Brazen Virtue

by Nora Roberts

  “I’m going to feed you.”

  “Oh.” Grace took a step back. She didn’t often offer herself to a man. It took more than a sexual pull, it took affection and a feeling of trust. And to the best of her recollection, she’d never been rejected. “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fine.” Turning around, she picked up the cauliflower. It might give her momentary satisfaction to throw it at him, but she decided against it. “If you’re not attracted, then—”

  It was the second time he’d whirled her around. This time she discovered that colliding with his chest was something like ramming into a stone wall. She might have sworn at him if he hadn’t already occupied her mouth.

  This time he wasn’t gentle. It didn’t surprise her to feel the licks of passion or the underlying knots of tension. It made her happy. Then, in seconds, she felt nothing but his mouth, his hands, and her own explosive response.

  He wanted her so much he’d have found it exciting to take her there, as they stood in the kitchen. But he wanted more than excitement. He wanted more than the flash of the moment. And he needed time to figure out just what it was he did want.

  “You think I’m unattracted to you?”

  Grace went from her toes to the flat of her feet on a quick whoosh of breath. “I could be wrong.” She cleared her throat, then rubbed her fingertip over her lips as they vibrated from his. “Am I still standing up?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Good. Okay. After we open a window and get rid of some of the heat in here, what are you going to feed me?”

  He smiled and touched her hair. “Stuffed artichoke bottoms Bordelaise.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said after a long pause. “You’re not making that up, are you?”

  “It only takes about a half hour.”

  “Can’t wait.” As he began to gather ingredients, she took a chair. “Ed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you planning on maybe having a long-term relationship?”

  He glanced over his shoulder as he rinsed vegetables under a cold spray. “I’ve been giving it some thought.”

  “Well, if it works out, I’d like to make a deal. Any night we have artichokes, we have pizza the next.”

  “Whole-wheat crust.”

  She got up to find a corkscrew. “We’ll talk about it.”

  BEN SHIFTED IN THE passenger’s seat and watched for the light to turn. Beside him, Tess drummed her fingers against the wheel. She knew she was right, but the problem was, she no longer had just her own feelings to consider.

  “I could have driven in alone,” she began. “You’re not going to have a car.”

  “Ed’ll drop me off.”

  The light switched to green. Tess moved along with the sluggish morning traffic. “I’m sorry you’re upset about this. Try to understand, it isn’t something I’m doing on impulse.”

  Annoyed, he turned the radio to another station. “I didn’t have any say about your involvement in the other case. Apparently I don’t have much say this time around either.”

  “You know that’s not true. What you feel means a lot.”

  “Then drop me off and go to your office. Leave this alone.”

  She was silent for a full thirty seconds. “All right.”

  “All right?” He stopped as he was about to punch in the car lighter. “Just like that?”

  “Yes.” She tightened a loose pin in her hair with a casual gesture, then made the turn to the station.

  “No argument?”

  “We argued last night. There’s no need to go into it again.” Tess swung into the parking lot and pulled up. “I’ll see you tonight.” Leaning over, she kissed him.

  He caught her chin in his hand before she drew away. “You’re using that reverse psychology shit on me, aren’t you?”

  Her eyes, violet and clear, smiled at him. “Absolutely not.”

  “I hate it when you do that.” He flopped back on the seat to rub his hands over his face. “You know how I feel about you being involved with this part of my life.”

  “You know how I feel about being excluded from any part of your life. Ben …”

  She lifted her hand to brush at his hair. A year ago she hadn’t even known him. Now he was the focal point of her life. Her husband, the father of the child she was just beginning to suspect she was carrying. But she was still a doctor. She’d sworn an oath. And she couldn’t forget the way Grace’s fingers had trembled on a cup of coffee.

  “I may be able to help, to let you understand his mind. I did it before.”

  “And I almost lost you before.”

