Judgment in Death

CHAPTER SIX

Ian McNab tried to look casual as he wandered into the detectives' bullpen. It wasn't easy for a man sporting a waist-long braid and wearing orange flight pants to look casual, but he worked at it.

He had an excuse for being in that area. A few of the detectives had tossed run requests on the witnesses listed in the Kohli case over to EDD. That was McNab's story, and he was sticking to it.

He also had a reason for being in that area. And the reason was tucked into a skinny cubicle in the far corner, studiously doing tech work.

She looked so cute when she was studious. He was gone on her, all right. He wasn't particularly happy about it, as his plan had always been to scoop as many women into his life as humanly possible. He just plain loved women.

But then Peabody had marched into his life in her ugly cop shoes and spit-spot uniform, and that, as the historians say, was that.

She wasn't completely cooperating. Oh, he'd finally gotten her into bed-on the kitchen floor, in an elevator car, in an empty locker room-and anywhere else his fluid imagination could devise. But she wasn't moony over him.

He was forced to admit, though it grated daily, that he was well over that moon as regarded Officer Delia Peabody.

He squeezed into her cubicle, settled his skinny butt on the corner of her desk. "Hey, She-Body. What's up?"

"What are you doing out of EDD?" She kept right on working, didn't even glance up. "You break your chain again?"

"They don't lock us up in EDD like they do over here. How do you work in this cage?"

"Efficiently. Go away, McNab. I'm really swamped here."

"The Kohli deal? It's all anybody can talk about. Poor son of a bitch."

Because there was pity in his voice, she did glance up. And noted that his eyes, cool and green, weren't just sad. They were pissed. "Yeah. Well, we'll get the slime who killed him. Dallas is working the angles."

"Nobody does it better. Some of the guys here asked us to run some names. Everybody in EDD from Feeney down to the lowest drone's on it."

She worked up a sneer. "Why aren't you?"

"I was elected to swing over and see if I could wangle an update. Come on, Peabody, we're in it, too. Give me something to take back."

"I don't have that much. Keep this part to yourself," she said, lowering her voice and peeking through the narrow opening of her work space. "I don't know what Dallas is up to. She went out in the field and didn't take me with her. Didn't tell me where she was going, either. Then a few minutes ago, I get a call from her. She's got uniforms bringing in four mopes, booking them on various charges, including carrying concealeds, and she wants me to run the names quick, fast, and now. She's on her way in."

"What'd you find?"

"All four of them have been guests of various government facilities, mostly violent crimes. Assaults, assaults with deadlies. Spine-crackers and persuaders, from the sheets. But get this."

She lowered her voice even more, so that McNab had to lean in, catch a teasing whiff of her shampoo. "They're connected to Max Ricker."

McNab opened his mouth, then sucked in the exclamation when Peabody hissed at him. "You think Ricker's behind the Kohli deal?"

"I don't know, but I know Kohli was part of the team that busted him last fall, because Dallas had me get the case file and the trial transcript. I took a quick look, and Kohli was low level, didn't testify, either. Of course, the case was tossed out of court within three days. But Dallas has some reason for hauling in four of his goon squad."

"This is good stuff."

"You can pass on the mopes she's bringing in, but keep quiet about the Ricker connection until we've got more."

"I could do that, but I want some incentive. How about you come by tonight?"

"I don't know what Dallas has planned." He was grinning at her. For reasons Peabody couldn't figure, she was finding it harder and harder to resist that dopey grin. "But I could probably swing by."

"Speaking of swinging, when you get there, we could…" He started to lean closer, make a suggestion he thought would keep her revved through shift. Then he shot off the desk like a pebble from a sling. "Jesus, it's the commander."

"Chill down." But Peabody came to attention herself.

It wasn't unprecedented for Whitney to make an appearance in the squad room. But he didn't make a habit of it, either.

"Oh man, he's coming over here."

She saw it and had to resist the impulse to tug at her uniform jacket to make certain it was straight.

"Detective." Whitney stopped, filled the entrance to the cubicle, and pinned McNab with dark, steely eyes. "Have you transferred out of the Electronic Detective Division?"

"No, sir, Commander. EDD is working in conjunction with Homicide on the matter of Detective Taj Kohli. We're confident that this interdepartmental cooperation and effort will result in closing the case quickly."

