Witness in Death

by J. D. Robb

  A door creaked open. There was the hesitant pad of bare feet on the floor. Rumpled and flushing, Michael Proctor stepped into the room.

  *** CHAPTER NINETEEN ***

  “Ah…” He cleared his throat, tried to find something to do with his hands, and ended up letting them dangle from his arms at his sides. He was rumpled, wrinkled, and had mis-buttoned his shirt. “Good morning, Lieutenant.”

  Carly’s long, delighted roll of laughter filled the room. “Oh, Michael, do better. At least try to look satisfied and defiant instead of embarrassed and guilty. She’s not the morals police.”

  “Carly.” Her name was a vocal wince.

  She waved a hand. “Go get yourself some coffee, you’ll feel better.”

  “Um…Can I get anyone…anything?”

  “Isn’t he sweet?” Carly beamed, like a proud mother over a well-mannered child. “Go on, darling.”

  She turned back to Eve as Michael shuffled from the room. Her expression transformed, like a mask removed, from silk to steel. “I believe sex between consenting adults is legal in this state, so shall we move on?”

  “How long have you and Michael been lovers?”

  Carly examined her nails, picked idly at a minute chip in the polish. “Since you tell me it’s after nine, for about twelve hours. I’m afraid I can’t give you the exact time the act was consummated. I wasn’t wearing my wrist unit.”

  “You want points for attitude?” Eve said evenly. “Fine with me. We can take this down to Central and see who’s the biggest hard-ass. Or you can give me straight answers on how Michael Proctor ended up sharing your bed this morning.”

  Carly’s lips twisted, but the idea of a session at Cop Central had her reaching for control. “We ran into each other at the memorial, ended up going out for a drink, came back here. One thing led very enjoyably to another. Is there a problem with that?”

  “Bury one lover, pick up a fresh one? That might be a problem for some people.”

  Temper flashed into Carly’s eyes, but she kept her voice level. “Save your narrow-minded view for someone who’s interested. It happens that Michael and I have a great deal in common, some chemistry stirred, and we acted on it. Above that, I like him very much.”

  “One of the things you have in common is Richard Draco.”

  “True enough. But Richard’s dead. We’re not.”

  Michael walked slowly back in. “Carly, would you like me to go?”

  “Not on my account.” She patted the cushion beside her. “Sit down.” It was as much a challenge as a request. When he sat, she gave a pleased smile, hooked her arm through his. “So, Lieutenant, you were saying?”

  “Michael, you didn’t mention your mother knew Richard Draco.”

  The cup jumped in his hand, sloshed coffee on his slacks. “My mother? What does she have to do with it?”

  “She worked in a play with Draco.”

  “Your mother’s an actress?” Carly angled her head.

  “She was. She retired years ago. Before I was born.” He set his cup down, rubbed ineffectually at his slacks. “Leave my mother alone. She hasn’t done anything.”

  “Did I say she had?” Nerves, Eve thought. He couldn’t keep his hands still for them. “You know then, that she had been intimate with Draco at one time.”

  “It was nothing. It was years ago.”

  “Your mother and Richard?” Carly drew back to study his face. “Oh. Sticky.” And there was sympathy in her eyes. “Don’t let it rattle you, sweetie.”

  But it had, obviously. “Look, she had a bit part, that’s all. She wasn’t a serious actress. She told me. She and my father have been together ever since…She wouldn’t have told me except she knew I admired him, that I was going to audition for his stand-in. He used her. He liked using women.”

  He looked steadily at Carly now. “She got over him. Smart women do.”

  His mother, Eve decided, or maybe women in general, was his weak spot. “Yeah, he liked using women. Young, pretty women. They were toys to him, and he got bored with his toys fairly quickly. Your mother gave up her career, her hopes for it, because of him.”

  “Maybe.” Michael blew out a breath. “Maybe that was part of it. But she made a new life, she’s happy in it.”

  “He hurt her.”

  “Yeah.” His gaze flashed up, ripe with bitterness. “Yeah, he hurt her. You want me to say I hated him for it? Maybe I did, on some level.”

