"I know. I'm okay. It's just, when I see him in that chair, I get a little shaky. There's no change. They said he should start to feel a tingling, like you do when your foot's asleep and starts to wake up. That would signal the nerves are coming back. But he's not, they're not."
"Recovery time varies. I've taken a full body blast and had no appreciable numbness within minutes. And I've had a glancing stream hit my arm and put it down for hours."
"He's scared. He's pretending he's not, but he's really scared."
"If he can pretend he's not, so can you. And if you want to do something about the people who put him in that chair-temporarily-then you need to pull it in and focus."
"I know." Peabody drew a deep breath, straightened her shoulders. "I can handle it."
"Good, then get started by handling the coffee."
She walked back out, stopped cold when she saw Feeney in her office doorway. His face was a picture of misery, sorrow, and fury as he stared at the back of McNab's chair.
Eve started to make a sound, anything that would snap him back, but before she could, he hit some internal switch. His face cleared.
"What's all this?" He came in scowling at McNab. "This looks like malingering to me. Trust you to manage to get a toy out of it all."
"Iced, huh?"
"First time you run over my foot, I'm flattening you. Baxter's on his way in. Got coffee?"
"Yeah." Eve nodded. "We got coffee."
By nine-thirty, she'd given the team the basic details. By nine forty-five she'd filled in the gaps, and by ten she'd added a basic theory.
"At least one of the key people in this group has been personally affected by a crime, most likely a crime against a child. Most probably more than one of them. You need like minds to get something like this off the ground. They have superior and as yet unknown electronic abilities, and must have some sort of medical consultant. It's also likely they have contact of some sort with the police or with the judicial system. Or both.
"They're organized, they're articulate, and they're media savvy."
"When you've got a group like this," Baxter said, "you've got those like minds. But you almost always have one or more who's in it for the thrill, the blood, or because they're just seriously wacko."
"Agreed. You can start a search for serious wackos who fit another of the group's profile. They will contact Nadine again," she continued. "They want public attention, and approval."
"They're going to get it." Feeney slurped at his coffee. "This is just the sort of thing that gets people riled up, arguing in the streets, making up T-shirts, taking sides."
"We can't stop the media train, so we do our best to steer it onto our tracks. Nadine wants to interview both you and McNab. You can blow," she said before Feeney could do just that. "But you won't be saying anything I didn't already say or think. The point is, the department believes this will be helpful."
"You think I'm giving this airtime?" Feeney slammed his cup down. "You think I'm going to go on-screen and yammer about what happened yesterday, talk about that boy?"
"What you'll say will help people understand what happened with Halloway." Roarke spoke quietly. "It will make them see him as he was-a good cop who was doing his job. Who was killed in the line of duty by a group of people who want to be perceived as guardians of justice. You'd make them see him as a person."
"I'd like to talk about it." McNab was strapped into the chair. It was something he couldn't ignore no matter how hard he tried. He wasn't just sitting, but secured in. So he wouldn't slump down like a ragdoll, tumble out like a baby.
It burned in his belly along with the fear that he would be strapped in a chair the rest of his life. "If people listen they'd understand he wasn't the one who put me down. It was whoever infected that unit he was working on. Halloway didn't put me in here, and he doesn't deserve anyone thinking he did. So I'd like to do the interview. I'd like to say what I have to say."
"If that's what you want." Feeney picked up his coffee again, drank it to wash away the fist-sized lump in his throat. "Then that's what we'll do."
"The department's issued statements. You'll both need to read them." Eve walked to her desk, gave herself time to settle. "They won't preclude or censor anything you feel you want to say, but they'd like you to get in the bullet points, and some of the language. It's important NYPSD show unity inthis regard. Nadine can do the interviews here."
She turned back. "Now maybe we can get down to the business of cop work. We need to determine the nature of the virus in the units, and that can't be done until we have some sort of shield against that virus."
"I've done a bit of work on that," Roarke told her. "And taken the liberty of calling in a technical adviser." He turned to the 'link. "Summerset, send him up."
"You should've cleared this with me," Eve began.
"You need specific skills for this. Feeney and McNab need more than me. And I need more than an assistant. I've someone who's been doing some very innovative work with my R and D departments, and I don't think you'll find anything to worry about regarding his loyalty or his clearance."
Eve looked at the doorway. And her jaw dropped. "Well, for Christ's sake, Roarke, I can't use a kid for this."
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Genius has no age."
So said Jamie Lingstrom as he strutted into her office on a pair of dilapidated airboots.
He wore his sandy hair short and spiked on top with a longer hank in the front that flopped over his forehead. The only piercing-apparently-was to accommodate the tiny silver hoop at the tail of his left eyebrow. His face had done some fining down since the last time she'd seen him, and right now his mouth was twisted into a smirk.
He'd always been cocky.
His grandfather had been a cop, who'd gone down while unofficially investigating a cult. The cult had killed Jamie's sister and had come uncomfortably close to sacrificing Eve.
He'd sprouted up at least two inches. When did kids stop growing? she wondered. He was sixteen-no, likely seventeen by now. And he should have been doing whatever teenagers did rather than standing in her office with that cocky expression.
"Why aren't you in school?"
"I do the home thing mostly, on work program. You get to do hands-on-the-job crap as long as it's with a business that contracts through the school and shit."
Eve turned to Roarke. "One of yours."
"Actually, I have several companies that contract with the education program. The youth of today, after all, is the hope of tomorrow."
"So." Jamie scanned the room then dipped his thumbs into the front pockets of baggy jeans with holes at both knees. "When do we get started?"
"You." Eve jabbed a finger at Roarke. "There." Pointing at his office, she strode in ahead of him, slammed the door smartly.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Bringing in an expert assistant."
"He's a kid."
"He's a brilliant kid. You do recall how he managed to bypass the security here with a homemade jammer?"
"So he got lucky."
"Luck had nothing to do with it." That particular homemade had been refined, adjusted, expanded. "He has more than a knowledge of electronics-though he has that in spades, I can promise you. He has a feel, an instinct that's very rare."
"I'd like to keep his brain inside his head, at least until he turns twenty-one."
"I've no intention of allowing him to do anything that puts him in physical jeopardy."
"Neither of us intended that last fall, either, but he came damn close. And he's, well, he's like Feeney's family."
"Exactly. It'll give Feeney a lift to work with him. The fact is, Eve, we need someone like him. Someone with an open mind and a quick brain. He won't automatically think a thing can't be done because it's not been done before." Roarke spread his hands. "He'll see possibilities. He wants to be a cop," he added before Eve could speak.