J. Robb - Kindred In Death

There had to be another angle, another way to whittle down those possibles. Back burner, she decided, until she’d updated her reports and prepped for the briefing.

It took her most of the hour, and restored most of her earlier optimism. Just before seven, she contacted Whitney.

“Commander, I’ve just sent you an updated report.”

“Yes, it’s coming in now. Highlight it.”

She did so, smothering the urge to get to her feet, to stand as she preferred when giving orals.

“I feel,” she continued, “we’re stacking the building blocks of a solid case, and refining our search for the suspect. It’s my belief Captain MacMasters may be able to provide more details, and more insights into the matter of the arrest, interrogation, and sentencing of Irene Schultz, and that will further assist us in apprehending Darrin Pauley.”

“When do you brief your team?”

“They’re arriving now, sir.” She signaled Peabody, McNab, and Jamie to silence as they came in chattering.

“I’ll have the captain in my office at nine. He’s agreed to issue a short statement to the media at noon. We’ll need to do the same, and to stand with him. He will not take questions, but you will. Five-minute duration.”

Crap. Crap. Crap, she thought. “Yes, sir.”

“Brief your team, Lieutenant. I’ll contact Chicago from here, give them a push on the information you need.”

“Thank you, Commander.”

She ended the conversation just as Summerset wheeled in a long buffet table, and Trueheart came through the door pushing the other end.

“God, doesn’t anybody think about anything but food?” she demanded.

“Thinking is often clearer when the body is properly attended.” Summerset stepped ably out of the way of the stampede. Eve saw his gaze track to the murder board, and knew it lingered on the crime scene photos of Deena. He looked back at Eve. “I wish you all the clearest of thoughts.”

When he left the room, she rose, got coffee. “Settle down, people. This is a briefing not a stuff-your-face contest. Screens on,” she ordered. “This is our suspect,” she began. “Born Darrin Pauley, age twenty-three. And this is what we know or believe we know about him.”

She moved from the suspect to the man believed to be his father, and from there to the woman who’d been his mother.

“She’s the key in his lock,” Eve said. “Whitney is reinforcing my overnight request to Chicago for the files on her murder, and the request to speak directly with the primary and other investigators on that case.”

“I can get media reports,” Jamie suggested. “It’s, like, twenty years back, but I could dig up any media coverage of the murder.”

“All right. The data from IRCCA states she was both raped and sodomized repeatedly, possibly by more than one attacker. She was not bound, which explains why this didn’t pop on like crimes. She was beaten, more severely than our vic, and also showed signs of illegals use.”

She gestured to the board where she’d noted the similarities between the murders of Deena MacMasters and Illya Schooner. “Evidence indicates she was partially smothered with a pillow found on scene, and was strangled with the bedsheets. She was found in a mid-level LC flop by maid service, and had been dead according to the report for eight hours. No witnesses came forward, none who were interviewed gave the police any salient information.”

“Shock and amazement,” Baxter muttered.

“She was not a licensed companion,” Eve continued. “However, when interviewed, Victor Patterson stated that they were experiencing some family difficulties as she had begun to prostitute herself to finance a growing drug problem. He was alibied for the time in question.”

“He could’ve had it done,” Baxter speculated. “If she’d gone on the junk, was a liability to the game, he might have wanted to get rid of her.”

“Possible, but unlikely. Look at the background.” She brought his sheet up on screen. “Bust, bust, trouble, trouble, right up until he got out of prison and ran off with her. Then nothing. He’s skimmed under the surface since. And on her? Nothing, not a damn thing before she took the fall for the fraud. Did he get that smart in prison? My money says she was the brains, she was the smarts. But something changed once she did the time. That’s the turn. Peabody, get data from her stretch in Rikers, find somebody who remembers her.”

“Can do. Maybe it was just the time in itself,” Peabody suggested. “It’s like you said, she had nothing prior. Free as a bird, doing things her way. Then bam, she’s in a cage for a year and a half.”

“Soured her,” Eve considered. “Shook her confidence. And if she’d gotten a taste for illegals on the outside, that could be fed inside. Expanded, exploited.”

“She’s not the same person coming out as she was going in.” Peabody studied the mug shot. “She looks pretty rough on the going in.”

“Yeah, she does. Not the beautiful, vibrant type Vinnie Pauley remembered just a couple years before.”

“The wrong guy.” Trueheart blinked when all eyes shifted to him. “Um. I mean to say, the, ah, longer-term exposure to Pauley, the wrong guy. His influence maybe started her on a downturn.”

“It could fit. The timing, the changes. What we know,” Eve added, “is between the Inga Vinnie Pauley knew and the Illya who died bad in a Chicago sex flop, there was a big slide. And it would appear that for a chunk of that, and for years after, Vance Pauley had influence over Darrin Pauley. How about the security imaging on the victim’s house?”

“I’ve got that.” McNab rose, held up a disc. “Okay if I plug it in?”

“Go ahead.”

He went to her desk. “Display, screen three. You can see there’s more definition,” he began.

“I can?”

“It’s slow. It’s not like a routine clean and enhance, and can’t work at that pace. We were able to capture and lock the image, but it’s severely corrupted. The pixels have to be repaired every level, every step. Feeney and I captured and locked two more last night, using the same procedure we worked out. And we’ve got those in process. I think that’s all we’re going to retrieve.”

“We’re going to work on a way to speed the process,” Feeney put in. “We’re on that, but no promises.”

“I’m meeting with Whitney and MacMasters at nine, and hope to pick through MacMasters’s memory of the arrest of Irene Schultz, any other data he might have. Peabody will pursue the shoes/ wardrobe angle. Baxter and Trueheart will recanvass the area around the crime scene with the sketch. At noon MacMasters will issue a statement to the media, as will I. I will briefly take questions. I’ve initiated another search, with the current results over thirteen thousand possibles.”

When she explained it, Trueheart cleared his throat. “Maybe, if they own the security system, the father bought it. Used one of his aliases.”

“Good thought. Run that. We brief at Central at sixteen hundred, at which time I’ll have selected the other members of the team to cover the memorial. We’ll rebrief-unless we have this fucker by then-at seven hundred tomorrow, full team. Now get out there and find this bastard. Baxter, one minute.”

She walked into the kitchen, came back with a bag, which she tossed to him.

When he looked inside his face beamed like the sun. “Holy shit, we got us some Alabama barbecue. I love this woman.”

“Save the love for Roarke. He dealt with it. Move out. Peabody, with me.”

Peabody waited until they were out of the house, in the car, and Eve sped down toward the gates. “Okay, I know we’re in deep investigative mode, and we have a lot of threads to tug, then tie together. But everyone has their specific thread or threads. I’ll be all over the retail outlets asap .”