  “This isn’t the same. I’m not involved in the same way at all. Ben, do you think he’ll kill again? Ben.” She took his hand before he could draw away. “Do you think he’ll kill again?”

  “Yeah. The odds favor it.”

  “Saving lives. Isn’t that still what it’s all about? For both of us?”

  He stared at the bricks of the station house. There was tradition there. His tradition. It shouldn’t have anything to do with her. “I like it better when you do it in your cozy little office uptown.”

  “And I like it better when you’re sitting behind a desk grumbling about paperwork. But it can’t be that way every time. Not for you, and not for me. I helped once before. I feel very strongly that I can help this time. He’s not an ordinary man. Even from the little you’ve told me I’m sure of it. He’s very sick.”

  His hackles came up instantly. “You’re not going to start bleeding for this one too.”

  “What I’m going to do is help you find him. After that, we’ll see.”

  “I can’t stop you.” But her hand was still caught in his, and he knew he could. “I won’t stop you,” he amended, “but I want you to think about your own caseload, the clinic, your private patients.”

  “I know my capacity.”

  “Yeah.” It seemed endless to him. “If you start lagging, I’ll tell your grandfather on you. He’ll straighten your ass out, sister.”

  “I’m forewarned.” She drew him to her again. “I love you, Ben.”

  “Yeah? How about a demonstration?” Her lips curved against his, then softened. Ed stuck his head in the window.

  “Don’t you two know any of the side streets around here?”

  “Kiss off, Jackson.”

  Tess nuzzled her cheek against Ben’s. “Good morning, Ed.”

  “Tess. We don’t usually see you around here twice in one week.”

  “You’ll probably be seeing her more than that.” Ben pushed open his door. “Doc’s coming in with us on this one.”

  “Is that right?” It wasn’t difficult to sense the discord. He knew them both too well. “Welcome aboard.”

  “Always happy to lend a hand to a couple of civil servants.” She slipped her arm through Ed’s as they walked. “How is Grace doing?”

  “Holding up. She’s decided to stay in town until this is wrapped.”

  “I see. That’s good.”

  “It is?”

  “She strikes me as the type who doesn’t do well when things happen around her. She does better when she has a hand in. One of the worst parts of grief is helplessness. If you can get through that, you cope.” She waited until he pulled open the door. “Besides, if she went back to New York, how would you make a play for her?”

  Ben strolled in behind his wife. “Doc’s got your number, Jackson. Nice-looking lady,” he said as he jingled the change in his pocket. “Brains, looks, and money.” He swung his arm over Tess’s shoulder. “Glad to see you’re following my example.”

  “Tess only fell for you because she has a soft spot for disordered minds.” He turned into Homicide, grateful that the business at hand would change the subject.

  They settled in the conference room. Tess spread the files of both victims out in front of her. There were photos, the autopsies, and the reports prepared by her husband. There had been more violence here than in the other case she had worked o
n with the department—if murder could be judged in degrees of violence. The common ground was as clear to her as it was to the investigating officers, but she saw something else, something darker.

  Patiently, she read over Eileen Cawfield’s statement and the notes from the interview with Markowitz. She studied Ed’s official report of the events on the night of Kathleen Breezewood’s death.

  Ben never liked seeing her this way, handling and studying the bits and pieces of the grittier side of his world. It had been difficult enough to accept her work when she was tucked behind a desk in an uptown office. Logically he knew he couldn’t shield her, but he was edgy just having her in the department.

  She ran a pretty, manicured finger down the medical examiner’s report. His stomach tightened.

  “It’s interesting that both murders occurred at the same time of night.”

  Harris rubbed a hand over his stomach. It seemed emptier every day. “We can agree on the possibility that that’s part of his pattern.” He broke off a tiny end of a raisin bun that was rapidly going stale. He’d managed to convince himself that if he took calories in small doses, they didn’t really count. “I haven’t had the chance to tell you how much the department appreciates your assistance here, Dr. Court.”

