by J. D. Robb
“And you do?”
“No, but I think I’ll know it when I see it. I need to go there, for the job. And I need to go there for me.”
“Then why would you suggest I go back to the hotel?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” She felt that hard bubble pushing up toward her throat. “I don’t know. Don’t make me think about it yet.”
He took her face in his hands. “I’ll take you wherever you want to go. I’ll be with you wherever that is. All right?”
“Yeah.” She fought for composure and won it when he pulled away from the curb. “I’m sorry about before. I don’t even really remember what I’m sorry about. But just to clear it.”
“We’re not something that needs to be cleared. You wanted to get under my skin so you could be angry with me, find some release there. And so I’d be angry with you and leave you alone.”
“I guess that’s probably it.”
She stretched out her legs, rolled her shoulders, circled her neck. It felt as if her body and everything in it was coiled to the point of aching.
“I did okay with her, with the interview. I handled it okay. I’ve gone back over it, and over it, and maybe I could’ve done better. But you always look back when it doesn’t work out the way you wanted and think you could’ve done it better. It was after, when I was afraid something was going to break, I shored it up by taking a kick at you.”
“Well, I kicked back, didn’t I?”
“I knew you would. I didn’t even mean it, about the stupid money and dying anyway. It was stupid, and I knew it would hurt you. I didn’t even think about it. It was like a reflex.”
He turned his head, looked at her tense, tired face. “You’ve had a miserable fucking day.”
“Yeah, real red letter. I met my mother. I arrested her, put her in the hospital. I grilled her. I found her body, and started the murder book on her. Miserable fucking red-letter day.”
“I contacted Mira.”
She swiveled toward him. “What?”
“I don’t give a rat’s damn if that pisses you off. You need her. She’s on her way.”
“You don’t—”
“I need her, goddamn it.”
Her eyes widened, blinked once at the short, violent explosion. Stupid, she realized, not to have expected it, not to have seen it coming. Stupid not to understand she wasn’t the only one coiled like a spring.
“Okay.”
“I know what I want to say to you,” he said, calmer now. “Do for you, but I don’t know if it’s right. I also know this isn’t about me, but anything that hurts you pulls me in. And this . . . well, that’s for later. You need to handle this, finish it. I understand that. Mira can help you. She can help both of us.”
She didn’t speak for a minute, had to settle the storm inside her—a pretty close twin to his, she imagined.
“You’re right. It’s good she’s coming. It’s just . . . once I start talking about it, it’s real. There’s no more sliding in this block that says it’s a case to be worked. Nothing more, nothing less.”
She sat, studying the duplex, when he stopped.
“It’s a nice place. I was thinking when we were watching for her, how it was a nice neighborhood. Not McQueen’s kind of place. Too suburban, even though it’s one good spit from the action. Not her kind of place either, with kids on bikes and guys fooling with flowers. But he wanted her out of her element, a little off balance. She’d be grateful every time he let her come to him.”
Let her think of it as a case for as long as she could, Roarke thought. A reckoning was coming soon enough.
“Why did she do it? Devote herself to him?”
“It wouldn’t have lasted, even without the knife across the throat. She’d have gotten twitchy, moved on. But he made her feel important. He treated her good—she said. He bought her things, I imagine, and the illegals. I think we may find he set up her source here in Dallas, to keep her happy. Maybe paid for them, or a portion of them.
“Anyway.”
She got out of the car. She saw the door of the neighboring unit crack open, and held up her badge.
A woman Eve pegged as late twenties came out.
“There were other police here. They just left a little while ago. They said Sylvia was arrested.”
“That’s right.”
“I just don’t understand it. Bill up the street said there were cops all over, and little Kirk almost got run over. I was at work, and when I came home it was just crazy.”
“Have you lived here long?”
“Four years. My sister and I. What about Sandra?”
“Sorry?”
“Sylvia’s sister. Sandra Millford. Is she in trouble, too?”
“You could say that. Were you friendly?”
