Memory in Death

Chapter 4

TO KEEP HER MIND BUSY, EVE CONCENTRATED on paperwork and follow-ups. Dealing with the drone work had the added benefit of getting her desk reasonably clear before the holidays snuck up and bit her in the ass.

She was making considerable headway when Peabody came to her office door.

“Tubbs’s tox came back positive for traces of Zeus, and various others. Other vic was clean. The bodies, such as they are, will be released to next of kin tomorrow.”

“Good job.”

“Dallas?”

“Mmm. I’m sending the squad’s expense chits up. Most of them,” she said with a sneer. “Baxter and I are going to have a little chat.”

“Dallas.” Eve glanced up, saw Peabody’s face. “What?”

“I’ve got to go to court. Celina.”

Eve got to her feet. “We’ve already given our testimony.”

“Prosecution called me separately, remember? As one of the victims.”

“Yeah, but… I thought you weren’t coming up for that yet, not for another week or two anyway. With the holidays…”

“It’s moving along pretty fast. I need to go in.”

“When?”

“Sort of now. It shouldn’t take long, but… You’re going with me?” Peabody asked as Eve grabbed her coat.

“What do you think?”

On a long breath, Peabody closed her eyes. “Thanks. Thanks. McNab’s going to meet me there. He’s out in the field, and he’s going to try to… Thanks.”

On the way out, Eve stopped at one of the vending units. “Get yourself some water,” she told Peabody. “Get me the cold caffeine.”

“Good idea. My throat’s already dry. I’m prepped,” Peabody continued as she entered her code, made her choices. “The prosecution team drilled me good. And it’s not like it’s the first time I’ve testified in court.”

“It’s the first time you’ve testified as a victim. It’s different. You know it’s different.”

She passed Eve a tube of Pepsi, and took a long pull from the water as they walked. “It wasn’t even Celina who hurt me. I don’t know why I’m so spooked.”

“She was part of it. She had foreknowledge and did nothing. She’s charged with accessory for a reason, Peabody. You go in, you lay out what happened, you don’t let the defense shake you. Then you walk away from it.”

You could walk away from it, Eve thought, but you never really got away. Peabody would remember every moment of that attack. She’d remember the pain and the fear. Justice might be served, but even justice couldn’t wipe away the memories.

She went out the main doors. However crappy the day, the short walk would settle Peabody down. “You’re a cop,” she began, “and you took a hard hit in the line. That matters to juries. You’re a woman.” Eve slid her hands into her pockets, out of the cold rain. “Whether or not it should apply, that matters to juries, too. The fact that this big, crazy son of a bitch—one who’d killed and mutilated multiple women—kicked you around… it matters big time.”

“He’s sewed up.” And that was a huge relief. “Too damn crazy to stand trial. He’ll be locked up in an institution for the mentally defective, violence sector, ‘til he croaks.”

“Your job here is to make what Celina didn’t do matter. To help the prosecution prove she was responsible.”

“They’ll get her cold on Annalisa Sommers’s murder, the one she did herself. She’ll go up for that. Maybe it’s enough.”

“Enough for you?”

Peabody stared straight ahead, chugged more water. “I’m working on it being enough.”

“Then you’re doing better than I am. You made it through, others didn’t. She watched. Every one of the dead after she linked psychically with John Blue is on her. Every minute you spent in the hospital, in recovery. Every bad moment you’ve had about it is on her, too. I damn well want her to pay.”

As they walked up the courthouse steps, Peabody swallowed hard. “Hands are shaking.”

“Toughen up” was all Eve said.

Once they were through security, she could have badged her way into the courtroom. Instead she waited with Peabody while APA Cher Reo made her way over.

“We’ve got a short recess,” Reo began. “You’ll testify next.”

“How’s it going in there?” Eve asked.

“She’s got good lawyers.” Reo glanced back toward the double doors. She was pretty and blonde, with perky blue eyes and a faint Southern drawl. She was also tough as titanium. “We’re both playing the psychic card, in different ways. Their stand is that the images Celina received—the murders, the violence—resulted in trauma, diminished capacity. They’ve got their experts swearing to it, and as a result they’re trying to hang all the responsibility on Blue. He’s crazy, he invaded her mind, and there you go.”

“Bullshit.”

“Well, yes.” Reo fluffed at her hair. “On our end we have her snuggled up safe in bed at home, watching Blue torture and mutilate and kill, which gave her the bright idea to do the same, with his MO, to her former lover’s fiancée. Under the guise of working with the cops, she held back while women were murdered, and while a NYPSD detective was critically injured. A decorated officer, who courageously fought back and was intimately involved in closing the case.” Reo put a hand on Peabody’s arm, gave it a little rub in what Eve recognized as a woman-to-woman support gesture. “You want to go over it again? We’ve got a few more minutes.”

