by J. D. Robb
“Detective third grade, small squad—not much notice there. She lives alone, nobody to wonder where she is, what she’s doing. She takes every day—always has—of her vacation and sick leave.”
“Unlike someone we know,” Roarke said to Galahad as he offered the cat a small cracker and a smudge of cheese.
“Flexing time regularly,” Eve added. “Not enough to raise eyebrows, but considerable. Enough time, when you add it up, for her to take other assignments. I need to know where she was during that period between college and going on the job. If she crossed with Sandy during that six months in Europe. Where she goes during her off time. I only need one connection, one time paths crossed. Reo can get me a search warrant on that.”
“I take it we’re working tonight.”
Eve popped a grape into her mouth before she carried the tray over to her dresser. “It’s not night yet.” She crawled back onto the bed, and onto her man. “And I have to finish groveling.”
“That’s right, you do.” In a quick move he reversed their positions. He lowered his head, caught her bottom lip in his teeth. Tugged. “There’s quite a bit of groveling to be done here. So this might take a while.”
“What choice do I have? My word is my bond.”
Sleep, sex, a little food—it was, Eve thought, the trifecta of energy boosts. And since she was going to use that energy to work, she deserved her most comfortable clothes. In ancient jeans and an even more ancient Police Academy T-shirt, she brought coffee out of her office kitchen. And found Roarke studying her board.
“Because she’s a woman?”
Eve passed him one of the mugs. “I know it sounds shaky. I guess you had to be here. It could be any one of them, but she’s the best fit. And fitting her . . . it’s all head and gut. That’s the problem. Without more, without some bump along the way, I can’t get the search. And the search may be the only way to find the bumps.”
“If bumps are there, we’d find them with the unregistered.”
“Can’t do it. Before, that was for Morris.” She shook her head, knowing as logic it was again shaky. “I’m going after another cop. I have to do it straight. Every step I take has to be by and on the book for the investigation. And for me. She made a mistake somewhere, overlooked something, sometime. She made one by sending Coltraine’s weapon and badge back. By botching the ambush on me.”
“Assuming it’s Grady. This one.” Roarke tapped Clifton’s photo. “He’s trouble. I know his type.”
“Yeah, and I won’t be surprised to hear at some point he’s ordered to hand over his pieces and badge. And if Coltraine had been knocked around, he’d be top of my list. That was a mistake,” Eve considered. “Grady did it too clean. It just wasn’t physical enough, either of the hits. That’s pride. She’s proud of her work. She does well on the job, she gets kudos from her LT. She does well on her mission, she gets them from Ricker. She covers both.”
“ ‘Don’t disappoint me, dear,’ ” Roarke remembered. “It does strike as a warning to a female. One that puts her in a subordinate position, and one that implies a relationship.”
“Do you ever call your subordinates ‘dear?’ ”
“Good Christ, I hope not. It’s a kind of backhanded slap, isn’t it? If I need to slap an employee, I do it face-to-face.”
“Exactly. Ricker can’t, being all busy in a cage off-planet. The whole phrase is an insult, and a warning. His history with women, it just fits again. So where did she catch his eye? I figure I’ll start with that six months in Europe, the college stint. I might find some intersect with Sandy, then I can work back, and forward from there.”
She went to her desk to do just that. Roarke continued to stand, studying the board.
Attractive woman, he thought. Compact, athletic, a strong face, but very female in the shape of the mouth, the line of the jaw. Certainly one of Ricker’s type, he mused—as far as he could recall. And still, if that connection went back as far as Eve seemed to think, she’d have been eighteen, perhaps twenty. Ricker certainly hadn’t been above using youth for sex, but had he ever taken an actual interest in a girl of that age?
Not in Roarke’s memory of him.
No, that part didn’t fit, not with the man he’d known in his own youth. Women had been commodities, something to be used. Easily discarded. Paid off, discarded, disposed of. Or, as with Alex’s mother, eliminated.
