by J. D. Robb
“Because you’re the lieutenant.”
“Damn right. I’ve thought a lot about what it means to be in command, to have rank since Renee Oberman. Not just about what it means to be a cop, but to be a boss. The responsibilities, and the influence, the obligations to the badge, to the public, to the men and women under your command. I wanted it, and I worked for it. I had to be a cop. It’s all I could be. I’d been a victim, so I knew I could stay broken, or I could fight. I could learn and train and work until I could stand for the victim. We all have our reasons for being a cop.”
“I wanted to make detective, so bad. Being a cop ... it meant I could help people who needed it, and that was important. Making detective, well, for me, it meant I was good, and I’d get better. You got me there.”
“I helped get you there,” Eve corrected. “I didn’t want the rank for the office, for the pay raise.”
“You’ve got one of the crappiest offices in Central,” Peabody told her. “It makes us proud.”
“Seriously?” Surprised, then foolishly pleased, Eve shook her head.
“You don’t care about the fancy, you care about the job. And your men. Everybody knows it.”
And that, Eve realized, didn’t merely please. It warmed her, in the deep.
“Anyway,” Eve continued, “I wanted it because I knew I could do it. I knew I’d be good, and I’d get better. I know when I walk into that bullpen I can depend on every man there. But it’s just as important, maybe more, that every man there knows he can depend on me. That I’ll stand for them and with them, and if necessary, in front of them. If they don’t know that, have absolute faith in that, in me, I’ve failed.”
“You haven’t failed.” Peabody sniffled a little. “We’ve got the best damn division in Central.”
“I happen to agree. Part of that’s me, and I’ll take credit for it. I’m a damn good boss, and the boss sets the level. Renee set hers, Peabody, and some cop who maybe—maybe—would have done the job, would have respected the badge chose to use it and to dishonor it because the person responsible for them said it was okay. Because the person responsible for them dug down for the weakness and squeezed it.”
“I never thought of that, or thought of it like that, I guess.”
“Other cops, good cops like Devin, died because the person responsible for her, the person she should have been able to have absolute faith in, made that call.
“You’re going to bury her for it.”
Peabody looked up again, blinked at the sudden fierceness in Eve’s tone.
“I’m the lieutenant, and I’m telling you you’re going to stand for Detective Gail Devin, and you’re going to get her justice.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now, set up the meet with Reo.”
“Can I just run a couple things by you, on the avenues I’m taking?” Peabody smiled a little. “Because you’re the lieutenant.”
“Make it quick. I’ve got politics and pissing contests on my slate.”
“You advised me to treat it like a cold case, so I’ve studied the file, the reports, the wit statements. The investigation was minimal because there were statements from cops—Renee’s cops—that Devin peeled off during the raid, lost her cover. And during that time was assaulted and killed. She got some streams off, took down a couple of the bad guys before she went down.”
“And?” Eve prompted.
“It reads like a cover, Dallas. An obvious cover. Like she screwed up, but her team edged from that so she’d get the posthumous honor. It reads blue line. No point putting she fucked up in her record since she’s dead—but it’s there, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t reinterview the wits without alerting them and Renee. So I’m reinterviewing the victim.”
Eve kept her smile inside. “Okay.”
“Her record previous to Renee’s command, her instructors in the Academy, cops she worked with when she was in uniform, after she made detective. Her family, friends, DS Allo. I’m working down the line. I told them, except for Allo, I’m working on something that crosses with the raid, so I’m just back-checking.”
“Good.”
“She wasn’t a fuckup, and hearing what Mira had to say in the briefing, I can follow the dots on how they set her up to look like one.”
“Where are you going from here?”
“I wanted to talk to her mother,” Peabody told her, “but her mother doesn’t want to talk to me. She doesn’t want to revisit, and has a serious hard-on for cops. She had a breakdown after it happened, and from what I’ve got she’s never come all the way back. They were tight. I think she might have something and not know it. Something Devin said or did that could bounce me to the next step. I don’t know how hard to push.”
“If your gut tells you she’s got something, you push. You find a way. You know how to work people, Peabody, how to relate, empathize, slide into their skin a little. Your eyewits are liars, so you’re looking for people who have no reason to lie. That’s good strategy.”
“I’ll go see her this morning. But ... it’s possible that if we can flip this doctor, put some pressure on the cops in the raid, we could get her for Gail Devin without anything else.”
“Possible. Do you want possible?” Eve demanded. “Listen, you may not be able to wrap it all the way, but you keep going, and you’ll know you did your best by her. That’s what she deserves, it’s what I expect, and it’s what you’ll be able to tell yourself when it’s done. One way or the other. Now set up my damn meet.”
“All over it.” Peabody rose. “You were my hero.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“When I was at the Academy, when I got into uniform, I studied you, your cases like you were some mythical figure, and I was on a quest. I wanted to be like you. When you took me on as aide I was so happy, and I was so fucking scared.”
Remembering, Peabody let out a half laugh.
“Those were the days,” Eve said, and made Peabody’s laugh full.
