Eight Classic Nora Roberts Romantic Suspense Novels

by Nora Roberts

  “A religious fanatic,” Harris mused.

  “Inwardly,” Tess told him. “Outwardly he probably functions normally for long periods of times. The murders are spaced weeks apart, so it would appear he has a level of control. He could very well hold down a normal job, socialize, attend church.”

  “Church.” Ben rose and paced to the window.

  “Regularly, I’d think. It’s his focal point. If this man isn’t a priest, he takes on the aspects of one during the murders. In his mind, he’s ministering.”

  “Absolution,” Ben murmured. “The last rites.”

  Intrigued, Tess narrowed her eyes. “Exactly.”

  Not knowing much about the Church, Ed turned to another topic. “A schizophrenic?”

  Tess frowned down at her glasses as she shook her head. “Schizophrenia, manic depression, split personality. Labels are too easily applied and tend to generalize.”

  She didn’t notice that Ben turned back and stared at her. She pushed her glasses back in their case and dropped them in her purse. “Every psychiatric disorder is a highly individual problem, and each problem can only be understood and dealt with by uncovering its dynamic sources.”

  “I’d rather work with specifics myself,” Harris told her. “But there’s a premium on them in this case. Are we dealing with a psychopath?”

  Her expression changed subtly. Impatience, Ben thought, noting the slight line between her brows and a quick movement of her mouth. Then she was professional again. “If you want a general term, psychopathy will do. It means mental disorder.”

  Ed stroked his beard. “So he’s insane.”

  “Insanity is a legal term, Detective.” This was said almost primly as Tess picked up the folder and rose. “Once he’s stopped and taken to trial, that’ll become an issue. I’ll have a profile for you as soon as possible, Captain. It might help if I could see the notes that were left on the bodies, and the murder weapons.”

  Dissatisfied, Harris rose. He wanted more. Though he knew better, he wanted A, B, and C, and the lines connecting each. “Detective Paris’ll show you whatever you need to see. Thank you, Dr. Court.”

  She took his hand. “You’ve little to thank me for at this point. Detective Paris?”

  “Right this way.” With a cursory nod he led her out.

  He said nothing as he took her through the corridors again and to the checkpoint where they signed in to examine the evidence. Tess was silent as well as she studied the notes and the neat, precise printing. They didn’t vary, and were exact to the point that they seemed almost like photostats. The man who’d written them, she mused, hadn’t been in a rage or in despair. If anything, he’d been at peace. It was peace he sought, and peace, in his twisted way, he sought to give.

  “White for purity,” she murmured after she’d looked at the amices. A symbol perhaps, she mused. But for whom? She turned away from the notes. More than the murder weapons, they chilled her. “It appears he’s a man with a mission.”

  Ben remembered the sick frustration he’d felt after each murder, but his voice was cool and flat. “You sound sure of yourself, Doctor.”

  “Do I?” Turning back, she gave him a brief survey, mulled things over, then went on impulse. “What time are you off duty, Detective?”

  He tilted his head, not quite certain of his moves. “Ten minutes ago.”

  “Good.” She pulled on her coat. “You can buy me a drink and tell me why you dislike my profession, or just me personally. I give you my word, no tabletop analysis.”

  Something about her challenged him. The cool, elegant looks, the strong, sophisticated voice. Maybe it was the big, soft eyes. He’d think about it later. “No fee?”

  She laughed and stuck her hat in her pocket. “We might have hit the root of the problem.”

  “I need my coat.” As they walked back to the squad room, each of them wondered why they were about to spend part of their evening with someone who so obviously disapproved of who and what they were. But then each of them was determined to come out on top before the evening was over. Ben grabbed his coat and scrawled something in a ledger.

  “Charlie, tell Ed I’m engaged in further consultation with Dr. Court.”

  “You file that requisition?”

  Ben shifted Tess almost like a shield and headed for the door. “File?”

  “Damn it, Ben—”

  “Tomorrow, in triplicate.” He had himself and Tess out of earshot and nearly to the outer door.

