“Yes, sir.”
She rushed for the stairs, all but leaping down them, bursting into the foyer.
“Oh, your nose is bleeding, let me—”
“Did a male, early twenties, short hair, medium blond, staff suit and ID, come through here?”
The woman who’d greeted her on arrival stared at the blood on Eve’s face. “Ah, yes, I believe I just saw one of our assistants just—”
“Where did he go?”
“He just left. He looked as if he was in a hurry.”
Eve charged outside, scanned in every direction. She caught sight of the two cops she’d assigned to the main doors giving chase. Cursing, she leaped down to the sidewalk, kicking into a full-out sprint as she yanked out her ’link, patched through to Dispatch.
“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, in foot pursuit of murder suspect heading north on Fifth at Fifty-eighth. White male, twenty-three, slim build, blond hair, wearing black suit, white shirt, black tie.”
She couldn’t see him, not through the wide stream of pedestrians flooding the sidewalk. She dodged, wove, eating up one block, then a second.
Even as she gained ground on the two cops, she knew it was fruitless. When she caught them at the cross street she didn’t need to hear their report. It was clear on their faces.
“We lost him, Lieutenant. He had a solid block on us when we got the alert, and he was moving fast. We barely caught sight of him. He just poofed in the crowd.”
“How’d he get by you?” she demanded. “How the hell did he get by you?”
“Lieutenant, we were on watch for incomings. Wired into the EDD guys keeping us up on any possibles heading in. This guy walked out with a small group of staff. We’d just gotten an alert there was a ruckus upstairs, that we’d taken the suspect down. There was a lag between that and the notification the suspect was posing as staff and on the loose. We pursued as soon as we got it. We were lucky to even catch sight of him before—”
She cut it off with a lift of her hand. “We’ll debrief this clusterfuck at Central. Report back to your unit and await orders.”
She clipped back, furious, her face throbbing, and only shook her head when she saw Roarke moving quickly north toward her.
“We lost him. Goddamn it.”
Roarke took a handkerchief out of his pocket, handed it to her. “Your nose is bleeding.”
“I got clocked twice, maybe more in that riot. Knocked out my com, trampled my communicator. And he walks right out, right under the noses of two cops. He did exactly what he’d come to do, and had the extra benefit of watching us act like morons. What the fuck happened?”
“I don’t know.” He took her elbow to steer her through the Fifth Avenue throng. “I saw you go down, but by the time I was able to get through that mass of panic, you were gone. I came after you when Trueheart said you’d gone in pursuit.”
“A lot of good it did me. He was lost before I hit the sidewalk.”
As she approached the building, arrowing through the people congregating on the sidewalk, Peabody came down the main stairs.
“Gone,” Eve said.
“Damn it.” Peabody hissed out a breath, then winced at Eve’s face. “I thought I took a knock,” she said, tapping ginger fingers to the bruise on her cheek. “You took harder.”
“Let’s go clean this mess up. What do you know?” Eve demanded as they went back in.
“The best I can get is some hair-trigger tackled some kid, and another cop helped him wrestle the kid to the ground and restrain him. Panic ensued. We’ve got all parties in one of the private parlors upstairs. Baxter’s riding herd there. Whitney’s with the MacMasterses, and is to be advised when you’re back on site. We had to call in MTs. People got bruised and bloodied. We’ve got a really big mess, Dallas.”
“Clean up what you can on the periphery, and inform Whitney I’m talking to the officers and the civilian involved. My communicator’s toast.”
“Why don’t I speak to whoever manages this place,” Roarke suggested. “Smooth over what I can.”
“Couldn’t hurt. But I’m going to speak to him later. Son of a bitch.” Eve squared her shoulders and went up to the second level.
The scent of lilies and roses was stronger now, probably because so many of them lay trampled. She skirted around broken glass, puddles of water, to where Trueheart stood outside a door.
“We got the word on the suspect, Lieutenant. Sorry. Ah, Baxter has the two officers involved here, and the kid. We brought in an MT to look at the kid. He’s got some bruises.”
“Perfect. Just perfect.”
