by J. D. Robb
"A word where, with who?"
"I wasn't paying attention. Shawn's always talking big. He was going to be tending bar, serving the finest wines and such at a party for some high flyer."
"Give me a name, Sinead. He was bragging, full of himself. What name did he drop?"
"Well, hell." Irritated, but caught up, Sinead rubbed her forehead with her fingers. "An old mate, he said. Someone from Dublin who'd made it big. Roarke," she said, jabbing with the smoldering cigarette. "Of course. That's why I thought it was just Shawn bullshitting as usual. What would a man like Roarke be wanting with the likes of Shawn?''
It took all Eve's control not to leap up from the chair. "He said he'd talked to Roarke?"
"Christ, my mind's not awake." She yawned again when an airbus with a faulty exhaust farted outside the window. "No, I think he said…yeah, he was saying how Roarke sent his man to do the deal. And the pay was fine. He'd be out of the Shamrock and into the high life before long. Take me along for the ride if I wanted. Shawn and me, we bumped together a few times when the mood struck. Nothing serious."
"What time did you close up the Shamrock?" As Sinead's gaze slid away, Eve ground her teeth. "I don't give a shit about the after-hours license. I need the time you last saw Shawn, and where he went."
"It was about four this morning, and he said he was going to bed. He was to meet the man himself today and needed to look presentable."
• • •
"He's playing with me." Eve slammed into her vehicle, rapped a fist against the wheel. "That's what the bastard's doing, playing with me. Throwing Roarke's name into the mix. Goddamn it."
She held up a hand before Peabody could speak, then simply stood staring out the window. She knew what she had to do. There was no choice for any of them. She snatched up the car 'link and called home.
"Roarke residence," Summerset said in smooth tones, then his face went stony. "Lieutenant."
"Put him on," she demanded.
"Roarke is engaged on another call at the moment."
"Put him on, you skinny, frog-faced son of a bitch. Now."
The screen switched to the pale blue holding mode. Twenty seconds later, Roarke was on. "Eve." Though his mouth curved, the smile didn't touch his eyes. "Problem?"
"Do you know a Shawn Conroy?'' She saw it in his face before he answered, just a flicker in those dark blue eyes.
"I did, years ago in Dublin. Why?''
"Have you had any contact with him here in New York?"
"No. I haven't seen or spoken to him in about eight years."
Eve took a calming breath. "Tell me you don't own a bar called the Green Shamrock."
"All right. I don't own a bar called the Green Shamrock." Now he did smile. "Really, Eve, would I own something quite so cliched?"
Relief had the weight dropping out of her stomach. "Guess not. Ever been there?"
"Not that I recall."
"Planning any parties?"
He angled his head. "Not at the moment. Eve, is Shawn dead?"
"I don't know. I need a list of your New York properties."
He blinked. "All?"
"Shit." She pinched her nose, struggling to think clearly. "Start with the private residences, currently, unoccupied."
"That should be simple enough. Five minutes," Roarke promised and ended transmission.
"Why private residences?" Peabody wanted to know.
"Because he wants me to find it. He wants me there. He's moved quickly on this one. Why hassle with a lot of security, cameras, people. You get a private home, empty. You get in, do your work, get out."
She flipped her 'link to transmit when it beeped.
"Only three unoccupied at the moment," Roarke told her. "The first is on Greenpeace Park Drive. Number eighty-two. I'll meet you there."
"Just stay where you are."
"I'll meet you there," he repeated, and broke transmission.
Eve didn't bother swearing at him, but swung the car away from the curb. She beat him there by thirty seconds, not quite enough time for her to bypass the locks with her master code.
The long black coat he wore against the bite of wind flowed like water, snapped like a whip. He laid a hand on her shoulder, and despite her scowl kissed her lightly. "I have the code," he said and plugged it in.
The house was tall and narrow to fit the skinny lot. The ceiling soared. The windows were treated to ensure privacy and block UV rays. At the moment, security bars covered them so that the sunlight shot individual cells onto the polished tile floors.