  “Don’t care much for paperwork?” she said.

  He pushed the door open and saw the rain had turned to a damp drizzle. “It’s not the most rewarding part of the job.”

  “What is?”

  He gave her an enigmatic look as he steered her toward his car. “Catching bad guys.”

  Oddly enough, she believed him.

  Ten minutes later they walked into a dimly lit bar where the music came from a jukebox and the drinks weren’t watered. It wasn’t one of Washington’s most distinguished night spots, nor one of its seamiest. It seemed to Tess a place where the regulars knew each other by name and newcomers were accepted gradually.

  Ben sent the bartender a careless wave, exchanged a muffled word with one of the cocktail waitresses, and found a table in the back. Here the music was muted and the lights even dimmer. The table rocked a bit on one shortened leg.

  The minute he sat down, he relaxed. This was his turf, and he knew his moves. “What’ll you have?” He waited for her to ask for some pretty white wine with a French name.

  “Scotch, straight up.”

  “Stolichnaya,” he told the waitress as he continued to watch Tess. “Rocks.” He waited until the silence stretched out, ten seconds, then twenty. An interesting silence, he thought, full of questions and veiled animosity. Maybe he’d throw her a curve. “You have incredible eyes.”

  She smiled, and leaned back comfortably. “I would have thought you’d come up with something more original.”

  “Ed liked your legs.”

  “I’m surprised he could see them from his height. He’s not like you,” she observed. “I imagine you make an impressive team. Leaving that aside, Detective Paris, I’m interested in why you distrust my profession.”

  “Why?”

  When her drink was served, she sipped it slowly. It warmed in places the coffee hadn’t touched. “Curiosity. It comes with the territory. After all, we’re both in the business of looking for answers, solving puzzles.”

  “You see our jobs as similar?” The thought made him grin. “Cops and shrinks.”

  “Perhaps I find your job as unpleasant as you find mine,” she said mildly. “But they’re both necessary as long as people don’t behave in what society terms normal patterns.”

  “I don’t like terms.” He tipped back his drink. “I don’t have much confidence in someone who sits behind a desk probing people’s brains, then putting their personalities into slots.”

  “Well.” She sipped her drink again and heard the music turn to something dreamy by Lionel Richie. “That’s how you term psychiatrists?”

  “Yeah.”

  She nodded. “I suppose you have to tolerate a great deal of bigotry in your profession as well.”

  Something dangerous flashed in his eyes, then it was gone, just as quickly. “Your point, Doctor.”

  She tapped a finger on the table, the only outward sign of emotion. He had an admirable capacity for stillness. She had already noticed that in Harris’s office. Yet she sensed a restlessness in him. It was difficult not to appreciate the way he held it in check.

  “All right, Detective Paris, why don’t you make your point?”

  After swirling his vodka, he set it down without drinking. “Okay. Maybe I see you as someone raking in bucks off frustrated housewives and bored executives. Everything harks back to sex or mother hating. You answer questions with questions and never raise a sweat. Fifty minutes goes by and you click over to the next file. When someone really needs help, when someone�
�s desperate, it gets passed over. You label it, file it, and go on to the next hour.”

  For a moment she said nothing because under the anger, she heard grief. “It must’ve been a very bad experience,” she murmured. “I’m sorry.”

  Uncomfortable, he shifted. “No tabletop analysis,” he reminded her.

  A very bad experience, she thought again. But he wasn’t a man who wanted sympathy. “All right, let’s try a different angle. You’re a homicide detective. I guess all you do all day is two-wheel it down dark alleys with guns blazing. You dodge a few bullets in the morning, slap the cuffs on in the afternoon, then read the suspect his rights and haul him in for interrogation. Is that general enough for you?”

  A reluctant smile touched his mouth. “Pretty clever, aren’t you?”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  It wasn’t like him to make absolute judgments of someone he didn’t know. His innate sense of fair play struggled with a long, ingrained prejudice. He signaled for another drink. “What’s your first name. I’m tired of calling you Dr. Court.”

