by J. D. Robb
She had her coat half off, stopped dead. “What plans?”
“If you bothered to consult your calendar—ever—you’d be aware you and Roarke are booked to attend a benefit at Carnegie Hall in . . .” Deliberately he looked at his wrist unit. “Thirty-six minutes.”
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck,” she said a third time as she tossed her coat over the newel post. She started to rush up the stairs, stopped herself.
He irritated the marrow from her bones, but that was beside the point. Or could very well be a dangerous point.
“You get deliveries here all the time, right?”
“We do, yes.”
“Until I say different, you don’t open the door to any delivery person. You don’t open the gates unless you’re expecting said delivery and verify the identification of the delivery company and the individual or individuals making that delivery.”
“May I ask why?”
“Because I don’t want to have to actually bury that coffin I suspect you sleep in. No exceptions,” she added, and hurried upstairs with the cat racing behind her.
She arrowed straight toward the bedroom, struggling to think how she could toggle around from cop to Roarke’s wife in thirty minutes.
When it came to public appearances, she could barely manage it with thirty days’ notice. Which, of course, she’d had. And forgotten.
Carnegie Hall—a benefit for . . . Oh, what the hell did it matter? She’d screwed up, again.
She dashed into the bedroom to see her husband completing the knot on his elegant black tie.
Christ, he was gorgeous. All that silky black hair framing a face artists and angels wept over. Madly blue eyes, full, sculpted mouth, bones that would keep him deliriously handsome after he hit the century mark.
He looked as if he’d been born wearing a tux. No one could look at him and see the Dublin street rat he’d once been.
“There you are.” Ireland wafted through his voice as he smiled, as those magic eyes met hers in the mirror.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“No need.” He turned, moved to her—a living poster for tall, dark, and handsome. He cupped her chin, brushed his thumb over the shallow dent in it before he lowered his head to kiss her. “Being a bit late isn’t a crime—and I’ll be with a cop in any case.”
“Right. Well, I’ll . . .” What? she wondered. What would she do?
“Your gown, shoes, bag, appropriate coat are all in the front of your closet. Jewelry, unless you want something else, in the boxes on your dresser.”
“Okay, right.” She got as far as the sitting area, then just dropped down on the sofa. Galahad changed directions from his journey to the bed and leaped up beside her.
“I have a feeling I’m overdressed for what we’ll be doing this evening,” Roarke commented.
“I’m sorry. I need a minute.” She scrubbed her hands over her face, then just left them there.
“Eve.” Amused resignation shifted to concern as Roarke went over, sat on her other side. “Is someone hurt?”
“Bastwick. Leanore Bastwick. She’s dead.”
“Yes, I heard that on the media bulletin, assumed you’d caught it, and that’s why you were late. But you barely knew her.”
“It’s not her. Of course it’s her,” Eve corrected. “But it’s me. I didn’t let it hit me until just now. It can’t get in the way.”
“What can’t?”
“It doesn’t make any sense. But that’s nothing new, is it? You have to remember a lot of the time it doesn’t make sense.”
“You’re not.” And that concerned him. “Tell me.”
“Better show you.” She pulled out her PPC, then glanced at the wall screen. “Put this up on there, will you? You’ll do it faster.”
“All right.”
He took her handheld, keyed in a few commands. The wall screen went on.
And the image of the message from the crime scene flashed on.
“This was on the wall, over her bed. She’d been garroted. Fully dressed. Slight stun burns, center mass. No other signs of violence. No defensive wounds. She—”
“Hush,” he muttered, eyes cold as he read the message.
So she said nothing more, just sat.
“Has Whitney seen this?”
“Sure. I went straight to him with it.”
“And Mira?”
“And to her. The media liaison’s handling the media liaisoning. You’ll need to alert your people on that. Once this leaks, reporters are going to go batshit.”
Hating that, just hating it, she pressed her fingers to her eyes.
“That’s a simple matter to deal with.”
“There has to be a solid wall of—”
“We’ll deal with it,” he snapped. “Have you had any other communication from this person?”
“No. I don’t know,” she corrected. “Mira’s looking over correspondence, looking for tells. If she finds anything, we’ll follow up. We’re looking at her law partner, other people in the firm, personal acquaintances, lovers, family. Nothing’s shaken loose there yet, but—”
“And is unlikely to. Has anyone sent you gifts, tokens, made any sort of advances?”
“No, Jesus.” Rather than embarrass, as it had coming from Feeney, the question irked coming from Roarke. “Who’s the cop here?”
“You are. You’re my cop. You’re standing for her, that’s your job. But I stand for you, and you’re the target here. The murder was a gift to you. As brutal and bloody as a cat dropping a dead mouse at your feet.”
Scowling, Eve looked down at Galahad.
“Not this cat,” Roarke said. “It’s that feral, Eve. You’re the target,” he repeated, “and sooner or later the feral will turn on you. I’ll change, and you’ll bring me up to date.”
“I’m not going to turn down the help, you’re too good at it. And I could use another set of eyes, another viewpoint. But if you’re going to be pissed about it—”
“Pissed?”
