11

 

 

Eve didn’t have time for hysteria, and ten seconds after walking in to interview Alyce Ellison she wished, bitterly, she’d left the woman to Jenkinson and Reineke.

“Why is he trying to kill me?” Ellison’s shriek cut a dull, jagged groove through Eve’s skull. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t hurt anybody! Somebody’s trying to kill me.”

“Ms. Ellison—”

“The police came to my apartment! I didn’t even finish my dinner! People are going to think I’ve been arrested! I didn’t do anything! I could be killed any second!”

As she raved, Ellison whirled around the room, her arms alternately waving like flags, then coiling around her stick-figure body as if to hold what there was of it together. Her eyes, heavily lined in glittery blue, bugged out of her narrow face. Her mouth, heavily dyed in shiny red, never stopped moving.

“Sit down and knock it off.”

“What? What? Would you sit down if your life was in danger?” “Lady, I’m a cop. My life’s in danger daily and I know how to sit

down. Watch this.”

To demonstrate, Eve sat at the Interview table.

“Being in danger’s what you get paid for! Someone’s trying to kill me.”

“Not at the moment, so sit the hell down. Sit!” Eve snapped. “You can’t talk to me like that.” Now tears swam, an ocean

between glittery shores. “I’m a citizen.”

“Right now you’re wasting the time of the investigators on a series of homicides. Sit, shut it, or get out.”

“I’m not going anywhere. You have to protect me. I’ll—I’ll sue!” “You have to be alive to sue.” Eve got up, walked to the door,

opened it. “Sit or get out. Now.”

Ellison sat, dissolving into wild sobs. “You’re mean. You’re just mean.”

“I can be meaner because blubbering’s wasting my time, too. Suck it up. You’re alive and well and in protective custody. We plan on keeping you alive and well. Want that? Pull yourself together and answer some questions.”

“I don’t know anything.” “You knew Susann Mackie.”

“I didn’t hurt her!” Ellison lifted her blubbering-splotched face. “I could have fired her, but I didn’t. I gave her another warning, that’s all.”

“What kind of warning?”

“About being late, and about forgetting to check the stock, and about how long she talked to customers. It’s not my fault she got hit by a car!”

“When did you give her the warning?”

“Which time?” Ellison sniffled now, blinked fat tears from her sparkly eyes. “I had to talk to her every month, explain again how uneven her evaluations were because she was never on time to work or from her breaks, and she’d end up talking to a customer for like ten minutes instead of selling anything.”

“Why didn’t you fire her?”

Ellison sighed. “Because when she did sell, she did really well, and a lot of customers came back and went to her, especially. And she was nice, you just had to like her. She had a really good eye for fashion, for what looked good. She always looked good, and she could—when she wasn’t off daydreaming—steer a customer to just the right outfit or accessory. I liked her. We all went to her memorial. I cried and cried.”

I bet, Eve thought.

“Did you warn her the day she went to the doctor on her lunch break?”

Those glossy red lips trembled. “I had to. It was evaluation day, and I had to. I told her she had to be on time, just had to show

improvement in that area. She said she was sorry and she would. She always said that, and she’d usually be on time for a few days, even a week after eval, and then . . . But that day, she never came back from lunch.”

Ellison started to cry again. “I was so mad. We were really slammed—we had a major sale going, and I was really mad. I tagged her ’link, and got v-mail, and I was harsh. I said how if she didn’t respect me or the position enough to be back from her lunch break on time, she just shouldn’t come back at all. I didn’t know she was dead.”

“Okay.” Since she was actually getting information now, Eve softened her tone. “You were doing your job.”

“I was! If she’d told me she had a doctor’s thing, or if she’d tagged me up, let me know she was running late because of one, I wouldn’t have been harsh. I swear. I don’t want to die! I’m only twenty-nine.”

Official ID data said thirty-three, but Eve let that pass.

“You’re not going to die. Did you speak to Reginald Mackie after the accident?”

“We—we sent flowers and a sympathy note. And we went—a whole group of us—to the memorial.”

“Right. Did you speak to him personally?” “I just couldn’t. I couldn’t stop crying.” “Did he speak to you, at any time?”

“No. His—his daughter . . .” “Willow Mackie.”

“Yes. She came into the store. I recognized her because she’d come in before, so Susann could help her find clothes. And she came up to me, right up to my face, and said how I had to be sorry Susann got killed because I didn’t get to be a big shot and fire her. How Susann and the baby were dead because I wouldn’t give her enough time to go to the doctor’s. And she said: ‘Enjoy your crappy job and your crappy life while you have them.’”

