by J. D. Robb
“I’m going to find out. I need you to … I need you to—”
“Ask and it’s done.”
“No, no, it’s not personal. The hell it isn’t,” Eve said on a breath. “The hell it isn’t. Lyle Pickering was a confidential informant.”
“Yours?”
“No. I need you to do what you do, Nadine. I need you to report his story. I need you to report the way he’d turned his life around, how he was doing everything right, working to earn back his family’s trust. Risking his physical safety to work with the police. You know how to do all that.”
“Yes, I do. And I will.”
Yes, Eve thought. Yes, she would.
“I don’t know how long we’ll be at this tomorrow before I can give you the go.”
“We’ve got plenty to report on. I want to share this with my researchers—you know you can trust them. I want as much on Lyle Pickering as we can get—before we talk to his family. After your go,” Nadine added. “And I need what I can get on the people who killed him.”
“Add Marcus Jones. I don’t think he was in on the murders, but he’s going down. That’s it for now. I’m going home.”
“Good. Put some ice on that face.”
“People keep telling me that.”
She clicked off, sat back. She should go up to EDD, see what they’d pulled out for herself. But she’d just run out, run down, been run through.
So she got her things, texted Roarke she’d meet him in the garage.
She got there ahead of him, took the passenger seat, put her head back, closed her eyes. If she could have, she’d have willed herself to sleep, into oblivion for a few hours. Then she could wake up and do what needed to be done without having her mind crowded with it all.
Because the fatigue she felt wasn’t physical.
She kept her eyes closed when she heard Roarke open the driver’s-side door. “Awake,” she said. “Did you get anything I can use?”
He studied her a moment, and from what he saw—clearly—she hadn’t used the ice patches. Well, he’d deal with that once they got home, but for now.
He took out his case. “Take a blocker now. Don’t argue about it.”
She considered it, just for spite, then realized how stupid that would be. She took the blocker, swallowed it. “What did you get?”
“All manner of data—and I have no doubt the FBI will want in on it. There’s more to find, but we were just calling it for the night when you texted. Feeney and the rest will get back to it in the morning.”
He glanced at her again as he drove. “It wasn’t even a challenge, none of it. Some rudimentary IT knowledge and not much skill to marry with it. Like the false walls and keypads, child’s play. The fact is, most children are better at such things.”
He laid a hand over hers. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
She just shook her head. “Did you get more data from Jones’s unit?”
“As you already believed, he had his records on the one hidden in his room. His profits and expenses with his Cohen partnership. How much he skimmed, Cohen’s percentage of it. And he kept records on the gang’s business as well. Illegals deals, their protection racket, who handled break-ins, burnings, beatings. All of it, Eve. And it looks like he was planning to relocate. To Aruba. He had searches on property there.”
“So he’s cheating his own gang with the goal of getting enough together to buy himself a place in the tropics. Fucking hypocrite.”
“Well, yes, but I think hypocrisy is the least of his sins.”
“Is it? Is it really? Isn’t it all part of it? All fucking part of it?”
She shifted, so much anger rising up. “You ran with a gang in Dublin.”
“I wouldn’t say we thought of ourselves as a gang, but all right, loosely, yes.”
“Would you have betrayed them for money, cheated any one of them for profit?”
“No, nor they me. But that may be a difference between a gang and mates.”
“They pledge loyalty.”
“And friends don’t need a pledge, do they?”
She shook her head, sat back again. “What Jones was doing under it all laid the groundwork for all of this. His leadership sucked—and maybe we should be grateful for that because they weren’t as powerful as they once were. He’s skimming, so there’s not as much for the whole to split. He’s avoiding confrontation with rival gangs, isn’t pushing for more territory, which is how they gain power and reputation. He’s not because he’s more interested in banking profits and dreaming of freaking Aruba.”
“And so someone with more interest in power and rep plots ways to depose him and take over.”