He was good, Peabody thought with annoyed admiration. Slick as cat spit.

"Then perhaps you should get back to your division and continue that cooperation, Detective, instead of disrupting this officer's work."

But not, she thought, quite slick enough.

McNab nearly saluted but managed to restrain himself. Then vanished like smoke.

"Officer, do you have the data your lieutenant requested on the four individuals currently in booking?"

In booking? Already? Jeez. "Yes, sir."

"Hard copy," he said and held out a hand.

Peabody ordered the printout. "As ordered, Commander, I've sent copies of the data to Lieutenant Dallas's vehicle and office units."

He merely grunted, then turned away already reading the data. He paused, glanced over as Eve walked in. "Lieutenant, your office."

Peabody winced at the tone. It was hard as granite. And courageously, she stepped out of her cubicle. She couldn't say she was disappointed when Eve signaled her back, then swung toward her office.

There was a fire being lighted, Peabody thought, but wasn't sure who was going to get burned.

"Sir." Eve held the door open, waited for Whitney to pass through, then closed it behind them.

"Explain, Lieutenant, why you left the state, and your jurisdiction, interrogated Max Ricker without discussing your intentions or going through the chain of command?"

"Commander, as primary, I am not required to clear investigative interviews through any chain of command. And I am authorized to leave my jurisdiction to do so if the interview is pertinent to the case."

"And to harass a civilian in another state?"

She felt the first sting of temper, ignored it. "Harass, sir?"

"I received a call from Ricker's attorney, who has also contacted the Chief of Police, and who is threatening to sue you, this department, and the city of New York for harassing his client and for assaulting and detaining four of Ricker's employees."

"Really? He's running scared all right," she murmured. "I didn't think I'd gotten to him that deep. Commander," she said, bringing herself back. "I contacted Ricker, requested an interview at his convenience, and was granted same."

She pulled a sealed disc from a drawer. "The request, made from this unit, and the agreement to said request, were recorded, as was my interview with Ricker, in his home where he was properly Mirandized in the presence of six of his attorneys by holograph."

This time, she took a disc from her bag. "Recorded, Commander, with his full knowledge. With respect, sir, he's pissing in the wind on this."

"Good. I thought as much." He took both discs. "However, angling for Ricker on a cop killing is a dangerous and delicate matter. You'd better have a foundation you can stand on."

"It's my job to pursue all possible leads. I'm doing my job."

"And does your job include rousting four men on a public road, endangering their lives and the lives of innocent bystanders with reckless driving, and causing two vehicles to incur damage?"

Her training was too solid to permit her to snarl. But she thought about it. "While in transit from Connecticut to New York City, I was tailed then pursued by two civilian vehicles containing two men each. While I took evasive maneuvers, said vehicles continued pursuit, exceeding the posted speed limits. Concerned at the possible danger to other civilians, I left the heavily traveled freeway for an empty stretch of road. At this time, the two pursuing vehicles further increased speed, shifting into a charge pattern. The vehicles crossed the state line. Unsure of their purpose, I called for backup, and rather than risk continuing a high-speed chase into a populated area, I engaged my sirens, executed a U-turn. As a result, the pursuing vehicles ran off the road."

"Lieutenant-"

"Sir, I would like to complete my report of the incident." Her temper might have been spiking, but her tone was very cool.

"Go ahead, Lieutenant. Complete your report."

"I identified myself as a police officer, ordered them out of the vehicles. At this time one of the individuals made a suspicious move toward what I perceived, and later discovered was, in fact, a weapon. I fired a warning shot, which damaged a headlight. Two radio cars arrived as backup, and the four individuals were restrained. During the resulting search, which is permissible given the probable cause, banned weapons, two forms of illegals in small quantities, suspicious tools, and two weighted steel pipes were found to be in the individuals' possession or concealed in their vehicles. At this time, I requested that the uniformed officers transport the individuals to Central for booking on various charges, contacted my aide to execute a standard run on each man, and returned with the intention of writing my report and questioning the individuals I had so detained."

Her voice remained flat, cool, and dead calm. She refused to allow any temper or triumph to glimmer in her eyes. Once again, she reached in her bag, took out two discs. "All of the aforesaid was recorded, through my unit during the pursuit, and during the arrest by my collar clip. It is my opinion that proper procedure was followed as closely as possible."