“It didn’t take long for me to learn you weren’t a mythical figure, or the kind of hero who stun streams bounce off of. You bleed just like the rest of us, but you still go through the door. That makes you, and the rest of us who do the same, damn good cops. I learned I’d rather be a damn good cop than a hero. I learned I didn’t want to be like you. You taught me to want to be me. You taught me and helped make me a damn good cop because you’re the lieutenant.”
Peabody pulled out her ’link to set up the meet.
In short order Eve stood outside studying the spiffy little compact in sapphire blue.
“What part of not flashy did you miss?” she asked Roarke as Peabody let out a happy woo-hoo.
“You consider anything this side of ugly flashy. This vehicle is serviceable, handles very well, and has an excellent electronics package Peabody might find useful.”
“Woo-hoo!” Peabody said again. “It’s uptown mag! For a serviceable vehicle I will treat with great respect,” she added.
“Wait ten minutes after I’m through the gate before heading out,” she told Peabody. “If they’ve set up a tail, they’ll follow me, and you’ll be clear.”
“Do you think I can’t shake a tail?”
“How many times have you done so?”
“Okay, but there’s always a first time. Which isn’t this time,” Peabody continued, “due to the delicacy of the investigation.”
“That would be correct. Update me when you have something worth telling me. I appreciate the loaner for my partner,” Eve told Roarke, “and apologize if she drools on the upholstery.”
“Go get your warrant.” He kissed her lightly. “I want to go play with my friends.”
“Well, enjoy.” She got into her vehicle, shook her head as Peabody stroked the shiny blue fender and purred. “I like mine better,” she muttered, and drove off in her ugly but loaded DLE.
When Eve walked into the sex club, Crack gave her what she could only interpret as the stink eye. Reo sat
at the bar, chatting with him, looking like a lost ray of sunshine in the dim and dinge.
“Sorry.” Eve set down the box she’d loaded from the buffet table in her office. “I brought you pastries—and real coffee.”
Crack opened the lid, studied the contents. “Not a bad payoff, white girl. Plus, lucky for you, I like Blondie’s company. Give you some room.” He set another bottle of water on the bar and took his payoff box down to the other end.
“I don’t get pastries?” Reo demanded.
“Maybe he’ll share. Sorry I’m a little late. I got hung up.”
“It better be good. I had to reschedule my nine o’clock. So, what’s urgent and confidential?”
Eve opened her water. Reo was a curvy little blonde with a hint of Southern in her voice. She looked and sounded like a lightweight, a fact she used expertly to disarm, then skewer, defense attorneys, defendants, and opposing witnesses.
“If you can’t move on what I tell you respecting that urgency and keeping a seal on the confidential, I can’t tell you.”
“I can’t suck up urgent and confidential unless I know what I’m sucking up.”
“Yeah, that’s the trick, isn’t it? Give me this. Do you trust your boss without qualification, without hesitation?”
“Yes. He’s a good PA, a good lawyer, and a good man. Do I agree with him a hundred percent of the time? No. But if I did, it wouldn’t say much about either of us.”
“That’s a good answer.” In fact, Eve decided, she couldn’t think of a better one. “If I ask you if you’ll speak to no one but him about what I’m going to tell you, what I need from you, can you agree to that?”
“Yes. But I can’t promise to agree with what you need, or to recommend to him he agree.”
“You will.” Eve took a long drink of water, then laid it out, start to finish.
It took time. When dealing with a lawyer, Eve knew, everything tangled with questions, arguments, points of law. Reo took out her book, made notes, demanded Eve backtrack and go over already covered ground.
And all of that assured Eve she’d gone to the right person.
“This is going to be a massacre,” Reo murmured. “And the blood that stains the ground is going to sink in deep. Everything she’s touched, Dallas, everything her squad’s touched is going to carry that stain. The legal ramifications ... arrests, confessions, plea bargains, convictions. Every one will go in the sewer.”
“I know it.”
“Oh, she’s going down. We’re going to take her down hard. I’ve had her on the stand. Her, Garnet, Bix, some of the others. Had them on the stand—witnesses for the prosecution. I’ve put people away who damn well deserved to go away, and because of this, those people get the door opened. She’s going down,” Reo repeated, her eyes like blue steel. “How many cops do you suspect she’s had executed?”
“If you count Garnet—”
“I don’t,” Reo snapped.
“Okay then, two I’m sure of. I have what we’ve got for you.” She pushed a disc across the bar. “You’re not just here because the e-geeks want to try a new angle and we need the warrant. You’re here because I wanted you to be prepared, to give you time to start putting your end of it together.”
“Believe me, we will.”
“Reo, I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but I have to say it. You have to be absolutely, unquestionably sure of the judge you go to on this. She could have one in her pocket, or have a bailiff, a clerk. She could have somebody in your office.”
“God, that pisses me off. It pisses me off that this makes me worry that might be true. I’ll go to my boss, and we’ll work this out. That has to be done first, so it’ll take some time to get that warrant.”
“The e-work’s probably not a snap anyway.”
“I’ll get back to you.”
Alone, Eve sat at the bar for a minute, turning the water bottle in circles. Crack walked back down, took a long look at her.
