The In Death Collection Books 6-10 - J. D. Robb [401]
“Hell.” Eve closed her eyes a minute, shifted her thoughts. “That puts it under that same amount of time after Louise regained consciousness. Defensive wound indicated she’d seen her attacker and could identify.”
“Somebody didn’t want Jan to talk.” Feeney pursed his lips, nodded. “Follows.”
“That puts it back at the Drake, Feeney. Wo’s out. We need to find out where the other doctors on the short list were in that hour period. You’ve got the security discs and logs from Jan’s building.”
“Peabody’s confiscating right now.”
“He wouldn’t have done it himself. He’s not stupid. You’re going to find a droid, six two, two ten, Caucasian, brown and brown. But somebody had to activate and program.”
“Droid.” Feeney nodded. “McNab hit something interesting when he scanned for data on the self-destruct units. Senator Waylan headed the subcommittee that studied their military uses.”
“I have a feeling he won’t be running for another term.” She rubbed her fingers over her eyes. “Check the logs for security droids at the Drake. Wake up McNab. He could run a systems check on them if you can get a warrant for it. Even if the program was wiped, he’d find the lag time. When you’ve . . .”
She trailed off, snapping back. “Sorry,” she said in a careful voice. “Just thinking out loud.”
“You think good, kid. Always have. Keep going.”
“I was going to say that in some of the research I’ve done, I found that Westley Friend’s self-termination used the same method as Dr. Wo, and they were both—along with some of our other cast of characters—involved in some classified project at the time of his death. It seems a little too neat. Someone might want to suggest to Morris that he consider that dose was forcibly administered.”
“It was her pin found on scene.”
“Yeah, and it was the only mistake in this whole business. That’s a little too neat, too.”
“Smelling goat, are you, Dallas? Scapegoat?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m smelling. Be interesting to find out how much she knew. If I had access to her personal logs . . .”
“I think I’ll just wake up McNab, keep the boy busy awhile. You stand by.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
When the transmission ended, she picked up her coffee and got up to prowl. It had to go back to Friend, she decided. Revolutionary new implant that made certain hot areas of organ research obsolete. Meaning end of funding, end of glory for those heavily involved in those areas.
“What if a group of doctors or interested parties continued and restarted research on a covert level?” She turned to Roarke, grimaced when she noted he was manning the keyboard. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right. I’ve got his pattern now. It’s nearly routine from here.” He glanced up, pleased to see her focused, restless, edgy. That, he thought, was his cop. “What’s your theory?”
“It’s not one rogue doctor,” she began. “Look at this little operation. I can’t do this out on my own. I’ve got you, with your questionable skills. Feeney, Peabody, and McNab, sliding under regs and procedure to feed me data. I enlisted a doctor on the side. I’ve even got Nadine running research. It’s too big for one cop—and a cop working outside the system—to handle alone. You need contacts, fillers, assistants, experts. There’s a team, Roarke. He’s got a team. We know he had the nurse. My best guess is she fed him data on patients, the kind that use the clinic or make use of the medi-van service. Sleepers, LCs, dealers, chemi-heads. Dregs,” she concluded. “Vessels.”
“She contacted someone with possible donors, let’s say.” Roarke nodded. “Every business needs a good inside track. And this appears to be a business.”
“She passed data straight to the labs. Her contact with the outside centers could have, likely was, for verification of a hit. She’d be what you’d call middle management, I guess.”
“Close enough.”
“I bet we find she has a nice nest egg stashed. They’d pay well. We know their lab man had to be Young. Every business needs a geek, right?”
“Can’t run one otherwise.”
“The Drake’s enormous, and our geek was pretty much in charge of the organ wing. He’d know