J. Robb - New York to Dallas

“She was at the ceremony yesterday.”

“Yeah, I saw her.”

“It was nice, seeing so many friends. I owe you big for cutting me loose early yesterday.”

“Consider you won’t be again until McQueen’s back in a cage.”

“Even so. It meant a lot to my parents for me to spend real time with them. Dad took us out to dinner. A real restaurant, too. Not veggie, not vegan, not healthy choice for Free-Agers. We had actual meat. They were sorry you and Roarke couldn’t come. They understood, but they were sorry.”

“It was nice to see them anyway. Give me data, Peabody. We’re nearly there.”

“Special Agent Scott Laurence, twenty-seven-year vet. Recruited while he was in college. String of commendations. On the short list for bureau chief.”

“Interesting. He let her take the lead.”

“Well, she’s no slouch. He’s married—twenty-two years. Two kids. She’s single, got eight years in. Degrees in psych, criminology. First in her class at Quantico.”

She looked up when Eve rattled up to a second-level spot on the street. “Anyway, they look solid.”

“Felt that way. Bracken works nights. Tends bar at a strip joint where she used to peel it off.” Eve gestured. “She lives above her current place of employment.”

Peabody glanced over. “Handy.”

“Had her club LC license pulled when she tested positive on the regulation exam for illegals. She’s fifty-one, no marriages, no official cohabs, no offspring. Spotty employment, a couple of stints for illegals-related charges. Nothing major. Her juvie records show consistent truancy, runaway, petty theft.”

“Sounds like McQueen’s type.”

The neighborhood had probably seen better days, but to Eve’s eye it looked as though it had always been dirty, dreary, and dangerous. The strip joint, cleverly named Strip Joint, hunched against the sidewalk like a gaudy toad. Some street artist had drawn excellently executed and optimistically sized male genitalia onto the naked and also optimistically endowed naked woman on the sign.

As it didn’t look fresh, Eve assumed either the owners didn’t give a rat’s ass or thought it added interest.

She’d have used her master to gain access to the residential door, but the lock was broken. And that did look fresh.

She ignored the smell of stale zoner in the skinny entryway, and the far skinnier elevator. Peabody clumped up the stairs after her. “Why do guys always urinate on the walls of places like this?”

“Expressing their disdain for the facilities.”

Peabody snorted. “Good one. Disdain by pee. I bet she lives all the way up on four.”

“Four-C.”

“Oh well, I ate all my dessert last night and part of McNab’s. I deserve to walk up four flights. I wasn’t going to have dessert, but it was right there, all gooey and sweet. It’s like sex. I mean, when it’s right there, what are you supposed to do? I wasn’t going to have that either—sex—with my parents bunking in the office, but, well, it was right there.”

“I’ll tolerate the gooey and sweet, Peabody, but I’m not thinking about you having sex with McNab, especially in the same sentence as ‘my parents.’ ”

“I think they had sex, too.”

Eve struggled not to wince or twitch. “Do you want me to kick you down four flights of steps and make you walk up again?”

“I’d probably bounce all the way down, too, with all this gooey and sweet in my butt. So I guess not.”

“Good choice.”

No palm plate, no security cam, Eve noted, on 4-C. Just two dead bolts and a manual peep.

She banged her fist on the door.

“McQueen’s partners always kept their own places,” she told Peabody. “Usually worked full- or part-time. We only have information from the vics on the last. She helped him lure, abduct, restrain. She helped him clean them up if he decided to use one he’d had for a while. Then she liked to watch.”

Peabody’s face went cold. “Which makes her as much of a monster as him.”

“Yeah, it does.” Eve banged again.

A door opened across the hall. “Shut the fuck up! People are trying to sleep.”

Eve studied the man glaring at her. He stood buck-naked but for a nipple ring and a tat of a coiled snake. She held up her badge. “I’d call that indecent exposure, but it barely qualifies. Deb Bracken.”

“Fuck. She’s in there. She sleeps like the dead.” He slammed the door.

Eve banged again, kept on banging until she heard somebody cursing from inside 4-C. A minute later she saw the bleary eye through the peep. “What the hell do you want?”

Once again, Eve held up her badge. “Open up.”

“Goddamn it.” The peep flipped closed, bolts and locks rattled open. “What the hell? I’m trying to sleep here.”

From the looks of her, she’d been doing a good job of it. Her hair, a short, sleep-crazed mess of brass and black, stuck up everywhere around a thin, slack face. She’d neglected to remove her enhancers so her eyes and lips were smeared with what was left of them.

She wore a short black robe, carelessly looped, that showed good legs and breasts too perky not to have been paid for.

“Isaac McQueen.”

“Who?”

“If you bullshit me, Deb, we’ll have this little talk downtown.”

“Christ sake, you beat on my door, wake me up, hassle me. What the hell is this?”

“Isaac McQueen,” Eve repeated.

“I heard you. Jesus.” She gave Eve a hard, smeary-eyed scowl. “I need a hit.” And turned, shuffled away.

Eyebrows cocked, Eve stepped in, watched Bracken continue to shuffle to the far corner of the messy living area where the kitchen consisted of a bucket-sized sink, a mini-friggie, and a shoe box–sized AutoChef. When she stabbed at the AutoChef it made a harsh, grinding hum, then a clunk.

She pulled out a mug, downed the contents like medicine. From the smell, Eve identified cheap coffee substitute. She waited while Bracken programmed a second mug, took a slug.

“Isaac’s in the joint.”

“Not anymore.”

“No shit.” The first glimmer of interest passed over her face. “How’d he get out?”

“Sliced up a medical and took his ID.”

“He killed somebody?” Bracken’s scowl deepened. “That’s bullshit.”

“It’s not the first time.”

“I don’t believe that.” She glugged down more coffee, shook her head. “He wasn’t in for murder, so he didn’t do murder. He’s maybe a prick, but he ain’t no killer.”

“Tell that to the medical’s widow and kid. Has he been by to see you, Deb?”

“Shit no. I’m old news to him.” She frowned into her coffee. “Prick.”

“You visited him in The Tombs.”

“Yeah, so what? It’s not against the law. Some cop framed him, set him up so she could get some flash. So he liked kiddie porn. Everybody’s got their quirks, right? Anyway, I just went in a couple times to talk to him, give him some company.”

“Eleven visits is more than a couple,” Peabody pointed out.

“What’s the difference? I haven’t seen him in, like, two years. He gave me the boot. Get that? He’s in the joint and he gives me the boot. Prick.”

“How did you and McQueen get acquainted?” Eve asked her.

“What’s it to you?”

At Eve’s nod, Peabody took a file from her bag, handed it to Eve. She walked it over, set it on the tiny, crowded counter. Opened it. “Take a look. This is what he kept in a locked room in his apartment twelve years ago.”

Bracken’s face paled, but she shook her head again. “It was a frame-up.”

“I was in that room. I found those girls.”

“You’re the one who set him up?”

“I didn’t set him up, but I took him down. And I will again. Here’s what he did yesterday, so I’d know he was back in business.” She showed her the evidence photo of Julie Kopeski. “She and her cohab live in that apartment now. McQueen broke in. He beat the crap out of her, raped her. I wonder, Deb, if he’ll decide to look you up, renew your acquaintance.”