“Harvo’s not a cop.”
“Aw, come on.” Obviously revved, the queen of hair and fiber lifted her arms. “I never get to have the fun. I bet there’s hair and fiber in there, and I’ll be right on the scene.”
“There may also be one or two very dangerous men in there along with a supply of a deadly nerve agent.”
Harvo shook back her green hair. “So, you go first.”
Feeney lumbered up, his topcoat over a wrinkled beige shirt with a telltale salsa stain. “Figured EDD should get in on it. I told McNab to get some toys and we’d swing by and pick him up.”
“Good. Wait. Think.”
She took a few paces away to do just that. Paced back.
“Heat sensors in the toys, McNab?”
“You bet.”
“Check the building. Peabody, pass out the masks. Whatever the status, no one enters without a mask. Feeney, how about you and Roarke deal with any alarms and/or locks. Reineke, you and Jenkinson make the circuit. Let’s mark all exits, then we’ll cover them.”
“What about me?”
“You wait,” she told Harvo.
“Bogus. Roarke’s not a cop, either, and I’m an expert consultant, too. Plus, I work with the cops totally.”
“Are you authorized to carry a weapon?”
“No, but—”
“Then you wait.”
Reineke jogged back. “Back and front, first level, south side and back, fire escapes on the second level.”
“No heat sources,” Callendar called out.
“If there aren’t bad guys—”
“You still wait,” Eve interrupted Harvo’s next pitch.
“We’ll still take it front and back. Reineke, Jenkinson, Callendar, McNab on the rear. Peabody, we’ll take the front with Roarke and Feeney. We’ve got a damn army taking an empty building,” she muttered.
She marched up to Roarke. “It’s empty.”
“It’s bypassed anyway, alarms and locks.”
“Then this’ll be easy.” Empty or not, she drew her weapon, went through the door low.
The lights on full illuminated the gaudy tackiness of a living area with enormous gel sofas—a trio—done in dizzying patterns of red and black. Giant entertainment screens dominated two opposing walls. All the tables shined in mirrored gold, which was picked up by a bar fronted by a couple of stools designed to resemble the female form wearing only high heels.
She pointed Feeney and Roarke in one direction, Peabody in the other, and moved straight ahead.
On her sweep she noted a game system, posters—more naked women—bottles of high-end booze, a jar of Zoner, a bowl holding a variety of pills.
She added her call of “Clear” to the others as Roarke, Feeney, and Peabody moved back from the sides, the other team from the rear.
“Kitchen, storage for cleaning droids and supplies,” Peabody said.
“Bedroom and bath,” Roarke added, “designed to fulfill a teenage boy’s wet dream. Complete with currently deactivated sex droid.”
“Another john, and a game room,” Feeney added. “Refreshment area.”
“Let’s clear upstairs. They outfitted this for Loco. Neither rich guy’s taste runs to sex-starved tacky. Lab’s going to be upstairs.”
She started up the metal stairs, had gotten no more than a quarter of the way when she smelled it.
“Fuck!” She threw up a hand to stop the rest of her team, then jogged until she could see the second floor. “We’ve got a body. Back out. Everybody, back out, masks or not. Peabody, call in the hazmat unit.”
She took a sweep not only for the visual but so her lapel recorder could capture the scene. Then she followed her team back outside.
She yanked off her mask. “Jenkinson, go around and seal the back entrance. Reineke, let’s get some uniforms for backup, to canvass. Callendar, tag Morris, see if he can come on scene.”
She dragged a hand through her hair. “Son of a bitch.”
“Do you know the DB?” Feeney asked.
“Yeah. It’s Cosner, Marshall Cosner. It looks like he was packing up another poison egg, and had a little lab accident.” Her eyes narrowed. “That’s how it’s supposed to look.”
“Very handy he’d have that accident the night before you’d have him in the box,” Roarke commented.
“Yeah, isn’t it? He went whining to Whitt, that’s what he did, and Whitt found a way to cut his losses. The thing is, he wouldn’t expect us to find Cosner so fast. Wouldn’t expect us to find this place. There were more eggs up there, a whole lab set up, a shipping prep area. Boxes, packing stuff. But he’s not stupid enough to come back here.”
Thinking, thinking, she paced the sidewalk. “No, he’s done here. Maybe he took some of it with him. Maybe he really is cutting his losses. He’ll let it end with Cosner. Can’t continue the fun with Cosner dead and have us pile the blame on Cosner.”
“He’ll figure he has plenty of time and room now,” Feeney added. “You were taking the DB in the box tomorrow.”
“Yeah, we had that set.”
“So when he doesn’t show, we go looking. We find something that clicks to this place, find it, find him. And there’s your dead guy, piles of evidence, killed by the same method he used to kill, which has a nice clang to it.” Feeney nodded as he studied the building. “Asshole figures case closed.”
“Yeah, and he’ll have a cover for tonight. But it’ll have a hole somewhere. Cosner was a follower. No way he came here tonight, all wound up about the interview tomorrow, and decided, on his own, to pack up another egg.”
“And without precautions,” Roarke added. “Would you, knowing what’s inside the egg, handle it without a suit? Or the very least gloves and a mask?”
“No, and good point.”
Harvo, who perched on the hood of Jenkinson’s ride, ticked a finger in the air. “You have to figure, right, the other bad guy was here—sometime or the other. Right?”
Eve glanced back. “Had to. He runs the show.”
“On average, a human sheds between fifty and a hundred hairs a day. Some experts say up to two hundred, but I lean more toward a hundred. Average.” She smiled. “We’d only need one.”
“It’s a big place, Harvo, with cleaning droids, and without any way—at this point—to confirm when the suspect was last inside.”
Tonight, Eve thought. She’d make book on it, but …
Harvo angled her head, spread her fingers to examine glossy blue nail polish. “Do you doubt the queen?”
She’d be a fool to, Eve admitted. “Okay, Harvo, once the specialty team clears the building, you can go in, take a look.”
“Mag-o!” She hopped down from the hood. “Will you hold off the sweepers, let me have first pass?”
“I can do that.”
“Even more mag-o. Can I get a lift to the lab and back? I need some stuff.”
“McNab,” Feeney said. “Take my ride.”
When the uniforms arrived, Eve had them set up barricades, start the canvass. Then she waited as the specialty team donned their protective suits.