“Maybe. Okay, maybe.” Peabody turned to Eve. Her eyes were a little too bright, her smile a little too tight. “You can go on in. I’ll get one more briefing from Reo, then I might want to throw up. I’d do that better alone.”

Eve waited until Reo took Peabody into a conference room, then she pulled out her communicator and tagged McNab. “Where are you?”

“On my way.” His pretty face and the long blond tail he wore bobbed on her screen. “Three blocks south. I had to hoof it. Who the hell let all these people out on the street?”

“There’s a recess, nearly over. You’ve got a few minutes. I’ll be in the back. Save you a seat.”

She clicked off, walked in, and sat, as she had countless times in the course of her career. Halls of justice, she thought as she studied the bench, the gallery, the reporters and those who piled in out of curiosity. Sometimes—she liked to think most times—justice was served here.

She wanted it for Peabody.

They’d dunked the ball of the case in the net for the arrest, for the indictment. Now the ball was passed to the lawyers, to the judge, and to the twelve citizens who sat on the jury. She studied them when they filed in.

A moment later, Celina Sanchez was led in with her legal team.

Their eyes met, held with that quick, buzzing connection between hunter and prey. It all came back, all the bodies, all the blood, the waste, and the cruelty.

For love, Celina had said at the end of it. She’d done it all for love.

And that, Eve thought, was the biggest bullshit of all.

Celina took her seat, faced front. Her luxurious hair was worn back and up—sleek and almost prim. Instead of her preferred bold colors, there was a staid gray suit.

Just packaging, Eve noted. She knew what was inside it. Unless the jury was dirt stupid, they knew, too.

Reo stepped in, leaned down briefly. “She’s going to be fine. It’s good you’re here.” Then she walked to the front to take her place with the State’s team.

As the bailiff called for the court to rise, McNab bolted through the doors. His face was pink from cold and exertion, but was still a few shades calmer than the puce shirt he wore under a jacket with a blue and pink zigzag pattern so bright and busy it stung the eyes. On matching puce airboots, he nipped in beside Eve, spoke in a breathless whisper.

“Didn’t want me to sit with her—needed a minute. We thought we had ‘til Monday. Damn it.”

“She knows how to handle herself.”

There was no point telling him her stomach was tying itself into greasy knots. No point in telling him she knew what he saw in his head as they took their seats and the PA called Peabody.

He’d see himself running, with his heart slamming in his throat, hear himself shouting, “Officer down!” into his communicator as he flew down the steps of the apartment building to get to her.

Eve hadn’t been there, but she saw it, too. She hadn’t been there to see Peabody broken and bloody and crumpled on the street. But she could see.

She wanted every member of the jury to see it, too.

As directed, Peabody gave her name, her rank, her badge number. The PA was brisk with her—good strategy, in Eve’s mind. Treat her like a cop. He reviewed with her some of the testimony already given, and he and the lead for the defense did their little lawyer dance.

When she was asked to take them through the evening of the attack, she started out strong. The timing, the steps, the way she’d contacted her cohab partner, Detective Ian McNab, as she’d walked home from the subway. So when her voice broke, the jury heard it, they saw it. And they saw a woman’s struggle to stay alive, a cop’s fight to survive.

“I was able to deploy my weapon.”

“You were severely injured, and in a life-or-death struggle with a man who was considerably bigger than you, but you were able to reach your weapon?”

“Yes, sir. I got one off. He threw me, was throwing me. I remember being airborne, and firing. Then I hit the ground, and I don’t remember anything until I woke in the hospital.”

“I have here a list of the injuries you sustained, Detective. With the court’s permission, I’ll read them off for your verification.”

As it began, McNab’s hand groped for Eve’s.

She let him hold it through the recitation, through the verification, the objections, the questions. She said nothing when the defense began their cross, and McNab’s fingers tightened like thin wires on hers.

Peabody was shaky now, and the defense played on that. But that might be a mistake, Eve thought. Screwing with the victim, the only survivor in a series of hideous murders.

“According to your own testimony, Detective, and the statements and testimony of other witnesses to the attack, John Joseph Blue was alone when he assaulted you.”

“That’s correct.”

“Ms. Sanchez was not there at the time you were injured.”

“No, sir. Not physically.”

“According to prior testimony, Ms. Sanchez had never met or spoken with or had contact with the man who attacked you, with John Joseph Blue.”

“That’s not accurate. She had contact with John Blue. Psychically.”

