by J. D. Robb
“I don’t have to like it.”
Heat leapt back into his eyes. “You think I do?”
“Why do it otherwise?”
“Because we’re sworn to uphold the law, not use it. Protect and serve, not grab whatever you want along the way. Not do whatever you want. We’re supposed to stand for something.”
She couldn’t argue. “Did IAB look at me when I hooked up with Roarke?”
“Yeah, some. You knew it, in your gut. Your rep, your record held up. Plus,” he added with a quick grin, “nobody’s ever pinned anything on him either. The fact is, I know from personal experience, he could be the baddest of the badasses out there, and he’d never use you.”
He hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. “You may never see captain. They may never pull the bars out of their tight asses for you.”
“I know. It doesn’t matter.”
“It should.”
It surprised her to hear the resentment—for her sake—in his voice. And left her without a clue what to say.
“Anyway.” Webster shrugged. “I’ll take a look at things, on my own time. So we don’t put a smear on her if she didn’t earn it. If you get any more on Ricker, either way it leans, I’d appreciate if you’d pass it on.”
“Okay. I can do that.”
“How much does Morris know?”
“I told him about Ricker before I tagged you. I’m not going around him on this.”
“So he knows you were going to run this up with IAB.”
“He put the dots together, yeah.”
“If you talk to him again, tell him I’ll be keeping a lid on it.”
“I will. He’ll appreciate it.”
“Yeah, unless I find something. Then he’ll want to eat my heart with cranberry sauce. I have to get back.” He got to his feet. “Be careful around Ricker. You put his father over. Odds are he’d be happy to eat your heart raw.”
Eve waited until Webster walked out, then went over to say her good-byes to Crack.
Eve supposed it would be weird to most, and just another day in the life of a cop, to go from a meeting in a sex club to a consultation in the pretty, cool-aired office of Dr. Charlotte Mira.
As the department’s top profiler and head shrink, Mira claimed a roomy space, decorated to her own liking. Which edged toward female and class.
Just like the doctor herself.
Mira sat, her legs crossed and shown to advantage in a pale pink suit. Her deep brown hair curled softly around her calm, lovely face as she sipped tea.
“I sent a card of condolence to Morris,” she told Eve. “It seems such a small thing to do for a friend at such a time. You’ve seen him, of course.”
“Yeah. He’s holding on. It’s wrecked him, you can see it, but he’s holding. You were able to read the files, the updates? Everything?”
“Yes. One of our own goes down, it’s a priority. She had an affair with Max Ricker’s son. A dangerous business. A professional risk. Yet I wouldn’t characterize her as a risk taker.”
“She was a cop.”
“Yes, which always involves risks. But according to her files, she never once in her career discharged her weapon. She solved puzzles. She was a thinker. An organized, detail-oriented thinker. She came from a good background, upper-middle-class, single-marriage family. She excelled in school. Her job evaluations were always solid and steady. No black marks, no shiny stars. This was a careful woman. Alex Ricker was the exception.”
“Love, lust, or gain?”
“If gain, or only gain, why risk the connection, the closeness? To continue in the relationship for more than a year, to go to the trouble to hide it from her colleagues, her family? Lust can start the fire, but it rarely keeps it burning for long. It may have been all three.”
“The attraction first—the lust. Hot guy, interesting guy, classy. Dangerous. The good girl gets a tingle from the bad boy.”
Mira smiled a little. “Are you projecting?”
“I didn’t get a tingle. I got hit with a brick. Yeah, I see some parallels, but the way she played it . . .”
“Wasn’t the way you did,” Mira finished, “or ever would. It’s possible the clandestine nature added some excitement. Everything I’ve studied about it indicates she followed the rules. Except here. That’s another form of excitement.”
“So she leads with lust, and there’s all those tingles—the excitement. Come away with me to Paris tonight. Hotdog. And yeah, she jumped through a lot of hoops to be with him,” Eve considered, “and to stay with him, so love—or what she thought was—had to play a part. She’s in love, and he says, maybe you could do me this little favor. Not a big thing. Stars in the eyes, you do the little favor. What does it hurt?”
