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Calculated in Death

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“Get rich quick is usually a scam and always for suckers.” - Eve to Roarke, Calculated in Death[1]

Plot Summary[]

On Manhattan’s Upper East Side a woman lies dead at the bottom of the stairs, stripped of all her valuables. Most cops might call it a mugging gone wrong, but Lieutenant Eve Dallas knows better.

A well-off accountant and a beloved wife and mother, Marta Dickenson doesn’t seem the type to be on anyone’s hit list. But when Eve and her partner, Peabody, find blood inside the building, the lieutenant knows Marta’s murder was the work of a killer who’s trained, but not professional or smart enough to remove all the evidence.

But when someone steals the files out of Marta’s office, Eve must immerse herself in her billionaire husband Roarke’s world of big business to figure out who’s cruel and callous enough to hire a hit on an innocent woman. And as the killer’s violent streak begins to escalate, Eve knows she has to draw him out, even if it means using herself as bait. . . . 

Spoiler warning!
This article contains plot details about an upcoming episode.

Timeline[]

Approximate Story Start Date: November 2060[2]

Day 1[]

Chapter 1[]

  • Lieutenant Eve Dallas is called to a crime scene in November, with a woman laying at the bottom of a short stairway to a lower-level apartment with a broken neck and no coat. Eve forgot her gloves but figures it was just as well since she’d have ruined another overpriced pair once she’d sealed up. The uniformed officer, Turney, says the 9-1-1 call was at 2:12 a.m. and she and her partner were two blocks away. The call came in from the owner of the unit, which is being rehabbed, who had stopped by with his date and saw the body. It looks like a mugging gone south but doesn’t feel like it to Turney – it’s too staged to feel like it’s not a dump site. Eve seals up and gets the ID while she waits for her partner, Detective Peabody, to arrive, noting that the victim's earrings are missing, removed rather than torn off, and the victim, Marta Dickenson, works at an accounting firm eight blocks away.
  • Bradley Whitestone, the person who called it in and one of the building’s owners, gets out of a black-and-white to talk to Eve. He and his partners run a company that does financial consulting, and they are rehabbing the building for their work, with him planning to live in the downstairs apartment. He and his date, Alva Moonie, were out to dinner and drinks when he decided they would stop by on the way home so he could show her the progress. Moonie recognizes Eve from a charity event the previous spring. When they arrived they didn’t see the body at first, but then Alva spotted her and they could see she was dead, so Brad called 9-1-1. Alva tells Eve, “When I met you before, I thought what you did was glamorous. In a way. Like the Icove case, and how it’s going to be a major vid. It seemed exciting. But it’s not. It’s hard and it’s sad.” Eve replies, “It’s the job.”
  • They get contact info for Brad and Alva, with Eve telling Turney they’ll wait to canvass until 7:30 a.m. and Eve will clear it with her Commanding Officer (Sergeant Gonzales) if Turney wants in on the canvass (she does). Eve has Turney get Brad and Alva home. She sees a tarp out of place, bunched up like somebody slipped on it, with some blood splatters, and marks the spot for the sweepers. Peabody runs the wits, saying Alva is loaded and Brad does alright for himself as well. Eve shows her the tarp and they discuss that the body was left there, not with forced entry so whoever killed Marta “had the code, or a damn good reader.”
  • Eve thinks the killer isn’t smart, since if he’s strong enough to break Marta’s neck, why smack her – she was backhanded across the right cheek and has a split lip, hence the blood. “Smart, and controlled enough not to punch, not to beat on her, but not smart enough to leave the area clean. Not smart enough just to take the tarp with him.” She sees what looks like a rug burn on Marta’s right hand and carpet fibers from a vehicle on her pants. “Smart enough to take her valuables, including the coat, to play the bad mugging card. But he left her boots. Good boots, looked fairly new. If you’re a mugger who’d take the time to drag off the coat, why leave her boots?”
  • Peabody says Marta was on her way home from work – her husband contacted the police when she didn’t make it home. Her husband is the brother of a noted criminal judge, and they head to his house for the notification. Peabody says, “I hate this part” and Eve adds, “When you don’t, it’s time to find another line of work.”
  • At the Dickensons’ building, Eve gets grief from the automated night security, and when Peabody points out that she’s actually getting dicked around by the programmer, not by the electronics, she asks Peabody to do a search and scan and find out who programmed “that officious bastard.” Denzel Dickenson is unsurprised but devastated by the news. Peabody calls his sister and brother-in-law while Eve tells him about Marta, where her body was found and the broken neck. He tells her she would never have walked that far alone at night, and she wouldn’t have fought being mugged. Eve tells him there was no sign of sexual assault, and as he rushes out of the room, Peabody says “Sometimes it’s worse that others” while they wait for him to return.

Chapter 2[]

  • Denzel is a corporate lawyer, specializing in estate planning and tax law, and Eve tells Peabody to see if there’s a connection between him and Whitestone, but she doesn’t find one. Denzel’s sister, Judge Gennifer Yung, arrives, along with her husband, Dr. Daniel Yung. Dr. Yung says he’s been married to a lawyer and a judge for 36 years, so he knows Eve has to ask about the Dickensons’ marriage, and he tells her they loved each other very much, they had a good life, a happy family, and he doesn’t know anybody who would want to harm either of them. He asks Eve to go back to the kitchen to speak with his wife while she’s making coffee, and Peabody stays to ask Denzel more questions.
  • Judge Yung says Denzel will never get over it, that he and Marta met in college and that was it for both of them. The families are very close, with Marta like a younger sister to Judge Yung. She says she knows Eve has to look at her brother, since the spouse is always the first suspect, and she’ll give her a list of their friends, the neighbors, coworkers, the nanny, etc. for Eve to interview. She can’t arrange for the warrant because it’s a conflict but she’ll have another judge issue and sign it. She just wants to make sure the searching is done with the children out of the house – they’ll stay with Judge and Dr. Yung for a few days.
  • Yung asks Eve to tell her what she can, and Eve tells her it appears as though Marta was mugged and it went south, asking the judge if Marta would have had a briefcase or handbag – Yung says both and is able to describe the briefcase, along with her wrist unit and wedding ring. She tells Eve not long ago she and her husband were joking that if any of the scum she’d sent over followed through on their death threats, she would want Eve to be the one leading the investigation, and to please arrange for Dr. Morris to handle the body. Eve asks what coat Marta would have been wearing, and Yung describes it, adding that she would have worn a scarf as well.
  • They leave with Denzel’s 'link, Peabody under instructions to have McNab process it asap. Eve requested that Harpo [sic] process the fibers on Marta’s pants, and she tells Peabody to get Detectives Carmichael and Santiago on the search warrants for the Dickensons’ residence, vehicles, and offices, making sure the family isn’t home when they start the search. She tells Peabody to have Uniform Carmichael pick a team for the canvass, contact Turney’s CO to let him know Eve requested Turney for the duty, saying she has good instincts (“There’s a little Peabody in there”) and telling Peabody “Don’t even think about asking if she’s got a smaller ass, prettier face, tougher chops or whatever you’re thinking. Just get it done.”
  • Eve and she thinks it was target-specific – they grabbed Marta and knew the apartment was empty, had the codes, knocked her around a little to make it look like a mugging, but doesn’t think it’s payback on Yung – they’d have messed her up a lot more, made a statement, and gone closer than the sister-in-law. She thinks somebody wanted information about a client from Marta, so after Eve finishes at the morgue, they’ll go to Marta's office and talk to her supervisor and coworkers. Eve drops Peabody at Central and calls her husband, Roarke, to let him know she won’t be back. She tells him about the victim, saying “You couldn’t swim through the love and grief in that place. It just kept flooding the air.” She asks him if he knows anything about Marta’s firm, and he says they have a steady, straightforward reputation. She tells him the husband’s law firm rents space in his headquarters, and also asks him about the WIN Group (Whitestone’s company), which he hasn’t heard of but can easily get information on. He knows of Alva Moonie, that she used to be a wild child until a few years ago.
  • At the morgue, Morris is already working on Marta’s body, with weeping sax and tearful bass in the background. He says “Our day began when hers ended” and Eve says Marta was working overtime and her day didn’t end very well. Morris says he took the night shift this week because he was feeling restless, and when Eve tells her Judge Yung is Marta’s sister-in-law, Morris says he and Genny share an appreciation for the same type of music, and he’d met Denzel and Marta once at a musical evening Genny had in her home. He didn’t recognize Marta, but Genny always spoke so warmly of her. Morris says there are light stun marks on her, which Eve says is seriously stupid if the killer wanted it to look like a mugging.
  • Morris says it was just enough to incapacitate her, to daze her, and Eve speculates that the killer grabbed her coming out of her office building, shoved her in a van, stunned her so she couldn’t fight back, took her to the murder scene – she figures somebody else was driving, and Morris says the pattern of the bruising indicates large hands, making the need to stun her make even less sense. The killer manually snapped her neck from behind – he’s right-handed and very strong. Controlled but not professional. Military or para, used to kills on the field where you don’t have to clean things up before the cops get there. Eve figures Marta would have told them whatever they wanted to know, but they killed her anyway.

