Free New York to Dallas by J. D. Robb Page B

all the way down, too, with all this gooey and sweet in my butt. So I guess not.”
    “Good choice.”
    No palm plate, no security cam, Eve noted, on 4-C. Just two dead bolts and a manual peep.
    She banged her fist on the door.
    “McQueen’s partners always kept their own places,” she told Peabody. “Usually worked full- or part-time. We only have information from the vics on the last. She helped him lure, abduct, restrain. She helped him clean them up if he decided to use one he’d had for a while. Then she liked to watch.”
    Peabody’s face went cold. “Which makes her as much of a monster as him.”
    “Yeah, it does.” Eve banged again.
    A door opened across the hall. “Shut the fuck up! People are trying to sleep.”
    Eve studied the man glaring at her. He stood buck-naked but for a nipple ring and a tat of a coiled snake. She held up her badge. “I’d call that indecent exposure, but it barely qualifies. Deb Bracken.”
    “Fuck. She’s in there. She sleeps like the dead.” He slammed the door.
    Eve banged again, kept on banging until she heard somebody cursing from inside 4-C. A minute later she saw the bleary eye through the peep. “What the hell do you want?”
    Once again, Eve held up her badge. “Open up.”
    “Goddamn it.” The peep flipped closed, bolts and locks rattled open. “What the hell? I’m trying to sleep here.”
    From the looks of her, she’d been doing a good job of it. Her hair, a short, sleep-crazed mess of brass and black, stuck up everywhere around a thin, slack face. She’d neglected to remove her enhancers so her eyes and lips were smeared with what was left of them.
    She wore a short black robe, carelessly looped, that showed good legs and breasts too perky not to have been paid for.
    “Isaac McQueen.”
    “Who?”
    “If you bullshit me, Deb, we’ll have this little talk downtown.”
    “Christ sake, you beat on my door, wake me up, hassle me. What the hell is this?”
    “Isaac McQueen,” Eve repeated.
    “I heard you. Jesus.” She gave Eve a hard, smeary-eyed scowl. “I need a hit.” And turned, shuffled away.
    Eyebrows cocked, Eve stepped in, watched Bracken continue to shuffle to the far corner of the messy living area where the kitchen consisted of a bucket-sized sink, a mini-friggie, and a shoe box–sized AutoChef. When she stabbed at the AutoChef it made a harsh, grinding hum, then a clunk.
    She pulled out a mug, downed the contents like medicine. From the smell, Eve identified cheap coffee substitute. She waited while Bracken programmed a second mug, took a slug.
    “Isaac’s in the joint.”
    “Not anymore.”
    “No shit.” The first glimmer of interest passed over her face. “How’d he get out?”
    “Sliced up a medical and took his ID.”
    “He killed somebody?” Bracken’s scowl deepened. “That’s bullshit.”
    “It’s not the first time.”
    “I don’t believe that.” She glugged down more coffee, shook her head. “He wasn’t in for murder, so he didn’t do murder. He’s maybe a prick, but he ain’t no killer.”
    “Tell that to the medical’s widow and kid. Has he been by to see you, Deb?”
    “Shit no. I’m old news to him.” She frowned into her coffee. “Prick.”
    “You visited him in The Tombs.”
    “Yeah, so what? It’s not against the law. Some cop framed him, set him up so she could get some flash. So he liked kiddie porn. Everybody’s got their quirks, right? Anyway, I just went in a couple times to talk to him, give him some company.”
    “Eleven visits is more than a couple,” Peabody pointed out.
    “What’s the difference? I haven’t seen him in, like, two years. He gave me the boot. Get that? He’s in the joint and he gives me the boot. Prick.”
    “How did you and McQueen get acquainted?” Eve asked her.
    “What’s it to you?”
    At Eve’s nod, Peabody took a file from her bag, handed it to Eve. She walked it over, set it on the tiny, crowded counter. Opened it. “Take a look. This is what