“And the next favor’s bigger. You’re in deeper.” Mira nodded. “It’s a logical pattern.”
“Maybe he starts to ask too much. There’s more risk for a woman not wired for them, and it starts going south. It went south, according to my source, right around the time Ricker went down. She sees what happened, wonders if that’s going to happen to the son and to her.”
“It changes the pattern,” Mira agreed. “Alex is now, with his father’s defeat, in charge.”
“She can’t handle it, breaks it off. Puts distance between them. Clean slate, that’s what she told Morris. Fresh start. Alex Ricker loses a lover and a resource. Bad break for him.”
“His father is a violent, unstable man. A known criminal, a man of power and no conscience. His mother died when he was very young. Accident, suicide.”
“Or murder,” Eve added.
“Yes, or. While he was given a superior education, and raised with the advantages money can buy, he was placed in confined institutions, regimented schools. As his only acknowledged blood kin—as only son—Max Ricker would have expected a great deal. Demanded it. He’d be expected to excel, and expected—when his father was ready—to step up and take the helm. He, too, from what I’ve studied, is a careful man. While he may be in the business of risk, he’s certainly minimized it by covering himself with layers of protection. His public persona is much more polished than his father’s. He has, with careful, even meticulous PR, evaded the scandal of having a parent convicted of all the crimes Max Ricker was convicted of.”
“It stings him anyway.”
“Oh, it would have to. His only surviving parent, and the one who saw to his needs for most of his life, is locked away. Much of his wealth confiscated. And as you said, his father’s arrest, the repercussion of that, closely coincided with the breakup with Detective Coltraine.”
“He had a real bad week, I bet.”
“He’d have to be angry, feel betrayed, deserted. Again. His mother left him, now his father’s taken, and the woman he loves—or is intimately connected to—leaves.”
“A careful man could bide his time.”
“Yes, a careful man could. But—”
“Damn it. I knew it.”
“There’s no intimacy in the killing. No passion, no retribution. It’s cold, calculated, distant. She belonged to him, in a very real sense. Either just as a woman or as a woman and as a resource. If that sense of betrayal and that anger—even cold and controlled—led him to kill her, I’d expect to see some sign.”
Mira sipped her tea, shifted. “Could he resist hurting her, taking more time? Certainly a man with his profile would be much more apt to choose a safer place for the kill. Still, using her own weapon is personal, even intimate. It’s insulting.”
“He hired it out.”
“Much more likely, in my opinion. A careful man, used to protecting himself and his interests. A hired kill staged to look like a personal one. Sending the weapon back, to you, with a personal message? Again conflicting meanings. A careful man would have left, or ordered the weapon left on the scene. If not, then would have disposed of it. Sending it back, that’s a taunt.”
“It’s an I-dare-your-ass. The killer was proud of his work, and wanted to get that last lick in.
”
“Yes. Tell me, was she in love with Morris? You’d know.”
“Yeah. I think she was.”
Mira sighed. “Only more painful for him. But if she was in love with Morris, I don’t believe she’d have betrayed him. It doesn’t fit her. If she’d ended the relationship with Alex Ricker, and found someone else, she wouldn’t betray it.”
“Which gives Ricker another motive. If their personal relationship was dead, how about their business one? If they’d had one.”
“I’d say, if there was one, they were tied together. Why would she risk it?”
“Maybe he didn’t give her a choice. I want her to be clean.”
Mira reached out to touch Eve’s arm. “Yes, I know you do. So do I. It’s painful to see a friend in pain.”
“He trusts me to do the job, but I don’t know if he’ll ever forgive me if doing it proves her dirty. It pisses me off I have to care about that. I wouldn’t have to care if . . .”
“You didn’t care.”
“That’s the bitch.” She pushed up. “Thanks.”
“Anything you need on this, anytime. I’ve cleared it.”