“We try to be, Candace and I. And I guess we thought, when they moved in, being sisters like us, we’d get together a lot. Hang.” She shrugged it off with a glance toward the neighboring unit. “But they were always too busy. We stopped asking them over. They didn’t spend a lot of time at home anyway, not really.”
“Ever have any visitors?”
“I can’t say I ever saw anybody come by and pay a call. But Sylvia was involved with someone.”
“Oh?”
“A woman doesn’t dress like that unless it’s for a lover. And I overheard her talking on the ’link just yesterday, now that I think about it. Sitting outside, and I was, too, having some coffee. The way she laughed, the tone of her voice. There was somebody. What did she do?”
“She aided and abetted in the escape from prison of a dangerous felon. She aided and abetted in the abduction of two people, one a minor female for this dangerous felon who is a violent pedophile.”
Eyes wide, mouth open, the woman rubbed at her throat. “Well, oh my God.”
Eve took out her PPC, brought up McQueen’s photo. “I don’t think he’ll come around here, but if he does, stay inside and contact the police.”
“I saw him on the media reports! Oh my God. Sylvia’s involved with him?”
“She was. He killed her a couple hours ago.”
“Oh. Oh.” She backed up a pace, slapping both hands to her heart. “Sandra? Her sister?”
“There was no sister. Just one woman, two different identities. Tell your neighbors. If they see this man, contact the police immediately.”
“I will. I will.” She turned, bolted for her own door. “Candy! Candy!”
“You scared the hell out of her.”
“I meant to,” Eve said as the door slammed, as locks snicked into play. “Because he could come back here. He might start to wonder if she had anything that might point the way to where he’s dug in now. And that one’s just the type who’d come out, talk to him like she did with me. I flashed a badge, a New York badge from ten feet away, and she just accepted and came right out. I don’t want to find out she’s had her throat cut.”
She stepped to the door, used her master.
The sweepers had been through, she noted, leaving their fine layer of print dust.
“No need to seal up again,” she told Roarke.
“Small blessing.”
“Decent furniture, on the gaudy side,” she began as she walked through the living area. “Not a lot of it, and no fussy stuff sitting around. Not home, not for her.”
She studied the couch fabric, and the purple and pink roses growing over it in wild abandon. “Does that make your eyes sting, or is it just me?”
She needed to keep it light, then he’d keep it light. “I was about to dig out my sunshades.”
“She could watch some screen down here if she was bored enough, privacy shades down. Don’t want nosy neighbors peeking in. Had to be lonely, waiting for him to get out, but she doesn’t have any men over. She went to them, took care of that somewhere else. As someone else, I imagine.”
She moved through into a powder room. A single towel, she noted. “No guests. Just a place to pee if she was down here. If there’d been a
ny trash, any paraphernalia, the sweepers would’ve bagged it. Nothing here.”
She moved on, dining alcove—empty—and the kitchen.
“Sits at the counter to eat.” She opened the fridge. “Or drink,” she said, when she saw only four bottles of brew, one bottle of wine, open.
She opened cupboards. “Glasses, a couple of plates, a stack of disposable ones.” She jerked her chin toward the pile of dirty dishes and unrecycled cartons in the sink, on the counter. “Not much on housekeeping.”
“And no house droid,” Roarke observed, “to tidy up after her.”
“Good appliances, nice counterwork, cabinetry, but she doesn’t care. It’s not hers. Not what she wants. She wants a lot more than this little playhouse with its fenced yard and the two bitches next door who ask too many questions. She wants the high life Isaac’s going to get her. Nothing here,” she said again, and walked back to take the stairs up.
She turned to the bedroom first. Too much perfume, she thought immediately. Too thick, too strong, too much. And the memory struck like a fist.
“Eve.” Roarke grabbed her arms when she swayed.
“Too much. Do you smell it? It’s too sweet—dying sweet, like flowers left out too long. God, it makes me sick.”
