by J. D. Robb
“Wouldn’t surprise me. It doesn’t surprise me, either, we’re on the same page. Cohen knows about the murders. Accessory before or after the fact yet to be determined.”
And she’d damn well determine.
“How soon can you get me those hard numbers?”
“It won’t take long.”
“And put together in a way that gets me a warrant.”
Now his eyebrows rose. “What? Like a report?”
“Not that formal, just clear so I can send it to Reo, so she can pump up a judge.” She smiled. “I’ll owe you one.”
“I’ll collect more carefully next time. Actually, free pass on it. I said I wanted to bugger the bastard, so there’s the satisfaction.”
“Hold that thought,” she said when her comm signaled. “Dallas.”
“Sir, Officer Trace. Cohen just left the residence with a small suitcase. He got in a Rapid. We’re tailing.”
“Keep on him, Officer. Let me know where he lands.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Gave him his walking papers,” Roarke assumed when she clicked off. “And good on her.”
“What does that even mean? Who needs papers to walk? But he’s on the move, so we should do the same. I’ll get Reo on tap, let her know you’re sending hard data for the warrant.”
“All right then.” He rose, then frowned. “I think it must be like firing someone. The pink slip sort of thing. You know, you’re done, start walking.”
“Then why papers?” she insisted. “A pink slip—and nobody gets an actual pink slip—is a paper, not papers. So a walking paper. Why not say she told him to take a hike? And that doesn’t work, either, because he got in a cab.”
He decided he wanted a second glass of wine for the work, poured one, smiled at her. “I adore you, Eve.”
“Yeah, yeah, start walking.”
13
Cohen didn’t go far. He checked into a hotel about ten blocks from the residence.
So, Eve thought, he got his pink walking paper and took a hike in a Rapid.
Now she had to wait for the wheels to turn. Roarke to Reo, Reo to a judge, then back to her.
She got coffee, sat with her boots up, studied the board.
The simplest theory: Pickering slipped up somewhere, and his CI status leaked. Not only did he break with the gang, not only was he having his gang tat removed, going to lame meetings, working some shit-ass job, but he was ratting out his own brothers and sisters to the cops.
That’s a pisser.
Instead of a trial, a beatdown, and a slit throat, Jones decides another way. Having so close a connection—friends since childhood—Pickering betraying his family looks bad on leadership. He tells Duff to set him up, enlists three young low-levels or wannabes to stage the OD. The OD for humiliation.
You humiliate me, I humiliate you to death.
She could see that. She’d have given Jones more credit for cunning, but she could see it.
Duff. Maybe she whines, or makes demands. Maybe she makes noises about telling someone. Have to take her out. Same three killers, and give them the go-ahead to have their fun with her while they’re at it.
Harder to see that, harder to see the strategy in the location of the kill, but it could play.
It just didn’t sit easy in her gut.
“If not you, who?” she wondered. And trained her eyes, her thoughts on Kenneth “Bolt” Jorgenson.
That one, she thought, just sat easy.
A violent criminal since childhood, with a father who goes to prison for nonviolent crimes—and erases the family stability.
One minute, Eve thought as she paced, you’re a rich kid with all the perks. Nice digs, nice threads. You hook school when you feel like it, bully whoever you want to bully.
Then bam, your father’s in a cage, your mother’s looking for work. No more rich kid because your family sucks.
Eve circled back to Jorgenson’s photo, and found, yeah, he just sat right in her gut.
He finds a new family, one more to his taste, with the Bangers. Gets into trouble, some real trouble—but he likes it. Likes trouble.
Then he physically attacks his own mother only to get his ass kicked by his sister. That had to sting.
He worked his way to lieutenant under Jones, she mused. But he wants more. Maybe—Mira territory—he was still looking for that status his father lost.
And—a kicker for her—he’d been trading a space in his flop with Duff for sex.
Roarke walked back in. “I sent the data to Reo, so my work is done. Though if you’re going into Central to box Cohen, I’d very much like to watch.”
“I want to, but it’s smarter to let him sweat out the night. By the time the warrant comes through and I have him picked up, taken in, booked, and all that, it’ll be too late for a bail hearing. So instead of watching porn and raiding the hotel AC, feeling sorry for himself, he’ll sit in a holding cage feeling sorry for himself and trying to figure how much I know.”
“He has just under four million in his accounts. That’s not including the equity amassed in the real estate.”
Eve shook her head. “No good to him. Ill-gotten gains. He won’t be able to pull from that for a lawyer or for bail. Or it’ll take time to sort out what’s legit and what isn’t, so he’s stuck.
“I don’t think it’s Jones,” she continued. “He just doesn’t fit. I’m liking Jorgenson more because he does. But if not Jones, how does Cohen play in? Because he damn well knew something about something.”
He could all but see her brain circling. “Let’s have a walk.”
“A what?”
“A walk, one not requiring papers. It’s cooler, but still a lovely evening.”
Frowning, she glanced toward the window. “It’s dark.”
“That’s why we have lights. A walk will clear your head.”
“I’m waiting for the warrant to—”
“Take your comm. Let’s walk out, see what they’ve done on the pond.”
