by Nora Roberts
“Devil’s advocate, darling, but under the same circumstances, I’d have been covering mine hours earlier if I’d done murder. By the time the body was discovered, there’d be nothing on the premises I didn’t want the cops to see.”
“He’s not as good as you. I said that before.”
“I never tire of hearing it.”
“On the night she died we’ve got him on the cam, coming and going at the times he gave us. Or close enough not to argue with. But he shuts it down to remove his unregistered and take a furniture delivery. No, not as good as you.”
She gave Roarke a thoughtful look. “You’d’ve doctored the discs if you felt you needed to. But most likely, you’d have let it all go on record. What the fuck do you care if the cops see packages leaving your place? Something new coming in. No crime in it. The cops hadn’t had the first word with you. You’d’ve let it stand and said prove it. With the ‘fuck you’ implied.”
“How comforting to be so well understood. He’s given you just what you wanted to know, hasn’t he? He’s-as you put it-on the shady side, and he had something to hide.”
“Which doesn’t make him a killer,” Eve admitted. “But if the shady side included cops on the payroll, why stop at one? I’ve got to take another look at her squad, which probably means reaching out to IAB again. Crap.”
“Again. Yes, I gleaned that when you talked to Morris.”
Realizing she’d yet to mention her meet with Webster, she glanced over. “If a lead indicates the vic may have been a dirty cop, I’ve got to tap that resource.”
“Define tap.”
Even though she realized it was his intent, Eve nearly squirmed. “I had a meet with Webster. I used the Down and Dirty-Crack says hey. We’re both keeping it off the log, for now.”
“Interesting venue.”
“The connection with Crack makes it my turf. We’re sharing data.”
Roarke tapped her chin. “Isn’t it lucky I’m not the jealous type?”
She simply stared at him. “Oh yeah, that’s lucky.”
When he laughed, she shook her head, then walked over to study her murder board one last time. “The killer’s on here. The trigger or the one who cocked it. Nothing else makes sense. But what did she do? What did she do, what did she know, who did she threaten to bring it down on her?”
She slept on it, and didn’t sleep well.
In the dream, Eve sat on a slab in the morgue, with Coltraine sitting on her own. They faced each other while the mournful sounds of a saxophone played through the chilled air.
“You’re not telling me enough,” Eve said.
“Maybe you’re not listening.”
“That’s bullshit, Detective.”
“You can’t think of me as Ammy, or even Amaryllis. You’re having a hard time seeing me as just a woman.”
“You’re not just a woman.”
“Because of the badge.” Coltraine held hers in her hand, turning it over, studying it. “I liked having it. But I didn’t need it. Not like you. For some, the job is just a job. You know that about me, you know that much. It’s one of the reasons you can think, can believe, I used the badge for personal gain.”
“Did you?”
With her free hand, Coltraine brushed back her blond, glossy hair. “Don’t we all? Don’t you? I don’t mean the pitiful pay. You gain, personally, every day, by being in charge, in control, doing the work. Pushing, pushing, pushing what you were aside for what you are.”
“It’s not about me.”
“It’s always about you. Victim, killer, investigator. The triad, always connected. Each one links the other, each one brings what they bring to the table. One can’t be without the other two in this game.” Coltraine puffed out a breath, a soft sound of annoyance. “I never expected to die for it, and that-let me tell you-is a total bitch. You do.”
“I expect to die?”
“Sitting on a slab, aren’t you? Just like me. But expect’s the wrong word. You’re prepared.” As if pleased, she nodded. “Yes, that’s better. You’re prepared to die, for the badge. I wasn’t. I was prepared to do the work until it was time to step away from it and get married, start a family. You’re still surprised you’ve managed to be a cop and a wife. You can’t figure how it’s possible to be one and have a family, so you don’t think about it.”
“Kids are scary. They’re foreign and-”
“What you were when he hurt you. When he beat you and terrorized you and raped you. How can you have a child until you fully understand, accept, forgive the child you were?”
“Did getting murdered give you a license to shrink?”
“It’s your subconscious, Lieutenant. I’m just one of your dead now.” She looked over to the wall, and all those cold, steel drawers. “One of the many. You and Morris, both so oddly comfortable here. Did you really never think about tapping that?”
Even in the dream, Eve felt heat rise into her face. “Jesus, this is not my subconscious.”
“It sure as hell isn’t mine.” With a laugh, Coltraine shook back her hair. “But loving someone without the sex, even the sexual buzz? That’s special. I’m glad he has you now, glad he has that with you. It was different for him and me. That sexual buzz?” She snapped her fingers. “Almost that quick. And from there, a lot more. He was the one, I think he would’ve been the one to be with, to believe in, have a family with.”
“What about Alex Ricker? Sexual buzz?”
“And then some. You know that. You know exactly the kind of sexual buzz a man like that throws off.”
“He’s not like Roarke.”
“Not that different, not all that different.” Coltraine pointed at Eve, smiled easily. “That bothers you. We’re not that different either. We fell for it, we wanted it. We just handled it differently. Would you, could you, have walked away from him if he hadn’t shed the shady?”
