Brotherhood in Death
Page 31
“He’d have known that.”
“How many did you say? How many names?”
“Forty-nine.” She hesitated. “Some are clearly a great deal older, some are . . . not.”
His gaze came back to her, horrified. “You think they were still . . . They continued, all this time?”
“Why would they stop when they got away with it?”
“Not because they were drunk or high and lost control. Not to excuse that, you see, but this is . . . calculated. What you’re telling me. Planned and done as—as a pack. Like rabid animals. No. No. No. Not like animals.”
He pressed his fingers to his eyes a moment, then dropped his hands in his lap. The devastation on his face cut Eve to the bone.
“Like men who thought they had the right. Worse, so much worse than animals.”
In the next moment, anger burned through the devastation. “Edward had a daughter. How could he do this and not think how he would feel if someone did the same to his own child? His daughter has a daughter. Merciful God. And he died for it, for his own brutality, his own arrogance.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not going to be able to save Betz, Mr. Mira. I swear to you, I’ve tried, but I don’t think we’ll find him in time. Easterday’s in the wind. I’m going to do everything I can to find him, not just to see he pays for his part of this, but if they find him first, he’s dead. Killing them isn’t justice. What was done to your cousin wasn’t just. I get you might think because of what happened to me I might see it that way, but—”
She saw his eyes change from sad and angry to shocked, then sorrowful, then so desperately sympathetic her insides trembled.
“I—I figured Dr. Mira would have told you.”
“No. Oh, no, Charlotte would never betray a confidence. My sweet girl,” he comforted. “I’m so sorry. What you do, every day, is so courageous, and so dangerous.”
“It didn’t happen on the job.” She wanted to push to her feet, get out, get away from that quiet sympathy. But her legs had gone to water. “I was a kid,” she heard herself say. “It was my father.”
It was he who moved. He rose, came to her, took her cold hands in his. Without a word, he simply drew her to her feet and into his arms where he held her so gently she felt she would break.
“I’m okay. I’m all right,” she managed even as she began to shake.
“There now. There. You’re safe here. You’re safe now.”
“It was a long time ago. I—”
“Time doesn’t heal, whatever they say. It’s how we use the time that can heal.” He stroked her back, as Roarke often did, and tears burned like embers in her throat.
“You sit now, sit right here, and wait. I’ll only be a minute.”
“I should go.”
He eased her back into the chair, touched a hand briefly to her cheek. “Sit right there.”
She did what he told her, struggled to find her balance again when he left the room. She had believed Mira would have told him. She understood the confidentiality, but they’d been married forever. Didn’t that outweigh . . . ? Of course it didn’t.
She closed her eyes, forced herself to take slow breaths.
And both the Miras would understand and respect that.
Now she’d unloaded more of a burden on a man who was already grieving. She needed to get things back on course, then get back to work.
He came back—misbuttoned sweater, house skids, and carrying two delicate cups in their delicate saucers. Tears pressed viciously at the back of her eyes just from looking at him.
“We’ll have this very nice tea, with a healthy dollop of brandy. It helps.”
She didn’t have the heart to tell him she didn’t like tea, or brandy, so took the cup.
“Drink now.”
She obeyed, and discovered whatever magic he’d put into the cup was like a warm stroke on the spirit. She drank some more.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Mira. This isn’t about me. I only wanted to reassure you I’ll do everything I can to find the women who killed your cousin.”
“I never doubted that. There’s no need to explain, and you don’t have to tell me anything that makes you uncomfortable. I’d like to ask, if you can answer. Where was your mother?”
“She was as bad as he was. Maybe worse. She hated me. She left. She’s dead. I didn’t kill her. I killed him, but I didn’t kill her.” She closed her eyes. “Christ.”
“Do you think I’d judge you? My brave girl, I think you judge yourself far too harshly.”
“No—I—I did what I had to do. I know that.”
“But this investigation brings it back, and still you don’t set it aside. You could.”
“If I did that, he wins. If I did that, I don’t deserve the badge.”
“Far too harshly,” Dennis said quietly. “Will you tell me how old you were?”
“They said I was eight. When they found me, after, they said I was eight. They didn’t know who’d raped me or broken my arm, they didn’t know I killed him. Well, Homeland did—it’s complicated—but the police, the doctors, they didn’t know. And I didn’t—wouldn’t remember. I shut it all away.”
Those kind, kind eyes never left her face.
“A healthy response, I think. Just a child. A child should never have to defend herself from her father. A father should never prey on his own child. Biology, that’s simply science, isn’t it? There’s more in the world than science, more inside the human heart than DNA and genes. He was never your father in the true sense. I hope you can understand that.”
The simple heart of it all, she thought. Of course he would find the simple heart of it all.