“Look at her mother.”
“What?”
“Her mother,” Roarke repeated. “Run her mother, her parents. Indulge me,” he said when she frowned at him.
Eve ordered the run, and Lissa Grady’s data on-screen.
“Attractive woman,” Roarke commented. “Works part-time in an art gallery where she and her husband retired. Suburban Florida. Respectable salary.”
“No criminal. I ran everyone’s connections before. The father’s clean, too,” she pointed out. “Had his own accounting firm. Small company with two employees. Clean. Now he plays a lot of golf, and works freelance.”
“Hmm. They must have sacrificed considerably to give the daughter the kind of education she had. Where were they when she started college?”
Eve ordered the history. “Bloomfield, New Jersey.”
“No, the employment. She’s a clerk, and he’s working for an accounting firm. Go back on her. Where was she, let’s say nine months before she gave birth?”
“Chicago,” Eve announced. “Working her way through graduate school—art history major—as an assistant manager in a private art gallery. She moved to New Jersey, where her parents lived, during the pregnancy. She took maternity benefits, then the professional mother’s stipend.”
“And was single until, what would it be, she was about four months along.”
“Like that never happens. It’s . . . Wait.”
“Run the gallery, Eve. Where she worked when she became pregnant.”
She began, shook her head. “It doesn’t exist anymore and hasn’t for six years. It’s an antique store now. Oh, big, giant pop. I’m an idiot. Not a protegée, not exactly. Not an employee—not only. Not a lover. His freaking daughter.”
“Alex said he’d spent most of his life trying to please his father. Maybe she’s doing the same. Ricker owned several art galleries, an excellent front for smuggling and art forgery. Lissa Grady—or Lissa Neil at the time—could’ve caught his eye.”
“And if she turned up pregnant? He’d get rid of her?”
“Unless she was carrying a son, I imagine so. She’s tested, it’s a female. He might—if he was feeling generous—give the young woman some form of payment. If not, he’d issue a warning.”
“And Lissa took either the payment or the warning, moved back home to New Jersey. Gave up her chance at her graduate degree, her job, had the kid. Married some guy.”
“The some guy’s stuck, more than thirty years. So I’d say Lissa found someone and made something.”
“Would he have kept tabs on her?” Eve wondered. “Looked up the kid?”
“I wouldn’t think so, no. The woman and the child wouldn’t have existed for him.”
“Okay. Okay.” She pushed up to pace. “So, at some point, they tell her. Or maybe they’ve been up front about it all along. Maybe she always knew the guy raising her wasn’t her biological. She gets curious, she starts digging.”
“And finds Max Ricker.”
“Most people, they’re going to be sick if they’re looking for a biological and turn up a criminal kingpin, one suspected of being responsible for more deaths than a lot of small wars. If this is right, if this”—she pointed at Lissa’s image on the wall screen—“is the connection, Grady went to him. She made the contact. I’m your kid, asshole, what are you going to do about it? What would he have done?”
“Depends on his mood again,” Roarke said. “But he might have been entertained by a direct approach. And as he and Alex weren’t on the best of terms at that point, it might’ve intrigued him. The idea of having a chance to mold an offspr
ing.”
“Educate her, train her. Use her.” She knew all about that, Eve thought, all about the methods a father might use to mold. She blocked it out, focused on Grady. “And God, wouldn’t it be sweet to use her to screw with the son who disappointed him?”
“And for her, wouldn’t you think?” Roarke walked back to the board. “For her, also sweet to have a part in undermining the son—the prince, as he’d appear to be from the outside. The one who had all she didn’t. The wealth, the advantages, the attention. The name. It all falls into place with this single element. But then you have to prove this single element is fact.”
“I can do that.” Eve grinned fiercely. “DNA doesn’t lie. I’m going to write this all up, toss it to Mira to add to the stew for the profile. I still need something that puts her and Sandy together, even just the same general place, same general time.”
“That would be my assignment.”
