In Death 18 - Divided in Death

come over there and work on it. Probably be faster to deploy one of the team.”
    “That’s an insult, and don’t think I don’t know it. It’s a damn closet menu, Feeney, get me in.”
    He puffed out his cheeks, made little noises while she scanned the unit so he could see it on his screen. “Okay, key in this code.”
    He read it off as she input the numbers manually. “What’s this? A privacy override?”
    “Just keep going. Snap your fingers and say, ‘Open Sesame.’”
    She started to obey, then set her teeth. “Feeney.”
    “Okay, okay, just a little joke. Code’s from the data we’ve been pulling out here. Let’s see if he used it on that unit, too.”
    “Computer, what was removed by Blair Bissel at last usage?”
    Working . . . Contents listed as emergency package.
    “Emergency package. What was in the emergency package?”
    That data is not available.
    “Computer, open the compartment from which said emergency package was removed.”
    Acknowledged.
    The panel slid open, revealing a small safe. “Bingo. Computer, I said to open the compartment.”
    Acknowledged. Compartment is open.
    “You have to be specific, Dallas,” Feeney told her. “You want the safe open, you tell it you want the safe open. It can’t read your mind.”
    “Open the damn safe.”
    Acknowledged. Commencing interface.
    There was a low hum and some blinking red lights on both the safe and the wall unit as they communicated. When it stopped, Eve wrenched open the safe door.
    “Empty,” she said. “Whatever it was, he got it all.”
    ———«»———«»———«»———
    She asked herself what Blair Bissel would have secreted away for an emergency. Funds, forged ID, codes or passkeys into bolt-holes. But surely he’d have taken all that with him before he killed Kade and his brother.
    What else, she thought, would a man who prepared to run require enough to risk breaking into his own house for?
    Weapons seemed the most logical.
    He hadn’t stored a rocket blaster in that little safe, but he might’ve stored smaller weapons and passkeys.
    Stupid to have left them behind in the first place, she thought as the cab drove through the gates of home. Sooner or later the safe would have been discovered, and whatever he’d left behind found.
    Then again, it would all have been a kind of mystery, wouldn’t it? His body would have been long since cremated, ensuring he’d stay dead. But people would wonder about the safe, its contents.
    He might have left behind something that would have hinted at the HSO, at his association. It would make him important, talked about.
    Another kind of immortality for the dead man who didn’t die.
    Yeah. Yeah. That would be right up his alley.
    “You want I should wait? Again?”
    Eve broke out of her thoughts, stared at the big house with lights gleaming in some of the windows. “No, last stop. You’re sprung.”
    She pulled out a debit card, swiped it over the scanner.
    “You telling me you live here?”
    She verified the meter charge and decided to cut him a break and give him a decent tip. “So?”
    “So then you ain’t no cop.”
    “Surprises me all the time, too.”
    She went straight in and straight up to her office. She wanted, very much, to go straight to bed. Still playing the evasion game, she bypassed the lab.
    She found her team had been busy in her absence. The full report on Quinn Sparrow was filed, and copied. He’d been charged. Peabody’s attached personal memo told Eve that there was already political wrangling taking place between the HSO and the NYPSD on who owned him.
    She couldn’t work up the spit to care who won that battle. Sparrow was done, and that was that.
    Reva had left her a list of Bissel’s habits, routines, favorite haunts and getaways. Most of those haunts and getaways leaned toward the trendy or exotic.
    She would, in the morning, contact local authorities in all the out-of-town and foreign locations Reva listed and ask for their assistance.
    But he wasn’t out of town, he wasn’t in some foreign location. He was, for now, in New York. Maybe not for much longer, but for now.
    She read McNab’s report. He’d found nothing under Chloe McCoy and was now pursuing variations and codes based on that name.
    What had she died for? What use had she been for him that had made her a victim when that use was over?
    A locket, a sculpture, and corrupted data on a cheap desk unit.
    She made a note to ask Feeney to have the team focus on