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Left with staff, she set them in the café and joined Roarke at a private cube. The monitor of the unit was, like every other she’d seen, swimming with chaotic colors and strange symbols. Beside it was a tall mug of some fancy coffee mixture.
“Is this the source?” she asked him.
“It is, yes. I’ll need to—”
“Don’t touch anything!” She grabbed his wrist. “Don’t—touch—anything,” she repeated, then signalled a uniform. “I need a CS kit.”
“We’ve only got minis in the patrols.”
“That’ll do. Then, Officer Rinksy,” she added scanning his nameplate, “you can inform the guy in charge around here that this joint is closed by order of the NYPSD until further notice.”
“Won’t that be fun?” With surprising cheer, Rinksy walked off to get the kit.
“I wasn’t,” Roarke said when she turned back to him, “going to touch anything. This is hardly my first day on the job, Lieutenant.”
“Don’t get pissy. And it’s my job, not yours. How do you know this is the source?”
He circled his fingers, examined his manicure. “I’m sorry.” He smiled absently. “Did you say something? I’m just biding time, waiting to take my lovely wife home when she finishes work.”
“Jeez. Okay, okay, sorry I jumped on you. I’m a little tense. Would you tell me, since you’re so brave and strong and smart, how you know this is the source?”
“That would’ve sounded better if you hadn’t had your lip curled, but it’ll do. I know this is the source because by tracking through the central system, I traced the virus to its starting point. This unit was the first infected, and the virus was programmed to self-clone and, I suspect, slither into central, spread to all interfaced units, then erupt in a nearly simultaneous burst. It’s very clever.”
“Great.”
Rinsky stepped up beside her again. “Your kit, Lieutenant.”
“Thanks.” She took the kit, opened it. She coated her hands with Seal-It first, then passed the can to Roarke. “Don’t touch anything yet.” She took out a wand, shined its pencil-thin beam and washed cool blue light over the coffee mug. “Gotta good thumbprint. Yeah, partial index finger. You got your palm unit on you?”
“Always.”
“Can you access the casefile? I need to compare these latents.”
While he did as she asked, Eve shined the light over the table surface. Too many prints, she mused, most of them smeared.
“Lieutenant?” Roarke held out a small printout of the casefile prints.
She grunted, then held the printed copy against the latent on the mug. “That’s our boy. Hold on.” Using the wand she picked up the mug, balanced it with a sealed finger on the base, then poured the coffee mixture into an evidence bag. “Why do people screw up perfectly good coffee with all that froth and flavors?” She sealed the bag, then tipped the cup into a second, sealed that. “Question.”
“Ask it.”
“How did he know we we
re coming? He had to know. That’s why he uploaded the virus. We were here minutes after notification, but he tagged us, dumped the germ and danced. How?”
“I have a theory, but I’d prefer exploring it a bit first.”
She shifted her weight. “Exploring how?”
“I need to open this unit.”
She debated. Strict procedure meant she could, and likely should, roust either Feeney or McNab and haul them over to check out the unit on site. Or she could call in another EDD tech.
But Roarke was here.
If he’d been a cop, he’d have been commanding EDD by this time.
“Consider yourself field drafted as an expert consultant, civilian.”
