J. Robb - Big Jack

“Don’t walk me down that path, McNab. Bottom-line it.”

“Sure. Sorry.”

He licked-the bastard actually licked sauce from his thumb.

“I got locations on two of the transmissions we believe the killer sent Cobb. One of them matches the location of an aborted trans sent to the Gannon residence and picked up by the answering program on the night of Jacobs’s murder.”

“Where?”

“The location that hit both is a public ’link in Grand Central. The other, generated from a cyber club downtown. Oh, and there’s a second aborted to the Gannon residence, ten minutes after the first, from another public three blocks from her residence.”

Public places, public access. Phony accounts. Careful, careful, careful. “You with Peabody?”

“Yeah. She’s in the other room.”

“Why don’t you check out the club? See if you can pinpoint the unit he used. Maybe you can get us a better description.”

“No problem.”

“We’re going to brief at my home office, eight hundred hours.”

His mouth might’ve been full of pizza, but she recognized a groan when she heard one. Served him right for eating on her empty stomach.

“You get anything hot, I want to hear right away. No matter what time it is. That’s good work on the ’links.”

“I am the wizard. You guys got any of that real bacon?”

She cut him off. Sitting back in the blue-shadowed dark, she thought about diamonds and pizza and murder.

“Lieutenant.”

“Hmm?”

“Lights on, twenty-five percent.” Even in the dimness, Roarke watched her blink like an owl. “You need to eat.”

“McNab had pizza. It broke my focus.” She rubbed her tired eyes. “Where’s Feeney?”

“I sent him home, not without a struggle. His wife called. I think she’s going into a low-level state of panic that he’s going to do what he suggested to you earlier and postpone this family trip.”

“I won’t let him. You got anything for me?”

“The first stage of matching’s done on Judith Crew, nearly so on the boy. Once that’s done we’ll… ” He remembered who he was talking to and edited out the techno jargon. “Essentially, we’ll cross-match and reference the two sets. If she kept her son with her until he came of age-and it certainly seems she’d do so-we should be able to locate that match, or matches.”

He cocked his head at her. “Is it going to be pizza for you, then?”

“I would give you five hundred credits for a slice of pepperoni pizza.”

He sneered. “Please, Lieutenant. I can’t be bought.”

“I will give you the sexual favor of your choice at the next possible opportunity.”

“Done.”

“Cheap date.”

“You don’t know the sexual favor I have in mind. Did you get your warrants?” he called out as he went into the kitchen.

“Yeah. Jesus, I had to tap-dance until my toes fell off, but I’m getting them. And McNab’s pinned locations on transmissions. He and Peabody are going to check out a cyber club tonight where one was zipped to Cobb.”

“Tonight?”

“They’re young, able and afraid of me.”

“So am I.” He brought her in a plateful of bubbling pizza and a large glass of red wine.

“Where’s yours?”

“I had something with Feeney in the lab, and foolishly assumed you’d feed yourself.”

“You’ve already eaten and you still fixed me dinner?” She scooped up pizza, singed her fingertips. “Wow, you’re like my body slave.”

“Those roles will be reversed when I collect my payment. I think it may involve costumes.”

“Get out.” She snorted, bit into the pizza and burned her tongue. It was great. “He made a call to both Cobb and Gannon from a port in Grand Central. Called Gannon’s place the night he killed Jacobs-twice, two locations. Just covering his bases, sounds like. Gets her answering program on both aborts, confirms the all clear. Goes over.”

She washed down pizza with wine and knew God was in His heaven.

“Could’ve walked from there, that’s how I’d’ve done it. Better than a cab. Safer.”

“And allows him to case the neighborhood,” Roarke added.

“Then he gets there, gets inside. Maybe he’s smart enough to do a room-by-room check of the house first. Can’t be too careful. Then he goes upstairs to get started, and before you know it, the house sitter comes in. All that care, all that trouble, and for what?”

“Pissed him off.”

Eve nodded, drank some more wine, considered the second slice of pizza. Why the hell not? “I’m thinking, yeah. Had to piss him off. You know he could’ve gotten out. Or he could’ve debilitated her, restrained her. But she’d ruined his plans. She’d become the fly in his soup. So he killed her. But he wasn’t in a rage when he did it. Controlled, careful. But not as smart as he thinks. What if she knows something? He didn’t take that leap in logic.”

“He struck out, coldly, but didn’t take the time to completely calm himself.” Roarke nodded. “He had to improvise. We could assume he’s not at his best when he hasn’t been able to script the play and follow the cues.”

“Yeah, I can see inside his head, but it’s not helping.” She tossed the slice of pizza down and stared at the artist’s image she kept on screen. “If I’ve structured this investigation right, I know what he wants. I know what he’ll do to get it. I even know, if we’re following the same logic, that his next step would be to go after Samantha Gannon or one of her family. To buddy up with them if he calculates it’s worth the time and effort, to threaten, torture, kill, if it’s not. Whatever it takes to get the diamonds or information leading to them out of her.”

“But he can’t get to her, or them.”

“No, I got them covered. And maybe that’s part of the problem. Why it’s stalled.”

“If you use her as bait, you could lure him out.”

With the wineglass cupped in her hand, Eve tipped back, closed her eyes. “She’d do it, too. I can see that in her. She’d do it because it’s a way to end it, and because it makes a good story, and because she’s gutsy. Not stupidly, but gutsy enough to go for this. Just like her grandma.”

“Gutsy enough, because she’d trust you to look out for her.”

Eve shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t like to use civilians as bait. I could put a cop in her place. We can fix one up to look enough like her to pass.”

“He’d have studied her. He might see through it.”

“Might. Hell, he might even know her. Anyway, I’m too tall. Peabody’s the wrong body type.”

“A droid could be fashioned.”

“Droids only do what they’re programmed to do.” And she never fully trusted machines. “Bait needs to be able to think. There’s someone else he might go for.”

“Judith Crew.”

“Yeah. If she’s still alive, he might try for her. Or the son. If neither one of them is a part of this, he might push those buttons. There’s nobody else left from back then, nobody with direct knowledge of what went down, and how. He can’t even be sure they exist.”

“Eat.”

Distracted, she looked down at the pizza. Because it was there, she picked it up, bit in, chewed. “It’s a kind of fantasy. Now that I see he’s younger than I assumed, it makes more sense to me. It’s a treasure hunt. He wants them because he feels he’s entitled to them, and because they’re valuable, but also because they’re shiny,” she added, thinking of Peabody outside the display windows at Fifth and Forty-seventh.

“You talked me into swimming around that reef off the island. Remember? You said not to wear my pendant deal. Not only because, hey, big fat diamonds can get lost in the ocean, but because I shouldn’t wear anything shiny in there. Barracudas get hyped up when something shines and gleams in the water and can take great big, nasty bites out of you.”