Whitney took the discs and allowed himself the tiniest of smiles as he pocketed them. "Nice work. Damn nice work."

She ordered herself to change gears, and change them smoothly. But her "Thank you, sir" came out with a bite.

"Pissed off that I questioned you?" Whitney asked.

"Yes, sir. I am."

"Can't blame you." Idly, he tapped his fingers on the discs in his pocket, then wandered, as much as he was able, to her skinny window. "I was confident you'd have covered yourself here, but not completely confident. Above that, you'll be hammered at by the lawyer, even with the record. I wanted to see how you'd hold up to it. You held, Dallas, as always."

"I can handle myself with the lawyer."

"No doubt." Whitney drew a breath, studied the miserable view out her miserable window, and wondered how she stood working in that box of a room. "Are you waiting for an apology, Lieutenant?"

"No. No, sir."

"Good." He turned back to her, his face closed and hard again. "Command rarely apologizes. You followed procedure, and I'd expect no less. However, this doesn't negate the fact that by pulling Ricker into the case, you've put the department in a strained situation."

"A dead cop makes a strained situation for me."

"Don't second-guess me, Lieutenant," he snapped. "And don't underestimate my personal and departmental stand on the murder of Detective Kohli. If Ricker was involved in this, I want his ass more than you do. Yes, more," he added. "Now, tell me why, if he agreed to interview, he sent four assholes after you?"

"I got under his skin."

"Specifics, Lieutenant." Then he looked around. "Where the hell do you sit in this hole?"

Saying nothing, she pulled out her creaky desk chair. He stared at it a moment, then in a gesture that popped the tension out of the room like a pin in a balloon, he threw back his head and roared.

"You think I don't know that's an insult? I put half my ass on that excuse for a chair, and I'm through it and on the floor. For Christ's sake, Dallas, you've got rank. You can have an office instead of this cave."

"I like it here. You get something bigger, you end up putting more chairs in, maybe a table. Then people start dropping by. To chat."

Whitney hissed through his teeth. "Tell me. Let me have some of that coffee Roarke scores you."

She moved to the AutoChef, programmed for two cups, hot, strong, and black. "Commander, I'd like to speak off the record for a moment."

"Give me that coffee, and you can speak any way you damn well want for the next hour. Jesus God, what a scent."

She smiled to herself, remembering the first time she'd tasted Roarke's coffee. The real thing, not soy or any of that man-made bean crap. She should have known, then and there, he'd be it for her.

And because he was it for her, she turned with the coffee and put her faith in her commander. "Roarke was connected to Ricker in some areas of business. Roarke ended the association more than ten years ago. Ricker hasn't forgotten it or forgiven it. He'd like to sting Roarke if he could, through me if it works that way. During the meet, I used Roarke to poke at him. It worked. He lost his cool a couple of times. I keep pressing that sore spot, he'll keep losing it."

"How bad does he want Roarke?"

"Bad enough, I think, but he's scared of him. That scrapes at him more than anything, that underlying fear. Because, well, he doesn't see it as fear, but as intense loathing. He sent those morons after me because he wasn't thinking, he was reacting. He's too smart to order four piss-brains to hassle a cop, piss-brains that can be tracked back to him. But he lost control just long enough to send them out. He wanted me hurt because I sneered at him. Because I'm Roarke's cop, and I sneered at him."

"You baited him. Consider this. He might have hurt you before you got clear of the house."

"He wouldn't foul his own nest. It was a risk, but calculated. If I can get one of those jerks to roll, we could bring Ricker in, put more pressure on him."

"These types don't roll easy."

"It wouldn't take much. I want Ricker inside. He skated on the illegals bust. He shouldn't have. I've studied the reports and transcripts. It looked like textbook, every angle covered. Then there were all these screw-ups. The mix in the chain of evidence, one of the primary witnesses disappearing when he was supposed to be under protection, some clerk in the PA's office mis-files a statement. Little holes make bigger holes, and he slides through."

"I agree, and there's no one who'd like to nail Ricker more than I would. But his connection to Kohli is tenuous at best. I can't see your angle on it."

"I'm working it" was all she would say. She thought of Webster, the hints, but she wasn't ready to talk about it.