  “Michael, don’t say any more,” Carly warned.

  “The hell with that.” His voice took on conviction as well as anger. “She’s talking about my mother. She wasn’t some cheap tramp, some toy he picked up then tossed aside. She was a nice, naive girl. He took advantage of that, of her.”

  “Did he give her illegals, Michael?” Eve asked. “Did he give her a taste for them?”

  “No. He tried. The son of a bitch.”

  “Michael, you don’t have to answer her questions.”

  “I’m going to straighten this out, right now.” Heat rolled off him in violent waves. “She told me that she came into the room and he was putting drops of something in her drink. She asked him what it was, and he just laughed. He said…my mother doesn’t use hard language, but she told me exactly what he said. It would make her fuck like a rabbit.”

  Muscles quivered in his jaw as he stared at Eve. “She didn’t even know what it meant. But I knew, when she told me, I knew. The bastard tried to slip her Wild Rabbit.”

  “But she didn’t drink it?”

  “No, it scared her. She told him she didn’t want anything to drink, and that’s when he got mad. He called her names, tried to make her drink it. She realized then what kind of man he was and she ran. She was crushed, disillusioned. She went back home. She told me that was the best thing that ever happened to her, going home.

  “He didn’t even remember her,” Michael added. “He didn’t even have the decency to remember her name.”

  “You spoke to him about her?”

  “I wanted to see how he’d react. He didn’t even pretend to remember. She meant nothing to him. No one did.”

  “Did you tell him? Remind him?”

  “No.” He deflated, the heat evaporating. “No, I didn’t see the point. And if I’d pushed it, I’d have lost the job.”

  “Don’t. Don’t let it hurt you.”

  Eve’s eyes narrowed in speculation as Carly slipped her arms around him, soothed. They stayed narrowed and cool when Carly shot her a burning glare. “Leave him alone. Do you get your kicks picking on people weaker than you?”

  “It’s what gets me through the day.” You’re not weak, Eve thought. Did the people who made you form you, she wondered. Or the people who raised you?

  “It must have been hard on you, Michael, knowing all that and seeing Draco day after day.”

  “I had to put it out of my mind. I couldn’t change what had happened, could I?” He gave a shrug that tried to be defiant. “And nothing I could do would make any difference. And one day, I’d step out onstage in his place, and I’d be better. That would be enough.”

  “You’ve got that chance now, don’t you? A chance to stand in his light. A chance to be with one of his lovers.”

  His tightly compressed lips trembled apart. “Carly. It wasn’t like that. I don’t want you to think—”

  “Of course it wasn’t.” She put a hand over his. “The lieutenant has a foul mind.”

  “Ms. Landsdowne.”

  Carly ignored Eve for a moment and laid gentle kisses on both of Michael’s cheeks. “You’ve spilled your coffee. Why don’t you go back and get us both a fresh cup?”

  “Yeah. All right.” He got to his feet. “My mother is a wonderful woman.”

  “Of course she is,” Carly replied.

  When he went back into the kitchen, she turned to face Eve fully. “I don’t like seeing Michael’s vulnerabilities exploited, Lieutenant. The strong are supposed to protect the weak, not kick them in the face.”

  �
��Maybe you’re not giving him enough credit for spine.” Eve moved over, eased down on the arm of a chair. “He defended his mother very well. For some, family ties are the strongest. You didn’t mention you were adopted, Ms. Landsdowne.”

  “What?” Confusion clouded her eyes. “For heaven’s sakes, why should I have? I don’t remember it half the time. What business is that of yours?”

  “It was a private adoption, at birth.”

  “Yes. My parents never hid it from me. Neither was it made a particular issue in our home.”

  “Did they give you the details of your heritage?”

  “Details? Medical history, ethnicity, of course. I was told my birth mother arranged for my placement because she wanted the best for me, and so on and so forth. Whether that was true or not never mattered. I had my mother.”

