“Dennis.” Jay squeezed his eyes shut. “She was the glue. Our boys…” He opened his eyes again, looked at Eve. “They’re good boys, growing into fine young men. We built a good home, a good life together. But she was the glue. And I … Did I kiss her goodbye this morning? I think so, I think I did. But I don’t think I told her I loved her. I don’t think I did. Why didn’t I?”
“Mr. Duran, from everything you’ve told me, there’s no question in my mind, she knew you loved her. Please, if you think of anything, however insignificant it might seem, contact me.”
Peabody stepped back in. “Mr. Duran, your transportation’s coming. Why don’t I walk you out to it?”
“Yes, thank you. Yes.” He got to his feet, took a moment to gather himself.
Dennis rose, hugged him. Not the one-armed, pat-on-the-back man hug, but a full one.
“Anything you need, Jay. Anytime you need it.”
Duran nodded, went with Peabody.
Dennis lowered to the chair again. “I know how often you do this, how often you have to tell someone the life they had five minutes before is gone. You’re such a strong, brave girl, Eve.”
“It’s the job, Mr. Mira.”
He shook his head. “A strong, brave girl. I hope I didn’t overstep.”
“No. You did everything right.”
“You’ll talk to Charlie about this?”
It always took her a moment to think of the elegant Mira as Charlie. “Yes, when I get back to Central.”
“Between you, you’ll figure this out. She’s another strong, brave girl.” He rose, and as he had with Duran, hugged her. And when he did, she felt every ounce of tension just slide out of her.
“Now, I’ll go take care of things here for that poor man.”
“Thanks for your help here.”
He patted her cheek, had her heart melting. “We all do what we can.”
And what some did, she thought when he left, was take lives, and destroy others.
* * *
Peabody met her by the car.
“Mr. Mira really helped. Duran told me when he came to Columbia, Mr. Mira was the first to take him out for coffee.”
“That’s how he’s built. It’s going to come from the school, Peabody,” she said as they got into the car. “That’s the springboard. We need to track down this Lotte Grange.”
“I’ll get on that. When I talked to Rufty, he said he could come in if you needed him to. He’s finalizing the arrangements for a memorial. He’s having it in the park in the morning, where Abner liked to run.”
“Set it up.” While she did, Eve contacted Mira’s office. For a change she got no grief from the admin, who told her the doctor would be available when she got back to Central.
“He needs an hour,” Peabody told Eve.
“That works. Targeting spouses,” Eve continued. “Or loved ones, as it’s possible not everybody on his payback list is married. Would a chemistry teacher at a private school have enough skill to pull this off?”
“It seems way above pay grade, but who knows? And it looks like we’re talking close to eight years of research and development time. Still, it didn’t sound like Duran caused any big waves while he was there.”
“People, especially homicidal people, have different perspectives. He did something, said something, was something that put him on that list. He’s not going to remember it right off, not while he’s in this first stage of shock. He may later.”
“And Rufty, being brought in—it really sounds like to clean up a mess, or at least that’s how Duran saw it—is going to have a wider overview. If he sat down and talked with an instructor who was leaving, he sat down and talked with everybody. He may have nudged somebody out. Or somebody saw his coming in as pushing Grange out. Still…”
“Yeah, she landed another position, another big school with rich kids and influential parents,” Eve finished. “So what’s the beef? We’ll find out.”
Just as she started the turn into the garage at Central, Eve had to hit the brakes to avoid mowing down a naked guy. He ran like the wind, his hair flying, his dong swinging merrily, with a handful of uniforms in hot pursuit.
Pedestrians scrambled clear as he loped along like a gazelle.
“Well.” Eve watched another moment. “Even in New York that’s something you don’t see every day.”
“He’s really fast,” Peabody observed. “We could probably cut him off with the car.”
“Probably.” Instead she just drove into the garage. “The uniforms need to get the lead out. Of what?” she wondered when she pulled into her slot. “Just what do you get the lead out of? Why would anybody haul lead around anyway? Language is ridiculous.”
“I always thought it was your ass—not literally,” Peabody added before they went down that road. “Just like you’re slow because you’ve got the lead ass.”
“What kind of ass do you have if you’re fast?” Eve countered as they walked to the elevator. “What’s the opposite of lead? Feathers? Hey, you’re a real feather ass. Nobody says that.”
They got into the elevator. “But they could,” she continued, “because people just make shit up, then other people say it, and then it’s a thing. I’m heading straight to Mira,” Eve continued while Peabody was still processing. “Start digging into Grange so we have solid data before we talk to Rufty.”
She rode up a handful of floors, then started to jump off to take the glides.
“Helium,” Peabody called out. “Maybe because it’s light it’s sort of the opposite of lead.”
“Well, those cops weren’t helium asses, not the way they were running.”
Eve continued on and, unlike her partner, who would ponder it for some time, she forgot the entire conversation.
Mira’s admin gave her the hard eye, but cleared the way.
Mira sat behind her desk in a suit of pale lavender with a little flouncy thing at the waist. She signaled Eve to wait while she finished her ’link call.
“No, of course. Don’t worry about that. I know, honey, I do. We’ll eat whenever you get home, and talk about it. You did, but it’s nice to hear it again. And I love you, too. I’ll see you at home. Bye now.”
She clicked off, sighed. “Dennis.”
“I kind of figured.”
“He’s taking Jay Duran’s Shakespeare Club meeting at five,” she said as she rose and crossed to her AutoChef on purple heels. Their open fronts revealed toes with nails painted the exact shade of the suit.
How did anyone think of that? Eve wondered.
“This has hit him very hard.”
“He was great with Duran,” Eve told her. “He helped, a lot.”
“I barely remember Elise.” The air filled with the scent of flowers as Mira took cups of tea from the AC. “I didn’t even have a clear picture until I brought up her data.”
“You didn’t really socialize.”
“No.” She handed Eve a cup, took a seat in one of her blue scoop chairs. “I don’t get to many of Dennis’s faculty functions. Work interferes. But I did meet her a few times. There are two teenage sons.”