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“That’s evasion. You think it.”
“Truth, Morris? I don’t know.”
“What did she do with the jewelry he bought her?”
“She gave it back when they split.”
He smiled, really smiled, for the first time since she’d come to his door the day before. “That’s who she was, Dallas.”
She brooded about it on the drive home. “Waste of three hours. Nothing. Nothing there. If we couldn’t find anything between us, there’s nothing there. Wasted time.”
“It wasn’t, and far from it. He looked alive again when we left. In pain, in sorrow, but alive.” Roarke reached out to cover her hand. “Not wasted time.”
11
BACK IN HER HOME OFFICE, SHE RAN THE SECUrity discs. She watched Rod Sandy, carrying a briefcase, exit the elevator, cross the lobby, exit the building at eleven-twenty-six the morning after Coltraine’s murder.
He looked grim.
“Favor,” she said to Roarke, “do a search on the time the first media reports of Coltraine’s murder hit.”
While Roarke obliged, she continued the run, watched people come and go. None exited—according to the elevator readout—on the penthouse levels until Sandy returned at twelve-oh-eight.
“The first bulletin hit at ten-fifty-three on ANN,” Roarke said, referring to All News Network. “Broad sweep reports followed on every major station by eleven.”
“Quick work,” Eve muttered. “That’s quick work if Sandy carried discs and anything incriminating or questionable out with him—which he damn well did—to another location.”
“He wouldn’t have taken his unregistered out across a public lobby.”
“No.” She switched to elevator security. Again she saw Sandy step in, ride down, get off. Others took the car to other floors. Then the screen went blank and black. “What the—is that the disc or my equipment?”
“Neither. The security cam shut down. Was shut down,” Roarke corrected. “No blip, no static, no jump such as you’d get if there was a malfunction. The building would have a basement, utility areas, a delivery entrance.”
“Delivery entrance on the cross street.” Eve shifted to that disc. “Son of a bitch, coordinated shutdown. Smooth. Even if I dig up a wit from the building, or the buildings across the street that saw loading and unloading, it proves nothing. Still . . .”
“He’d need a vehicle—truck or . . . a van to move the equipment.”
“And to carry the new furniture in. He wouldn’t have used a stolen van,” she added, in response to Roarke’s unspoken question. “Furniture delivery truck maybe. He owns an antique store on Madison, and another downtown. Maybe I get somebody to ID it, and say, ‘Yeah, I saw these guys carting out boxes, carting in a dresser,’ it’s not evidence. But this tells me he took care of business the morning after Coltraine was killed. He covered his ass.”
“Devil’s advocate, darling, but under the same circumstances, I’d have been covering mine hours earlier if I’d done murder. By the time the body was discovered, there’d be nothing on the premises I didn’t want the cops to see.”
“He’s not as good as you. I said that before.”
“I never tire of hearing it.”
“On the night she died we’ve got him on the cam, coming and going at the times he gave us. Or close enough not to argue with. But he shuts it down to remove his unregistered and take a furniture delivery. No, not as good as you.”
She gave Roarke a thoughtful look. “You’d’ve doctored the discs if you felt you needed to. But most likely, you’d have let it all go on record. What the fuck do you care if the cops see packages leaving your place? Something new coming in. No crime in it. The cops hadn’t had the first word with you. You’d’ve let it stand and said prove it. With the ‘fuck you’ implied.”
“How comforting to be so well understood. He’s given you just what you wanted to know, hasn’t he? He’s—as you put it—on the shady side, and he had something to hide.”
“Which doesn’t make him a killer,” Eve admitt
ed. “But if the shady side included cops on the payroll, why stop at one? I’ve got to take another look at her squad, which probably means reaching out to IAB again. Crap.”
“Again. Yes, I gleaned that when you talked to Morris.”
Realizing she’d yet to mention her meet with Webster, she glanced over. “If a lead indicates the vic may have been a dirty cop, I’ve got to tap that resource.”
