Chapter Fifteen #3
“You think . . . huh. I’ll get a bigger shovel.”
While Peabody dug, Eve fought Long Island traffic and thought about it all.
Why not wait to kill her until she’d come back to New York? Why risk that kind of travel, and the expense?
Maybe she wasn’t coming back, or not soon enough.
Nadine’s sources didn’t name Redman, but she’d bet her badge he’d had access to that restricted area thirteen years before. And something in there, something he knew, found, heard, set the whole thing off.
“We’re there, or nearly. Pick it up when we head back.”
“Happily. My eyes are crossing.”
Eve pulled up to a gate. Not an iron gate, but a solid white wall. Centered on it were Banner’s initials, JB, in black.
“Talk about closed in and all secret,” Peabody commented.
The walls, about eight feet high, held security cams every few feet. No doubt, she thought, someone watched them now, was already running the plates on her DLE.
She had to get out of the car to step up to the security plate, and there held up her badge.
“NYPSD, Lieutenant Dallas and Detective Peabody. We need to speak with Calvin Banner regarding investigations into the deaths of two of his employees.”
The voice that answered was human, male, and brisk.
“Please submit your warrant.”
“We’re not here to detain Mr. Banner, or to search the premises. We request an interview with Mr. Banner to aid in the investigation. Two of his employees have been brutally murdered. We assume Mr. Banner is concerned about these deaths, and we are concerned for his safety.”
“Your request is denied until such time as you have a warrant authorizing you to enter the property. Please remove your vehicle.”
“We can seek a warrant charging Mr. Banner with obstruction of justice.”
“Your request is denied until such time as you have a warrant. You’re free to contact Mr. Banner’s attorneys. Please remove your vehicle.”
She stood a moment longer, then got back in her car.
“How pissed are you?” Peabody asked.
“Pretty goddamn pissed. And yet.”
She pulled away, drove away.
“And yet?”
“The barricade tells me Banner’s in there.
Or they’d simply say Mr. Banner is not in residence.
And it tells me he was expecting the visit, as the gate’s asshole guard had his script.
It further tells me he’s walled up tight because he knows Redman’s rampaging through his company, and he’s on the list.”
“I’m going to agree down the line. All that money, and he’s walled up in there. No matter how magnificent it all is inside that gate? It’s a kind of prison.”
“He can enjoy the magnificence of that one awhile longer. Then he’s going to find out what a real prison’s like.”
Eve remembered the chips, ate another one.
“Dig,” she told Peabody.
A half hour later, Peabody sat back. “I’m going to need a blocker before much longer. Give me a minute.”
Taking the minute, she sat back, closed her eyes.
“If you don’t find it and the connection exists, we’ll find it when we get into Banner-Wyst. Or EDD will find something when they break that goddamn code.”
“I’m not admitting defeat. Okay, okay, I can’t find any way they might have been related. She never married, he did. She never cohabbed or had offspring. No educational or military connection. She owned a place in the Hautes-Pyrénées. He didn’t. He still has family in Mexico, she didn’t. But.”
She hissed out a breath and picked up the shovel again.
“X marks the spot!” Peabody whooped as Eve drove back into Central’s garage. “I got an image. I got one. Some fancy do in Acapulco. The two of them, together. Look, look!”
Eve parked in her spot, studied the screen Peabody shoved into her face.
She saw Cruz, in a tux, his arm around the waist of the woman—dark hair, bold blue eyes, curvy in a red gown.
Both smiled for the camera.
“Bang,” Eve said. “When?”
“April 2045. They knew each other, Dallas. Socialized glitzy.” Peabody pumped a fist, added a quick car seat dance. “I am not defeated.”
“No, you’re not. Good work. Damn good. They slept together.”
Peabody rubbed at her tired eyes. “You can tell that from a photo?”
“He was divorced right around this time, and I’m betting they had it going before that. Just sex would be my bet. Have some fun. Redman figured it out, figured out the connection, and decided—true or not, but I bet true—she’s the one who suggested having Cruz take care of things.”
“So he killed her first.”
“They worked together—whatever this restricted project was. Maybe he didn’t like her, but he’d have respected her brain. There had to be a level of trust. And she’s sleeping with the guy who killed his family.”
Eve nodded as she got out of the car. “Big bang. Probably not enough for a warrant, but it’s a big bang.”
“Maybe I can find more.”
“Don’t put your shovel away. You keep digging.”
“And I’ve got fertile ground now.”
“Do what you do with that. I’m going to try to push Reo into that warrant, and I need to get the case files on Delgato’s death.”
“Take you a while on the second.”
“I’ll get them,” Eve said, with an expression as feral as Nadine’s had been. “There’s no wasting the big bang.”