“Been working on that for a while.” Finish it, she told herself, and move on. “He always locked me up—they didn’t give me a name, I was a thing. He kept me locked up whenever he went out. I don’t remember the first time he raped me. They’re all blurred together, except the last time. He came home—we were in Dallas, that’s where Child Services got my name. And he was drunk, but not enough. He hit me, knocked me down. I fought him, and it made it worse. He broke my arm. I could see the pain, the blinding white flash of it. There was a little knife I’d dropped. I’d been sneaking something to eat while he was gone. I was so hungry. And my fingers found the knife. I used it, and I kept using it until I was covered in his blood. Until he was dead. It was just a little knife. I guess I got lucky, hit some arteries.
“Anyway.” She took a breath, drank more tea. “They found me in an alley. I’d gotten out, wandered off. I didn’t remember any of it.”
“But you remember now?”
“It came back a few years ago. I’d have flashes, some nightmares, some memories—but I could shut them down. And a few years ago it all came back. Dr. Mira . . . she’s helped me. Even when I didn’t want her to.”
“Of course. She’s brilliant and beautiful, and cares deeply for you. And Roarke? Have you told him?”
“I guess he was the trigger, or the finger on it. Yeah, I told him everything.”
“Good, that’s good. He’s a fine young man, and one who loves you without restrictions. Finding a mate, a true one, is a rare and precious thing.”
And the heart of the heart, she thought. Yes, he’d found that, too.
“I don’t even know how it happened, but even when he pisses me off, I’m grateful every day it did.”
“The best possible description for a good marriage.”
“I didn’t intend to come here and talk about all of this, I just— You matter, Mr. Mira. I understand whatever he did, you lost family in a terrible way. I’ll do everything I can to identify, find, and stop those who took his life. I swear it to you.”
“You took an oath when you became a police officer. How long have you been with the police? I don’t recall.”
“About a dozen years now.”
“A cop protects and serves, and everybody deserves it. But I don’t think he deserved you. I’ve got to get back to work.”
He got to his feet when she did, stepped to her again, enfolded her again. “I’m proud of you.”
“Oh God, Mr. Mira.” Tears flooded her throat, her eyes. At that moment it seemed her whole being was tears.
“There now.” He let her go to pat the pockets of his sweater, his trousers. “I never have a handkerchief where I think I do.”
“It’s okay.” She swiped at the tears with her hands. “Thanks. Thank you. For everything.” She grabbed her coat, afraid she’d fall to pieces. “Are you going to be all right?”
“Yes. Charlie will be home soon. I’ll be fine.”
But when she left, he sat by the fire and mourned the death—in every way there was to die—of the man he had thought he’d known. And grieved for the little girl he’d never known, and no one had protected.
—
Eve got crime scene blotters out of her field kit, used them as tissues, found some sunshades in the glove box. They wouldn’t fool Roarke if he’d beaten her home, but they might get her past Summerset.
She wanted to get home, stick her face in a bowl of ice water, then get to work.
She’d been honest when she’d told Dennis Mira the odds of her saving Frederick Betz were next to zero. Unless she misjudged this . . . sisterhood, they wouldn’t finish him in his own house, not this time. Not when they knew she was looking for them.
She needed to ID the house in the painting, if her hunch held and it was, or had been, real. She needed to find the residence that opened with Betz’s key swipe.
And she needed to watch the recording.
She shuffled that to the side for now.
Easterday, she thought as she drove. He’d be panicked, desperate, looking to both survive and escape.
Forgive me
His last message to his wife told Eve he knew what he’d done, what they’d all done, would come to light.
Where would he run?
Reo had it right—he hadn’t had much of a lead. Unless he’d run straight out of the city, he’d have a hard time getting out, and with only whatever cash he’d taken from the safe. He couldn’t use credit or debit or it would throw up a flag.
And he hadn’t used a card to book a shuttle, a train, a car, or any other mode of transpo.
He didn’t seem the type to hole up in a flop. A hotel, possibly, but that didn’t ensure privacy. She had every property owned by any of the men under watch. If he had a property she didn’t know about, Eve felt certain Petra would have told her.
The woman was terrified, only wanted her husband back and safe.
Would she forgive when she learned why he’d run?
Not your problem, Eve told herself and nearly wept again from the relief of driving through the gates of her home.
She ordered herself to pull it together. She had to get through Summerset and upstairs. And she didn’t want to break down on Roarke.
She didn’t have time to lose it again.
She got out of the car, took the bank bag out of the back—asked herself again if she should’ve made the trip downtown to take the hair to the lab rather than give that task to Reo.
Quicker this way, quicker was best.
She strode to the door, told herself to just keep walking.
The relief she felt when the foyer was Summerset-free dried up any threatening tears. She took the stairs two at a time, heading straight for her office.
Then slowed, stopped, when she heard Summerset’s voice.
“I haven’t seen one of those for thirty years or more.”