"Dallas, Ricker can't be your personal vendetta."

"He's not. Let me work it through, Commander."

"It's your investigation. But watch your step. If Ricker was the trigger on Kohli, he won't hesitate to point at you. From what you've told me, he has more reason to."

"I get in his face enough, he'll make a mistake. I won't make one."

She went around with the lawyers, one for each of the men she'd brought in. They were, she thought, slime in five-thousand-dollar suits. They knew every trick. But they were going to have a hard time weaseling around the fact she had everything on record.

"Records," the head slime named Canarde said, with a lift of his perfectly manicured fingers, "you alone had possession of. You have no corroboration that the discs were not manufactured or tampered with for the purpose of harassing my client."

"What was your client doing riding my back bumper from Connecticut to New York?"

"It isn't against the law to drive a public road, Lieutenant."

She simply flipped back, tapped her finger on the file. "Carrying concealed and banned weapons."

"My client claims you planted those weapons."

Eve shifted her gaze toward the client, a man of about two hundred and fifty pounds with hands like hams and a face only a mother could love-if she were seriously nearsighted. As yet, he hadn't opened his mouth.

"I must've been pretty busy. So your client, who apparently has been struck mute, purports that I just happened to be carrying four self-charging hand lasers and a couple of long-scoped flame rifles in my police unit, with the hopes that some innocent civilian might come along and I could frame him. Seeing as, what, I didn't like his face?"

"My client has no knowledge of your motives."

"Your client is a piece of shit who's been down this road before. Assault and battery, carrying concealeds, assault with a deadly, possession with intent. You're not standing for some choirboy, Canarde. With what we've got on him, he goes in, and he stays in. My best guess is twenty-five, hard time with no parole option, off-planet penal colony. Never been on an off-planet facility, have you, pal?"

Eve showed her teeth in a smile. "They make the cages here look like suites at The Palace."

"Police harassment and intimidation is expected," Canarde said smoothly. "My client has nothing more to say."

"Yeah, he's been a real chatterbox up till now. You going to let Ricker make you the sacrificial lamb here? You think he's worried about the twenty-five you'll do in a cage?"

"Lieutenant Dallas," Canarde interrupted, but Eve kept her eyes on the man, saw the faintest shadow of worry in his eyes.

"I don't want you, Lewis. You want to save yourself, you want to deal with me. Who sent you after me today? Say the name, and I cut you out of the herd."

"This interview is over." Canarde got to his feet.

"Is it over, Lewis? You want it over? You want to start your first night of twenty-five in a cage? Does he pay you enough, can anyone pay you enough to make you swallow sitting in a hole twenty hours every day for twenty-five years, with a slab for a bed, with security cams watching you piss in a steel toilet? No luxuries off-planet, Lewis. The idea isn't rehabilitation, no matter what the politicians say. It's punishment."

"Be quiet, Mr. Lewis. I have ended this interview, Lieutenant, and demand my client's right to a hearing."

"Yeah, he'll get his hearing." She rose. "You're a sap, Lewis, if you think this mouth in a pricey suit's standing for you."

"I got nothing to say. To cops or cunts." Lewis looked up, sneered. But Eve saw the glitter of fear in his eyes.

"I guess that counts me out altogether." Eve signaled to the guard. "Take this sack of shit to his hole. Sleep tight, Lewis. I won't tell you to sleep, Canarde," she said as she walked out. "I hear sharks don't."

She rounded the corner, slipped down a hall, and through a door where Whitney and Peabody stood in observation.

"The hearings are set for tomorrow. Starting at nine," Whitney told her. "Canarde and his team put on the pressure to get them in."

"Fine, our boys'll still spend the night in a cell. I want to sweat Lewis again, before the hearing. We can push his hearing to the end of the group, give me some time with him tomorrow morning. He's the one who'll crack."

"Agreed. You've never visited an off-planet rehabilitation center, have you, Lieutenant?"

"No, sir. But I've heard they're gutters."

"Worse. Lewis will have heard, too. Keep playing that note. Go home," he added. "Get some sleep."

"If I'd been in there," Peabody said when they were alone, "I'd've rolled over on my mother. Could he really cop twenty-five off-planet?"

