by J. D. Robb
“IAB had investigated her.”
“They got a tip about her relationship with Ricker, when they were in Atlanta. They had eyes on her, eyes and ears when they could manage it. They lived together, essentially, for well over a year.”
He kept his eyes steady. “I knew she’d had a serious relationship. She never lied to me about it, or tried to play it down.”
“Okay. She occasionally traveled with Ricker. Vacation type stuff. He bought her some jewelry. That’s all they had. They never assembled any evidence that it was anything but a personal, a romantic relationship.”
“And, of course, never just asked her.”
“Not according to my source.”
“Which would be Webster, Dallas, I’m not a fool. Have they had her under watch here?”
“Initially. The relationship with Ricker ended, appeared to end, a couple of months before she requested the transfer. Their contact was minimal after the breakup, and dribbled down to none. But the New York bureau was notified, and took a look at her. Webster said they bumped her down—just nothing there—and they weren’t on her when Ricker contacted her, when he got to New York.”
“He’s your prime suspect.”
“He’s a suspect. Prime’s pushing it with what I have. I know he’s crooked. She would have known that, too. Webster’s going to do some digging, and keep a lid on it. He’ll be careful with her, Morris.”
“IAB, now—it’s—” He broke off, shook his head.
“I’m sorry. She may have been a source for Alex back in Atlanta. Morris, you know I have to consider that. If she was involved with him, in love with him, she might’ve stepped over the line for him. I have to look there as long as I’m looking at him. And I have to think, either way it was, maybe she took a good hard look at things. After she’d come here, after she had that distance, and you. Maybe she’d started to put things down, thought about putting down details and flipping on him.”
Both the anger and the fatigue had cleared from his face as he heard her out. “If that’s true, and he found out—”
“If and if. But there’s nothing on her units. Nothing. She spent a lot of time here. A lot of time with you. Maybe time here when you weren’t.”
“Yes, depending on our shifts, or if either of us got called in. You think she might have used my comps, tucked something in, because it felt safer. More secure.”
“I’d like to have my expert consultant here take a look. And, I know it’s weird, but if I could do a search. In case she hid discs or any kind of documentation.”
“Yes. Please.” He got to his feet. “I’ll make coffee.”
Morris helped with the search, and Eve thought he seemed more himself—precise, focused—for the doing. She took the kitchen, the living area, leaving him to the bedroom while Roarke concentrated on the office.
She dug through containers and clear jars, in drawers and behind them. Under tables, cushions, behind art, and through Morris’s extensive music disc collection. She examined every stair tread before going up.
In the bedroom Morris stood in front of the closet, a filmy white robe in his hands.
“It smells of her,” he said quietly. “It smells of her.” And hung it up again. “I can’t find anything.”
“Maybe Roarke’ll have better luck. Can you think of anywhere else she might put something? Hide something?”
“I can’t. She was friendly but distant with her neighbors. You know how it is. She was closest with her squad. But if she’d given one of them anything, they’d have come to you, or certainly to their lieutenant, with it by now.”
“Yeah.”
She blew out a breath. “Maybe there’s nothing here because there’s nothing anywhere.”
“It feels as though it’s the first thing I’ve done of any consequence, the first I’ve done to help her. Even if it was to find nothing. You believe she crossed the line.”
“IAB couldn’t prove it.”
“That’s evasion. You think it.”
“Truth, Morris? I don’t know.”
“What did she do with the jewelry he bought her?”
“She gave it back when they split.”
He smiled, really smiled, for the first time since she’d come to his door the day before. “That’s who she was, Dallas.”
She brooded about it on the drive home. “Waste of three hours. Nothing. Nothing there. If we couldn’t find anything between us, there’s nothing there. Wasted time.”
“It wasn’t, and far from it. He looked alive again when we left. In pain, in sorrow, but alive.” Roarke reached out to cover her hand. “Not wasted time.”
11
BACK IN HER HOME OFFICE, SHE RAN THE SECUrity discs. She watched Rod Sandy, carrying a briefcase, exit the elevator, cross the lobby, exit the building at eleven-twenty-six the morning after Coltraine’s murder.
He looked grim.
“Favor,” she said to Roarke, “do a search on the time the first media reports of Coltraine’s murder hit.”
While Roarke obliged, she continued the run, watched people come and go. None exited—according to the elevator readout—on the penthouse levels until Sandy returned at twelve-oh-eight.
“The first bulletin hit at ten-fifty-three on ANN,” Roarke said, referring to All News Network. “Broad sweep reports followed on every major station by eleven.”
“Quick work,” Eve muttered. “That’s quick work if Sandy carried discs and anything incriminating or questionable out with him—which he damn well did—to another location.”
