Delusion in Death (18 page)

“Reineke, get the full names of Lydia’s friends so we can find them.”

She signaled to Jenkinson, pulled him over. “I want her examined. Get her to the hospital, have them run a tox, examine her nasal passages, her throat. She won’t want to go. Convince her.”

“I’ll take care of it. How many, LT?”

“Forty-one. It looks like sixteen survivors, at this point. We may find more, like Lydia, who got out before it took a strong hold. Get her examined,” Eve repeated, and moved fast to find Feeney.

“I’ve got a time line,” she told him. “We got a wit who was in there with friends, but left—felt a headache coming on as she walked out. They got there approximately twelve-forty, and she left just after one. First on scene pulled up at thirteen-eleven. The vics inside were still infected.”

“It hit about the time your wit left. We’ll focus on twelve-thirty to one-fifteen, to cover it. Cams were operational. I’ll run the discs back at the house.”

“Run it with face recognition, using the faces we have leaving the bar or connected to vics.” She pushed at her hair. “We’ll bump the briefing until eighteen hundred.”

She scanned the street, the buildings. “He was here, Feeney. But he had to know about the cams. How could he risk popping on the security disc in both places? Can’t. He found another way to get it in this location—or both. Or there’s more than one of them, and they took turns. He had to leave about the same time the wit did. Hefty blonde, black pants and jacket. I want to see everyone coming and going about five minutes before up to five minutes after the wit.”

“I’m heading back now. Do you want to keep McNab?”

“If he’s got the electronics, take him with you. Otherwise I’ll send him in as soon as he has them all bagged.”

Baxter met her on her way back in. “They’re loading up the last of the survivors. We have fourteen from inside.”

“I counted sixteen.”

“Two didn’t make it. I peeled off to talk to a couple of them who were lucid enough. It’s running like the bar, Dallas. Having lunch, serving it or cooking it, headache, hallucinations, most with feelings of anger or fear along with the headache.”

“We’ve got one who got out, left with the headache.”

“Good.” He glanced toward the café, the blood on the sidewalk. “She’s lucky.”

He rooted in the pocket of his snazzy top coat—always the smart dresser, that Baxter. And came up with a PowerBar. “Want half?”

“No. Maybe. What kind is it?”

“Yogurt Crunch.”

“That’s a no.”

With a shrug he unwrapped it, bit in. “I’ve had worse. McNab and two e-geeks have most of the electronics. We’ve got IDs on the survivors, and about half the DBs so far.”

“Take Trueheart and what you’ve got, go back and start running
the names. I want lists of anyone with employment at any of the businesses involved in the first incident. There’s going to be some cross. Another crossing the connections.”

It was going to come down to relationships and geography, she concluded. Who he knew and where he knew them.

“This is his comfort zone, his place. People tend to eat and shop in the same area, especially when they’re on a schedule. Look for businesses between the two crime scenes. Use a two-block radius on both ends, list who lives in that sector who’s connected to any survivor, any vic, or who we pin leaving either scene before the hit.”

Baxter took another bite of the bar, chewed thoughtfully. “It won’t be fast.”

“Get started. Briefing rescheduled for eighteen hundred.”

“LT.” Jenkinson hustled up. “Lydia’ll go in for exam, but I had to tell her Reineke and I would take her.”

“Get it done. Start interviewing survivors while you’re there. Briefing’s now at eighteen hundred. Don’t waste time.”

Taking her own advice, she moved fast, walked back into the building, and spotted Morris kneeling beside one of the dead.

“You didn’t have to come in,” she told him.

“You’ll want confirmation as quickly as possible you’re dealing with the same COD. There are tests I can run here.”

“And?”

“The same. I can give you solid confirmation within the hour, but it reads the same.”

She crouched down beside him. “We’re going to try to keep a lid on how and what. We won’t, not for long, but do what you can.”

“Depend on it.”

“I am.” Still crouched, she scanned the room. “Was it already
planned? Both hits? Bang-bang. He went smaller. Impulse or planning? He’s not impulsive, so … Why this place?” She tracked the bodies. “Who in this place?”

As he understood she was thinking out loud, Morris remained silent.

