Eve went straight to her office and wrote up the new information on the investigation, then did a separate report to Mira and Whitney on Lansing.
Satisfied, she got coffee, put her boots on the desk, and took some thinking time.
One way or the other, she decided, Oglebee had something to hide—and a lot of rage he didn’t bother to hide. The suicide factor weighed against him. But she wondered if he was capable of holding that rage in for years before he acted on it.
Maybe, maybe, she considered. Especially if there was some trigger within the last year—either in Greenleaf’s life or Oglebee’s.
It’s time he paid, she mused. Yeah, she could see that. Pushing there, she began to dig deeper into his background, his travel, the medicals she could access, employment.
The harder she looked at his employment, the more certain she became Roarke would find something on him.
But an illegal source of income, tax evasion, whatever he was into didn’t equal murder.
She set him aside and went back to her list.
She’d culled two more possibles when Baxter rapped on her doorjamb. “Trueheart and I are clear, boss. We could assist until otherwise with the
suicide cops. I got a vested—get it?—interest.”
“Ha. What went down with Lansing had less to do with Greenleaf than it did me.”
“And still. Son of a bitch used a dead cop as an excuse to go after you, and he added me in.”
“Have Peabody pass five to Trueheart. I’ll send you five. If you catch one, pass them back.”
“That’ll work.” He waved a finger toward her face. “You ought to ice down again.”
“I keep hearing that.”
She kept at it. When she found one more possible, she got up, rearranged her board. Then sat another moment studying it until she got an incoming from Mira.
I’ve spoken with Nadine Furst, acquired more details re Lansing. I’ve arranged a psych eval. You should know the PA has charged him with felony assault and assault with a weapon, possession of an illegal weapon, and other related charges. He
has retained counsel through his rep, and said counsel’s petition for release on his own recognizance was denied. Bail also denied until a full psychiatric evaluation.
Okay then, Eve thought. The PA was pushing it all the way. They’d deal at some point, but Lansing would likely get five to ten—closer to the ten if the PA kept up the push.
Either way, he’d blown up his career, would lose his freedom. And because a woman had turned him down.
Not that simple, she admitted. Not nearly that simple, but another kind of excuse.
Maybe he’d been a decent cop once, she thought. Maybe. But she didn’t care enough to take the time to scroll back through his history.
Once again, she set him aside, and this time got up and walked to the bullpen. She had three, and she could try to interview them all before she called it for the day.
“I’ve got three. I’m going to try to round them up, then work from home.”
“I got one and a half,” Peabody told her. “Half because the second’s a stretch. But I’d like to follow up just in case.”
“Do that. Take McNab. Feeney sent another couple. Nothing yet on the weapon, but a couple more possible conversations. We’ll start there
tomorrow. I want to look them over. I’ll send you the addresses where we’ll start.”
“I’ve been through three,” Baxter told her, “but none of them sing.”
“I think I might have one.” From his desk, Trueheart sent Eve one of his earnest looks. “I don’t know if it sings, Lieutenant, but it hums.”
“Listen to you.” Baxter grinned at him. “Good one.” “Hum the tune,” Eve told him.
“Ah, Lucy Millan. Detective, SVU. It’s twenty years back, LT, but it feels like a fit. She killed her husband—second husband. Found out he was sexually abusing her daughter. The girl was fourteen. She stunned him, beat him, trussed him up, weighed him down, and dumped him in the Hudson River.”
“Thorough,” Baxter commented.
“She self-terminated awaiting trial—she was going to do some time and knew it. The minor child, Jessie, was given into the guardianship of her aunt, Millan’s sister. Jessie ran away multiple times, ended up in the system. She’s been busted for illegals, for solicitation without a license. She had plenty to say about her mother’s arresting officers, her aunt, Greenleaf, and others. She’s working in a strip club, Lower Manhattan.”
“All right.”
“There’s a little more.” “Keep humming.”
“She shares a residence—not official cohabs—with a Curt Barrow. He’s done time for possession of illegal weapons, trading in same, wholesale theft and sale of prescription meds, for assault with intent.”
“That sounds like singing to me, Detective. You found her. Why don’t you and Baxter take the first pass? Let me know what you get.”
It’s moving, she thought as she headed out. She didn’t hold any real hope they’d tie it up before the memorial. But it was moving.