  She paused, then asked, “Are you speculating that my mother had a relationship with Richard at one time?” She let out a rolling laugh and shook back her cloud of tousled hair. “I can assure you she didn’t. My mother never met Richard Draco. She and my father have been happily married for nearly thirty years. Before I was born she was a travel agent, not an actress.”

  “You were never curious about the woman who gave you up?”

  “Not particularly. I have wonderful parents whom I love, and who love me. Why should I wonder about a woman who’s nothing but a stranger to me?”

  Like mother, like daughter, Eve thought.

  “Many adoptees want contact, want answers, even a relationship with their birth parents.”

  “I didn’t. Don’t. There was no hole in my life to fill. I’m sure my parents would have helped me find her if I’d asked. If I’d needed that. I didn’t. And it would have hurt them,” she said quietly. “I would never hurt them. How is this relevant?”

  “Do you recognize the name Anja Carvell?”

  “No.” She stiffened slightly. “Are you telling me that’s the name of the woman who placed me? I didn’t ask for a name. I didn’t want a name.”

  “You have no knowledge, have had no contact with a woman by that name?”

  “No, and I don’t want any.” Carly got to her feet. “You’ve no right to do this. To play with my life this way.”

  “You never asked about your birth father.”

  “Goddamn it, if she’s nothing to me, he’s less than nothing. A lucky sperm. You wanted a rise out of me, you got one. Now, what does this have to do with Richard Draco’s death?”

  Eve said nothing, and in the silence she watched denial, disbelief, then horror flash into Carly’s eyes. “No, that’s a lie. A revolting, vicious lie. You hideous bitch.”

  She grabbed the little pot of violets on the table, heaved them to shower glass and petals down the wall. “It’s not true.”

  “It’s documented,” Eve said flatly. “Richard Draco was your birth father.”

  “No. No.” Carly sprang at Eve, shoved her roughly against a table and upended a lamp. The china exploded like a bomb. Before Peabody could intervene, Eve signaled her back, and took the hard slap to the face without attempting to block.

  “Take it back! Take it back!”

  She shouted it, tears spurting out of her eyes. Her beauty was stark now, white face, dark eyes. She grabbed Eve’s shirt, shook, then with a moan, collapsed on her.

  “Oh God. Oh my God.”

  “Carly.” Michael bolted in from the kitchen. One look at his face told Eve he’d listened, he’d heard. When he rushed to Carly, tried to turn her into his own arms, she shoved away, crossed her arms defensively over her breasts.

  “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.” Like a candle burned to wax, she slid to the floor in a shuddering puddle.

  “Peabody, take Michael back into the kitchen.”

  He stepped back, stared at Eve. “It was cruel what you did. Cruel.” He walked toward the kitchen with Peabody behind him.

  Eve crouched. She could still feel the heat from the crack of Carly’s hand across her face. But her gut was iced over. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  Carly lifted her face, and her eyes were ravaged. “I don’t know who I loathe more at this moment: myself or you.”

  “If you were unaware of your blood tie to him, you have nothing to loathe yourself for.”

  “I had sex with him. I put my hands on him. Allowed him to put his on me. Can you conceive how that makes me feel? How dirty that makes me feel?”

  Oh God, yes. She was suddenly and brutally tired. She fought off her own demons and stared into Carly’s eyes. “He was a stranger to you.”

  Carly’s breath hitched. “He knew, didn’t he? It all makes such horrible sense. The way he pursued me, the way he looked at me. The things he said. We’re two of a kind, he told me, and he laughed.” She gripped Eve’s shirt again. “Did he know?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “I’m glad he’s dead. I wish I’d killed him myself. I wish to God almighty it had been my hand on the knife. I’ll never stop wishing that.”

  • • •

  “No comments, Peabody?”

  “No, sir.” They rode down in the elevator with Peabody looking straight ahead.

  There was an ache, churning, pulsing, swelling, in every part of her body. “You didn’t like the way I handled that.”

  “It’s not for me to say, Lieutenant.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “All right. I don’t understand why you had to tell her.”

  “It’s relevant,” Eve snapped. “Every connection matters.”

