city, but nobody gave a shit about his wife and baby being murdered. I could talk him down. Hell, I combed over the accident report, the reconstruction. I even talked to Russo and the wits myself. It was an accident—a goddamn tragedy, but an
accident. When he was sober, I talked to him straight about it. He didn't much want to talk to me after that.”

“Do you know when he moved?”

“I didn't know he had, but I thought, the way he put me off, the way Will blocked me, he'd just moved on. He didn't want the contact with me, with things or people who reminded him of what he'd lost.”