by J. D. Robb
“I fell apart when I first saw her in my office. I just crumbled.”
“Then you picked yourself up and went on.”
Eve let her head fall back. Roarke had been right—again. She’d needed to come here, to say it out loud to someone she trusted. “She made me feel afraid, sick with fear. As if just by being there, she could drag me back. And it wasn’t even me she cared about. If I wasn’t hooked to Roarke, she wouldn’t have given me a second thought. Why does that bother me?” She closed her eyes.
“Because it’s hard not to matter, even to someone you dislike.”
“I guess it is. She wouldn’t have come here. Not much to squeeze out of a cop, unless that cop happens to be married to billions.”
She opened her eyes now, gave Mira a puzzled look. “He has billions. Do you ever think of that?”
“Do you?”
“Sometimes, this kind of time, and I can’t really get a handle on it. I don’t even know how many zeros that is because my brain goes fuzzy. And I don’t know the number that goes ahead of them because once you have all those zeros it’s just ridiculous anyway. She tried to shake him down.”
“Yes, he gave me the basics. I’m sure he handled it appropriately. Would you have wanted him to pay her off?”
“No.” Her eyes went hot. “Not one cent out of the billions. She used to tell me I didn’t have a mother or a father because I was so stupid that they’d tossed me away because I wasn’t worth the trouble.”
Mira lifted her wine, sipped, to give herself a chance to push back her own anger. “She should never have passed the screening. You know that.”
“She was smart. I look back now, and I see she was smart, the way you have to be to run long cons or quick scams successfully. She played the system, figured the ins and outs. I think, well, you’re the head doctor, but I think she believed her own bullshit. You have to believe the lie to live it, to make otherssee you the way you need to be seen.”
“Very possibly,” Mira agreed. “To have lived it for so long.”
“She had to figure she deserved the money, had earned it. Had to believe she’d worked and sacrificed, and given me a home out of her humanitarian nature, and now, hey, how about a little something for old times’ sake? She was a player,” Eve said, half to herself. “She was a player, so maybe she played too deep with somebody. I don’t know.”
“You could pass this off. In fact, you may be asked to do so.”
“I won’t. I think I’ve got that covered. I’ll call in favors if I have to, but I’m going to see it through. It’s necessary.”
“I agree. That surprises you?” Mira asked when Eve stared at her. “She made you feel helpless and worthless, stupid and empty. You know better than that, but you need to feel it, to prove it, and to do that you’ll need to take an active part in resolving this. I’ll say just that to Commander Whitney.”
“That has weight. Thanks.”
* * *
When she stepped through the door of her home, Summerset was looming like a black crow in the foyer, fat Galahad at his feet. She knew by the gleam in his beady eyes he was primed.
“I find myself surprised,” he said in what she figured he considered droll tones. “You’re out for several hours, yet you return—dare I say— almost fashionably dressed, with nothing torn or bloodied. A remarkable feat.”
“I find myself surprised that no one’s bothered to beat you into a pulpy mass just on the general principle of your ugliness. But the day’s young yet, for both of us.”
She whipped off her coat, dumped it on the newel post just because she could, and strutted up the stairs. The quick and habitual sally made her feel marginally better. It was just the thing to take Bobby’s devastated face out of her head, at least temporarily.
She went straight to her office. She would set up a murder board here, set up files and create a secondary base, on the off chance Whitney vetoed both her and Mira. If she was ordered to step aside, officially, she intended to be ready to pursue the work on her own time.
She engaged her ‘link to touch base with Morris.
“I’m going to come by in the morning,” she told him. “Am I going to get any surprises?”
“Head blow did the job, and was incurred about thirty hours after the other injuries. While those were relatively minor in comparison, it’s my opinion they were caused by the same weapon.”
“Got anything on that?
“Some fibers in the head wounds. I’ll be sending them over to our friend Dickhead at the lab. A weighed cloth sack would be my preliminary guess. Tox screen’s come back positive for legal, over-the-counter pain meds. Standard blockers. She took one less than an hour before death, chased it with a very nice Chablis.”
“Yeah, there was a bottle of that in her room, and blockers on the bed table.”
“She had some soup, mostly chicken broth, and some soy noodles about eight, and some soft meat in a wrap closer to midnight. Treated herself to some chocolate frozen dessert, more wine with her late supper. She was, at time of death, nicely buzzed on wine and pills.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll catch you in the morning.”
“Dallas, are you interested in the fact that she’s had several sculpting procedures over the last, I’d say, dozen years? Face and body, tucks and nips. Nothing major, but considerable work, and good work at that.”
“Always good to know the habits of the dead. Thanks.”
She ended the transmission, sat back at her desk to study the ceiling.
So she’d gotten herself roughed up sometime Friday after leaving Roarke’s office. Doesn’t, by their statements, tell her son or daughter-in-law, doesn’t report same to the authorities. What she does, apparently, is hole up with wine and pills and easy food.
Either leaves her window unlocked, or opens the door to her killer.
Now why would she do that if the killer had already played a tune on her the day before? Where was her fear, her anger? Where was her survival instinct?
