Survivor in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “Understood. I’ll leave you to do it.”

  It’s about time somebody did, Eve thought as he left. Then she sat down, propped her feet on her desk, sipped her coffee. And studied her murder board while the computer ran the next search.

  17

  EVE MADE NOTES FROM SEARCH RESULTS, RAN probabilities, continued her notes. She was tired of riding a desk on this one. She wanted action. Needed to move.

  Instead, she rolled her shoulders, went back to her notes.

  Kirkendall v. Kirkendall to Moss.

  To Duberry. To, most likely, Brenegan.

  To Swisher, Swisher, Swisher, Dyson, and Snood.

  To Newman.

  To Knight and Preston.

  Kirkendall to Isenberry.

  Isenberry to Tully and Tully to Rangle.

  No harm to Tully or Rangle, with countless opportunities.

  Target specific.

  And all circling back to Kirkendall v. Kirdendall.

  “What time is it in Nebraska?”

  “Ah.” Peabody blinked her tired eyes, rubbed them. “Let’s see, it’s five-twenty here, so I think it’s an hour earlier there? Do they do daylight savings? I think. An hour. Probably.”

  “Why does it have to be an hour earlier there, or an hour later here? Why can’t everybody just run on the same time and end the madness?”

  “It has to do with the earth turning on its axis as it orbits the sun and . . .” She trailed off, catching Eve’s narrowed glare. “You’re right. Everybody should run on the same time. Dallas time. I’d vote for it. Are we going to Nebraska?”

  “I’m going to do everything in my power to avoid it.” Going out in the field didn’t mean she wanted to go out in actual fields. With hay or grass or spooky corn. “Let’s try the wonder of the ’link first.”

  She opened Dian Kirkendall’s file, found her sister’s data. “Turnbill, Roxanne. Age forty-three. Married to Joshua, mother of Benjamin and Samuel. Professional Mother status. Okay, Roxanne, let’s see what you know about your brother-in-law.”

  The face that popped on her screen was a child’s—a boy, Eve thought, despite the sunny halo of hair. He had a big, wide open face with the dazzle of green eyes. “Hello, hi, this is Ben. Who are you?”

  “Is either your mother or your father”—or any rational adult—“at home?”

  “My mom’s here, but you’re supposed to say who it is, then say if you can—if you may,” he corrected, “speak with somebody.”

  Now kids were lecturing her on manners. What had happened to her world? “This is Dallas. May I speak with your mother?”

  “Okay.” There was a blur and a jumble on-screen, then a piercing shout. “Mom! Dallas is calling you. Can I have a cookie now?”

  “One cookie, Ben. And don’t shout near the ’link. It’s rude.” The mother had the son’s curls, but in a deep brunette. Her smile wasn’t as open, but polite, and just a little annoyed around the edges. “Can I help you?”

  “Mrs. Turnbill?”

  “Yes. Look, we’ve blocked solicitations, so I’m sorry, but if you’ve—”

  “I’m Lieutenant Dallas with the New York City Police and Security Department.”

  “Oh.” Even that polite smile faded. “What is it?”

  “I’m calling regarding your former brother-in-law, Roger Kirkendall.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “No, not to my knowledge. I’m trying to locate him for questioning in connection with a case. Do you have any information as to his whereabouts?”

  “No. I can’t help you. I’ve very busy so—”

  “Mrs. Turnbill, it’s very important that I locate Mr. Kirkendall. If you could tell me if you’ve had any contact—”

  “I haven’t, and I don’t want any contact with him.” Her voice was strained, like a wire snapped tight. “How do I know you’re who you say you are?”

  Eve held her badge to the screen. “Can you read my ID and my badge number?”

  “Of course I can, but—”

  “You can verify by contacting Cop Central in Manhattan. I can give you a contact number that won’t cost—”

  “I’ll get the number. You’ll have to hold.”

  “Careful,” Peabody noted when the screen went to holding blue. “And a little pissy.”