“Pickering. Someone who goes back with Jones. Someone who once pledged loyalty and now turned his back. Maybe his CI status leaked, I can’t be sure. But … I think killing and humiliating Pickering to strike at Jones wouldn’t have been enough if that got out.”
“You think Lyle Pickering’s murder was a personal hit at Jones?”
“I think that was part of it, yeah. And punishment for turning his back on the gang. Maybe even assurance that he couldn’t change his mind, come back.”
“Ah.” Roarke followed her perfectly. “And compete for the leadership role.”
“Yeah. It’s Duff. It’s Duff, how she was killed, where she was killed. It’s Duff’s murder they used to try to light the fuse for a gang war. Then Aimes.”
Considering anger better than misery, he kept her talking. “You think he—Jorgenson—planned to kill Duff all along, even before he coerced, convinced, bribed her to aid in Pickering’s murder.”
“Pickering connects to Jones, Duff connects to Pickering. Yeah, she was always going to die. Pickering was more a kick in the balls. Cops are wheeze, right? That’s the word now. Cops see a junkie OD’d, file it, forget it. But Duff, that’s going to bring on some attention, and it’s something that can be used to rile up the troops. Dragons fuck with one of ours, we fuck with all of theirs.”
As they drove through the gates she closed her eyes again.
“You know what to do tomorrow, what angles to take, what buttons to push.”
“Yeah, I know what to do.”
He didn’t like hearing the discouragement in her tone, but let it go for now.
Despite the late hour, Summerset waited in the foyer.
“You know where to find the med kit,” he said to Roarke.
“Yes, thanks.”
“There have been numerous media reports on tonight’s raids and arrests.”
“Yeah, that’s why we went in. For the screen time.” Eve tossed her jacket over the newel post.
“I imagine there are people who have homes and shops in those areas, and see the reports, who’ll sleep better tonight,” Summerset added.
He waited until they’d started upstairs before picking up her coat, examining it.
Blood, of course—and from the look of her at least some of it her own. He’d gotten quite adept at removing bloodstains from leather. He took the coat with him to his quarters to see to it.
He had no doubt Roarke would see to the lieutenant.
The cat stretched across the bed, and stirred when they came in. His bicolored eyes blinked at her face as Eve unhooked her weapon harness. Then he leaped off the bed to rub against her legs, to butt his head against her calves.
She bent to give him a reassuring rub, and even with the blocker felt every muscle weep.
“I’m going to grab a shower.”
“A soak in the tub might do better for you. And a glass of wine.”
“Maybe. Yeah, maybe.”
She went in to fill the tub, started to strip down. Roarke brought her a glass of wine, then took a glass jar from a shelf. He tossed a couple of scoops of pale blue salts into the water.
“It’ll help with the bruising.” While she stood watching him, he fixed ice patches to the worst of the damage to her face. “And so will that.”
“Are you going to use one on your knuckles wh
ere you powed the finger-snapper?”
“He had a jaw like a marshmallow. Keep the jets on low.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
He kissed her lightly, and would have left her alone, but the cat leaped onto a stool, apparently to stand guard.
Eve finished stripping off, took a survey in the full-length mirror. A few got past her guard, as Nadine had said, a little bruising along the ribs, some on the arms from blocking. Definitely the face got the worst of it.
She met Galahad’s eyes in the mirror. “I’ve had worse. You’ve been around when I’ve had worse. They called her Tank, get it? She had arms like steel beams. And a bat,” she added when he seemed unimpressed.
“Screw it.”
She slid into the tub, ordered the jets on low, and picked up the wine.
* * *
When she came out, Roarke had changed into what she thought of as rich-guy knock-around clothes: high-end sweatpants of cotton so soft clouds were jealous and a thin, roomy sweater.
He sat with his wine and his PPC, no doubt catching up on work. He looked up, gave her a close study, nodded. “All right, better. Let’s finish it off.”
