by J. D. Robb
It hurt, heart and gut. But he did what he had to do. “You should have them.”
“Oh, I couldn’t. Her family—”
Bitch, he thought as he watched her. You cold bitch. “Her family told me to give what was appropriate to friends. She’d want you to have those since they remind you of her.”
“I’d really love to, if you’re sure. I’d love to have something of hers.” Tears sheened her eyes as she smiled. “I’ll treasure them.”
“I know you will.”
There were so many ways to kill, he thought, as they closed and sealed boxes. Slow, painful ways, quick, merciful ways. Obscene ways. He knew them all. Did she? How many ways had she killed?
Had she felt anything when she’d taken Ammy’s life? Or had it been simply a task to be done, like sealing a box for shipment? He wanted to ask her that, just that single thing. Instead, he asked if she’d like coffee.
“I wouldn’t mind, actually. Why don’t I get it? I know where everything is.”
When she went out to the kitchen, he followed as far as the living room and crouched in front of the droid kitten. He activated it, then stepped away to carry boxes and protective wrap to a chair.
He began, meticulously, to wrap the pale green glass vase she’d used for the roses he’d sent her. And the kitten mewed, as programmed. It stretched its silky white body as Cleo came back with the coffee.
“Thanks.” He kept his hands full—coffee, wrapping—while the kitten wound through Cleo’s legs.
“She loved this thing.” Cleo looked down as the kitten gave a plaintive meow and stared up at her with adoring eyes. “She just loved it. Will you keep it?”
“I suppose I will. I haven’t thought that far yet.”
Cleo laughed a little as the kitten continued to rub, meow, stare. “Do droids get lonely? You’d swear it’s desperate for a little attention.”
“It’s programmed for companionship, so . . .”
“Yeah. Okay, okay.” Cleo set down the coffee, bent down.
Morris continued to wrap even as he held his breath.
“It is kind of sweet if you go for this sort of thing. And she did. She bought it little toys, and the cat bed.” Cleo picked up the kitten. Gave it a stroke. Cursed.
“Don’t tell me it scratched you.” Morris put aside the wrapping to go to her.
“No, but something did.” Cleo held up her hand, and blood welled in a shallow cut on her index finger. “Something on the collar.”
“Damn rhinestones.” His own blood pumped hot, but his tone, his touch were both easy as he took Cleo’s wounded hand. “It’s not deep, but we’ll clean it up.”
“It’s nothing. A scratch.”
“You should wash and protect it.” He took a handkerchief out of his pocket, dabbed at the blood. “She’ll have what you need in the bathroom. Doctor’s orders,” he said.
“Can’t argue with that. I’ll be right back.”
He folded the cloth, tucked it into an evidence bag. He removed the collar from the droid, studied—just for a moment—the faint smear of blood on the glittery stones he’d sharpened himself. And he bagged it as well.
Then he picked up the kitten, nuzzled it. “Yes, you’ll come home with me. You won’t be alone.”
When Cleo came back in, he was sitting in one of Ammy’s living room chairs. “All right?” he asked.
“Good as new.” She held up her finger with the clear strip on the tip. “Where’s the cat?”
“I turned it to sleep mode.” He gestured absently toward the ball of white on its pillow. “Cleo, I want to thank you again for all you’ve done today. It’s been more help than you know. But I have to stop, for now. I think I’ve done all I can do in one day.”
“It’s a lot.” She walked over, laid a hand on his shoulder.
He wanted to surge out of the chair, close his own hands around her throat and ask his single question. What did you feel when you killed her?
“Do you want me to come back tomorrow, help you with the rest?”
“Can I contact you? I’m just not sure.”
“Absolutely. Anytime, Morris. I mean it. Anything you need.”
He waited until she’d gone before he balled his hands into fists, kept them balled and tried to envision all his rage inside them. When his communicator beeped twice—McNab’s all-clear—he rose. He walked over to pick up the sleeping kitten, its pillow, its toys.
He took them and nothing else from the home of the woman he loved. But the blood of her murderer.
In the interview room, Eve faced Alex across the table. “You want me to believe your father never told you that you have a half sib?”
“I want to know why you seem to believe I have one.”
“Did you ever see Sandy with this woman?”
“No.”
“You answered awfully quick, Alex. You’ve known Sandy since college, but you’re absolutely sure you’ve never seen him with this woman.”
“I don’t recognize her. If you’re trying to tell me she and Rod had a relationship, I didn’t know about it. I haven’t met every woman he’s ever been with. Why do you think she’s my sister?”
“Her mother was involved with your father.”
“For Christ’s sake—”
“Your father sent this woman to college. Paid the whole shot,” she continued as she saw annoyance turn to bafflement. “She did six months at University of Stuttgart. Big rival of your alma mater’s, right? Football rivals. Take another look.”
“I tell you I’ve never seen this woman before in my life.”
