The In Death Collection Books 26-29 - J.D. Robb [563]
“How could you let this happen? How could you? At Deena’s memorial?”
“Carol, stop. Stop.” MacMasters got to his feet.
“It’s a disgrace.”
“Yes, it is.” He took his wife by the shoulders. “And it was my men who caused it, not the lieutenant’s. It was my men.”
“Regardless of that, this was my operation,” Eve said, “and my responsibility. I have no excuse, Mrs. MacMasters, and my apologies are hardly adequate.”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” Her eyes burned with a fury Eve imagined hurt less than grief. “You take responsibility?”
“No, but it’s all I have. I should be standing here telling you I have the man who killed your daughter in custody, and I’m not. Nothing I say can mean anything to you.”
“Carol.” Anna put the teapot down. “You’ve been a cop’s wife too long to do this. You’ve been a cop’s wife long enough to know everything that can be done is being done, and that lashing out at the lieutenant doesn’t help Deena.” She stood. “Now, come with me. We’ll go sit with Deena while this is sorted out.”
She led Carol out, closed the door quietly behind her.
“Lieutenant,” Whitney said coolly, “report.”
She did so just as coolly and in careful detail. When she spoke of Harrison and Cunningham, MacMasters rested his head in his hands.
“Who leaked it?” Whitney demanded.
“I’ll debrief within the hour, sir. I will have that information within an hour and five.”
“I expect you to have better control of your team, Lieutenant. I expect you to have the judgment and control to prevent this sort of leak in an operation under your command.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jack.” MacMasters spoke wearily. “They were my men.”
“And as the lieutenant correctly stated, this was her op, and her responsibility.” Whitney turned his gaze pointedly to Eve. “Lieutenant, I’ll need a full evaluation and written report, tonight.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll refine the team according to that evaluation, and present you with a detailed overview of the alternate operation to apprehend the suspect tomorrow with the Mimotos’s cooperation.”
“If you expect me to sell not releasing Darrin Pauley’s sketch and some salient information to the public via the media to the commissioner, you’d better sell it to me.”
“If we release the sketch, let him know we’re close, he’ll be in the wind.” He could already be in the wind, she thought. And that was a hard, hot ball in her belly.
“He’s young,” she continued, calmly, firmly, “and he’s patient. He can afford to wait, a year, five years before moving on another target if he goes rabbit now. He may select another. He’ll alter his looks—which he was cautious enough to modify today—use his skill in ID fraud to take another identity, or series of them, and settle back until Deena and Karlene Robins are forgotten, until the other known targets are no longer protected.”
“She’s right, Jack.” MacMasters held up a hand, let it fall. “Dallas was right about him coming here today. She’s right about this. If I have any weight here, I want you and the commissioner to know I agree with the lieutenant.”
Eve took MacMasters’s weight and pushed with more of her own. “Commander, if we release the sketch, we’ll have morons like Cunningham flooding the tip line with sightings of teenagers and twenty-somethings in ball caps while Pauley closes shop here and moves on to wait his chance.
“If we release the sketch, he wins. If we let this play out, and frankly, Commander, it burns my ass, but if we allow the media to portray this fiasco today as a monumental screwup, and we control that feed, he’ll be only more confident, and he’ll move on Mrs. Mimoto tomorrow, as planned. Release it, and we lose the chance.”
“We’d have had him today, sir.” When Peabody spoke up, Eve glanced at her with a combination of surprise and annoyance. “That’s not an excuse, it’s a fact. We will need to interview staff members here, and access their security as it’s obvious Darrin Pauley gained access much earlier, and was in the building prior to the memorial. But even with that, we’d have had him.”