But she pushed back when he tried to draw her out of the room.
“No. I remember. I remember. The bedroom—their room. Always smelled like this. Too much. Perfume, too strong. And sex. Old sex and perfume. All those bottles and tubes. Lip dyes and sprays and powders. Can’t touch or she’ll hurt me. She’ll hurt me anyway because I’m ugly and stupid and always in the fucking way.”
“No. Baby, no.”
“I’m all right, I’m all right. Just need to breathe. God, open the window. Please, God, get some air in here.”
He yanked up the privacy screen, the window. She leaned out the opening, gasping air like the drowning. “I’m okay. It just hit so hard. She wanted to get rid of me. I can hear them talking, arguing. I’m so scared. I want to hide so maybe they’ll forget about me. Maybe she won’t remember me. She wants to get rid of me, for Christ’s sake. I’m useless, always hungry, always in her things. They should sell me now, get something out of the fucking little bitch.
“But he says no. They’ll get more later, renting me out. Can’t get top dollar for a six-year-old. But rent out, starting at ten, maybe sooner—rake it in for five, six years easy, then sell what’s left.”
Undone, simply shattered, he laid his cheek on her back so they drew in the hot, fresh air together. “Let me take you away from this.”
She reached back for his hand. “I can’t get away if I can’t get through.”
“I know it.” He pressed his lips to the back of her neck. “I know.”
“I didn’t understand what they were talking about, not exactly. Not then. But I was so scared. And they fought. I could hear them beating on each other, then the sex. I think she left after that—or soon after. He’d already started to touch me, to do things to me, but soon after that night, he got so mad because she was gone, and she’d taken money and things—I don’t know. He got mad and drunk, and he raped me for the first time. I remember.”
She took one last deep breath, eased herself back into the room.
“Is this what you were looking for?”
“No.” She swept the heels of her hands up her cheeks, annoyed tears had gotten through. “No, I didn’t expect to remember anything, not from this place. It’s the smell. It’s eased off with the window open.”
“Eve, there was barely a trace of perfume in the air here before.”
“I don’t know, but it was the same.” She scrubbed her face dry. She’d come to work, she reminded herself, not to wallow.
“I want to toss this room, top to bottom. See if she had any hideyholes. I think she used to have one, wherever we were. Extra stashes, hiding them from him. If she thought there was a chance McQueen would come here, she’d expect him to use the bedroom. If she was keeping something, she’d want it where he wouldn’t see it. Illegals, running money, but more maybe. Maybe.”
“Such as?”
“She thought she loved him. What do you have in your pocket?”
He smiled, drew out the gray button that had fallen off her very ugly suit the first day they’d met.
“See?” She couldn’t say why that stupid button moved her so damn much. “People in love keep things. Sentimental things.”
“What do you have?”
She pulled the chain, and the tear-shaped diamond from under her shirt. “I wouldn’t wear this for anybody but you. It’s embarrassing. And—”
“Ah, something else.”
“Shit. I’m tired. It makes me gabby. I have one of your shirts.”
His brow creased in absolute bafflement. “My shirts?”
“In my drawer, under a bunch of stuff. You lent it to me the morning after our first night together. It still sort of smells like you.”
For a moment, the worry on his face simply dissolved. “I believe that’s the sweetest thing you’ve said to me in all our time together.”
“Well, I owed you. Besides, you have enough shirts to outfit a Broadway troupe. So, help me toss the room?”
“Absolutely.”
Eve took the dresser first. The cheap, flimsy fake wood reaffirmed this had been no more than a stopping point, less personal than a motel flop. Not really a piece of furniture, she thought, but a big suitcase with drawers.
She opened one, saw her mother had spent more on underwear than she had on the container used to store it.
She reached in, immediately pulled her hands back. God, she didn’t want to touch any of it, didn’t want to put her hands on those hard, bright colors.
Stop thinking of who, she told herself. Who doesn’t matter. Think of what, of doing the job.
