by J. D. Robb
She stepped to the doorway, saw that he stood at one of the windows, looking out while he dictated his memo. He’d pulled his hair back, she noted, all that thick black silk he usually wore loose so that it streamed nearly to his shoulders.
He still wore his dinner suit, black and sleek, over his long, rangy form. You could look and see the elegant businessman, madly successful, perfectly civilized. He’d polished himself, Eve thought, but that dangerous Celt was still, always, just beneath the surface.
It still, always, allured her.
She caught a glimpse of it now as he turned, though she hadn’t made a sound, and his eyes met hers.
“Sign Roarke,” he said, “and transmit. File copy Hagerman-Ross. Hello, Lieutenant.”
“Hi. Sorry about dinner.”
“No, you’re not.”
She tucked her hands in her pockets. It was ridiculous, really, the way they continually itched to take hold of him. “I’m sort of sorry about dinner.”
He grinned, that lightning bolt of charm and humor. “You wouldn’t have been as bored as you think.”
“You’re probably right. If I’d been as bored as I thought, I’d have slipped into a coma. But I am sorry I let you down.”
“You don’t let me down.” He crossed to her, tapped her chin up with his finger and kissed her lightly. “It adds considerably to my cache when I apologize for my wife, who’s been called to duty on a case. Murder always makes lively dinner conversation. Who’s dead?”
“Couple of guys downtown. Small-time chem dealer whaled on his neighbor with a ball bat, then went after a woman and a cop. Cop took him out.”
Roarke lifted a brow. More, he thought. There was a deal more trouble in her eyes than her quick rundown warranted. “That doesn’t seem like the sort of wrangle that would keep you on duty so late.”
“The cop was Trueheart.”
“Ah.” He laid his hands on her shoulders, rubbed. “How’s he doing?”
She opened her mouth, then shook her head and paced away. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Kid breaks his cherry it’s tough enough.”
Roarke stroked a hand over the fat cat that sprawled over the console, then gave Galahad a little nudge to move him along. “That’s an interesting way to put it.”
“There are cops who go through the whole life of the job without deploying. Kid’s in uniform under a year, and he’s racked up a termination. It changes everything.”
“Did it for you? Your first termination on the job,” he added. They both knew she’d killed long before she had a badge.
“It was different for me.” She often wondered if the way she’d started life made death somehow different for her.
A cold and personal insult.
“Trueheart, he’s barely twenty-two and he’s . . . shiny yet.” Pity—a dark, slippery blossom—bloomed inside her. She crouched down, gave Galahad an absent scratch under the chin. “He won’t sleep tonight. He’ll go over it and over it and over it in his head. If I’d done this, if I’d done that. And tomorrow . . .” She rubbed her hands over her face as she straightened. “I can’t block Testing for him. I can’t stop the process.”
She knew what it was. Stripped bare, monitored, questioned, forced to let machines and techs into your head. Into your gut like a tumor.
“Are you worried he won’t pass through it?”
She glanced over, took the glass of wine he’d poured her. “He’s tougher than he looks, but he’s scared down to the bone. And he’s swimming in guilt. Take all that guilt, all those doubts into Testing, they can drown you. And there’s got to be an investigation. Internal.”
“Why is that?”
She sat, gave him the details while the cat leaped up and kneaded a nest in her lap. It helped clear her mind to say it aloud, particularly to someone who caught on quickly and saw the full picture before you painted in all the lines.
“A uniform’s stunner can’t terminate under those conditions.”
“Yeah.” Eve nodded. “Exactly. It would have to be on full stun and jammed on the throat pulse. Even then it would take more than one jolt.”
“Which means Trueheart’s version of the events doesn’t quite hold.”
IAB wouldn’t think so, she knew, and ran it through for herself as she would for them. “He was under serious duress. A civilian dead, another in extreme jeopardy, himself injured.”
“Is that how you’re going to play it with IAB?”