She stepped inside, closed the door at her back.
A male of about eighteen sat in a blinding-white chair while a grizzled MT checked his pupils.
“I’m okay,” the boy said. “Mostly just got the shit and the wind knocked out of me. I’m okay.”
“I get called to take a look atcha, I take a look atcha.”
The MT ran a wand over the bruise on the boy’s jaw.
Eve spared a glance toward the two cops slumped on a sofa of the same blinding white, flicked one to Baxter who rolled his eyes heavenward.
Yeah, she thought, call on that higher power. We’re going to need it.
“I’m Lieutenant Dallas,” she told the boy.
“Ah, yeah, hi. I’m Zach. Can I just get out of here now? I need to find Kelly. I came with Kelly. She went to school with the dead girl. I just came with Kelly because she was freaked about seeing the dead girl.”
“What’s Kelly’s full name?”
“Kelly Nims. Everything went whacked in there, and I don’t know if she’s okay.”
“Detective Baxter, have someone find Ms. Nims.”
“Yes, sir, right away.”
“Thanks. I’ll feel better once I know she’s frosted. We’re tight, and like I said, she was already freaked.”
He bore a surface resemblance to Pauley, she noted. The basic build, coloring, the shaggy hair. She noted the ball cap in his lap.
“Zach, I’d like to apologize for the unfortunate occurrences, and any inconvenience you’ve experienced. And also to assure you, I’ll look into this thoroughly and personally.”
“I was just standing there, then it’s like I got hit by a maxibus and I’m chewing carpet, and everybody’s yelling and running. I think somebody stepped on me. These guys, they put cuffs on me, and I could hear Kelly screaming. But the air’s knocked out of me, you know? I couldn’t do anything. It was weird, but . . .” He smiled a little. “Kind of iced, too. They said stuff about my rights and all. Am I supposed to call a lawyer?”
She hoped to hell he didn’t. Any lawyer worth a single billable hour would snatch him for a client and sue the department up the ass and out again.
“You’re not in any trouble, Zach. It was a mistake, a very regrettable one. Again, I hope you’ll accept my personal apology.”
“Sure. No big really.”
Baxter slipped back in. “Kelly’s fine, Zach. She’s waiting for you right outside.”
“Straight. So, can I go?”
“Is he clear?” Eve asked the MT.
“Got a couple knocks, that’s all.” The MT turned his gimlet eye on Eve. “You got worse.”
“If you’d give Detective Baxter your full name and contact information,” Eve told Zach, “the officer on the door will take you down to Kelly. If you have any questions, or any problems, you can reach me at Cop Central.”
“That’s a major.” He put his cap back on, rose. “It’s all been totally Dali.”
“At least. Baxter, lend me your recorder. Mine was damaged.” She took his, pinned it on.
“Want me to take a look at that face?” the MT asked.
“Not now.”
“Well.” He pulled a cold wrap out of his case, tossed it to her. “Get that on there anyway.”
She waited until both Zach and the MT left, then turned to the two cops.
“Engage recorder. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, in interview with tw
o hotheaded fuckups who have managed to completely undermine a precisely organized operation and allow a murder suspect to stroll away.”
“Lieutenant—”
“You do not speak until so ordered.” Deliberately, she turned to the one who’d kept silent. “Name, rank, house, division.”
“Officer Glen Harrison, out of the One-Two-Five, assigned to Illegals under Captain MacMasters.”
“You, same data.”
“Officer Kyle Cunningham, out of the One-Two-Five, assigned to Illegals under Captain MacMasters.”
“And you two clowns decided to do my job for me today?”
“We came to pay our respects, offer our support to the captain and his wife. It’s all over how the investigation’s stalled.”
“Is it?” Eve said pleasantly while Harrison shut his eyes at his companion’s comment.
“That’s the word,” Cunningham said.
“And you decided to give the investigation a little momentum by manhandling a civilian, disrupting a memorial service, and causing general panic. During which time the actual suspect was able to elude those of us who are actually working the investigation.”
“The kid looked like him.”
