“The hell it is. I see you clear enough, don’t I?”
His grin was quick and gorgeous. “Why, Lieutenant, you’ve made my heart flutter.” He grabbed her hand, kissed her knuckles lavishly.
“No funny stuff.” She slapped him aside, an absent gesture that only made him smile again.
It was good, he thought, to be back in synch.
“She’s got two payments to a Lucius Breck,” Eve noted. “Three thousand a pop. Who’s Breck?”
Because she hadn’t realized he’d cued her into the system, she nearly jumped when the computer’s polite voice answered.
Breck, Lucius. Substance abuse counselor. Private practice. Office address 529 Sixth Avenue, New York City. Residence—
“Never mind. That jibes with the story she gave me. Jesus, she’s close onto flat busted financially and still paying through the nose for private counseling when she could get it through departmental sources for nothing. And she’s going to lose anyway. She won’t keep her squad command when this all washes down.”
And she thinks I’m bucking for her desk. Eve shook her head. No, thanks. Eve would wear captain’s bars one day, but damn if they’d drag her off the street by them.
“You can’t find any other accounts linked to her?”
“I can’t find what’s not there,” Roarke said reasonably. “As you’ve seen for yourself, your Captain Roth is very nearly in financial ruin. She’s borrowed from her retirement account in order to pay Breck’s fee. Her living expenses are otherwise frugal.”
“So she’s clean, and her squad’s dirty, which may go to motive. She commanded both victims and had visited Kohli at Purgatory. Her probability scan’s still fairly low, but that could change if I can add in her personality analysis from the department files and my own take on her.”
“And your take is?”
“She’s hard, got a mean temper, and she’s been so busy rising up the ladder, she’s been missing details. She’s covering up personal mistakes in a scramble to protect her position. Could be she’s covered up more, in her squad, to keep her superiors from yanking her out. A lot of temper went into that first murder. Like I said, she’s got a mean one.”
She turned back to Roarke. “Vernon, Detective Jeremy. I’ve already got enough on him to haul him in—after I let him sweat awhile.”
“What do you need from me?”
“I want to connect the money to Ricker. Getting it this way, I won’t be able to use it as evidence. But I can make him think I can. I break Vernon, I’ve got new lines to tug. He’s connected to both victims and to Roth. And to Ricker.”
“Ricker’s going to be insulated, thickly. Any funds he disperses in that manner would have been washed.”
“Can you find it?”
His brow winged up. “That is, I assume, a rhetorical question. It’ll take time.”
“Then why don’t you get started? Can I use this subunit to check a few other names?”
“Hold on.” He issued some commands she didn’t understand, keyed in something manually. The computer acknowledged him and began a low hum. “It’ll sift through the initial layers on auto,” he explained, “as quickly as I could do it. What are the other names?”
She looked at him. “Rue MacLean.”
If he was annoyed or surprised, he didn’t show it. “You suspect her?”
“She manages Purgatory, knows or should know what goes down there. Now you tell me Ricker used to own the place, and we know IAB suspects or suspected a connection. If he’s doing any business there, she should’ve known about it. And,” she concluded, “you already thought of that.”
“I did a run on her yesterday. Deep search. Computer, results of search on MacLean, Rue, on screen three. You can study the data yourself,” he told Eve. “I found nothing to alarm me. Overmuch. But then again, if she’s playing with Ricker, she’d be careful. She knows me.”
“Would she risk it?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so.”
Eve scanned the financial first. “Jesus, Roarke, you pay her a goddamn mint.”
“Which traditionally inspires loyalty. She essentially runs the club. She earns her salary. You’ll see she enjoys the financial rewards and doesn’t pinch her credits. She took a vacation to Saint Barthélemy this winter. Ricker’s known to have a base near there.”