Page 133 of Passions in Death
“Hey, that’s a good angle. I’ll be all over it.”
Eve sat, finished the report. She spent a little more time on her notes, laying on her very circumstantial evidence against Greg Barney.
She took the glides to EDD—less crowded, more thinking time—then walked into the geek carnival of EDD.
Color, movement, sound. Everyone jiggled, pranced, or shook in their bibs and baggies with the stripes, checks, swirls thereon making constantly changing patterns.
E-speak rolled like a strange, foreign language.
She spotted McNab, airboots shuffling, bony hips ticktocking, red-streaked blond tail of hair swaying.
She turned to the brown and beige sanctuary of Feeney’s office.
He sat, worn brown shoes crossed on his desk. With his explosion of ginger hair, wiry with threads of silver, a wild crown on his head, he tipped back in his wrinkled shit-brown suit, baggy eyes closed in his hangdog face.
Before she could step back, he held up a finger. “Thinking, not sleeping.”
In about eight seconds, he nodded; a satisfied smile bloomed.
“Okay, got it.” And opened his eyes. He got up, walked to his wall screen. He held up another finger—just wait—then changed the position of some lines of code or equations or whatever the hell she couldn’t have translated with a stunner shoved in her ear.
“And there it is.”
He swiped something else she could interpret as save, copy, send. Seconds later, someone in the bullpen shouted:
“Wee-oh! Dunked it! Wee-oh, Cap!”
“Fucking-A right.” He stepped back, picked up the lopsided bowl his wife had made, and snagged some candied almonds before offering the bowl to Eve.
She started to shake her head, changed her mind, popped two.
“Whatcha after, kid?” Feeney asked her.
“I sent up a recording,” she began.
“Yeah, yeah, got that right here. Had to deal with this one first.”
He went back around behind his desk. Manually brought the recording on-screen where she’d cued it.
“The redhead’s about to get clocked by the brunette,” Feeney observed.
“Yeah. The guy, off to the left, behind the redhead, beside the blonde—reddish blonde…”
Strawberry blonde—essentially a redhead, she realized. He went from one redhead to another.
Interesting.
“That guy,” she continued. “Watch him, okay? Run it to just after the slap and tell me what you see.”
Eve turned to watch again herself without blocking Feeney’s view.
Over the gasps and murmurs, the crack of flesh to flesh snapped.
“That one hurt. And he liked it.”
He paused it where Shauna’s head reared back and Lopez’s open hand had just started to drop.
“Right? First, I want to enhance until it’s as close to the four of them—slapper, slappee, smirker, and the blonde—as we can get.”
