by J. D. Robb
“I asked for copies of the building security. We can review them.”
“Yeah, you never know.” She studied the area, the setup, and yes, began to get the feel of it. “He’d bring them in late, reduce risk of running into another resident or visitor. But he’d jam the elevator. No one up or down but him until he was inside. He puts them in a kind of twilight sleep. Walks them right up. Uses the stairs, that’s why he likes a lower floor.”
She started up. “Quiet. Quick. Confident, but excited, too. Especially this time because it’s been so long. The partner goes out first, clears the hall.”
Roarke obliged.
“And they walk the vic right in,” Eve said, stepping out, using her master to uncode the police seal.
“Melinda, straight into the holding room. But Darlie, into the bedroom.” She crossed to it. “Put her down a little deeper, secure her hands to the headboard. It’s a form of paralytic. The vic is aware, but immobilized. He can’t have her squirming around when he does the tat. He’s a perfectionist.”
She visualized it. Stripping the girl, touching her—but just a little, not too much now. Removing his clothes, putting them away. Neat and tidy. Then the tools, the tat.
“Camera’s in the closet.” She walked over, opened it. “He took the brown shoes,” she noted. “The ones Melinda remembered. He took time to select what he’d pack. Nothing rushed or spur of the moment. Nothing carelessly discarded. Except the shirt with his partner’s blood on it.”
She studied the ties again, the duplicates, thought of Melinda’s statement. Just stood there—indecisive.
Considering, she fingered the sleeve of a jacket, a shirt. “Nice. Nice material. He must’ve hated leaving some of this, especially since he couldn’t have had time to wear a lot of it. He’ll want replacements. Will he wait until New York? I don’t know. Can’t say.”
She stepped out of the closet.
“Dallas at their feet. If he means the city, he’s got a place posher than this. He’s tired of the middle-class scene. He bought too many swanky clothes to suit this neighborhood. Not just a few select pieces like before. So, he’s planning, he’s thinking it’s time to move up, where he belongs. He’ll need to bring me there now, so it’s either set up for that or he needs to do it.”
She walked into the bath, stood there, studied, moved out and on, back into the living area where her mother’s blood stained the floor.
Did she believe herself unaffected by it, Roarke wondered. Didn’t she realize she looked at everything but the blood?
“He spends a lot of time out here. He likes the space. A cage is so confining. He can watch Melinda, then Darlie on the monitor, or catch up with some screen, listen to music, read. But he’d get itchy. He needs to be out and about. He needs the city. He’ll go out, seek out places with people. Shops, restaurants, galleries, clubs. After he sends the partner away, he’d go out. He’d want to go out, get the smell of her out of his nose. Put on a new persona, sit at a bar or a table in some trendy club. Strike up conversations, flirt with some woman. If he could run a game, so much the better. Then he’d come back, lock up, check on his ‘guests.’ Maybe have a drink while he counted up his take. Then he’d sleep like a baby.”
She walked to the kitchen, checked the AutoChef, the friggie, the cabinets. “He left a lot of this behind, and you know, there’s a lot of duplication here, too. Does anybody need a half-dozen jars of stuffed olives?”
“Hoarding?” Roarke suggested.
“Yeah, maybe.” But she wasn’t so sure of that now. “He has to leave a lot behind because it’s too annoying and time-consuming to repack food. He can get more. Check gourmet food shops, that should be on the list. And clubs, the trendy ones. If we can find out where he went the nights he abducted Melinda, then Darlie, we’d know what he’s looking for in late-night entertainment.”
“He wouldn’t go back. He’d look for fresh,” Roarke said when she turned and frowned at him. “And wouldn’t go back on the off chance whoever he played as a mark came in as well.”
“You’re probably right. Good thought. So if we can find, we eliminate. But we’d have a style.”
She walked to the window, looked out, looked down.
Dallas at our feet, she thought again.