“I would qualify the word contact . Ms. Sanchez had observed, through her gift, violent murders committed by one John Joseph Blue, to which he has confessed. Isn’t it true that Ms. Sanchez came to you voluntarily to offer her assistance in your investigation?”

“No, sir, it’s not.”

“Detective, I have reports in evidence that clearly state Ms. Sanchez volunteered her help, without any fee, to the investigating officers, and that her assistance was accepted. That, in fact, she was instrumental in identifying Blue, and thereby stopping him.”

While he’d spoken, Peabody lifted a water glass, drank deep. Her voice was steady again, a cop’s again when she continued. “No, sir, she did not give the investigative team or the department, or the victims or the city assistance. She, in fact, hindered the investigation by holding back key information in order to kill Annalisa Sommers, which was her primary objective.”

“Your Honor, I ask that this witness’s speculative and inflammatory statement be stricken from the record.”

“Objection.” The PA was on his feet. “This witness is a trained police officer, one of the key members of the investigative team.”

The dance continued, but Eve could see Peabody relax into it now. She’d found her rhythm.

“You’ve got two seconds to let go of my hand before I use the other to punch you,” Eve said mildly.

“Oh. Sorry.” McNab released her, gave a nervy little laugh. “She’s okay, don’t you think?”

“She’s fine.”

There was more, then re-cross. When she stepped down, Peabody was a little pale, but Eve was pleased to see her turn her head, look directly at Celina.

She’d remember that, too, Eve decided. She’d remember she’d stood up, and she’d looked.

“That’s my girl,” McNab said the minute they were outside the courtroom. His arms went around her. “She-Body, you rocked! ”

“More like I was rocky, but I think I came around. And Jesus, I’m glad it’s over.” She rubbed a hand over her belly, mustered up a genuine smile. “Thanks for sticking,” she said to Eve.

“No problem.” Eve checked the time. “Tour’s over in two. Take off, take the personal.”

“I’m okay, I—”

“Nothing’s shaking anyway.” She spotted Nadine Furst, Channel 75’s on-air ace, clicking her way over the tiles in her skinny-heeled boots, her camera in her wake. “At least, nothing official.”

“There she is. How’d it go, Peabody?”

“Okay. I think it went good.”

“You up for a quick one-on-one?”

Eve started to object on principle, then stopped herself. It would probably be good for Peabody to have her say outside the courtroom. And she could trust Nadine.

“I guess. Sure. I can do that.”

“It’s lousy out, but it’d make better screen if we did it on the steps. Give up your girl a minute, McNab.”

“Nope, but you can borrow her.”

“Dallas, looking forward to tomorrow.” They headed for the doors. “I could use a quick one from you, too. The sober, flat-eyed, ‘justice is being served’ kind of thing.”

“No. It’s Peabody’s show. Take the personal,” Eve said to Peabody, and took a look up at the sky before she started down the steps.

At the bottom, she turned, looked back. Nadine was right, it would make good screen—Peabody, damp in the drizzle, on the steps of the courthouse. It’d be something Peabody would want her family to see, how she’d stood there and talked of the job and justice.

Since she liked seeing it herself, she watched a few moments. She turned away again, just in time to see the shove, grab, and go.

“My purse! My purse!”

“Oh, shit,” Eve muttered. She blew out a breath, and gave chase.

* * *

Halfway down the steps, Nadine risked a broken neck by rushing. “Get on her!” she shouted to her camera. “Stay on her. Look at her go!” When Peabody and McNab whizzed by, Nadine all but danced on the courthouse steps. “Don’t lose them, for God’s sake.”

* * *

The snatcher was about six foot, Eve judged, and looked a solid one-ninety. Most of his height was legs, and he was using them. He bowled people over like pins, leaving her to leap over the piles.

Her coat streamed back, leather snapping in the wind.

She didn’t waste her breath shouting for him to stop, identifying herself as the police. His eyes had met hers—as Celina’s had—and they’d recognized the hunt.

He grabbed a glide-cart on the corner—operator and all—and shoved it. Soy dogs skidded onto the ground, drink tubes splatted and burst.

She jigged away from a pedestrian he all but threw at her, then jagged from another. Judging the distance, she pumped her legs, shoved off. Her tackle took him down, sheered them both across the wet sidewalk an inch from the curb, where the brakes of a maxibus screamed like a woman.

Her healing hip cried like a baby at the jolt.

He managed to get one in while she was avoiding being crunched under skidding wheels. She tasted blood when the elbow jammed her jaw.

“Now that was stupid.” She yanked his arms back, slapped on restraints. “That was bone stupid. Now you’ve got assaulting an officer on your tab.”

