Promises in Death

CHAPTER SIX

“RICKER.” THE NAME RAMMED INTO EVE LIKE a bare-knuckled jab. Sucker punch. “Max Ricker’s son?” “Yes. I checked to be sure.”

She took one long breath to regain her balance. “So Alex Ricker has property and business in Atlanta. Wasn’t he in Germany or something?”

“He was raised there, and his father kept him insulated. When Ricker and I had . . . business together, Alex was kept back. I never met him. I’m not sure any of Ricker’s associates did—not then.”

Yes, she had her balance back now, and walked it through. “You worked with Ricker, back in the bad old days. Went out on your own, did a hell of a lot better. Years later, you help me take Ricker down, way down, so he’s spending the rest of his miserable life in a concrete cage off-planet. I wonder what his baby boy thinks of that.”

“I don’t know anything of their relationship, but I do know that Ricker’s connected to me—to my father, to yours. I know he went to a lot of trouble to take me down, and failed. And to end you, and failed. Now his son may very well be connected to your victim.”

Eve sat back, tapped her fingers on her thighs. Thinking, thinking. “Max Ricker had a lot of cops in his pocket. A lot of officials, a lot of politicians. We dug some of them out last year, but it’s unlikely we dug them all. Would Ricker have passed them to his son?”

“I can’t say for sure—yet. But who else?”

“Yeah. And his businesses, too—what we didn’t find and shut down. Certainly, his contacts, his power points, and there’d be finances. Coltraine meets the son of a notorious criminal, now doing life—well, several terms of life—she’d have run him. She’d run the owner of the business that got hit. It’s routine. Make sure it doesn’t come up an insurance fraud, at the very least. When she did, she’d have made the connection to his father. She’d ask him about it. Have to.”

She pushed up, walked to her board to study Coltraine’s ID shot. “She’d have to ask. Three years ago Ricker was still at large, still slithering through the loopholes, but any standing background check on the son would have coughed out the data on the father.”

“I don’t know if it has any bearing on your case, but . . .”

“Yeah, but.” She looked back at Roarke. “Did she close it? The case?”

“In a manner of speaking. She narrowed it down to three suspects. In each case when she secured a search warrant and went to serve it, she found the suspects gone and several items from the antique shop on the premises. Within two days, the bodies of the three men were found floating in the Chattahoochee River—chained together.”

“The what river? Did you make that up?”

“I suppose I could have, but no. I suspect some Native Americans did that a few centuries ago.”

“I think it’d be embarrassing to be dead in the Hoochie-Coochie River.”

“Chattahoochee.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Quite a bit, I’d think, to Atlantans.” He moved to her, laid a hand on her cheek. “And now that you’ve finished lightening the mood until you can get a handle on this . . .”

After a while, Eve thought, marriage turned walls into clear glass so both of you could see right through each other. “Okay. Okay, so maybe it’s like father, like son? Ricker’s a killer. He didn’t think twice about snapping necks or slitting them. The son gets ripped off, hunts down the ripper-offers—or follows Coltraine’s dots to same—and does them. Or has them done. She’d have to look there.”

“According to the file, Alex Ricker was attending a charity event, in Miami, with a few hundred witnesses at the time of death of the three suspects.”

“Didn’t want to get his hands dirty, ordered the hit when he was covered.”

“Possibly. If so, he proved as elusive as his father did. Oh, and I accessed the ME reports on the dead thieves.” He watched her start to speak—to object, no doubt—then swallow it. “They’d been beaten over the course of several hours, incurred numerous broken bones before their throats were slit. That’s the Ricker touch, in my opinion.”

“She had to know it.” Eve studied Coltraine again, tried to see into her head. “Everyone says she was thorough, detail-oriented. She wouldn’t have missed the link.”

“The files note a follow-up interview with Alex after the bodies were recovered, and the verification of his alibi. While the homicide case went cold, all of Ricker’s property was recovered.”