Yeah, he always saw the whole picture. “Pretty close to that.” She drummed her fingers restlessly on her thigh, on the cat, sipped her wine. “I need the ME’s report. But there’s no way it’s going to come out Trueheart terminated with deliberation. Panic, okay. He’ll take a slap for panic, thirty days’ suspension, some mandatory therapy. I can’t get in the way of it. It’s already dicey for him because he tagged me instead of calling it in through Dispatch. IAB smells cover-up, and the kid’s finished.”
Roarke sat, sipped his own wine. “Have you considered speaking to your old friend Webster?”
She tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair now and kept her gaze steady on Roarke’s. There might have been amusement on his face—or something else. It was often tough to call.
Don Webster wasn’t precisely an old friend. He had been very briefly and years before a lover. The fact that he, for reasons that would never be clear to Eve, had never gotten over that single night they’d shared had caused a violent and fascinating altercation between him and Roarke.
It wasn’t something she wanted to repeat.
“Maybe, unless you’re thinking that’d be a nice opportunity to pound his face in again.”
Roarke sipped, smiled. “I believe Webster and I have a reasonable understanding. I can’t fault him for being attracted to my wife, as I’m very attracted to her myself. And he knows that if he puts his hands on what’s mine again, I’ll break every bone in his body into small, jagged pieces. It works well for us.”
“Great. Dandy.” She said it between her teeth. “He’s over it. He said so,” she added and Roarke merely smiled again. Lazily now. Catlike.
“You know what, I’ve got enough to think about, so we’re just not going to go there tonight. I want to call the commander,” she said. “And I can’t. I have to play this by every page in the book. Kid was dog sick after. Nothing I could do for him.”
“He’ll be all right, Mum.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Careful. I’m the one who brought him in out of Homicide Lite. I put him in the hospital a few months ago.”
“Eve.”
“All right, all right. I put him in a situation where he ended up in the hospital. Now he’s dealing with a suspicious termination. I’ve got a responsibility.”
“You’d see it that way.” He grazed his hand over the backs of her restless fingers. “That’s what makes you what you are. And why he called it into you first. He was scared, he was shaken. The taking of a life isn’t a simple matter for most, and it shouldn’t be. Doesn’t it make him a better cop that he felt something?”
“Yeah, and I’ll use that, too. It just doesn’t hang, Roarke. Just doesn’t hang,” she said as she got to her feet to pace again. Annoyed, the cat shot his tail into the air and stalked out of the room.
“No burn marks on his throat. If Trueheart had zapped him that way, there should have been marks. Why weren’t there?”
“Could he have used another weapon, one with lethal power?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know anyone less likely to carry a drop piece. If I’m wrong about him, where is it? It wasn’t on him. It wasn’t in either apartment. I had the recyclers checked. His call to me came in minutes after the termination. No time to think clearly enough to ditch one safely. Besides, when you go back through it, the whole thing doesn’t make sense.”
She sat again, leaned in. “Take this Louie K. The beat cop, the neighbors, even the woman he attacked all describe him as your bas
ic lowlife wimp. Preyed on schoolkids. He’s got a sheet, but nothing on it with violence. No assaults, no batteries. No weapons of any kind in his flop.”
“The bat?”
“He played ball. So he’s sitting there in his underwear doing his books. Tidy books, filthy apartment. But not logically filthy. Cupboards are organized, windows are washed, but there’s food and dirty dishes, ripe laundry tossed around. It’s like he got sick or went on a bender for a week.”
She scooped her hand through her hair as she brought the picture of his cramped little apartment into her head. Pictured him in it. Sitting in the heat at his desk unit, by the open window. Sweating through his Jockey shorts.
“He’s got the music up to ear-blasting, nothing new according to neighbors. Ralph from across the hall goes over and bangs on the door. Again, nothing new. But this time, instead of turning the music down, Louie K. picks up his bat and beats his sometime drinking buddy to death with it.
