Page 72 of Treachery in Death

“You’d win that bet.”

“I’m trusting you, Allo, to keep everything said here to yourself. Not to share it, at this time, with the friends you talk to, hook up with. I’m not going to insult you by saying if you do that, if you trust me with those records I’ll see that rip is expunged from your record. But I will tell you, either way you go, I’m going to look into that.”

“I’m not asking for a favor, but I won’t turn this one down.” He sat another minute. “She’s done murder, too?”

“Her hands are bloody.”

“I’m sorry to hear it, sorry because of her old man. You’re going to take her down.”

It wasn’t a question, but Eve answered anyway. “To the ground.”

He nodded, rose. “I’ll get my books.”

He paused at the door, turned back. “There was an officer—female officer—who went down in the line under Oberman.”

“Detective Gail Devin.”

He nodded. “She was a good cop. She was the daughter of an old friend of mine. My oldest friend. We went to school together in the old neighborhood. She had some concerns about Oberman and came to me with them.”

“What concerns?”

“How Oberman tended to have regular closed-door meets with certain members of the squad. How invoices for confiscated illegals and cash were usually under the estimate. Same as me. I looked into it after it happened, as best I could. It looked clean, but I always wondered. I had this place in me that wondered, and it still does. If you look into that, Lieutenant, if you look into what happened to Gail, you can forget about the rip.”

“I’ll be looking into both.”

Driving back to Manhattan, Eve considered angles, approaches, timing.

“I want you to take the lead on Devin.”

“Take the lead?”

“Approaching it like a cold case, an unsolved. Dig into the files. Have McNab and/or Webster help you if you need to shovel anywhere that might send Renee a flag. She’s not thinking about Devin—that’s old, settled business to her.”

“You think Renee had Detective Devin killed?”

“Fact: Devin wasn’t one of Renee’s handpicks. She was a newly minted detective, and according to our source—DS Allo, who strikes me as very grounded—she was solid. In my scan of her records, her evals were the same. Solid. Until assigned to Renee where they took a dip.”

“And that’s pattern with Renee.”

“Add in Mira’s profile, which says Renee has a problem with females. Conclude with another fact. Less than a year under Renee’s command, Devin goes down in a raid. The only officer to go down.”

“How did she go down?”

“The official report states she got separated from her team during the confusion and was found with her neck broken. Read the file, examine the evidence. Dig. Then I want you to tell me if Renee had Devin killed.”

“It could’ve been me. If they’d found me in that shower stall.”

“And you have to put that to the side and study, access, investigate objectively. If there was a cover-up, you uncover it.”

Eve engaged her ’link and contacted Webster.

12

WEBSTER CLICKED OFF THE ’ LINK HE’D PUT ON privacy mode and looked across the table where he’d been enjoying a late lunch. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s not a problem.” Darcia smiled at him. “Do you have to go?”

“Soon.” He reached over, took her hand. “I’d rather stay.”

---