Rising, he pulled off the tie, the jacket. She felt another quick pang when she watched him carefully remove the little lapel pin she’d had made for him for Christmas.
Her wedding flowers—white petunias in mother-of-pearl.
“Why would I be pissed just because some murderous bastard’s got a crush on my wife?”
“Could be a murderous bitch,” Eve said evenly. “And your wife’s a murder cop.”
“Doesn’t make her less mine, does it? The bastard—or bitch, if you prefer—claims to have given you justice. Now tell me how you spent your day.”
“How I—” She got to her feet. “How the hell do you think I spent my day? Doing interviews, following leads, consulting, writing reports. Doing my damn job.”
“Exactly.” He sat on the side of the bed, removed his shoes, his socks—as outwardly cool as she was hot. “But to the killer’s mind, he did the job for you. Justice was served. You’re demeaning the gift, Lieutenant, and no one enjoys having their gift go unappreciated.”
“So, what, I should’ve said thanks?”
“You could have passed the investigation on—of course you didn’t, and couldn’t, being you.” He walked into his enormous closet as he spoke. “I imagine the killer’s quite torn. On one hand, you’re doing exactly what he purports to admire about you, and on the other, he wants your gratitude for the gift.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass if he’s torn. I’m doing my job.”
“And by doing it, you’ll eventually twist the crush into rage or despair. I’d think either could be deadly.” Roarke stepped back out wearing jeans and a black sweater. “On some level you know that, and you’re already wondering how you can turn it quicker. Because until you do, and the rage or despair turns on you alone, someone else stands to be the next gift.”
“How
the hell do you know what he thinks, feels, wants?” she demanded.
“He’s infatuated with you. And so am I.”
The anger dripped away into a kind of grief. “He’s killing for me, Roarke. It makes me sick inside.”
“He—or she—is killing for himself.” Roarke came back to her, framed her face with his hands. “You’re an excuse. And you’ll do better work when you fully accept that, and put all the blame—every bloody bit of it, Eve—where it belongs.”
He kissed her again. “Now, we’ll go into your office, and you can tell me all of it.”
Roarke programmed spaghetti and meatballs, a particular favorite of hers, so it would be a comfort. He poured them both a generous glass of Chianti.
“You’ll work better for it,” he told her when she simply stood in the middle of her home office, staring at the murder board she’d barely begun to set up. “Eat, and tell me from the beginning. A fresh eye,” he reminded her. “And viewpoint.”
“Okay.” She let out a breath. “Okay.” She joined him at the little table by the window. “I want to say, first off, I forgot about this deal tonight. I just forgot it. I don’t know that I’d have remembered if this had been . . . well, a more usual case. I don’t know if I would’ve remembered.”
“I was a bit busy myself today.” Watching her, he drank some wine. “I hadn’t given this evening a thought until Caro reminded me late this afternoon. Maybe what you need, Lieutenant, is an admin of your own.”
“The last thing I want is somebody telling me about stuff when I’m trying to do other stuff. And the department can’t afford sticking me with a keeper if I wanted one.”
She poked at a meatball. “Don’t say Caro or a Caro-like substitute could send me reminders. I’d want to rip their lungs out and play a tune with them within two days.”
“It takes years of practice and dedication to play a proper tune on the lungs.”
“Maybe, but I’d be up for it. It’s a charity thing, right, this thing tonight? They were probably counting on you and your big buckets of dough.”
“The ticket price covers at least a bucket or two, and we’ll make a donation.”
“I should do it.” Guilty, annoyed by the guilt, she poked at another meatball, decided maybe pasta first. “You could tell me how much and where it goes, and I should do it.”
“Easy enough. I was thinking in the neighborhood of five million.”
She swallowed—hard—the spaghetti she’d wound around her fork. “I don’t have that big a bucket, or spend much time in that neighborhood. You make it.”
“Done.” He reached over, squeezed her hand. “Let that go, Eve. It’s just a night out in fancy dress.”
“You like those.”
“Well enough. I find I like this more. Having dinner with you, here in the quiet. And while murder might not be a particularly appealing dinner conversation for some—those some aren’t you and me. Now tell me, from the start of it.”
However guilty and unsettled she felt, knowing he spoke the absolute truth reminded her just how lucky she was.
“Her admin, speaking of them, found her this morning,” Eve began, going step by step.
“I’d like to see the security run. I assume you’ve had it enhanced, analyzed.”
“Feeney’s on that. The best guess is on race—killer’s white or mixed race. And the height, unless there’s lifts in the boots, hits about five feet ten inches. Estimate on hands and feet—small side for a man, but not unusually small. The clothes? Common, nondescript. No way to pin them down.”
“He’d cased the building prior.”
Really lucky, Eve thought, because Roarke caught on, and quick.
“Yeah, had to. The feed automatically overwrites every seventy-two hours, so there’s no way to go back and . . . Vacancies.” As it hit her, she jabbed a finger in the air. “I need to check, see if there’s any unit or units in there that have been shown in the last few weeks. Hell, the killer could have walked through the place months ago, but it’s likely he did at least one fresh pass in the last few weeks, to make sure nothing changed.”