A woman who could run a game on CPS for over a decade had damn good survival instincts.
Even if you’re in some pain, why would you get buzzed alone in a hotel room when someone’s hurt you, and obviously can hurt you again? Especially when you have family right down the hall.
Unless it was what was down the hall that hurt you. Possible, she thought. But if so, why stay where they could so easily get to you, hurt you again
She glanced over as Roarke came in through his adjoining office.
“You get yourself beat up,” she began, “you don’t want the cops involved.”
“Certainly not.”
“Right, okay, I get that. You don’t tell your son?”
“I don’t have one to tell at the moment.” He eased a hip onto the corner of her desk. “But pride might very well prevent me.”
“That’s guy thinking. Think like a woman.”
“A stretch for me,” he said with a smile. “How about you?”
“If I’m thinking like this woman, I whine ASAP to anyone who’ll listen. But she doesn’t, which gives me a couple of possibilities.”
“One, she doesn’t have to tell her son, because her son’s the one who used her as a punching bag.”
“That’s one,” she agreed. “One that’s not fitting so well into my memory of their relationship. If that relationship soured since, why does she stay where he can get to her again?”
He picked up the little statue of the goddess, a symbol of mother, he thought, from her desk. He toyed with it idly as he spoke. “We both know relationships are thorny areas. It’s possible that he made a habit out of knocking her about. She was used to it, and didn’t consider telling anyone, or getting out of his way.”
“There’s the daughter-in-law. No marks on her, no typical signs of an abusive relationship there. A guy who pounds on Mommy is likely to smack the little woman around, too. It doesn’t fit very well for me.”
“If you bump that down the list”—he set the stat
ue back on her desk—“what leapfrogs over it?”
“She doesn’t want anyone to know. Which isn’t pride, it’s planning, it’s precaution. She had an agenda, a personal one.” And yeah, Eve thought, she liked that a lot better.
“But it doesn’t explain why she drank a lot of wine, took blockers, got herself impaired.”
She shuffled the close-up still of Trudy’s face to the top of her pile. And took a hard look at it. “That doesn’t say fear to me. She’s afraid, she uses her son as a shield, she locks herself up tight, or she runs. She didn’t do any of those things. Why wasn’t she afraid?”
“There are some who enjoy pain.”
Eve shook her head. “Yeah, there’s that. But she liked being tended to. Run me a bath, get me a snack. She’d used the tub, and I got a prelim sweeper’s report that tells me there was some blood in the bathroom sink, in the drain. So she washed up after she got tuned.”
Missing towels, she remembered, and made another note of it.
“And she turns her back on her killer. Blow came from behind. She’s not afraid.”
“Someone she knows and mistakenly—as it turns out—trusts.”
“You don’t trust somebody who smashes your face the day before.” Love them, maybe. She knew there was a kind of love that ran to that. But trust was different. “Morris thinks the same weapon was used throughout, but I’m thinking two different hands on it, two different times. You’ve got the run from your building security.”
“A copy, yes. Feeney has the original.”
“I want to see it.”
He took a disc from his pocket. “Thought you might.”
She plugged it in, ordered the review on the wall screen.
“I’ve had the whole business put on here,” he said as Eve watched Trudy enter Roarke’s Midtown building. She crossed the acres of marble, passed animated screens, rivers of flowers, sparkling little pools, and moved straight to the information desk that handled the offices.
That suit, she noted, had been in the closet of the hotel room. Neatly hung. The shoes had been tuckedin there, too. She hadn’t been wearing that outfit when she was beaten.
“Done her research,” Eve mused. “No fumbling around, no looking around to get her bearings.”
“She presses at information, as you see. ‘No, I’ve no appointment, but he’ll want to see me,’ and so on. Look confident, look friendly, and as though you belong. She’s very good.”
“She got upstairs, anyway.”
“They called through, got to Caro, who passed the request on to me. I had them make her wait a bit. I’m good as well. She doesn’t care for it, as you can see by the way her face tightens up, but she has a seat in one of the lobby waiting areas. Unless you want to watch her twiddle her thumbs for the next bit of time, you can move forward.”
Eve did, then slowed it down when a young woman approached Trudy.
“Caro, who knows the ropes, sent one of the assistants down to escort her up on one of the public elevators. Takes her round about, up to my level, through outer areas, down the skyway. A goodly hike, and when she arrives, well, she can wait a bit more. I’m a busy man, aren’t I?”
“She’s impressed,” Eve commented. “Who wouldn’t be? All that space, the glass, the art, the people at your beck and call. Good job.”
“Here you see Caro coming to get her at last, to walk her back. Then Caro goes out, shuts the doors, and we have our little chat.”
Eve ran the disc forward, marked the time elapsed at twelve minutes before Trudy came hurrying out.
And there was fear, Eve noted, a hint of wildness in the eyes, a jerkiness to the walk that was nearly a trot.
“She was a bit annoyed,” Roarke said with a wide, wide grin.
Eve said nothing, simply watched as Trudy was escorted down, and quickly made her way out of the building.