  “I’m sure the department will appreciate it more if I can help.” She took her reading glasses off for a moment to rub her eyes. “I think at this point in the investigation, we can agree that we’re dealing with someone with a capacity for explosive violence, and that the violence is certainly sexually oriented.”

  “Rape usually is,” Ben put in.

  “Rape is not a sexual crime, but a violent one. The fact that the victims were murdered after the assault isn’t unusual. A rapist assaults for a number of reasons: frustration, low self-esteem, a poor opinion of women, anger. Anger is almost always a factor. In the cases where the rapist knows his victim, there is also a need to dominate, to express male superiority and strength, to have what he might believe he deserves, what he thinks has been offered. Often the rapist feels as though his victim is resisting or refusing only to add excitement, and that she actually wants to be taken in a violent way.”

  She put her glasses on again as she sat back. “The violence in both cases was confined to one room, where the victim was found. The same weapon was used, the phone cord. In all probability the telephone is his link with each woman. Through the phone, they promised him something. He came to collect, not through the front door, but by breaking in. To surprise them, perhaps, to add to the arousal. I tend to believe that the first murder was an impulse, a reflex. Kathleen Breezewood fought him, she hurt him, physically, mentally. She wasn’t the woman he’d imagined her to be. Or, in his mind, the woman she’d promised to be. He had a relationship with her. He sent flowers to her funeral, or to Desiree’s. She was Desiree to him. It’s essential to remember he never knew Kathleen Breezewood, only Desiree. He never saw her, even in death, as the person she was, but as the image he’d created.”

  “Then how the hell did he find her?” Ben demanded, not so much of Tess as of himself. “How did he take a voice over the phone and zero in on a house, a woman. The right woman?”

  “I wish I could help you.” She didn’t reach for his hand as she would have if they’d been alone. Here, she knew, there would always be a certain amount of distance between them. “I can only tell you that in my opinion, this man is very clever. He is, in his way, logical. He follows a pattern, step by step.”

  “And his first step is to choose a voice,” Ed murmured. “And create the woman.”

  “I’d say that’s close to the mark. He has a very strong capacity for fantasy. What he imagines, he believes. He left fingerprints at both murder scenes, but not because he’s careless. Because he believes himself to be very clever, to be invulnerable to the realities since he’s living in a world of his own creation. He lives out his fantasies, and very likely those he believes his victims have.”

  “Am I hearing that he rapes and kills women because he thinks they like it?” Ben pulled out a cigarette. Tess watched him light it, recognizing the edge in his voice.

  “In simple terms, yes. According to Markowitz’s recollection of what he heard on the phone during the second attack, the man said, ‘You know you want me to hurt you.’ Rapists often rationalize this way. He bound Mary Grice’s hands, but not Kathleen’s. I think that’s important. From the reports, Kathleen Breezewood offered a more conservative, a more straightforward sexual fantasy than Mary Grice. Bondage and sadism were often included in Mary’s conversations. The killer gave her what he thought she preferred. And he killed her, in all probability, because he’d discovered a dark and psychotic pleasure from the first bonding of sex and death. It’s highly possible he believes his victims received the same pleasure. Kathleen was an impulse, Mary a reconstruction.” She turned to Ben now. He may not have approved, but he was listening. “What do you think about the time of the murders?”

  “What should I think?”

  She smiled at him. He was the one who always accused her of answering a question with a question. “They both occurred fairly early in the evening, a pattern of sorts. It makes me wonder if perhaps he’s married, or lives with someone who expects him to be home by a certain time.”

  Ben studied the end of his cigarette. “Maybe he just likes to turn in early.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Tess.” Ed dunked a tea bag in a cup of hot water. “It’s generally accepted that a voyeur or a crank caller doesn’t go any further. What makes this guy different?”