“I boosted one like it when I was a boy—before you. It was old even then, but you never knew what might bring in a few punts. So I lifted it and a stack of discs with it. Turned out to be very old porn, which gave the lads and myself quite an education. I traded it off to Mick—no, no, I’m wrong, it was Brian I traded it off to, years later. He may still have it, as far as I know.”
“I take it this one came without the porn.”
“Sadly, it did.”
“How did you come by it?”
“One of my R & R men is known for hoarding everything,” Roarke told him. “He swears it will work, good as new. But the problem, as you see, is the hookup.”
“You’ll jury-rig it there to the comp, and then program it to screen.”
“That’s the plan. Bugger it. Hand me the small spanner there. It’s the wrong size plug, but I can swap it out, I’m thinking.”
She considered backtracking to the bedroom, doing that bowl of ice water. But she’d taken too much time on herself already.
She squared her shoulders, strode straight in to see Roarke at her desk, hunkered over her comp and some black box thing with Summerset peering over his shoulder.
“There you are,” Roarke said without looking up. “I’m just working out how to merge the antique with the contemporary. Nearly there.”
“Great.”
When Summerset glanced over, she realized the shades fooled no one. She saw him lay a hand on Roarke’s shoulder, give it a small squeeze as he himself straightened.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he said as Roarke lifted his head, looked at Eve.
She supposed she owed him for leaving the room rather than mortifying her.
“What happened?” Roarke asked.
“A whole bunch of stuff.”
“You’ve been crying.”
“A little meltdown, I guess. Look, what you’re doing there’s really important. I’ll bring you up to date, meltdown included, but I need you to keep doing whatever that is. I’ll get coffee.”
“What you need is sleep.”
“Maybe, but it’s not what I’m going to get. The ground’s still a little shaky under my feet, okay? Give me a chance to steady up.”
“All right.”
He reached for another tool as she went to the kitchen to program a pot of black coffee.
19
She told him all of it, from the time he’d left her that morning until she’d left Dennis Mira.
“I really did assume Mira had told him—like the Marriage Rules take over everything else after—what—three decades. I wouldn’t have . . .” She shook her head. “I wanted to reassure him, I guess, that no matter what, I’d do the job. And I ended up telling him. An abbreviated version, maybe, but all the high points. Or the low ones.”
“There’s no kinder shoulder to lean on, to my thinking.”
“I didn’t go there to lean on him. But I did.” The tears stung her eyes again. “And he was kind. I brought him grief, mine and more of his, and he was kind. I’m going to give him more grief, because everything I do is a step closer to bringing all this out. It’s his family name.”
“A man isn’t a name. Who knows that better than I? It’s he himself makes it. I’ve no worries on that count for Dennis Mira. Nor should you.”
“You’re right.” And with that came a cool wash of relief. “You’re right,” she said again, taking his face in her hands. “You’re a fine young man, and you love me without restrictions.”
“Well now, there’s various interpretations of fine, and I might hit one or two. But the second part is pure truth.”
“You’re a fine young man,” she repeated. “I have it from a good source. So . . . d
o you think that thing’s going to work?”
Roarke glanced at the old disc player, the jury-rigged cable. “I do.”
She went to the bank bag, took out the disc in its clear case. “Let’s run it.”
He put the disc in a little pop-out drawer that made a grinding sound that didn’t inspire confidence. Then he played his fingers over the keyboard of her comp, swore under his breath.
“I just need to . . .”
He sat, keyed in something else, checked the connections, keyed in more. And this produced a series of beeps.
“There we are.”
“We are?”
“We are, yes. Just give it a moment.”
She frowned at the screen. The frown deepened when it turned a deep, and blank, blue.
“What—”
“It’s coming,” he insisted, and gave a satisfied nod when the word PLAY appeared in the top right corner.
“See, there we are.” He tapped two keys simultaneously with his thumb and pinkie.
They came on screen, six young men standing in a circle in a room lit with dozens of candles. The glow flickered over their taut, naked bodies.
One of them—William Stevenson, she thought—let out a series of drunken giggles.
“Come on, Billy, cut it out.” Ethan MacNamee, Eve noted, trying to look stern, but managing a glassy grin.
“Sorry, Jesus, doesn’t anybody else think this is weird? Standing here naked. Plus, she’s out, man.” He glanced behind him. “Hot, but out.”
“She’ll wake up.” Young Edward Mira had a glint in his eyes, and not all of it came from whatever they’d ingested. “And she’ll beg for it.”
“Are we really going to do this?” MacNamee swiped a hand over his mouth. “All of us? On camera?”
“Brotherhood.” Betz gave MacNamee a poke in the chest. “This is how we seal our brotherhood, now and forever. We already agreed, we’re all set up. We’ve got the girl.”
“Let’s get started.” Easterday looked off camera, too. “Hey, she was practically humping me at the party, right? We’re giving her what she wants. Is the camera on?”