Eve stepped out, started back to Homicide. To do whatever the job demanded.
9
THE PROBLEM WITH BEING THE SON OF A NOTORIOUS criminal was that it was a lot easier for cops to obtain search warrants. With one in hand, and a small battalion of cops behind her, Eve entered Alex Ricker’s penthouse for the second time.
The fact that he had a trio of lawyers with him didn’t surprise her. The head guy, who identified himself as Henry Proctor, gave off the impression of elder statesman with his flow of white hair, craggy face, conservative dark suit. She imagined his rich, baritone voice had echoed through many courtrooms, sculpting the law like a chisel on marble to defend his high-collar clients.
“My client is fully prepared to cooperate with the police in this matter, to the letter of the law.”
“You can read this letter of the law.” Eve offered the warrant. “We’re authorized to search the premises, and to confiscate and examine all data and communication devices, including portables and personals.”
“One of Mr. Ricker’s legal counsel or staff will observe every level of the execution of the warrant. Which will be conducted on record. Mr. Ricker will also exercise his right to record the search and confiscation. He will make no statement, and will not be questioned at this time.”
“Fine by me. Captain Feeney.”
It wasn’t usual for the head of EDD to assist in the execution of a warrant. But Eve wanted no mistakes—and Feeney had wanted in. She nodded to her former partner, her trainer.
His basset-hound face remained sober. She wondered if she were the only one in the room who knew how much he was enjoying himself. Any slap at a Ricker gave the day a little shine.
“Okay, boys and girls, you know the drill.” He stepped forward, a contrast to the slick and polished in his rumpled suit and worn-in shoes. “Receipts will be issued for any equipment and devices removed.”
“An estimated time of return would be appreciated. This causes considerable inconvenience.”
Feeney scratched his head through his wiry thatch of ginger and silver hair. “Depends, don’t it?”
“Detective Baxter, you and your team will begin the search on the third floor. Officer Carmichael, take this level. Peabody,” Eve added, “we’ll take the second floor.”
She wanted the bedrooms, the private spaces, the areas of intimacy. Even people who knew better generally felt safest in the place they slept, had sex, dressed, undressed. It was, in Eve’s mind, the most likely spot for Alex to have made a mistake, to have forgotten something that could tie him to Coltraine’s murder.
They didn’t speak. She’d already informed the team, down to the lowest uniformed drone, that everything they said, everything they did, every expression, gesture, and sneeze could and would be on record. And could and would be used by the lawyers to question both the procedure and the intent of the search and seize.
“We’ll start with Mr. Ricker’s bedroom,” she told Rod Sandy.
He stood behind them, disapproval in every line of his face and body. He turned out of the airy, second-floor parlor and into the spacious master suite.
Alex knew how to live, Eve mused. The parlor spilled into a tidy office/sitting room with a black glass work counter holding mini-units. A matching wet bar, a couple of club chairs, and an entertainment screen filled in the blanks. Knowing Roarke’s fondness for panels, she ran her fingers over the walls.
“This is what you’re looking for.” Sandy stepped behind the wet bar, opened a panel. Inside, a cabinet held wine and liquor. “We’ll cooperate, Lieutenant,” he said, disdain dripping, “so you’ll finish this invasion and get out.”
“So noted.” Eve mirrored Sandy’s tone, and with her eyes on his, added to the team, “Check for others.”
She moved on with Peabody.
The man liked space, she decided. The bedroom sprawled, one wall fully glassed to open to the terrace and the city beyond. Alex could enjoy his morning coffee or evening brandy while sitting at the bistro table or reclining on the gel-sofa. An antique desk held another mini d and c. Mirrors reflected back the watered silk walls, and the enormous four-poster bed.
In silence, Sandy moved around the room, opening panels for another bar, an AutoChef, screens. Eve wandered, scanned the dressing area with its racks and drawers and counter—and thought she might, finally, have hit on someone with as many clothes as Roarke. And into the luxury of the marble and stone bath.