Chapter 3[]

  • Eve has a little incident with a vending machine near Homicide, with Baxter buying her a blueberry Danish before her vending privileges, such as they are, get suspended. He closed a case, with Trueheart taking the lead and doing a great job on the murderer ex-girlfriend who didn’t want to be the ex, “playing her in interview like a shortstop plays an infield grounder.” Baxter says Trueheart’s lost his green and has earned a shot at detective. Eve says if he wants to take the exam, he can take it the first of the year to give him a little more experience and study up, and that Baxter has done a good job with him.
  • Eve fills Peabody in on the morgue visit, with Peabody saying she put an alert out on the wedding ring, wrist unit, and earrings Marta was wearing and started a run on their financials (both Dickensons), which seem solid. The warrant comes through, along with a note that the Dickensons are going to be at Yung's place, so Eve tells Peabody to give Carmichael the warrant and have her and Santiago get started on the searches. Commander Whitney appears, having heard that Judge Yung’s sister-in-law was killed, and Eve runs it through for him. He says he will have the media liaison issue a statement to save her time. He adds that Chief and Mrs. Tibble are very friendly with Judge and Dr. Yung.
  • Harpo/Harvo calls with info on the fibers – she’s narrowed it down to three vehicles that use that particular color, either this or last year, and the blood was indeed from the victim, adding that “a lot of us have testified before Judge Yung.” McNab verified Denzel’s story about Marta contacting him the previous evening, and the 'link shows Marta’s coat, scarf, hat, and gloves, plus her briefcase and a red handbag. Since Marta worked in a division that handled audits, Eve figures she was looking into something hinky – snatch the auditor, find out what she knows, what she’s put on record, who she’s talked to, get the information, kill her, set it up as a mugging, then fix the numbers or put the money back. Peabody contacts Judge Yung to clear the way for a warrant on everything Marta’s worked on for the past month.
  • The guy on security at Brewer, Kyle, and Martini confirms that Marta is dead, saying “you gotta hope it’s a mistake, you know? She’s a nice woman, always says hi when she comes in.” He says she routinely worked late – all of them do, especially during tax season, when they may as well live there, and he’ll clear it with his boss to get her the security log for the past week or so. He says she had a nice family, and it’s a damn shame. At the office itself, the receptionist is weeping – the only reason she and the other receptionist are there is to cancel all the appointments. They were told that Marta was killed by a mugger, and Eve doesn’t disabuse them. Eve and Peabody go back to Marta’s supervisor’s office; Sylvester Gibbons says Marta’s office is locked and nobody but he has been in that morning. He blames himself for Marta working late, saying two of their auditors were at a convention in Las Vegas and were due back but there was a car accident that injured both of them and he gave Marta and another auditor, Lorraine, extra work just yesterday. He and Lorraine left around eight, but Marta was still working – she was the best auditor he had.
  • Eve tells Gibbons she doesn’t think Marta was the victim of a random mugging, but was abducted when she left the office and taken to another location where she was killed. Her briefcase was taken, and it would have contained at least some of her work. She hopes the news reports will continue to call it a mugging, but it wasn’t. He says he needs to talk to Legal before he can give Eve Marta’s files, and she assures him a warrant is in the works, and that he wasn’t responsible for her death, the killer was.

Chapter 4[]

  • Eve looks at Marta’s comfortable but not overly personal office, and as she’s replaying communications from her, her assistant, Josie Oslo, comes in, startled to hear Marta’s voice. Eve asks her if there have been any problems lately, anything unusual, and she tells Eve and Peabody about the accident with Chaz and Jim in Vegas and the extra work Marta’s supervisor gave Lorraine and her, including that Marta worked late the previous evening. Josie says that Candida Mobsley had threatened Marta – Candida had taken money she wasn’t supposed to and tried to cover it up, Marta told her if she kept harassing her she’d have to report the communications to the trustees and the court, and then Marta told Josie to tell her if Candida or anybody else contacted her about the audit or tried to pressure her about it, but nobody else did. Eve asks her to give Peabody Mobsley’s contact info and send Lorraine in.
  • Peabody tells Eve Mobsley is all over the media – in and out of rehab for illegals and/or alcohol abuse, car wrecks, smacking her rivals, tearing up hotel suites, etc. – basically a rich, spoiled heiress with a history of violent behavior. Eve tells Peabody to get her info so they can meet with her and has her go downstairs to get the logs from the security guy. Lorraine tells Eve she looks capable and asks what she needs from her. Lorraine says they usually deal with corporations and large businesses, so there’s no real threats going on, and although it’s not unheard of to be offered a bribe, Marta would never make that choice – “Numbers don’t lie, Lieutenant. Sooner or later, they’ll add up correctly, and that quick, easy money will have proven a very poor choice.”
  • Eve talks to the rest of the staff, getting a picture of a woman well-liked by her coworkers, and meets back up with Peabody to go back to the crime scene and to follow up with the witnesses before they track Candida down. Peabody falls asleep just a few blocks from Brewer, Kyle, and Martini, and Eve orders her to fuel up at a deli and take a booster if she needs it. Eve mentally reconstructs the scene when they get to the apartment building. Peabody runs into Uniform Carmichael at the deli, and brings him back to Eve – so far the only thing they’ve found in their canvass is a witness who maybe saw a dark van and the lights on in the lower apartment around 10:30 p.m.; the witness has been watching the rehab progress so assumed it was one of the crew working late. Eve asks how Turney did and Carmichael says, “She don’t give up.” Eve tells him to take her on the second pass (when people are home from work) if she wants.
  • Eve thinks Marta would have told them whatever they wanted to know – she wouldn’t have played the hero, and she didn’t fight back. Peabody returns with chicken noodle soup that tastes like her granny’s and twisty herb bread. Eve figures they always meant to kill Marta because they didn’t want her to talk, and she thinks the owners of the building are involved, or much lower probability somebody on the construction crew is. There are over two thousand Maxima Cargos – the likeliest vehicle for the snatch, 2059 or 2060, with New York registration, double that if New Jersey is included, so Eve tells Peabody to stick to current year only (over 800 in New York) and they arrive at the WIN Group headquarters.
  • They meet with Brad and Eve tells him that it wasn’t a mugging, and Marta was killed inside his apartment. Eve gets the names of everyone who had access codes to the building, and Peabody gives Brad the names of the Brewer, Kyle, and Martini clients that overlapped with the WIN Group, none of who are Brad’s.