Eve rubbed the back of her neck. “Three years ago. She didn’t put in for transfer here until just under a year ago. As much as I’d like to burn another Ricker for pretty much anything, I can’t see the connection between her murder and a trio of payback homicides three years ago.”

“Maybe there isn’t. But Alex Ricker is in New York, and has been for the last week.”

“Is that so?” Eve stuck her hands in her pockets, rocked on her heels. “Now, see, that’s just too much coincidence. Where is he?”

“He has a pied-à-terre on Park Avenue.”

“Convenient. I’ll have to pay him a visit in the morning.”

“I’ll be going with you.” He held up a hand before she could speak. “Anything that involves Ricker, his son, his second cousin, his bloody pet poodle, I’m in it, too.”

“They don’t allow dogs on the Omega Penal Colony. Okay. I’m not going to argue about Ricker—either of them. We did enough of that a year ago.”

“A year ago,” Roarke pointed out. “A kind of anniversary. And here we have another dead cop—and you were littered with them last spring—as well as another Ricker. Oh, aye, far too many coincidences here.”

She’d already followed that path. “We need to do a deep background on Alex Ricker. When did he buy the Park Avenue property, what other businesses does he have, and how many of them are in New York? How often does his name pop up in conjunction with an investigation? And what has he been doing for the past year? Has he contacted his father? A lot of questions.”

“You won’t find the answers to all of them on these units. Not with the privacy laws and CompuGuard. Believe me, he’ll be protected under several layers.”

“Then we’ll use your unregistered.”

He angled his head. “That’s a quick leap for you, Lieutenant.”

“Maybe.” She stood as she was, hands in pockets, and stared into Coltraine’s face. “And maybe she found out more about Alex Ricker three years ago than she noted in her files.”

“You think he, like his father, had cops in his pocket? Including her?”

“I don’t know.” Inside her belly knots twisted. “God, I hope not, for Morris’s sake. But if she was dirty, I need to find out. If she was clean, and if Alex Ricker had something to do with her death, I need to find out.”

In Roarke’s secured office, the privacy-screened windows opened to the lights of the city. The slick U-shaped console held the sharpest of cutting-edge equipment—shielded as well—from the vigilent eye of CompuGuard.

Illegal, Eve thought, so whatever they found here couldn’t leave the room. But she’d know. For Morris, she needed to know.

Roarke, his hair pulled back in a short tail, his sleeves rolled up, stepped behind the console. He laid his hand on the palm plate. “Roarke. Power on.”

The console flashed on, a sea of jeweled lights and controls.

Roarke acknowledged. Power on.

“We’ll want coffee,” he said to Eve.

“I’ll get it.” She programmed a full pot from the office AutoChef, poured two tall mugs. When she turned, Roarke stood where he was, watched her. Waited.

“All right.” She crossed over, set his mug down, placed hers on the jut that held the auxiliary computer.

For Morris, yes, she thought. But not only.

“My father worked for Ricker. Your father worked for him, and we’ve established before that they met, and were working on the same job before the night in Dallas. Before I killed my father.”

“Before you, an eight-year-old girl, stopped him from raping you again.”

“Okay.” Truth could still dry the throat and chill the blood. “The fact is, he’s still dead. So’s your father. And your father pulled a double-cross, on Ricker, on a weapons deal. About twenty-four years ago.”

“In Atlanta.”

“Yeah. In Atlanta. Down the line, you worked for Ricker.”

Roarke’s tone turned very cool. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Were associated with him. Jump further down the line, Ricker shows up in New York, and he’s hell-bent on destroying you.”

“And you.”

“Three years ago, when Ricker was probably dreaming about eating your liver, Coltraine connects with Ricker’s son. In Atlanta. Between that point and this point, we brought Max Ricker down. One year ago. And a couple months after that Coltraine requests a transfer to New York. She gets cozy with the chief medical examiner. A man I have a close work relationship with, and who we both consider a friend. Alex Ricker comes to New York; she dies. I think when you’ve got that many intersections, you have to take a real hard look at the road.”