“Still working the hard one.”
“Yeah. I want to be pissed off—mostly am. But now and again I lose that edge, and then I just feel sick.”
“Maybe I say something, piss you off. Give you the edge back.”
She shook her head, smiled a little. “No. I already owe you three and a half.”
“Friends don’t keep score. Not when it matters.” He put his huge hand over hers on the bar, patted it. “Want a pastry?”
She laughed this time. “No, thanks. I’ve got to get back to the hard.”
Peabody approached the little house in the Bronx with trepidation. She wasn’t afraid she’d walk away empty—though that was a possibility. She was more afraid she’d push the wrong way and break what she believed was a brittle hold on survival.
She thought of her own mother, what it would be like for her to be told her daughter was dead. Dead because she’d made the choice to be a cop. Dead because she’d been ordered to put herself at risk, and had done so.
Her mother was strong, Peabody thought, but it would put cracks in her. It would damage, and there would be fissures that would never fully close again.
So she thought of her own mother as she knocked on the door of the little house in the Bronx.
The woman who opened it was too thin—brittle again—with her hair pulled back in a tail. She wore cutoff sweats and a T-shirt and studied Peabody with annoyance out of shadowed eyes.
“Mrs. Devin—”
“I told you yesterday, when you got me on the ’link, I’ve got nothing to say to you. To any cop about Gail.”
“Mrs. Devin, if you could just hear me out. You don’t have to say anything. Just hear me out. I wouldn’t disturb you if it wasn’t important.”
“Important to who? You? I don’t care about what’s important to you. You’re cleaning up your files? That’s all she is to you, a file. Just a name in a file.”
“No, ma’am, she’s not. No, ma’am.” The emotion in her heart, in her belly rang clearly in her voice. “I apologize more than I can say if I gave you that impression. I’ve gotten to know Gail a little. I know she liked to sing, and she had a strong alto. I know her father taught her to fish, and even though she didn’t really like it, she went with him because they liked the time together. I know you and she had a strong and loving relationship. I know even after she moved to Manhattan, the two of you got together every week. For girl time. Lunch, dinner, a vid, the salon, shopping. It didn’t matter.”
Peabody’s stomach clenched as tears began to roll down the woman’s cheeks. But she didn’t stop. “She called you her best friend. You didn’t want her to be a cop, but you didn’t stand in her way. You were proud of her when she graduated from the Academy, with honors. When she made detective you had a party for her. She knew you were proud of her. I think it meant a lot to her to know you were.”
“Why are you doing this?”
Tears burned in Peabody’s eyes. She didn’t let them fall, but she wasn’t ashamed to let them show. Not here, not with a dead cop’s mother.
“Because I have a mother, Mrs. Devin, and she didn’t really want me to be a cop. I know she’s proud of me, and it means a lot. I love her so much. And some days, because she lives out West, I miss her until it hurts.”
“Why did you do it then, why did you leave her and do this?”
“Because I’m a cop. It’s what I am as much as what I do. Gail was a cop. She was your daughter, and she loved you. She was a cop, and she tried to make things better.”
“It killed her.”
“I know.” Peabody let a little of the anger clutched inside her show, let it mix with the sympathy. “When I was coming here, I thought of my mom, and what it would do to her if she lost me. I wish, for her, I could be something else. But I can’t. You were proud of Gail. I would have been proud to know her.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Could I come in, please?”
“Oh, what does it matter?”
When the woman turned away, lea
ving the door open, Peabody stepped inside. She noted the clutter on a table—items that had obviously been on shelves, caught the scent of cleaner, polish.
“I’m sorry I upset you so much yesterday. You didn’t get much sleep last night. Now a cleaning binge to help you work it off.” She tried a small smile. “My mom does the same.”
It wasn’t quite true, as it was her father who used that route, but sticking with mothers seemed best—and not altogether a lie.
“Ask what you want to ask and go. I want to get back to my housework.”
Won’t have her long, Peabody calculated, and skipped over the groundwork she’d intended to lay. “Gail had a good record. Her evaluations from her supervisors were excellent. There were some notes in her file during the period she served under Lieutenant Renee Oberman that indicated she was having a difficult time.”
“So what?” The resentment, the instinctive defense of her child charged out. “It’s difficult work, and she worked hard. Too hard. She barely did anything but work those last weeks.”
“Did you see her during that period, during those last weeks?”
“Of course I did.”
“Did she tell you why she was stressed, or what she was working on that was particularly difficult?”
“No. We didn’t talk about her work. She knew I didn’t like it. Being proud of your child doesn’t mean you want to be reminded how dangerous the work is they’ve chosen. I know she was tense. On edge. She’d lost weight.”
“You were worried about her.”
“I asked her to take some time off. Said we’d take a little trip, a few days at the shore. She said she’d like that, could use that. But she had to finish something first. Finish something important, then she’d really want to get away for a while. It was work. If it had been a man, or anything else, she’d have told me.”
“Is there anyone else she would have told?”
“One of you. Cops talk to other cops.”
Peabody nodded, felt it slipping away. “Did she keep a notebook, a diary, any sort of journal?”