It took her close to two hours to interview all three on her short list. None of them sang, or hummed, but movement still, if only crossing names off.
When she drove through the gates, she decided she’d take a closer look at Feeney’s results, sort them by highest to lowest probability.
And one way or the other, she’d take another closer look at Trueheart’s find. Kid goes to the aunt—not her bio father. Why? Runs away multiple
times. Why?
Obviously poor choices thereafter, all the way to hooking up with a bad character. Who could likely access a police issue.
Her mind on that trail, she walked into where Summerset and Galahad waited.
Summerset’s brows lifted. “Well, I suppose it couldn’t last.” “What?”
“You managing to come home without injuries.”
She’d mostly forgotten, and now lifted a hand to her jaw. “Shit.”
“Leave the shirt out when you change. I’ll deal with the bloodstains.”
Now she looked down. What was left was barely noticeable. But. “Shit.” And striding up the stairs, repeated, “Shit, shit, shit!”
Best to hit the bedroom first, she decided. Ditch the shirt, do a quick icing, wanding, whatever, before Roarke showed up.
Even if Summerset blabbed—and he fucking-A would—she’d be in better shape.
The cat leaped onto the bed, sat, studied her with steady, bicolored eyes. “It wasn’t my fault. And it happens. It just happens.”
She peeled off the jacket, unhooked her weapon harness. She pulled off the shirt, stood holding it, wondering what Summerset meant by leave it out.
And Roarke walked in.
Like the cat, he gave her face a long, steady stare.
“From the looks of it, that happened considerably earlier in the day from when we spoke.”
She shrugged, tossed the shirt on the bed beside the cat, who sniffed it and snarled. As she stood in her trousers and support tank, Roarke moved in to gently, very gently, cup her face.
“You’re supposed to take care of my cop.” “I did. Believe me, he got the worst of it.” “And who is he?”
“Former Detective Joe Lansing. He’s in a cage, and he’ll stay there,” she added quickly. She knew the icy flare that shot through those blue eyes. “He was in the garage, waiting, when I got to Central this morning. I couldn’t take him down—Baxter dove in, and that didn’t mean a damn to him. I had to let him take the first swing.”
“Of course you did. You did,” he repeated when she huffed out a breath. “I understand that. But you might’ve blocked it, at least a bit.”
“I kicked his ass. Yeah, he got some hits in, but I put him down. He had a clutch piece, Roarke, and he pulled it. He was down and dazed, so he missed me, hit Baxter. His piece was on full.”
Now she cupped Roarke’s face. “Baxter had my anniversary present. If he hadn’t had the Thin Shield under his fancy jacket, he’d have gone down hard.”
“Christ Jesus, the man’s lost whatever senses he might have once had.” “Not my fault. If you want to point fingers, point at Nadine.”
“Nadine, is it?” Roarke angled his head, then brushed his lips over the bruising. “I want to hear what part she’s played, but hold it while I get a cold pack and a wand. Am I seeing all your injuries?”
“He got through on the ribs a couple times. And he punched me, fucking hard, in the left tit. But otherwise—”
She broke off when those eyes went burning hot, and a vicious string of incomprehensible Irish seethed into the air.
“I’m not sure I’ve heard any of that before.”
“Let’s just leave it as it’s lucky for him he’s in a cage. Let me see.”
Now she sighed. “I had to show it to Mira already. Mortifying.” But she tugged down the tank. And he hit the Irish curses again.
When she looked down, she saw why.
“It’s pretty bruised up.” Then annoyance spiked into fear. “You are not pulling Summerset in here for this.”
“No, but you’ll sit, let me tend to you.”
“He’s cost me time,” Eve said as she sat on the side of the bed. “Lansing’s cost me time on the Greenleaf case. So stupid,” she added, and closed her eyes. “So stupid.”
“Here now, just try to relax. I’m going to wand that lovely breast first.
Tell me what this has to do with our Nadine.”
As she did, he wanded, iced, wanded until the aches and twinges barely registered.
“It’s not about Nadine, either,” Roarke commented, “but about him, all of it about him, and his need to feel and be superior to women, without having any real affection and certainly no respect for them.”