  “Yours is Ben.” She gave him a smile that made him focus on her mouth again. “Teresa.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “That’s not what you’re called. Teresa’s too ordinary. Terry doesn’t have enough class.”

  She leaned forward and dropped her chin on her folded hands. “You might be a good detective after all. It’s Tess.”

  “Tess.” He tried it out slowly, then nodded. “Very nice. Tell me, Tess, why psychiatry?”

  She watched him a moment, admiring the easy way he sprawled in his seat. Not indolent, she thought, not sloppy, just relaxed. She envied that. “Curiosity,” she said again. “The human mind is full of unanswered questions. I wanted to find the answers. If you can find the answers, you can help, sometimes. Heal the mind, ease the heart.”

  It touched him. The simplicity. “Ease the heart,” he repeated, and thought of his brother. No one had been able to ease his. “You think if you heal one, you can ease the other?”

  “It’s the same thing.” Tess looked beyond him to a couple who huddled laughing over a pitcher of beer.

  “I thought all you got paid to do was look in heads.”

  Her lips curved a little, but her eyes still focused beyond him. “The mind, the heart, and the soul. ‘Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased. Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow. Raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart.’ ”

  He’d lifted his gaze from his drink as she’d spoken. Her voice remained quiet, but he’d stopped hearing the juke, the clatter, the laughter.

  “Macbeth.” When she smiled at him, he shrugged. “Cops read too.”

  Tess lifted her glass in what might have been a toast. “Maybe we should both reevaluate.”

  It was still drizzling when they turned back into the parking lot at headquarters. The gloom had brought the dark quickly, so that puddles shone beneath streetlights and the sidewalks were wet and deserted. Washington kept early hours. She’d waited until now to ask him what she’d wondered all evening.

  “Ben, why did you become a cop?”

  “I told you, I like catching bad guys.”

  The seed of truth was there, she thought, but not the whole. “So you grew up playing cops and robbers, and decided to keep right on playing?”

  “I always played doctor.” He pulled up beside her car and set the brake. “It was educational.”

  “I’m sure. Then why the switch to public service?”

  He could’ve been glib, he could’ve evaded. Part of his charm for women was his ability to do both with an easy smile. Somehow, for once, he wanted to tell the simple truth. “All right, now I’ve a quote for you. ‘The law is but words and paper without the hands and swords of men.’ ” With a half smile he turned to see her studying him calmly. “Words and paper aren’t my way of handling things.”

  “And the sword is?”

  “That’s right.” He leaned over to open her door. Their bodies brushed but neither acknowledged the physical tug. “I believe in justice, Tess. It’s a hell of a lot more than words on paper.”

  She sat a moment, digesting. There was violence in him, ordered and controlled. Perhaps the word was trained, but it was violence nonetheless. He’d certainly killed, something her education and personality completely rejected. He’d taken lives, risked his own. And he believed in law and order and justice. Just as he believed in the sword.

  He wasn’t the simple man she’d first pegged him to be. It was a lot to learn in one evening. More than enough, she thought, and slid aside.

  “Well, thanks for the drink, Detective.”

  As she pushed out of the car, Ben was out on the other side. “Don’t you have an umbrella?”

  She sent him an easy smile as she dug for her keys. “I never carry it when it rains.”

  Hands in his back pockets, he sauntered over to her. For reasons he couln’t pinpoint, he was reluctant to let her go. “Wonder what a head doctor would make of that?”

  “You don’t have one either. Good night, Ben.”

  He knew she wasn’t the shallow, overeducated sophisticate he’d labeled her. He found himself holding her door open after she’d slid into the driver’s seat. “I’ve got this friend who works at the Kennedy Center. He passed me a couple of tickets for the Noel Coward play tomorrow night. Interested?”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to refuse, politely. Oil and water didn’t mix. Neither did business and pleasure. “Yes, I’m interested.”

