by J. D. Robb
“You I trust, and always have, Reva. Him I didn’t know, so why should I have trusted him? Still, I didn’t go beyond two levels out of respect for your mother.”
“But not for me, not out of respect for me. Either of you,” she said with a furious look at her mother as Caro came back with a small crystal dish. “You were spying on him, checking up on him, and all the while you were making wedding plans, pretending to be happy for me.”
“Reva, I was happy for you,” Caro began.
“You didn’t like him, you never liked him,” Reva spat out. “If you think I didn’t know you—”
“Sorry. If you want to get into a family spat, it’ll have to wait.” Eve made a show of getting out her recorder when Reva whipped around toward her. “Homicide investigations take precedence. You’ve already been read your rights—”
“You agreed to give me ten minutes,” Roarke reminded her. “I’ll take it now.”
Eve shrugged. “A deal’s a deal.”
“Caro, is there somewhere private I could have a few moments with Reva?”
“Yes. You could use my office. I’ll just show you—”
“I know where it is.” Turning her back on Caro, Reva stalked away. The ensuing silence was punctuated by the violent slamming of a door.
“I’m very sorry.” Caro sat again, folded her hands in her lap. “She’s understandably upset.”
“Sure.” Eve glanced at her wrist unit. Ten minutes was all Roarke was going to get.
In Caro’s office, with its streamlined D and C center on top of an antique rosewood desk, Reva stood as rigid as a blindfolded prisoner awaiting execution. “I’m so angry with her, with you. With every fucking thing.”
“Well, there’s a bulletin. Why don’t you sit down, Reva?”
“I don’t want to sit down. I’m not going to sit down. I want to punch something, kick something. Break something.”
“Do what you need to do.” His tone was bored, a verbal shrug that caused embarrassed color to rise up and join the flush of Reva’s temper. “That’s between you and Caro, as these are her things. When you’ve finished your tantrum, you can sit down and we’ll talk like reasonable adults.”
“I’ve always hated that about you.”
“What’s that?” he asked and took a slow drag on his cigarette.
“That control of yours. That ice you use instead of blood in your veins.”
“Ah, that. The lieutenant can tell you there are times when even my astonishing control and marvelously even temper fails. No one snaps our composure quite like someone we love.”
“I didn’t say you had an even temper, marvelous or otherwise,” she said dryly. “There’s no one scarier, or meaner. Or kinder.” Her breath hitched, forcing her to take a gulp of air, or sob. “I know you have to fire me, and that you’re going to try to do it gently. I’m not angry about that. I can’t blame you for that. If it makes things easier, less messy, I’ll resign.”
He took another drag, then tapped the cigarette out in the little crystal dish he’d brought in with him. “Why would I need to fire you?”
“I’ve been charged with murder, for God’s sake. I’m out on bail, the kind of bail that’s going to require me to sell my house and nearly everything else I own. I’m wearing this.”
She shot out a hand, her fingers fisted tight below the dull silver tracking bracelet on her wrist.
“I suppose it’s too much to ask for them to make those things even remotely stylish.”
At the comment, she could only stare at him. “They know if I walk outside to go to the corner deli. They know I’m upset right now because they can read my pulse rate. It’s just a prison without the cage.”
“I know it, Reva. I’m sorry for it. But the cage could be worse, a great deal worse. You’re not to sell your house, or anything else. I’ll lend you the money. Shut up,” he ordered even as she opened her mouth. “You’ll take it because I’m telling you to take it. It’s an investment for me. And when this is cleared up and you’re exonerated, I’ll have it back. Then you’ll work off what I consider a fair interest on the loan.”
She did sit down, dropping onto the little love seat beside him. “You have to fire me.”
“You’re telling me how to run my own business now?” His tone was cold, deliberately so. “However valued an employee you are, I don’t take orders from you.”