“It’s that, and it’s more, and I honestly don’t give a rat’s ass. He cost me time. He pulled my focus away from Greenleaf. And the son of a bitch had my tit making the rounds at Central.”
Now Roarke laughed before kissing her swollen lip, tenderly. “What an extraordinary visual—and even more outrageous crime. Take a blocker.”
“I took one already.” “When?”
“Okay, awhile ago.” She popped the little blue pill he held out. “I have to get back to work.”
“And so you will. But you’ll have a meal first, and a glass of wine. It can be pizza.”
“It can?” Gingerly, she touched a finger to her lip. “Is it going to sting?” “It shouldn’t, no, and while you have the pizza and wine, I’ll tell you
what I’ve dug up—so far—on Steven Oglebee.” “Already?”
“I was home before you, as it happens, and well into it. Wine, food, and I’ll tell you.”
Another deal, she thought as they walked to her office. And a good one from her standpoint, since it involved pizza and information.
“Why don’t you take ten to update your board so that’s off your mind before we eat?”
She stopped, studied the board, studied him. “You know, every now and again it’s irritating you get me pretty much all the way through. But most times, like now? It’s pretty great.”
She took the ten and felt more relaxed when her board reflected her current thinking and the data as she knew it.
Then she sat with him at the table by the open balcony doors and lifted a glass of red.
“First,” she began, “I know you were packed today, so thanks, big-time, for squeezing Oglebee in.”
“I’ll take the thanks, big-time, but the fact is, poking there gave a packed and occasionally difficult day a nice lift.”
“I get the packed because you’re you—and I get you, too. Why difficult?”
The big-time thanks, he thought, for her to ask when he knew how much she wanted to hear what he found. “Some gaps needed filling on some
wheels and deals, as you’d call it, set in motion before we left for Greece.” “You didn’t work much there, or in Ireland.”
“We didn’t work,” he corrected. “It was our time. Now we’re back.” He lifted his wine as well. “And what we do is what we are. And that suits us.”
He slid a slice of pizza on her plate. “And so. Steven Oglebee.” “If he were clean, you’d have said so straight off.”
“True enough, and he’s far from clean. I’ll also say he’s not particularly bright. I can’t tell you if anything I found helps in your investigation, but I can tell you he enjoys considerable unreported income. He hides it, but not being particularly bright, he doesn’t hide it particularly well. He has an account buried under a shell—a thin one, purported to be a security company—Protect and Serve.”
“He’s got a cop obsession. A male-cop-only obsession.”
“He uses the name Steve Justice as owner. He funnels cash in from a short list of clients. I’ve the names for you, but I can already tell you they’re fake. He deals in cash, and cash only, and pulls in between eight and fifteen thousand a month—all deposits under the minimum for reporting, as are all withdrawals. He has a beach property in the Caymans, titled under the shell company, and travels there via shuttle, using the name Justice, every four to six weeks.”
Roarke sipped some wine. “It’s clear to me he’s washing money for clients not named under the shell.”
“I can get a warrant on this much.”
“And when you do, you’ll find what I did that you can’t use until you get that warrant.” He shrugged. “I was curious. I suspect some of his deliveries on his legitimate job aren’t just fast food, but that’s for you to find out. What he has—and I only had to brush some dust off the surface—is connections to low-level mobsters, very likely the offspring of those his father had connections with.
“It’s a simple setup,” Roarke continued, “and very low-level. A shipment of electronics or fashion or mechanical parts, whatever, is diverted. Oglebee sells the products for a commission. Cash. Simple, as I said, slightly sloppy, but he’s had some success with this system over the last ten years.”
“He keeps a crap apartment, a crap job. Buys expensive furniture for cash—or takes a part of a shipment for himself. Gets himself a place at the beach, and uses that as a way to wash money. And I bet your very fine ass
and mine with it, he feels entitled. His father did a lot of the same. The son likely sees that as a payment for being on the job. Fucker.”
“I wouldn’t disagree. But as I said, I don’t know how any of it ties into Greenleaf’s murder.”
“Maybe a low-level mob hit. Maybe. Another payment for services rendered. A delayed payback for his father.”
She considered as she took another slice. “He’d have wanted to do the kill himself. The suicide setup plays in, brings it to a nice closed circle, as he’d see it.”
“You’re working on a but.”
