by J. D. Robb
“You’re wrong.”
“The hell I am.”
“You’re wrong,” he repeated, “that you wouldn’t have been consulted, that I would have changed a single square inch without consulting you or seeing how you felt, what you wanted. That’s bollocks, Eve, and I don’t deserve it.”
“You’re the one who had her in here. I didn’t get the memo.”
He looked down at his wine, drank. “I had her come in to revisit the space, to take a fresh look at it with some ideas I’d given her.”
“You’d given her.”
“Yes. As I’m intimate with where and how you work.”
“This is where I work when I’m here. This is how. You’re the one who put it together like this in the first place. Goddamn it.” She shoved up from her desk, yanked out the tear-shaped diamond she wore on a chain under her sweatshirt.
“When you gave me this fat-assed diamond and said you loved me, I just thought you were crazy.”
“I recall.” Eyeing her over it, he took another sip of wine. “Clearly.”
“But when you showed me this, what you’d done for me here, in your home. How you’d made this space for me, just like my apartment, because you understood I needed my own, I needed what I knew. You got that, so I started to believe you did. You loved me. Now it’s not good enough.”
“It’s not good enough, no,” he said, striking her to the core. “It’s not good enough for you—for who you are and what you do every bloody day. But that’s only part of it. Once, you needed that familiarity, that security, to leave your apartment and come here. I needed you. So I gave you what you needed to be here, to have your own here. I thought three years was enough time for you to let it go, really leave it behind, and to make something new, for yourself. Not in my home. In ours.”
His eyes remained cool on hers, but she thought she caught something behind that blue frost. And that something was hurt.
“It’s . . . troubling to realize you still need to hold on to what was before. Before us.”
“That’s not it.” No, no, she wouldn’t swallow that. “That’s not fair. That’s bullshit wrong. I’m not holding on to anything. Much,” she amended. “I’m not insecure. Exactly.”
Shit, shit, shit.
“I’m used to the space. It works fine. How can I have cops come up here, work here, if you go all fancy with it? It’s a work space, for solving murders, closing cases, not for showing off.”
Frustration eked through the ice—which was better to her mind than hurt.
“Updating and creating an efficient work area isn’t showing off. Christ Jesus, for a woman with such professional arrogance, you’re forever worried about your idea of showing off otherwise.”
“You want to talk arrogance, pal.”
“No. I want to talk about that desk.”
“The—what?”
“Are you attached to that desk?”
“I . . .” Thrown off, she shoved at her hair, frowned at the desk. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“I can’t count the manner of things wrong with it. But if you’re attached, it stays. It’s that simple. If you’re not, you might consider one of the options you’d have, such as the command center I have in mind.”
“I don’t . . . ‘command center’?”
“A wide-curved U, controls and swipe screens built in, the main D&C at the top of the curve, auxiliary on one side, disc storage, holo controls on the other. I’ll be updating some of my own in my office, and in my office with the unregistered. Technology makes leaps almost daily, and it pays to keep up with it.”
“I don’t get along very well with technology, so—”
“That would be taken into account.”
He rolled right over her. Not so icily now, she noted. He’d heated up all on his own. Maybe there was some hurt, definitely some frustration. But mostly he was deeply pissed.
“You prefer a physical board, so that remains. You’d have the option for the screen, and the screens here, as elsewhere, would be updated. We’re hardly talking about fussy window treatments and bloody divans.”
“Yeah, but—”
“We have dinner in here more often than not.” He rolled right over her again. “So it’s time we had a more pleasant area for it—likely over there. Table, chairs, part of the space, but in a more defined area. With a table that would expand when we’re invaded by half your department. Which takes us to the secondary workstations and the seating area.”
“‘Seating’?”
He gestured with his wine. “You can go on about not liking visitors in your work space, but the fact is, you often have people in here. Cops, in any case.”
“They’ll never leave if you make it all comfortable.” She rubbed at the back of her neck because, damn it, she could see some of it. And she was still hung up on the idea of a command center. “I’m used to it, that’s all, and then I come in and some redhead in boots is in here humming. And you’re: Here’s what’s going to happen.”
“I say again, nothing would have been changed, been touched without your approval. It’s not just your office, Eve, bloody hell, it’s your house.”
“That’s why I was pissed!” At wit’s end, she yanked at her hair. “It’s my house, too, and it felt like you were just taking over without telling me.”
He paused a moment, poured more wine. “There’s a point. I’ll give you that. And it’s lowered the troubling quite a bit to have you say it. I wasn’t taking over, but laying the groundwork for something you could choose. Or not. Would you like to work with Charmaine?”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“I haven’t. I brought her in, and would have presented you with some completed options I felt would appeal to you. If none did, she could come up with more, or, again, not. If you liked any, but wanted changes, there’d be changes. Just as we handled the dojo. I strongly suspect if I’d said to you I wanted to have a dojo designed, particularly for you, you’d have said . . .
“Who the hell has a dojo in their house?” he demanded in a snarky American accent that surprised a laugh out of her.