Chapter 5[]

  • They go to a conference room so they can interview the partners. Brad gives the backstory of the founding of the company five years ago. He and Rob Newton went to college together and they added Jake Ingersol, who worked with Rob after college. The three clicked, bought and flipped a place, and started the company with the profits.
  • Eve and Peabody interview Rob, who reminds her of Roarke with his “absolute confidence with hints of power.” He tells them he’s just scored tickets to the premiere of The Icove Agenda and he feels better knowing Eve and Peabody are in charge of Marta's investigation. He has three clients with Brewer, Kyle, and Martini, but he works with Jim Arnold, not Marta.
  • Jake gets back from lunch and joins Rob (Brad leaves for a meeting). Jake thinks somebody from the construction crew didn’t lock up, giving the killer access to the apartment. He also has clients with Brewer, Kyle, and Martini, but with Jim Arnold and Chaz Parzarri, although he met Marta once in passing. His alibi for the previous evening is Sterling Alexander, one of the mutual clients (with Chaz), and then dinner with a woman he’s been seeing.
  • Peabody sums up the company as “[Rob] Newton’s the smooth one, [Bradley] Whitestone’s the charisma, and [Jake] Ingersol’s the hamster.” None of them have a Cargo registered, but Eve tells Peabody to check their finances and their families, and they head to Mobsley’s penthouse. Peabody says she’s juiced about the premiere, which Eve is not looking forward to, but Peabody reminds Eve that it’s important to Nadine, because playing the friend card always works. Detective Carmichael finished the home and vehicle search, so Eve tells her to take one of the people who had access to the apartment while they’re waiting for the warrant on the work stuff, and run down the alibis they just got. Peabody contacts Judge Yung to tell her the residence is clear and to get an ETA on the other warrant.
  • Candida, who lives in an almost totally white palace-like space, tells Eve it doesn't make any difference to her that Marta was killed, according to her money guy, Tony Greenblat, since they'll just have somebody else do the audit. She sent Marta flowers and offered her $10K under the table if she'd clear the audit; she considered that a nice chunk of change for “some bookkeeper bitch,” then upped it to $20K. Eve threatens to arrest her for confessing to offering a $20,000 bribe in exchange for altering a court-appointed audit, which is a felony. She says she was going to make Marta sorry by buying Brewer, Kyle, and Martini and firing her. Meanwhile, her white panther cub is all about Eve, and Peabody opts for the water, which was harvested from snowmelt in the Andes, and tasted like water.
  • They determine that Candida is too dumb to have anything to do with Marta’s death (Candida thinks she’s allowed to threaten Marta because “it’s, like, freedom of speech. It’s, like, the Fifth Amendment or whatever.”). If she wanted to hurt Marta, she would have done it herself, but she needs to not smack anybody for another 81 days or else she needs to take more anger management classes, which are boring. Eve tells her “sending flowers is nice; bribery’s not nice, it’s illegal. Try to remember that.”

Chapter 6[]

  • Eve sends Peabody to interview the head of the construction company while she follows up with Alva Moonie, the other witness. She lives with her housekeeper, Cicily Morgan, who used to be her nanny. Brad is courting Alva and her money, but they’re taking it slow – she used to be a wild child until she was badly hurt, ending with an ugly trial, and now she’s a good deal more cautious. Her wild days included time with Candida, who she says hasn’t changed a bit, and is a little crazy and not very bright. Sissy says “she’s the person she wants to be.” Eve tells Alva she’s doing a good job with her second chance.
  • Once home, Galahad gives her a wide berth, hissing at Eve, smelling Delilah the panther cub on her, and she falls asleep almost instantly. Roarke comes home and joins her in a nap, bringing Galahad with him to bed. Eve dreams about being at the Dickensons’ penthouse. Dr. Yung says “Family meant everything. She’d have done, given, said anything to protect them.” Eve says, ”That’s what mothers do” and then sees Stella sneering at her from the doorway, who tells her “She’d have thought about herself, like everybody. She hated being stuck in this place with a sniveling kid. Just like me. She’s no better than me.” Eve tells her to fuck off, saying she doesn’t have time for Stella. Eve knows Marta thought of her kids and Denzel, and she gave the killers whatever they wanted, but she still knew whatever it was – somewhere the numbers won’t add up. Eve wonders how she will find the right ones, the wrong ones, and Roarke steps beside her, stroking a hand down her hair, asking, “Do you really have to ask?” Eve says, “Oh yeah, I’ve got you,” opening her eyes to see him there in bed with her and they make love.
  • Eve tells Roarke she had magic chicken soup for lunch and he says he had to talk to entirely too many people for entirely too long when he had lunch in the executive dining room, which Eve interprets to mean he had to be Scary Roarke, saying she didn’t get to kick any ass, but she did intimidate a really rich idiot (Candida), who’s too much of a moron to have planned the murder, and if she’d paid to have it done she’d have bollocksed it up when Eve was grilling her. She tells Roarke Candida had a panther, and Galahad curled his lip at Eve over it. She determines that Roarke hasn’t slept with either Candida or Alva, though he knows of both of them. They agree to eat steak, drink wine, and talk murder and money.

Chapter 7[]

  • Eve thinks she’s won the trifecta with her own home, a real meal, and a man who not only listened but got it. She thinks the murder was all business – not a personal motive. She thinks the motive is one of the accounts Marta picked up from Chaz or Jim, and that it would have been easy enough to find out which accounts were moved to her when Mr. Very Bad Man calls to express concern about the accident and is told not to worry, that Marta does excellent work and will in fact be burning the midnight oil right there that night to catch up. Mr. VBM calls in a couple of goons to find out what Marta knows and get the files and get rid of her, but Lieutenant Very Smart Woman detects the subtle mistakes in their work.
  • Eve cleans up after the meal and Roarke gets started looking into the money. Eve runs the two auditors who were injured in Vegas. Jim Arnold looks like an accountant, and has money problems with an older child in private rehab. Chaz Parzarri doesn’t look like an accountant but has an advanced degree and had scholarships. Both have many traffic violations, but no criminal history.
  • By the time Eve is falling asleep, neither she nor Roarke have found anything. Chaz and Jim won’t be cleared for travel for another couple of days, and Eve doesn’t want to tip her hand by going there to interview them in person. She wonders whether Stella or Marta was right – if Marta truly thought of her children and husband right before she died and realizes that yes, she did, and that even though she copied files to her home unit she didn’t tell the killers that, protecting her family.

Day 2[]

Chapter 8[]

