Big Jack

She didn’t know about class, but she knew about noise. Inside there was plenty of it.

“Lot of space,” she commented.

“Five floors, three buildings. You got round about eighteen thousand square, not counting rooftop area. Go

“Yeah. This much space, three buildings, there’s a lot of ways in and out. A lot to cover.”

“We got a central security system, and individual backups on each building.”

“Who’s got the codes?”

“Ah, that’d be Steve, myself, head carpenter, assistant foreman and the security company.”

“You can give those names to my partner. We’d like to look around.”

“You going any farther than this, you gotta have your hard hat and goggles. That’s the law.”

“No problem.” Eve took the canary-yellow construction hat and the safety glasses. “Can you show me where you’ve used the flame sealant?”

“Damn near all the subflooring’s been sealed.” He scratched his chin. “You want, we can start here, work our way through. But I’m telling you, nobody coulda gotten in here after hours.”

“It’s my job to check it out, Hinkey.”

“Gotta do what you gotta.” He jerked a thumb and began to wind his way around equipment. “This here’s commercial space. Probably lease it to a restaurant. This here floor’s been sealed up. Had to rip out what was left of the original. New flooring’s not installed yet, just the sub and seal.”

Eve took the sca

“Can you do me a favor, Hinkey? How about you get somebody to take my partner through the next building while you and I go through this one? We’ll hit the third after that. Save us all some time and trouble.”

“Whatever you want.” He took a two-way off his belt. “Yo, Carmine. Need you floor one, building two.”

They divided into teams, and Eve moved from area to area on the first floor. After a while she was able, for the most part, to tune out the noise. Buzzing and whirling, the sucking of compressors and the smack of air guns.

The voices of the crew came in a variety of accents. Brooklyn and Queens, Hispanic and street jive. She filtered it out, along with the music each section selected as background tunes. Trash rock, ti

Because he was giving her time and no hassle, she listened to Hinkey’s ru

He droned on about climate controls, inspections, electrical and filter systems, walls, trims, labor, plumbing. Her brain was jammed with it by the time they hit the second floor.

He nattered on about windows, framing, stopped off to chew out a laborer and to consult with another crew member on specs. It gave Eve hope she’d shake him off, but he caught up with her before she made it to the third level.

“Apartments up here. Give people a decent place to live. Fact is, my daughter’s getting married next spring. She and the guy, they’ve already put in for this unit right here.”

Eve glanced over in time to see him look a bit baffled and sentimental. “Be nice for them, I guess. And I know the place is built good. Solid.” He rapped a hand on the wall. “None of that toothpick-and-glue shit some of these places use when they slap one of these old buildings back together. Steve, he takes pride.”

“You worked for him long?”

“Seventeen years this October. He ain’t no fly-by-night. Knows his buildings, too. Works side by side with you in a crunch.”

She found a few drops of blood, discounted it as she had in other areas. Not enough. And you put a bunch of people together with a bunch of tools, a little blood was going to spill.

“He spend much time on this job?”

“Oh yeah. Biggest we’ve had. Worked his ass off to get this bid, and he’s by here every day.”

He walked with her out of the unit, down the hall formed by studded walls.

“How about his son?”

“What about him?”

“He put in time?”

Hinkey snorted derisively, then caught himself. “Works in the office.”

Eve paused. “You don’t like him much.”

“Not for me to say, one way or the other.” Hinkey lifted a beefy shoulder. “I’ll just say he don’t take after his old man, not that I see.”

“So he doesn’t come around.”

“Been here once or twice, maybe. Doesn’t take much interest. Suit-and-tie type, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.” She stepped over a stack of some sort of lumber product. “Would he have the access codes?”

“Don’t see why he would.”

“Boss’s son.”

Hinkey’s shrug was his response.

Her ears were ringing, her head pounding by the time they hit the fourth floor. She decided she’d have asked for ear protectors if she’d known how bad it would get. It seemed to her that the tools had gone to scream level here. She eyed, with some respect, a large, toothy saw run by a man who looked to weigh in at a hundred pounds flat.

She gave it a wide berth, flipped on the sca

And hit the mother lode.

“What the fuck is that-beg pardon.”

“It’s a hell of a lot of blood, Hinkey.” She ran the sca

“Jesus Christ, no. Lieutenant, I don’t see how that could be blood.”

But she could. Just as she could see the smear of it ru

He’d walked through it, she noted, squatting down for a better look. He’d left some prints, and wasn’t that handy?

So had Cobb, she saw. Handprints, bloodied. Tried to pull herself up the wall, used it for support and pressed her hand there, there.

He’d taken his time with her, Eve was sure of it. He’d let her crawl, limp, stumble the entire length of the fourth-floor corridor before he delivered the death blow.

“Can’t be blood.” Hinkey stared at the blue, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “We’d’ve seen it. Jeezopetes, you couldn’ta missed it.”

“I need this area cleared. I’ve got to ask you to get your crew out of this building. This is a crime scene.” She took out her communicator. “Peabody? I’ve found her. Fourth floor.”

“I’ve gotta… I gotta call the boss.”

“You do that, Hinkey. Tell him to be available, at his home, in an hour.” Eve turned to him, felt a pang of sympathy as she saw the horror in his eyes. “Get your crew out of this building and call Whittier. I want to talk to him.”

In under an hour, the construction noise had been replaced by cop noise. Though she didn’t have much hope of picking up more evidential trace, she had a team of sweepers spread throughout the building. A crime-scene unit took images of the hand- and footprints, and with their tech magic extracted microscopic blood traces for DNA match.

She’d already matched the index fingerprint on the wall to the prints on file for Tina Cobb.

“I know you’re going to say it’s just cop work, Dallas, just step-by-step investigation, but it’s just short of miraculous we were able to nail this scene.”

Peabody studied the blood patterns, boldly blue under the sca

“Another few weeks, maybe days, they’d have set the floor, covered the walls. He picked a good spot for this.”

“Nobody to see her, hear her,” Eve stated. “Easy enough to get her inside, dozens of reasons he could’ve used. There’s plenty of pipe for the murder weapon, tarps to wrap her body in to transport it. He’d get the gas first. Have that in the transfer vehicle. He got in here, he could access the gas. We’ll follow up there. There’ll be records of what’s stored or purchased through the Whittier account.”