"Oh yeah. You don't mess with a cop. The system frowns severely on it. He knows it, too. He's going to be thinking about it tonight. Thinking hard. I want you back here at six-thirty. I want to hit him again early. You can stand in, look mean and heartless."

"I love doing that. Are you going home?" she asked, knowing how often her lieutenant sent her off and stayed on the job herself.

"Yeah. Yeah, I am. After rubbing shoulders with that bunch, I want a shower. Six-thirty, Peabody."

"Yes, sir."

– =O=-***-=O=-

She'd missed dinner and wasn't pleased to discover the candy thief who'd targeted her as patsy had found her newest stash. She had to settle for an apple someone had foolishly left in the squad's friggie.

Still, it filled the hole so that by the time she got home she was more interested in a long, hot shower than a meal. She was slightly disappointed that Summerset didn't slide into the foyer on her arrival so they could have their evening pissing match.

Shower first, she decided, jogging up the stairs. Then she'd track Roarke down. The shower would give her time to figure out just how much of her day she wanted to share with him.

Editing Ricker out of it, for the time being, seemed like the best path to marital harmony.

When she stepped into the bedroom, she saw the flowers first. It was difficult to miss them as there was a four-foot spread of them dead center of the room and the scent was sweet enough to hurt her teeth.

It took another moment to realize the flowers had long, skinny legs in black trousers.

Summerset. The shower could wait.

"For me? Gee, you shouldn't have. If you don't try harder to control your passion for me, Roarke's going to fire your bony ass and make my life complete."

"Your humor," the flowers said in a dry, faintly Slavic voice, "eludes me as usual. This obnoxious and overstated arrangement just arrived by private messenger."

"Watch the cat," she began as Summerset stepped forward and Galahad strolled in his path. To her surprise and reluctant admiration, Summerset neatly sidestepped, avoided Galahad's tail by a, well, a cat hair, and neatly set the enormous bouquet on the wide table in the sitting area.

Galahad leaped up, sniffed at it, then padded over to butt his head on Summerset's leg.

"The flowers are for you," Summerset said, and since she was looking, ignored the cat. "And as of now, they become your problem."

"Who sent them? They're not Roarke's style."

"Certainly not." Summerset sniffed, a great deal as Galahad had done, and eyed the elaborate arrangement with distaste. "Perhaps one of your felonious acquaintances considers it a suitable bribe."

"Yeah, right." She snatched out the card, ripped it open, then snarled in a manner that had the cat leaping down and standing between Summerset's legs. "Ricker, that son of a bitch."

"Max Ricker?" Distaste turned to ice, the jagged sort that flayed skin. "Why would he send you flowers?"

"To get my goat," she said absently, then a ripple of fear worked into her belly. "Or Roarke's. Get them out of here. Bum them, stuff them in the recycler. Get rid of them fast. And don't tell Roarke." She grabbed Summerset's sleeve. "Don't tell Roarke."

She made it a point never to ask Summerset for anything. The fact that she was, and urgently, had alarm bells sounding in his brain. "What's Ricker to you?"

"A target. Get them out, damn it. Where's Roarke?"

"In his office upstairs. Let me see the card. Have you been threatened?"

"They're bait," she said impatiently. "For Roarke. Take the elevator. Move. Get them gone." She crumbled the card in her hand before Summerset could grab it from her. "Now."

Dissatisfied, Summerset lifted the arrangement again. "Be very, very careful," he said, then maneuvered them onto the elevator.

She waited until the doors closed before she smoothed out the card, read it again.

I never had the chance to kiss the bride. M. Ricker

"I'll give you the chance," she muttered and carefully tore the card to bits. "The first time we meet in hell."

She flushed the pieces, breathed a little easier, then stripped. She left her clothes where they fell, laid her weapon harness over the long counter, then stepped into the glass-walled shower.

"All jets full," she ordered, closing her eyes. "One hundred and two degrees."

She let the water beat at her everywhere, warm away the little chill the flowers had brought with them. She would put that aside and calculate how she would drill at Lewis the next morning.

Feeling better, she turned the jets off, squeezed some of the water out of her hair, and turned. Yelped.

"Jesus. Jesus Christ, Roarke, you know I hate when you sneak up on me like that."

"Yes, I do." He opened the door to the drying tube, knowing she preferred it to a leisurely toweling off. While the fan whirled, he strolled over to take her robe from the hook on the back of the door.