“When did this happen?”

“I guess about a month after the memorial. She didn’t even look mad or upset. She was sort of smiling the whole time. I was really upset, and I tried to say I was sorry, but she just walked away. She knocked over a display of T-shirts on her way out. On purpose!”

“Did she ever come back?”

“Not while I was working. I never saw her again, until I saw her picture on the bulletin. All I could think was I wasn’t surprised.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, I said how she didn’t look mad or upset when she came in and said those mean things to me? But she looked a little bit crazy. Darla said so, too. Darla’s one of our top salespeople, and she was right there. She saw the whole thing, and she said how that girl’s just crazy in the eyes.”

E

—

ve headed back toward her office, and Peabody walked briskly out.

“Dallas!” Peabody moved into a jog. “We just confirmed the Mackies in Divine on the afternoons of both attacks. They’re on the feed today, at the counter ordering, at fourteen-twenty-five.

“Both?”

“Yeah. The security feed’s a twenty-four-hour loop, so we’ve missed catching them after the first incident, but while Uniform Carmichael reviewed the feed, Officer Shelby talked to some of the staff. Two of them remembered the Mackies, and the day because of the attack. Both agree they came in around quarter to four. Just after the peak of the after-school swarm.”

“Were they carrying anything?” “I—”

“Find out, find out now! Did he have any kind of case, did she?

Backpacks, bags, rollies. Now, Peabody.” “Yes, sir.”

Eve went straight to her office, snagged the results from EDD the minute she saw them.

“On screen.”

Hands on her hips, she studied the buildings highlighted in order of probability. They’d gotten lucky with the first nest, she thought.

Maybe that luck would hold.

“She had a backpack.” Peabody came to the door. “That’s it. No briefcase or luggage or bags of any kind on the feed. Just a backpack. The wits don’t remember any bags either from yesterday.”

“So they went to their hole after the strike, had time to stow their weapons, then get fucking ice cream. Get me a conference room.”

“We’ve got A. Whitney has it reserved for us for the duration.” “Briefing, everybody, five minutes.”

“Do you want EDD?” “I said everybody.”

Eve grabbed what she needed, went straight to the conference room. She updated the board, brought up the EDD map on screen, split it, and began assigning sectors to various officers and detectives.

She glanced over, frowned when Roarke came in. “I didn’t know you were still here.”

“I wasn’t, now I am. As they didn’t need me, particularly, in EDD, I did some remote work. Now I’m back. How can I help you?”

“I don’t— Actually, you could bring up a map on the other screen, focus on a place called Divine on the East Side.”

“I know it. So do you—at least their products.” “I’ve never been there.”

“Because we stock it at home. One of the perks of owning it.” “Your place?”

“Actually, it’s in your name.”

Even with her mind full of cop details, she stopped cold, blinked at him. “I own an ice cream joint?”

“You own what many consider to be the premier ice cream parlor in the city,” he told her as he worked.

“No one can ever know.”

“Sorry?” Distracted, he glanced over and saw her eyebrows drawn together. “What?”

“Especially Peabody. No one can ever know my name’s on some big-deal ice cream joint.”

“I see we’ll be canceling our plans for the Lieutenant Dallas Frosted, but as you like.”

“You— That’s a joke. Ha-ha. Why is my name on— No, later. I’m losing my focus.”

“Then tell me: How does Divine play into this?”

“They go there—the Mackies. It’s their celebration place. They went there after each strike.”

The amusement, the slight curve of his lips faded away. “Kill people, enjoy a banana split?”

“Something like that.”

“You’ve dealt with some monsters in our time together, but these . . . They’re a separate breed. Father and daughter, celebrating death over ice cream while families mourn.”

“He rewards her. He trained her, helped make her, so he rewards her for a job well done. I’m looking for their hole. If they went to Divine—having stowed the weapons first—I lean toward them holing up in a place within reasonable walking distance of the ice cream joint. According to my information, Divine has been their place since she was a kid.”

Others began to file in as she spoke. “I’m going to ask you to take a deep dive into Mackie’s finances, but even considering pension, death benefits from the wife, he’s paying rent on two places. He’s had to acquire all the weapons, the false IDs. That’s got to stretch his income. So the hole’s likely low rent, maybe a month-to-month.

It’s doubtful he’s had it more than six months.”

