by J. D. Robb
“Your mother, your sister.”
She looked away. “I don’t want to talk about them.”
“Fine. I just wondered. The kids who killed them got off pretty light.”
“Because there wasn’t justice. My father cried and cried, no justice, he’d say, and sob and sob. But they died together, he said that, too. They had each other at the end, and they’d always be together. The two of them. They didn’t want me with them. I was the smart one! But my sister was the pretty one, the clever one, the sweet one. So she got to go with our mother, and I had to stay.”
“You got to live,” Eve pointed out, and Lottie’s mouth twisted.
“I got the leftovers, like always. Got the responsibilities, like always. And my father didn’t even see me. Nobody saw me. Be good, Lottie, behave, Lottie. Study hard, Lottie. I did, I did, I did. And nobody paid attention. I could’ve been a cop, but he said, no, no, you’re too smart. Be a scientist. Be good. So I did, and so what? I did everything right, and what happened?”
“What happened, Lottie?”
“I did everything he wanted, and he got married again! And her daughter’s the pretty one and the clever one. And they didn’t see me.”
“It wasn’t respectful of him.”
“No! It wasn’t respectful. It wasn’t right. ‘Oh, Lottie, I’ve been alone for ten years—’” She whined it, disgust on her face. “He said that to me. I was right there, wasn’t I? How could he be alone when I was there? Then my grandmother got sick, and it was ‘Lottie, you can take care of her.’ So I did. Five years. She died anyway. Just died, after five years of my life taking care of her. But she left me a lot of money, so I could come to New York, and I could study and train. And I saw you, on screen. Talking about dead whores. Oh, you were respectful, but they were whores, and that’s disgusting. And even so, you worked to give them justice.
“Can I have a tube of Pepsi? Maybe you could have one, too.” She smiled again, eyes shining. “We can have a drink and talk.”
“Yeah, sure.” Eve rose. “Dallas, leaving interview.”
She stepped out. Just stood a moment to breathe before she started toward Vending.
Roarke beat her there. “I’ll get it.”
“Thanks. Machine would probably laugh at me, and I’m in the mood to beat the crap out of something. Jesus, Mira nailed it. She’s fucked up inside out. Sick, selfish bitch. Dead mother, dead sister, grieving father who was probably doing the best he could. Not enough for her. She’s got brains, skills, but she decides she’s not important enough to anybody instead of making herself important to herself.”
“That alone is why while she thinks she knows you, she never has, never will.” He handed her the soft drinks.
“This is going to take a while. I need to take her through all of it, get it all on record. Some bleeding heart may try to get her off. She needs to go away.”
“Agreed. We’ll be here.”
“Look, if somebody gets dead, one of the cops in there has to go handle it.”
“I’m sure that’s understood.”
She went back in. Lottie smiled at her as she went back on record. “This is really nice. I’m glad you stopped me or we wouldn’t have this time. I guess I got upset. I don’t like to get upset. Once I got upset and took a lot of pills, but then I threw them up.”
“When was that?”
“Oh, the day my father got married. I thought about doing it before. Putting the pills in dinner. His and mine. We could die together, too. Be together. But I got scared.”
She took a sip of Pepsi. “Everybody said how I didn’t cry when my mother and sister died, but I didn’t want to get upset and have everyone looking at me, thinking I was bad. I was the good one.”
“Okay. Let’s move on to Ledo.”
“God! That place was a sty. I don’t understand how people live like that. You and I see a lot of that kind of thing in the work, but I never get used to it. I like how they call us sweepers. It makes me think of cleaning things up. That’s what we do, you and me. We make things cleaner.”
“Tell me how you cleaned Ledo up.”
It took three long hours of listening. Eve asked questions, made comments, occasionally guided the topic back, but for the most part, just listened.
“All right, Lottie, we’ve got what we need. You’re going to be charged with murder in the first, two counts. You have confessed to those crimes on record, waived your right to an attorney.”
“Aren’t we going to talk some more?”
“We’re done now.”
“But you’ll come back.”
Eve rose. No point in saying all the angry things that ran through her head. No point. “They’re going to take you down to Booking again, Lottie. And tomorrow Dr. Mira will talk to you.”
“You like her, Dr. Mira.”
Eve froze. “Yeah. Was she on your list, Lottie?”