Eve drew her weapon, gestured Peabody to the left. "You're with me," she told Roarke, and started up the curving flow of the staircase. "We're going to talk about this later."
"Of course we are." And he wouldn't mention, now or then, the illegal nine-millimeter automatic he had in his pocket. Why distress the woman you loved with minor details?
But he kept a hand in that pocket, firm over the grip as he watched her search each room, watched those cool eyes scan corner to corner.
"Why is a place like this empty?" she wanted to know after she'd assured herself it was indeed empty.
"It won't be next week. We're renting it, furnished, primarily on the short term to off-planet businesses who don't care to have their high execs in hotels. We'll furnish staff, droid or human."
"Classy."
"We try." He smiled at Peabody as they descended the stairs. "All clear, Officer?"
"Nothing here except a couple really lucky spiders."
"Spiders?" Lifting a brow, Roarke took out his memo and plugged in a note to contact the exterminators.
"Where's the next place?" Eve asked him.
"It's only a couple of blocks. I'll lead you over."
"You could give me the code and go home."
He brushed a hand over her hair as they stepped outside. "No, I couldn't."
The second home was back off the street, tucked behind now leafless trees. Though houses crowded in on either side, residents had sacrificed their yards for privacy. Trees and shrubs formed a high fence between buildings.
Eve felt her blood begin to stir. Here, she thought, in this quiet, wealthy arena, where the houses were soundproofed and protected from prying eyes, murder would be a private business.
"He'd like this one," she said under her breath. "This would suit him. Decode it," she told Roarke, then gestured for Peabody to move to the right.
Eve shifted in front of Roarke, opened the door herself. That was all it took.
She smelled fresh death.
Shawn Conroy's luck had run out in a gorgeously appointed parlor, just off a small, elegant foyer. His blood stained the wild roses climbing over the antique rug. His arms were stretched wide as if in supplication. His palms had been nailed to the floor.
"Don't touch anything." She gripped Roarke's arm before he could step inside. "You're not to go in. You'll contaminate the scene. You give me your word you won't go in or I'll lock you outside. Peabody and I have to check the rest of the house."
"I won't go in." He turned his head, and his eyes were hot with emotions she couldn't name. "He'll be gone."
"I know. We check the house anyway. Peabody, take the back. I'll do upstairs."
There was nothing and no one, which was what she'd expected. To give herself a moment alone with Roarke, she sent Peabody out to the unit for her field kit.
"He wants it to be personal," she began.
"It is personal. I grew up with Shawn. I knew his family. His younger brother and I were of an age. We chased some of the same girls on the streets of Dublin, and made them sigh in dark alleys. He was a friend. A lifetime ago, but a friend."
"I'm sorry. I was too late."
Roarke only shook his head, and stared hard at the man who'd once been a boy with him. Another lost boy, he thought. Eve turned away, pulled out her communicator. "I have a homicide," she said.
• • •
When her hands and boots were clear sealed, she knelt in blood. She could see tha
t death had come slowly, obscenely to Shawn Conroy. His wrists and throat had been slashed, but not deeply, not so that the blood would gush and jet and take him away quickly. He would have bled out slowly, over hours.
He was sliced, neatly, almost surgically from breastbone to crotch, again so that the pain would be hideous, and release would be slow. His right eye was gone. So was his tongue.
Her gauge told her he'd been dead less than two hours.
She had no doubt he'd died struggling to scream.
Eve stood back as the stills and videos of the body and scene were taken. Turning, she picked up the trousers that had been tossed aside. They'd been sliced off him, she noted, but the wallet remained in the back pocket.
"Victim is identified as Shawn Conroy, Irish citizen, age forty-one, residence 783 West Seventy-ninth. Contents of wallet are victim's green card and work permit, twelve dollars in credits, three photographs."
She checked the other pocket, found key cards, loose credits in the amount of three dollars and a quarter, a slip of torn paper with the address of the house where he'd died. And an enameled token with a bright green shamrock on one side and a line sketch of a fish on the other.
"Lieutenant?" The field team medic approached. "Are you finished with the body?"
"Yeah, bag him. Tell Dr. Morris I need his personal attention on this one." She slipped the wallet and the pocket contents into an evidence bag as she glanced over at Roarke. He'd said nothing, his face revealed nothing, not even to her.
Automatically, she reached for the solvent to remove the blood and sealant from her hands, then walked to him.
"Have you ever seen one of these before?"
He looked down into the bag that held what Shawn had carried with him, saw the token. "No."
She took one last scan of the scene—the obscenity in the midst of grandeur. Eyes narrowed, she cocked her head and stared thoughtfully at the small, elegant statue on a pedestal with a vase of pastel silk flowers.
A woman, she mused, carved out of white stone and wearing a long gown and veil. Not a bridal suit, but something else. Because it seemed both out of place and vaguely familiar she pointed. "What is that—the little statue there?"
"What?" Distracted, Roarke glanced over. Puzzled, he stepped around a field tech and might have picked it up if Eve hadn't snagged his hand. "The BVM. Odd."
"The what?"
His laugh was short and far from humorous. "Sorry. Catholic shorthand. The Blessed Virgin Mary."
Surprised, she frowned at him. "Are you Catholic?" And shouldn't she have known something like that?
"In another life," he said absently. "Never made it to altar boy. It doesn't belong here," he added. "My decorating firm isn't in the habit of adding religious statues to the rental units."
He studied the lovely and serene face, beautifully carved in white marble. "He put it there, turned it just so."
He could see by the cool look in Eve's eyes that she'd already come to the same conclusion. "His audience," she agreed. "So, what was he, like showing off for her?"
Roarke might not have thought of himself as Catholic or anything else for too many years to count, but it sickened him. "He wanted her to bless his work, I'd say. It comes to the same thing more or less."
Eve was already pulling out an evidence bag. "I think I've seen another just like this—at Brennen's. On the wife's dresser, facing the bed. It didn't seem out of place there, so I didn't really notice. There were those bead things you pray with, holos of the kids, a statue like this, silver-backed hairbrush, comb, a blue glass perfume bottle."
"But you didn't really notice," Roarke murmured. Some cops, he mused, missed nothing.
"Just that it was there. Not that it shouldn't have been. Heavy," she commented as she slipped the statue into the bag. "Looks expensive." She frowned at the markings on the base. "What's this, Italian?"
"Mmm. Made in Rome."
"Maybe we can run it."
Roarke shook his head. "You're going to find that thousands of these were sold in the last year alone. The shops near the Vatican do a bustling business on such things. I have interests in a few myself."
"We'll run it anyway." Taking his arm, she led him outside. It wouldn't help for him to watch the body bagged and readied for transport. "There's nothing for you to do here. I have to go in, file the report, do some work. I'll be home in a few hours."
"I want to talk to his family."
"I can't let you do that. Not yet. Not yet," she repeated when his eyes went narrow and cold. "Give me a few hours. Roarke…" Helplessly she fell back on the standard line. "I'm sorry for your loss."
He surprised her by grabbing her close, pressing his face into her hair and just holding on. Awkwardly she smoothed her hands over his back, patted his rigid shoulders.
"For the first time since I met you," he murmured so she could barely hear, "I wish you weren't a cop."
Then he let her go and walked away.
She stood out in the freshening wind, smelled hints of the winter to come, and bore the miserable weight of guilt and inadequacy.
• • •
Roarke was closed in his office when she arrived home. Only the cat greeted her. Galahad twined affectionately between her legs as she shrugged out of her jacket, hitched her bag more securely on her shoulder.
It was just as well she was alone, Eve decided. She still had work. Since she was obviously pathetic at comforting her husband, she'd be a cop. There, at least, she knew her moves.
Galahad came with her, bounding up the steps despite his girth as she headed for the suite of rooms where she often worked and sometimes slept when Roarke was away from home.
She got coffee from the AutoChef, and as much because Galahad looked so hopeful as for her own appetite, ordered up a tuna sandwich. She split it with the cat, who fell on it as if he hadn't eaten in a month, then carried her own to her desk.
She studied the door that connected her office with Roarke's. She had only to knock, she knew. Instead she sat behind her own desk.
She hadn't saved his friend. Hadn't been fast enough or smart enough to prevent death. Nor would she be able to keep Roarke out of the investigation. There would be questions she would have to ask, statements she would have to take.
And the media would know by morning. There was no way to block them out now. She'd already decided to call Nadine Furst, her contact at Channel 75. With Nadine she would get fair coverage. Though Nadine was annoyingly persistent, she was without doubt accurate.
Eve looked at her 'link. She'd arranged for McNab to program her office 'link to transfer transmissions to her home unit for the night. She wanted the bastard to call.
How long would he wait? And when would he be ready to play the next round?
She drank coffee, ordered her mind to clear. Go back to the beginning, she told herself. Replay first round.
She shoved a copy of the initial contact call into her machine, listened to it twice. She had his rhythm, she thought, his tone, his mood. He was arrogant, vain, smart, yes, he was smart and skilled. He was on a holy mission. But conceit was his weak point. Conceit, she mused, and his skewed faith.
She'd need to exploit it.
Revenge, he'd said. An eye for an eye. Revenge was always personal. Both men who were dead had a connection to Roarke. So, logically, did their killer. An old vendetta, perhaps.
Yes, she and Roarke had quite a bit to discuss. He could be a target. The thought of that turned her blood cold, scattered her heartbeat, froze her brain.
She shoved it aside. She couldn't afford to think like a wife, like a lover. More than ever, she needed to be pure cop.
She gave Galahad most of the second half of the sandwich when he came begging, then took out the copies of the security disc for the Luxury Towers.
Step by step, she ordered herself. Every disc, every area covered, no matter how long it took. In the morning she would have Roarke view them as well. He might recognize someone.
She knocked h
er coffee cup over when she did.
"Stop," she ordered. "Replay from zero-zero-five-six. Jesus Christ. Freeze, enhance section fifteen to twenty-two by thirty percent, shift to slow motion."
She stared as the figure in the trim black suit and flowing overcoat enlarged, as he walked across the sumptuous lobby of the apartment complex. Checked the expensive timepiece on his wrist. Smoothed his hair.
And she watched Summerset step into the elevator and head up.
"Freeze screen," she snapped.
The time at the bottom read twelve p.m., the afternoon on Thomas X. Brennen's murder.
She ran the lobby disc through, fast-forwarding through hour after hour. But she never saw him come back out.
*** CHAPTER FIVE ***
She didn't bother to knock, but simply shoved open his door. Her blood was hot, her mind cold.
Roarke could clearly see both temperatures in her eyes. Deliberately and without haste, he flipped his computer manually to hold, closing off his work.
"You're overdoing again," he said easily, remaining seated as she stalked—a single posse closing in on her man—to his desk. "Fatigue always steals the color from your face. I don't like seeing you pale."
"I don't feel pale." She wasn't sure what she felt. All she could be certain of was that the man she loved, a man she'd taught herself to trust, knew something. And he wasn't telling her. "You said you hadn't had any contact with Brennen or Conroy. Any contact, Roarke? Not even through a liaison?"
He angled his head. This wasn't the track he'd expected. "No, I haven't. Tommy because he preferred to sever ties, and Shawn because…" He looked down at his hands, spread his fingers, closed them. "I didn't bother to keep in touch. I'm sorry for that."
"Look at me," she demanded, her voice sharp and keen. "Look me in the face, damn it." He did, rising now so their gazes were nearly level. "I believe you." She whirled away from him as she said it. "And I don't know if it's because it's the truth, or because I need it to be."
He felt the nick of her distrust at the edge of his heart. "I can't help you with that. Would you prefer to do this in Interview?"