“I don’t sound like that.”
“Close enough. And you should know now she’ll be working up some fresh looks for the bedroom.”
“What? What? Why? It’s nice. It’s—”
“It was designed for me, before I ever set eyes on you. Well before, come to that. Now it’ll be designed for us.”
“I’m fine with it.”
“You’ll have to be fine with any new design before anything’s done. So if you come home unexpectedly, and there’s a redhead humming in the bedroom, you’ll know why, and not react as if I’m about to shag her on our bed.”
Insulted, she jabbed a finger at him. “I didn’t react like that. If I had, there’d be a droid wearing your skin suit. Just ask Peabody because I explained it to her just today.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I spent most of today talking to adulterers. And I do want wine,” she decided, taking his. “And it put me in a mood I came home early to ditch, before I dug back into the work. And Summerset wasn’t even where he’s supposed to be so I could insult him and start the ditching.”
“I was home even earlier, and told him to go out with some of his friends.”
“Corpses don’t have friends, they have other corpses.”
His eyebrows lifted; his head angled. “Feel better?”
“Not really.”
He went to get himself a new glass of wine. “I wanted to do something for you, for the cop, and I’ll circle back here and say again, this isn’t good enough for you. Don’t argue with me on that,” he said before she could. “You’re your own cop, and as brilliant a one as I’ve ever known. You’re also mine, and this isn’t what you deserve.”
It touched her bec
ause she knew he meant it, just exactly that. “You’re trying to seduce me with command centers.”
“I am. And the other part of why is purely selfish in that I need you to let this go. I want to know you can.”
“This?” She gestured. “It’s not that. It’s not. Mavis, Leonardo, the kid, the apartment’s theirs. They’ve made it so theirs, there’s nothing of what was mine. I don’t need that—not there, not here. I swear I’m not clinging to that. I’m used to this, that’s pretty big. But bigger, it’s that you gave it to me. You knew me, even then, and gave it to me. That’s what I don’t want to let go.”
She swallowed more wine, muttered, “Dumb-ass.”
He came back to her, trailed a fingertip down the shallow dent in her chin. “I’ll always have done that, when we both needed it. Dumb-ass. Let’s try this, for both of us. And if what you need is to keep this as it is, then it stays.”
“If I say okay, let’s try it, the redhead’s not going toward fancy.”
“Not within miles of fancy, my word on that.”
“Okay. But I’m not apologizing.”
“Neither am I.”
“I guess that works.”
He leaned down, touched his lips to hers. “Did you murder a droid?”
“I wanted to, but I didn’t because I knew you’d ask. I didn’t want to give you the satisfaction.” She smirked, then sighed. “But I kind of wish I had. It really has been a pissy day.”
“You were right about the senator. About finding his body.”
“Yeah, score one for me. They did a number on him—we didn’t release all the details, but they’ve already started to leak. I had to end the day with a media conference. And I need to begin tomorrow at the morgue. I didn’t get there today. No rush on that, really.”
She walked back to the board, around it. “They pushed through his tox, and they didn’t dose him. They wanted him to feel it, all of it. They beat him, face, genitals. Beat the shit out of him. Sodomized him and, unless Morris tells me different, the way I see it is he was alive, probably conscious when they put the noose around his neck, fastened it to the entrance hall chandelier, and used the mechanism. You know? Lowered it to hook him on, then raised it. Slow, I bet, slow so he’d feel every inch, so he’d choke, struggle. Left his hands free, because he clawed at his throat some. He died hard. They thought he deserved to die hard.”
A pissy day indeed, he thought. And though he wouldn’t bring it up, felt it proved his point. She should come home to a work space she deserved.
“‘They’?”
“Had to be at least two. At least one’s a woman.”
She needed to talk it out, Roarke thought as he leaned back on her desk. “How do you know?”
“Sex. Sodomy—and no evidence he went for men or boys. Plus Mr. Mira heard a female voice. I got that when I grilled him, in his own kitchen. While he made me hot chocolate.”
The tears burned up, nearly out. “Oh shit, oh shit.”
“Here now, what’s this?” He set his wine aside quickly, went to her. And took the wine out of her hand before she wrapped around him.
“I had to push him, dot the i’s. He did great, he did fine, and he understood. They all understood I had to, but, oh God, you could see he was grieving. He was grieving for the worthless son of a bitch, and trying to soothe me because he knew . . .”
“It was hard for you, but you were protecting him.”
“I wanted to punch the reporter who asked me if he was a suspect. If Professor Dennis Mira was a fucking suspect. But I couldn’t. I have to look out for him, Roarke, but the worthless son of a bitch is my victim, and I have to stand for him, whatever I think of him.”
“You did have an all-around pissy day.”
“That’s not all of it.” She won the war with tears, eased back.
“I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll have an early dinner, and you’ll tell me. Then we’ll work on it. Dennis matters to me as well, very much matters.”
“I know he does. I don’t know if I can eat.”
