Page 29 of Fury In Death

“You gonna arrest that line-cutting bitch?”

“We’ve got her name,” one of the uniforms said, trying not to look amused. “We’ll follow up.”

“All right. You’re all right,” she said to Eve. “A bagel and schmear.”

“Absolutely,” Eve said, and made her escape the minute the doors opened again.

“Line cutters are the devil.” Peabody said it with a grin.

“Cut the line, smirk, then run off before the cops get there? Evil.”

They rode the glides to Homicide, and Eve figured she’d done her good deed for the day. She couldn’t understand why that good deed deserved the punishment of Jenkinson’s tie.

Plump pink pigs with glittery wings soared over a sky that appeared toxic with sunset. Oranges, reds, and purples of those hues surely never appeared in nature.

“I have no words,” she decided, “so won’t waste any.”

“Sometimes you tell people to do what needs doing, and they say when pigs fly. I got the answer right there.” When he fluttered the tie, she swore the wings flapped.

“Heard you caught one after the accidental. Word is the vic got pummeled into goo.”

“Word is not wrong. And his assailant managed that without a weapon, without leaving any of his own DNA.”

“Pros might fit the first two, but it takes a lot of time and energy to turn somebody into goo. Pros usually don’t waste time or energy.”

“No, they don’t. Personal, not pro. I’m in my office.”

She hit the AutoChef for coffee, then stood at her single, skinny window a moment. He might be out there now, strolling around in the sunshine, pleased with his evening’s work.

Her job was to make sure that pleasure didn’t last.

She began to build her board, studying the crime scene stills as she went. The blood trail and pools and spatters. The destruction of personal property. Except the family photo.

That meant something.

She studied Lawrence Chu’s face in his official ID, then what had been left of it in death.

That meant something, too. Don’t just hurt, don’t just kill.

Erase.

With those thoughts circling the back of her mind, she sat to build her book.

When up-to-date, she started a run on Calvin Banner to add to the data and opinions Roarke had given her.

No criminal, but a shitload of civil cases, sometimes as defendant, sometimes as plaintiff.

A quick scan showed her Banner rarely lost.

Married at thirty, divorced from Madeline Reece Banner at sixty-eight. One offspring, female, age forty. Remarried at sixty-nine—didn’t wait long—to Lucille Lovet, age twenty-seven.

No offspring.

Harvard educated, the second son of Boswell Banner II. Boswell Banner III had died of a heroin overdose at the age of twenty-four. And, Eve surmised, Calvin Banner became heir apparent.

He took over the reins of Banner Chemicals at the age of fifty, and merged his company with Wyst Scientific four years later.

Partnered with Jacob Wyst, they’d expanded their global interests, certainly beefed up their PR with Wyst taking the lead, and had significantly increased their profits.