“Dallas, Uniform Carmichael and Officer Shelby are on their way in,” Peabody told her. “They won’t be here for at least fifteen.”

“Loop them in remotely. They don’t need to come in.” “Loop Chief Tibble,” Whitney ordered as he stepped in. “I’ve got them.” Feeney moved to the comp.

“Everybody else, give your attention to screen one. Note the buildings highlighted. These are potential nests for today’s attack on Times Square. Note your sectors,” Eve added.

“In the first strike, the suspects used a hotel room, a conventional check-in. They may have done the same here. You’ll search your sectors—hotels, flops, office buildings, studios. The program used to determine these probabilities also, as you see, lists probable angle and direction of strike. You have the most likely floors and angles.

“Hit all, hit thoroughly. Talk to clerks, supers, beat cops, LCs, merchants, dog walkers, residents, cleaning crews. They didn’t pick the nest at random, so at least one of them cased it previously. Find it.”

She turned to the other screen. “Divine,” she began.

“Best Rocky Road in the city,” Jenkinson commented, then shrugged. “Just saying.”

“Your endorsement’s so noted. Apparently the suspects agree— although she prefers the caramel sundae. We’ve learned the suspects indulged themselves after both strikes.”

“Fucking cold,” Feeney muttered. “And I ain’t talking ice cream.” “Zoe Younger, Willow Mackie’s mother, states Mackie has taken his daughter to Divine regularly, as a reward. That pattern remains

here. The Wollman strike took place at fifteen-fifteen. Times Square at thirteen-twenty-one. The Mackies were caught on Divine security feed today at fourteen-twenty-five. And witnesses state they came in at approximately fifteen-forty-five after the Wollman attack. In both cases, Mackie carried nothing, and the daughter only had a backpack.”

“So they left the nest, went to wherever they’re holed up, stowed the weapons. Then went out for dessert,” Baxter concluded.

“And consider the timing. On the afternoon of the Central Park attack. They packed up the weapons, left the East Side hotel, and were ordering ice cream about thirty minutes after the first TOD. Today, the time between the attack and the wits’ statement of their arrival at Divine is more than an hour. It’s a full thirty minutes longer for them to travel from where we project they used a downtown nest for the strike on Times Square, to the East Side location of Divine for their celebration.”

“Takes longer to get there from downtown,” Santiago began, “that’s a factor. But both times they ditched the weapons, the bags. Could they have their own transportation?”

“He didn’t,” Lowenbaum said. “Never knew Mackie to have his own vehicle.”

“East Side Hotel has garage parking for guests,” Eve added. “The Mackies didn’t check a vehicle there.”

“And unless he’s bought one that’s as secure as our Tactical units,” Lowenbaum added, “there’s no way he’d leave weapons inside a vehicle, garaged or on the street. If he has transpo, he’d still stow his weapons in a secured location.”

“He may have recently acquired a vehicle, as he plans to settle with his daughter in Alaska when he’s finished here, but I agree a

trained officer isn’t going to leave a laser rifle in a parking lot while he gets ice cream.”

Once more, Eve gestured to the screen. “It takes longer to travel from any of the highlighted locations downtown to the parlor—add that thirty minutes. But after the first strike, they arrive at the counter, according to the wits, thirty minutes after the first vic’s TOD.”

“Their hole’s on the East Side,” Jenkinson said. “Probably within walking distance of the parlor. You said it’s their place, a father/daughter deal?”

“That’s right, and that’s right. So we focus on this area. First Avenue to Lex, Fifty-Fifth to Fifteenth. That puts the parlor in the center of that quadrant. They could easily have walked from their nest on Second Avenue to any location in that area.”

“That’s a lot of doors to knock on,” Carmichael calculated. “Which is why the e-geeks will eliminate the unlikelies while the

rest of you find the nest.

“We have potential targets in protective custody. You should all familiarize yourselves with the interview recordings conducted today. To summarize, it became clear during the interview with Zoe Younger, Willow Mackie displays psychopathic tendencies, which include offing her brother’s puppy, threatening her stepfather with a knife.”

“The brother, too, sir.” Trueheart flushed as she stopped, turned to him. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”

“Forget that. Go.”

“The kid broke down during Interview.”

“I call it opening up,” Baxter corrected. “He felt safe, and he hasn’t.

He felt like he could talk to Trueheart, and Trueheart would believe him.”