  “Not just careful, not just pissy. A little scared on top of it.” As she waited, Eve considered. She began to calculate how long a round trip to Nebraska, including interview time, might take.

  Roxanne came back on screen. “All right, Lieutenant, I’ve verified your information.” Her face was pale now. “You’re with Homicide.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “He’s killed someone. Dian—” She broke off, bit down on her lip as if to block words. “Who has he killed?”

  “He’s wanted for questioning in the murders of at least seven people, including two police officers.”

  “In New York,” she said carefully. “He killed people in New York City?”

  “He’s wanted for questioning for murders that occurred in New York.”

  “I see. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. I don’t know where he is, I don’t know what he’s doing. Frankly, I don’t want to know. If I did, if I knew anything, I’d tell you. I can’t help you, and this isn’t something I want to discuss. I have to get back to my children.”

  The screen went black.

  “She’s still scared of him,” Peabody commented.

  “Yeah. And her sister’s still alive. That’s what she thought, just for an instant there. Oh God, he finally got to Dian. She may know more than she realizes. She needs a face-to-face.”

  “We’re going to Nebraska?”

  “No, but you are.”

  “Me? Just me? Out there in the wilderness?”

  “Take McNab. Backup and ballast.” And, Eve thought, as someone who’d keep Peabody from overdoing. “I want you there and back tonight. You’ll do better with the mother type, the family type, than I would first shot. She’ll trust you faster.”

  Eve used the house ’link, interrupted Roarke in the computer lab.

  “I need fast, secure transpo.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Not we—Peabody. Nebraska. I’m sending McNab with her, so something that’ll hold two. But quick and small. They shouldn’t need to be there more than a couple of hours. I’ve got the exact location.”

  “All right, I’ll arrange it. Give me a minute.”

  “Wow, just like that.” Peabody gave a little sigh. “What’s it like being with a guy who can snap his fingers and get you pretty much whatever you need?”

  “Convenient. Use the sister on her if you have to. Show her the dead kids.”

  “Jesus, Dallas.”

  “She’s got kids. It’ll help crack her if she’s hiding anything. We can’t play nice. Have McNab take the edge if you need one. Can he handle bad cop?”

  “He does it really well during personal role-playing games when I’m the reluctant witness.”

  “Oh crap.” Eve pressed her fingers to her eyes and prayed the image wouldn’t form. “Just work her, Peabody. She must know where to find the sister. Kirkendall’s ex would be a valuable tool in this investigation.”

  Roarke walked in, handed Peabody a memo cube. “There’s your transpo. The pilot will be waiting for you.”

  “Thanks.” She gathered her file bag. “I’ll contact McNab, have him meet me there.”

  “I want to know when you arrive, when you leave, and when you get back,” Eve told her.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Safe trip,” Roarke said, then turned to Eve when Peabody headed out. “I’ve got some bits and pieces, but I’m going to need the unregistered to pull them together.”

  “Show me what you’ve got.”

  “Let’s take it in there.” He ran a hand down her arm as they walked. “You’re tired, Lieutenant.”

  “Some.”

  “It’s been a stressful, emotional day.”


  She jerked a shoulder when he unlocked his private office with palm and voice ID.

  “And Nixie?”

  “Mira came by on her way out. She said the kid was doing a little better. That the trip to the morgue . . . Jesus.” She covered her face with her hands. “God, I didn’t think I was going to be able to hold it together in there.”

  “I know.”

  She shook her head, struggling even now to maintain. “The way she looked at her father, touched him. What was in her eyes when she did. Sorrow, something beyond sorrow. And you knew, seeing that, how much she loved him. That she was never afraid of him, never had to worry if he’d hurt her. We don’t know what that’s like. We can’t. I can find the man who did this, but I can’t understand what she feels. And if I can’t understand, how can I make it right?”

  “Not true.” He brushed her face with his fingers, took away tears. “Who are you weeping for, if not for her?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. She doesn’t know what I do, but she’s living through it. I can’t know what she knows. That kind of bond? It’s different than what we’ve got. It’s got to be. Child to parent, parent to child. That was taken from her.”