She leaned forward, elbows on knees, and covered her face with her hands. “If this is for friendship—”
“Partially, of course. The friendship and affection I have for you and for Caro. It’s also a matter of you being a very important part of Securecomp. And aside from that, I believe you’re innocent, and trust my wife to prove it.”
“She’s almost as scary as you.”
“And she can be more so, in certain areas.”
“How could I be so stupid!” Her voice was wavering again, tears shimmering in it. “How could I be such a fool?”
“You weren’t stupid. You loved him. Love’s supposed to make us fools, or what’s the point of it? Pull yourself together now. We don’t have much time, for believe me, when my cop says ten minutes, she means ten. The extermination program and shield, Reva, the Code Red.”
“Yeah.” She sniffled, wiped her hands over her face to dry it. “We’re close, nearly there. All the data’s on the secured unit in my office—double passcoded and blocked. Backup copies in the vault, encrypted. The latest was hand-delivered to your office yesterday. Also encrypted. Tokimoto can take it over. He’s the best choice. I can brief him on the areas he doesn’t know, or you can. Probably best if you bump LaSalle up to second-in-command on that. She’s as smart as Tokimoto, just not as creative.”
“Did you ever mention the project to your husband?”
She rubbed her eyes, then blinked them. “Why would I?”
“Think carefully, Reva. Any mention of it, however casual?”
“No. I might’ve said something like I had a hot one and that was why I was putting in some extra hours. But nothing specific. It’s Code Red.”
“Did he ask you about it?”
“He can’t ask me about what he doesn’t know,” she responded in a tone tight with impatience. “He was an artist, Roarke. His only interest in my work pertained to how I’d design and implement security for our house, and his work.”
“My wife’s a cop, and couldn’t be less interested in my business. But occasionally, for form anyway, she asks about it. How was your day, what are you working on, that sort of thing.”
“Sure, okay, sure. I’m not getting this.”
“Did he, or anyone else, ask you about this project, Reva?”
She leaned back. Her face was pale again, her voice thin and weary. “I guess he might have. What’s so hot about this one, something like that. I’d’ve told him I couldn’t talk about it. He might’ve teased me about it. He sometimes did that. Top secret, hush-hush. My wife, the secret agent or something.”
Her lip trembled so that she sank her teeth into it, biting back some control. “He got off on espionage, loved spy vids and games. But if he said anything it was just joking. You know how it is. Friends might do the same now and then, but they weren’t really interested.”
“Felicity, for instance?”
“Yeah.” And now those teary eyes opened, went hot. “She was all about art, fashion, socializing. Sneaky bitch. She’d say things like how could I stand being holed up in some lab all day, fiddling with codes and machines. And what was so damn interesting about that? But I never discussed details, not even on the minor projects. It would violate the confidentiality contract.”
“All right.”
“You’re thinking Blair’s dead and I’m in this fix because of the Code Red? That’s just not possible. He didn’t know anything, and nobody without clearance knew I was on it.”
“It may be very possible, Reva.”
Her head jerked around. Before she could speak, there was a brisk knock on the door. “
Time’s up,” Eve called out.
She opened the door just as Reva was getting slowly to her feet. Reading Reva’s expression, Eve nodded at Roarke. “I take it you laid the groundwork.”
“He knew she was working on a top-level project, but the details weren’t discussed.”
“This can’t have anything to do with what happened to Blair,” Reva insisted. “If this was a terrorist hit, why wouldn’t they come after me, or you?” she said to Roarke. “Or any active member of the team?”
“Let’s try to find out,” Eve suggested. “Come back in here so we can lay this all out once, for everyone.”
“What does killing Blair accomplish?” Reva hurried out behind Eve. “It doesn’t affect the project.”
“Got you booked on a double homicide, didn’t it? Sit down. When’s the last time either of you were in Bissel’s studio?”
“Months for me,” Caro responded. “I was there last spring. April? Yes, I’m sure it was April. He wanted to show me the fountain he was working on for Reva’s birthday.”