  “He’s not a watcher. He participates. These women have spoken with him. There’s not the same distance, actual or emotional, as there is with someone who uses binoculars to spy into an apartment across the street or peep into a window. There’s not the same kind of anonymity as a random call. He knows these women. Not Kathleen and Mary, but Desiree and Roxanne. I once had a patient who was involved in a date rape.”

  “Unfortunately, the victim’s viewpoint doesn’t apply, Dr. Court,” Harris put in.

  “I treated the rapist, not the victim.” Tess took off her glasses to run the stem through her fingers. “He didn’t force sex on this girl only for himself. He initiated, persisted, then insisted because he thought she expected it of him. He’d convinced himself that his date wanted him to take the responsibility, and that if he backed off, she’d have thought him weak. Unmanly. In forcing her, he not only received sexual release, but a sense of power. He’d called the shots. In my opinion, the man you’re looking for enjoys that same sense of power. He kills these women not so they can’t identify him, but because murder is the ultimate power. It’s likely he comes from a background where he wasn’t able to wield power, where the authority figures in his life were, or are, very strong. He’s been sexually repressed, now he’s experimenting.”

  She opened the folders again. “His victims were very different types of women, not only in the personalities of their alter egos, but physically. That could have been a coincidence, of course, but it’s more likely it was deliberate. The only things these women had in common were sex and the phone. He used both against them in the most violent and most final of ways. His next choice will probably be someone with a totally different style.”

  “I’d prefer it if we didn’t have the opportunity to test that particular theory out.” Harris snuck another corner from the raisin bun. “Could he stop? Stop cold?”

  “I don’t think so.” Tess closed the folders again and set them on his desk. “There’s no remorse here, no anguish. The message of the florist card wasn’t ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘Forgive me,’ but ‘I won’t forget.’ His movements are carefully planned out. He’s not grabbing a woman off the street and dragging her into an alley or a car. Again, you must understand, he knows them, or believes he knows them, and he’s taking what he feels he deserves. He’s very much a product of today’s society, where you can pick up the phone and order anything. From pizza to pornography, you only hav
e to push a button and it becomes yours, something you’re entitled to. You have a mixture here of the convenience of technology and sociopathic tendencies. It’s all very logical to him.”

  “Excuse me.” Lowenstein popped her head in the door. “We’ve just finished the cross-checks on the credit cards.” At Harris’s nod, she handed the printouts to Ed. “Not one match.”

  “None?” Ben stood to look over Ed’s shoulder.

  “Zero. We looked for matches in the numbers, in the names, addresses, possible aliases or dupes. Nothing.”

  “Different styles,” Ed murmured and he began to think it through.

  “So, we’re back to square one.” Ben took the sheets Ed passed him.

  “Maybe not. We tracked down the flowers. It was a phone order to Bloom Town. MasterCard number belongs to a Patrick R. Morgan. Here’s the address.”

  “He show up on either of these?” Ed asked, still studying the printouts.

  “Nope. We’re still checking the other lists.”

  “Let’s go pay him a visit.” Ben checked his watch. “You got a work address?”

  “Yeah, Capitol Hill. Morgan’s a congressman.”

  THE REPRESENTATIVE COULD BE found at home that day in his refurbished Georgetown town house. The woman who answered the door looked sour and impatient and carried a mountain of file folders. “Yes?” was all she said.

  “We’d like to see Congressman Morgan.” Ed had already looked beyond her and zeroed in on the mahogany paneling in the hall. The real stuff.

  “I’m sorry, the congressman isn’t available. If you’d like an appointment, call his office.”

  Ben dug out his shield. “Police business, ma’am.”

  “I don’t care if you’re God Himself,” she said with hardly a glance at his ID. “He’s not available. Try his office, next week.”

  To prevent her from shutting the door in their faces, Ed simply put a shoulder into the opening. “I’m afraid we’ll have to insist. We can talk to him here, or down at headquarters.” Ed caught the look in her eyes and was certain, despite his size, that she intended to muscle him aside.