  Because he wasn’t sure how he felt about her agreement, he just nodded. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

  When he slammed her door shut, she rolled down the window. “Don’t you want my address?”

  He sent her a cocky smile she should’ve detested. “I’m a detective.”

  When he strolled back to his car, Tess found herself laughing.

  By ten the rain had stopped. Absorbed in the profile she was compiling, Tess didn’t notice the quiet, or the dull light from the moon. The take-out Chinese had slipped her mind, and her dinner of a roast beef sandwich was half eaten and forgotten.

  Fascinating. She read over the reports again. Fascinating and chilling. How did he choose his victims? she wondered. All blond, all late twenties, all small to medium builds. Who did they symbolize to him, and why?

  Did he watch them, follow them? Did he choose them arbitrarily? Maybe the hair color and build were simply coincidence. Any woman alone at night could end up being saved.

  No. It was a pattern, she was sure of it. Somehow he selected each victim because of general physical appearance. Then he managed to peg her routine. Three killings, and he hadn’t made one mistake. He was ill, but he was methodical.

  Blond, late twenties, small to medium build. She found herself staring at her own vague reflection in the window. Hadn’t she just described herself?

  The knock at the door jolted her, then she cursed her foolishness. She checked her watch for the first time since she’d sat down, and saw she’d worked for three hours straight. Another two and she might have something to give Captain Harris. Whoever was at the door was going to have to make it quick.

  Letting her glasses drop on the pile of papers, she went to answer. “Grandpa.” Annoyance evaporated as she rose on her toes to kiss him with the gusto he’d helped instill in her life. He smelled of peppermint and Old Spice and carried himself like a general. “You’re out late.”

  “Late?” His voice boomed. It always had. Off the walls of the kitchen where he fried up fresh fish, at a ball game where he cheered for whatever team suited his whim, on the floor of the Senate where he’d served for twenty-five years. “It’s barely ten. I’m not ready for a lap robe and warm milk yet, little girl. Fix me a drink.”

  He was already in and shrugging his six-foot line-man’s frame out of his coat. He was seventy-two, Tess thought as she glanced
at the wild mane of white hair and leathered face. Seventy-two and he had more energy than the men she dated. And certainly more interest. Maybe the reason she was still single and content to be so was because she had such high standards in men. She poured him three fingers of scotch.

  He looked over at the desk piled with papers and folders and notes. That was his Tess, he thought as he took the glass from her. Always one to dig in her heels and get the job done. He didn’t miss the half-eaten sandwich either. That was also his Tess. “So.” He tossed back scotch. “What do you know about this maniac we’ve got on our hands?”

  “Senator.” Tess used her most professional voice as she sat on the arm of a chair. “You know I can’t discuss this with you.”

  “Bullshit. I got you the job.”

  “For which I’m not going to thank you.”

  He gave her one of his steely looks. Veteran politicians had been known to cringe from it. “I’ll get it from the mayor anyway.”

  Instead of cringing, Tess offered her sweetest smile. “From the mayor, then.”

  “Damn ethics,” he muttered.

  “You taught them to me.”

  He grunted, pleased with her. “What about Captain Harris? An opinion.”

  She sat a moment, brooding as she did when gathering her thoughts. “Competent, controlled. He’s angry and frustrated and under a great deal of pressure, but he manages to keep it all on a leash.”

  “What about the detectives in charge of the case?”

  “Paris and Jackson.” She ran the tip of her tongue along her teeth. “They struck me as an unusual pair, yet very much a pair. Jackson looks like a mountain man. He asked typical questions, but he listens very well. He strikes me as the methodical type. Paris …” She hesitated, not as sure of her ground. “He’s restless, and I think more volatile. Intelligent, but more instinctive than methodical. Or maybe more emotional.” She thought of justice, and a sword.

  “Are they competent?”

  “I don’t know how to judge that, Grandpa. If I went on impression, I’d say they’re dedicated. But even that’s only an impression.”