“Is he a familiar face, a regular? I bet he is. Pleasant enough guy, knows how to interact, but it’s all surface. Probably speaks to the counter guy or the waitress whenever he comes in. Just a ‘How ya doing?’ kind of thing. He
wants
attention, to be noticed, remembered. But he’s just one of the many. Really just another customer here, and back at the bar. One of the many where he works? It’s not enough. Not nearly fucking enough, not for him, not with his brains, his potential. He’s
not
just one of the many. The suits and drones, the people who trudge through the workday. Goddamn it, he’s special. They’re beneath him, all of them. None of them matter, and still …”

She shook her head, continued to study the room. “Someone in here or something that happened in here mattered enough for this. Because it’s not random.

“He’s going to need to brag,” she decided. “
You think the NYPSD worries me? Look what I can do, whenever I damn well please
.” She pushed to her feet. “He’ll need us to know that.”

By the time she’d finished, rounded up Peabody, and gone back to Central, she had a new batch of photos for her board.

“Post these,” she told Peabody, “then check in with the lab.”

She moved straight into the bullpen, to Baxter’s desk.

“Still working on it,” he said before she could speak. “You were right. We’ve already found some vics who worked at the same places previous vics worked. Crossing survivors, too. There’s a decent percentage, so far, who live in the area you designated.”

“Any connections between the vics in the two locations? Personal connections.”

“Still working on it.”

“Bring in a couple of e-men Feeney picks to help you run it. And tell him I’m heading up to talk to Callendar.”

She went straight up. Easier to go to, she calculated, then to send for.

She pushed into the color and chaos of EDD, scanned the neons and patterns, the busy movements for Callendar. When she didn’t see her, Eve turned toward Feeney’s office.

One of the e-geeks jogged by her. “He’s in the lab.”

She veered out again, turned toward the e-lab. She saw Feeney hunkered at a station on one end of the big, glass-walled area, and Callendar standing, doing some sort of dance, in front of another.

“Yo, Dallas. Got some bits and pieces.” Callendar stopped dancing, gestured toward a screen. “Putting it together.”

“Anything I should know now?”

“Other than the Red Horse cult was full of crazy sickheads? Not so much, but I’m working on it. I dug up a handful of names—abducted kids who got out or were recovered. Moving on it.”

“Keep moving.”

Taking her literally, Callendar went back to dancing.

“What do you see?” she asked Feeney.

“Something that might be interesting.” He, too, gestured to a screen.

“See for yourself.”

She watched him play back the door security disc, noted the time stamp. The busy sidewalk, people moving, moving, moving. Then the woman—brown and brown, early twenties, in a Café West shirt, unzipped navy jacket—came into the frame. She stopped, grinned at
someone to the left; her mouth moved as she called out something. And she waved as she walked inside.

“Time’s right,” Eve murmured.

“Yeah. It’s fourteen minutes, thirty-nine seconds after the wit and the two with her went in. Wit leaves …” He ran it forward, and Eve watched Lydia, her teeth clenched, her face rigid with fury, stomp out.

“Five minutes, fifty-eight seconds after the woman in the Café West shirt goes in. Gets bitchy, gets headache, gets out. Yeah, the time’s right.”

“I’m guessing if the wit had stayed inside another ten, twenty seconds, she wouldn’t be a wit.”

“Her lucky day. Go back to the woman going in. What’s she saying? Did you translate?”

“We don’t have her full face, but the program reads her lips at eighty-five percent probability.”

He ordered it up.

No prob. I’ll put it in for you
.

“Okay. Do we have an ID on her?”

He toggled over to an ID shot. “Jeni Curve, twenty-one. Part-time delivery girl, part-time student. No priors, no shaky known associates. Shares an apartment with two other females. And she’s one of the vics. I checked.”

“She doesn’t look suicidal,” Eve speculated. “Doesn’t look homicidal. Not nervous, not gathering her courage.”

“I’ve got others. Nothing’s popping. Some in, some out, some alone, most with somebody. But your wit’s the last out before this.”

He ran it forward six minutes. Eve watched the café door shudder, and the spiderweb spread over the glass. Most people on the street just kept going, one or two flicked the door a glance.

And one man bustled up, working his PPC as he pulled open the door. Distracted, he started to step in, stopped, goggled, stumbled back out of camera range.

“He’s the one who called it in,” Feeney told her. “Now you’ve got this guy, paying less attention, pulls the door open, goes on in. See the door there?”

“Yeah. Looks like he tried getting the hell out again. He didn’t make it.”