  “You punched her in the gut with it.”

  “So now it’s my method that doesn’t meet your standards.”

  “You asked,” Peabody shot back. “If she had to be told, I don’t see why you shoved it in her face the way you did. Why you couldn’t have found a way to soften it.”

  “Soften it? Her father was fucking her. You tell me how you soften that. You tell me how you put that in a pretty box with a bow on it.”

  She turned on Peabody, and like Carry’s, Eve’s eyes were ravaged. “What the hell do you know? What do you know about it with your big, sprawling, happy, Free-Ager family where everybody gathers around the dinner table with clean faces and chirpy news of the day.”

  She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t draw in enough air. She was strangling. But she couldn’t stop the words.

  “When Daddy came in to kiss you good night, he didn’t crawl into bed with you, did he, and put his sweaty hands all over you. Fathers don’t jam themselves into their little girls in your tidy world.”

  She strode off the elevator, through the lobby, and out to the street, while Peabody stood stiff with shock.

  Eve paced the sidewalk, barely restrained herself from kicking the duet of white poodles and the droid that walked them. A headache was raging, a rocket blast that screamed inside her skull. She could feel her hands tremble, even though they were balled into tight fists in her pockets.

  “Dallas.”

  “Don’t,” she warned Peabody. “Keep back a minute.”

  She could walk it off, she promised herself. She could walk off the leading edge of the fury that made her want to scream and pound and rip. And when she had, all that was left was the headache and the sick misery deep in her gut.

  Her face was pale but composed when she walked up to Peabody. “My personal remarks were over the line. I apologize for them.”

  “It’s not necessary.”

  “It is. In my opinion, it was also necessary to be cruel up there. It doesn’t make me feel any better about it. But you’re not here to be a punching bag for my foul moods.”

  “That’s okay. I’m kind of used to it.”

  Peabody tried a smile, then gaped with horror when Eve’s eyes filled. “Oh, jeez. Dallas.”

  “Don’t. Shit. I need some time.” She bore down, stared hard at the face of the building. “I’m taking a couple of hours’ personal time. Grab some public transpo back to Central.” He
r chest wanted to heave, to throw the tears up and out. “I’ll meet you at Roosevelt in two hours.”

  “All right, but—”

  “Two hours,” Eve repeated and all but launched herself into the car.

  She needed to go home. She needed to hold on and to go home. Not trusting herself, she set the car on auto and rode with her head back and her hands balled in her lap.

  From the age of eight, she’d built a wall or her subconscious had mercifully built one for her to block out the ugliness that had happened to her. It left a blank, and on that blank she’d created herself. Piece by painful piece.

  She knew what it was to feel that wall crumble, to have the cracks form so the ugliness oozed in.

  She knew what Carly faced. And what she would go through to live with it.

  The headache kicked like a tornado inside her skull by the time she drove through the gates. Her eyes were glazed with it, with the greasy churn of nausea in her belly. She ordered herself to hold on, to hold it in, and staggered up the steps.

  “Lieutenant,” Summerset began when she stumbled inside.

  “Don’t mess with me.” She tried to snap it out, but her voice wavered. Even as she bolted upstairs, he moved to the house intercom.

  She wanted to lie down. She’d be all right if she could just lie down for an hour. But the churning defeated her. She turned into the bathroom, went down on her knees, and was vilely ill.

  When she was empty, too weak to stand, she simply curled on the tiles.

  She felt a hand on her brow, cool. Blessedly cool. And opened her eyes.

  “Roarke. Leave me alone.”

  “Not in this lifetime.”

  She tried to turn away from him, but he slipped his arms under her.

  “Sick.”

  “Yes, baby, I know.” She felt fragile as glass when he lifted her, carried her to bed.

  She began to shiver as he drew off her boots, covered her with a blanket. “I wanted to come home.”

  He said nothing, only got a damp cloth and bathed her face. She was too pale, the shadows under her eyes too deep. When he held a glass to her lips, she turned her face away.

  “No. No soothers. No tranqs.”