“It would, but you have to play it straight.”
“You’re always spoiling my fun.”
“You already had fun. I groveled.”
“True.” He walked over, laid his hands on her shoulders, laid his lips on hers. “I know you.” He rubbed her shoulders, lightly. “The part of you who isn’t working the case in your head is wondering if all this is true, is she what she is, did she do what she did because of that DNA.”
Yes, she thought, he knew her. “It’s a question.”
“And the mirror turns so you wonder next about your own blood. What passes from father to daughter.”
“I know I’m not like her. But it’s another question.”
“Here’s an answer. Three fathers—hers, mine, yours—and three products of that blood, so to speak. And all of us have done what we’ve done with it. Maybe because of it. You know you’re not like her, you’re sure of that much. I know you. I’m sure you never could have been.”
He kissed her again before he left her.
She put it away, put away that part of her that wasn’t working the case in her head. That was for later.
She stitched the theory together for Mira, and thought it was a shame Grady’s DNA wasn’t on record. She’d have her warrants in a fingersnap if she proved Grady was Max Ricker’s daughter. Still, it wouldn’t take much. A little spit, skin, hair, blood—whatever came handiest—was all she needed.
She sent messages to her commander, to Reo, to Peabody, and after a brief hesitation, to Morris.
Sitting back, Eve calculated the best, legal, and most satisfying method of collecting Cleo Grady’s DNA.
“Here’s an interesting bit of trivia,” Roarke commented as he came back in. “The football team representing the university where Alex and Sandy became mates happens to play against the team representing the university where Grady was a visiting student.”
“Is that a fucking fact?”
“It is. In fact, these teams hold a deep-seated rivalry and their matches are what you’d call events. Rallies, dances, mad celebrations. They held two of these events—one on each team’s home pitch, during the time Grady was there.”
“I like it.”
“Alex got a bit of press as he scored goals in both those matches. I didn’t find Sandy’s name in any media, but he is listed as a member of the team.”
“Second-string benchwarmer. Has to be a pisser. Reo’s going to make noises—or make noises that her boss is going to make noises—that thousands of people must’ve been at those games. Hard to prove that Sandy and Grady actually met up. But it’s going to be enough. It’s going to weigh. Maybe Alex met her,” she speculated. “Or saw Sandy with her. Would he know about her, about having a sister?”
“Max would only have told him if it was useful. More useful, to Max, to keep it to himself.”
“Still, it has to be addressed. I have a lot of people to talk to in the morning.” She angled her head. “What you said before about her education and her parents’ finances. If Ricker paid for it, there’s a record somewhere, however deep it’s buried. I can’t look at Grady’s any deeper than I have, but Ricker’s an open book. I can go anywhere I want there. As long as I play it straight.”
“I knew you were going to say that, and just as I was getting excited.”
Eve smiled. “Let’s find her college fund. Add a little more weight to the scale for Reo.”
She set up what she could, then refined the steps in a briefing the next morning at Central.
“It’s not just my ass in the sling if I push for this warrant and you come up empty,” Reo told her. “It’ll be yours, and the department’s in there with me.”
“We’ll find something. The warrant’s not out of the box with what we have. Add in the blood tie with Ricker and Mira’s profile, it’s not only in the box, it’s a lock.”
“Alleged blood tie,” Reo reminded her. “And the profile hinges on that. The need to impress her father, to punish her brother, and the rest of the psycho-shrink babble—no offense.”
“None taken,” Mira assured her.
“All that stands on her being Ricker’s kid, and knowing it.”
“We’ll be substantiating that today. You’re up for this, Morris?”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
“Peabody and I will pull Alex Ricker in, work him. If he knows about a sister, even suspects he may have one, we’ll get it out of him. And letting the word get out that we’ve got Alex Ricker in the box, are interviewing him in the matter of Coltraine and Sandy? It’s going to give Grady a feeling of accomplishment. I’ll bet she’ll want a pat on the back from Daddy.”
