Golden in Death(4)

“Yes. Do whatever you have to do. Then please, God, please, let me call our children. I need to talk to our children.”

Eve waited while Rufty was scanned, tested, cleared. Whatever had killed Kent Abner had dissipated before anyone else had come in contact with the body.

“You can contact your children,” Eve told Rufty. “Is there somewhere you can go, stay for a few days? It would be best if you didn’t stay here.”

“I can stay with our daughter. She’s closer. Our son lives in Connecticut, but Tori and her family live just a few blocks away. I can stay with Tori.”

“We’ll arrange to take you there, as soon as you’re ready.”

Rufty closed his eyes. When he opened them, the tears had burned away to reveal the steel. “I need to know what happened to my husband. To the father of my children. To the man I loved for forty years. If someone did this, someone hurt him, I need to know who. I need to know why.”

“It’s our job to get those answers for you, Dr. Rufty. If you think of anything,” Eve added, “anything at all, you can contact me.”

“He was such a good man. I need you to understand that. Such a good man. A loving man. He never hurt anyone in his life. Everyone loved Kent. They loved him.”

Someone didn’t, Eve thought.

“I believe him,” Peabody said as they finally left the crime scene. “That guy was cut off at the knees, and he honestly didn’t know anything or anyone that put Abner in the crosshairs.”

“Agreed, but a spouse doesn’t always know everything. We need to dig into Abner, his work, his habits, his hobbies. Any extramarital relationships.”

As she nodded, Peabody glanced back at the pretty brownstone with tulips blooming in its little front garden. “It’d be worse if, you know, it was just bad luck of the draw. If this was random.”

“A hell of a lot worse. The package was addressed specifically so we’ll look specifically. Let’s talk to the delivery person asap.”

Peabody programmed the address on the in-dash. “You feel okay, right?”

“I’m fine. Didn’t the vampires draw my blood and clear me?”

“Yeah, but I’ll feel better when they ID the toxin.” Peabody frowned out the window of the car. “He laid there for hours. The good of that is whatever it was dissipated, so we’re all not dead. The bad is he laid there for hours.”

“Yeah, and think about that. Have the delivery in the morning, knowing nobody’s going to go in there until late afternoon. It makes it look like a specific kill. Just Abner.”

As she pushed through traffic, Eve took a contact from Officer Shelby on her wrist unit. “What’ve you got, Shelby?”

“They tracked the package to a drop-off kiosk on West Houston, sir. It was logged in through the after-hours depository—that’s self-serve—at twenty-two hundred hours.”

“Security cam?”

“Yes, sir. And the cam had a glitch at twenty-one-fifty-eight until twenty-three-oh-two.”

“An idiot would call that a coincidence.”

“Yes, sir. Officer Carmichael, who is not an idiot, has requested EDD examine the security camera and feed at this depository. However, if the killer proves to be an idiot, she used her credit account, via her ’link, to pay for the overnight shipping. Said payment was charged to the account of a Brendina A. Coffman, age eighty-one, apartment 1A, 38 Bleecker Street.”

“We’ll check her out now. Good work, Shelby.”

Peabody didn’t have time to grab the chicken stick before Eve wheeled sharp around a corner to change direction.

“Get a warrant,” Eve ordered Peabody. “We need to look at Coffman’s credit history.”

“Brendina Coffman.” Peabody read off her PPC as Eve fought her way to Bleecker. “Married to Roscoe Coffman for fifty-eight years, lived at the current address for thirty-one years. A retired bookkeeper who worked for Loames and Gardner for—wow—fifty-nine years. No criminal in the last half century or so, but a couple of dings in her twenties. Disorderly conduct and simple assault. They have three offspring—male, female, male, ages fifty-six, fifty-three, and forty-eight. Six grandchildren from ages twenty-one to ten.”

“Start running the rest of them,” Eve ordered. “It’s not going to be an idiot,” she muttered. “We don’t have that kind of luck. But run them.”

“Okay, well, the oldest offspring is Rabbi Miles Coffman of Shalom Temple, married to Rebekka Greene Coffman for twenty-one years—and she teaches at the Hebrew school attached to the temple. They have three of the kids—twenty, eighteen, and sixteen, female, male, and male, respectively—nothing flagged on the kids, no criminal on the parents.”

With no available parking in sight, Eve double-parked, causing much annoyance on Bleecker. Ignoring it, she flipped up her On Duty light.

“Keep going,” Eve said as she got out, studied the sturdy old residential building. A triple-decker of faded brick, no graffiti, clean windows, some of them open to the cool spring evening.

“Marion Coffman Black, married to Francis Xavior Black, twenty-three years—no, twenty-four as of today; happy anniversary—is cur rently employed, as she has been for twenty years, as bookkeeper in the same firm as her mother was. Couple dings in her twenties for illegal protests, nothing since. Son, twenty-one, a student at Notre Dame, daughter, age nineteen, also at Notre Dame.”