“Unharmed, as you see, and where she went from there, I couldn’t say.”
“She wasn’t afraid of her killer.” Eve’s gaze met his. “But she was afraid of you.”
He held up his hands, palms out. “Never laid a hand on her.”
“You don’t have to,” Eve replied. “But you’re clear. You had a record going inside your office. You would have.”
He lifted a shoulder. “And your point?”
“You didn’t offer that to Feeney, to the investigation.”
“It’s private.”
She took a careful breath. “And if it comes to a squeeze?”
“Then I’ll give it to you, and you can decide if it’s needed. I said nothing to her that I’m ashamed of, but it’s your privacy. It’s ours, and we’re bloody well entitled to it.”
“If it has weight in the investigation—”
“It doesn’t. Damn it, Eve, take my word and let it go. Do you think I had her done, for Christ’s sake?”
“No. But I know you could have. I know a part of you could want that.”
“You’re wrong.” He braced his hands on the desk, leaned forward until their eyes were level. And his were cold as arctic ice. “If I’d wanted her done, I’d have given myself the pleasure of seeing to it personally. That’s who you married, and I’ve never pretended otherwise. It’s for you to deal with.”
He straightened, turned, started for the door.
“Roarke.”
When he glanced back, she had her fingers pressed to her eyes. It tugged at his heart even as temper and pride burned at his throat.
“I know who I married.” She lowered her hands, and her eyes were dark, but they were clear. “And you’re right, you’d have done it yourself. The fact that you could and would do that, for me—the fact that you wouldn’t, didn’t do that, again for me, well, sometimes it’s a hell of a jolt.”
“I love you, beyond all reason. That’s a hell of a jolt for me as well.”
“She kept me afraid, the way I think a dog’s afraid of the boot that kicks him, again and again and again. It’s not even a human fear, it’s more primal, it’s more… sheer. I don’t know how to say it.”
“You have.”
“She played on that, she used that, kept me down in the fear until there was nothing but just getting through one day to the next. And she did it without the boot. She did it by twisting what was inside me until it was all there was. Until, I swear I’d have ended myself, just to get out.”
“But you ran instead. And got out, and did more than anyone could expect.”
“This, all this, makes me remember too well what it was like to be nothing but fear.” The fact that her breath shuddered out told her the memory was very close to the surface. “I have to see this through, Roarke. I have to end this the way I am now. I don’t think I can if you walk away from me.”
He came back, took her hand, gripped it. “I never walk very far.”
“Help me. Please? Will you help me?”
“What do you need?”
“I need to see the run from your office.” She tightened her hand on his. “It’s not mistrust of you. I need to get into her head. I need to know what she was thinking, feeling, when she left. It can’t have been many hours after that she got beat up. Where did she go, who did she go to? It might help me figure it out.”
“All right then, but it’s not going into the file. Your word on that first.”
“You’ve got it.”
He left her to go back into his office. When he returned, he handed her a fresh disc. “There’s audio as well.”
With a nod, she plugged it in. Looked and listened.
She knew him, the ins and outs of him, and still, his face, his tone even more than his words, made her belly jitter.
When the run ended, she took the disc out, gave it back to him. “It’s a wonder she didn’t piss herself and ruin your expensive chair and carpet.”
“Would’ve been worth it.”
Eve rose, paced around the room. “She had to be working with someone. But if it was Bobby… nothing I have on him clicks for this. It takes a ce
rtain type to punch out your own mother. I don’t like him for it. Someone else.”
“She was an attractive enough woman. A lover, perhaps.”
“Logical, and lovers are notorious for using fists and weapons. So, she’s scared, scared bad, maybe wants to drop the whole thing and head back to Texas, and this pisses him off. She had a job to do, a part to play, and she didn’t pull it off. He slaps her around to remind her what’s at stake. When he comes to see her later, she’s whiny, she’s half-drunk. I want to go home. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to do this anymore. And he’s pissed again, and kills her.”
“Logical.”
Yeah, logical, she thought. But shook her head. “I don’t like it. She doesn’t give up that easy. Plus, while you scared her, he hurt her. Maybe she’s caught between the two—fear and pain. But she’s not running from either. And why kill her?” She lifted her hands. “Wait until she’s calmed down. With her dead, you’ve got nothing.”
“He lost control.”
She brought the murder scene, the body, back into her head. “But he didn’t. Three blows. Three deliberate blows. He loses control, he’s drunk or juiced or just plain murderous, he beats the shit out of her, he smashes her face. He whales on her, but he doesn’t. He just bashes the back of her head, and leaves her.”
She rolled her shoulders. “I’m going to set up a board. I have to start putting this in order.”
“Well then, let’s have a meal first.”
chapter 9
SHE ATE BECAUSE HE’D NAG HER OTHERWISE.
And the mechanical act of fueling the body gave her more time to think. She had a glass of wine, nursing it throughout the meal. Small sips, like medicine taken reluctantly.
She left the wall screen on, data scrolling over. More pieces of the players she knew, or knew of, thus far. Trudy herself, and Bobby, Zana, and Bobby’s partner, Densil K. Easton.