In Death 28 - Promises in Death

anyone she had concerns about?”
    “No. We didn’t talk shop a great deal. She was a good cop. She liked to find answers, and she was organized and precise. But she didn’t live the job. She wasn’t like you. The job was what she did, not what she was. But she was smart and capable. Whenever we had our jobs intersect, that came across.”
    “What about on the personal front? Exes?”
    “We started seeing each other shortly after she transferred here from Atlanta. And while we were taking it slow, letting it all . . . unfold, neither of us was seeing anyone else. She had a serious relationship in college. It lasted over two years. She was involved with another cop for a while, but said she preferred the casual dating scene as a rule. That I was breaking her rule. I know there was someone else, someone serious, and that ended before she transferred to New York.”
    “Any complaints about any neighbors, anyone in the building hassling her?”
    “No. She loved that little apartment of hers. Dallas, she has family back in Atlanta.”
    “I know. I’ll notify them. Can I contact anyone for you?”
    “No. Thank you.”
    “I didn’t bring a grief counselor because—”
    “I don’t want a grief counselor.” He pressed his fingers to his eyes. “I have a key for her apartment. You’ll want that.”
    “Yeah.”
    She waited while he went up the silver stairs, and paced around his living space until he came back with a key card. “Did she have one to this place?”
    “Yes.”
    “Change your codes.”
    He drew a breath. “Yes, all right. I need you to keep me informed. I need to be involved in this.”
    “I’ll keep you informed.”
    “I need to be part of it. I need that.”
    “Let me work on that. I’ll contact you. If you need to talk to me, I’m available for you twenty-four/seven. But I’ve got to get back to this, back to her.”
    “Tell Ty . . . Tell him to play Eric Clapton for her. Any of the discs in my collection. She particularly liked his music.” He moved to the elevator, opened the grille.
    “I wish sorry meant something. Peabody . . . she told me to tell you the same.” She stepped in, kept her eyes on his as the grille closed and until the doors shut.
     
    O n the drive back, she tagged Peabody. “Did the sweepers find the weapon?”
    “That’s a negative.”
    “Damn it. I’m heading back to the scene. Contact the morgue. Chief Medical Examiner Morris assigns ME Ty Clipper to this matter. He requests the ME play Eric Clapton during autopsy.”
    “Oh, man. How is he? How—”
    “He’s holding up. Make sure they understand these are Morris’s directives. I’m on my way back. You and I are going to go through her apartment, inch by inch.”
    “I was about to start on that. I talked to Burnbaum and his kid. Nothing more there. The knock-on-doors hasn’t turned up anything. Security—”
    “Fill me in when I get there. Ten minutes.”
    She clicked off. She wanted silence. Just silence until the emotional knots loosened. She’d be no good to Amaryllis Coltraine if she let herself stay twisted up over the grief in a friend’s eyes.
    At the apartment, she waited until the morgue team carried the body out. “She goes straight to ME Clipper,” Eve snapped. “She’s a cop. She gets priority.”
    “We know who she is.” One of the team turned after the body was loaded in the wagon. “She’s not only a cop, she was Morris’s lady. We’ll take good care of her, Lieutenant.”
    Satisfied, she went inside, took the stairs to Coltraine’s apartment. Using the key card Morris had given her, she found Peabody inside.
    “It was hard,” Peabody said after one look. “It shows.”
    “Then I’d better get over it. Security?”
    “I took a quick scan. Nothing on the rear door. He had to come in that way, jam the camera. EDD’s on it. Front door cam ran the whole time. I’ve got her coming in about sixteen hundred, carrying a file bag—which is still here—and a take-out bag. She didn’t go out again, not by the front. Stairway has cams, and they were compromised. Both the rear and stairway cams shut down from about twenty-two thirty to about twenty-four hundred. Elevator has cams, and they ran through. She didn’t take the elevator. Neighbor confirms she used the stairs, habitually.”
    “The killer had to know her, know her routine. Had to take her in the stairway.”
    “I’ve got a team of sweepers in there now, going top to bottom.”
    “Taking her that