The In Death Collection, Books 11-15

by J. D. Robb

  “But not as cathartic, I’d think.”

  “Nope, there’s nothing quite like beating something into pulp with your bare hands for relaxation.” She shifted, straddled him. “We come from violent people. We’ve got that in us. The difference is we don’t let it loose whenever we feel like it on whoever’s handy. There’s something in us that stops that, that makes us decent.”

  “Some of us are more decent than others.”

  “Answer me this. Have you ever hit a child?”

  “Of course I haven’t. Christ.”

  “Ever beat or raped a woman?”

  He sat up so she was forced to wrap her legs around his waist. “I’ve thought about giving you a quick shot now and again.” He balled his fist, tapped her chin gently with his bruised knuckles. “I know what you’re saying, and you’re right. We’re not what they were. Whatever they did to us, they couldn’t make us what they were.”

  “We made ourselves. Now, I guess, we make each other.”

  He smiled at her. “That was well said.”

  “They didn’t give me a name.” She let out a slow breath. “When I remembered that, back there, it hurt. It made me feel small and useless. But now I’m glad they didn’t. They didn’t put their label on me. And, Roarke, right now anyway I’m glad I came here. I’m glad I did this. But what I want to do is get the information to the locals and get out. I don’t want to stay here longer than I have to. I want to go home tonight.”

  He leaned into her. “Then we’ll go home.”

  They got back to New York early enough for her to be able to say she needed to go into Central and make it sound plausible. She didn’t think Roarke bought it, but he let it slide.

  Maybe he understood she needed the space, she needed the work. She needed the atmosphere that reminded her who and what she was at the core.

  She bypassed Peabody’s cube, slipped quietly into her office, and shut the door. Locked it, as she rarely did.

  She sat at her desk and was absurdly comforted at the way the worn seat fit to the shape of her butt. A testament, she thought, to all the hours she’d sat there, doing the job—the thinking, paperwork, ’link-transmissions, data-formulating part of the job.

  This was her place.

  She got up and walked to the window. She knew just what she would see, which streets, which buildings, even the most usual pattern of traffic that formed at that time of the day.

  The part of her that was still quaking, the part she’d used every ounce of will to hide from Roarke, calmed just a little more.

  She was where she was meant to be, doing what she was meant to do.

  Whatever had come before, all the horrors, the fears, all funnelled into the now, didn’t they? Who could say if she would be here without them. Maybe, somehow, she was more willing to live for the victim because she’d been one.

  However it worked, she had a job to do. She turned, walked back to her desk, and got to work.

  She asked for and was granted a quick meeting with Mira. Slipping out as quietly as she’d slipped in, she left her office for Mira’s.

  “I thought you might be gone for the day.”

  Mira gestured to one of her cozy scoop-backed chairs. “Shortly. Tea?”

  “Really, this isn’t going to take long.” But Mira was already programming her AutoChef. Eve resigned herself to sipping the liquid flowers Mira was so fond of.

  “You’d rather coffee,” Mira said with her back turned. “But you’ll indulge me, which I appreciate. You can always pump in the caffeine later.”

  “How do you—I was just wondering how you keep it going on that herbal stuff.”

  “It’s all what your system’s used to, isn’t it? I find this soothes my mind, and when my mind’s soothed, I have more energy. Or believe I do, which is nearly the same thing.” She came back, offered Eve one of the delicate cups.

  “In other words, you bullshit yourself into thinking you’re wired up, when you’re not.”

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  “That’s sort of interesting. Anyway, I have more data on Julianna Dunne, and I wanted to get it to you right away. I don’t think we have much time before she moves again. I interviewed her step-father—”

  “You went to Dallas?”

  “I just got back about an hour ago. I want to do this now,” Eve said firmly enough to have Mira arching her brows. “Okay?”

  “All right.”

  She relayed the contents of the interview, citing only the facts given, then moving on to her discussion with Chuck Springer.

  “The first man she was with sexually—boy, that is—was someone her own age,” Mira commented, “and working-class. And he was the first to reject her. The last, by all accounts, who was permitted the luxury of doing so. She hasn’t forgotten it.”