“That means it has to be pizza, and I’ll make that deal with you if there’s a side salad involved.”
“Okay. Let’s give it a shot.”
She paid a little more attention to the setup while they ate: the replica of her old table where she’d sat for a meal—occasionally. More often she’d eaten, when she’d eaten, at her desk.
It probably wouldn’t kill her to consider a better table, she thought as she poked at the salad. But—
“Tell me,” Roarke said.
So she did, from the early meeting at the Mira Institute to the break for Trueheart’s ceremony, finding the body, notifying next of kin, and on to the Mira home. Then the interviews and her impressions of the women who’d had affairs with the senator.
“You pushed a lot into one day.”
“It didn’t end there. And there’ll be more women, that’s a given. Bagging women was like his fricking hobby. And with them? Guilt or defiance, cold calculation, self-preservation. They all had reasons for cheating, and I don’t buy any of them.”
“You think they’re lying?”
“No—or not exactly. The two I have at the top there?” She gestured toward the board. “Something more, something a little off. But I mean I don’t buy the concept. You stick or you don’t—and you don’t roll around with a married guy because he sticks or he doesn’t.”
“You see it in black-and-white.”
“Damn straight.”
“Fortunately for my skin, I agree with you. But there are many who see the concept as a more gray area, depending on the circumstance.”
“Then why do the marriage thing? Stick or don’t,” she said again. “MacKensie? Needs a harder look. She comes across as the type who stays home, observes rather than participates. And is a—what is it—Plain Joan?”
“That’s Jane.”
“Yeah, right, because it rhymes. I’m not going to say the vic had a specific type, but every other one of the list is a looker, and comes off confident. Is she the exception, or is she putting on a show? Harder look. Same with Downing. Not the Jane bit, but something that felt off. Letting some rich, influential old guy do her for profit and advancement, okay. But there was a lie in there. MacKensie played it too Jane, and too jittery, and Downing? Way too prepared.”
“More prepared than the one with the lawyer already on tap?”
“Yeah, the one with the lawyer was just a stone bitch. Downing? She’s got sly in her eyes. That rhymes, too. Plain Jane and Sly Eye.”
She picked up a slice. It was rare for pizza not to appeal, but she only ate it to avoid the inevitable nudge from Roarke.
“The one you dislike most is the one you suspect least.”
“Right now. But here’s what I started wondering. What if sleeping with the vic isn’t the only connection here? All of them knew him for a dog, banged him anyway. What if they knew each other? Not just knew there were others, but more specifically.”
“An I Slept with Senator Mira Club?”
“I think when you cheat with many, the odds of paths crossing go up. I’m wondering whose paths might have crossed, and what happened then.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t have much time to play the angle before the vic’s son and daughter showed up. And that was the second hardest part of the pissy day.”
She’d eaten a baby bunny’s portion of her salad, Roarke noted, and barely touched the pizza, which usually did the trick.
So whatever the second hardest part had been was still with her.
“Why is that?”
“They’re tight. He’s got Mr. Mira’s eyes. That’s irrelevant,” she said.
“Not to you.”
“To the investigation. They’re tight,” she repeated. “And when you listen to them, observe, it’s clear they’ve always been ti
ght, and basically they only had each other. Parents who had them primarily—maybe exclusively—to present an image. The image of an attractive, traditional, well-heeled family, because that image could further the vic’s career. Lawyer to judge, judge to senator. And likely he hoped for more, but backed off it rather than lose an election.”
“I see,” he said, and he did.
“It’s also clear they understood this, and their expected role from a young age. They understood their parents’ marriage, and the family itself, was surface and show. They were expected to behave in a scripted manner, to follow the family line to Yale, to law, to an advantageous marriage. Just pawns, right from the jump, who knew their parents for cheats and liars and hypocrites.”
She set the half slice of pizza down. “It’s not the same, I know it’s not.”
“Not so very different.” And because he understood, he laid his hand over hers. “Physical abuse is a tangible thing. A child beaten and raped as you were, that shows if anyone cares to look. Emotional abuse leaves marks and scars, but they’re internal. You, as they, knew from a tender age you were created for a purpose. It doesn’t matter that theirs was to walk a golden path, and yours was dark and brutal. You were all caged in and devalued by the very people who should have cherished and protected you.”
“Same with you.”
“Same with me, yes. They had each other, and that got them through. We found each other, and that changed the path for both of us. It’s hardly a wonder, darling Eve, that you related to them, felt for them, and for yourself.”
“It’s not something that can get in the way of the job. It could if I let it, so I needed to come home, settle it all down, start fresh.”
“And walked straight into the redhead in boots. Poor timing all around. I can apologize for the timing adding to the general pissiness of your day.”
“You didn’t know about it, so . . . They’re not in this.” She looked back at the board, at the ID shots. “Not just because he has Mr. Mira’s eyes, or because I can relate. They made their own lives, they didn’t follow the path, made their own. And they’re happy. I’ll look. I’ll cover the ground, but this wasn’t a family thing. It hinges on sex.”