  • Eve and Roarke eat breakfast, with Eve asking what meetings Roarke’s had so far and what he has coming up, trying to get a feel for what big shot business people do. He chooses her clothing so she exudes subtle power – authority, but not too threatening. Roarke also tells Eve her dress for the premiere is here, and that he has arranged for Peabody, McNab, Mavis, and Leonardo to go with them in the limo. Before she can leave for work she’s tagged that there’s been a break-in at Brewer, Kyle, and Martini – Sly Gibbons called it in. Somebody has been in Marta’s office, on her computer, and files are missing, including backups. She calls Denzel, telling him she’s sending a couple of cops to his apartment and not to answer the door to anybody else, then calls dispatch for the detail and tags Peabody to meet her at Brewer, Kyle, and Martini with McNab.
  • On the way, Eve thinks whoever broke in thought it was better to change the files than to risk killing another accountant, or possibly feign outrage that your data was compromised and threaten to take your business elsewhere – basically, stall until you get your accountant back. She schedules a meeting with Mira for a profile and then tells the security guy she has an e-man on the way and he will work with the security guy. Sly was on Marta’s computer, using his supervisor/master code to get files for reassignment, when he noticed that at least eight accounts were missing files. He contacted security, then Eve. Whoever took the files also took the petty cash, about three hundred dollars, from the safe, and the count is now up to ten missing files.
  • Eve is sure it’s the same person, with the same semi-professional mentality: Professional enough to cover your tracks, stupid enough to leave a trail taking the cash and the files. The killer/thief would have been smarter to leave the money and just corrupt the files. McNab says the thief left digital fingerprints – he found a shutdown code blended in with the rest, and he’s sure it was done remotely. He says the system is older, but not crap, and senior partner Stuart Brewer chimes in that “It didn’t do its job, it’s crap,” asking McNab for a recommendation. He says he intended to retire in about six months but will put that off until he knows he can leave the place clean; he plans to get up to speed on Marta’s files that day.
  • Peabody feels sorry for Mr. Brewer, and Eve outlines why he’s not guilty. She says for now they’ll concentrate on the files Marta sent to her home unit, since there had to be a reason she did that and didn’t tell anyone. They start with Young-Biden, a health company – they own health centers, hospitals, clinics, meds, supplies, etc. Eve bullies her way in when the receptionist tries to stonewall her.

Chapter 9[]

  • Eve starts with the CEO, Carter Young-Sachs. His admin, Tuva Gunnarsson, is sleeping with and probably in love with him and knows more about the business than either he or Tyler Biden (the COO). Basically, Young-Sachs and Biden have their jobs through nepotism. Young-Sachs has a rich man’s tan, a gym-fit body, and a quick, crooked smile women probably found charming, along with the pinprick pupils of the high if not the mighty. He recognizes Eve’s name from the vid, referring to her as “Roarke’s wife,” which she loves, and calling Eve and Peabody celebrities (ditto). He gives his alibi for the previous evening, which is losing at poker and then sex with his admin.
  • Tyler Biden has the broody, sulky looks some women found appealing. He has the same alibi of poker, except he won and stayed longer at the poker tournament. When he finds out Marta’s office was broken into, he demands that Eve and Peabody speak with Young-Biden’s lawyers and tells Tuva to get Rob (Newton) on the ’link now. He calls Eve “Roarke’s get-out-of-jail-free card,” in case it wasn’t absolutely clear he’s a jerk, quickly adding “no offense,” to which Eve tells him, “Considerable taken” and they head to Alexander and Pope Properties.
  • Sterling Alexander is a prosperous-looking man with dark hair. The perfect touches of elegant white at the temples added distinguished to his sharply chiseled features. He worked with Chaz Parzarri until he was injured in Las Vegas, and is very upset about the murder and break-in, which have inconvenienced him; he suggests a competitor engineered the accident and then the murder. When Eve requests his alibi, he lets her know his father founded the firm before she was born, and he has run it for seven years. She tells him it’s routine, and his half-brother (same mother), Thomas Pope, joins them. He also gives his alibi, sharing that he and his wife are looking forward to the premiere, and filling Eve on the history of the company.
  • Sterling tells Eve that’s all the time they have. He suggests looking at their competitors, saying they’re the victims here. Eve is suspicious of Sterling for being an asshole and Pope for being too self-effacing. Sterling’s ‘link didn’t ring while there were in there, but Pope had at least two calls. She thinks Pope does most of the work while Alexander plays big shot.
  • The next visit is to Your Space, an organizing company owned and run by four women. All of them, including their office manager, were at the office until about 9:30 p.m. the night Marta was murdered - they had an after-hours staff meeting. The audit was due to a merger - Your Space is looking to acquire a company that designs and makes organizing equipment and tools, but has a mostly online presence. Their financial advisor is Jake Ingersol of the WIN Group and they worked with Jim at Brewer, Kyle, and Martini. Tisha, one of the founders, says Jake has a lot of energy and enthusiasm: “We always say we feel like we could organize the world after a session with Jake.” Angie, another founder, tells Eve her goal is to organize Roarke World. Marta was also in the process of hiring Your Space to redesign her husband’s home office and their bedroom.

Chapter 10[]

  • Trueheart recognizes Holly Novak’s picture – she’s one of the founders of Your Space, which his mother’s company hired to organize and streamline the office where she works. Trueheart remembers her as friendly and energetic, and Mrs. Trueheart thought she was ruthless, but in a good way: “Mom liked her, I know that. She said how she wished my aunt would hire her. She’s kind of a pack rat, my aunt. And when she [Holly] found out I was a cop out of Central, she said how she bet we could use a good organizer, made kind of a joke about fighting crime through spacial efficiency.”
  • He also recognizes Young-Sachs and Biden from Eve’s murder board, saying they get a lot of media as the new breed of movers and shakers, and his take is they’re spoiled, entitled, and showy. Eve adds assholes and Trueheart can’t argue. He had stopped by to thank Eve for giving him a chance at the detective’s exam, and tells her he won’t let her or Baxter down.
  • Eve sets Your Space aside for now but is keeping Young-Biden and Alexander and Pope high up, wondering if it was funny or telling that Roarke’s name had come up in each interview. She’s got 15 minutes until her meet with Mira, but Judge Yung pushes her way in to request an update and ask Eve about sending a police unit to her brother’s home, which Eve tells her was a precaution after the break-in. Yung says Denzel and the children will stay with her husband and her for the time being because it’s too painful for them to be at home. Yung asks if Eve thinks Marta’s murderer is up on the murder board, and Eve tells her she doesn’t know, but the reason for her murder is up there, and that will lead to the person or persons.
  • Mira’s admin gives Eve grief even though she’s 30 seconds early, and Mira compliments her on her outfit: “Powerful but not hard, fashionable but not flashy, authoritative but not threatening.” Mira says she likes Judge Yung, both personally and professionally and that she met Marta a few times, and she struck her as a lovely and loving woman. Eve says she’s dead because she drew the short straw and inherited files from the injured auditors.
  • Mira agrees with Eve’s assessment of the murders as semi-pro – the job was rushed and they didn’t feel like they needed to pay for a full professionals, preferring to use somebody already on their payroll. She says Eve is dealing with brutish, cold-blooded, and physically trained individuals for the actual killing – those who do what they’re told but don’t think for themselves. Whoever hired them also doesn’t consider the long view – it’s immediate gratification rather than careful planning and finesse. The concern is the files, the data, not the victim – she’s disposable. It’s not cruelty, it’s callousness. Eve says “It’s business” and points out that in two of the three companies, the business was inherited. Mira also thinks the killer was showing off with how strong he is, completing the kill with his own hands rather than a weapon or tool, that he’s the weapon. Eve thinks he was compensating for stunning her first, since that was cowardly.
  • Mira says the person who ordered the kills is impatient, impulsive, and accustomed to having what he wants and quickly, with a distinct lack of compassion or attention to those who do the work so he can live as he lives. Eve says that eliminates the four women who own Your Space, since none of them are entitled assholes, and they all pay attention to details. They’re organized and efficient, and if they’d targeted the victim, it would have been a very tidy, very clean hit. Eve adds that killing Marta was inefficient, which those women are not. She tells Mira about the dream she had last night, ending with that she told Stella to fuck off,” which Mira calls progress and applauds. Eve said the dream made her realize Marta thought of her kids, of her family – she died before she put them in the killer’s crosshairs, unlike Stella, who was one of the monsters, and would have killed Eve herself.
  • Mira tells Eve she’s looking forward to the premiere and even made Dennis buy a new tux. Eve says if they don’t close the case before the premiere, she will have a chance for an up-front look at her suspects since plenty of them will be there.
  • McNab sees the same digital fingerprint for Marta’s comps as for the building security, so it’s the same hacker. The job was to get the files, compromise the unit, and move on, without checking Marta’s outgoings, so they don’t know that she copied the files to her home unit by way of a disc. The killer probably thought he got the backups because the discs were in her briefcase, without realizing she had copies on her home unit. The killer did what he was supposed to do, but didn’t do extra.
  • Eve tells Feeney she has bad guys who get the job done, but don’t go an inch further to do it right. They kill a woman because that’s the job, but the woman doesn’t have to be killed to reach the objective. They come in after the fact to clean up, and don’t check all the corners. They use a location for the kill that rings bells. If she was doing an eval on the guy it would read: “does the job, but doesn’t think outside the box, isn’t able to access the situation as it evolves and adjust accordingly.” She also tells Feeney that Trueheart is going to take the detective’s exam, saying he’s not green, but he’s still fresh. If she sent him out on assignment he wouldn’t just get the job done, but he’d tie up the details and adjust, and he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. She figures there’s a killer and a hacker, and bad management, but she still doesn’t know who the players are or why, beyond money/greed. Feeney suggests looking at the spouses. He also mentions that he has to rent a monkey suit for the premiere and Eve tells him Mr. Mira is buying a new one, plus she has to wear a dress and stilts and put crap all over her face so not to cry to her.