She already had her comm—and her ’link, her badge, her weapon—but that didn’t explain going outside to walk around in the dark. “You want to walk outside, in the dark, to look at a hole in the ground?”
“I do, yes.” To get her away from the board and her thoughts for a few minutes, Roarke took her hand. “After all, it’s our hole in the ground.”
Because she had been, mostly, thinking in circles, she let him pull her out of the office and downstairs.
He got her coat out of the closet.
“Why does he hang this up when he’s just going to put it back where I left it for the morning?”
“He has a tidy soul.”
“Summerset has a soul?”
Roarke flicked a finger down the dent in her chin, then got his own coat. “We’ll go out the side.”
The house had a zillion rooms and easily three zillion doors. She let him navigate back toward the kitchen, then a left through what she knew he called the morning room with its glass wall and cushy sofas and little indoor garden.
She stopped, pointed. “Are those limes?”
“I believe they’re lemons, with some ripening to do yet.”
“You have lemons growing on a tree in the house.”
“I doubt they’d take well to New York winters.”
He opened the glass door in the glass wall where, outside, the grounds were already lit in all their glory.
“You can probably see this place from Mars.”
He just took her hand again. “I’d hoped to check it out before dinner, but there will be criminals.”
Okay, it wasn’t bad. Cool, but not cold, and the lights beaming through all the still-bare trees threw everything into a kind of fascinating relief. Overhead, thin clouds whisked over the half slice of moon, and the sounds of the city, just a murmur really, assured her she wasn’t walking in some weird-ass country woods.
“What was the first place you bought? Real estate.”
“A small, seedy hotel in
Dublin. A rattrap, really, and one my mates said I’d be better burning to the ground. But I wanted it. I could see the bones of it,” he added as they walked. “And what it might be with some care and thought, and considerable investment.”
“How’d you afford it?”
“Well now.” He kissed her hair. “I stole a pearl necklace—three strands with a small ruby clasp. Then I took the ferry to Liverpool, to someone I knew, and hocked them. It was enough for the buy, but not for the rehab.”
“Pearls.”
“And quite nice ones,” he recalled. “I took Summerset to see the property, told him what I wanted to do. He took a loan out for the rest. And in eight months, we opened the Green, a small, elegant hotel we marketed to tourists looking for personal service.”
“How old were you?”
“About sixteen, more or less. I had enough from it in a couple years to pay him back the loan, but he wouldn’t have it. So we own it together.”
“Still?”
In the glow of the lights, his eyes hit a stunning blue as he glanced over at her. “Whatever I’ve bought and sold, there’s only one first. When I walked through it the first time, when it was mine, with its damp walls and broken windows, it was a revelation. Something belonged to me, and I could tend to it. I could … change it into something more.”
“You still stole the pearls.”
“And put them to very good use. Ah, there it is. Our hole in the ground.”
She saw the hole, a sort of oval, about twenty feet around, and the muscular digger parked nearby. Crossing to it with him, she looked down. Ten feet deep, maybe.
“You could bury a lot of bodies here.”
“Let’s try water lilies instead.” He slid an arm around her. “I think we’ll enjoy this, when there’s time for a walk.”
“What did they do with all the dirt?”
“Hauled it off for some other projects. Which reminds me, the Nebraska project’s nearly finished. I’ll have to show you the current pictures.”
He turned her, kissed her. “And I didn’t steal any pearls for this one.”
“But you’re still buying rat holes.”
“That’s the fun of it.” He kissed her again. As she lifted her arms to wrap around him, her ’link signaled.
She pushed back, pulled it out. “Reo. Did you get it?”
She got her warrant, Roarke thought while she paced and stalked, confirming with Reo.
He listened with half an ear, imagining the pond as it would be in years to come while she switched from ’link to comm to snap orders at the uniform sitting on Cohen.
Water lilies, and some sort of flowering weeper with its branches trailing toward the water. A bench for sitting. Turning, he studied the house, rising up in the night sky. He remembered how the boy of sixteen had felt walking through a sad, battered old building, knowing it belonged to him.
And how the man had felt when he’d first walked through the house he’d made in New York, knowing it belonged to him.
It was nothing, he thought, compared to the now, looking at it now that he shared that house with his cop, this life with her. Knowing she belonged to him, and he to her.
“They’re picking him up.”
He looked at her then, and into those steady cop’s eyes. “There wasn’t a cop who could lay a finger on me, on that boy who stole the pearls, and so much before and after. Fists and boots, but they couldn’t put me in a cage. And I wonder, if you and I had crossed our paths in the before, well, who would’ve won that one?”
“Justice, ace. I’d’ve dogged you for it.”
No question she would have dogged him to the end. How could he not adore her?
“I’d have fallen in love with you regardless, and you with me.” He moved to her, enfolded her. “It was meant.”
“Feels like it. So … I’d have brought you a cake and a smile.”
Laughing, he kissed her hair again. “Well, this was a nice walk, and it’s a fine hole in the ground. Now it’s back to work, is it?”
“I need to update Peabody. I want to start on Cohen in the morning. And I want confirmation from the uniforms when he’s in custody.”