“Never said cop. How’m I supposed to know? ‘Sides, you were chasing me, you nearly threw me in front of a bus. Police brutality!” He shouted it, humping his body as he struggled to look for some sympathetic bystander. “I’m minding my own and you try to kill me.”

“Minding your own.” Eve turned her head, spat out blood. At least her throbbing jaw took her mind off her hip.

She tugged, pulled out the purse—and another three, along with assorted wallets. “Pretty good haul,” she commented.

He sat up, shrugged, philosophical now. “Holidays. People come out, whatever the hell. Don’t slap the assault on, okay? Come on, cut me one, will ya? It was reflex.”

Eve wiggled her jaw. “You’ve got good ones.”

“You’re fucking fast, gotta admire it.”

She shoved at her wet hair as Peabody and McNab ran up. “Disperse this crowd, will you? And get a black-and-white down here to haul this guy in. Multiple counts, robbery. Seeing as it’s this close to Christmas, I’ll give you a pass on the assault.”

“Appreciate it.”

“Let’s get—get that camera out of my face,” Eve snapped.

McNab busied himself gathering the bags and wallets. “Your lip’s bleeding, Lieutenant.”

“Nah.” She swiped a hand over it. “Bit my own damn tongue.”

“Car’s on its way, sir,” Peabody reported. “Nice pedestrian-hurdling, by the way.”

Eve crouched down to have another word with the snatcher. “If you’d run the other way, we’d be at Central, out of this damn cold drizzle.”

“Yeah, like I’d be that stupid.”

“Stupid enough to do the grab right in front of the courthouse.”

He gave her a sorrowful look. “I couldn’t stop myself. The woman’s swinging the damn purse around, gabbing to the woman walking with her. She practically gave it to me.”

“Right. Tell it to your PD.”

“Lieutenant Dallas?” Nadine, huffing a little, stepped up. She had a hand clamped over the arm of a woman with huge brown eyes. “This is Leeanne Petrie, whose property you’ve just recovered.”

“Ma’am. I just don’t know how to thank you.”

“Start by not calling me ma’am. We’ll need you to come down to Central, Ms. Petrie, to make a statement and sign for your property.”

“I’ve never had so much excitement. Why, that man just shoved me right down on the ground! I’m from a little place called White Springs—just south of Wichita, Kansas. I’ve never had so much excitement.”

It had to be said. “You’re not in Kansas anymore.”

* * *

Because she pulled rank and ordered Peabody home, straightening out the mugging mess kept her at Central until after shift. Dark had the temperatures dropping, and the incessant drizzle turned into sleet. The now tricky streets turned the drive home into a marathon of annoyance.

Stuck in it, she sipped on ice water to soothe her sore tongue, and let her mind drift. She was a handful of blocks from home when it drifted to Trudy Lombard, and the light went off.

“Not me. Jesus, it’s not about me. Why would it be? Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

She flicked on sirens, shot into vertical. Cursing herself and the snarls that made the maneuver all but suicidal, she engaged her dash link.

“Roarke,” she snapped when Summerset came on. “Is he there yet? Put him on.”

“He’s just come through the gates, hasn’t yet reached the house. If there’s an emergency—”

“Tell him I’ll be there in ten. I need to talk to him. If anyone named Lombard contacts the house, don’t put her through to him. You got that? Don’t put her through.”

She flicked off, whipped her wheel, and nipped back down to the street to narrowly miss a trio offenders.

Son of a bitch! What else would she be after but money? Big, shiny piles of it. And who in the known universe had the biggest piles?

She wasn’t getting away with it. And if he even thought of paying her off to make her go away, Eve vowed she’d personally skin him.

She fishtailed, and roared through the gates of home. Roarke opened the door himself as she braked in front of the house.

“Am I under arrest?” he called out, and circled a ringer in the air. “Sirens, Lieutenant.”

She called them off, slammed the door. “I’m so stupid! I’m a goddamn idiot.”

“If you’re going to talk that way about the woman I love, I’m not going to offer you a drink.”

“It’s you. It was never me. If I hadn’t let her turn me inside out, I’d‘ve known it from the get. Lombard.”

“All right. And what’s this?” He skimmed a finger gently over the faint bruise on her jaw.

“Nothing.” Anger had smothered any lingering pain. “Are you listening to me? I know her. I know the type. She doesn’t do anything without a purpose. Maybe the purpose is jollies, but she didn’t go to all the trouble and expense to come here just to bust my balls. It’s about you.”

“You need to calm down. In the parlor.” He took her arm. “There’s a nice fire. You’ll have some wine.”

“Will you stop .” She slapped his hand off, but he simply shifted and tugged off her wet coat.