“He talked about staying in a hotel penthouse. High life. Upper floors, higher price, higher life. If he changed his MO with this second location, we’re looking for a top level, good view. Big windows, maybe a terrace. Lots of open. More, I think, in the center of things. The rest applies. At least two bedrooms, on-site garage.”
She shut her eyes, trying to think. “One of those corporate apartments, maybe, or a long-lease rental? Or—”
“You’re clutching now because you’re tired. You’re tired, Eve, and trying not to think you’re standing a foot away from where your mother bled out hours ago. But you are thinking it. This isn’t the place for you to think clearly or well, and you need to accept it.”
“I think,” she said slowly, deliberately, “he left food, wine, clothes, equipment behind. But he took some of everything with him. I think he carefully selected the best of each category. I think he did that because he was moving to a better location. And, I think, if we focus on high floors—even top floors of more upscale buildings, more urban center areas, more luxury accommodations, we’ll find him.”
“Then you should pass that on to your associates here so they can begin to do that.”
“I am. I will.”
“Good. You do that while I contact Mira. She can join us for a drink back at the hotel.”
“I don’t want—”
“It’s past that. You need to do this for yourself. If you won’t, then do it for me. I’m asking you, please, do this for me.”
She pulled out her ’link, but she didn’t look at him, or at the blood. She contacted Ricchio as she walked away from the crime scene.
19
Roarke understood her silence. It didn’t matter that she’d agreed to talk with Mira, even acknowledged she needed to. He’d forced her hand—made her stop her forward motion and her focus on the crimes, the perpetrator, the victims, the questions and answers. Stopping the forward motion meant facing the past—her past.
Dealing with her feelings about her mother’s life, and her mother’s murder.
He could accept her need, and her ability, to turn her reluctance into resentment aimed at him. In her place he’d likely have done the same.
What a pair they were.
He expected, and accepted, her reaction when the elevator opened. And Mira turned from her place by the windows. The single glance Eve spared him, one ripe with the shock of betrayal stabbed him right through the heart.
“I’ve been admiring your view,” Mira said.
“It’s good to see you.” Roarke walked over to greet her. “How was the flight?”
“Very smooth.”
“And your room here?”
“It’s lovely.”
Behind them, Eve’s silence was a roar of fury.
“Why don’t we have some wine?” Roarke began.
“You two go ahead with your social hour,” Eve interrupted in a tone like cracked ice. “I need a shower.”
She stormed upstairs, had nearly slammed the bedroom door. Then she saw the cat sitting on the bed, blinking at her with bicolored eyes.
Pressure thudded into her chest, burned in her throat, behind her eyes as she rushed forward, dropped to her knees by the bed.
“Galahad.”
He bumped his head against hers, purred like a cargo jet.
“He had her bring you.” She rubbed her face against his fur. “He had her bring you for me. God, God, I’m a mess.”
She sat on the floor, braced her back against the bed. Comfort flooded her when the cat jumped off the bed, padded into her lap. And circled there, digging thin claws into her thighs.
“Okay. Okay,” she murmured, giving him a long stroke down the back. She closed her eyes, and holding
the fat, purring cat, tried to find her center again.
“I’m sorry,” Roarke said downstairs. “I didn’t tell her you’d be waiting for us. I knew she’d stall otherwise, and we’d end up . . . I thought it would be harder. I’m going to get us that wine.”
He chose a bottle at random from the rack in the bar area. While he uncorked it, Mira walked over.
“You look very tired. You rarely do.”
“I’m not particularly. Frustrated, I suppose. This should breathe a bit, but bugger that.” He poured two glasses.
“Frustrated with Eve?”
“No. Yes.” He swallowed wine. “No. Not really. She has enough to deal with, more than anyone should. With myself. I don’t know what to do for her, what to say to her. I dislike not knowing what to do for or say to the person who means everything to me.
“I’m sorry, please, sit down. Have some wine.”
“Thank you.” She sat, and in her quiet way sipped and waited while he roamed the room as a wolf might a cage.
“What do you think you should do, or say?” she asked him.
“Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? I don’t bloody know. Does she need me to just let her work herself into exhaustion? That can’t be right. Yet I know very well she needs the work, the routine of it, the structure to get through the rest.”
He shoved a hand in his pocket, found the gray button, turned it over and over in his fingers. “But it’s not routine this time, is it? It’s not simply another case, another investigation.”
“It’s difficult, coming here. Being here.”
“Bad enough if it were only that, with all the memories it shoves down her throat. The nightmares, they’d eased off, until we came here. Now she’s had one worse than anything I know of since we’ve been together. She’s made of courage, you know? And for her to be so terrified, so absolutely defenseless . . .”
“Makes you feel the same.”
He stopped, and the anguish lived in his eyes, on his face, in the set of his body. “I couldn’t get her back. For . . . it seemed forever, I couldn’t pull her out. And this was before her mother. This was just being here, being here, tracking a man who makes her think of her father.”
“You understood it would be difficult for her, physically, emotionally. Did you try to stop her from coming?”
“As if I could.”
“Roarke.” She waited until he again stopped his restless movements, looked at her. “You know you could have. You’re the only one who could have stopped her from coming to Dallas. Why didn’t you?”
He stood for a moment, and when the storm in his eyes faded, sat across from her. “How could I? If she hadn’t come, hadn’t done whatever she could and McQueen had hurt, worse, killed Melinda Jones, Eve would never have forgiven herself. It would have cut something out of her. Neither of us could have lived with that.”
“Now Melinda and the girl McQueen abducted are safe.”
“But it’s not done, and not just because he’s still out there. She stood over her mother’s body today. God.” He rubbed at his temple. “Could it only be today? There’s been no time, you see, to deal with it, to understand it. To cope. She won’t take it. Do I force her to? Pour a tranq into her so she gets some rest? Let her run until she drops? Do I just watch her suffer, and continue to do nothing?”
“You feel you’ve done nothing?”
“Tracking financials and making her eat a goddamn sandwich?” The brittle, brutal frustration snapped out of him. “Anyone could do the same, so it’s next to nothing. She needs more from me than that, and I don’t know what it is.”
“You brought me the cat.”
Eve stood on the stairs, Galahad at her feet. Roarke stood as she crossed the room.
“Who else would think—would know—I needed the stupid cat? Who else would do that for me?”
“Maybe I did it for myself.”
She shook her head, laid her hands on his face, and watched everything—the sorrow, the fatigue, the love, swirl into his eyes. “You brought Mira and Galahad. Why didn’t you toss in Peabody and Feeney, add Mavis for comic relief?”
“Do you want them?”
“God.” She did what she rarely did in company. She took his lips with hers, let the kiss spin out, felt his hand fist on the back of her jacket. “I’m so sorry.”
“No. No. I don’t want you to be sorry.”
“Too bad. You needed to stop, and I wouldn’t. Wouldn’t let either of us take a breath. Routine, procedure, logic. It’s necessary. And it’s all fucked up.” She leaned on him a moment, let herself lean on him. “It’s so fucked up. So, I guess we’ll take a breath now. I’d better use the first one to tell you I love you because there’s going to be others that fuck it up again.”
He murmured to her in Irish, brushed his lips on her brow. “We’re used to that, aren’t we? A ghra, you’re so pale. She’s lost weight, you see,” he said to Mira. “It’s only been a couple of days, but I can see it.”
“He worries. He nags like a”—she nearly said “mother,” caught herself—“wife. He’s a damn good wife.”
“Now you’re just trying to piss me off. But under the circumstances, I’ll let it pass. Why don’t you sit, and I’ll get you a glass of wine?”
“Oh yeah, a really big glass of wine.” She dropped into a chair, let out a long, long breath. “I know I was rude before,” she said to Mira. “And I figure you know a defense mechanism when you see one. Still, sorry about that. I appreciate, a lot, that you came.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’ve work to catch up on,” Roarke said as he handed Eve her wine. “I’ll go upstairs, let the two of you talk.”