“And how will this be, for you, if this somehow tracks back to your father and mine?”

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to find out.” She took a breath. “I don’t know how it’ll be for either of us, but we need to find out.”

“We do, yes.”

“The killer sent her weapons, her badge back to me. Personally. Maybe he’s got a mole in Dispatch, and arranged for me to be assigned. But the fact is, it doesn’t take a brain trust to figure out that even if someone else had caught this case, I’d have been involved. Because of Morris. That package was always going to come to me.”

“Then we’re on the same page. And the note inside the package becomes more a threat than bravado.”

“Possibly. She wasn’t a street cop, Roarke. She was a puzzle solver, a detail chaser. But she wasn’t street, sure as hell wasn’t New York street. Nobody’s going to take me with my own weapon. Damn if I’ll have that in my jacket at the end of the day.”

He nearly smiled. “So pride will keep you safe?”

“Among other things. If I’m a target, why take her down? Why put every cop in the city on alert, then go for me?” She faced Roarke over the wink of jeweled lights. “I’m better than she was. That’s not bragging, that’s just fact. So it’s smarter to try to take me out cold than to try it when I’m already looking for a cop killer. And when, within the first twenty-four hours, I’ll find Alex Ricker in her files.”

“Logical. And somewhat comforting.”

“In any case, that’s all speculation. We need data.”

“It’ll take some time, to get under the layers.”

“I’ll use the auxiliary and keep going through her case files.”

Roarke sat, and began to peel at the first layers.

Ricker, he thought. The name was like a virus in his life, springing out, spreading, then crawling back into hiding only to slither out again. And again.

He had reason to wonder if Ricker had been responsible for jamming the knife in Patrick Roarke’s throat in that alley in Dublin years ago. And that, Roarke admitted, was the single thing he’d have to be grateful to Ricker for.

Not true, he corrected, not entirely true.

He could be grateful for what he’d learned during his association with Ricker. He’d learned how far he would go, and where he wouldn’t go. He knew it had both amused and annoyed Max Ricker that he wouldn’t deal in the sex trade when it involved minors or the unwilling. That he wouldn’t kill on command, or for the sake of spilling blood.

He’d taken lives in his time, Roarke admitted. He’d spilled blood. But always for purpose. Never for profit. Never for sport.

He supposed, in some oddly twisted way, he’d learned more of his own lines, his own moralities from Max Ricker than he had from his own unlamented father.

What, he wondered, had Alex Ricker learned from his father?

German boarding schools, Roarke noted. Military type. Very strict, very costly. Private tutors on holidays, then private university. Studied in business, finance, languages, politics, and international law. Played football—soccer to the Yanks.

Covering many bases there.

No marriages, no children on record.

Alex Maximum Ricker, age thirty-three, residences in Atlanta, Berlin, Paris, and most recently, New York. Financier and entrepreneur listed as occupations of record.

Also covering a lot of bases. Current net worth: 18.3 million.

Oh, no, there’ll be more than that. So, Roarke thought. Let’s get down to it.

He worked steadily for an hour, ordering multiple runs and chipping away manually.

“Covering asses, too, aren’t you now?” Roarke mumbled to himself when he hit a block, shoved and tunneled around and under it. “Not so quick to toot your own horn as your father was. Smarter. All that posturing and preening helped bring him down, didn’t it? Ah, now, there’s a start.”

“What? What have you got?”

“Hmmm?”

“I’ve got nothing.” Eve swiveled around to him. “Zip. You’ve got something. What?”

“Apparently, it’s not coffee,” he said with a glance at his empty mug.

“What am I, a domestic droid?”

“If so, why aren’t you wearing your frilly white apron and little white cap, and nothing else?”

She sent him a pained look of sincere bafflement. “Why do men think that kind of getup is sexy?”