“I don’t know. Can’t be sure. But I know if he had asked me to be with him, to make a life with him and to look the other way while he broke the law, he wouldn’t be Roarke. Roarke’s who I stayed with.”
Now Coltraine wagged that finger back and forth. “But he does break the law.”
“Hard to explain, even to me. He doesn’t break it for his own profit, for his own gain. Not now, not anymore. If he does, it’s because he believes in right, in justice. Not always the same right, the same justice as I do. But he believes. Ricker didn’t shed for you. I got that much, too.”
“They come from harsh fathers and dead mothers, these men. Isn’t that part of what makes them, and part of our attraction to them? They’re dangerous and compelling. They want us, and want to give us things.”
“I don’t care about the things. But you did. You did or you wouldn’t have given them back. Huh. Subconscious scores. You gave them back because they did matter, and because they mattered you couldn’t keep them. It wouldn’t have been a break then, not a clean one. You wore the ring your parents gave you instead, a reminder of who and where you’d come from. Solid middle-class family.”
“Maybe you are listening.”
“Maybe you looked the other way when you were with him. Maybe you even told him things you shouldn’t have-because the badge was just a job, and secondary. But you weren’t dirty. You weren’t on the take. That’s not what you wanted from him, and not what you’d have given him. If it was, you’d have given the badge back, too. You could lie to yourself when you were with him that it was nobody’s business what you did on your own time, nobody’s business who you loved.”
Coltraine’s smile warmed and spread. “Now who’s the shrink?”
Ignoring the comment, Eve went on. “But even when the job’s secondary, it gets in the way. It got in the way, and he wasn’t going to change. You couldn’t keep loving him when he couldn’t love you enough to see that. So you gave back the things, and you walked away. But you kept the badge.”
Coltraine studied it again. “A lot of good it did me.” She looked up at Eve then, and her
eyes, so bold and green, filled with sorrow. “I don’t want to stay here.”
“They’re going to let you go soon.”
“Do you think any of us go anywhere until we have the truth? Do you think there’s peace without justice?”
“No, I don’t,” Eve admitted, knowing it would always drive her. Would always make her push. “You won’t stay here. You’ve got my word. I promise you, you won’t stay here.”
Could you make a promise to a dead woman in a dream? Eve wondered. And what did it mean that she had, that she’d needed to?
As she dressed, she glanced over at Roarke, who sat with his coffee, his stock reports, his cat. Didn’t look so dangerous now, she mused. Not such a bad boy. Just an absurdly handsome man starting the daily routine.
Except, of course, he’d probably started the routine a good hour or two before, with some international ’link transmission or holo-meeting. But still, didn’t look so dangerous.
Which, she supposed, was only one of the reasons he was. Very.
“You were already giving it up.”
He turned his attention from the scrolling codes and figures on-screen to Eve. “Giving what up?”
“The allegedly criminal activities. When we met, you were already shedding. I just sped up the process.”
“Considerably.” He sat back with his coffee. “And with finality. Otherwise, I’d have, most likely, kept my finger tipped into a few tasty pies. Habits are hard to break, especially fun ones.”
“You knew we’d never have this otherwise. We’ll always slip and slide some on that line that shifts for us, but that? That would’ve been a wall, and we’d never have had this with a wall between us. You wanted this, wanted me more.”
“Than anything ever before or since.”
She walked over, and as she had with Morris the night before, sat on the table to face him. Galahad flopped over on Roarke’s lap to lay a paw on her knee. An oddly sweet gesture.
There were all kinds of families, Eve supposed.
“I didn’t want this, because I didn’t know what this was. But I wanted you more than anything before or since. I couldn’t have looked the other way, but I couldn’t have wanted you more than anything if you’d asked me to. I might’ve tried, but it wouldn’t have held between us.”
“No.”
“The habit, the… hobbies-that’s exactly what they’d become for you. They weren’t the driving force, not the way they’d been when you started. Not survival, not your identity. Success, positions, wealth, power, security, yeah, all that’s essential. But you don’t have to cheat to get them or keep them. Besides me, your own pride played a part. Sure, it’s fun to cheat, but after, it’s just not as satisfying as doing it the hard way.”
“Sometimes cheating’s the hard way.”
She smiled. “Maybe so. Here’s the thing. He-Alex Ricker-he didn’t give it up for her. He expected her to look the other way, and she did, for close to two years. But it couldn’t hold. He didn’t or wouldn’t give it up because he didn’t want her more than anything. She was secondary to him, just as the job was secondary to her. Maybe they had the heat, and maybe they loved each other.”
“But it wasn’t enough.”
“I wondered if we were connected to her murder. I don’t know that yet, but we’re connected to her. We took Max Ricker down, and when we did, the dynamics shifted. The son climbs up a few rungs on the power chain, doesn’t he? Or is free to-”
“Shed the shady,” Roarke finished. “And he didn’t. He didn’t choose that.”
“She had to know, at that crossroads, he never would. She made her choice, because of that. Or it had to play out. The timing just fits too well for the other.”
“He didn’t choose her, she couldn’t choose him.”