“Yeah. But why not work out a solid alibi? He’s connected enough to at least have something in place. Not very smart, fine, but that’s dead stupid. This murder was planned; why leave out an essential part of the plan?”
“Possibly he never considered he’d be questioned. Suicide, Eve. He could have seen that as cover enough.”
“Yeah, yeah, and I’ll work that angle. Still stupid though. You only need to have a couple of the bad characters you’re hooked up with swear you were playing poker or getting trashed somewhere.”
“You’d pull that straight apart,” Roarke commented. “It could be those he’s connected with weren’t willing to risk it for someone at his level. He’s only a tool. A well-paid one, but there are plenty like him who could serve the same purpose.”
“I’ll get the warrant, and we’ll bust him on what you found, what we’ll find. Trip him up when I’ve got him in the box.
“It’s good information, and it’s a good lever to pry out more. Right now, I see him as fifty-fifty, at best, on Greenleaf. I need more than that.”
“You have other names.”
“Peabody and I are going to hit another chunk of the list—thanks to Feeney—tomorrow. And we’ll keep digging on the rest.”
“I can help with that.”
“Guess you could. The more we eliminate, the tighter we can focus on who’s left. Baxter and Trueheart took one. I should hear from them soon. Peabody and McNab have a couple, and I took three on the way home. I want to carve out time for the memorial tomorrow. Not just to pay respects, but to see who shows.”
“And anyone on the list who does.”
“Means they’re worth a second look. It’s moving,” she added. “It’s slow as hell, but it’s moving. We’re looking in the right place,” she murmured, shifting to look at the board. “It wasn’t random or impulsive. It was cold, calculated revenge with a faked suicide chaser.”
“You still like the neighbors.”
Oh yeah, she thought, and absently sipped wine, he got her, all the way through.
“I can’t let go of it—and it doesn’t make sense because I know we’re looking in the right place. And nothing I look at, twist, turn connects either of them to Greenleaf, to a dead or disgraced cop he investigated. But they were on the spot—perfect alibi for her. No motive for either. They look like two people living solid if ordinary lives.”
“And yet.”
“Yet.”
“Would you like me to look at them again?”
“You looked, and there’s nothing there. I’m keeping them on the board, but I know we’re looking in the right place. And neither of them are in that place.”
“I’ll take some of your names. Maybe we’ll find the one who is in that place before the memorial.”
“Okay.” Even as she rose, her ’link signaled. “Going to be Baxter or Peabody. Maybe they already found the one.”
She saw Baxter’s name on the ID screen, answered. “What’ve you got?” “We’re booking Jessie Millan and Curt Barrow. Not on Greenleaf, Dallas. They were both busy on the night in question running a shipment of stolen meds down to East Washington. We busted them with part of the shipment—they skimmed—and what was left of the payment. They jacked a car—and we’ve got the owner IDing them both. Used it to transport the drugs. Jacked the car about nine Sunday night. Still had it parked outside
their apartment, for fuck’s sake.
“Trueheart reviewed the toll cams, and we’ve got them heading south about the time of the murder. We got them, but not on murder.”
Elimination mattered, she reminded herself. Plus. “It’s still a good bust.
Write it up for me.” “You got it.”
“Another off the list,” Eve said when she clicked off. “We’ll see if Peabody gets luckier.”
She didn’t, so Eve crossed off two more even as she bumped other names into the possible category.
She had to remind herself the list might be long, but it wasn’t endless.
Eventually they’d zero in on one.
“I have two for you,” Roarke said as he came back. “And the reasons why another two don’t work.”
“Looks like we hit the same ratio.” She leaned back in her chair. “Feeney sent me one, and three to cross off. We’re coming to the end of the list. The connection’s there, Roarke. I’ve second- and third-guessed myself on it, and I know it’s there. Maybe just buried deeper than we can see.”
“Time to give it a rest for the night. You need another treatment.” “I feel okay.”
“And you’ll feel better, sleep better, with another treatment. Come now, Lieutenant, it’s closing in on midnight.”
She knew the equation. Arguing equaled time wasted.
Added to it, aches and sneaky pains had crept in, and they equaled a distraction.
The cat beat them to the bedroom. He had a sense of these things. “Sit,” Roarke told her. “We’ll start with that face of yours.”