This was going to take a while.
“Roll up your sleeves, Peabody. Let’s get started.”
It took a man with brains and some experience to carefully, even meticulously remove anything remotely incriminating from his domain and leave the personal.
She found condoms and sex toys, various lotions billed to enhance the sexual experience. Nothing that crossed the legal lines. She found an army of grooming and hygiene products that told her Alex gave a great deal of thought and time to his appearance.
But vanity wasn’t a crime.
His wardrobe told her he preferred and could afford natural fibers and personal tailoring, that even his casual dress was meticulous in style. She found he liked soothing colors and comfort, preferred boxers over briefs—and unless his bedtime reading was a plant for her benefit, he liked spy novels.
What she didn’t find in his bedroom was a personal pocket computer.
“I’m not finding a PPC, Rod.”
He stood, soldier-straight, arms folded. “I’d assume Mr. Ricker would have his on his person.”
“And not have one at his bedside? Strikes me as odd. Doesn’t it strike you as odd, Peabody, that Mr. Ricker wouldn’t have a handy PPC at his bedside, where he could work in bed when the mood struck, check the box scores, send an e-mail, whatever?”
“It does strike the odd note, Lieutenant.”
“Would it be against the laws of this state not to own two personal computers?” Sandy said coolly.
“Nope, just that odd note.”
She walked out, through the parlor, opened a door. Inside she found what looked to be a small guest room. Bed, screen, tiny kitchenette. She crossed over to another black glass counter. On it sat a vase of fresh flowers and a decorative bowl.
“Another odd note. This looks like a work counter, like the one in the master suite. The kind that usually holds equipment. And instead, we’ve got flowers.”
She took a deliberate sniff. “Pretty.”
“I don’t believe flowers are against the law, either.”
“No, but we’re racking up the odd notes, Rod. Like why there’s a palm plate on this door. Extra security on this room.”
“Mr. Ricker initially considered making it his office, then decided against it.”
“Uh-huh.” She stepped up to a narrow chest of drawers, began opening it. “And this looks brand, spanking new. Like it’s never been
used. Like maybe it was just put in here. Don’t get much company?”
His smile hit a perfect middle between sour and smug. “We’re redecorating.”
“Yeah, I bet.” She gestured Peabody to the single closet while she stepped into the adjoining bath.
Compact, efficient, scrupulously clean. But she’d bet it had been used. Just as she’d bet the equipment once housed in the “guest room” had been transferred to another location very, very recently.
“Oh, hey, Rod? There’s this other odd note. The one where you told me you and Alex spent the night in—that would be the night Detective Coltraine was murdered—and Alex told me he went out.”
“I assumed Alex was in.”
“Don’t keep very good tabs on your boss for a PA, do you, Rod?”
He bristled; she enjoyed it. “I don’t keep tabs on Alex. We had dinner in, as I stated. I went upstairs about ten. I wasn’t aware, until he told me this afternoon, that he’d gone out that night. I believe it’s still legal in this country for a man to take a walk and have a beer.”
“Last I checked. So, how’d you get along with Detective Coltraine?”
“We got along very well, though I hadn’t seen her in about a year. I’m sorry for what happened to her and sorry it upsets Alex.”
“You didn’t see her when she came to see him a couple days ago?”
“No. Alex wanted to see her alone. I was up here.”
“You seem to spend a lot of time up here.” She sent him an overly cheerful smile. “Since you do, why don’t we take a look at your quarters, Rod?”
She went through the motions—as much for procedure as to needle the annoying PA—but knew there would be nothing to find. Alex was smart, he had experience, and he’d anticipated the search.
Once it was done, and they were outside, she conferred with Feeney. “Did you see the small bedroom off the big, second-floor parlor?”
“Yeah. Palm plate and voice code on the door. Unless he uses it to hold his sex slaves against their will, I’d say the equipment in there was moved out in the last day or two. And that equipment’s probably unregistered.”