Her eyes went to slits. “And how do you know that, Officer Cunningham? Just how have you come by any descriptive data on the suspect?”
“Word gets around.”
“So, on one hand word gets around that the investigation is stalled, and on the other word gets around that we have a description of a suspect. You decide to join those hands together and fuck up my op. A man who’s killed two people is now in the wind due to your actions. The investigation is compromised, the department is now vulnerable to a civil suit not only from a kid you tossed to the ground, but from this establishment, and any other individuals who may have been injured or just decide to claim emotional hardship. You assholes.”
“Look, I don’t have to take this.” Cunningham surged up. “I got a look at the sketch, and the kid looked like him, even dressed like he did. I acted, which is more than Homicide’s been doing since the captain’s girl got raped and murdered Sunday.”
Eve stepped forward. “Sit your fat ass down or I’ll put it down.”
“Like to see you try.”
“Cunningham, for Christ’s sake, for Christ’s sake.” Still on the sofa, Harrison rubbed a hand over his face.
“Officer Cunningham, you’ve earned yourself a thirty-day rip for insubordination. Further determination of your status will be determined. You will sit when I tell you to sit, or you’ll be looking at sixty days right off the top.”
“The captain’s my boss,” he said, but he sat.
“And I am your superior—in so many ways. But yeah, the captain’s your boss. Your actions today have destroyed an operation that could have—damn well would have—seen to it that the man who raped and murdered Deena MacMasters was in custody right fucking now. Who showed you the sketch?”
Cunningham jutted up his chin. “I don’t say nothing more until I have my rep.”
“Your choice.” She looked at Harrison. “You?”
“I didn’t see the sketch, LT. I heard about it, but I didn’t see it. Cunningham took the kid down, shouted out he had the bastard and needed assistance. I assisted.”
“Write it up, call your reps. Get out of my sight.”
When they filed out, Baxter came over, took the cold wrap, twisted to activate. “Use it. Your eye’s going black.”
She twisted, imagining for one happy moment the cold wrap was Cunningham’s neck. “Jesus Christ, Baxter.”
“We’re in the soup, and goddamn. I’d kick Cunningham’s ass, but it’s a waste of time. For what it’s worth, I got a decent view on how it went—and it went quick. Harrison’s telling it straight. He moved in to assist another officer. I can’t see hanging him for it.”
“That won’t be up to me.”
“I’d just caught sight of the bastard. Pauley. Just made him, then the place went up like somebody yelled ‘bomb.’ I couldn’t get to him, got pushed back, trapped in a corner. Trueheart carried some old woman out of it. She got knocked cold. We had him, Dallas. We’d’ve had him.”
“Means jack now.” She dragged her hand through her hair. “And now I have to go get my ass fried like I just fried Cunningham’s.”
“It’s not right. Not fucking right.”
“My op. My soup.”
Peabody was waiting when Eve stepped out. “The commander’s in the meditation room, this level. We can go over now.”
“I’ll go over. Inform the team we’ll debrief at the conference room in one hour.”
“I’ll inform the team, and we’ll go over. You’re rank, but we’re partners. I’m in this, too.”
“No point in both of us getting our asses kicked over it.”
“There is to me.”
“Fine. It’s your ass.”
“Every square inch. Trueheart! Inform the team we debrief in one hour at Central, conference room. It’s heady to outrank someone,” Peabody said as they continued on. “At least I outrank him for the moment.”
“Whitney’s not going to bust you down to uniform. One of us leaked the sketch, and my money’s on a uniform there. So, after we’re roasted, we do some roasting ourselves. Either way, it comes down to a FUBAR on this op.”
She stopped outside of the meditation room. “Last chance.”
“No. I’m in.” Peabody opened the door herself.
Jonah and Carol MacMasters sat together on a small sofa. From her chair, Anna Whitney leaned forward and poured tea from a delicate pot into delicate cups. Whitney turned from the window.
“We’ll speak elsewhere,” he said, but before he could move away from the window, Carol sprang up.
“How could you let this happen? How could you? At Deena’s memorial?”
“Carol, stop. Stop.” MacMasters got to his feet.
