Page 28 of Devoted in Death

“Maybe there are more sadists out there than we can possibly imagine.”

“Crap. Crap. I don’t even want to think about what’s in there, and now it’s inside me. Along with coffee murdered by milk and sugar. And now I’m hungry.”

Eve dumped the offensive pocket in the recycler where it belonged. “I wasn’t hungry, and now I am. Damn it.”

She went to the AutoChef, programmed a vitamin smoothie.

And was shocked when that’s exactly what she got.

It has worked for Feeney, she thought, bitterly, disguising his real coffee for a spinach smoothie in his office machine. But did she get the candy bar she’d disguised in there?

No, she did not.

“Goddamn Candy Thief. I should’ve known he’d steal me blind while I was on leave.”

“You have candy in there? What kind of—”

“Not anymore.” In disgust, Eve went back to her desk, yanked out a drawer. “Bastard leaves the dumbass power bars, takes the really good chocolate.”

“Chocolate!”

“Gone.” In penance for her own failure, Eve took a glug from the smoothie—which could have been worse—unwrapped the power bar.

“On the map,” she said. “It’s logical to assume they hit him between Perry and Christopher. Tag-teamed him, disabled, got him in the vehicle, restrained. Most probable hole would be this sector. I’ve got uniforms checking out abandoned buildings.”

“I’m not getting anything new or salient in the interviews. Theo Barron and Samuel Deeks came in on their own, so I went ahead and talked to them.”

“Part of the After Midnight group.”

“Right. Theo cried the whole time, kept saying if he hadn’t tried to score with the singer—Hanna—he’d have been with Dorian, and Dorian would still be alive.”

“He’s right about that.” When Peabody’s tired eyes widened, Eve waved her off. “It doesn’t make him guilty or responsible or at fault, it’s just fact. These two wouldn’t have tried for a couple of guys at once. They take singles—that we know of.”

“You still think there’s more.”

“It’s not fact, yet. But it’s logical. Some gaps on the route. Now, maybe they were in a hurry to get from one point to another, or maybe they just didn’t find anybody who did it for them, but the most logical conclusion is they killed somebody in these gaps. It hasn’t been connected, or the body hasn’t been found. But here...” With the power bar she gestured to the New York map. “This is promising. We’ll check it out.”

“I scheduled this break time, but we’ve got more coming in for interviews.”

“Are Baxter and Trueheart still in the bull pen?”

“Yeah, they haven’t caught anything.”

“Fill them in,” Eve ordered. “They’ll take over the interviews while we’re in the field. Give me five to update Mira, send an update to Whitney.”

She tried for an actual conversation with Mira, but was told in no uncertain terms by Mira’s dragon of an admin the doctor was in meetings. So Eve settled for hammering out a quick update, copying both Mira and her commander.

Because it was there, she drank down the rest of the smoothie, then grabbed her coat.

“You set?” she asked Baxter, with a nod to Trueheart as she hit the bull pen.

“We’ve got it.”

She paused a moment, shifted back to Trueheart’s young, earnest face. “Are you set otherwise, Officer?”

“I... yes, sir.”

“She means the detective’s exam, my young apprentice.”