  She reached up with her own hands, wiped the tears away. “I stood over my father, with his blood all over me. I can’t really remember what I felt. Relief, pleasure, terror—all of it, none of it. He comes back, in my head, in my dreams, and he tells me it’s not over. He’s right. It’s not over. It’s never going to be. She makes me see it.”

  “I know.” He rubbed an errant tear away with his thumb. “Yes, I know. It’s wearing on you, I can see that, too. There doesn’t seem to be anything either of us can do about it. You won’t pass the case to someone else.” He lifted her chin with his hand before she could answer. “You won’t, and I wouldn’t want you to. You’d never forgive yourself for stepping aside because of personal distress. And you’d never trust yourself again, not fully, not the way you need to.”

  “I saw myself when I found her. Saw myself, instead of her, huddled in a ball, coated in blood. Not just thought of it, but saw it. Just a flash, just for an instant.”

  “Yet you brought her here. You face it. Darling Eve.” His voice was like balm on the burn. “The child isn’t the only one who shows grace in her steps.”

  “Grace isn’t the issue. Roarke.” She could tell him, say this to him. “On days like this, part of me wants to go back there, to that room in Dallas. Just so I can stand over him again, with his blood all over me and the knife in my hand.”

  She closed her fist as if she held the hilt. “Just to kill him again, but this time to know what I feel when I do, to feel it because maybe then it’ll be done. Even if it doesn’t, to feel that moment when I carved him up. I don’t know what that makes me.”

  “On days like this, all of me wants to be the one to go back to that room in Dallas. To have his blood on me, and the knife in my hands. I know exactly what I would feel. And what it makes us, Eve, is who we are.”

  She let out a long breath. “I don’t know why that helps when it should probably scare me. She won’t feel this way, because she had that base. Because she could lay her head on her mother’s dead heart and cry. She’ll have sorrow, and nights when she’s afraid, but she’ll remember why she was able to touch her father’s face, her brother’s hair, and cry on her mother’s breast.”

  “She’ll remember a cop who stood with her, and held her hand when she did.”

  “They’re going to throw her into the system, Roarke. Sometimes it’s salvation, sometimes it’s good, but not for her. I don’t want her to be another case file. To cycle through that like I did. I have an idea what could be done, but I wanted to run it by you.”

  His face went absolutely still, absolutely blank. “What?”

  “I was thinking we could approach Richard DeBlass and Elizabeth Barrister.”

  “Oh.” This time it was Roarke who let out a long breath. “Of course. Richard and Beth, good thought.” He turned away, walked away from her to stare out the window.

  “If it’s a good idea, why are you upset?”

  “I’m not.” What was he? He didn’t have the name for it. “I should’ve thought of them myself. I should have thought more clearly.”

  “You can’t think of everything.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  He started to deny it, push it aside. And had to accept that it would just be one more mistake. “I can’t get my mind off the child. No, that’s not it, not altogether. I can’t get it out of my head, all of it, not since I went to that house with you. Stood looking at those rooms where those children had been sleeping.”

  “It’s rougher when it’s kids. I should’ve thought of that before I asked you to do the walk-through.”

  “I’m not green.” He whirled around, his face lit with fury. “I’m not so soft in the belly I can’t . . . Ah, fuck me.” He broke off, ran his hands through his hair.

  “Hey, hey, hey.” Obviously alarmed, she crossed over quickly, rubbed his back. “What gives?”

  “They were sleeping.” Christ Jesus, would that single thing always sicken him the most? “They were innocent. They had what children are supposed to have. Love and comfort and security. And I looked in those rooms, saw their blood, and it tears at me. Tears at my gut. Tears at the years between. I never think of it. Why should I, goddamn it.”

  She didn’t ask of what, not when she could see it on his face. Had it only been a short time ago he’d told her he hated to see her look sad? How could she tell him what it did to her guts to see him look devastated?

  “Maybe we should sit down a minute.”