“Other people get in the way of a real friendship. You can’t see me when other people are in the way.”
Eve planted her hands on the table, leaned over. “It’s not other people, Lottie. It’s not Mira or Mavis or Nadine or Peabody or any of them. That’s not why I don’t see what you want me to see.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Here’s simple. I see you, Lottie. I see you just fine. And I don’t like you. Dallas, leaving interview. Record off.”
She walked out on Lottie’s wailing scream. She just leaned against the door a minute, pinched her nose to try to relieve pressure.
“I’m taking her to Booking.” Peabody strode up on her silly boots, McNab stride for stride with her in his.
“We are.”
“We are.”
“Okay. Then get out. Go be insane in Times Square.”
“That’s affirmative.”
She’d write it up, Eve thought, and get the hell out herself. And she found Dawson on the bench outside Homicide.
“I couldn’t watch any more of it. Couldn’t do it. But I couldn’t leave until I said . . . Jesus, Dallas, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not on you, Dawson.”
“She’s one of mine. I worked with her. And I . . . didn’t see her.”
“Nobody could see her the way she wanted. Even she can’t. Don’t carry this one. Leave it to Mira, and probably a platoon of shrinks. Crazies out there, Dawson, all over the damn place.”
“Came into my house.”
Eve glanced toward the bullpen. “Mine, too. Sweep it out.”
He let out a breath, half a laugh, nodded. “Yeah. I’m going home. My wife’s going to kick my ass for being late.”
“Bet she won’t.”
She went into her office, started the report.
“Must you?” Roarke said from the doorway.
“I want it done tonight. Over, like the year. I want it out of my head—much as I can manage. It won’t take long, just a summary since it’s all on the record.”
“Then I’ll be in your bullpen having a drink with your cops.”
She froze in place. “A drink? What do you mean, a drink?”
“They’re all of them off duty, by two hours now, I’d say. And someone who won’t be named happened to have a bottle of whiskey handy.”
“Feeney,” she hissed.
“You didn’t hear it from me. Make it snappy, will you, Lieutenant? I want this out of my head as well.”
She made it as snappy as she could, but even then it took more than an hour. He’d come back in by then, settled into her awful chair with his PPC.
“Done. Finished. Gone.”
“And my abused ass here thanks you.”
“How much did you drink?”
“We all had one, and that was enough. A bit of solidarity after the war, you could say. A bit of the strange, even after all this time with you, to find mys
elf in a cop shop, clicking a glass of Irish with a room of cops. Feeney’s going to want a bit of time with you.”
“What? Why?”
“He was shaken down to the soles of his feet, Eve. Christ. So you’ll have a meal with him, or a beer, whatever suits the pair of you, soon as you can.”
“Sure. Yeah.”
“And now, you don’t actually want to go to Times Square, do you?”
“No!” The horror of it all but exploded on her face. “Jesus.”
“Ah, thank all the gods for that.” He let out a long sigh as they stepped out into the garage. “I’ll tell you what I want to do when we get home.”
“It’s what you want to do all the time, anywhere.”
“It’s not till after midnight for that, however eager you are, so we start the new year off with good luck. What I want to do when we get home is get drunk with my wife. And watch the ball drop from the quiet of our own home, with the fire going and the cat sprawled out with us. And every bit of the insanity in this world outside and away from us.”
“I could get drunk.” She nodded at the idea as she got into the car. “Not a whole lot drunk, not just a tiny bit drunk. Just the right amount of drunk.”
“The perfect amount of drunk,” he agreed. “I need another minute.”
“What for?”
“Just this.”
Just holding her, just feeling her heart beat, smelling her hair. Just that.
His entire life was just that.
“All right now,” he murmured. “That’s all right now.”
“I was scared shitless. Usually you don’t have time to be scared—after you can think, holy shit, but not when it’s happening. But I had plenty of time in there. All my people, Roarke. I was so scared. And when I jumped, when I saw Reineke come out, fire, I thought of all those cops. And when I grabbed the switch, I thought of you. Just you.”
She laid her hands on his face a moment. “Just you. So let’s go get drunk.”
“The year’s nearly done, another ready to start. I can’t think of anything I want more than to be home with you.”
As revelers celebrated in Times Square, as a killer wept bitter, bitter tears in her cell, they drove home, to get perfectly drunk.
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