  “Yet she didn’t target types like Springer. She went after types like her step-father.”

  “Because she was sure she could control them. They built her confidence and her bank account. But she was punishing Springer every time she was with another man. Look at this, look what I can have. I don’t need you. Along the way, Springer became less of a personal affront and more a symbol. Men are worthless, liars, cheats, weaklings, and driven by sex.”

  “And wouldn’t it irritate her to know that on a core level, she’s the one driven by it.”

  Mira lifted her brows, nodded in approval. “Yes, exactly. You understand her very well. Springer said that they’d had sex after he’d broken it off with her, after she’d physically attacked him. It only showed her sex was the key, and in her mind, man’s fatal downfall. She stopped being angry, and got down to the business of using that weakness to satisfy herself.”

  “That plays for me. But I can’t figure who’ll she’ll go for next. I ran probabilities on Parker, on Springer, and on Roarke. Parker and Springer are neck-in-neck, with Roarke more than twenty percentage points behind them. I trust your opinion more than a computer’s.”

  “It won’t be Springer. Not yet. She may toy with him a bit more, but I believe she’ll save him. Like a cat plays with a mouse before the kill. Her stepfather? It’s possible, but I’d think she’d wait on him as well. He was her first real victory, a kind of practice tool. She’ll want to savor him yet.”

  Mira set her tea aside. “I think, despite the results of the probabilities, it’ll be Roarke, or someone else entirely. She’s not finished here yet, Eve. She’s not finished with you.”

  “That’s the way I worked it, too. I’m going to keep him covered, and that’s going to piss him off. But he’ll get over it. Okay, thanks. Sorry, to have held you up.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “A little shaky, maybe, but mostly I’m all right. I got through it, and I remembered some stuff.”

  “Will you tell me?”

  It was foolish to deny, to either of them, that she was here as much for personal reasons as professional ones. “I remembered what it felt like to kill him. I remembered that rush of primal hate and rage. I know that’s in me, and I know I can control it. I know that killing him, for me, at that moment, was the only way to survive. I can live with that.”

  She got to her feet. “And if you’re thinking you need to put me through Testing to be sure I’m solid, I won’t agree to it. I won’t do it.”

  Mira kept her hands folded in her lap, kept her body very still. “Do you think I’d put you through that? Knowing you, understanding the circumstances, that I would use this confidence and play by the book? I thought you and I had come further than that.”

  She heard the hurt, and the disappointment, and had to turn away from it. “Maybe I’m shakier than I thought. I’m sorry.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. “Goddamn it.”

  “Oh, Eve.” Mira rose, but when she reached out, Eve stepped quickly aside.

  “I just need to find some level ground. Focus on work, and put this . . . He was training me,” she blurted out. “Training me so he could sell me to other me
n.” Slowly, she lowered her hands as she stared at Mira’s face. “You knew.”

  “I suspected. It made a terrible kind of sense. He could have moved quicker, easier, cheaper without you. You served no real purpose for him. From what I know, what you’ve been able to tell me, he wasn’t a standard pedophile. He had relationships with women as a rule. You were the only child he abused that we’re aware of. And if children were what he wanted, he could have availed himself of them without the inconvenience of having one underfoot otherwise.”

  “He kept me locked up. That’s how you train something—brainwash it. You keep it locked up, totally dependent on you. You convince it that it has no choice but to stay because whatever’s out there is worse. You keep it hungry, uncomfortable, and afraid, mix that with small rewards. Punish harshly and swiftly for any infractions, and accustom it to whatever task it’s meant to do. Bind it to you with fear, and it’s yours.”

  “You were never his. With all that he did, for all those years, he never really reached you.”

  “He’s never let go either,” Eve said. “I have to live with that, too. So does Roarke. This messed him up, maybe more than it did me. We’re okay, but . . . hell, it screws up your head.”

  “Would you like me to talk to him?”

  “Yeah.” The tension spiking into the base of her skull eased. “Yeah, that’d be good.”