After patting the cushion beside him, he took the healing wand out of the medical kit on the table.
“She had a bat. I might not have mentioned she had a bat.”
“And biceps, as I recall, like concrete.”
“That’s no bullshit. I can show you her mug shot.”
“I saw her on your board. And considering that, I believe you deserve another glass of wine.”
He poured it for her, then began to stroke the wand over her face. “I’m very fond of this face,” he said as he worked, “so I very much hope tonight’s mug shot shows the wrath of my cop.”
“I busted her nose. Had to be on Zeus because she just shook off the first couple of streams I hit her with.”
“Concrete biceps, a bat, and Zeus. Turn a bit. There you are.”
“Magic coat’s magic. Jones hit me with a stream—and on full, I checked. That’s going to be attempted murder of a police officer—maybe pled down to assault with a deadly, but we start with the high note. If Reo plays it right, when you add it all up, he could do the next seventy-five in a cage. More,” she calculated. “He’ll never turn that around.”
“No tropical breezes for him.”
“No.”
After setting the wand down, Roarke cupped her chin. “Darling Eve, talk to me.”
“I’m talking to you. Words are coming out of my mouth. I hear them.”
He simply kept his eyes on hers, and the inexplicable sadness in them. “You put together two operations, successful ones, that may very well have broken the backs of two gangs. Multiple members will do time, and as you said, Jones himself could spend over three-quarters of a century in prison. I have no doubt that tomorrow you’ll also break the three remaining who are responsible for Lyle Pickering, and Duff. And Aimes.
“Why are you sad?”
“I’m not sad. I’m … I don’t know what I am.”
She shoved up, pacing in a robe the color of apricots.
“We broke the backs, of the Bangers at least, because they’re stupid, sloppy, poorly run. A bunch of what you said—barking morons. Why didn’t we break them before? I don’t know. Maybe because their territory had shrunk, maybe timing, maybe because people they preyed on didn’t come to us.
“I don’t know. Don’t know. Maybe they stuck together better before Jones decided to go into business on the side.”
She went back for her wine, took it with her as she paced again. “Most criminals are stupid. Most, I said,” she repeated when Roarke arched his eyebrows. “They act on impulse, or they make mistakes. Some asshole decides to kill his wife, we’re going to figure it out, almost every time. These assholes I’m boxing tomorrow are beyond stupid. They’re—what are those words you use? Eejits, gits. Fuckheads.”
“All of those work,” Roarke replied.
“And still, three people in the morgue. A family of decent people are never going to be the same. A couple of mothers lost children. They’re not insane or diabolical. They’re sure as hell not masterminds. They’re just mean, vicious little bastards. And three people are dead.”
Roarke said nothing because, finally, she was talking to him, finally she was saying what had lodged inside her and put that look in her eyes.
“You know what else?” She gestured with the wine, then gulped some down. “Rehabilitation is mostly a crock. Mostly. You lock somebody up, the odds of him coming out and staying on the straight are slim. Somebody like Pickering? Jesus, abusive father dies in prison, addict mother suicides. A serious gangster, an addict? Odds say he’s going to go back in a cage, die on the street in some fight, or OD. He’s never going to walk the line.
“But he did. He beat the odds, and was making something of himself. Goddamn it!”
Her voice rang with it—sorrow-coated outrage.
“You and I know how hard that is. He did everything right, Roarke. Everything right, and he’s dead because some son of a bitch wanted to push his way to the top of the ranks.
“I told myself before that the system worked. Crime, punishment, rehabilitation. But it didn’t, it didn’t work for Lyle Pickering. The system failed him. We failed him.”
There it was, Roarke thought, the root of the sadness. One he could dig out, and hopefully cast aside.
“On the contrary, you had it right the first time. The system saved him.” He held up a hand before she could speak. “Now it’s time to listen. I’m hardly the biggest fan of what you call the system, and I spent most of my life circumventing it, so I have a different perspective. Mine may be a bit more like Lyle’s.
