Big Jack

“Which means he had to spend time doing so. Again in private. Had to have transpo, had to know there was a handy dump site and access to the flammable.”

“Probably didn’t seal up for that one,” Feeney commented. “Why bother?”

“Not an efficient use of his time,” Eve agreed. “He’s going to burn the body and destroy any possible trace to him, or so he believed. Why bother to avoid any trace on the scene as long as it’s reasonably cleaned? Particularly if he had some legitimate reasons for being there.”

“Could own the place, work or live in it.”

“Could be a building or construction inspector,” Roarke put in. “Though if he is, it wouldn’t have been bright of him to forget about the fire sealant.”

“You got the data I asked for, the properties being built or rehabbed in that area. Is what you sent me the whole shot?”

“It is, yes. But that doesn’t take into account ones that are under the table. Small jobs,” he explained. “A private home or apartment where the owner might decide to do some work, or hires a contractor who’s willing to forgo the permits and fees and work off the books.”

Eve visualized the map of her investigation suddenly crisscrossed with hundreds of dead ends and detours. “I’m not going to worry about side deals until we exhaust the legitimate ones. Sticking with that, don’t they sometimes use gas on construction sites?”

“For some of the vehicles and machines.” Roarke nodded. “As it’s inconvenient to transport it from one of the stations outside the city, you might use a storage compartment on-site or nearby. You’ve a fee to pay for that as well.”

“Then we follow that down, too.”

“Bureaucrats in Permits and Licensing are going to make you jump through hoops,” Feeney reminded her.

“I’ll deal with it.”

“You’re going to need to put the arm on these guys, get the warrants and assorted paperwork and other bullshit. We get lucky with the matches, you’ll cut back on that.” Feeney considered, pulled on his nose. “But you got a lot to wade through one way or the other. I can put my leave off a few days, until this is closed.”

“Leave?” She frowned at him until she remembered his scheduled vacation. “Crap. I forgot all about it. When are you going?”

“Got two more days on the clock, but I can juggle some things around.”

She was tempted to take him up on it. But she paced it off, heaved out a breath. “Yeah, fine, you do that and your wife will eat both our livers for breakfast. Raw.”

“She’s a cop’s wife. She knows how it goes.” But there wasn’t much conviction behind his words.

“Bet she’s already packed.”

Feeney offered a hangdog smile. “Been packed damn near a week now.”

“Well, I’m not facing her wrath. Besides, you’ve already juggled enough to give me this much time. We can handle the rest of it.”

He looked back at the board, as she did. “I don’t like leaving a case hanging.”

“I’ve got McNab and this guy.” She jerked a thumb toward Roarke. “If we don’t wrap it before you have to go, we’ll keep you in the loop. Long distance. Can you give me a couple more hours tonight?”

“No problem. Look, why don’t I get back to it, see if I can work some magic?”

“Do that. I’ll see if I can wrangle some warrants. Okay with you if we brief here tomorrow, oh-eight hundred?”

“Only if it comes with breakfast.”

“I’ll be right along,” Roarke told him, and waited until he was alone with Eve. “I can save you time with the red tape. A little time on the unregistered, and I can have a list of permits for you.”

She jammed her hands into her pockets as she studied her murder board, as she looked at the faces of the dead. Roarke’s unregistered equipment would blind the unblinking eye of CompuGuard. No one would know he’d hacked into secured areas and nipped out data with his skilled hands.

“I can’t justify it for this. I can’t shortcut this just to save myself a little time and a lot of aggravation. Ga

He stepped up behind her, rubbed her shoulders as they both looked at the images of Jacobs and Cobb. Before and after.

“When you don’t play it by the book, when you do take that shortcut, it’s always for them, Eve. It’s never for yourself.”

“It’s not supposed to be for me. Or about me.”

“If it wasn’t for you, or about you, in some sense, you wouldn’t be able to go on day after day, facing this and caring, day after day. And if you didn’t, who would pick up the standard for people like Andrea Jacobs and Tina Cobb and carry it into the battle?”

“Some other cop,” she said.

“There is no other like you.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “There’s no other who understands them, the victims and those who victimize them, quite like you. Seeing that, knowing that, well, it’s made an honest man out of me, hasn’t it?”

She turned now to look him straight in the eye. “You made yourself.”

She knew he thought of his mother, of what he’d learned only a short time before, and she knew he suffered. She couldn’t stand for Roarke’s dead as she did for those of strangers. She couldn’t help him find justice for the woman he never knew existed, for the woman who’d loved him and died at the brutal hand of his own father.

“If I could go back,” she said slowly, “if there was a way to twist time and go back, I’d do everything I could to bring him down and put him away for what he did. I wish I could stand for her, for you.”

“We can’t change history, can we? Not for my mother, not for ourselves. If we could, you’re the only one in this world I would trust with it. The only one who might make me stand back and let the law do what the law does.” He traced his finger down the dent in her chin. “So, Lieutenant, whenever you do take one of those shortcuts, you should remember there are those of us who depend on you who don’t give a rat’s ass about the book.”

“Maybe not. But I do. Go help Feeney. Get me something I can use so we can make him pay for what he did to them.”

She sat alone when he’d gone, her coffee forgotten and her gaze on the murder board. She saw herself in each of the victims. In Andrea Jacobs, struck down and abandoned. In Tina Cobb, robbed of her own identity and discarded.

But she’d come back from those things. She’d been created from those things. No, you couldn’t change history, she thought. But you could sure as hell use it.

Chapter 11

She lost track of time when she worked alone. Eve supposed, if pressed on the subject, she lost track of time when she worked with others, too.

But there was something soothing about sitting in or pacing around her office by herself, letting the data and the speculations bump around in her head with only the computer’s bland voice for company.

When her ’link beeped, she jerked out of a half trance and realized the only light in the room was from her various screens.

“Dallas. What?”

“Hey, Lieutenant.” McNab’s young, pretty face popped on screen. She could see the slice of pizza in his hand. Hell, since she could all but smell the pepperoni, it occurred to her she’d missed di

She could feel her embarrassment scale rising just because another cop had tagged her when she’d been drifting off. “No, I wasn’t asleep. I’m working.”

“In the dark?”

“What do you want, McNab?” She knew what she wanted. She wanted his pizza.

“Okay. I put in some OT on the ’links and d and c’s.” He took a bite of pizza. Eve was forced to swallow her own saliva. “Lemme tell you, these dink units are tougher than the pricey ones. Memory’s for shit, and the broadband-”

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

“Sure. Sorry.”

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