“I was there last month,” Reva said. “Early August. I went there after work to meet him. We were going to a dinner party at Felicity’s. He cleared me, and I went up, waited a few minutes while he finished changing.”
“Cleared you?” Eve prompted.
“Yeah. He was a maniac about his studio security. Nobody, but nobody got the passcode.”
“You gave me the passcode.”
Reva flushed, cleared her throat. “I accessed it—on that same visit. I just couldn’t resist. And it seemed like the perfect time to field test a new security scanner we were working on. So I accessed the code, tested it, and got clearance. Then I reset the security, and called up to Blair. I didn’t tell him because it would’ve pissed him off.”
“Did you ever go up there when he wasn’t around?”
“What for?”
“Poke around, see what he was up to.”
“I never spied on him.” She sent a long look toward Caro. “I never spied on him. Maybe I should have, maybe if I had I’d’ve known about him and Felicity long ago. But I respected his space and his privacy, and expected the same from him.”
“Did you know about him and Chloe McCoy?”
“Who?”
“Chloe McCoy, Reva. The pretty young thing who works in his gallery?”
“The little drama queen?” She laughed. “Oh, please. Blair couldn’t possibly have . . .” She trailed off as the cool, direct gaze had her belly trembling. “No. She’s hardly more than a child. She’s still in college, for God’s sake.” She curled herself into a ball and rocked. “Oh God. Oh God.”
“Baby. Reva.” Caro moved quickly to sit beside her daughter, wrap her arms around her. “Don’t cry. Don’t cry over him.”
“I don’t know if it’s over him, or over me. First Felicity, and now that—that brainless little coed. How many others?”
“It only takes one.”
Reva turned her face into her mother’s neck. “Like mother, like daughter,” Reva murmured. “If what you’re saying is true, Lieutenant, maybe it was some jealous boyfriend who killed them. Somebody who knew they were being cheated on.”
“That doesn’t explain why you were lured there at exactly the right time. It doesn’t explain why the passcodes on the elevator to the studio were changed at nearly the same time Blair Bissel and Felicity Kade were being murdered. It doesn’t explain why the computers at your home, at Bissel’s gallery and studio, and at Felicity Kade’s home—Feeney just verified”—she said to Roarke—“have all been infected with an as yet unidentified worm that has corrupted all data thereon.”
“A worm?” She pushed away from Caro. “All those computers, in all those locations? Corrupted. You’re sure?”
“I’ve examined two of them myself,” Roarke told her. “There’s every indication they were infected with the Doomsday worm. We’ll test to be certain, but I know what to look for.”
“It can’t be done by remote. We know it has to be done on site.” Reva sprang up to pace. “It’s a flaw in the system. It has to be uploaded directly into one of the units in a network to infect the network. It requires an operator.”
“That’s right.”
“If the units were infected with the Doomsday, it means someone got through the security. At my house, at the gallery, the studio, at Felicity’s. I can check those systems. I designed and installed all of them. I can run scans to see if they were compromised, and when.”
“If you run the scans, the results are inadmissible,” Eve told her.
“I’ll run them.” Roarke waited until she’d stopped pacing long enough to look at him. “You’ll trust me for that.”
“Damn right. Lieutenant.” Reva came back, sat on the edge of the sofa. “If this is—if what happened has something to do with the project, it means Blair was set up, too. It was all staged, all put together so I’d go running over there, so it would look to me, to everyone as if Blair and Felicity had been lovers. He’s dead because of what he was to me. They’re both dead because of me.”
“You can believe that if you want. Me, I’d rather deal with the truth.”
“But there’s no proof that he was ever unfaithful. It could all be faked. The photographs, the receipts, the discs. He could’ve been kidnapped and taken to Felicity’s. He might’ve been . . .”
She was running down as the facts, the timelines, the sheer weight of her fantasy began to bear down. “It doesn’t make any sense that way. I know it. But it doesn’t make sense any other way either.”