Chapter 11[]

  • Back in her office, Eve checks with Vegas to find out that the auditors would be cleared to travel the following day. Peabody hasn’t narrowed the van down but says that Chaz has fourteen first cousins, eleven of whom live in New York or New Jersey. Their suspects all live within their considerable means, with lots of travel to frosty places. They stop by a boutique to interview Young-Sachs’s ex-girlfriend, Brandy Dyson, who owns and runs it and describes him as selfish, self-absorbed, lying, and cheating and his “conjoined twin” Tyler Biden as a “smirking, sneering, superior-assed fuck.” Carter talked up his financial advisor, but Brandy says she’s careful when it comes to her bottom line.
  • As they’re walking back to the car, Eve hears a faint whine and feels a pressure thump into her back, between her shoulder blades. She realizes she’s been stunned, but the magic coat blocked it, so she knocks Peabody down, comes up with her weapon, and sees the six-four, two-fifty while male with a ski cap, sunshades, scarf, and coat execute a quick pivot and run. She chases the killer, but loses him when he grabs a toddler off the ground, coldcocks the father, and throws the shrieking kid through the air. Eve catches the kid, but the force knocks her flat and hard, with the kid’s skull ramming her chest. Peabody lifts the boy from Eve, trying to comfort him, and calls for medicals. The boy is fine but the mother grabs Eve to hug her thanks, causing Eve even more pain. Eve figures the killer to be a former football or arena ball player.
  • They head to the WIN Group for more interviews. Rob Newton greets Eve by shaking her hand, having seen the intercepted pass, which is all over the screen and internet. She talks to the three partners, who are heading over to the new building, which has been cleared, letting them know the man she was chasing is the one who killed Marta. They don’t recognize him from her description and none of the vids caught him, just Eve catching Chuckie. Brad says they think it’s corporate espionage, and Eve points out the companies are not in the same businesses or areas and are therefore not competitors. Satisfied she planted seeds of doubt, she heads home to soak her aching ass.
  • Summerset gives her grief, calling the elevator for her and giving her a blocker so he can tell Roarke she took it. Roarke walks into the bedroom as she’s struggling to take her coat off, having reinjured the shoulder that had barely healed from the recent life-and-death struggle with Isaac McQueen in New York to Dallas. He tells her “nice catch.”

Chapter 12[]

  • Roarke is very angry (not at her, obviously) and worried, so Eve tries to play it off by teasing him about getting her naked. They determine that her tits and ass (two of Roarke’s favorite parts) got the brunt of the injuries. She tells him she’s sure the killer played ball, that the kid had to have weighed twenty-five pounds, and he tells her twenty-seven according to the parents. He tells her she has a bruises on her ass in the shape of Africa, Australia, and a small chain of islands, and she needs ice on her ass. Roarke hadn’t realized Eve had been fired on, having only seen the media report with her catching Chuckie. She tells him that’s desperation, impulse, and stupidity – firing a stream at a couple of cops in the middle of the Meat Packing District, with people swarming everywhere. She thinks it’s not the first time he’s fired a stunner, so he’s probably ex-military or paramilitary. She thinks he thought Eve took Peabody down when she fell from the stun, not that he missed and Eve’s excellent reflexes saved her partner from being stunned.
  • Eve is sure it’s Alexander/Pope/Parzarri/Ingersol or Young/Biden/Arnold/Ingersol or any of those with Newton. Roarke says Sterling Alexander is considered a bit of a tool in some circles, spending far too much on travel, income, and perks, while holding the line at a contrasting low end for employees. Both Alexander Senior (his father) and Pope Senior (Thomas Pope’s mother) hold controlling interests even though they’re essentially retired. They built good facilities, donated generously, and funded a number of excellent causes.
  • Roarke gets in the tub with Eve, but not for sex – he rubs the cream over her aching shoulder and continues his report on Young-Biden – basically the same situation, with spoiled brats inheriting the firm and doing little to earn a living. Eve confirms that Young-Sachs was high when she interviewed him, and Roarke says he’s required to be in the offices or on company business for twenty-five hours a week in order to receive his generous salary and benefits. He’s charming and personable when he choose to be, and does well entertaining clients. Eve says his inner child needs a good spanking, but she doesn’t know if he’s smart enough to screw around with the books, plus he’d just figure he’s entitled to it anyway, but she can see him ordering up a murder to get his hands on something that wasn’t his, except then he’d have to know what to do with the data. Roarke says Biden is smarter, cagier, more ambitious, and ruthless, with a cold, cruel streak.
  • Roarke tells Eve to watch the video – Chuckie wasn’t the only one who was flying – she flew back when she caught him. She realizes he rearranged his schedule to be home to treat her, and he reiterates that he’s stupefied in love with her, which she says none of the people she’s looking at would understand, which is maybe why it’s so easy for them to kill, or pay to kill. She thinks the killer came after her because he was insulted that she got in his business, and it was a stupid move on his part. They make love, with Roarke doing most of the work and being very gentle.

Chapter 13[]

  • Peabody updates Eve on the exes – Biden’s ex is bitter, Brad’s thinks he spent too much time working, Newton’s fiancée’s friends think they’re adorable, and Eve tells her to meet her at the hospital where the two auditors are being transported from Vegas at 8 a.m. Roarke bribes Eve with a smiley-faced mini pepperoni pizza if she eats her vegetable stir-fry, and they discuss the seven deadly sins, but mostly greed and envy for the main players. Eve pins Roarke down on his favorite suspect, who is Sterling Alexander. He thinks Young-Sachs has more sloth than greed or lust – he’s dim and incompetent. Biden comes off as a loose cannon, with a quick temper, but Roarke doesn’t think Young-Sachs’ admin would cover something that would come back to bite him. He thinks Pope is exactly who he seems, and if he wanted more he could just assert himself, but that falls outside his comfort zone. Roarke doesn’t see Pope ordering the murder of anybody, let alone a mother.
  • Alexander has five full-time domestic staff, three part-time, and three domestic droids, which Roarke thinks is excessive and proof of his pride – he’s proud of his status and wealth. Pope has two part-time domestics and no droids. Alexander keeps two shuttle pilots on twenty-four-hour call, which Roarke considers showy and wasteful. He has a long-term mistress, whom his father deemed inappropriate for him. He is a staunch Conservative, one who bangs the political drum, and likes to trot out his family as examples of those values, those ideologies.
  • Eve tells Roarke if he’s right she’ll fix him a non-pizza dinner and clear the dishes. They separate for her to find a mistress and him to look for corporate misdeeds. She finds Alexander’s mistress, who is 57, already loaded from starting a national chain of eateries with her now-deceased husband, and an MIT grad (scholarship at age 18) with a business degree. Her husband died during a sudden squall off the coast of Australia when his sailboat was swamped. At the time, his wife was in New York, helping her mother recover from minor surgery. The investigation into the drowning – Chambers and four others, crew and passengers – had been thorough. It looks like Alexander and Mrs. Chambers rekindled their romance after she was widowed.