“Yeah.” She thought of Coltraine sitting on the slab in the morgue-her badge in her hand, and tears in her eyes. “He didn’t kill her. If she was secondary, what’s the point? He made a choice, she made hers. If he was that miffed about it-because it couldn’t have been about pride and ego-you get crime of passion. Why wait a year, then fuss around with it?”
“Maybe he changed his mind.”
“Yeah, I think he might’ve. At least changed it enough to come here to see her, to gauge the ground. He’d’ve known she was in another relationship. Maybe pride again, with vanity tossed it. He’s got plenty of both. He sees she’s happy, that she’s moved on. That had to sting some, but enough to take her out?”
She shook her head again. It just didn’t play through for her. “He let her go in the first place. And under it, he still doesn’t want her more than he does the life he leads. He’s a businessman-a crooked businessman, but enough of one to know when a deal’s not on the table. There just isn’t enough love there for murder, not cold, premeditated murder.”
“Not for love, or for passion then.” Since she hadn’t gotten any for herself, Roarke offered her his coffee. “If she had something on him, was working for him? Or had been?”
“If she had anything, she kept it to herself during their breakup, after it, and for a year.”
“Why hit her now?” he said as she drank his coffee, passed him back the empty mug.
“I kept pushing there because I was thinking like me, I mean, seeing her as a cop. Not as a woman who’d been in love. If she’d wanted to punish him, she’d have gone after him when her info was hot, when she was hurt or pissed. She was never dirty. She gave back the jewelry.”
“So you said before, but you went back to that possibility.”
“Yeah, because I missed a step, and I guess that’s what nagged at me. It’s not just that she gave back the jewelry, but that she kept the badge. It was just a job, but it was her job. And she kept it. That’s what I missed.”
She pushed up now to think on her feet, to think on the move. “If she wasn’t dirty, wasn’t out for him-and goddamn it, her type would’ve had that documentation we can’t find-and he let her go, all we’ve got between the two of them is a couple of people who decided it didn’t work out, and cut their losses. Not everybody kills over a broken affair.”
She turned back. “The alibi’s too lame. I’ve been fighting that one. If he’d done it or had it done, he’d be covered. It’s not one of those psych things-the smug ‘if I’d known I’d need an alibi, don’t you think I’d have one.’ He’s too neat and tidy not to have one. I kept looking at him and looking at him because his name is Ricker. I’ve wasted time.”
“You haven’t, no. No more than you did last night at Morris’s. You’ve clarified. How could you not look at him, go through all the steps, pick at the pieces? He’s the most logical suspect.”
“Yeah, and that’s… Son of a bitch.”
“And just a half step behind you, I’ll ask who’d gain by putting Ricker in your sites as a murder suspect?”
“A competitor. Plenty of bad guys wouldn’t scratch their ass over killing a cop.”
“You’re such a comfort to me,” Roarke murmured.
“I’m smarter than the bad guys. Wasn’t I a half step ahead of you?”
“Only because I gave you the nudge. Still, it isn’t what I’d call an expert frame job.”
“Doesn’t have to be, obviously. I’ve had Ricker on the hot seat since. He had to break down his penthouse, relocate docs, equipment. Cost him time and trouble. You could probably find out if he’s got any hot deals cooking, something this inconvenience is going to tangle up.”
“I probably could.”
“And I’m right back to being focused on him.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “But he’s the only thing that makes sense-that connection is it. She didn’t have any cases with the kind of heat that turns to murder. Nobody in her building had anything going with her, anything against her we can find. And she was going out-that’s how it plays no matter how many times I run it through, turn it around. She was going out, armed. Whoever was on that stairwell was a bad guy or a cop. And a wrong cop’s worse than a bad guy.”
“Someone besides Alex with a cop in his pocket.”
“Could be. Yeah, it really could be. And if that’s how it goes, the cop has to be in her squad.”
“Back to IAB.”
“I’m thinking yes.”
“Well, have some breakfast first.”
“I’ll grab something. I should get in and… Crap. Damn it. My ride.”
“Have some breakfast,” Roarke repeated, “then we’ll deal with your transportation.”
Scowling, she jammed her hands in her pockets. “I lost my appetite thinking about those bastards in Requisitions.”
Roarke simply walked over and programmed her a ham-and-egg pocket. “Here, quick and easy.”
“I guess.” She took a sulky bite where she stood. “I’d get Peabody to offer personal sexual favors again, but they’re not going to buy that a second time. They’ll make me beg, then they’ll still give me the crappiest piece of junk in the junk pile. I could bribe Baxter to do it,” she considered.
“The personal sexual favors?”
“No, but… maybe. Requisition a new vehicle. Like he needs one. They like him. Except they already know it’s my ride.” Her tone turned bitter as cop coffee. “They have their spies everywhere.”
“This is a very thorny problem, Lieutenant. I think I can help you with it.”
“They’d give me the pick of the fleet if you offered them personal sexual favors. But I’m not going there. There have to be lines, there have to be limits. Besides, I’m a goddamn lieutenant.” She stuffed her mouth with ham and eggs and thin, warm bread. “I shouldn’t have to beg,” she muttered around the food. “I’m a boss.”
“You’re absolutely right. The bastards.” He slung an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go downstairs. I think I may have a way around all this.”