by J. D. Robb
“Sabotage for causes. Terrorists often call themselves patriots.” She kept her voice mild, but saw the shimmer of anger in his eyes for the first time. “Do you believe in sabotage for causes, Lamont? In the slaughter and the sacrifice of the innocent for a just and righteous cause?”
He opened his mouth, closed it again, then took one long breath. “War is different. During my father’s time, our country had been seized by exploitive bureaucrats. The second revolution in France was necessary to give its people back the power and justice that are their right.”
“So . . .” Eve smiled a little. “I take that as a yes.”
“I don’t make bombs for causes. I make them for mining, for the demolition of old buildings. Empty buildings. For military testing. Contracts,” he said, smoothly now. “Autotron is a respected and reputable company.”
“You bet. You like making boomers?”
“We don’t make boomers here.” The tone was slightly scathing now and subtly more French. “Our devices are highly sophisticated, technologically advanced. We produce the best on the market.”
“Sorry. You like making sophisticated, technologically advanced devices?”
“Yes. I enjoy my work. Do you enjoy yours?”
A little cocky now, Eve noted. Interesting. “I enjoy the results of mine. How about you?”
“I believe in utilizing my skills.”
“Me, too. Thank you, Mr. Lamont. That’s all.”
The little smile that had begun to form faded. “I can go?”
“Yes, thank you. End record, Peabody. Thanks for the use of the room, Roarke.”
“We’re always pleased to cooperate with the police at Autotron.” He lifted a sleek eyebrow in Lamont’s direction. “I believe Lieutenant Dallas is finished with you, Lamont. You’re free to return to your work.”
“Yes, sir.” He rose, stiffly, and walked from the room.
Eve sat back. “He was lying.”
“Oh yes,” Roarke agreed. “He was.”
“About what?” It came out before Peabody could stop it.
“He recognized the name Cassandra, and he knew about Fixer.” Contemplatively, Eve scratched her chin. “He was a little shaky at first, but he started to warm up. He doesn’t care for cops.”
“A common emotion,” Roarke pointed out. “Just as it’s a common mistake to underestimate certain cops. He thought he was stringing you quite nicely toward the end.”
She snorted, rose. “Amateur. Peabody, order a shadow for our friend Lamont. Roarke, I’ll want you to—”
“Pull his work files, review his equipment and materials lists, any requisitions, and run a fresh inventory.” He rose as well. “That’s already being done.”
“Show-off.”
He took her hand, and because watching her work put him in the mood, nibbled on her knuckles before she could snatch it away. “I’ll be keeping an eye on him.”
“Keep your distance,” she ordered. “I want him to think he pulled off the interview. Peabody . . .” She turned, then cleared her throat when she caught her aide dreaming into space. “Peabody, snap to.”
“Sir!” She blinked, leaped to her feet, and nearly upended her chair. Seeing Roarke’s clever mouth linger over Eve’s fingers had made her wonder just what McNab would have in store for her later.
“Stay on planet, will you? I’ll be in touch,” she added to Roarke.”
“Do that.” He moved to the door with them, then caught Peabody’s arm to hold her back a step. “He’s a lucky man,” he murmured.
“Huh? Who?”
“Whoever you were just dreaming about.”
She grinned like an idiot. “Not yet, but he’s going to be.”
“Peabody!”
Peabody rolled her eyes and double-timed it to catch up with Eve.
“Take the jet, Lieutenant,” Roarke called after her.
She glanced over her shoulder, saw him, tall, gorgeous, in the center of the wide doorway. She wished she’d had the time and the privacy to stride back and give those marvelous lips one quick little bite. “Maybe.” She shrugged and made the turn for the elevator.
She took the jet—as much to keep Peabody from pouting as to save time. She’d been right. It was brutally cold in Maine. Naturally, she’d forgotten her gloves, so she stuffed her hands in her pockets as she stepped off the plane and into the bitter wind.