“As I said.” He took her hand, strolling back to the house. “It’s to work.”
* * *
She woke early and alone. Well, not alone, she thought groggily, as the cat curled his tubbiness at the small of her back. As she waited for her brain to wake up she considered the fact that the bed approached the size of Utah, and she routinely ended up sandwiched between Roarke and the cat.
Oddly enough, she was okay with that.
Because her brain was, mostly, awake, she opted to roll out of bed. She hit coffee first, downing it as she dragged on shorts, a tank, and running shoes.
She wanted to break a good sweat before she pulled Cohen into the box, so took the elevator straight down to the gym.
She programmed tropical for her run, but chose a hilly terrain rather than the flat beach. Her quads woke up and whined in the first half mile, so she kept the pace steady until they stopped complaining.
The sweat broke in mile two as she pushed herself up a hill into some sort of rain forest. In the thick, damp air, vegetation dripped green and madly colorful flowers rioted alongside her track.
Since, to her mind, it felt just a little creepy, she picked up her pace. Topping mile three she came to the base of a waterfall spewing down from a cliff and beating itself into a rushing blue river. A white bird with a wingspan as wide as a maxibus swooped down, skimmed the water. And came up with a flapping fish in its long, sharp bill.
As she judged the look in its eye definitely homicidal, she ran on. And with as much relief as satisfaction, saw that curving white beach and the rolling breakers below.
She aimed for it, leaving the drumming water behind, kept a steady pace while birds as bright as the flowers zipped overhead. Then ran flat out for the last half mile to reach the beach dripping like the vegetation in the hills.
She slowed, jogging lightly until her heart rate leveled again, cut back to a walk while she guzzled water.
Satisfied, she pumped weights for fifteen, stretched it out, then walked through Roarke’s version of an indoor rain forest to the pool. Stripping down, she dived in.
After a few lazy laps, she rolled over to float and think about Cohen and connections. He hadn’t resisted arrest, though he’d refused to unlock the hotel room door. Once the officers gained admittance he’d squawked—according to Officer Trace—about his civil rights, suits against the NYPSD and the individual officers, even the hotel.
He’d bitched—her word—all the way down to Central, through the booking process, and into his holding cell.
And somewhere in there he’d offered the booking officer his wrist unit and two hundred in cash to let him go.
So an additional charge of attempted bribery was added just to sweeten the pot.
He’d been allowed his single contact. And the report stated whoever he’d contacted hadn’t come through. So there’d been a little blubbering as well as the squawking and bitching.
She’d lay money he’d contacted Vinn, begged for her help. A guy didn’t blubber after tagging his lawyer.
Which made him—Officer Trace’s words—a weak sister.
She ate weak sisters for breakfast.
Looking forward to it, she got out, dried off. And, wrapped in a robe, rode back to the bedroom, where Roarke programmed coffee.
“You’re up early,” he commented.
“Not as early as you, but then I only wanted a workout, not global domination.” She took the coffee he held out to her. “I did about five miles in some jungle mountain beach place with killer birds and plants that looked like they ate small mammals. That’s probably why I did the five in about forty-five.”
“With that under your belt, you should be ready for breakfast.”
“Quick shower first.”
When she came out, she saw waffles, fruit, and the bacon that wasn�
��t bacon but some sort of ham. And good.
“I imagine you’re primed for Cohen,” he said as she went about the business of drowning and smothering the waffles.
“I need a quick roundup with Whitney. The tax shit’s federal, but I want the shot at him before they slap him down. And they’re going to confiscate all his e-toys, so I want a look at them first.”
“Holo with Whitney,” Roarke suggested, “then you can get that first shot on the way to Central and Cohen.”
“Huh.”
“Better time management.”
She told herself she hadn’t thought of it herself because she wasn’t used to the holo feature on her command center.
“It is.” She got up, grabbed her ’link off the dresser, got busy sending texts. “Peabody can meet me at the residence, bring McNab. He can clear it with Feeney. I can holo from here with Whitney as soon as he sets a time. I’m already poking through the electronics and everything else by the time Whitney contacts the feds, starts laying it out. Plus, get the jump on Cohen.”
She looked up as she finished. “This is why global domination is within your sights.”
He only smiled. “Do you need a hand engaging the holo feature?”
“Why would I? I can figure out— Yes.” Why fight it?
She sat again, went after the waffles. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Where’s the cat?” she wondered. “There’s ham on the plate, and he’s not trying to sneak over and steal it.”
“Early start for us. I imagine he’s down with Summerset getting his belly full. He’ll be disappointed he missed his chance here. Will you contact Eldena, let her know you’re coming?”
“No point risking she has a change of heart and goes soft on Cohen. She’s pissed, but people get over being pissed. Do you still want to watch when I have Cohen in the box?”
“Let me know when you’re bringing him into Interview, and I’ll see if I can manage it.”
“Good enough.”
She polished off breakfast, went into her closet to face wardrobe.
Spring tease or not, she wanted to look mean, and that said black to her. Black pants, black tee, black jacket in thin leather because leather said mean when you wore it right.
