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“That works. You head back to the bullpen, brief Jenkinson and Reineke. I may need to pull them in again. I’ll send you my record on the interviews at the hotel. Start writing the report. If I’m not back, go deeper on the ID the suspect used. There may be a reason he used that name. Dig under the credit card.”
“I’ve got it. Why Feeney?”
“He was in the Urbans, and he’s worked LDSKs before.” And, Eve thought, he trained me.
When she hit a traffic snag—somebody had wiped out on the slippery street, and was now arguing heatedly with the cabdriver he’d slid into—she thought: Fuck it. Slapped on the sirens, and went in hot.
“Call that mess in before there’s bloodshed.”
“Already done.”
As she turned toward Central, Eve glanced over. She’d trained Peabody. Something else to think about.
She squealed into her parking spot in Central’s garage, quickstepped to the elevator.
“You think another strike’s coming,” Peabody said. “That’s why the rush.”
“I think another strike’s coming. And if I’m wrong on that, they’ve had a day to poof. We need to catch up.”
As the elevator filled with cops, she hopped off when Peabody did, took the glide the rest of the way up to EDD.
Entering the odd cop world of color and movement, she spotted McNab—hard to miss in a fluorescent red-and-yellow shirt flopping over neon green baggies as he stood, skinny hips tick-tocking to his own strange beat. His screen was exploding with color and weird symbols.
She dodged around a female practically skipping across the room wearing a fuzzy pink sweater with an animated poodle doing backflips over her chest.
Eve beelined for the relative sanity of Feeney’s office.
He stood working a large swipe screen two handed. His hips didn’t bop—thank Christ—and he wore one of his shit-brown suits, already wrinkled, a darker shit-brown tie askew over a saggy beige shirt.
His silver-threaded ginger hair sproinged up from his comfortably worn face as if he’d scrubbed it with a wire brush. The room smelled of his candied almonds and coffee.
When he grunted at her, she stepped in.
“Can I close this door? All that color makes me dizzy.”
He signaled her to go ahead and, when the door shut, wagged a thumb toward his AutoChef. “Coffee’s under kale-and-carrot smoothie.”
“Good choice.” Eve programmed two, waited until Feeney nodded at the screen and stepped back.
“What ya got, kid?”
“The nest, a description. He made those strikes from Second Avenue, Feeney.”
Eyebrows lifted. He let out a whistle as he dropped behind his desk. “That’s some juice.”
“He’s got a partner, except . . . The second suspect is young, undetermined gender. Possibly a teenager. I’ll know more when Yancy finishes with the wit. Adult suspect, probably early fifties.”
“Doesn’t sound like a partner.”
“Exactly. Sounds like a trainee. Maybe the wit’s off, but he comes off rock solid. When he says sixteen tops, I lean toward a kid. Who takes a kid into something like this unless he’s molding said kid?”
As he thought about it, Feeney snagged a few almonds out of a lopsided bowl. “Any chance the kid’s a hostage?”
“Doesn’t feel like it. This wit? He’d have noticed if the kid came in under duress. They checked into the hotel together, had already requested that particular room. Stayed the night, stayed through the morning. That’s planning and patience. And it’s lying in wait. So I ask myself: Why this kid? You took me.”
Sipping coffee, Feeney nodded. “You had juice.”
“I was green.”
