by J. D. Robb
They’d toss her into the system, as she’d been tossed. Maybe she’d get lucky. Maybe she wouldn’t. And maybe she’d spend the rest of her life reliving what Summerset had called the unspeakable in nightmares.
She stepped to the window and, looking out, didn’t see the leaves dancing in that rising wind, or the burnished fall color that was already fading toward November dull. She saw the face of the cop who’d stood over her hospital bed when she’d been eight.
Who hurt you? What’s your name? Where’s your mom and dad?
Give me the facts, she thought now. Give me some data so I can help you. I’m not going to feel too much, standing here over this broken kid, because I’ve got to do the job.
She closed her eyes a moment and pulled it back in. So did she have to do the job.
“Start running Kirkendall for known associates, for other family members,” she said without turning. “Do the same on Isenberry. You get any who cross, we push it.”
“Yes, sir. Want coffee?”
“Yeah I want coffee, as I’m still among the living. Thanks.”
She turned just as Roarke came into the room. Something must have shown on her face still, as he stopped, frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“A pile of dead bodies at the morgue. Same old same old.”
“Eve.”
“Leave it, would you?”
He started to speak again, she could see the struggle. Then he gave a quick nod. “All right. Where do I sign up for my assignment?”
“Gotcha covered right here. Suspect, Kirkendall, Roger, former army, rank of sergeant. Swisher repped the spouse in a custody suit, won. Presiding judge was hit a couple years back. Vehicular explosion device. CPS rep was strangled in her bed. Expert medical wit stabbed, and it looks like the asshole they pinched for it might have just been wrong place, wrong time.”
“Looks like you’ve got your man.”
“He’s not in a cage yet. He co-owns a dojo in Queens. Flash place with Master Lu, his partner.”
“Lu the Dragon?”
“Yeah.” She was able to smile now, though it didn’t quite move up into her eyes. “Who says we’ve got nothing in common? You catch him wiping the floor with the Korean to take his third Olympic gold?”
“I did, yes. Front row.”
“Okay, not so much in common, as I caught it on a screen in a bar in Hell’s Kitchen. Anyway, Lu comes up clean. He deals with Kirkendall through the magic of E. Sends required paperwork and profits electronically. Says he hasn’t seen his partner in six years. I believe him.”
“And you’d like me to trace the transmissions and deposits.”
“Check. Lu’s equipment’s in your comp lab. Pickup officer confirmed its delivery.”
“I’ll get started.” But he crossed to her first, stroked his fingers down her cheek. “I don’t like to see you sad.”
“I’ll have a big, toothy smile on my face when I close this case.”
He kissed her lightly. “I’ll hold you to that, Lieutenant.”
Discreetly, Peabody waited until he’d left before coming out with the coffee. “You want me to set up on your secondary unit?”
“Yeah.” Eve took the coffee. “I’m going to take a poke at Yancy’s theory. If Kirkendall’s had major face sculpting, wouldn’t he trust—first—a military surgeon? Guy spends nearly twenty in, it doesn’t seem like he’d go to a civilian.”
“That kind of change has to be recorded,” Peabody pointed out. “You can’t radically change your appearance without filing fresh ID. If Yancy’s right, and he did, we wouldn’t be looking for a surgeon on the up.”
“Covert ops, guys have work done. Temp and permanent. We’ll see if he had any before, and who he trusted to do the job.”
She sat at her desk, called up Kirkendall’s military data. And Mira walked in.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Teeth set in frustration, Eve sat back, lifted her hands. “What?”
“I need to speak with you regarding Nixie.”
“Look, you’re in charge of her counseling. You want to do a session, pick your spot. As long as it’s not in here.”
“We’ve had a session. She’s having a difficult day.”
“She should get in line.”
“Eve.”
“I’m doing what I need to do.” Her earlier rage began to bubble back. “And I can’t do it if somebody’s forever in my face telling me I’ve got to go pat the kid on the head and give her a there, there. I can’t—”
“Lieutenant.”