“Cracks his skull,” she continued. “Turns his face to jelly, beats down hard enough to crack a good, solid baseball bat. Neighbor outweighs Louie K. by better than a hundred pounds, but he doesn’t get a chance to put a mark on him.”
He knew she was seeing it now, pulling images into her brain of what had happened. Though she hadn’t been there, she would see it. “It’s tough to fight back if your brains are leaking out of your ears.”
“Yeah, that’s a disadvantage. But then, screaming all the while, Louie K. kicks in the neighbor’s door and goes after the woman. Cop responds, and Louie goes for him.”
“The heat can turn people.”
“Yeah, it can. It brings out the mean. But the sucker was sitting there, doing his books. Making entries. Just like he did every evening about that time. It doesn’t feel right.”
Frowning, she leaned back on Roarke’s desk. “You know of any illegal that goes by Purity?”
“No.”
“Neither does anyone else. When I went into his apartment, his screen was on. It said Absolute Purity Achieved. What the hell is absolute purity, and how was it achieved?”
“If it’s something new, why would a small-time playground dealer be in on the ground floor?”
“I’ve been asking myself that. The computer wouldn’t identify, even with my authorization code. So I’ve sent it into EDD. Can’t bring Feeney in,” she mused. “Looks wrong to tag the head of Electronics Detective Division for a standard data search.”
“You could’ve tagged me.”
“Talk about looking wrong. Besides, you were working.”
“So I was, and eating, which I imagine you weren’t. Hungry?”
“Now that you mention it. What did you have?”
“Hmm. Chilled plum soup, crab salad, and an excellent grilled turbot.”
“Huh.” Eve pushed to her feet. “I could go for a burger.”
“Somehow I knew that.”
Later, Eve lay awake, staring at the ceiling as she reconstructed data, evidence, theory. None of it felt right, she thought, but couldn’t be sure how much of that was influenced by concern over a young, promising cop.
He had a good brain, and an idealism that was as bright and shiny as polished silver. Purity, she thought again. If she had to use one word to define it, it would be Trueheart.
He’d lost some of that purity today. Some, she knew, he’d never be able to get back. He would suffer for it, more than he should.
And she wasn’t being a mommy, she thought, turning her head just enough to scowl at Roarke in the dark.
“Well then.” He shifted toward her, sliding his hands unerringly over her breasts. “Since you’ve all this energy . . .”
“What’re you talking about? I’m sleeping here.”
“You’re not, not with your mind racing around loud enough to wake the dead. Why don’t I just give you a hand with all that energy?”
As he pulled her against him, she chuckled. “I’ve got news for you, ace. That’s not your hand.”
Thirty-six blocks away, Troy Trueheart lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling. No one shared his bed to offer comfort or distraction. All he could see, printed on the dark, was the face of the man he’d killed.
He knew he should take a departmentally approved tranq. But he was afraid to sleep. He’d see it all again in his dreams.
Just as he could see it all as he lay awake.
The splatter of blood and bone and worse all over the walls of that dank hallway. Even here in his tidy apartment, he could smell it. The way the heat ripened the stench of blood, of gore. He could hear the screams, the woman’s no more than a howl of terror and awful pain. And the man’s. Louis K. Cogburn. The man’s screams like a wild animal’s mad from the hunt. The voices of other tenants shouting out from behind locked doors. Calls booming up into the windows from the street.
And his own heart raging in his chest.
Why hadn’t he called for backup? The minute he’d heard the woman calling for help, he should have called for backup.
But he’d rushed inside, thinking only to protect and serve.
He’d shouted back—he had, at least he had shouted as he’d rushed up those stairs for someone to call 911. No one had. He realized that now. No one had or cops would have come long before Lieutenant Dallas.
How could people stand behind locked doors and do nothing while their neighbor was crying for help? He would never understand it.
