“Some,” Nadine agreed and the smile faded. “Some of the details on how the victims were tortured. I imagine there was a lot more, a lot worse, that didn’t leak.”
“There was more. There was worse.”
“You worked it.”
“Feeney was primary, I was his partner.”
“I wasn’t in New York nine years ago. I was fighting my way out of a second-rate network affiliate in South Philly. But I remember this case. I remember these murders. I bullied my way into doing a series of reports on them. That’s part of what got me out of South Philly hell.”
“Small world.”
Nadine nodded, sipped more coffee. “What do you want?”
“You’ve got that research department at your fingertips now, being you’re a big shot.” Eve eased a hip down on the corner of her desk. “I want everything, anything you can dig up on the murders. All the murders. Here, Europe, Florida, South America.”
Nadine blinked. “What? Where?”
“I’m going to explain it all to you, off the record, then you can put your researchers and your own honed skills on the scent. He’s already got the second one, Nadine.”
“Oh, God.”
“Can’t help her. Odds are slim we’ll track him fast enough to save her. I need to know everything I can know. Maybe we can save the one he’s hunting now.”
“Let me think.” Closing her eyes, Nadine sat back. She drank more coffee. “I’ve got a couple of smart people I can bully and bribe to keep the work and the results off the radar. I’m pretty damn smart myself, so that’s three.” Nodding, she sat up again. “You know I’d do this because I believe a life is worth more than a story. Marginally,” she said with a smile. “I’d do it because you and I are friends who also happen to respect each other to play it straight. No payback required.”
“I know that. Just like you know I’m going to pay you back.”
Nadine cocked a brow. “Being pretty damn smart, I’m not going to say no. A one-on-one exclusive with you.”
“After he’s bagged, not before.”
“Deal. A live appearance on Now.”
“Don’t push it.”
Nadine laughed. “By any member of your team you choose—with portions of that exclusive—and did I mention extensive—interview by you to run during the show. Recorded prior.”
Eve thought it through. “I can work with that.”
“Okay. To get details, I need details.” Nadine pulled out her recorder, cocked her head. “All right?”
“All right.”
There was something unnerving on some visceral level about working in a cop shop. It was an interesting experience, Roarke thought, but very, very strange for someone with his…colorful background.
He’d worked with cops—in addition to his own—a number of times now, had had cops in his home professionally and socially. But working in a war room in the core of Cop Central for the best part of a day, well, that was a different kettle.
They came and went, he noted. Clipping into the room, clipping out again, communicating for the most part in that cop speak that was oddly formal, as clipped as their footsteps and somehow colorful all at the same time.
He was flanked by McNab whom he had great fondness for, and the dark, curvy, and sloe-eyed Callendar. They might sit, or stand and walk—almost dance—around as they worked. Slogging through data, searching for just one vital byte. Busy bees in their busy hive.
As for colorful, well, excepting their captain, it appeared the e-division went for the flashy. McNab with his bright yellow jeans, the turquoise shirt with what appeared to be flying turtles winging across it. He had his long blond hair sleeked back in a tail and secured with a thick yellow band. On either side of his thin, pretty face, his earlobes were weighted down with a complex series of hoops and studs.
Roarke wondered why, honestly, anyone would wish to have that many holes punched into his flesh.
But the boy had a way about him, and was damn clever at this job.
The girl, for she looked barely twenty, was an unknown. She had burnt honey skin, masses and masses of black curly hair pinned in a multitude of hanks with a neon rainbow of clips. Silver hoops he could have punched his fists through hung at her ears. She wore baggy, multipocketed pants in bleeding colors of lavender and pink with a snug green sweater that exclaimed E-GODS! across her rather impressive breasts.