Safely across the room, Peabody hunched her shoulders. It was the same tone her own mother used to stop any one of her children in their tracks.
“Fine. What? I’m listening. I’m all fricking ears.”
And that, Peabody thought as she slid down another inch in her chair, was the tone that would have resulted in immediate annihilation should she, or a sibling, have dared to use it.
“I hope you find it cathartic to take your frustration out on me.”
If she’d been sure no one would notice, Peabody would have chosen that point to slink out of the room.
“However,” Mira continued in a voice cool enough to scatter frost on the windows, “we’re discussing a child in our charge, not your poor manners.”
“Well, Jesus, I’m just—”
“Regarding that child,” Mira interrupted. “She needs to see her family.”
“Her family’s in the damn morgue.”
“I’m aware of that, and so is she. She needs to see them, to begin to say good-bye. You and I are both aware of the importance of this step with survivors. The stages of her grief require this.”
“I told her I’d fix it so she’d see them. But for Christ’s sake, not like this. You want to take a kid to the morgue so that she can see her family pulled out of containment drawers?”
“Yes.”
“With their throats cut.”
Impatience rippled over Mira’s face. “I’ve spoken with ME Morris. There are ways, which you very well know, to treat wounds and injuries on the dead, to spare their loved ones. He’s agreed to do so. It’s not possible for her to attend any sort of service or memorial for her family until this case is closed and her safety is insured. She needs to see them.”
“I’ve got her here in lockdown for a reason.” Eve dragged her hands through her hair when Mira only stood, gaze cool and level. “Okay, fine. I can get you secure transpo there and back. I’ll need to coordinate it with Morris. We get her in the delivery door—no record, no ID scans. He clears the area so you can take her straight into a view room. Out the same way. It’ll have to be quick. Ten minutes.”
“That’s acceptable. She’ll need you there.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute.”
“Like it or not, you’re her touchstone. You were there when she last saw them. You’re the one she believes will find the people responsible. She needs you to be there in order to feel safe. We’ll be ready to leave as soon as you arrange secure transportation.”
Eve sat, too stunned to work up a glare as Mira walked out.
She decided on Roarke’s jet-copter. It would be fast, and it wasn’t unusual for him to buzz off in it to a meeting. It meant she had to pull him away from the trace as she didn’t trust anyone else to get them there and back without incident. Not only the crashing sort of incidents she tried not to obsess over when zipping along a couple hundred feet above street level, but the assault incident she was risking by following Mira’s edict.
“Risks are minimal,” he told her as the copter landed gracefully on the lawn. “We’ll engage the privacy shields and the antiscan equipment. Even if they’re watching, they wouldn’t be able to jam—in the amount of time we’ll need—to detect her on board.”
Eve frowned pessimistically at the sky that was beginning to bruise with Peabody’s predicted rain. “Maybe they’ll just blow us out of the air.”
He smiled at her dour tone
. “If you thought that a possibility, you wouldn’t be sending her up.”
“Okay, no. I just want this the hell over with.”
“I’ll be doing my own scans. I’ll know if anyone’s trying to track us or jam the equipment. We should be able to do this in thirty minutes. Not an appreciable delay in your schedule.”
“Then let’s do it.” She signalled for Mira to bring Nixie out while Roarke exchanged a quick word with the pilot, then took the controls himself.
“I’ve never been in a copter,” Nixie said. “It’s mag.” But her hand crept over the seat, found Mira’s.
Roarke looked over his shoulder, smiled at her. “Ready?”
When she nodded, he lifted off.
Smoother, Eve noted, than he did when she was the only passenger. He liked to cowboy it, bursts of speed, quick dips—just to make her crazy. But this time, he piloted the copter with the care and grace, despite the speed, of a man hauling precious cargo.
He’d think of that, she realized. The little things. Is that what she lacked, the ability to consider the compassionate, because she was so focused on brutality?
