In Death 32 - Treachery in Death

won’t box me in if I tell him I need the room.”
    She argued a little for form’s sake. “How much room is he going to give you after you dangle a hint of something major under his nose?”
    “Enough. I won’t lie to my captain, Dallas—and more—by informing him to that extent, it puts my part of the investigation on record. That’s going to matter when we nail her and her merry men.”
    “Okay.”
    “Now, since this coffee didn’t kill me, I’m going to get started.”
    “Sixteen hundred, HQ,” Eve told him.
    “I’ll be there.” He stood. “You did the right thing, Peabody. Right down the line, you did right. That’s going to matter, too.”
    Peabody sat another moment after Webster walked out. “God, I’m glad that part’s over. Dallas, would you really have broken his arm? Or tagged Whitney and tried to get Webster transferred to Queens?”
    “Yeah—maybe I’d’ve gone for his nose and Yonkers.” She shrugged. “But I’d’ve been a little sorry about it.”
    Back at Central she told Peabody to start the board and book on Keener. “I’m going up to EDD, get wired, then pay Renee a visit.”
    “Shouldn’t I go with you?”
    “We’re going to initiate this as a kind of courtesy call—LT to LT, weasel handler to weasel handler. I want her to know we’re giving the case our best effort, and my detective is laying the foundation before we check in with the morgue.”
    “Do you think she already knows we found him?”
    “It’s going to be interesting to find out. Get it started, Peabody, then take one of your little ‘breaks’ with McNab and get wired up.”
    All innocence, Peabody widened her eyes. “What little breaks?”
    “Do you really think I don’t know what goes on in my own department?”
    Eve split off, took the glide up to EDD.
    She ignored the noise, the eye-searing colors, the incessant movement as best she could and ducked into Feeney’s blissfully normal office.
    He sat at his desk, comfortably rumpled, stoop-shouldered, alternately tapping his fingers on a screen, and raking them through his bush of wiry ginger red hair.
    His basset hound eyes tracked to hers.
    “I’ve got to close out that noise. How the hell do you stand it?” She shut the door, and for a moment neither spoke.
    His face, as comfortably rumpled as his shirt, went grim. “This is a hell of a thing.”
    “Yeah.”
    “I’ve crossed with Oberman’s daughter plenty. Everybody needs EDD. I wouldn’t have figured it.”
    “You’re not alone.”
    “I took a look at her when she came out of the Academy. Had a shiny record there, so I thought about asking if she wanted Homicide, wanted me to train her.”
    Connections, Eve thought. You never knew where they’d come from. “Why didn’t you?”
    “Just didn’t seem the right fit. I can’t put my finger on it, even now, except you know when you know. Like I looked at somebody else who came out of the Academy with a shiny record a few years later and knew.” His saggy face moved into a smile. “That was a pretty good fit.”
    And if he’d taken Renee, would he have still taken her? Fate, she decided, you never knew where that came from either.
    “You’d be running Homicide still if you hadn’t gone over to the dark side.”
    “I trained you to run it.” He tapped a finger in the air at her. “Besides, you never did understand or appreciate the power of the geek.”
    “Enough to know when to use them.” She sat on the edge of his desk, dipped a hand into his dish of candied almonds. “Fuck, Feeney, I just put us in bed with IAB.”
    “No choice, kid.” He opened a drawer. “And no regrets. I’ve got your eyes and ears here. High grade. They won’t show on a scan or a sweep. Running a network like this, she’s probably hooked in for scans. You want to be careful with these. They’re worth double what we make in a month, combined.”
    He rose, blew out a breath. And his ears pinked a little. “You gotta strip off the jacket and shirt.”
    “Yeah, yeah.” They avoided looking at each other as she did.
    “That one, too.”
    “Jesus, Feeney, I’m naked under here. It’s a support tank.”
    His color spread from his ears to his cheeks; his gaze stayed pinned over her shoulder. “I don’t want to see your tits any more than you want to flash them, but this has to go against skin. So you should’ve thought of that and worn one of those other things.”
    “Man.” Mortified, she stripped to the skin, shoved the