An airport official in cold-weather coveralls hustled over, handed her a vehicle coder.
“What’s this?”
“Your transportation, Lieutenant Dallas. Your vehicle is in the green parking area, level two, slot five.”
“Roarke,” she muttered and jammed the code into her pocket along with her frozen fingers.
“I’ll show you the way.”
“Yeah, do that.”
They moved across the tarmac and into the warmth of the terminal. The private transportation sector was quiet, almost reverently so, as opposed to the constant noise, bumping bodies and food and gift hawkers that crowded the public areas.
They rode the elevator down to green, where Eve was shown a sleek, black air-and-road number that made the all-terrains the illegals detectives drove look like kiddie cars.
“If you’d prefer another make or model, you’re authorized for any available unit,” she was told.
“No. Fine. Thanks.” She waited until he’d walked away before she seethed. “He’s got to stop doing this.”
Peabody ran a loving hand over the glistening fender. “Why?”
“Because,” was the best Eve could come up with, and she uncoded the door. “Map out directions to Monica Rowan’s address.”
Peabody settled in, rubbed her hands together as she scanned the cockpit. “Air or road?”
Eve spared her a steely look. “Road, Peabody.”
“Air or road, I bet this baby moves.” She leaned forward to study the on-board computer system. “Oh wow, she is loaded.”
“When you finish being sixteen, Officer, map out the damn route.”
“You never stop being sixteen,” Peabody murmured, but followed orders.
The in-dash monitor responded immediately with a detailed map of the best route.
Would you like audio prompts during this trip? They were asked in the computer’s warm, silky baritone.
“I think we can handle it, ace.” Eve cruised toward the exit.
As you wish, Lieutenant Dallas. This trip comprises ten point three miles. Your estimated time to complete at this time of day on this day of the week, at the posted speed limits, is twelve minutes, eight seconds.
“Oh, we can beat that.” Peabody shot Eve a quick grin. “Right, Lieutenant?”
“We’re not here to beat anything.” She drove decorously through the parking garage, into and around airport traffic, and through the gates.
Then there was a stretch of highway, long, wide, open.
Hell, she was human. She punched it.
“Oh man! I want one of these.” Peabody grinned as the scenery blurred and flew by. “How much do you think this honey goes for?”
This model retails for one hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars, excluding tax, fees, and licenses.
“Holy shit.”
“Still feeling sixteen, Peabody?” With a quick laugh, Eve swung onto their exit.
“Yeah, and I want a raise in my allowance.”
They hit the commuter high-rises, strip malls, and hotel complexes that edged the suburbs. Traffic thickened on the road and overhead, but remained well-mannered and well-spaced.
That made Eve immediately miss New York with its nasty streets, rude vendors, and snarling pedestrians.
“How do people live in places like this?” she asked Peabody. “It’s like somebody cut it all out of a travel disc, took a few thousand copies, and pasted it down outside of every goddamn city in the country. They’re all the same.”
“Some people like all the same. It’s comforting. We took a trip to Maine when I was a kid. Mount Desert Is
land, the national park?”
Eve shuddered. “National parks are full of trees and hikers and weird little bugs.”
“Yeah, no bugs in New York.”
“I’ll take a good honest cockroach any day.”
“Come over to my place. Sometimes we have parties.”
“Complain to your super.”
“Oh yeah, that’ll work.”
Eve took a right, slowed as the street narrowed. The duplexes and triplexes here were old and shoved unhappily together. Lawns were quietly miserable, showing grass the bitter yellow of winter where snow had melted. She pulled up at a curb by a cracked sidewalk, shut off the engine.
Trip complete. Time elapsed nine minutes, forty-eight seconds. Please remember to code your door.
“You’d have cut another two minutes off easy if you’d gone air over that traffic,” Peabody told her when they climbed out.
“Stop grinning and put on your cop face. Monica’s peeking out the window.” Eve headed up the bumpy, unshoveled walk and rapped on the middle door of the triplex.