Trueheart played with her, Baxter joked with her. Peabody had no trouble finding the right words, the right tone. Summerset—frog-faced demon from hell—he was handling her overall care and feeding without a single bump.
And there was Roarke being Roarke—no matter what he said about the kid being scary and intimidating. He interacted with her as smoothly as he drove the damn copter.
And, Eve admitted, every time she got within five feet of the kid she wanted to walk the other way. She didn’t know how to deal with the entity of a child. Just didn’t have the instincts.
And just wasn’t able to—bottom line—close out the horror of her own memories the kid pushed into her head.
She glanced down, saw Nixie watching her.
“Mira says they have to be in places that are cold.”
“Yeah.”
“But they don’t feel cold anymore, so it’s okay.”
Eve started to nod, dismiss it. Jesus, she thought, give her something. “Morris—Dr. Morris,” Eve corrected, “has been taking care of them. There’s nobody better than Dr. Morris. So yeah, it’s okay.”
“Tracking us,” Roarke said softly and she swung around to him.
“What?”
“Tracking.” He tapped a gauge bisected with green and red lines. “Or—more accurately—trying. Can’t get a lock. Ah, that must be frustrating.”
She studied the dash gauges, tried to decipher the symbols. “Can you track it back to source?”
“Possibly. I engaged the tracking equipment before we took off, so it’s working on it. It’s mobile, I can tell you that.”
“Ground or air?”
“Ground. Clever. They’re attempting to clone my signal. And yes, detected me doing precisely the same to theirs. They’ve shut it down. We’ll call that one a draw, then.”
Still he detoured, spent a few minutes cruising to see if they’d attempt another trace. His equipment continued to sound the all-clear when he landed on the roof of the morgue.
As arranged, it was Morris himself who opened the by-air delivery doors. Closing and latching them when everyone was inside.
“Nixie.” He offered his hand. “I’m Dr. Morris. I’m very sorry about your family.”
“You didn’t hurt them.”
“No, I didn’t. I’ll take you to them now. Level B,” he ordered, and the wide elevator began its descent. “I know Dr. Mira and Lieutenant Dallas have explained some of this to you, but if you have any questions you can ask me.”
“I watch a show about a man who does work on dead bodies. I’m not really supposed to, but Coyle can, and sometimes I sneak.”
“Dr. Death? I watch that sometimes myself.” The doors opened into the long, cool white corridor. “It’s a little more entertaining than it is accurate. I don’t chase the bad guys, for instance—I leave that in the capable hands of the police, like Lieutenant Dallas.”
“You have to cut them open sometimes.”
“Yes. I try to find something that will help the police.”
“Did you find something with my mom and dad, with my brother?”
“Everything Morris has done has helped,” Eve said.
They stopped by double doors, their small, round observation windows screened now. Nixie reached for Eve’s hand, but they were jammed in pockets. She settled for Mira’s. “Are they in there?”
“Yes.” Morris paused again. “Are you ready to go in?”
She only nodded.
She would smell it, of course, Eve thought. No matter what sterilizer they used, it never quite masked the smell of death, the fluids and liquids and flesh.
She would smell it, and never forget it.
“Can I see my daddy first? Please.”
Her voice trembled a little, and when Eve looked down she saw Nixie was pale, but her face was set with a concentrated determination.
So nor would she forget it, Eve thought. She wouldn’t forget this kind of courage, the kind it had to take for a child to stand, to wait while her father—not a monster, but a father—was drawn out of a steel drawer.
Morris had masked the throat wound with the magic of his enhancers. He had draped the body with a clean white sheet. But dead was dead.
“Can I touch him?”
“Yes.” Morris set a stool by the drawer, helped her climb onto it, and stood by her, his hand lightly on her shoulder. She brushed her fingers—light as a wish—over her father’s cheek.
“He has a scratchy face. Sometimes he rubs it on mine to make me laugh. It’s dark in the drawer.”
“I know, but I think where he is now, it’s not.”