  It wasn’t really stalling to go back to her office, add Mira’s comments to her file on Julianna Dunne. It gave her time to smooth out her mood, and to update and copy all updated files to her team and her commander.

  When it was done and she heard the general scuffle outside her office that meant change of shift, she programmed one last cup of coffee and stood drinking it at her window.

  Uptown traffic, she thought, was going to be a bitch.

  In a small office across the jammed street and sky, Julianna Dunne sat at a secondhand metal desk. The door that read DAILY ENTERPRISES was locked. The office consisted of a boxy room and a closet-sized washroom. The furnishings were sparse and cheap. She saw no reason her alter ego of Justine Daily, under which the rental agreement was signed, should waste overhead.

  She wouldn’t be here long.

  The rent was steeper than it should have been, and the toilet ran continually. The thin, scarred carpet smelled ripely of must.

  But the view was priceless.

  Through her binoculars she had a perfect view of Eve’s office, and the lieutenant herself.

  So sober, so serious, she mused. So dedicated and devoted, worshipping at the altar of law and order. And such a waste.

  All those brains, that energy, that purpose tossed away on a badge. And on a man. Under different circumstances, they’d have made an amazing team. But as it was, Julianna thought with a sigh, they were making challenging adversaries.

  Eight years, seven months had given Julianna abundant time to examine her mistakes, replay her moves. There was no doubt in her mind that she would have outwitted the cops, the male cops, and spent those eight years, seven months doing what she loved to do.

  But a woman was a cagier beast. And the then-freshly promoted Detective Dallas had been cagey indeed. Relentlessly.

  More, she hadn’t had the common courtesy to acknowledge her opponent’s victories and skills.

  But things were different now. She herself had changed. She was physically stronger, mentally clearer. Prison tended to hone away the excesses. In the same amount of time she knew Eve had been honed as well. But there was one vital difference between them, one essential flaw in the cop.

  She cared. About the victim, about her fellow officers, about the law. And most important, about her man.

  It was that flaw, in what Julianna considered a near-perfect machine, that would destroy her.

  But not quite yet. Julianna set the binoculars aside, checked her wrist unit. Right now there was time for a little fun.

  Eve ran into Peabody just outside the bull pen.

  “Lieutenant. I thought you were in Texas.”

  “I was. Got back earlier. You’ve got updates waiting. You’re out of uniform, Officer,” she added as she skimmed Peabody’s black cocktail dress and mile-high heels.

  “Yeah, I’m off-shift. Changed here. I was heading to your place, actually, to scoop up my parents. McNab’s taking us out to a fancy dinner. Can’t figure what’s up with that. He doesn’t like fancy, and I’m pretty sure he’s scared of them. Not fancy dinners, my parents. Anything I should tell him about the case?”

  “Morning’s soon enough. Let’s do a conference at my home office. Eight hundred.”

  “Sure. You, ah, heading home now?”

  “No, thought I’d go to Africa for an hour and see the zebras.”

  “Ha-ha.” Peabody trotted after her as best she could in the cocktail shoes. “Well, I was just wondering if maybe I could catch a ride, since we’re going to the same place at the same time.”

  “You going to Africa, too?”

  “Dallas.”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure.” She had to elbow her way onto the crowded elevator and was cursed roundly.

  “You look a little wiped out,” Peabody commented as she took advantage of the distraction and squeezed in.

  “I’m fine.” She heard the bite of irritation in her own voice and made the effort to soften it. “I’m fine,” she repeated. “Long day, that’s all. You put any time in on Stibbs?”

  “Yes, sir.” The elevator stopped and a number of passengers popped off like corks out of the tight neck of a bottle. “I was hoping to talk to you about that. I’d like to bring her in for a formal interview tomorrow.”

  “You set for it?”

  “I think so. Yes,” she corrected. “I’m set for it. I talked to some of the former neighbors. The suspect didn’t have a relationship going. She’d had one, but broke it off just a few weeks after she moved into the same building as the Stibbs. When one witness loosened up, she told me that she hadn’t been surprised when Boyd Stibbs married Maureen. How Maureen moved in on him quick, fast, and in a hurry after his wife’s death. Taking him meals, tidying up his apartment, that sort of thing. Basic good-neighbor stuff until you look under it.”