It was a long wait, though she judged Monica had about three steps to take to get from the window to the door. She didn’t expect a warm welcome. And didn’t get one.
The door opened a crack and one hard gray eye peered out. “What do you want?”
“Lieutenant Dallas, New York Police and Security, and aide. We have a few questions we’d like to ask you, Ms. Rowan. Can we come in?”
“This isn’t New York. You’ve got no authority here, no business here.”
“We have some questions,” Eve repeated. “And we’ve been cleared to request an interview. It would be easier for you, Ms. Rowan, if we conducted it here rather than arranging for you to be transported to New York.”
“You can’t make me go to New York.”
Eve didn’t bother to sigh, and pocketed the badge she flipped out for Monica’s study. “Yes, we can. But we’d rather not inconvenience you. We won’t take up much of your time.”
“I don’t like the police in my house.” But she opened the door. “I don’t want you touching anything.”
Eve stepped into what she supposed the architect had amused himself by calling a foyer. It was no more than four square feet of faded linoleum, ruthlessly scrubbed.
“You wipe your feet. You wipe your dirty cop feet before you come in my house.”
Dutifully, Eve stepped back, wiped her boots on a mat. It gave her another moment to study Monica Rowan.
The image on file had been a true one. The woman was hard-faced, grim-eyed, and gray. Eyes, skin, hair were all nearly the same dull color. She was wearing flannel from top to toe, and the heat pumping through the house was already making Eve uncomfortably warm in her jacket and jeans.
“Close the door! You’re costing me money letting the heat out. You know what it costs to heat this place? Utility company is run by government drones.”
Peabody wiped her feet, stepped in, closed the door, and was rammed up tight against Eve. Monica stood glowering, her arms folded across her chest. “You ask what you got to ask, then get out.”
So much, Eve mused, for Yankee hospitality. “It’s a little crowded here, Ms. Rowan. Maybe we can go in the living room and sit down.”
“You make it fast. I’ve got things to do.” She turned and led the way into a doll-sized living area.
It was painfully clean, the single chair and small sofa slicked with clear plastic. Two matching lamps still wore their plastic shields on the shades. Eve decided she didn’t want to sit down after all.
The window drapes were drawn together, leaving a thin chink. The inch-wide slit brought in the only light.
There were dust catchers, but no dust. Eve imagined if a mote wandered in, it soon ran screaming in horror. A dozen little happy-faced figurines, gleaming clean, danced over tabletops. A cheap model cat droid rose creakily from the rug, gave one rusty meow, and settled again.
“Ask your questions and go. I’ve got housework to finish.”
Eve recited the revised Miranda when Peabody went on record. “Do you understand your rights and obligations, Mrs. Rowan?”
“I understand you’ve come in my house unwanted, and you’re interrupting my work. I don’t need any bleeding-heart liberal lawyer. They’re all government puppets preying on honest people. Get on with it.”
“You were married to James Rowan.”
“Until the government killed him and my children.”
“You weren’t living with him at the time of his death.”
“Doesn’t make me less of his wife, does it?”
“No, ma’am, it doesn’t. Can you tell me why you were separated from him, and your children?”
“That’s my private marital business.” Monica’s arms tightened on her chest. “Jamie had a lot on his mind. He was a great man. It’s a wife’s duty to give way to her husband’s needs and wishes.”
Eve only lifted a brow at that. “And your children? Did you take their needs and wishes into account?”
“He needed the children with him. Jamie adored them.”
But he didn’t think so much of you, did he? Eve mused. “And you, Ms. Rowan, did you adore your children?”
It wasn’t a question she needed to ask, and Eve was annoyed with herself the moment it was out.
“I gave birth to them, didn’t I?” Monica stretched her head forward aggressively on her scrawny neck. “I carried each one of them inside me for nine months, gave birth to them in pain and blood. I did my duty by them, kept them clean, kept them fed, and the government gave me a pittance for my trouble. A damn cop made more than a professional mother back then. Who do you think got up in the middle of the night with them when they were squalling? Who cleaned up after them? Nothing dirtier than children. You work your hands to the bone to keep a clean house when there’s children in it.”