“Maybe you ought to think back to college. Sophomore year, and the big game. You made the varsity. Your pal was still a benchwarmer.”
“We weren’t . . .”
“Pals yet.” Eve smiled.
“We knew each other. Of course. We were friendly enough.”
Eve took out another photo, one of Cleo when she’d been eighteen. “Try this one, taken back in the day.”
“I don’t . . .” But he trailed off.
“Yeah, she looks different there. Younger, but that’s not all. Lots of long blond hair. The face is fuller. She looks girlier, fresher. Ring any bells?”
“You’re talking about more than ten years ago. I can’t remember every woman I’ve met or seen.”
“Now you’re lying to me. Fine, we’ll just move on.”
He slapped his hand on the photo before Eve could pick it up. “Who is she?”
“I ask the questions, you answer them. Now do you remember her?”
“I’m not sure I do. She looks like someone I saw around, during that time. With Rod. We were becoming friends, real friends. I saw him with her a few times, or someone who reminds me of her. I asked him about her, since we were starting to hang quite a bit—and, frankly, I liked the look of her. He was cagey, wouldn’t say more than she went to Stuttgart. I only remember because I called her Miss Mystery. Just a lame joke between us that lasted for months. Long enough that I remember it, and her. She’s not my sister.”
“Because?”
“Because I don’t have a sister. Do you think I wouldn’t find out? That he—my father—wouldn’t use it against me in some way? He’d—”
He broke off, and again Eve waited while he thought it through.
“You think my father sent her to Rod. To recruit him, to enlist him as a spy. To get close to me. That all this time, right from the beginning, Rod was my father’s dog?”
He pushed up from the table, walked to the two-way glass, and stared through his own image. “Yes, I see. I see how that could be, how he could and would orchestrate that. It doesn’t make this woman my blood. My sister. It just makes her another of Max Ricker’s tools.”
Peabody’s communicator signaled. She glanced at the text, nodded to Eve.
“We’ll be able to verify that shortly. If you’re being square with me on this, and if you were being square with me on wanting to know who killed Coltraine and why, you’ll do what I tel
l you now.”
“What are you telling me?”
“To stay here. It’s going to take some time to wrap this, and I want you inside.”
Alex continued to stare through the glass. “I’ve nowhere I have to be.”
Eve stepped out to the corridor to confer with Peabody. “Morris pulled it off.”
“McNab signals a go there. She left Coltraine’s. We’re on her, and she’s heading back to work. That’s a big plus as they’re not done at her apartment. I’m getting like a zillion signals during the Ricker interview. Her comp’s passcoded and it’s got a fail-safe. They’re bringing it in to Feeney. They haven’t found, as yet, a toss-away ’link.”
“She’d keep it with her. That’s what I’d do.”
“If she kept Coltraine’s ring, it’s not with her other jewelry. They haven’t found it yet. Callendar’s shuttle’s on schedule. Morris is taking the sample to the lab, personally.”
“Dickhead won’t mess with him,” Eve muttered, thinking of the chief lab tech. “Not with Morris. I want to pick her up, but we don’t have it. Not yet. Need the DNA, need the ring, the ’link. Any one of them would do it.”
“We could get her down here. Use the Sandy homicide with the Alex Ricker connection. We believe he’s responsible for both murders. We want to pick her brain, anything she might know, any take she might have. How we’re trying to put him away, but we’re hitting walls.”
“Not bad, Peabody. Make it happen. Set up a conference room away from Interview. I don’t want her running into Rouche when Callendar delivers him.”
She turned away to contact Baxter herself. “Why haven’t you found what I need?” she demanded.
“Working on it. We found a passcode. False bottom of her weapon’s lockbox. It’s a bank box. And before you tell me to contact Reo, I already did. We can’t stretch the warrant to the bank box. We need a separate warrant, and we don’t have enough for that.”
“Damn it.”
“Second that. There’s nothing here so far that doesn’t jibe with a cop’s life, a cop’s salary. No high-end electronics, jewelry, art. She’s got some pretty serious weaponry though. Six pieces over and above her departmental issue. A freaking army of knives. Not all under the legal limit either, but she’s got a collector’s license. We checked for prints, for blood. They’re showroom clean. She takes care of her tools.”
“Is there a stiletto?”
“Several. We culled them out for forensics.”
“Keep digging.”
She clicked off as Peabody came back. “Grady’s clearing it with her lieutenant. She’s juiced, I could see it. The idea of coming in and bailing us out, of finding a way to put the screws to Alex. She’s pumped.”
“Good. Keep on Dickhead, will you? But not enough to put his back up. I’m going to move Alex to one of the visitor rooms, put a babysitter with him. We’ll be working Grady, Rouche, and Zeban simultaneously, the way it’s panning. You take Zeban. He’s low rung, but that means he’s going to flip. He just helped out his drinking buddy, and now he’s in the soup. Work him quick and hard, Peabody. Scare the shit out of him.”
