In Death 32 - Treachery in Death

it up the levels. Six years?” Eve shook her head. “She’s got a network. Cops and crooks. Some lawyers she can flip if one of her crew gets squeezed, probably somebody in the PA’s office, at least one judge.”
    “She needs a treasury,” Roarke added. “There would be palms to grease, other expenses.”
    “It’s not just the money. It’s hardly ever just the money,” Eve decided. “She has to like it. The kick, the power, the dirt, the edge. She’s twisting and demeaning everything her father stood for. Stands for.”
    “That may be part of the point.”
    “Father issues? Boo-hoo. Dad was so busy being a cop he didn’t pay enough attention to me, or he was too strict, expected too much. Whatever. So now I’ll take my own badge and smear shit all over it. That’ll teach him.”
    “I suppose you and I have little patience or sympathy for father issues that don’t involve violence or real abuse.” In understanding, he laid a hand over hers briefly. “But it may be part of this, and may be something you can work with.”
    “Once I inform the commander and IAB, I may be out of it.”
    “In a pig’s eye.”
    She had to laugh. “Okay, I intend to fight—hard and dirty if necessary—to have a part in the investigation. I’m going to need Mira,” she mused, thinking of the department’s top shrink. “Her clearance will put her on board, and I want Feeney. We need EDD. McNab’s already in it, but he’ll need Feeney not only to give him the time and the space to work this, but to help.”
    She eased along the mean streets now, where streetlights—when they worked—shone on oily piles of garbage, and deals for sex, for drugs thrived in the shadows.
    “It’s going to be a fucking mess, Roarke. Not just the investigation, the media fallout when it hits. But the repercussions? They’ll have to review every one of her cases, and the cases of whoever she sucked into this. Retrials or just being straightjacketed into springing bad guys because of the old fruit of a poisoned tree. Taking her and her network down means opening up cages. There’s no way around it. I could kick her ass for that alone—after I strip the skin off it for Peabody.”
    She pulled to the curb. Parking wasn’t an issue here. If you didn’t have weight in this sector, your vehicle would either be gone or stripped down to its bones if you left it for five minutes.
    “Oh, forgot. The alarm works great,” she told him. “Some mope tried to boost it—when I’m barely fifty feet away. Landed on his ass and limped away without his tools.”
    Like her he scanned the shadows, the deep pits of dark. “It’s nice to know we won’t be walking home from here.”
    “Seal up.” Eve tossed Roarke the can of sealant, engaged her recorder.
    “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Roarke,” she began, and listed the address. “Date and time stamp on record.”
    The building had likely been a small warehouse or factory at some point, and scooped up in the rehab-crazed pre-Urbans. Since, it might have served as sorry shelter for itinerants or a chemi-den—probably both at one time or another.
    The rusted and broken chain and padlock drooping from the door proved security measures had been half-assed to begin with, and long since breached.
    But the shiny new lock caught her interest.
    “Cold weather hole,” Eve said. “Nobody much wants to be inside the dirt and stink in high summer. Still ...” She nodded at the lock. “Somebody put that on recently.” She started forward, digging for her master.
    The man who jumped out of the shadows boasted a half acre of wide shoulders. He bared his teeth in an ugly grin that demonstrated dental hygiene wasn’t high on his list of priorities.
    Eve imagined it was his six-inch sticker and what he took as a couple of easy marks that put the grin on his face.
    “Take care of that, will you?” she asked Roarke.
    “Of course, darling.” He gave the man currently jabbing playfully at him with the blade a pleasant smile. “Something I can do for you?”
    “Gonna spill your guts all over the street, then I’m gonna fuck your woman. Gimme the wallet, the wrist unit. Ring, too.”
    “I’m going to do you a favor, as even if you managed to spill my guts all over the street—and odds are against you—if you tried to touch my woman she’d break your dick off like a twig then stick it up your arse.”
    “Gonna bleed.”
    When the man lunged, Roarke danced easily to the side, pivoted with an