“Hmm, let me think. Mostly naked women wearing only symbols of servitude. No, I can’t understand it myself.”

“Perverts, your entire species. What have you got?”

“Besides a very clear picture of you in my head wearing a frilly white apron and little white cap?”

“Jesus, I’ll get the damn coffee if you’ll cut it out.”

“What I’ve found is the reason Alex Ricker hasn’t blipped on my radar, not that I’ve given him much thought. But from a purely business standpoint, why he hasn’t blipped.”

“Why?”

Roarke gestured to the wall screen when he ordered data to transfer there. “He’s scattered and spread himself out, with numerous small to mid-size companies. None of them with holdings that cross the line into interesting.”

“What’s the line where they become interesting?”

“Oh, for me? Eight to ten million, unless I’m looking to acquire small, individual properties or businesses.”

“Oh yeah, anything under ten mil’s boring.” She rose to get the coffee. “Is he laundering or hiding income?”

“Not that I’ve found so far. He’s bought or established companies. Some he owns outright, others a controlling interest. Still others a small percentage. Some of his companies are arms of his other companies.”

He took the coffee she brought him, patted his knee in invitation, and laughed at her sour look. “Some of his companies own property—homes in Athens, Tokyo, Tuscany. He holds some of these interests through an Atlanta-based operation called—logically enough—Varied Interests. Others are held by the Morandi Corporation, which was his mother’s name.”

“Dead mother, as I remember.”

“Very dead. He was six when she ingested an unhealthy number of tranqs and supposedly fell or leaped from her bedroom window, twenty-two stories above the streets of Rome.”

“Where was Max Ricker?”

“Excellent question. According to statements in the very thin police file on her death, he was in Amsterdam when she jumped, or fell. Alex also has a company he called Maximum Exports, which owns—among other things—the antique store in Atlanta that was hit. There’s no criminal on him. He’s been questioned on various accounts by various authorities on various continents. But never charged.

“All of these business activities and the structuring are perfectly legal,” he told her. “Close to the edge on some, but never over. I’ve no doubt, unless he’s a complete bint, he’s got a second set of books on every one of his enterprises, and considerable funds sheltered in coded accounts.”

Roarke sat back, sipping coffee. “He stays under the radar, you see. Very carefully under. No splash, no flash. Quietly successful businesses that make no real noise. Until you dig down, put them together and see there’s really one entity that’s worth about ten times what his official data lists for him.”

“And there’s probably more.”

“Oh, very likely. I can find it, now that I’ve got his pattern. I could find those coded accounts, with enough time.”

“Those would probably still be on the legal side. What about the illegal side?”

“Some of these may be fronts. Or I’ll find smaller, more obsure businesses that serve as fronts. An antiques business—of which he has several worldwide—is always a handy way to smuggle all manner of things. There’s an easier way for me to find out if he’s taken over some of his father’s trade. I can ask people who know people.”

“Not yet. For one, I don’t want the people who know people to signal him we’re coming to see him. For another, I don’t want to get so bogged down in Alex Ricker, when there’s no clear evidence he’s involved. Coltraine’s the priority. I’m going to run her financials. I’m going to run them from here because I don’t want to set up any flags there either. I’m hoping she was clean, and if she was clean, I don’t want to be responsible for even a whisper she might’ve been dirty.”

“I’ll run them. I’ll do it,” he said when she started to protest. “I can do it faster, as we both know. And it’ll be easier for you if you don’t have to do it yourself. I know it troubles you to look at one of your own this way.”

“It’s worse. She’s dead. I can’t ask her. She can’t defend herself. She can’t say, ‘Fuck you, bitch, for even thinking it.’ ”

She dragged a hand through her hair, then crossed the room to stand and look out the window. “And here I am, using illegal means to try to find out if she was tangled in something wrong. If she was on the take, or Alex Ricker’s weasel.”