But when she stepped out, he held onto it rather than offering. "Who put those marks on you?"

"Huh?"

"Your arm's bruised."

"Yeah." She glanced down, had an image of Ricker, his eyes burning as his fingers dug into her flesh. "You're right. Must've run into something." She reached for the robe only to have him hold it out of reach. "Come on, I'm not going to play your sick games in the bathroom."

Such a statement usually made him smile. Her stomach began to quiver when his eyes stayed cool and steady on hers.

"They're finger marks, Lieutenant. Who handled you?"

"For God's sake." Working up irritation, she snatched the robe. "I'm a cop, remember? It means I tend to run into a number of nasty characters in any given day. Have you eaten? I'm starving."

He let her walk back into the bedroom, stand and fiddle with the AutoChef. Waited until she punched in a request. "Where are the flowers?"

Oh shit. "What flowers?"

"The flowers, Eve, that were delivered just a while ago."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I just got-Hey!"

He'd spun her around so quickly her teeth nearly rattled. Might have if they hadn't frozen solid at the fury in his eyes. The chill had turned to fire very quickly. "Don't lie to me. Don't ever fucking lie to me."

"Cut it out." He had her arms. But even now, she realized, even when he was furious, he didn't hurt her, and was careful to keep his grip away from the bruise. "Flowers come here all the time. What am I supposed to know about it? Now let me go. I'm hungry."

"I'll tolerate, and by God do tolerate, a great deal from you, Eve. But you won't stand here and lie to my face. You have bruises on you put there since I last saw you, and by someone's hand. Summerset is downstairs feeding a bunch of flowers into the recycler. On your orders, I assume, since he brought them up here first. Goddamn it, I can still smell them. What are you afraid of?"

"I'm not afraid of anything."

"Then who? Who put the fear behind your eyes?"

"You."

She knew it was wrong, knew it was cruel. And hated herself for it when his eyes went blank, when he stepped just a little too carefully back from her.

"I beg your pardon."

She hated when he used that rigid and formal tone, hated it worse than a shout. And when he turned to walk away from her, she gave up.

"Roarke. Damn it, Roarke!" She had to go after him, take his arm. "I'm sorry. Look, I'm sorry."

"I have work."

"Don't freeze me out. I can't take it when you do that." She dragged her hands through her hair, pressed the heels of them hard on her forehead where it had begun to throb. "I don't know how to do this. Any way I do, it's going to piss you off."

Disgusted, she stalked back to the sitting area, flopped on the couch, scowled at nothing in particular.

"Why don't you try the truth?"

"Yeah, all right. But you have to make me a promise first."

"Which would be?"

"Oh, get the stick out of your ass and sit down, would you?"

"The stick in my ass is surprisingly comfortable just now." He'd been studying her face, calculating, speculating. And he knew. "You went to see Ricker."

"What are you, psychic?" Then her eyes popped wide and she was up and running again. "Hey, hey, hey, you promised."

"No. I didn't."

She caught up to him in the hallway, considered trying to muscle him to the floor, then decided to go for his weak spot. She simply wrapped her arms around him.

"Please."

"He put his hands on you."

"Roarke. Look at me, Roarke." She laid her hands on his face. The look in his eyes was murder. She knew he could accomplish it, hot or cold. "I baited him. I've got my reasons. And right now, I've got him shaken. The flowers were just a dig at you. He wants you to come after him. He wants it."

"And why shouldn't I oblige him?"

"Because I'm asking you not to. Because taking him down is my job, and if I play it right, I'm going to do that job."

"There are times you ask a great deal."

"I know it. I know you could go after him. I know you'd find a way to get it done. But it's not the right way. It's not who you are anymore."

"Isn't it?" But the rage, the first blinding rush of it, was leveling off.

"No, it's not. I stood with him today, and now I'm standing with you. You're nothing like him. Nothing."

"I could have been."

"But you're not." The crisis had passed. She felt it. "Let's go in and sit down. I'll tell you all of it."

He tipped her face back, a finger under her chin. Though the gesture was tender, his eyes were still hard. "Don't lie to me again."

"Okay." She closed a hand over his wrist, squeezed there in silent promise where his pulse beat. "Okay."