She pushed through, examined contents, pulled out drawers to check the sides, bottoms, backs.
If she let herself, she could have put together a picture, one of a woman who shopped—or shoplifted—at boutiques, upscale stores and markets. And who still managed to select the trashy.
She found one drawer dedicated to the more subtle wardrobe of the alternate ID, found the simple shirt worn as Sandra on the night Darlie had been taken.
She switched to the tables beside the bed, and as she’d expected she found the toys and tools of a woman who didn’t stint on items for self-pleasuring.
They’d been through this, she thought, the cops, the sweepers. She imagined the careless comments, the lame jokes—then shut them out.
“Got something here,” Roarke called out.
She went to the closet where he worked, studied the disordered display of clothes, shoes, bags. He’d cleared a space and was removing a section of the floor, lifting it with one of the little tools he carried.
He set it aside, pulled a box covered with ornate, fake jewels and small circular mirrors out of the hole. He glanced at Eve, read her face very well. She didn’t want to go in the closet, didn’t want to surround herself with the clothes, the scents clinging to them.
“Why don’t we take this downstairs?”
“Yeah, let’s do that.”
She opted for the kitchen and the counter space.
“It’s probably expensive, but it’s still cheap and gaudy. It’s not new.”
“No, it’s got some travel on it, so something she likely took with her from place to place.”
“I don’t remember it,” she said, answering his unspoken question. “She wouldn’t keep anything that long. What’s inside’s more important.”
She opened it.
“Variety of illegals, cash, some IDs with credit cards.” She pulled out a dried rose, carefully sealed in a small bag. “But this is sentiment. See, she’s drawn a heart on the bag, S and I in the middle. Isaac gave her this. And here, she took a picture of him when he was sleeping.”
She held it up, studied him, sprawled on his back under a tangled sheet. “I bet he doesn�
�t know she did this. That’s the bed from his place. He’s blond here, tanned—like the South African ID. So he got a flash or gave himself some fake sun. But he looks really tired, a little drawn, doesn’t he? What’s that on the nightstand? Champagne? A celebration. Maybe his first night in. Yeah, maybe.”
“That’s Vie Nouveau. One of mine, and very exclusive. I wonder what vintage.”
“So, he—or she—buys a pricey bottle of bubbles.”
“More than that. You can’t get it just anywhere. That’s how you keep it exclusive and desirable. Hmm.” He took out his case again, opened it for a small magnifier.
“Handy.”
“Sometimes you need a closer look at things. I can just make it out . . . Yes, that’s a limited premiere ’fifty-six. Not easy to come by. We had a bottle on our anniversary.”
“Yeah? It was good.”
“Good? Darling Eve, it’s exquisite. He had some very nice wines at his apartment, but nothing at this level.”
“Maybe he took the top drawer with him.”
“Maybe he did. He’d need a top-drawer outlet to purchase this.”
“In Dallas,” Eve said. “How many top drawers are there in Dallas?”
“I’ll be checking on that.”
“He could go back for more. We can sit on the outlets once we have them. Jesus.” She lifted out a short stack of notes, postcards. “Mother lode. Here, a postcard from Dallas, but it’s stamped New York. Mail drop–box addy. Numbers. Code?”
He glanced at it. “Measurements. Inseam, sleeve, waist, so on from the looks of it. He’s ordering a suit.”
“The numbers and Baker and Hugh.”
“Men’s shop,” Roarke told her, “known for its excellent tailoring.” Roarke pulled out his PPC, did a quick run. “There’s only one in Dallas.”
“He wants clothes, good clothes. Doesn’t have time to fiddle with fittings and all that. So he has her take care of it. Has his suits waiting for him when he gets here. No.” She closed her eyes a moment, brought New York back. “He was wearing a suit, sharp-looking gray suit, flashy red tie, when I saw him in the crowd at the medals ceremony. He had her order the suits, and send at least one of them to New York. He wanted to look good when he let me catch a glimpse.”