Page 71 of Bonded in Death

“Some of it. He didn’t know all of it, either. I’m going to tell you what I can, and where the investigation stands as of now.”

“Okay.”

She sat on the edge of his desk, and in the shorthand of partners, filled him in.

“I’m going to say I’m sorry, really goddamn sorry, about Summerset’s wife. That’s a hell of a thing. I’m going to say it’s risky bringing all those targets to one place.”

“I know it.”

“Riskier for them to stay scattered, so I’d’ve done the same. They’re going to know this guy as well as anyone’s gonna. Marjorie Wright. Man, I never saw that coming. I had a picture of her taped inside my locker door at the Academy.”

“You— Really?”

“Before Sheila,” he added, and looked more nostalgic than embarrassed. “A boy’s gotta dream. Anyway, I’m going to give your Potter’s alive a probability in the high nineties. Can’t give you the hundred. You need that DNA.”

“I’ll take high nineties. The computer gave me mid-sixties, but I didn’t have time to run another after I found out Pierce had poofed.”

“That’ll up it. But comps don’t have a gut. Considering, if I don’t get a good scent inside the next hour, I’ll tap Roarke. But… Potter, how old would he be?”

“Seventy-eight.”

Feeney shook his head. “The driver, more like mid to late fifties. I don’t know if face work can carve off twenty years. Hell, people’d be getting worked on instead of buying food. I got McNab—he wanted a piece of this—and Callendar working on the face. They should be able to detect makeup, face putty, with enough filters and enhancements. But, well, everybody over forty’d be walking around with putty and all that if it takes two decades off.

“A hire’s more likely.”

“More likely,” she agreed. “To do the pickup, show the card, get Rossi in the limo. But Potter would want to do the kill himself. He’d need to.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

“I’ll get out of your way.”

“I’m going to find this fucker.”

“I’d put money on it.” She opened the door just as McNab—Callendar beside him—raised his hand to knock.

“Hey, Dallas, good timing. Cap, we need a minute, okay?”

He did his come-ahead, but not sharp and irritated. “What you got?”

They stepped in, McNab’s baggies a screaming green, his airboots canary yellow. Callendar’s sported a pattern that made Eve think of some mad witch’s garden. On Mars. In contrast her kicks were an almost subtle blue, if you discounted the bright orange laces on the left, the candy pink on the right.

“What we got,” McNab began, “is hinky.”

“What kind of hinky?”

“Maximum smooth hinky.” Callendar answered Feeney, and shoved her hands into two of her many pockets. “We started with the standard OCS, added the combined filters, mostly for shits and giggles, then boosted that with some NL beams.”

“Good choice. Did you push on F-10—not the F-8?”

“We went up to that.”

McNab picked up the e-speak, and Eve tuned it out before her brain collapsed and died.

When the cross-talk became too much to tune out, Eve lifted her hands. “Dumb it down. In the name of tiny baby Jesus, dumb it down for someone outside your species.”

“Too smooth,” Callendar said.

“I got that. Maximum smooth hinky.”

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