She sat while he took out a healing wand. And watched his eyes focus as he worked.
“Do you ever get tired of playing nurse?” “More, it annoys me to see bruises on you.”
“It annoys me, too. If Baxter hadn’t gotten Lansing in lockup fast, Jenkinson might’ve found a way to put some on him. Then Peabody. Jesus, she actually threatened me.”
“Our Peabody?”
“Shoves a blocker in my face and says if I don’t take it, she’s telling you. Like we’re twelve and she’s going to tattle on me if—” Her eyes narrowed when he smiled. “Oh, you like that one.”
“Quite a bit, actually.”
“Try this one then. I’m going to tag you about Oglebee’s finances when we’re in the field, and she says I should text so you don’t see I got punched
in the face and worry about it.”
“Looking after both of us, wasn’t she?” She had to sigh. “Maybe.”
He touched his lips lightly to hers. “Jenkinson, Peabody, and all the rest aren’t just cops, aren’t just a team. You’ve made yourself a family. Now then, let’s see the rest. Off with the shirt.”
She let him lift off the loose T-shirt she’d changed into, then looked down when she saw the cold light in his eyes.
“It’s better. Right? It looks better. Not that I spend a lot of time looking at my tits, but—”
“I do whenever possible. It’s better, yes. Bleeding poxy bastard. I wouldn’t have put bruises on him over this. I’d have twisted off his cock at the fecking root.”
Out came the Irish, she noted, and found herself oddly touched.
“He got worse.” She laid a hand on his cheek. “And he’ll pay for it a lot longer. He went after Peabody yesterday. Not physically,” she said when Roarke’s gaze shot up. “That got lost in the chaos, but he started on her before Jenkinson got in his face. She didn’t want to write it up. Probably felt like piling on to her. But she did, and it’s not. He’s not fit to have a badge.”
She let out a sigh as he ran the wand gently up and down her ribs. “Angelo’s on-planet. You knew,” she realized.
“I did. Webster contacted her when I took him out to walk. And she contacted me shortly after to let me know she was taking time. She came to see you?”
“Not me, really. Webster. Forgot.” She let out another sigh when he put the wand away. Thank God that was over for now. “He came in, wanted to talk to me about what he wanted to talk to Greenleaf about.” She dragged the shirt back on. “He’s turned in his papers.”
She stared at him when he walked to the AutoChef. “You knew?”
“I didn’t, no. But I’m not at all surprised. He’ll be relocating to Olympus then?”
“That’s the plan.” “You don’t agree?”
“It’s not for me to … Okay, no, I didn’t. Jesus, he’s got, what, sixteen, seventeen years on the job? He’s got rank, and he’s that close to making his
twenty? He’s leaving the job, New York, and freaking planet Earth? But— What’s that?”
“A soother. It’ll ease the last aches, and you’ll sleep better.” “I don’t want—”
“It’ll top off the wanding. And it’s double chocolate.” “Hand it over, Nurse Nancy,” she muttered.
He drew it just out of her reach. “I’m thinking I’ll switch it for the carrot and spinach blend.”
“I got punched in the tit.”
He handed it to her. “All right then. Webster. ‘But,’ you said.”
“Right. But. When I listened to why, to what he wanted, I got it. Or started to. Then Angelo walked in, and I got it all the way. I know what it’s like to have someone who means everything, someone who can lift the hard and heavy off you just by being there.”
“They love each other.”
She gulped down soother, and the rich chocolate made her system smile. “Not always enough, is it? But it’s a hell of a strong start. So he’ll move
to Olympus and train cops to be cops, not bullies with badges.” “Is that his plan?”
“It is now, and he’ll be good at it. I love you.” “And I you.”
“So we need to make a pact.”
“Do we?” He smiled at her as he undressed. “And what sort of pact is that?”
“Neither of us, ever, says to the other: ‘Hey, we have to leave planet Earth and go live on some space colony or outpost or station.’”
He slipped into bed, drew her to him. “I can agree to that, with one qualification.”
“What’s the qualification?”
“I’d only say that, and you’d only agree to that, if planet Earth is in immediate danger of exploding, imploding, or becoming uninhabitable to life forms.”
“That sounds fair. Okay, we have a pact.” “We do indeed. Lights out.”
