“I … It’s odd you say that. I bought all new lingerie before the wedding, didn’t wear any of it. Neville and I lived together in the house since the spring, and I wanted everything new when we were married. So I put it away, but didn’t wear it. When we got back from the honeymoon I’d have sworn a couple of sets were missing. I took some with me on the honeymoon, but I was so sure I’d bought and put away these others.”
“They weren’t where you’d put them.”
“They weren’t anywhere. I just chalked it up to all the wedding chaos.”
She stopped, rubbed a hand over her heart. “He’d been in the house?”
“It’s something we’re looking into.”
“It feels like it’s never going to end,” Rosa murmured.
McNab opened the door, let Kyle walk in ahead of him.
“Lieutenant?”
“Give me a minute.” She stepped out with McNab.
“Drop ’link.”
“I figured.”
“But I’ve got a location. Where the text originated, and where the ’link—still active—is now. It’s half a block from the Patricks’ building. I checked the file.”
“Get your gear, you’re with me. Garage, five minutes, so move your ass.”
“It’s never still.”
Simple truth, she thought as he rushed off on his tartan airboots and she went back into Interview A.
“As I suspected, the text came from a drop ’link.”
“What does that mean?” Rosa demanded.
“They can’t identify it, Rosa,” Kyle explained. “It’s not registered.”
“Oh, but—”
“We do have a location. I’m going there now. I can take you down to our lounge to wait for Mr. Patrick.”
Kyle checked his wrist unit. “Damn it. He’s still about ten minutes out. Don’t wait. Go. I’ll tag him back, and we’ll meet him downstairs. He’s nearly here, Rosa. We’ll go meet him.”
“Yes.” Rosa stood up. “Hurry,” she said to Eve.
Eve hurried to her office, barely slowing her stride when Peabody sprang from her desk in the bullpen. “McNab said—”
“Work the list. McNab’s enough for this. We get anything, you’ll know.”
Eve grabbed her coat, arrowed down to the garage. McNab loped up half a minute behind her.
Eve simply bulleted out of the slot, hit the lights and sirens, and sped out of the garage.
“Yee-haw” was McNab’s reaction, but he tightened his safety harness. “Not to dampen down, Dallas, but he’s not going to be there.”
“I know it.”
“Okay then. This sucker moves. So this fuckhead escalates to murder on one hand, devolves to taunts on the other.”
“Why ‘devolve’?” she asked as she swerved around a sedan whose driver obviously decided sirens meant nothing to him.
“It’s small time, right? Sure, it keeps a former target on edge, or brings back that edge, but he’s on to bigger now.”
“Ask yourself why this target? Why this woman? The first.”
He asked himself as she hit a clear stretch on Tenth, and the city blurred by. “She’s still important. She, especially, means something to him.”
“He didn’t include the husband on the text—it wasn’t a couple thing. He didn’t threaten violence. He taunted, yeah, but it’s ‘Let’s do it again.’ The sick part of him that twists this into actual sex wants to do it again. With her. That’s my conclusion until and unless the rest of the victims get the same.”
McNab thought it through. Nodded. “That’s why you’re the LT.”
“Fucking A. Still in that location?”
“Hasn’t budged. I got a lock on it.” He studied the read on on his PPC.
He guided her in as they got closer, then cursed.
“Shit, fuck, damn, it shut down.”
“Turned off?”
“Shut down,” he repeated. “Vanished. I’ve got the lock on the location, but the ’link’s shut down. Left here, half a block. Shit. Ten feet, south side. Stop. We’re right on it.”
Eve cut the wheel, double-parked. And saw the blueprint of it all the minute she stepped out of the A-T into the blast of angry horns.
“Recycler.” She pointed, jogging to it. “It’s still humming, goddamn it.”
“Smash-and-churn schedule’s right on it.” Frustrated, McNab kicked the bin. “Started up five minutes ago. Not just shut down, Dallas. Crushed and shredded.”
18
She waited with McNab, cleared the proper paperwork, and stood by while a city drone unlocked and opened the bin.
And looked into the open bin at the god-awful, compacted mess.
“Well.” McNab shoved at his purple-and-green earflap cap. “I like a challenge.”
“You’ve got one. Take it in, do what you do.” She considered the logistics of him carting a big bag of compacted trash and garbage on the subway, dug into her pocket. “Cab it back.” She shoved money into one of his many pockets as his hands were currently busy working with the city drone to transfer the contents of the recycler to a large green bag.
“Thanks.”
“What are the odds?” she asked him.
“Pretty much zilch, but you never know. Maybe it gets lodged in a little pocket, and just gets compressed instead of shredded.”
“Good luck with that.” She started back to the car.
“Ten minutes sooner, I could’ve jammed the sucker, and we’d have it whole.”
She nodded as she climbed into the car because that had already struck her as a very interesting point.
Heading toward the hospital, she used her wrist unit to shoot off a quick text to Roarke: