by J. D. Robb
Summerset's chair dug into the aged linoleum as he shoved back from the table and sprang to his feet. "You dare speak to me of using. You dare? When you'd use an innocent young girl in this filthy business? And you would stand there and point your finger at the man whose ring you wear and say that he was responsible for the horrors she endured? They were children. Children. I'd gladly spend the rest of my life in a cage if it makes him see you for what you are."
"Summerset." Roarke stayed seated, but laid a hand on Summerset's arm. His eyes were flat and cool as they met Eve's. "He needs a moment."
"Fine. This interview is broken at this time at the request of the subject's representative. Record off."
"Sit down," Roarke murmured, keeping his hand on Summerset's arm. "Please."
"They're the same, you see." Summerset's voice trembled with emotion as he lowered himself into a chair. "With their badges and their bullying and their empty hearts. Cops are all the same."
"We'll have to see," Roarke said, watching his wife. "Lieutenant, I'd like to speak with you, off the record, and without your aide."
"I won't have it," Summerset fired up.
"It's my choice. If you'd excuse us, Peabody." Roarke smiled politely, gestured toward the door.
Eve stood where she was, kept her eyes on Roarke's. "Wait outside, Peabody. Secure the door."
"Yes, sir."
"Engage soundproofing." When she was alone with Roarke and Summerset, Eve kept her balled hands in her pockets. "You've decided to tell me," she said coldly. "Did you think I didn't realize you knew more than you were saying? Do you think I'm a fucking idiot?"
Roarke read the hurt behind the temper and bit back a sigh. "I'm sorry."
"You would apologize to her?" Summerset snapped. "After what she—"
"Just shut the hell up," Eve ordered, turning on him with teeth bared. "How do I know I didn't have it just right? The equipment to jam transmissions, to bypass CompuGuard, is right there in the house. Who knows about it but the three of us? The first victim was an old personal friend of Roarke's, the second another old friend who was killed in one of Roarke's properties. You know everything he owns, everything he does and how he does it. It's been almost twenty years, but that isn't so long for you to wait for payback, to avenge your daughter. How do I know you're not willing to sacrifice everything to destroy him?"
"Because he's what I have left. Because he loved her. Because he's mine." This time when Summerset picked up his glass, water sloshed to the rim and over onto the table.
"Eve." Roarke spoke softly even as he felt his heart, and his loyalties, dragged in opposite directions by angry hands. "Please sit down, and listen."
"I can listen fine standing."
"Suit yourself." Wearily Roarke pressed his fingers to his eyes. The woman fate had handed his heart to was rarely easy. "I told you about Marlena. She was like a sister to me after Summerset took me in. But I wasn't a child," he continued, eyeing Summerset with amused affection. "Or innocent."
"Beaten half to death," Summerset muttered.
"I'd been careless." Roarke shrugged. "In any case, I stayed with them, worked with them."
"Running grifts," she said tightly. "Picking pockets."
"Surviving." Roarke nearly smiled again. "I won't apologize for that. I told you that Marlena…she was still a child, really, but she had feelings for me I'd been unaware of. And she came to my room one night, full of love and generosity. I was cruel to her. I didn't know how to handle the situation so I was clumsy and cruel. I thought I was doing the right thing, the decent thing. I couldn't touch her in the way she thought she wanted. She was so innocent and so…sweet. I hurt her, and instead of going back to her own room and hating me for a while as I'd hoped—as I'd thought she would—she went out. Men who were looking for me, men I was arrogant enough to believe I could deal with on my own ground, found her, took her."
Because a part of him still mourned, and always would, he paused a moment. When he continued his voice was quieter, his eyes darker. "I would have traded my life for hers. I would have done anything they asked to spare her one moment's fear or pain. But there was nothing to be done. Nothing I was allowed to do. They tossed her on the doorstep after they'd done with her."
"She was so small." Summerset's voice was barely a whisper. "She looked like a doll, all broken and torn. They killed my baby. Butchered her." Now his eyes, bright and bitter, met Eve's. "The cops did nothing. They turned their backs. Marlena was the daughter of an undesirable. There were no witnesses, they said, no evidence. They knew who had done it, because the word was everywhere on the street. But they did nothing."
"The men who had killed her were powerful," Roarke continued. "In that area of Dublin, cops turned a blind eye and deaf ear to certain activities. It took me a great deal of time to gain enough power and enough skill to go up against them. It took me more time to track down the six men who had had a part in Marlena's death."
"But you did track them down, and you killed them. I know that." And she'd found it possible to live with that. "What does this have to do with Brennen and Conroy?" Her heart stuttered a moment. "They were involved? They were involved with Marlena's death?"
"No. But each of them fed me information at different times. Information that helped me find a certain man in a certain place. And when I found the men, two of the men who had raped and tortured and murdered Marlena, I killed them. Slowly. Painfully. The first," he said with his eyes locked on Eve's, "I gutted."
The color drained out of her face. "You disemboweled him."
"It seemed fitting. It took a gutless bastard to do what was done to a young helpless girl. I found the second man through some data I bought from Shawn. When I had him I opened him up, one vein at a time, and let him bleed to death."
She sat now, pressed her fingers to her eyes. "Who else helped you?"
"It's difficult to say. I talked to dozens of people, gathered data and rumor, and went on. There was Robbie Browning, but I've checked on him already. He's still in Ireland, a guest of the government for another three to five. Jennie O'Leary, she's in Wexford running a bed and breakfast of all things. I contacted her yesterday so she would be on the alert. Jack—"
"Goddamn it." Eve thumped both fists on the table. "You should have given me a list the minute I told you about Brennen. You should have trusted me."
"It wasn't a matter of trust."
"Wasn't it?"
"No." He grabbed her hand before she could shove away. "No, it wasn't. It was a matter of hoping I was wrong. And a matter of trying not to put you in the very position I've just put you in."
"You thought you could handle it without me."
"I'd hoped I could. But as Summerset's being set up, that's no longer an option. We need your help."
"You need my help." She said it slowly as she tugged her hand free of his. "You need my help. That's great, that's fine." She rose. "Do you think anything you've just told me takes the heat off of him? If I use it, you'll both go into a cage. Murder, first degree, multiple charges."
"Summerset didn't murder anyone," Roarke said with characteristic cool. "I did."
"That hardly takes the pressure off."
"You believe him then?"
He's what I have left. She let Summerset's words, the passion behind them, play back in her head. "I believe him. He'd never involve you. He loves you."
Roarke started to speak, closed his mouth, and stared thoughtfully at his own hands. The simple statement, the simple truth behind it rocked him.
"I don't know what I'm going to do." She said it more to herself, just to hear the words out loud. "I have to pursue the evidence, and I have to go carefully by the book. Officially. If that comes down to me charging you," she aimed a level look at Summerset, "then that's what I'm going to do. The only way you're going to help yourself is to give me everything. You hold back, it works against you. I'm going into this with both hands tied behind my back. I'm going to need yours," she said to Roarke.
"You have the
m. Always."
"Do I?" She smiled humorlessly. "The evidence points to the contrary. And I'm hell on evidence, Roarke." She walked to the door but didn't yet disengage the locks. "I'll clear your bony ass, Summerset. Because that's my job. Because not all cops turn their backs. And because this cop keeps her eyes and ears open." She shot one last fulminating look at Roarke. "Always."
She opened the locks and stalked out.
*** CHAPTER SIX ***
Peabody knew when to keep her mouth shut and her thoughts to herself. Whatever had been said in the interview room off record hadn't put her lieutenant in a cheerful state of mind. The lieutenant's eyes were hot and broody, her mouth grim, and her shoulders stiff as a board of black market oak.
Since Eve was currently driving uptown behind the wheel of a not entirely reliable vehicle—and Peabody was in the passenger seat—the lieutenant's aide chose the better part of valor.
"Idiots," Eve muttered, and Peabody was dead certain she wasn't referring to the stream of jaywalking tourists who barely missed being mowed down by a maxi-bus.
"Trust, my ass."
At this, Peabody merely cleared her throat and frowned sternly at the smoke-obscured corner of Tenth and Forty-first where a pair of glide-carts were dueling over territorial rights. Peabody winced as the operators rammed their carts together. Metal sang against metal once, twice. At the third butt, a funnel of flame shot skyward. Pedestrians scattered like ants.
"Oops" was Peabody's comment, and she resigned herself when Eve swung her vehicle to the curb.
Eve stepped out into the smoke, caught the scent of scorched meat. The operators were too busy screaming at each other to notice her until she elbowed one of them aside to reach the regulation extinguisher hanging on the corner of the nearest cart.
There was a fifty-fifty shot that it would contain anything but air, but luck fell on her side. She coated both carts with foam, snuffing out the fire and eliciting a stream of furious Italian from one operator and what might have been Mandarin Chinese from the other.
They might have joined forces and jumped her, but Peabody stepped through the stink and smoke. The sight of a uniformed cop had both operators satisfying themselves with threatening curses and vicious glares.
Peabody scanned the crowd that had gathered to watch the show, and furrowed her brow. "Move along," she ordered. "There's nothing more to see here. I always wanted to say that," she murmured to Eve, but got no quick, answering grin in response.
"Make their day perfect and write them up for creating a public hazard."
"Yes, sir." Peabody sighed when Eve walked back to the car.
Ten minutes later, and in silence, they pulled up in front of the Luxury Towers. The droid was on duty at the door and only nodded respectfully when Eve flashed her badge and walked by him. She headed straight to the elevator and stood dead center of the glass tube as it shot them up to the twelfth floor.
Peabody remained silent as Eve pressed the bell at Audrey Morrell's snowy white door. A moment later it was opened by a tidy brunette with mild green eyes and a cautious smile.
"Yes, can I help you?"
"Audrey Morrell?"
"That's correct." The woman focused on Peabody, the uniform, and lifted a hand to the single strand of white stones around her neck. "Is there a problem?"
"We'd like to ask you a few questions." Eve took out her badge, held it up. "It shouldn't take long."
"Of course. Please come in."
She stepped back into a lofty living area made cozy with soft pastel hues and the clever grouping of conversation areas. The walls were crowded with paintings in dreamy, bleeding colors.
She led them to a trio of U-shaped chairs covered in Easter-egg blue.
"May I offer you anything? Coffee perhaps?"
"No, nothing."
"Well then." With an uncertain smile, Audrey sat.
This would be Summerset's type was Eve's first thought. This slim, pretty woman wearing a classically simple pale green sheath. Her hair was neatly arranged in smooth waves.
Age was difficult to gauge. Her complexion was creamy and smooth, her hands long and narrow, her voice quiet and cultured. Mid-forties was Eve's best guess, with plenty of bucks spent on body maintenance.
"Ms. Morrell, are you acquainted with a man named Summerset?"
"Lawrence." Instantly the green eyes took on a sparkle, and the smile grew wider and more relaxed. "Yes, of course."
"How do you know him?"
"He attends my watercolor class. I teach painting on Tuesday nights at the Culture Exchange. Lawrence is one of my students."
"He paints?"
"Quite well, too. He's working on a lovely still life series right now, and I…" She trailed off, and her hand went back to twist her strand of rocks. "Is he in trouble? Is he all right? I was annoyed when he missed our engagement on Saturday, but it never occurred to me that—"
"Saturday? You had an appointment with him on Saturday?"
"A date, really." Audrey shifted and brushed at her hair. "We…well, we have common interests."
"Your date wasn't for Friday?"
"Saturday afternoon. Lunch and a matinee." She let out a breath, worked up a smile again. "I suppose I can confess, as we're all women. I'd gone to quite a bit of time and trouble with my appearance. And I was terribly nervous. Lawrence and I have seen each other outside of class a few times, but always with art as a buffer. This would have been our first actual date. I haven't dated in some time, you see. I'm a widow. I lost my husband five years ago, and…well. I was crushed when he stood me up. But I see he must have had a good reason. Can't you tell me what this is about?"
"Where were you on Friday afternoon, Ms. Morrell?"
"Shopping for my outfit for Saturday. It took me most of the day to find just the right dress, shoes, the bag. Then I went to the salon for a manicure, a body polish." She lifted her hand to her hair again. "A little highlighting."
"Summerset claims your engagement was for Friday noon."
"Friday." Audrey frowned, shook her head. "That can't be. Can it? Oh, did I mix the dates?" Obviously distracted, she got up quickly and hurried into another room. She came back moments later with a slim silver-toned datebook. As she coded in, she continued to shake her head. "I'm certain we said Saturday. Yes, that's what I have here. Saturday, twelve noon, lunch and theater with Lawrence. Oh dear." She looked at Eve again, her face comically distressed. "Did he come on Friday, when I was out? He must have thought I stood him up, just as I—"
She started to laugh then, sitting down, crossing her legs. "How absurd, and the two of us with our pride and feelings crushed just because we didn't have the good sense to call and verify. Why in the world didn't he at least leave a message at the door?"
"I couldn't say."
"Pride again, I suppose. And shyness. It's so difficult for two shy people to manage." Her smile faded slowly as she studied Eve's face. "But surely this isn't a police matter."
"Summerset is involved in an investigation. It would be helpful if we could verify his movements on Friday."
"I see. No, I don't," Audrey corrected. "I don't see at all."
"I can't give you a great deal of information at this time, Ms. Morrell. Did you know a Thomas Brennen?"
"No, I don't believe so."
You will, Eve thought. By the evening newscasts everyone would know of Thomas Brennen and Shawn Conroy. "Who else knew about your date with Summerset?"
Audrey's fingers tangled with her necklace again. "I can't think of anyone. We're both rather… private people. I suppose I did mention to my beauty consultant when I made the appointment that it was for a special occasion."
"What's your salon?"
"Oh, I always use Classique on Madison."
"I appreciate your time," Eve said and rose.
"You're welcome, of course. But—Lieutenant, was it?"
"Yes. Dallas."
"Lieutenant Dallas, if Lawrence is in any sort of trouble…I'd like to help howe
ver I can. He's a lovely man. A gentleman."
• • •
"A lovely man," Eve muttered as they headed back to the elevator. "A gentleman. Right. Penthouse floor," she ordered as the tube closed them in. "I want to go over the scene again. Set your recorder."
"Yes, sir." Efficiently, Peabody clipped the minirecorder onto her starched lapel.
Eve used her master code to bypass the police block on Brennen's door. The apartment was dim, the outside light blocked by security screens. She left them in place and ordered the lights to bright.
"It started right here." She frowned down at the bloodstains on the carpet, the walls, and brought the gruesome image of a severed hand into her mind. "Why did Brennen let him in? Did he know him? And why did the attacker hack off his hand? Unless…"
She circled around, moved back to the door, eyed the direction of the bedroom. "Maybe it went this way: The killer's an electronics whiz. He's already messed up the cameras. Can't take a chance that some bored security guard scans discs before he can do the job here then get back to them. So he's taken care of that. He's smart, he's careful. He can get into this place easily enough. Bypass the codes, pop the locks. That'd give him a kick, wouldn't it?"
"He likes to be in charge," Peabody offered. "Could be he wouldn't want to ask to come in."
"Exactly. So he lets himself in. What a thrill. The game's about to begin. Brennen comes out, from the kitchen most likely. He's just had lunch. He's caught off guard, and he's a little sluggish from the tranq. But he grew up on the streets, he grew up rough. You don't forget how to take care of yourself. He charges the intruder, but the intruder's armed. The first injury, it could have been no more than a defensive move. Unplanned. But it stops Brennen, stops him cold. There's blood everywhere. Most likely some of it splattered on the intruder. He'll have to clean up, but he'll worry about that later. Now he wants to do what he came for. He tranqs Brennen a little deeper, drags him into the bedroom."
Eve followed the trail and puddles of dried blood, then stood in the bedroom, eyes keen. She lifted the statue of the Virgin from Eileen's dresser, scissoring the head between her fingers to upend it and check the markings on the base. "The same. The same as at the Conroy scene. Bag this."