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Then she laughed, took off at the green. “Hell yeah, it was physical, but I mean it wasn’t just.”
“I know what you mean. I get that.”
“It was like something out there said, ‘Hell, let’s give these two a break. It’s time they found each other.’ And it broke, those first cracks on what I’d locked away. I could start facing it because I could trust him to stand for me. Trust him to let me stand for myself. There was no way to lock away what I felt for him. I couldn’t make it stop or go back, and somewhere along the line I stopped wanting it to. I think, without that, I’d have lost myself. Somewhere down the line the victims would stop mattering so much, the job would just be the job. Maybe I’d have gotten the bars first, who knows, but I’d have stopped being the kind of cop I needed to be.”
And that, she knew absolutely, that would have ended her.
“I’d have stopped surviving without what I let in, with him. Without what letting that in let me let in otherwise. I might have pulled you in, like maybe I’ll pull in Shelby, but we wouldn’t be partners. I wouldn’t have had the chops for it.”
She made the turn into the garage at Central.
“So I found that peace. Cases like this, they can shake it. Sometimes I can lose it, like water dripping through your fingers. But I know where to find it again, and with who. You’re part of that. Part of the where and the who.”
She pulled into her slot, glanced over. “Stop that!” she ordered as tears streamed silently down Peabody’s cheeks. “No blubbering. We’re in a cop-shop garage. There’s no blubbering in a cop shop—when you’re a cop.”
“I’m not blubbering.” But Peabody blubbered a little as she dug in her pockets for a tissue. “And I’m not giving you a really big hug right now, like I really want to do. I just want to say that anytime that peace gets shaken, you can count on me. You can count on me,” she repeated and, blowing her nose, shoved out of the car.
Eve sat in the car another moment. “I know it,” she murmured, and got out to get back to the job.
17
Eve went straight to EDD, hoping the e-geeks would give her something solid.
She found the e-lab packed with them.
McNab stood—hips jiving in his neon pants, hoops sparkling around his ear—at a station peering through some sort of scope. Feeney sat in his wrinkled brown suit, his hair standing up as if he’d been electrocuted while he swiped at two screens simultaneously.
The well-endowed Callendar seemed to dance between two stations, shoulders bouncing, which made the well-endowed portion—where for some unknown reason a monkey rode a unicycle across her spangled red shirt—bounce in turn.
Yet another geek Eve only vaguely recognized sat, bopping in his stool with comp guts spread out over his station. He had hair as red as Callendar’s shirt worn in long dreads with tips as bright and yellow as an exploding sun. The tips matched his bibbed baggies.
Eve vaguely wished she had sunshades as she pushed into the lab.
Spotting them, McNab wiggled his eyebrows at Peabody. “Yo, Captain, Dead Squad’s here.”
“We got some something and some nothing,” Feeney told Eve.
“Start with the something.”
“We could scan out the one swipe, and get the code and the ID. Bank was on it. Liberty National Bank of New York was on it. Did a little dance, and we got the branch for you. Whatever he stashed, he stashed it in the Bronx. I was just about to send you the address.”
“Do that. I’ll check it out, and thanks. What’s the nothing?”
“Other swipe. We got the code, no problem. But there’s no handy ID like with the bank box. We’re still working, but the best we can figure is residence. It doesn’t read like a company swipe, a business swipe. Still could be one, but we’re leaning residential.”
“It’s more than I had. What about vic comps?”
“I’m giving what we got from the Mira Institute another full scan, but what I got is all business and political bullshit. Callendar’s on Wymann. Juju’s got Betz.”
“Juju?”
“Cuz, I got it.” Red Dreads grinned at Eve.
She thought it looked as if someone had splattered his round white face with specks of red paint and called them freckles.
“Getting down on the Betz,” he said, tapping the toes of lightning-blue air boots laced to his knees. “Dude’s flush. Be flusher he didn’t ride slow ponies. Got two digs that show, one’s in the Apple, other’s rum and cigars. Pulls it in, doesn’t put much out. Got megs game for skirts for creaky. Lists ’em, flips ’em. Likes wheels, got three, mucho slap for zipping.”
“Just... stop.” Eve held up her hand as her head was starting to throb. “Does this guy speak English?”