He’d been right, of course. Between the wanding and the soother, she dropped almost immediately into sleep.
Where dreams found her.
 |
In the room where he’d died, Greenleaf sat at his desk. But in place of the wall screen, the shelves, the window, photos of cops papered the walls around him.
Dead ones, disgraced ones, cops in cages.
“I did the job,” Greenleaf told her. “A badge doesn’t put you above the law, Lieutenant. A badge means you toe the line of the law. Serve and protect.”
“I know what the badge means, Captain.”
“Did they?” He gestured to the faces surrounding him.
“Not everyone you looked into crossed the line. Those who did? That same law stripped the badge from them.”
“Do you think I got them all?”
“We never get them all. You knew that when you headed IAB, when you decided to take on other cops.”
“I knew what it meant. I stand by what it meant.” He gestured to the walls. “How many of these have you looked at?”
She scanned the faces. “Too many.” “What did you find?”
“So far? That you did the job, as you saw it, your duty, as you saw it. Too many here exploited the job. Too many dishonored their badge, used it for gain, for violence, for power.”
“You came from violence and cruelty. I know because you know,” he said when she didn’t respond. “You worked to become a cop, one who took the oath to protect and serve to heart rather than continue the cycle of violence and cruelty as some do. You could’ve chosen otherwise.”
“No, I couldn’t have.”
He picked up the glass—the iced tea—watching her as he drank. “You chose a man who crossed the line of the law, many, many times.”
Even in the dream, even knowing it for a dream, she felt her blood heat. Hard-ass, she thought. In life and in death.
“The man I chose—if chose is the word—gives his time and skill to help find justice for the dead. And he’s bled for it. He came from violence and
cruelty while badges looked the other way. And still he honors the badge as much as I do.”
With a slight shrug, Greenleaf set the glass down again. “You’re a violent woman.”
“Maybe. Yeah.”
“But not once have you exploited your badge for personal gain, to cause harm, for power.”
Now she shrugged. “I’ve been known to lean on it some.”
“A different matter. But a dirty badge left unpunished taints us all. If I pushed hard, some would say too hard, I believed that absolutely.”
“The ones I’m looking at now needed to be pushed, and hard. But there were others, Captain, in your long career who fell into the gray.”
His eyes held hers, unwavering. “In my job no gray could or did exist. Black or white, Lieutenant. Right or wrong. An absolute. I believed in the oath taken. In the end, I died for it.”
With a long sigh, he looked at the walls, all the faces.
They stared back, she saw, with rage, with a kind of terrible thirst. She put a hand on her weapon.
“They haunt me. Not because I was wrong, but because they were. They haunt me,” he repeated. “And now they’ll haunt you.”
The walls became men and women, ghosts that took form, and forms that fell on Greenleaf like wolves.
And she couldn’t stop them.
|
She woke with a jolt in the dim light of predawn. The cat bumped his head against her side as Roarke stroked her face.
“There now, a dream. I’m here.”
He drew her into his arms, held her close. “It’s all right now.”
“I’m okay. Hard dream. Not a nightmare. Well, at the end, I guess, but…” Closing her eyes, she laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m okay.”
“You’ll tell me.”
“Greenleaf at his desk, all the cops I’ve been looking at—like he looked at—photos plastered on the walls.”
She told him the rest.
“He knew they were coming, and he didn’t fight back. He just watched me while they covered him. Watched me try to stop them. They’d come for me next, and I would have stopped them. I’d have taken out as many as I could.”
She breathed out. “But I woke up.”
“He was a different kind of cop, wasn’t he then? One who did his job at a desk—just as you saw him. And you, Lieutenant, do a great deal of yours on your feet. I wonder if you think while one of those photos may be responsible, in some way, for his death, many of the others would stand and watch it happen without remorse.”
He kissed her. “But not you. You wouldn’t and couldn’t stand and watch.”
“He said they’d haunt me now.”
“And was this one there?” Roarke asked, tracing a finger over her jaw. “No. But he wasn’t Greenleaf’s. He’s mine. And I’m okay. It gave me
something to think about. And now I’m thinking about coffee, and that it’s nice to wake up and find you here. I’d rather it be with you sitting over there with the cat, but it’s close enough.”
“You’ll have your coffee and another round with the wand. Then we’ll both sit over there.”