Chapter 14[]

  • Roarke finds a few barely hidden and mostly legal but skirting the edges accounts for Alexander, and assumes since those were so easy to find there will be more. Since it’s late he gathers Eve and they head for bed while the searches continue to run.

Day 3[]

  • Eve wakes up stiff but not in too much pain, and her ass map is South American rather than Africa now. She says she dreamed about flying babies, and the ones she didn’t catch were like piñatas, with little weird toys and shiny candy coming out of them. Meanwhile Marta was there with an adding machine telling her “two and two makes four” over and over.
  • Roarke opts for cheese and spinach (for the iron) omelets while Eve showers, and then over breakfast, he explains Sterling Alexander’s con to lure clients and money in, making some reasonable payoffs to prime the pump. Meanwhile some of the land doesn't exist or is overestimated in value. Alexander then uses the legit Alexander and Pope Properties to launder the profits. Roarke says he didn’t do real estate scams because he preferred the game on its level playing field, and he liked to steal, preferring that to conning people.
  • Eve has enough to bring Alexander in on fraud, but wants to interview Parzarri to add pressure, since she wants Alexander on murder. She doesn’t want to bring in the feds since their concern will be the land fraud and money laundering, not the murder. She’s sure the murderer is on Sterling Alexander’s payroll and is either former cop or military/paramilitary. Roarke springs that he’s arranged an after-premiere party as she’s leaving.
  • Meanwhile, Parzarri and Arnold arrive from Vegas. Arnold’s wife takes him to the hospital, while Parzarri is met by Alexander’s hired muscle, who smothers him in the ambulance he commandeered, thinking how much he enjoys being a killer. When Eve and Peabody realize that Parzarri never made it to the hospital, they figure out the hacker intercepted the ambulance and killed Parzarri.

Chapter 15[]

  • Eve and Peabody find Parzarri’s body and a funky junkie named Doc who describes the two men who got out of the ambulance (one big, one small) and the big shiny car (dark) they left in. Eve is pissed that she didn’t anticipate this, saying it was stupid and inefficient to kill him. Peabody got the make and model of the car from the traffic cams, but the windows were privacy shielded, so nothing on the occupants. Eve thinks three vehicles for the accountant was also really stupid, but tells Peabody to have McNab check the vehicle for a match against Alexander and his company.
  • They figure that the hacker drove the ambulance, and they now have his voice print. Eve calls the WIN offices to try to reach Jake to warn him, learning that the partners are all meeting at the new offices that morning. Eve has Peabody set up a consult with Mira, conceding defeat with Mira’s admin and vending. Peabody tells her Parzarri’s death is not their fault – he was incommunicado, hadn’t been told about Marta’s death, and had no reason to betray Alexander even if he’d wanted to. It would have made more sense to try to frame him somehow than to kill him, and then maybe kill him down the line. She hits the sirens, arrives at the new WIN building only to find that Jake had a call twenty or thirty minutes ago, saying he wouldn’t be gone more than an hour. Jake doesn’t answer his ‘link, and they find his body in the apartment, beaten to death with a conveniently left behind claw hammer. Eve says the killer put some effort into this one, adding “I’d say he’s starting to enjoy his work.”

Chapter 16[]

  • Eve decides the killer tagged Jake from inside the apartment, telling him Mr. Alexander needed to meet him, then stunned him from behind and beat him to death when he was helpless. She thinks Alexander would have taken out his frustration at missing killing Eve and Peabody on the killer, who then took it out on Parzarri and Ingersol. The only people left to kill are the hacker and the killer himself, and she thinks the killer’s gone rogue, enjoying his new career. Jake was killed eighteen minutes ago, and Eve figures the killer stopped at a hardware store to buy the hammer and protective gear after killing Parzarri,
  • She tells Rob and Brad their partner was murdered and re-interviews them. She explains about the land and investment fraud scheme, noticing that Brad doesn’t seem that surprised. Brad had an inkling that he (Ingersol) was up to no good but thought he was kidding around - he had noticed a few suspicious purchases (a watch, a painting) that Ingersol was able to explain away.
    • About a year ago they were out drinking at a club, “it looked like I might lose the Breckinridge account and I was feeling pretty low. He [Jake] laid out this whole idea for making money off land deals. Setting up dummy companies, pulling in groups and selling off more shares than you had, then buying up the land yourself. Inflating or deflating the assessments. He drew up a chart on cocktail napkins.”
    • Brad thought Ingersol was joking around, messing around to cheer him up. “I said it sounded good if you didn't mind cheating people, or going to jail for a couple decades. I even added a couple of ideas... I refined a couple of angles. He wrote them down... I said something about it being too bad we were honest, too bad we'd worked all those years to get our license, build our business and our rep, things we didn't want to lose.”
    • Ingersol told him, “'Big money buys big rep.' I just laughed at him, and said something like big talk buys shit, and it was his turn to get the next round.”
  • Newton says Jake wouldn’t commit fraud or cheat a client, that they built the business together, and Eve says it’s more than fraud – it’s murder, and Jake gave the building codes to the killer. He might not have known before they murdered her, but he knew after that and therefore was complicit. Eve says if Brad had brought Alva to the apartment earlier he might have walked in on the killing. She tells them she will be confiscating their electronics, and if they know anything they need to tell her since their method of tying up loose ends is murder. Rob asks for protection for his fiancée, and Brad says they’ll make the funeral arrangements for Jake since he wasn’t close to his family. Eve tells them Jake was beaten to death, but was stunned unconscious first, and will let the ME know to contact Brad when he’s finished with his exam. Brad says “If he did what you think… it was a game to him. It was wrong, but a game. He liked being a player, liked being important. He made mistakes, bad ones, but he didn’t deserve to die for them.”
  • Eve and Peabody find and visit the hardware store and the owner confirms the description of 6’4”, 250 pounds, but doesn’t have a security camera, so she has Yancy come in to work with him on a sketch, and takes the cash the killer used to pay into evidence for fingerprints, offering a 10% use fee when the owner balked at giving up the cash, and adding another $50 for working with Yancy if it leads to an arrest. Eve has Peabody take the cash to Dickhead for fingerprints, to run them against military, police, and private security databases, eliminating females or people out of the suspect’s age range and race. The bribe is two tickets to the premiere the following day, VIP section.