So much for mother love, Eve thought, and reminded herself that wasn’t the issue.
“You were aware of your husband’s activities. His association with the terrorist group Apollo?”
“Propaganda and lies. Government lies.” She all but spat it out. “Jamie was a great man. A hero. If he’d been president, this country wouldn’t be in the mess it’s in with whores and filth in the streets.”
“Did you work with him?”
“A woman’s place is to keep a clean house, to provide decent meals, and to bear children.” She folded her lips into a sneer. “The two of you might want to be men, but I knew what God had put women on Earth to do.”
“Did he talk to you about his work?”
“No.”
“Did you meet any of his associates?”
“I was his wife. I provided a clean home for him and for the people who believed in him.”
“William Henson believed in him.”
“William Henson was a loyal and brilliant man.”
“Do you know where I might find this loyal and brilliant man?”
Monica smiled, thin and sly. “The government dogs hunted him down and killed him, just the way they killed all the loyal.”
“Really? I have no data that confirms his death.”
“A plot. Conspiracy. Cover-ups.” Thin beads of spittle flew out of her mouth. “They dragged honest people out of their homes, locked them in cages, starved and tortured them. Executions.”
“Were you dragged out of your home, Mrs. Rowan? Locked up, tortured?”
Monica’s eyes slitted. “I had nothing they wanted.”
“Can you give me names of people who believed in him who are still alive?”
“It was thirty years ago and more. They came and they went.”
“What about their wives? Their children? You must have met their families. Socialized.”
“I had a house to run. I didn’t have time to socialize.”
Eve flicked a glance around the room. There was no view screen in evidence. “Do you keep up with the news, Ms. Rowan? Current events.”
“I mind my own business.
I don’t need to know what other people are up to.”
“Then you might not be aware that yesterday a terrorist group calling themselves Cassandra bombed the Plaza Hotel in New York. Hundreds of people were killed. Among them, women and children.”
The gray eyes flickered, then leveled again. “They should have been in their own homes where they belonged.”
“It doesn’t concern you that a group of terrorists is killing innocent people? That it’s believed this group is connected to your dead husband?”
“No one’s innocent.”
“Not even you, Mrs. Rowan?” Before she could answer, Eve moved on. “Has anyone from Cassandra contacted you?”
“I keep to myself. I don’t know anything about your bombed hotel, but if you ask me, the country’d be better off if that whole city was blown to hell. I’ve given you all the time I’m going to give. I want you out of my house, or I’m calling my public representative.”
Eve gave it one more shot. “Your husband and his group never asked for money, Mrs. Rowan. Whatever they did, they did for their beliefs. Cassandra is holding the city hostage for money. Would James Rowan have approved?”
“I don’t know anything about it. I’m telling you to leave.”
Eve took a memo card out of her pocket, set it on the table in front of a figure of a laughing woman. “If and when you remember or think of anything that might help, I’d appreciate it if you contacted me. Thanks for your time.”
They headed out, with Monica dogging their heels. Outside, Eve sucked in air. “Let’s get back to the whores and filth in the streets, Peabody.”
“Oh, you bet.” She shuddered for effect. “I’d rather have been raised by rabid wolves than a woman like that.”
Eve glanced back to see that dingy gray eye peering through the chink in the drapes. “What’s the difference?”
Monica watched them go, waited until the car had pulled away. She went back, picked up the memo card. Could be a bug, she thought. Jamie had taught her well. She hurried into the kitchen with it, dumped it in the recycler, and turned the whining machine on.
Satisfied, she went to the wall ’link. Could be bugged, could be bugged, too. Everything could be. Dirty cops. Lips peeled back, she slipped a small jammer out of a drawer, slid it onto the ’link.