  “Bloody hell. Bloody buggering hell.” He stalked to the door, booted it closed. “You can’t forget it, but you can live with it. And I have. I do. It doesn’t beat at me as it does you.”

  “So maybe when it does, it’s worse.”

  He leaned back against the door, stared at her. “I see myself lying in a puddle of my own blood and puke and piss after he beat me unconscious. And yet here I am, aren’t I? Damn good suit, big house, a wife I love more than life. He left me there, probably for dead. Didn’t even bother to throw me away as he had my mother. I wasn’t worth the trouble. Why should I give a damn about that now? But I wonder, what in God’s name is the purpose, Eve? What is the purpose when I come to this, and those children are dead? When the one who’s left has nothing and no one?”

  “You don’t deal the cards,” she said carefully. “You just play them. Don’t do this to yourself.”

  “I cheated and stole and connived my way to what I have, or to the base of it in any case. It wasn’t an innocent lying in that alley.”

  “Bullshit. That’s just bullshit.”

  “I’d have killed him.” His eyes weren’t devastated now, but winter cold. “If someone hadn’t done it before me, when I was older and stronger I’d have gone for him. I’d have finished him. Can’t change that either. Well.” He sighed, heavily. “This is useless.”

  “It’s not. You don’t think it’s useless when I flood it on you. I like your dick, Roarke, like it fine. But it’s irritating when you think with it.”

  He opened his mouth, hissed out a breath just before a choked laugh. “It’s irritating when you point it out. All right then, let’s finish this out with me telling you I went to Philadelphia today.”

  “What the hell for?” She snapped it out. “I told you I needed to know where you were.”

  “I wasn’t going to mention it, and not to spare myself your wrath, Lieutenant. I wasn’t going to mention it because it was a waste of time. I’d thought I could fix it—I’m good at fixing, or buying off if fixing won’t work. I went to see Grant Swisher’s stepsister. To talk to her about stepping in for Nixie, now that the legal guardianship’s been voided. She couldn’t be less interested.”

  He sat now, on the arm of a chair. “I decided to make all this my concern. Magnanimous of me.”r />
  “Shut up. Nobody rips on you but me.” She stepped to him, caught his face in her hands, kissed him. “And I’m not because—even being pissed off about you taking an unscheduled trip—I’m proud that you’d try to help. I wouldn’t have thought of doing it.”

  “I’d have bought her off, if that had been an option. Money fixes all sorts of problems, and why have so bloody much if you can’t buy what you like? Such as a nice family for a little girl. I’d already eliminated the grandparents—found the grandfather, by the way—on my high moral grounds. But the one left, the one I hand-selected, wouldn’t fall in.”

  “If she doesn’t want the kid, the kid’s better off somewhere else.”

  “I know it. I might’ve been disgusted with this woman’s callousness, but I was furious with myself for assuming I could just snap fingers and make it all tidy. And furious that I couldn’t. If it was tidy, I wouldn’t feel guilty, would I?”

  “About what?”

  “About not considering, not being able to consider keeping her with us.”

  “Us? Here? Us?”

  He laughed again, but the sound was weary. “Well, we’re on the same page there anyway. We can’t do it. We’re not the right people for it—for her. The big house, all the money, it doesn’t mean a damn when we’re not the right people.”

  “Still on the same page.”

  He smiled at her. “I’ve wondered if I’d be a good father. I think I would be. I think we’d be good at it, either despite or because of where we came from. Maybe both. But it’s not now. It’s not this child. It’ll be when we know we’ll be good at it.”

  “That’s nothing to feel guilty about.”

  “How does it make me any different from Leesa Corday? Swisher’s stepsister?”

  “Because you tried to make it right. You’ll help to make it right.”

  “You steady me,” he murmured. “I didn’t even know how far off-balance I’d been, and here you steady me.” He took her hands, kissed them. “I want children with you, Eve.”

  The sound she made brought on a quick and easy grin. “No need for the panic face, darling. I don’t mean today, or tomorrow, or nine months down the road. Having Nixie around’s been considerable education. Children are a lot of bloody work, aren’t they?”