Page 76 of Thankless in Death

“Yeah, I’m heading there. Thanks.” Feeling more settled, she popped another nut. “All around.”

She went, circling around the movement and mayhem to McNab’s cube.

“If you don’t have anything hot, you belong to me today.”

“I’ve got some warm, no hot. I can multitask.”

“Coordinate with Peabody. Find the electronics. When you do, take them apart. I want anything and everything. He had to use the ones in his parents’ place to do some of his research, his financial maneuvers. He’d have wiped them.”

McNab smiled. “He’d think he wiped them. Nothing’s ever all the way clean.”

“Find them,” she repeated.

She went back down to Homicide, and Peabody got up to follow her into her office.

“Suit store? On The Rack. He went in on Sunday, bought the suit, a couple shirts, some ties, socks. He had the suit altered, arranged to pick it up on Monday morning. Said he had other shopping to do. The clerk described him, once I loosened him up, as a snotty little jerk.”

“Sounds like a good judge of character.”

“I’ve got a list of what Reinhold bought there, and at Running Man—they were ready with it.”

“It’s Roarke’s,” Eve said simply.

“Yeah, I got that. Report’s already sent to your unit.”

“Good. McNab’s going to coordinate with you on the electronics. Keep at it.”

“We’re open all day,” Peabody said and headed back to her desk.

Eve closed herself in her office. She worked with the maps, expanded her board. Then sat, drinking coffee, studying the route he’d taken, his timing.

Scanning Peabody’s reports on his purchases, she cemented her image of him.

Suits, ties, shirts—but beyond that primarily the trendy. Airskids and boots, jeans, a leather jacket, the cargo pockets McNab was so fond of, prime athletic wear, silk boxers.

Clothes, she thought, that reflected his own image of himself. Important, stylish, edgy, and successful.

Rich. He saw himself as a rich man now.

She called up the locations of the stores he’d visited, added them in, calculated the most probable route and timing, added that.

Skirting his old neighborhood. Never going into it, or not deep. Detouring out to the East Side—fresh turf.

He buys things along the route, for his new look, for his new vocations. A suit, shoes, cord, tape, athleticwear, a knife. A new ’link, but a drop ’link at least for now. A tablet? A PPC? Wouldn’t he need to continue to research, to keep up with the media reports while on the street?

ID’s the sticker, she decided. He has to get a new one. Would he, as Roarke suggested, try to create one on his own?

Curious, she brought up his file, ran through his employment and education history. No stellar comp skills or experience, she noted, despite the short, aborted attempt to work in comp game design.

Crapped out there, barely passed basic Comp Science in high school, and that with an extra semester. Skin of his teeth in his two college e-courses.

No, he didn’t have the chops to create a passable ID on his own. He had to pay for one, or find someone to do it for him.

She added every e-instructor he’d had, grade school to his short college career. Lab partners? she wondered. She’d check on them when she contacted the instructors.

Then there was Golde—he had the chops, Eve imagined—but he wouldn’t cooperate with Reinhold. Still, she took the time to contact him, to confirm his safety.

She learned he was still at his parents’, and intended to stay there.