Chapter 17[]

  • Eve visits the morgue for her double-header, with Morris telling her “Two slabs, no waiting.” No prints on Parzarri, but Morris can give her a reasonable reproduction of the size and shape of his right thumb and forefinger from the bruising, and match it to the bruising on Marta’s face. He’s also identified the discoloration from the stun stream on Ingersol, mid-body, confirming that he never felt the beating. They agree it’s because the killer is a careful coward with a lot of rage, who’s enjoying his work. He took their briefcases and ‘links but left the cash, credit cards, and a six-figure wrist unit, indicating to Eve that the hacker is the one who stole the cash from the safe at Brewer, Kyle, and Martini.
  • Back at Central, Marlo Durn has stopped by to spread joy. She tells Eve Julian is in rehab, out for a couple of days for the premiere, but planning to go back and finish the full program, and she asks Eve to stand up for her when she and Matthew Zank get married the day after the premiere. She says she wants to make promises to Matthew in front of somebody who really understands how important those promises are. Eve agrees and asks her for two VIP tickets to the premiere (for Dickhead’s bribe). Roarke joins them in Eve’s office, and Marlo tells him they’re looking forward to the after-party the following day. Mira also comes in, so Roarke takes Marlo up to EDD.
  • Mira is seriously worried about how fast the killer is evolving, and she has Eve update her board with that morning’s victims while she programs coffee for them. Mira thinks he’s going to go after Eve again, especially since he was called a coward and a monster in the media, while she was cheered as a hero for saving the kid. She says he’s lost face and needs to correct his mistake, so Eve starts to calculate how she can turn that to her advantage and get him to come after her. Mira tells Eve not to underestimate him, that his impulse and unpredictability could work in his favor.
  • Eve immediately calls Nadine when Mira leaves her office, telling her the two murders that morning are connected to Marta’s, and why hasn’t she been interviewed about the upcoming premiere? Roarke comes back into her office, this time bearing soup from vending, and she fills him in on Mira’s take. He has a disc with everything she needs to arrest and charge Sterling Alexander with multiple cases of fraud, embezzlement, and misappropriation of funds, with a side of tax evasion, but alas, nothing about the murders. Eve’s going to take it to Whitney and ask for a couple of days to cage him in on the murders. Roarke catches on quickly that Eve is going to talk up the premiere and how excited she is to be attending it in the hopes of adding the killer to the attendee list.
  • McNab and Peabody arrive, with McNab telling her he has the name of the hacker, Milo the Mole Easton; Roarke has heard of him, knows him to be not 25 and responsible for hacking into the NSA when he was still a teenager and draining the bank account of an Internet magnate he considered a rival, manipulating the odds board before the Kentucky Derby. He was caught when he was fourteen but they went easy on him and he stopped hacking for fun and started doing it for profit after that. He went after retirement accounts, so he’s no longer popular. Roarke goes with McNab to look for the money trail to find Milo and Eve updates Whitney on the case, including Alexander’s fraud, asking for thirty-six hours, and explaining about using the premiere as bait for the killer to try for Eve again, adding that Alexander will also be in attendance at the premiere. She’s sure the killer will want to finish the job in public, and in front of his employer.

Chapter 18[]

  • Nadine interviews Eve about attending the premiere, Eve says she’s looking forward to seeing how the vid interprets reality on what was a difficult and far-reaching case, and how it’s a break from her everyday world. Afterwards, Peabody runs through the theater setup and schedule for the premiere. Eve decides the killer won’t wait until after the vid because he won’t know which exit they plan to leave from, and also he won’t want to wait. She thinks he will get in as security since he’ll blend better, but try for Eve and Peabody after they’re inside the theater so he can come in close and from behind.
  • Yancy comes in to drop off the sketch and Eve begins briefing her team. Baxter asks if he can bring a date, and Eve says, “Sure. Bring Trueheart. You look really cute together.” Roarke invites the whole team to the after-party after the killer is apprehended, and they disburse. McNab comes in to say they found Milo in Tribeca, in a brownstone, under the name James T. Kirk, and Eve has Peabody bring in a team to take Milo down.

Chapter 19[]

  • Peabody finds the van – it’s registered under Tony Stark (Ironman). Eve decides to go low-tech for busting Milo. She sets Peabody up to play the damsel in distress while they get the warrants they need. Since Baxter has mag wheels, he drops Peabody off in front of Milo’s house, kicking her out of his car in a fight while she stands shivering in the cold with no coat and no bag. She yells after him that he has her ‘link, she presses the buzzer for Milo’s house, crying and asking for help. Roarke and McNab see Milo do a sweep and then just as Peabody turns away to sit on the steps and cry, Milo opens the door and she tells him her boyfriend left her there and she needs to use his ‘link to call her girlfriend to come get her. She says she’s Dolly Darling, a dancer at Kitty Kat, and she found out her boyfriend was cheating on her with her ex-best friend. She offers to give him a freebie for lending her a coat and as soon as he lets her in, Peabody blocks him from closing the door and presses him face-first to the wall while everybody else comes inside. Eve arrests Milo, sending the e-geeks to search his house while she and Peabody head back to Central.
  • Eve warns Milo that his client is still cleaning house so he needs to be careful which lawyer he calls in. He tells her the fraud and embezzlement is not on him, it’s all Alexander. Milo was only there to hack some files for the audit. He tells Eve he’ll give her all the info on Alexander’s dummy companies, Internet scams, and land fraud in exchange for no time. Peabody suggests five to ten house arrest when Eve tells him she can’t make the charges disappear. He says he has a safe room that’s fully secured and shielded, saying, “You can’t get in without my palm print, voice print, retina scan. You have to take me back there so I can get you in,” to which Eve says, “We’ll see about that,” thinking of Roarke. She then tells Milo, “Let’s talk about murder.”

Chapter 20[]

  • Milo insists he had nothing to do with Marta’s murder, and Eve shows him the crime scene photo to refresh his memory. She tells him she has a witness who saw him, his pal, and his Cargo utility van outside Whitestone’s apartment the night of Marta’s murder. He admits it was his van, but all he did was drive. They had the codes from Jake Ingersol and Milo was there to get through in case the codes didn’t work. He did some prior work for Jake, which is how Alexander knew to hire him. He’s worked for Alexander for six months, insisting he didn’t do any fraud, just tweaks. He doesn’t know who the ass-kicker is, saying he never asked and had only seen him a couple of times before.
  • The ass-kicker had Marta’s briefcase and coat, but Milo figured he was just giving her the business, making her get home without her coat because it was “bitching cold that night.” It wasn’t until the next day when he saw she’d been killed from a mugging gone south, and he didn’t ask questions. He could have taken care of the files before but Alexander didn’t want to pay, although he ended up paying anyway, after, when Milo had to hack into the files the next day at Brewer, Kyle, and Martini, and then paid again when Milo hacked into the hospital’s system. He says he didn’t know Parzarri was going to be killed, figuring Alexander just wanted to make sure Parzarri hadn’t talked to anyone. Alexander wanted Milo to hack into Central to get an update on the investigation but Eve has some “major mag shielding” so he couldn’t and Alexander was steamed; luckily he was able to hack into Peabody’s system so the ass-kicker knew where they’d be (he thought just to scare them off, not to try to kill them).
  • Milo didn’t realize they were leaving Parzarri dead – he claims he thought it was just another “scaring.” Whitestone had changed the codes to the building, but Milo was able to hack in based on the pattern, allowing the killer to get in before Jake. He said after that he had decided not to do any more jobs for Alexander, that it wasn’t worth it. He says it’s not his responsibility what people do with information people buy from him, but Eve corrects him, saying the law takes a different view, and therefore he’s under arrest for accessory to murder, three counts, along with abduction of Marta. She tells him maybe somebody will buy that he didn’t know about the murder in advance, but to take more jobs with the same people after he found out she’d been murdered – that’s not believable. She does tell him that the state of New York won’t pursue charges of fraud against him, but she doesn’t have any control over what the feds do. She adds that she’ll ask the PA to consider house arrest for the hacking, although since that will come after the time served for murder, he may not live long enough to get that. He calls her a bitch and she agrees and thanks him.
  • Peabody lets Eve know Roarke and McNab got into Milo’s panic room. Reo thanks Eve for doing her job with the negotiating and Eve fills her in on the contingency plan for getting Alexander on murder in addition to fraud. There’s a match for the killer – Clinton Roscoe Frye, age 33, freelance personal security, semi-pro football eight years ago, straight out of high school into the army for two years, then joined the Montana Patriots, a paramilitary group, for four years. Reo says they get a three and a half on the four-star lunatic fringe scale. His criminal record is all violence-related: assault, battery, destruction of property – no time served, fines paid, anger management, community service.
  • Frye’s not home, so they check with a neighbor, who’s home with a sick and cranky child; he’s in day three of a cold, feeling better, but not allowed to go back to school until the following day. The child is shouting for ice cream, while his mother is telling him “you get nothing until after you take a nap.”
    • Eve threatens him with arrest after he throws a toy truck: “Kid, you've just violated Code Eighty-two-seventy-six-B. You've got two choices. Go take a nap, or go to jail. There's no ice cream in jail. No toys in jail, no cartoons on screen in jail. There's just jail.”
    • His mother offers to kiss Eve's feet if she takes off her boots, give her a pedicure, make her dinner, bake her a cake (after she learns how).
  • The neighbor of five years is completely unsurprised to learn of Frye’s misdeeds, saying “I'm not surprised to find the police at my door asking about him. He just gives off that vibe. I've never seen anybody visit, never seen him with a single friend.”
  • Eve figures he left when the vid went viral in case someone got a look at his face, but that he hasn’t gone far.