“Come, sit down. Listen to the perspective of someone who worked around the system instead of for it.”
“He’s dead,” she said flatly, but she sat again.
“And between the time he went into prison—an addict, a violent man whose life appeared to have only one doomed path—and his death, he lived. He made a choice to live, and your system gave him the choice. Who taught him to cook, and to learn the satisfaction of having that skill? Who offered him counseling and help with his addiction? Who listened to him, helped to dig into the issues that sent him down that doomed path? Christ, who locked him up in the first place, forced him to make choices to accept the help and training or reject it?
“He made the choices,” Roarke continued, “your system gave them to him to make. You demean the choices he made, Eve, the effort they took him, by thinking the system failed him.”
He trailed his fingers, lightly, so lightly over her battered face.
And you fought for him, he thought, will fight for others like him. Again and again and again.
“Five people are responsible for his death,” he reminded her, “and two of them have paid with their own lives. You and your system will see to it the other three pay, will demand justice for Lyle, and give solace to his family. A family, Eve, who will remember and cherish the man he began to be in prison, and not the one he was when he went inside.”
“I feel it’s … Do you really believe that?”
“Believe it? I’m proof of it.” He skimmed a hand over her hair, down to the nape of her neck still tight with tension. “Do you think I work with you and the cops only for the entertainment? Not to downplay that value at all, as it’s considerable. But since you—you and your system, no matter how I might push against it from time to time—I’ve seen what it can do and be in the right hands. And having a part in that? It’s shown me that I can make a difference in my way. Maybe offset some of my darker deeds.”
He kissed her bruised face. “I know a failed system, as it failed me as a boy and, Christ, it failed you. But you changed that, for yourself, for others. For me. The system you stand for didn’t fail Lyle, Eve. And it’s not failing him now.”
She drew him closer, rested her head on his shoulder. And realized he’d given her what she hadn’t been able
to find for herself. Peace of mind.
“I’m going to remember all that, everything you just said, when I break them tomorrow.”
“I’ll regret not being there for that, but—”
“Somebody has to buy the next galaxy.”
“Very true. Now, let’s see to the rest of you. Lie down and I’ll see what the bat-wielding, concrete-biceps-on-Zeus Tank has done to my cop.”
“It’s not too bad. Truth,” she insisted when he took her hand, pulled her up.
“I’ll be the judge of that.” At the side of the bed, he circled a finger in the air. “Robe off, lie down.”
“You just want to play doctor.”
“A favorite of mine.” To Galahad’s annoyance, Roarke lifted his bulk from the bed and set him down in front of the fire he had simmering low.
Eve shrugged out of the robe, sat on the side of the bed. “See, not too bad. She got a couple of shots in the ribs—fist, not bat. The bat bashed my helmet, then sort of bounced off my shoulder.”
“Mmm-hmm.” He started wanding the thunderous rainbow of bruising on her shoulder. “And was she the only one you dealt with hand to hand?”
“Couple more, but they didn’t really land anything. Carmichael’s sporting a mouse, and Reineke got a little bloody. Nothing major. Peabody got the worst of it on our side. A bunch of them got the worst altogether. One of them tossed out a mini boomer,” she remembered.
However casually she mentioned it, it still stopped his heart for a beat. “And no one was hurt?”
“On their side some because I fielded it and pitched it back in. Lucky for them it didn’t have much juice.” She turned her head, smiled at him. “I feel better.”
“Good. There’s some balm in the kit Summerset swears by. We’ll try some on your face, but the rest, as you said, isn’t too bad.”
“I feel better,” she repeated. “And I’m naked.”
His gaze shifted to hers. “I had noticed, but I’m trying to maintain my medical ethics.”
“Screw ethics,” she said, and whipped a leg over, shoved him back, straddled him. “I soaked in the stuff, did the ice, got the wand. The least you can do is polish me off.”