“Not his lucky day,” Feeney commented.

“Jeni Curve.” Eve stood, studying the ID shot. “I’ll look into it. Did you ID the people who left between Curve going in, Lydia coming out? We may get something from them.”

“Shot the data down to your unit. I ran them—standard—nothing pops there either.”

“I’ll add them all to Baxter’s cross. I’ll put it in for you,” she repeated. “Curve doesn’t look crazy.”

“A lot of people who don’t are.”

“Ain’t that the fucking truth? Maybe. Maybe. I’ll dig down.”

Halfway on the route between EDD and Homicide, her comm signaled. “Dallas.”

“Lieutenant,” Whitney’s admin spoke briskly, “the commander needs you in his office, immediately.”

“On my way.”

She backtracked, grabbed an up-glide. Idly studied a couple of women with battered faces she made as street LCs. To her way of thinking their line of work was nearly as dicey as hers. You just never knew when some asshole would decide to punch you in the face.

In Whitney’s outer office, the admin merely signaled Eve to go straight in. Still she knocked briefly before stepping inside.

Whitney sat at his desk, his hands folded. Chief of Police Tibble,
his long frame suited in black with subtle chalk stripes, stood at the window.

She didn’t know the third person, but made her as federal as quickly as she’d made the LCs on the glide.

She thought:
Fuck
, then settled into resignation.

It had to happen.

“Lieutenant Dallas,” Whitney began, “Agent Teasdale, HSO.”

“Agent.”

“Lieutenant.”

In the three or four beats of silence, they sized each other up.

Teasdale, a slight, delicate woman, wore her long, black hair slicked back in a tail. The forgettable black suit covered a compact body. Low-heeled black boots gleamed like mirrors. Her dark brown eyes tipped up slightly at the corners. The eyes and the porcelain complexion had Eve pegging her as mixed race, leaning Asian.

“The HSO, through Agent Teasdale, requests to be brought up to speed on the two incidents you’re investigating.”

“Requests?” Eve repeated.

“Requests,” Teasdale confirmed in a quiet voice. “Respectfully.” She spread her hands. “May we sit?”

“I like standing.”

“Very well. I understand you have reason to distrust, even resent HSO due to the events that occurred in the fall of last year.”

“Your assistant director was a traitor. Your Agent Bissel a murderer. Yeah, might be some lingering distrust.”

“As I said, this is understood. I have explained to your superiors the operatives and handlers who were involved in that unfortunate incident have been incarcerated. We have conducted a full and complete internal investigation.”

“Good for you.”

Teasdale’s placid expression never changed. “The NYPSD has also had some difficulties. Lieutenant Renee Oberman ran illegal activities, including murder, out of her department for many years before she was discovered, arrested, and incarcerated, along with the officers involved. Their dishonor doesn’t destroy the honor and purpose of the NYPSD.”

“I know who I’m working with here. I don’t know you.”

“A valid point. I’ve worked for the HSO for nine years. I was recruited while in graduate school. I specialize in domestic terrorism, and for the last four years have been based here in New York.”

“That’s great. We don’t believe we’re dealing with any individual or group with a political agenda. I’ll let you know when and if that changes.”

Teasdale smiled softly. “Politics isn’t the only basis for terrorist activities. The indiscriminate murder of multiple people in public settings is a kind of terrorism as well as homicide. I believe I can help you identify the person or persons responsible, and aid in your capture of same.”

“I have a solid team, Agent Teasdale.”

“Do you count among them a terrorist specialist with nine years of training? With nine years of field and laboratory experience? Who also holds advanced degrees in chemistry and who serves Homeland Security as an expert on chemical and biological warfare? You’re welcome to check my bona fides, Lieutenant, as I have yours. I’m useful.”

“Useful to the HSO.”

“Yes, and that doesn’t preclude my usefulness to you, your department, and your investigation. The request at this time is to consult and assist, not to overtake.”

“I can check your bona fides, but who do you work with, report to? And how long does ‘at this time’ run?”

“I’ll be working alone, as far as HSO contacts, and will report to, and only to, the head of the New York branch, Director Hurtz. You may or may not be aware that Director Hurtz, who moved into the position after the events of last fall, has been most directly responsible for the internal investigation that has led to several arrests and reassignments. I believe Chief Tibble and Director Hurtz are acquainted.”