“He wouldn’t have taken his unregistered out across a public lobby.”
“No.” She switched to elevator security. Again she saw Sandy step in, ride down, get off. Others took the car to other floors. Then the screen went blank and black. “What the—is that the disc or my equipment?”
“Neither. The security cam shut down. Was shut down,” Roarke corrected. “No blip, no static, no jump such as you’d get if there was a malfunction. The building would have a basement, utility areas, a delivery entrance.”
“Delivery entrance on the cross street.” Eve shifted to that disc. “Son of a bitch, coordinated shutdown. Smooth. Even if I dig up a wit from the building, or the buildings across the street that saw loading and unloading, it proves nothing. Still . . .”
“He’d need a vehicle—truck or . . . a van to move the equipment.”
“And to carry the new furniture in. He wouldn’t have used a stolen van,” she added, in response to Roarke’s unspoken question. “Furniture delivery truck maybe. He owns an antique store on Madison, and another downtown. Maybe I get somebody to ID it, and say, ‘Yeah, I saw these guys carting out boxes, carting in a dresser,’ it’s not evidence. But this tells me he took care of business the morning after Coltraine was killed. He covered his ass.”
“Devil’s advocate, darling, but under the same circumstances, I’d have been covering mine hours earlier if I’d done murder. By the time the body was discovered, there’d be nothing on the premises I didn’t want the cops to see.”
“He’s not as good as you. I said that before.”
“I never tire of hearing it.”
“On the night she died we’ve got him on the cam, coming and going at the times he gave us. Or close enough not to argue with. But he shuts it down to remove his unregistered and take a furniture delivery. No, not as good as you.”
She gave Roarke a thoughtful look. “You’d’ve doctored the discs if you felt you needed to. But most likely, you’d have let it all go on record. What the fuck do you care if the cops see packages leaving your place? Something new coming in. No crime in it. The cops hadn’t had the first word with you. You’d’ve let it stand and said prove it. With the ‘fuck you’ implied.”
“How comforting to be so well understood. He’s given you just what you wanted to know, hasn’t he? He’s—as you put it—on the shady side, and he had something to hide.”
“Which doesn’t make him a killer,” Eve admitt
ed. “But if the shady side included cops on the payroll, why stop at one? I’ve got to take another look at her squad, which probably means reaching out to IAB again. Crap.”
“Again. Yes, I gleaned that when you talked to Morris.”
Realizing she’d yet to mention her meet with Webster, she glanced over. “If a lead indicates the vic may have been a dirty cop, I’ve got to tap that resource.”
“Define tap.”
Even though she realized it was his intent, Eve nearly squirmed. “I had a meet with Webster. I used the Down and Dirty—Crack says hey. We’re both keeping it off the log, for now.”
“Interesting venue.”
“The connection with Crack makes it my turf. We’re sharing data.”
Roarke tapped her chin. “Isn’t it lucky I’m not the jealous type?”
She simply stared at him. “Oh yeah, that’s lucky.”
When he laughed, she shook her head, then walked over to study her murder board one last time. “The killer’s on here. The trigger or the one who cocked it. Nothing else makes sense. But what did she do? What did she do, what did she know, who did she threaten to bring it down on her?”
She slept on it, and didn’t sleep well.
In the dream, Eve sat on a slab in the morgue, with Coltraine sitting on her own. They faced each other while the mournful sounds of a saxophone played through the chilled air.
“You’re not telling me enough,” Eve said.
“Maybe you’re not listening.”
“That’s bullshit, Detective.”
“You can’t think of me as Ammy, or even Amaryllis. You’re having a hard time seeing me as just a woman.”
“You’re not just a woman.”
“Because of the badge.” Coltraine held hers in her hand, turning it over, studying it. “I liked having it. But I didn’t need it. Not like you. For some, the job is just a job. You know that about me, you know that much. It’s one of the reasons you can think, can believe, I used the badge for personal gain.”
“Did you?”
With her free hand, Coltraine brushed back her blond, glossy hair. “Don’t we all? Don’t you? I don’t mean the pitiful pay. You gain, personally, every day, by being in charge, in control, doing the work. Pushing, pushing, pushing what you were aside for what you are.”
“It’s not about me.”
“It’s always about you. Victim, killer, investigator. The triad, always connected. Each one links the other, each one brings what they bring to the table. One can’t be without the other two in this game.” Coltraine puffed out a breath, a soft sound of annoyance. “I never expected to die for it, and that—let me tell you—is a total bitch. You do.”
“I expect to die?”