“Don’t.” Eve took his hand. “You should stay. You’re part of this.”
“All right.”
“I don’t know where to start. How to start. It’s like trying to navigate a maze in the dark, and . . .” Then the cat sprawled weightily over her feet. And that was it, the start. “I miss home. Roarke had you bring the cat, because the cat’s home. I never had anything, didn’t want anything until that cat. I don’t even know why I took him, exactly, but I made him mine.”
She took a long, slow drink of wine. “I missed him. I miss Peabody and her smart mouth and steady ways. I miss Feeney and Mavis and my bullpen. Hell, it’s so bad I even miss Summerset.”
When Roarke made some sound, she turned narrowed eyes on him. “If you ever tell him I said that, I’ll shave you bald in your sleep, dress you in frilly pink panties, and take a vid that I’ll auction and sell for huge amounts of money.”
“So noted,” he said, and thought: There’s Eve. There she is.
“It’s not just being away. Since Roarke, I’ve gone away, from home, from work. It’s here, and it’s working here without my people, my place. And it’s more than that,” she admitted when Mira waited her out. “McQueen’s another beginning for me. Not just the real start of the job for me. When I opened the door in New York where he had all the girls, when I saw them, knew what he’d done to them, I went back, for a minute, to that room in Dallas.
“I’d probably remembered things before, but that was the first time I couldn’t pretend I didn’t. He’d done to them what someone had done to me. I knew it. Even if I didn’t know all of it, I knew that.”
“How did you feel?” Mira asked her.
“Sick, scared, enraged. But I put it away, could put it away for a long time. Maybe little parts would slip out, give me a bad time, but I could shove them back into the shadows again. Then, right before I met Roarke there was an incident. A girl—baby, just a baby really. And I was too late.”
“I remember,” Mira said. “Her father was crazed on Zeus, and murdered her before you could get to her.”
“Cut her to pieces. Right after, I caught the DeBlass case, and Roarke was a suspect. He was so . . . he was Roarke, and while I could eliminate him from my suspect list, I couldn’t shake him. And the case built, and everything turned around inside me.�
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“How did you feel?” Mira asked again, and Eve managed a smile.
“Sick, scared, enraged. What does he want from me? I mean, look at him. What does he want from me, with me?”
“Should I tell you?”
She looked at him. “You tell me every day. Sometimes I still don’t get it, but I know it. And with everything turned around and opening up and breaking apart, I remembered. My father, what he did to me. It can’t go back in the box anymore.”
“Is that what you want? To shut it away?”
“I did. I did,” Eve repeated in a murmur. “Now? I want to deal with it, accept it, move on. I was, I think. When I remembered the rest. Remembered that night when he came in and he went at me, hurting me, raping me. He broke my arm.” She rubbed it, as if she felt the shock of pain. “And I killed him. I didn’t think I could live with that, get through that memory. I don’t think I would have without Roarke. Without you. But I know more, coming back here again, this time. With McQueen and my father twisting together in my head.”
“Do they?” Mira asked.
“Yes. I guess they always did. I know I killed to survive. I know it was a child, striking out to save herself. But I know, too, I felt . . . joy in the killing. In driving that knife, that little knife, into him again and again and again, I felt euphoric.”
“And why shouldn’t you?”
In absolute shock, Eve stared at Mira. “I’ve killed since, in the line. There’s no joy. There can’t be.”
“But this wasn’t in the line. This wasn’t a trained officer acting in the line of duty. This was a child, one who had been continually, systematically, brutally abused, physically, mentally, emotionally. A child in terror and pain, killing a monster. And that joy, Eve, didn’t last. It’s only part of the reason you suppressed. It frightened you, that joy, because of who and what you are. He couldn’t make you an animal, couldn’t make another monster out of you. You killed a beast, and felt glad. You took a life, and punished yourself.”
“If I ever felt that again, ever felt glad again with blood on my hands, I couldn’t come back from it.”