“That, and I think he felt like she—his half sister—couldn’t get to him.” Trueheart glanced at the board. “The kid’s been terrorized, Lieutenant. He said sometimes he’d wake up in the middle of the night and she’d be in his room, just sitting there, staring at him. Once she held a knife to his throat, dared him to call for help.”

“He never told his parents?”

“He was afraid to.” After a moment, Trueheart hissed out a breath. “I could see how scared he was, Lieutenant. She said maybe he’d

end up going out the window, going splat on the sidewalk like his puppy. Or maybe his father would end up with his throat slit some night if he didn’t keep his mouth shut. Or how his mother might fall down the stairs one day, and when the cops came, one of his toy trucks would be there. They’d put him in jail for that. She’d make sure of it. He’s just a kid, sir. He believed her.”

“He was right to. She planned to kill all of them once she completed the assignment for her father. Anybody here thinking of her as a child, stop. Until she’s in a cage, she’s deadly. Anyone thinking of Mackie as a fellow cop, stop. He and his daughter are cold-blooded killers. Find the nest, compile all data and evidence when you do. Anyone assigned to the field, dismissed.

“Feeney, do whatever you can to lower the number of locations for the hole.”

“You got that. You wanna play?” he asked Roarke. “I do, yes.”

“Come up when you’re ready.” Rising, Feeney stuck his hands in his baggy pockets. “Any sense there’s anything weird going on with these two?”

“I think being LDSKs— Oh.” Eve’s hands slithered into her own pockets. “No, nothing like that.”

“Okay then, he’s going to want a place with two bedrooms. She’s nearly sixteen, so they maybe share a nest, short term, but for longer term, probably two bedrooms. Guy wants to go to Alaska, he’s probably trying to save money where he can, so like you said, nothing upscale. Yeah, we can knock the number down some.

McNab, let’s get started.” “I was just thinking.” “He does that.”

With a half grin, McNab rubbed his earlobe and part of the forest of silver hoops riding on it. “You gotta eat, right? Single dad right off, and you add they’re huddled in to work out how to kill a whole bunch of people. Probably not a lot of cooking, even stocking an AutoChef with much more than your basic grab-and-gos.”

“Takeouts, deliveries,” Eve said with a nod. “Pizza, Chinese, subs, those would rank high. And 24/7s, carts.”

“Even thinking with his stomach, that’s not bad.” Feeney gave McNab a light punch. “We’ll add it in.”

“Lowenbaum, do you have Officer Patroni on tap?”

“I brought him back with me. Do me a solid, Dallas, don’t talk to him in Interview.”

In his place, Eve thought, she’d have asked for the same for any of her men. “We’ll talk in the lounge. The three of us. Why don’t you go get us a table?”

“I appreciate it.”

“Peabody, I want you to check that all the civilians we brought in are now secure. And it’s that needle-in-the-hay-pile thing—”

“Stack.”

“Whatever. Run the initials of the yet to be identified against every fricking lawyer in the city. Start with ones who advertise, who specialize in personal injury and wrongful-death suits.”

“That’s a teeny little needle in a lot of haystacks, but I’m on it.” With only Eve and Roarke left in the room, Whitney rose.

“Lieutenant, HSO is inquiring about your investigation.”

She actually felt her spine turn to a rod of steel at the mention of the Homeland Security Organization. “Inquiring, sir, or looking to take it over?”

“Inquiring with the concept, we’ll say, of taking it over.” “It’s a murder investigation, Commander.”

“That could be considered domestic terrorism. And, in fact, is being labeled that by much of the media.”

Part of her brain might have been raging Politics, fucking politics, but her tone held cool and even. “That may be, sir, but the evidence clearly indicates the motive here is murder, and targeted murder. The rest is, or was, nothing but an attempt to cover the specific target.”

“It may be possible to tap some HSO resources without them taking the lead.”

“Respectfully, sir, I feel we don’t have time to jump through those hoops. If I come to believe those resources are more valuable than that time, or that we are unable to move the investigation forward, I would welcome the assistance.”

“Agreed. It’s your case, Lieutenant. And you’re clear for as much overtime as you deem necessary. The proper paperwork on same

will have to be submitted in a timely manner.” “Yes, sir.”

“Shut them down, Dallas. Shut them down.”

When he walked out, Eve pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Fucking HSO. Fucking paperwork. Fucking fuck.”

“Have you eaten anything since this morning?” “For Christ’s sake.”

He pulled a nutribar out of his pocket. “Eat this and I won’t add

fucking nagging to your list.”

“Fine, fine.” She ripped off the wrapper, took an annoyed bite.