“Requests for building schematics?”
“I’ve got that working, but everything’s slow because of the damn holidays.”
“It’s unlikely to matter. This one strikes as too efficient to make it that easy.”
“Efficient, professional, dispassionate.”
“You’re considering a pro?”
“Peabody likes the angle.” Now that she could talk it through—facts, evidence, probabilities—the food went down easier. But she still couldn’t find her appetite.
“Somebody Bastwick knew hired the hit, is using me as that herring thing.”
“Red herring.”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it’s red. I don’t know why it’s red. A purple herring makes more sense—or less, which is kind of the point—but I got it’s red.”
“I love you.”
She smiled a little. “I got that, too. We ID’d the murder weapon, but that’s not going to get us far. Piano wire, as easy to come by as brown pants. The tongue—Morris said it was a clean cut, no sign of hesitation marks. The symbolism there’s pretty obvious.”
She wound, unwound, wound pasta on her fork without eating.
“What about her electronics?”
“McNab’s on that. So far nothing that rings. She didn’t have close friends, that’s how it’s reading. No exclusive lover, or, apparently, the wish for one. She made a play for Fitzhugh—dead partner—back when he wasn’t dead.”
“Ah yes, I remember something of that. He had a spouse.”
“Spouse is in Hawaii and covered. I can’t find anything that indicates she was making another play. Fitzhugh had some punch and power, so there was motive for her there. She was, essentially, top dog once he kicked, so why bother?”
“For the fun?” Roarke suggested.
“Seems she went another way for her fun. She booked a hotel room and an LC for Christmas. She had three LCs she used on a kind of rotation, and what we get is she’d settled into a kind of routine there when it came to sex.”
“Safe, unemotional, and she remains in control.”
“Yeah, my take. She had a short ’link conversation with her family on Christmas Day, didn’t travel, didn’t party that we can find. She worked—that was her focus. I see her pretty clear. I used to look in the mirror at her.”
“Not true. Not at all true,” Roarke countered. “You had Mavis—and she’s been family as well as friend for a very long time. Feeney’s the same. He wasn’t just your trainer, or your partner. He was, and is, a father to you.”
“I didn’t go out looking for them.”
“You didn’t shut them out, either, did you?”
“Nobody shuts Mavis out if she doesn’t want to be shut.” She brooded down at her spaghetti. “I tried shutting you out.”
“And look how that worked out. Do you want to say there’s some surface similarity between you and her? I’ll agree. Strong-willed, successful women, on either side of a line of law, but both serving it in their way. Attractive, intelligent, ambitious women, solitary in their ways. Or you were, and would like to be more than you might find yourself these days.”
“I don’t think I could live without you anymore. That’s how that worked out for me. Maybe somebody wanted her.” She wound pasta again, ate without thinking. “And she didn’t want him, or her, back. But . . .” She shook her head, reached for her wine.
“No passion in the kill.”
“None. When you want someone, and they keep you shut out, there’s despair or anger or payback. I can’t make the motive about her. I can’t find the angle for that. All the angles say it’s about me. And I can’t figure it.”
“Another cop, one who admires you, and resents the defense attorney who works as diligently
to ensure the freedom of the criminals you take off the street.”
“Yeah, that’s one of the angles. It’s not one of mine, Roarke. It’s not one of my cops. I don’t just say that because they’re mine, but because I know them, inside and out.”
“I’m going to agree with you because I’ve come to know them as well. There’s no one in your division who’d take a life this way, or use you as an excuse to do so.”
“None of them are psychotic, and that’s how this feels.”
“But you don’t only work with your own. Uniforms who respond first to a scene, who help secure a scene or canvass. A cop from another division whose investigation crossed with yours. One who consulted you, or vice versa.”
“I couldn’t count them,” she admitted.
“And that doesn’t begin to address all those who work on processing and forensics and so on.”
“I stood in the lab today, and I thought: All these people in their white coats, they’d know how to do a clean kill, to keep evidence off a crime scene. And I don’t know them—a handful of them, but that’s it. There’s the sweepers, there’s the morgue doctors, techs, support. Or it’s just some crazy person who got juiced up from the book and vid.”
“Bastwick’s not in either.”
“No, she’s not.”
“Then why her? Specifically her?”
“Okay.” She sat back with her wine. “I spent some time scanning some interviews she did around the Barrow trial. She tried to make a case in the court of public opinion that I had a vendetta going, that I had a score to settle—a personal one. She tried to get in I’d physically assaulted Barrow, covered it up, and she wasn’t wrong. But it didn’t play out. If they’d copped to the reason I did indeed punch the fucker, they’d have had to cop to why. As long as they were stringing the line he’d inadvertently developed a system of mind control using subliminals, they had a shot of getting him off with a light tap. If they had to say I’d punched him because he’d used that system on us, and on you, that meant the law would punch him right along with me.”
“I hurt you. I forced you—”