“It would fit,” Mira agreed. “She may try to contact him through her usual sources.”
“Which we’ll have, also in a box, within hours. Rouche will give us Ricker, and he’ll give us Sandy. We may get lucky and get another log to add on the Grady fire.” She looked at Feeney. “We need to know asap if she tries for the contact. You’ll be set.”
“We’ll be set. She sends anything to the ’link Callendar found in Rouche’s quarters, we’ll nail it down. Once you work the return process out of Rouche, we’ll send her whatever return you want.”
“We’re a go then. Get me the damn warrants, Reo. Peabody, wait outside, please. McNab, set it up. Morris, another minute.”
Eve waited until the room cleared. “McNab’s going to have ears on you the whole time you’re with her.”
“I’m not worried about it.”
“She’s a killer. It’s her job. You should worry about it. If she senses anything off, she’ll do you first, think about it later. You just have to—”
“We’ve been over what you want me to do, how you want me to do it, three times. I can do this. And I should be the one to do it, not only for Amaryllis, but because I’m the only logical choice. You have to trust me to do my part. I’m trusting you to do yours.”
No choice, she thought, but to back off. “Call it in, either way.”
“I will.”
Eve watched him walk away, then stuck her hands in her pockets as Peabody stepped up. “He’ll be okay, Dallas. McNab’ll be right there. Practically.”
“If he tips it the wrong way, and she pulls out her weapon or a knife, McNab will get it on record. Morris is still down. I couldn’t work out a way to do it myself. She’ll be on alert with me. I thought about pushing her into taking a swing at me, so I could swing back. Then, oops, I’ve got her blood on my shirt. But then I’ve provoked her into giving up DNA instead of her—essentially—volunteering it.”
“He’ll get it done. He needs to, so he will.”
“Right. Contact Alex Ricker, and ask him real nice to come on down so we can chat.”
“He’ll bring a bunch of lawyers.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
She went into her office to prep, to line up all the threads she intended to tie together. She could wrap that knot tight around Cleo Grady, but she needed all those threads to put the bow on it.
Now it was wait, she thought. Wait for Reo to get
the warrants, wait for Callendar and Sisto to deliver Rouche, wait for Morris to play out his role.
Alex Ricker? At this point he was more a pawn than a thread. She’d use him—and prove his father, his friend, and his half sister had used him. And she’d prove all the threads ran out from him, simply because he was.
She wouldn’t be sorry for it. He’d made his choices—to follow in his father’s footsteps, or close enough alongside them to cross the lines. He’d chosen to stay on that path rather than change it for a woman who must have loved him. A woman who died because she’d loved him, and left him.
She stood at her window, drinking coffee, considering choices. When she heard the knock on her door, she called out, “Come on.”
Mira stepped in, closed the door behind her. “Do you want me to observe when you interview Alex Ricker?”
“I’ve got it.”
“All right. I will want to observe if and when you interview Cleo Grady.”
“When. The DNA’s going to lock it. I need that because the law says I do. But I know who she is. She’s Ricker’s spawn. What I don’t know, what I’m curious about is what she wanted, or needed, from him. Was it the recognition, the money, the thrill? Maybe all of it. It fits that she sought him out rather than the other way. It fits their profiles.”
“Yes. She’d be nothing to him, and he’d be important to her. She could make herself important to him.”
“He educated her, so she must have. The college money, coming through a scholarship—with her the only recipient. That was stupid and greedy on Ricker’s part. Why not spend some bucks to send off a few other kids? He’d buried the payment, putting it through one of the arms of one of his fronts. He could’ve made it a legit deal, done the same a few times. Gotten the tax break or whatever.”
“He wouldn’t give a dollar to anyone without a purpose, a personal interest. It’s not in his scope.”
“Once she took it, he owned her. Was she too stupid to see that, or didn’t she care? She didn’t care,” Eve said before Mira spoke. “I read your profile. I’m just talking out loud.”