Maybe the fact that something that bland tasted delicious meant she needed the damn nutri part of it.

“And since you won’t actually want cop coffee, you could drink a bottle of water during this next meeting. I’m with Feeney, but I’d like to know if you go into the field.”

He caught her face in his hands, kissed her, firm and hard, then left her.

On a sigh, she polished off the nutribar—half wished she had another—as she gave the board one more study.

In the lounge, she saw Lowenbaum at one of the tables with another cop.

Vince Patroni—mid-forties, dark hair cut high and tight over a sharp-boned face—brooded into a cup of cop coffee. Since Roarke had it right, she went for water, and was almost disappointed when Vending burped out the bottle without a hitch.

“Lieutenant Dallas,” Lowenbaum began as Eve and Patroni eyed each other. “Tactical Officer Patroni.”

“The lieutenant says you’re sure, a hundred percent, on Mac.” “That’s right.”

“And his kid, his girl.”

“Right again. Do you need me to run it down for you?”

“No.” Patroni lifted a hand, rubbed his fingers over his eyes. “We were both Army, me and Mac, both weapons specialists, trained at the one-nine-seven. We didn’t train at the same time, but we knew some of the same people from back then.”

“You connected.”

“Yeah. I got a boy, ten, from a busted relationship, and he had Will.

We’d have a brew a couple times a week, catch a game, hit the range. He’d bring Will whenever he had her—to the range, I mean. Girl’s got some serious skill, I mean she’s a killer on the . . .”

Obviously he heard his own words. “Jesus.”

“Let it go,” Eve told him. “You went with them to the practice range regularly.”

“Yeah, not for the last year or so, but before. I brought my own kid a few times, but he’s not interested much. Wants to be a scientist.

And anyway, our kids didn’t much hit it off.” “Age difference?”

“Not really. Owen, he gets on with everybody, old, young, whatever, but he didn’t like her. He told me after the couple of times I took him along that he didn’t want to hang with Mac when she was around. He didn’t like the way she looked. I was surprised, because like I said he gets along with people. I said how he couldn’t judge people by how they look. But he said it wasn’t the way she looks. It was how she looked. At him, at people,” Patroni explained. “She had too much mean in her eyes. He said when she shot at a target, she saw people, and liked imagining them dead.”

“That’s pretty perceptive for a kid.”

“Yeah, well, he’s got that, you know, extra. We think. We haven’t had him tested yet, both his mother and I think he’s too young for it. But he’s got that extra, so when he said he didn’t want to hang with her, I stopped taking him. Mostly, I put it down to Will not liking anybody pulling her dad’s attention off her, and Mac really likes Owen. Mac’s crazy about Will, don’t get me wrong, but he wanted a son. I guess he sort of thinks of Will that way. Not much girlie about her, you know?”

“He got married again.”

“Yeah, Susann was the love of his life, no question. He said Will loved her, too.”

“He said?” Eve prompted.

“Yeah, well . . .” After shifting in his seat, Patroni frowned into his coffee. “My perspective, Will was okay with Susann. From what I could see Susann never got between Mac and Will, encouraged them to have time together. And he was looser, happier, with

Susann. Over the moon when she got pregnant. When she died . . . Broke him to pieces, took him down into the dark, man, deep down. Drinking till he blacked out, every night. I couldn’t talk to him. He shut out everything and everybody but Will. I hauled him out of bars a few times, but then he started just drinking at home, locked in.”

“You didn’t report that behavior to me, Patroni.”

Patroni looked up, met Lowenbaum’s eyes. “It got bad after you had him take the hardship leave, LT. I didn’t see what good it would do to report he was drinking himself sick on leave. And I honestly didn’t think he’d come back on the job. He wasn’t ready to come back on the roll, LT, you knew it. He’d pulled it together some. He was careful there, but we all knew it. You gave him desk work because you knew it, and nobody was surprised when he took his twenty and stepped out. But after that, after he put in his papers, I think he did more than drink himself blind.”

His ex-wife thought the same, Eve remembered. “What more?”

“I went over a few times. He’d lost a lot of weight, looked sick. He had hand tremors, and his eyes . . . Even in the early stages, even when it’s just a little use, you can start to see it in the eyes.”

“You think he went on the funk,” Eve said. “Goddamn it, Patroni, why didn’t you tell me?”