“Take a minute, catch your breath,” he advised. “You may not be wanting a drink, but I am. Filthy weather.”

She did take a breath, pressed her hands to her face to steady herself. “I couldn’t think, that was the trouble. Didn’t think. Just reacted. And I know better. She must’ve figured she’d come see me, try to play the reunion card. I was just a kid, and messed up with it. So maybe she banked that I didn’t remember what it had been like with her. Then she can be the long-lost mother, angel of mercy, whatever, grease those wheels so when she tapped me for money, I’d ask you to give it to her.”

“Underestimated you. Here.” He handed her a glass of wine.

“Backup plan.” She took the wine, paced to the hearth with its snapping fire, back again. “Someone like her has one. I’m not receptive, she’ll have a way to go straight to the source. Right to you. Try for sympathy, some hard-luck story. Move to threats if that doesn’t shake the money tree. She’d want a nice fat lump sum, come back for more later, but get a juicy bite right off…”

She took a moment to study his face. “And none of this is news to you.”

“As you said, you’d have come to it yourself right away if you hadn’t been so twisted up.” He lowered his head enough to brush his lips over her jaw. “Come, sit by the fire.”

“Wait, wait.” She grabbed his sleeve. “You didn’t go warn her off. You didn’t go see her.”

“I had and have no intention of going to her. Unless she continues to harass and upset you. Do you know she had eleven other children put in her care over the years? I wonder how many of them she tormented as she did you.”

“You ran her? Of course you ran her.” She turned away. “I’m really slow on this one.”

“It’s taken care of, Eve. Put it out of your mind.”

She kept her back to him, took a slow sip of the wine. “How is it taken care of?”

“She came to my office today. I made it clear that it would be best for all concerned if she went back to Texas and didn’t attempt to contact you again.”

“You spoke to her?” She squeezed her eyes shut against the helpless anger. “You knew who she was, what she was, but you let her in your office.”

“I’ve had worse in there. What did you expect me to do?”

“I expected you’d leave this to me. That you’d understand this is my problem. This is for me to handle.”

“It’s not your problem, but ours—or was. And it was for us to handle. Now it’s done.”

“I don’t want you dealing with my problems, my business.” She whirled around and before either of them knew she intended it, she let the glass fly. Wine and glass splatted and shattered. “This was my personal business.”

“You don’t have personal business from me any longer, any more than I do from you.”

“I don’t need to be shielded, I won’t be shielded. I won’t be tended to.”

“Oh, I see.” His voice softened, a dangerous sign. “So it’s perfectly fine, we’ll say, for me to see to those pesky little details. Can this get wrapped, for instance. But the things that matter, I’m to keep my nose out?”

“It’s not the same. I’m a lousy wife, I get that.” Her throat was clogging up, and her voice thickening as the words fought their way through. “I don’t remember to do things—don’t know how and don’t give a rat’s ass about finding out. But—”

“You’re not a lousy wife, and I’d be the one to judge that. But you are, Eve, an extremely difficult woman. She came to me, she tried to shake me down, and she won’t try it again. I have every right to protect you, and my own interests. So if you want to have one of your snits about it, you’ll have to have it alone.”

“Don’t you walk away from me.” Her fingers actually itched to pick up something precious to throw at him as he started for the doorway. But that was too female, and too foolish. “Don’t you walk away and flick off my feelings.”

He stopped, looked back at her with eyes searing with temper. “Darling Eve, if your feelings weren’t so important to me, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. If and when I walk away from you, it’s to prevent myself from taking the alternative, which at the moment would be to beat your head against some hard object until a little sense rattles into it again.”

“Were you even going to tell me?”

“I don’t know. There were good reasons on both sides of that, and I was still weighing them. She hurt you, and I won’t have it. That’s simple. For God’s sake, Eve, when I found out about my mother, and went into a spin, didn’t you knock it out of me? Didn’t you tend to me, even stand in front of me?”

“It’s not the same.” Her stomach burned, and the acid of it spewed into words. “What did you get, Roarke? What did you fall into but people who love and accept you? Good, decent people. And what do they want from you? Not a damn thing. Yeah, you had it rough. Your father killed your mother. But what else did you find out? She loved you. She was a young, innocent girl who loved you. It’s not the same for me. Nobody loved me. Nobody and nothing I came from was decent or innocent or good.”

Her voice hitched, but she bore down, let the rest spew out. “So yeah, you took a hard and nasty slap, and it sent you reeling. But what did you fall into? Right into gold. What else is new?”

He didn’t stop her when she strode from the room. Didn’t go after her when she charged up the steps.

At that moment, he couldn’t think of a single reason why he should.