Page 82 of Fury In Death

“She’s the PI who Redman’s family hired. I talked to her today, and she gave me her files on it. She was on the job a few years, went private. She knows her stuff. It’s an all-female operation. Sort of interesting. Anyway, your biotech engineer, Redman’s sister, gave us a list of his friends. I interviewed a few of them on the way uptown, and I’ll talk to the rest.”

“As he might’ve gone to a friend after he left the health center.”

“He’d need money. He’d need to trust someone, and he’d need enough money at least to buy food. And a duffel,” she added. “He walked out of the facility with a laundry bag, then hitched a ride on a long-haul, carrying a duffel. Maybe he had an account that didn’t show up. One his family didn’t know about, one that didn’t pop in the MP or for the PI.”

“I’ll have a look there.”

“That’d be good.”

She walked to her board first, studied the faces on it.

She’d just needed to be home, to settle, to see him, to tell him. To know he was with her.

And now, she’d do her duty.

Chapter Twelve

Though Melody Donahue had run the list of friends, Eve considered several years had passed since. She wanted all current data.

She learned one friend had married, one divorced. One married and divorced. Another had two kids within that six-year period and moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

She found a scant handful of criminal bumps—petty stuff, no violence.

Most financially secure enough to have made a loan, or a gift of money, to a friend in need.

Running them wouldn’t be enough, she decided. She needed in-person.

She’d go to the morgue first, view the body again, get a sense from Morris if there was anything to sense. No need for the lab because, though Dent had fought back, he hadn’t drawn blood. Or none left on scene.

She sat back, coffee in hand, and studied the board.

“I see you, Steve,” she murmured. “You were fit, healthy, probably hit the gym a couple times a week. Young, reasonably strong. But not strong enough to do what you did to Chu and Dent.”

No, not strong enough for that. And she considered, more than a decade later, after lying in a hospital bed for a good chunk of that.

She rose, paced.

Sure, physical therapy, and they’d get him up to walk. Like a zombie. To keep his muscles from atrophying, avoid blood clots, bedsores, maybe hope to stimulate body and mind.

“But you’d be weak, you’d be on the frail side. So you’d need time, wouldn’t you, to get stronger. Build muscle again, endurance.”

But even with that, she thought as she paced, circled, even with that, it wouldn’t be enough. You’d need more.

“Something to jack you up,” she muttered. “Get strong again, sure, maybe even get some training. Boxing, martial arts.”

If he’d just wanted to kill them, she thought, he’d get in, with a weapon, get it done. Or maybe he’d wanted to torture them first, the way he felt tortured. Restrain them, let them know what’s coming and why, then get it done.

“But that’s not what you wanted. You wanted what I saw at the first scene. Destroy, eradicate, and with your own hands. Personal. You needed to feel it.”

A scientist, a man of intellect. A man who knows his chemistry.

“Got a lab, don’t you, Steve? Or access to one, because you’re making what you’re using.”

She sat again, put her boots up on the desk.

Some chemi-heads and users could mix their junk in a bucket-sized sink in a flop, she thought. Would he settle for that?

“Maybe, maybe. Just need enough to buy supplies, some basic equipment.”