  The elevator stopped eight times, disgorging passengers, taking more on.

  An Illegals detective, undercover as a sidewalk sleeper, shambled on wearing a full-length duster stained with what appeared to be various bodily fluids. The stench was awesome.

  “Jesus, Rowinsky. Why don’t you use a damn glide, or at least stand downwind?”

  He grinned, showing off yellowed teeth. “Really works, doesn’t it? It’s cat piss, with a little dead fish juice. Plus, I haven’t showered in a week, so the BO’s tremendous.”

  “You’ve been under way too long, pal,” Eve told him and breathed through her teeth until he shambled off again. She didn’t risk a good gulp of air until they hit garage level.

  “I hope none of it got on me,” Peabody said as she clicked along behind Eve. “That kind of smell gets right into the fibers.”

  “That kind of smell gets right into the pores, then it breeds.”

  On that cheerful note, Eve slid into the car. She backed out, spun the wheel, and arrowed for the exit. And was forced to slam the brakes as a man disguised as a mountain lumbered in front of her car. His rag-shoes flapped as he stepped forward and sprayed her windshield with a filthy liquid he carried in a plastic bottle in the pocket of his grimy Yankees jacket.

  “Perfect. Must be my day for sleepers.” Disgusted, Eve slammed out of the car as the man wiped at her coated windshield with a dirty rag.

  “This is an official city vehicle, moron. It’s a cop car.”

  “Clean it up.” He nodded slowly as he smeared muck on muck. “Five bucks. Clean it right up.”

  “Five bucks, my ass. Make tracks, and make them now.”

  “Clean it right up,” he repeated in a sing-song voice as he swiped the glass. “Just like she said.”

  “What I said was beat it.�
�� Eve started toward him, and she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye.

  Across the street, flame-bright in a red skin suit, her golden hair gleaming, was Julianna Dunne. She smiled, then waved cheerfully. “Got a mess on your hands there, Lieutenant—oh and belated congratulations on your promotion.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Her hand went to her weapon as she started to charge. And the mountain backhanded her. One side of her face exploded as she was lifted off her feet, then went numb before she hit the pavement. She felt wild pain in her ribs as the brick of a foot covered in rags kicked her into a rolling skid. Through the ringing of her ears, she heard Peabody’s shouts, the mountain’s furious chant, “Five bucks! Five bucks!”

  She shook her head to clear it, then came up fast, leading with her shoulder directly into his crotch. He didn’t even howl, just crumpled.

  “Dallas! What the hell?”

  “Dunne,” she managed, yanked out her restraints as she fought to pull in air and fill her lungs again. “Across the street. Red skin suit, blonde hair.” She panted against the pain that was eating through the numbness. The right side of her face was starting to scream. “Heading west on foot. Call it in,” she demanded as she snapped the street sleeper’s beefy wrist to the car door. “Get me backup.”

  She came off the ground like a sprinter off the mark—low and fast. She zigzagged through traffic, was nearly creamed by a Rapid Cab. The blasts of horns and shouted obscenities followed her to the opposite side.

  She could see the flashing red, with nearly a full block lead, and ran like a demon.

  Legs pumping, she dodged pedestrians, plowed through those who didn’t have the sense to get out of the way of a woman holding a lethal weapon. A man in a pristine business suit, a pocket-link at his ear, shouted in shock as she barreled toward him. Panicked, he stumbled back into a glide-cart, scattering tubes of Pepsi and soy dogs, inciting the vocal fury of the vender.

  Eve leaped over him, pivoted north. She’d gained a quarter block.

  “Backup, goddamn it, where’s my backup?” She yanked out her communicator on the run. Her side was aching like a rotted tooth. “Officer needs assistance. In foot pursuit of suspect, identified as Julianna Dunne, heading north on Seventh at Bleeker. All units, all units in the vicinity, respond.”