“He was retired,” Patroni said to Lowenbaum. “You weren’t his lieutenant anymore. And I couldn’t prove it. I knew it in my gut, but I couldn’t prove it. When I tried to talk to him about it, he denied it. I went back a couple times after that, but Will was there, said he was sleeping, said he was doing better, was pulling out, how she’d talked him into taking some time away with her, out west.”

“She talked him into it.”

“Camping, she said, fresh air, change of scene. She had it all worked out. The fact is, he’d taken her out to Montana, maybe up to Canada a couple of times before, and Alaska maybe more than a couple.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“A while now, maybe three or four months. He made it pretty damn clear he didn’t like me dropping by, and I couldn’t say, ‘Hey, let’s go have a brew.’ I tagged him a couple times about catching a game, or hitting the range, but he put me off, always had something going with

Will. Or she’d answer his ’link, tell me he was busy, he’d get back to me, but he wouldn’t.”

“Did he ever talk about payback, for Susann?”

“Not in the I’m-going-to-kill-a-bunch-of-people sort of way. He’s my friend, Lieutenant Dallas, but I’m a police officer, and I know my duty. If he’d made serious threats or if I’d suspected—”

“I get that, Patroni.”

“Right.” He scrubbed a hand over his hair. “When he was still talking to me, drinking heavy, he’d talk about how somebody had to pay. I think he hired a lawyer.”

“What lawyer?”

“He never said. But he talked about hiring one. He’d say stuff like his wife and baby had been murdered, and where was the justice? How he’d served his country, served this city, but nobody gave a shit about his wife and baby being murdered. I could talk him down. Hell, I combed over the accident report, the reconstruction. I even talked to Russo and the wits myself. It was an accident—a goddamn tragedy, but an accident. When he was sober, I talked to him straight about it. He didn’t much want to talk to me after that.”

“Do you know when he moved?”

“I didn’t know he had, but I thought, the way he put me off, the way Will blocked me, he’d just moved on. He didn’t want the contact with me, with things or people who reminded him of what he’d lost.”

“Did he ever talk about moving?”

“Sure, he did. He had this thing about Alaska, talked about heading there when Will was eighteen—this was before Susann. After Susann, it was a farm somewhere. Always some dream about getting out of the city, living off the land.”

“But nothing about moving within the city? He had a wife and a baby on the way.”

“Right, right.” Patroni closed his eyes as he thought back. “Yeah, yeah, they were saving up. Yeah, yeah, I remember about this.

Susann was going the professional mother’s route. In fact, she really wanted to quit her job and start nesting or whatever. But he said they needed her income over the next few months so they could get a bigger place. They’d looked at some townhouses, low-end, places that needed work. East Side—I remember that because it would

keep Will in the same school, keep them sort of in the same neighborhood. And Mac was making noises about pushing for full custody of her. Around on Third, maybe. Or Lex. I think that’s the area, in the Twenties or south of there—one of those old post-Urban places that got tossed up. Crap mostly, but you can get them pretty cheap. Ah, they wanted something where they could walk the baby to a park or playground. That was where they were looking.”

“Buy or rent?”

“They wanted to buy, or try one of those rent with option deals.

You can do that with those post-Urbans, or he said you could. I figured yeah, because they’re prefab boxes, mostly falling apart unless somebody’s gone in and put a lot of money and time into it. I lived in one myself—Lower West—when I was in my twenties. I swear the place swayed in a strong wind. But yeah, that’s what they wanted. An investment until they fixed it up, until he could put in his papers, and they moved to that farm. Pipe dreams, I figured, but a guy’s got to have them.”

“Anything else, something he said, someone else he blamed?

These initials JR and MJ, do they mean anything to you? JR, MJ,” she repeated. “These two names are on his list, and as yet unidentified.”

“He stopped talking to me about the accident after I looked into it and talked to him, he didn’t want to talk to me about it. There’s nobody I can—wait, ‘MJ’? I don’t see how it could, he could . . .”

“Who?”

“Maybe Marian. Marian Jacoby. She has a son who goes to Will’s school. Divorced. Susann fixed us up once, we dated a couple times, just didn’t click that way. She works at the lab. She’s an evidence tech at the lab.”

“Hold on.” She yanked out her ’link. “Peabody, Marian Jacoby, evidence tech. Find her, get her covered and brought in. She’s a potential.”

“I don’t know why he’d go after her,” Patroni began.

“Maybe he went to her, maybe she tried to do him a favor, ran a reconstruction on her own time, studied the evidence, the reports, and told him what he didn’t want to hear.”