He’d seen the man in the hallway far beyond anyone’s help. He’d seen that, felt his stomach lurch, and the blood roar into his head in a buzzing white noise that was the sound of fear. Yes, he’d been afraid, very afraid. But it was his job to go through the door. The open door, he thought now, go through it and into the screams and the blood and the madness.
What then? What then?
Police! Drop your weapon! Drop the weapon now.
His stunner was in his hand. He’d drawn it on the way up. He was sure of that. The man. Louis K. Cogburn. He had turned, the bloody bat hitched in both hands like a batter at the plate. Tiny eyes, Trueheart thought now. Tiny eyes almost disappearing in a thin face that was red from rage and secondhand blood.
Darker blood, fresher blood leaked from his nose. Just remembered that, he thought. Did it matter?
He’d charged. A madman in Jockey shorts who’d moved like lightning. The bat had come down on his shoulder so fast, so hard. Stumbled back, nearly lost the stunner. Terror, bright as blood.
The man. Louis K. Cogburn. He’d whirled back toward the woman. She was down, dazed, weeping. Helpless. The bat swung up, high. A death blow.
But then he jittered. His eyes—oh God, his eyes—demon red, went wide, jumped inside his skull. His body jolted, jolted like a puppet dancing on string as he ran by. Out in the hall.
He danced, still dancing. Then he fell, sort of folded up and dropped, faceup to stare at the ceiling with those awful red eyes.
Dead. Dead. And I’m standing over him.
I killed a man today.
Trueheart buried his face in his pillow, trying to erase the images that wanted to play in his brain. And he wept for the dead.
In the morning, Eve put in a call to Chief Medical Examiner Morris and tried not to sound too snarly when she was forced to leave a message on his voice mail. If necessary, she’d make time to go down to the morgue and speak with him personally.
In fact, that was just what she was going to do—and get another look at Cogburn’s body.
As much at it irked, she put a call into Don Webster in Internal Affairs. This time she didn’t bother to play down the annoyance when she was transferred to voice mail.
“The Rat Squad’s got some cushy hours. Us real cops are already on duty. Give me a call, Webster, when you toddle in for your day of riding the desk and sniffing up dirt on fellow officers.”
Probably not smart to annoy him, she thought as she broke transmission. Then again, if she tried to sweet-talk Webster, he’d know she was up to something.
“Lieutenant.�
�� Cap in hand, Trueheart stood in her doorway. “You sent for me.”
“That’s right, Trueheart. Come in. Close the door.”
She wasn’t crossing any lines by calling him to her office prior to Testing. She was primary on the case.
That was her story, she thought, and she was sticking to it.
“Sit down, Trueheart.”
He looked every bit as pale and hollow-eyed as she’d expected. Somehow he managed to stay at attention even seated. She programmed her AutoChef for two coffees, black, whether he wanted one or not.
“Rough night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re going to have a rougher day. Testing’s no walk on the beach.”
“No, sir. I’ve heard.”
“You better be up for it. Look at me when I speak to you, Officer.” She snapped it out, watched his head come up and his weary eyes focus. “You put on the uniform, you pick up the badge, you holster the weapon and you take on everything that means. Was your termination of Louis K. Cogburn justifiable?”
“I don’t—”
“Yes or no. There’s no middle here, no qualifications. Your gut, Trueheart. Was the deployment of your weapon necessary?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you walked into the same situation today, would you again deploy your weapon?”
He shuddered, but he nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“That’s the core of it.” She passed him the coffee. “You hold on to the core of it, you’ll get through the rest. Don’t try to out-think Testing. You haven’t got the brass for it yet. Answer correctly, answer truthfully. And however they twist the question of justification, you deployed your weapon justifiably, to preserve the life of a civilian and your own.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jesus, Trueheart, you’re an agreeable bastard. At what distance were you from the subject when you deployed?”
“I think—”
“Don’t think. How far?”
“Six feet, maybe five and a half.”
“How many jolts did you give him?”
“Two.”
“Did your weapon, at any time during the altercation, come in direct contact with the subject?”