“Sitting on a slab, aren’t you? Just like me. But expect’s the wrong word. You’re prepared.” As if pleased, she nodded. “Yes, that’s better. You’re prepared to die, for the badge. I wasn’t. I was prepared to do the work until it was time to step away from it and get married, start a family. You’re still surprised you’ve managed to be a cop and a wife. You can’t figure how it’s possible to be one and have a family, so you don’t think about it.”
“Kids are scary. They’re foreign and—”
“What you were when he hurt you. When he beat you and terrorized you and raped you. How can you have a child until you fully understand, accept, forgive the child you were?”
“Did getting murdered give you a license to shrink?”
“It’s your subconscious, Lieutenant. I’m just one of your dead now.” She looked over to the wall, and all those cold, steel drawers. “One of the many. You and Morris, both so oddly comfortable here. Did you really never think about tapping that?”
Even in the dream, Eve felt heat rise into her face. “Jesus, this is not my subconscious.”
“It sure as hell isn’t mine.” With a laugh, Coltraine shook back her hair. “But loving someone without the sex, even the sexual buzz? That’s special. I’m glad he has you now, glad he has that with you. It was different for him and me. That sexual buzz?” She snapped her fingers. “Almost that quick. And from there, a lot more. He was the one, I think he would’ve been the one to be with, to believe in, have a family with.”
“What about Alex Ricker? Sexual buzz?”
“And then some. You know that. You know exactly the kind of sexual buzz a man like that throws off.”
“He’s not like Roarke.”
“Not that different, not all that different.” Coltraine pointed at Eve, smiled easily. “That bothers you. We’re not that different either. We fell for it, we wanted it. We just handled it differently. Would you, could you, have walked away from him if he hadn’t shed the shady?”
“I don’t know. Can’t be sure. But I know if he had asked me to be with him, to make a life with him and to look the other way while he broke the law, he wouldn’t be Roarke. Roarke’s who I stayed with.”
Now Coltraine wagged that finger back and forth. “But he does break the law.”
“Hard to explain, even to me. He doesn’t break it for his own profit, for his own gain. Not now, not anymore. If he does, it’s because he believes in right, in justice. Not always the same right, the same justice as I do. But he believes. Ricker didn’t shed for you. I got that much, too.”
“They come from harsh fathers and dead mothers, these men. Isn’t that part of what makes them, and part of our attraction to them? They’re dangerous and compelling. They want us, and want to give us things.”
“I don’t care about the things. But you did. You did or you wouldn’t have given them back. Huh. Subconscious scores. You gave them back because they did matter, and because they mattered you couldn’t keep them. It wouldn’t have been a break then, not a clean one. You wore the ring your parents gave you instead, a reminder of who and where you’d come from. Solid middle-class family.”
“Maybe you are listening.”
“Maybe you looked the other way when you were with him. Maybe you even told him things you shouldn’t have—because the badge was just a job, and secondary. But you weren’t dirty. You weren’t on the take. That’s not what you wanted from him, and not what you’d have given him. If it was, you’d have given the badge back, too. You could lie to yourself when you were with him that it was nobody’s business what you did on your own time, nobody’s business who you loved.”
Coltraine’s smile warmed and spread. “Now who’s the shrink?”
Ignoring the comment, Eve went on. “But even when the job’s secondary, it gets in the way. It got in the way, and he wasn’t going to change. You couldn’t keep loving him when he couldn’t love you enough to see that. So you gave back the things, and you walked away. But you kept the badge.”
Coltraine studied it again. “A lot of good it did me.” She looked up at Eve then, and her eyes, so bold and green, filled with sorrow. “I don’t want to stay here.”
“They’re going to let you go soon.”
“Do you think any of us go anywhere until we have the truth? Do you think there’s peace without justice?”
“No, I don’t,” Eve admitted, knowing it would always drive her. Would always make her push. “You won’t stay here. You’ve got my word. I promise you, you won’t stay here.”
Could you make a promise to a dead woman in a dream? Eve wondered. And what did it mean that she had, that she’d needed to?
As she dressed, she glanced over at Roarke, who sat with his coffee, his stock reports, his cat. Didn’t look so dangerous now, she mused. Not such a bad boy. Just an absurdly handsome man starting the daily routine.
Except, of course, he’d probably started the routine a good hour or two before, with some international ’link transmission or holo-meeting. But still, didn’t look so dangerous.
Which, she supposed, was only one of the reasons he was. Very.
“You were already giving it up.”
He turned his attention from the scrolling codes and figures on-screen to Eve. “Giving w
hat up?”
“The allegedly criminal activities. When we met, you were already shedding. I just sped up the process.”
“Considerably.” He sat back with his coffee. “And with finality. Otherwise, I’d have, most likely, kept my finger tipped into a few tasty pies. Habits are hard to break, especially fun ones.”