Chapter 21[]

  • Frye’s apartment is empty, with no personal touches. Peabody says “This is taking minimalism to an extreme.” The only area that’s lived in is the second bedroom, which is set up as a gym – machines, weights, a heavy bag, and a speed bag, along with mirrors to watch himself work out. Eve thinks Milo is lucky to be locked up because he’s undoubtedly on Frye’s target list. She calls Mira and shows her a recording of Frye’s place. Mira agrees that it’s a lack of emotion, of connection. She thinks he will blame Eve for needing to leave his gym equipment behind, and when he comes at Eve he’ll be brutal.
  • Eve goes home for a workout, running while she reviews the theater setup to familiarize herself with the layout. Half an hour in, Roarke joins her, and she tricks him into sex by feigning an injury (Roarke: “What did you pull?” Eve: “Your strings.”).
  • Roarke fills Eve in on what they found from Milo’s data and she asks him to set up a holo call with Judge Yung, Commander Whitney, and Chief Tibble, saying if the feds want Alexander, they have to play ball and they have to move on Eve’s timetable. Since it’s a huge bust, she thinks they’ll be willing to wait to get all of the data Roarke and McNab found. She realizes she needs to include APA Reo, Feeney, McNab, and Peabody. The call goes well, with Roarke explaining the business side of the fraud, and Eve convincing Judge Yung how important it is to stop Frye before he kills again, as well as making him pay for snapping Marta’s neck and the other two murders. Tibble and Whitney tell her good work to her and her team.
  • Roarke has a gift for Eve: a thigh holster for her clutch piece, which she happily models for Roarke. Roarke tells her, “Your bruising is more like a faded map of Mexico tonight. Olé.” He also says that Trina has adjusted the schedule to accommodate her, telling her to be brave, that it will be over before she knows it.

Day 4[]

Chapter 22[]

  • Eve spends the day poring over the theater’s blueprints and talking to Frye’s former bosses. Peabody opened a side seam on her dress and made a thigh holster for her weapon, and Eve calls her Crafty Cop, telling her about the thigh holster Roarke gave her. They go through the plan together, and then Trina and Mavis arrive. Eve fills Mavis and Trina in while Trina does her magic.
  • They make it through the red carpet and into the theater without incident, with Eve seeing Sterling Alexander looking smug, along with the rest of the players – Biden, Young-Sachs, Alva, Brad, Candida in all but transparent white, Newton and his fiancée, plus her cops. Julian Cross intercepts them to thank Eve for saving his life (she tells him Nadine saved his life, but he says they both did – Eve by figuring out Joel killed K.T. and tried to frame him, giving him the courage to change his life, getting and staying sober).
  • Eve’s spidey tingles go off and she senses and then sees Frye, who’s wearing a security badge. She tells Baxter to quietly take Alexander into custody while she leads Frye into the theater where there are fewer people, and tells McNab to give the green light to the feds to pick up Alexander’s operatives. Frye draws his stunner but Eve tells him, “You may be able to get off a stream before I do, but believe me, if I miss, the other four cops in here won’t.” She tells him to lower his weapon, but then Candida stumbles in, drunk, to chew Eve out. Frye grabs her to use as a shield, and launches her at Eve. Candida punches Eve in the eye, Eve kicks off her shoes to chase after him, and fires on him square in the back, which affects him not at all. Roarke flies across the stage, hitting Frye low, at the knees, sending them both shooting through the air across the floor, and punches Frye in his face twice before Jenkinson tosses her the restraints to cuff Frye. He was wearing body armor but was burned by Frye’s stunner. Frye tries to reach for his pocket but Roarke holds up a knife asking if he’s looking for it, telling him he had it out of his pocket before he hit the ground. Eve has Jenkinson bag the knife before Roarke can use it, and she arrests Frye for conspiracy to murder and murder for hire, with additional charges to come, including assault with intent on police officers, twice.
  • Eve and Roarke go back to Central, missing the premiere but planning to catch at least part of the after-party. Eve has Peabody stay behind to deal with Candida and the rest of the aftermath. Eve has a black eye from Candida’s fist and Roarke has bruised knuckles from punching Frye. Peabody tells Eve Baxter and Trueheart have Alexander in interview, and he’s pissed.

Epilogue[]

  • Eve tells Frye Alexander rolled on him, saying he acted on his own and threatened him, but Frye doesn’t say anything. Eve lays out what happened, asking if he’s that stupid since he’s letting Alexander get off with a slap by throwing Frye under the bus. That and telling him all he did was follow orders, making him the patsy, triggers him into spilling how much Alexander paid him ($25K for Marta, cash because he’s not stupid). Whenever he stops talking, she prods him by saying that’s Alexander’s pattern – getting other people to do the work, trying to go cheap, thinking he’s so much smarter than Frye.
  • Frye upped it to $30K for Parzarri since he’s a man, Jake called him Bubba, which is where the extra hate came from, and even though Alexander paid another $30K for Jake, he would have done that for less since he enjoyed it. Alexander especially didn’t like Eve because she married money and now thinks she’s his equal, and he got $60K for the two of them (Eve and Peabody), but wanted his money back so he told him he wasn’t finished and left his apartment in case somebody got a good look at him, but he has to finish the job.
  • Frye blames Milo for telling Eve too much, and that’s how she found him, but she assures him that she figured it out because she’s smarter than him and not a coward, telling him he ambushed an unarmed woman, smothered an injured man after he strapped him down, beat a man to death after he stunned him, and tried to stun Eve in the back. She calls him a coward and a killer, and tells him he can take some satisfaction in knowing that Alexander is also going to live out his life in a cage right along with him and Milo, and the people Alexander had helping him defraud, steal, and ruin other people’s lives are also going to do time.
  • Pope is at Central and tells Eve his brother won’t see him, that he didn’t know about the killings but suspected his dishonesty. Eve tells him that his company is going to need help, so maybe he should look after it and fix what’s wrong. Roarke shows her a picture of the two of them, his knuckles raw as he lays a hand on her bruised cheek, just below her black eye and she decides she needs that picture for her desk at home. They head to the after-party. The end.

Character List[]

List of Main Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Secondary Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Recurring Characters Appearing or Mentioned in this Book[]

List of Minor Characters Appearing in this Book[]

List of Peripheral Characters Appearing or Mentioned in this Book[]

YANNIs[]

Footnotes[]

  1. ↑ Calculated in Death, Chapter 14
  2. ↑ In Chapter 1, “A killer wind hurled bitter November air, toothy little knives to gnaw at the bones.” Later in Chapter 1, Eve wonders “What were you doing, Marta [Dickenson], blocks from work, from home on a frigid November night?” In Chapter 6, Eve mentions that “November’s cold and blowing winds stripped the last of the leaves from the trees rising over the wide green lawn.”
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