She nodded, silent tears trickling down her face. “He had to go to heaven, even though he didn’t want to.” And when she leaned over, touched her lips to her father’s cheek, Eve felt the hot ball of tears in her own belly.
“You can put him back now.” She climbed off the stool, took the tissue Mira offered her. “Maybe I can see Coyle now.”
She touched her brother’s hair, studied his face in a way that made Eve think she was trying to see him alive again. “Maybe he can play baseball all the time now. He likes baseball best.”
She asked for Inga, touched her hair as well. “Sometimes she baked cookies—the ones with sugar. She’d pretend it was a secret, but I knew Mom told her it was okay.”
She stepped off the stool again. Her face wasn’t pale now, but flushed from the tears. Eve could see her chest tremble with the effort to hold them back.
“Linnie’s not here. They took her already. They didn’t let me see her or say good-bye. I know they’re mad at me.”
“They’re not.” Eve looked down when Nixie turned to her. “I saw Linnie’s mother today, and she’s not mad at you. She’s upset, like you are. She’s sad and upset, but she’s not mad at you. She asked about you. She wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“She’s not mad? You swear?”
Her belly churned but she kept her eyes steady. If the kid could maintain, by God, so could she. “She’s not mad. I swear. I couldn’t let you go say good-bye to Linnie, so that’s on me. It wasn’t safe, and it was my call.”
“Because of the bad guys?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s on them,” Nixie said simply. “I want to see my mother now. Will you come with me?”
Oh Christ, Eve thought, but she took Nixie’s hand and stepped toward the drawer Morris pulled out.
Eve knew the face well now. Pretty woman who’d passed the shape of her mouth on to her daughter. White as wax now, with that faint tinge of unearthly blue, and soft as wax as well, in the way the dead go soft.
Nixie’s fingers trembled in hers as the girl reached down to touch that soft, white face. And the sound she made as she lay her head on the sheet over her mother’s breast was a low, painful keening.
When it quieted to whimpers, Mira stepped for
ward, stroked her hand over Nixie’s hair. “She’d be glad you came to see her, proud that you could. Can you say good-bye to her, Nixie?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Oh, baby, I know, and so does she. It’s so hard to say good-bye.”
“Her heart doesn’t thump. If I sat in her lap and leaned my head here, I could hear her heart thump. But now it doesn’t.” She lifted her head, whispered good-bye, and stepped off the stool for the last time.
“Thank you for taking care of them,” she said to Morris.
He merely nodded, then walked to the door to hold it open. When Eve passed behind Mira and Nixie, he murmured to her, “You think you can handle anything in this job.” His voice was thick and raw. “Stand anything, stand up to anything. But my sweet Christ, that child almost had me on the floor.”
“ ‘Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, In every gesture dignity and love.’ ”
Looking at Roarke now, Morris managed a small smile. “Well said. I’ll get you out.”
“What was that from?” Eve asked. “What you just said.”
“Paradise Lost. Written by a poet named Milton. It seemed apt as what we just witnessed was a wrenching form of poetry.”
She drew in a breath. “Let’s get her back.”
When they returned, Mira sent Nixie upstairs with Summerset and the promise to be up in a moment.
Gauging the ground, Roarke excused himself and went back to work.
“I know that was difficult for you,” Mira began.
“It’s not about me.”
“Every case is about you, to some extent, or you wouldn’t be able to do what you do so well. You have the gift of being able to mate your objectivity with compassion.”
“That’s not the way I hear it.”
“She needed what you gave her. She’ll heal. She’s too strong not to. But she needed this to begin.”
“She’ll need a hell of a lot more since the Dysons won’t take her.”
“I’d hoped . . . well, it may be for the best on all sides. She would remind them of their loss, and they of hers.”
“It’s not best for her to end up a ward of the court. I may have another possibility. I know some people who’d qualify to take her on. I was thinking maybe we could contact Richard DeBlass and Elizabeth Barrister.”