“I don’t know about the last part, but this is prime. This is bloody brilliant police work. Have the Dublin police been informed?”
“Not yet.”
“If you’d let me report this to my superiors, take this part of the investigation from here?”
“All yours.”
“I’m grateful. I’m impressed.” He turned to Eve with a wide grin that convinced her he wouldn’t try to bogart the investigation. “I’m bloody gobsmacked.”
He beamed back at the board, then frowned. “A cat?”
“That’s right.” As Eve told him, Abernathy ran a hand over his close-cropped hair.
“This isn’t like him.” Pacing now, Abernathy shook his head. “Not the killing of animals, that is like him. But to do so when it’s not related to another kill. To simply do it to taunt, to take those steps, that time, risk that exposure.
“I need to …” He circled a hand in the air. “To think. If I could … think, walk. I noticed Vending. I’ll get some coffee, think.”
“Don’t get that coffee. Peabody.”
“How do you take it?” Peabody asked.
“With what passes for cream, and a lump of what passes for sugar. Thank you. I’m just going to …”
He wandered into the hallway.
Baxter held up his comm. “Caught one, Dallas.”
“You’re finished here, so you take it. Santiago.”
“I’m with you, Baxter.”
“This is good work, Dallas,” Whitney told her. “I didn’t see your last report.”
“Trueheart gets credit for the fast turnaround on the cat—as do Morris and Harvo and Berenski. The civilian pinned the salon.”
“It’s good work.”
“Thank you, sir. Feeney, if you’d brief the inspector on EDD’s area in this. Jenkinson will take his, Carmichael hers. If Abernathy has questions after, we can address them.”
Abernathy came back in, intercepted Peabody and the coffee. “Thank you, Detective. I apologize, I wanted to clear my head, let this all filter in. I’ve worked on Cobbe for nearly six years. I’ve gotten close once or twice. But I’ve never seen so many solid breaks, so many missteps to exploit.”
“It’s personal for him this time,” Mira repeated. “It’s not a job.”
“You’ve convinced me. He’s so off his game, so off his pattern. It’s as if he’s had a psychic break.”
“He has,” Mira confirmed.
Abernathy nodded, sipped his coffee. Paused. “This isn’t my first time in the States, or in New York. I have to say, the coffee’s improved by leaps and bounds.”
He sat again. “While we’ve gathered considerable intel on Cobbe’s background, going back to his early days in Dublin, we didn’t have this specific data on his relationship with Roarke. Not to this extent, not in this detail.”
He glanced over at Eve. “Details on your husband’s background are hen’s teeth.”
“They’re what?”
“Rare. Rare as hen’s teeth. I wonder if he’d agree to speak with me.”
“That would be up to him. Either way, what applies to Cobbe from him is in the file.” Shifting, she turned to Feeney. “Captain, if you’d brief the inspector on your area.”
Abernathy listened, took more notes, asked more questions. Eve decided he wasn’t an idiot. More, he didn’t seem territorial in a way that would hamper her investigation.
At the end, Abernathy rose again. “I want to thank all of you for bringing me fully up-to-date. Commander Whitney, I’ll reiterate that you’ll have my cooperation and any and all of my resources in this investigation.”
“As you’ll have ours,” Whitney assured him. “I’ve had an office prepared for you on this level. Lieutenant Dallas will assign a uniformed officer to serve as your aide.”
“That’s very considerate, but I wonder—if it’s not intrusive—if I could have a desk in here, in your bullpen. It would help me immerse myself in the rhythm, so to speak.”
“If you prefer.”
“If Lieutenant Dallas agrees, I would.”
“No problem.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Whitney told him. “If you need anything else, you have my contact. Fine work, everyone.” Whitney turned to the room. “Fine, solid work. Keep it up.”
“An imposing man,” Abernathy commented as Whitney left. “Captain Feeney, I wonder, after I settle in a bit, get my bearings, if I could visit your EDD. I’d like to get a sense of it.”
“Door’s always open.”
“Brilliant. Lieutenant, if I could impose on a little more of your time, have a word?”
“Sure. Feeney, as soon as I get more data on potential safe houses, I’ll pass it to you. We’ll start scanning them for heat imagery.”
“We’ll be ready when you are.”
“My office,” she said to Abernathy and led the way.
When he stepped inside, he looked around. “How … cozy.”
“No, it’s not, but it suits me. What can I do for you, Inspector?”
“I hope there’s considerable we can and will do for each other. I’m in your house, Lieutenant, and want to make it clear I understand you’re in charge. This will and must be a joint investigation, but this is your house.”
She gestured to her board. “There isn’t enough room for all his victims up there. I have the four he’s killed in New York, five with the cat he slaughtered because I have a better chance of using the hows and whys there, but the NYPSD, my house, stands for all four hundred and forty-five.”
“I know the faces of the others, particularly those he killed after I began the hunt. I nearly had him two years ago in Berlin. I believe we missed him by less than an hour. Eluding us there, he drove out of the city with the body of a thirty-six-year-old mother of two in the trunk of her own car.”
Eve said nothing as Abernathy wandered over to glance out her single skinny window.
“We had a leak, and the media reported the authorities were closing in on a suspect in the murder of a prominent industrialist. Instead of taking the private shuttle he’d booked, he killed Ingrid Frederick, who’d stopped to pick up a cake for her youngest daughter’s fourth birthday.
“She haunts me.”
“My department doesn’t leak unless I authorize it.”
“I would have thought the same. I’m not contradicting you,” he added, “merely explaining this is not just a job for me, not simply an assignment. Perhaps it should be, but it’s long past that point. I don’t care about being in charge, I don’t care about credit. I want him stopped. I want him to pay.”
“Then we’re on the same page.”
“I did some research on you on the flight over, so I believe we are. I wanted you to know my position. In addition, I wanted to ask if you’d approach Roarke with my request to speak to him. Over the last few hours, I’ve learned fresh information about Cobbe’s childhood due to this connection, this interaction. We knew, of course, about Cobbe’s—I don’t think obsession is overstated—with Patrick Roarke. We knew pieces, confirmed some, speculated on more. But we never knew about these personal encounters between Cobbe and Patrick Roarke’s son.”