“It makes sense if Bissel was not only unfaithful with Felicity Kade and Chloe McCoy, but if the terrorists believed he had intel. More sense yet if they had reason to believe it.”
“Because they think I talk to him? But—”
“No. Because he talked to them.”
She jerked back as if Eve had struck her. “That’s not possible.” The words came out in a croak. “You’re saying that Blair had knowledge of, had contact with this radical terrorist group? That he fed them information? That’s ludicrous.”
“I’m saying it’s a possibility I’m going to explore. I’m saying person or persons unknown went to a lot of trouble to kill Bissel and Kade and point the finger at you. And if this had been taken as the classic crime of passion it appeared to be, those units wouldn’t have been given more than a cursory look.”
She waited, just a beat, as she watched the possibilities hit home with Reva. “It would be assumed that you, with your knowledge of computers and your temper, destroyed them out of spite. That the changes in security at Bissel’s gallery would be considered a glitch.”
“I can’t—I can’t believe this of him.”
“What you believe or don’t believe is up to you. But if you look deeper, if you start tugging on all the threads, you start to see there’s a lot more here than a couple of murders and a suspect served up to the cops on a shiny, silver platter.”
Reva got up, walked to the wide window that looked out over the river. “I can’t . . . You want me to believe this, to accept it, and if I do, it means everything was a lie. Right from the beginning, it was a lie. He never loved me. Or he loved me so little, he was seduced by whatever these people offered him. Money, or power, or just the thrill of playing techno-espionage for real instead of on VR. You want me to believe he used me, exploited everything I’ve worked for, the trust and respect I’ve earned in my field.”
“If you look at it straight, it’s about him. It’s not about you.”
Reva only stared out the window. “I loved him, Lieutenant. Maybe from where you’re sitting that’s weak of me, and stupid of me, but I loved him, the way I’ve never loved anyone else. If I accept all this, I have to let go of that, and everything it means to me. I’m not sure prison’s any worse.”
“You don’t have to believe anything, or accept anything. That’s your choice. But unless you want to find out if prison’s any worse, you’ll cooperate. You’ll submit to Tr
uth Testing, level three, tomorrow at oh eight hundred. You’ll agree to full psychiatric eval by the departmental psychiatrist, and you’ll instruct your attorneys to clear all of your records. All of them, and those of your husband. If there are any sealed records—either yours or his—you will authorize us to break them.”
“I don’t have any sealeds,” Reva replied softly.
“You were Secret Service. You’ll have sealeds.”
She turned back, and her eyes were dazed like a woman living in a dream. “You’re right. Sorry. I’ll authorize.”
“And yours,” Eve said to Caro.
“Why hers?” The earlier resentment was forgotten as she leaped to her mother’s defense. “She’s not part of this.”
“She’s connected to you, to the victim, and to the project.”
“If you think she might be in danger, she should have protection.”
“I’ve seen to it, Reva,” Roarke stated, and earned a quick, surprised look from Caro.
“You might have mentioned it,” she mumbled, then sighed. “But I won’t argue. And I’ll take care of the authorization immediately.”
“Good. Meanwhile, both of you think, go back over any conversations you might have had with either victim, or anyone else for that matter, about work. Particularly this Code Red. I’ll be in touch.”
Eve started for the door, but Roarke lingered another moment. “Get some rest, both of you. Take tomorrow if you need it, but I expect you both back to work the following day.” He glanced over at Eve. “Any problem with that, Lieutenant?”
“Not for me. That’s your deal.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Detective”—Caro opened the door—“I hope you get some rest yourselves.”
“We’ll get to it.”
Eve waited until they were in the elevator and heading down before she spoke to Peabody. “That was a good hunch about Caro running Bissel. How’d you come to it?”
“She strikes me as a thorough woman and a thorough mom. She didn’t much like Bissel.”
“I got that part.”
“So, she doesn’t much like him, but she loves her daughter and wants her daughter to have what she wants. Still, she’d want to be sure he was what he said he was. She had to look.”