“Oh, boy, oh, boy.” Bouncing on her toes, Peabody rubbed her hands together. “Who’s juiced now?”
Eve moved Alex, arranged for Cleo to be taken straight to the conference room upon arrival.
She paced awhile as she worked out the best strategy. And was ready when she got word Detective Grady was in the house. She grabbed a mug of coffee, a file bag, and timed it so she swung into the conference room a few minutes after Peabody.
“Appreciate you coming down.” She kept her voice clipped, just a hair over into resentful.
“Not a problem for me,” Cleo assured her. “Everybody in the squad wanted a piece of this. Now we’ve got one. I hear you have the son of a bitch in holding.”
“For now. He’s got three lawyers with him and more on tap. I want to record this. Okay with you?”
“Sure.”
“Want some coffee, Detective?” Peabody asked.
“Sure. Thanks. I heard about the second murder. Rod Sandy? That’s on Ricker, too?”
“Has to be. Okay, this is the way it’s playing out.” All business now, cop to cop, Eve sat across from Cleo. “Ricker and Sandy kill Coltraine. Ricker does Sandy to put the first murder on him. Could work, but where’s Sandy’s motive? There’s no evidence of anything between Coltraine and Sandy. Sandy’s Ricker’s tool. Was. Like father like son,” Eve said with a shrug. “You use the tool until you’re done, then you break it so nobody else can. Ricker’s blood? It’s poison.”
Cleo only smiled. “That may be your opinion, but that’s not going to put Alex Ricker away for Ammy. If that’s all you’ve got, you’re not as good as everybody says you are.”
“I put the old man away.” Eve let anger—and some pride—punch through the words. “Nobody else ever did, or could. Don’t forget that. I’ll get his spawn, too. Count on it.”
“Then why do you need me?”
“You worked with her. Morris, he’s too close. I can’t get what I need out of him. Everything’s colored with emotion there. You worked with her, were friends with her. According to my partner, the fact you’re female adds another layer to that.”
“You said it yourself,” Peabody told Cleo, “women talk about things to each other. Maybe they don’t talk about those things even to guys they’re sleeping with. Plus, you were both cops.”
“She never mentioned Ricker to me, not by name. But like I already told you, she talked about a guy she’d been involved with. How they’d broken it off, and she’d come here.”
“She must’ve given you more than that,” Eve pressed. “Are you saying you never asked what happened? Nothing?”
“It was her business. Maybe I poked a little.” As if reluctant, Cleo hesitated, then sipped coffee. “I don’t know how it helps, not with a solid case, but she said a few things off and on. Like he had money, and she’d traveled with him some. It just wasn’t meant to be, and that kind of thing. She did say once he was too much like his father, but she didn’t get into it. I didn’t push because I didn’t know we were talking about Ricker, for God’s sake.”
She frowned a moment. Eve could all but see the wheels turning in her head. How much to add, how much to fabricate. “You know, I remember she said something about how he had this friend. How they were practically joined at the hip, and that was annoying. She said she’d have thought they had a love affair except he was too busy doing her.”
No, she didn’t, Eve thought. Coltraine wouldn’t have said that in a million.
“The friend didn’t like her,” Cleo added. “Tension there. Resented her. They had words at the end. He called her a cunt.”
Eve picked up her cue, narrowed her eyes. “You’re sure of that. That exact word?”
“Cunt cop, that’s what she said he said. Said it to her as she was walking out with stuff she had at the boyfriend’s place. She just kept walking. That was Ammy. No point in mixing it up when it was done, you know? She was glad it was over, and that was that. She decided to transfer up here. That’s what she said.”
“But?” Eve prompted.
“I’ve gone over and over it, trying to read the nuances. Hindsight. I guess I’d have to say she was into Morris. She really cared about Morris. But she was still hung up on the guy back home. If I had to judge it, to judge her, I’d say if Ricker contacted her, made the play, she’d have gone for him. To him. He could’ve used her feelings to get at her.”
Eve started to speak, broke off when her communicator signaled. “Crap. Sorry. I have to handle this.”
“We can use some of this,” Peabody said as Eve walked out. “The nuances, like you said, to try to pressure Ricker.”
Keep it up, Peabody, Eve thought, and answered Morris’s signal.
“Dallas.”
“I’m at the lab. Cleo Grady is Max Ricker’s daughter. We’re doing a second test, but—”
“It’s all I
need.”
“I’m coming in, Dallas. I need to be there when you take her.”
“I’ve got her now, working her now. She thinks she’s helping me nail Alex Ricker. I don’t want her to see you, Morris.”
“She won’t.”
He cut her off, so she contacted Baxter. “DNA’s confirmed. Contact Reo. I want a warrant for that bank box.”