“It’s a disgrace.”
“Yes, it is.” He took his wife by the shoulders. “And it was my men who caused it, not the lieutenant’s. It was my men.”
“Regardless of that, this was my operation,” Eve said, “and my responsibility. I have no excuse, Mrs. MacMasters, and my apologies are hardly adequate.”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” Her eyes burned with a fury Eve imagined hurt less than grief. “You take responsibility?”
“No, but it’s all I have. I should be standing here telling you I have the man who killed your daughter in custody, and I’m not. Nothing I say can mean anything to you.”
“Carol.” Anna put the teapot down. “You’ve been a cop’s wife too long to do this. You’ve been a cop’s wife long enough to know everything that can be done is being done, and that lashing out at the lieutenant doesn’t help Deena.” She stood. “Now, come with me. We’ll go sit with Deena while this is sorted out.”
She led Carol out, closed the door quietly behind her.
“Lieutenant,” Whitney said coolly, “report.”
She did so just as coolly and in careful detail. When she spoke of Harrison and Cunningham, MacMasters rested his head in his hands.
“Who leaked it?” Whitney demanded.
“I’ll debrief within the hour, sir. I will have that information within an hour and five.”
“I expect you to have better control of your team, Lieutenant. I expect you to have the judgment and control to prevent this sort of leak in an operation under your command.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jack.” MacMasters spoke wearily. “They were my men.”
“And as the lieutenant correctly stated, this was her op, and her responsibility.” Whitney turned his gaze pointedly to Eve. “Lieutenant, I’ll need a full evaluation and written report, tonight.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll refine the team according to that evaluation, and present you with a detailed overview of the alternate operation to apprehend the suspect tomorrow with the Mimotos’s cooperation.”
“If you expect
me to sell not releasing Darrin Pauley’s sketch and some salient information to the public via the media to the commissioner, you’d better sell it to me.”
“If we release the sketch, let him know we’re close, he’ll be in the wind.” He could already be in the wind, she thought. And that was a hard, hot ball in her belly.
“He’s young,” she continued, calmly, firmly, “and he’s patient. He can afford to wait, a year, five years before moving on another target if he goes rabbit now. He may select another. He’ll alter his looks—which he was cautious enough to modify today—use his skill in ID fraud to take another identity, or series of them, and settle back until Deena and Karlene Robins are forgotten, until the other known targets are no longer protected.”
“She’s right, Jack.” MacMasters held up a hand, let it fall. “Dallas was right about him coming here today. She’s right about this. If I have any weight here, I want you and the commissioner to know I agree with the lieutenant.”
Eve took MacMasters’s weight and pushed with more of her own. “Commander, if we release the sketch, we’ll have morons like Cunningham flooding the tip line with sightings of teenagers and twenty-somethings in ball caps while Pauley closes shop here and moves on to wait his chance.
“If we release the sketch, he wins. If we let this play out, and frankly, Commander, it burns my ass, but if we allow the media to portray this fiasco today as a monumental screwup, and we control that feed, he’ll be only more confident, and he’ll move on Mrs. Mimoto tomorrow, as planned. Release it, and we lose the chance.”
“We’d have had him today, sir.” When Peabody spoke up, Eve glanced at her with a combination of surprise and annoyance. “That’s not an excuse, it’s a fact. We will need to interview staff members here, and access their security as it’s obvious Darrin Pauley gained access much earlier, and was in the building prior to the memorial. But even with that, we’d have had him.”
Whitney lifted his eyebrows. “You’re confident of that, Detective?” Eve was pretty sure she heard Peabody gulp, but her partner continued in what passed for confidence. “Yes, sir. Detective Baxter made him, just as the lieutenant did. His communication to me was delayed due to the chaos Cunningham and Harrison created, the same chaos that injured Dallas and damaged her coms. Instead of entering the room where we could and would have boxed him, he slipped away rather than engage in the confusion, and risk being interviewed as we are now interviewing a number of participants. That’s his caution, sir, just as profiled. He behaved exactly as anticipated. He will behave as we anticipate tomorrow.”