“As chief medical examiner, Morris could access this case file?”

“Yeah, he could find a way to get it. So by making sure this area of investigation isn’t in that file, am I protecting him or myself?”

“Darling Eve, I see nothing wrong with doing either, and both. If you find the worst, he’ll have to know. If you don’t, what good would it do you or him for him to know you felt compelled to look?”

“You’re right. You do it. You’ll be faster.”

She stayed at the window, staring out at dark and light. Had Morris taken a soother, given himself a chance to sleep, to put it away for a few hours? Or was he staring out at the dark and the light?

She promised she’d find the answers for him. But what if those answers were the woman he loved was a bad cop, a liar, that she’d used him? What if the answers were as painful as the questions?

“Eve.”

She turned, braced. “What?”

“I can do another level or two, try some tricks, but what I’m seeing here is a woman who lived within her means. You may be interested to know a New York City detective third grade makes a bit more than an Atlanta detective. But the cost of living balances that out. She paid her bills on time, and now and then went a little over budget on her credit card and carried a balance for a month or two. There aren’t any unusual deposits or withdrawals, no major purchases.

“I’ve tried the most usual mix of names—hers, her family’s, Atlanta, and other key words that make sense to me and the computer to search for a second account. I haven’t found one.”

Most of the tension eased. “So, at this point, it doesn’t look like she was on the take.”

“You were in her apartment. Was there any art, any jewelry?”

“Nothing that rings the bells. Framed posters, street art, a couple of good pieces of jewelry, the rest tasteful costume. Let’s let this alone until we talk to Alex Ricker. I don’t want to do this to her any more until I have to.”

“All right.” He ordered all data saved, then laid his hand over the palm plate again. “Roarke. Power down.”

When the console winked off, he crossed to her, put his hands on her shoulders. “It’s harder when it’s personal.”

She closed her eyes a moment. “I can’t stop thinking about him. How he’s dealing, or not dealing. What I might find, and how whatever that is will affect him. I should take myself off the case, for all the same reasons I can’t and won’t take myself off the case. Because a friend’s life has been turned inside out.”

With a nod of understanding, he stepped back to take her hand, to walk her to the elevator. “Tell me your instincts about her—your feelings. No filters,” he added as they stepped into the car. “Master bedroom,” he ordered.

Eve hesitated, then shrugged. “I was a little bitchy about her, I guess.”

“Because?”

“Well, it sounds stupid. But because of Morris. Because he’s . . . He’s Morris, and I didn’t see her coming until she was already there and he’s gooey-eyed. It’s not like I have—ever had—that kind of thing with Morris. Or wanted one, or even thought about him. Not like Peabody and her sexual fantasies. I mean, Jesus.”

“Why that slut. I thought I was her sexual fantasy.”

Relieved with how he’d played it, she gave him a bland stare as they stepped into the bedroom. “You lead the charge, but apparently Peabody’s got the capacity for lots of fantasy partners. Probably all at the same time.”

“Hmm. Interesting.”

“And I probably just violated some girl code by saying that, which doesn’t apply to your question anyway.” She pushed her hands through her hair. “I don’t know what I thought of her, exactly, because it was all filtered through that ‘Wait a damn minute, this is Morris’ attitude. Which is embarrassing now that I really think about it.”

“You have a connection. An intimacy. Not all intimacies are sexual. She was an interloper.”

“That’s it.” Eve pointed a finger at him. “That’s exactly it. And she didn’t deserve that from me. She made him happy. Anybody could see it. I’d say, now that I think about it, her apartment didn’t surprise me. The look of it, the neatness of it, because that’s how she struck me. A woman who had things in place, and knew what she liked. Dressed well—not flashy, but well. Sexual. She gave off the sexual and the female more than the cop, but the cop was there. Under it. She took her time, in how she talked, how she moved. That’s a Southern thing, isn’t it? Nothing New York about her. I don’t know.” She shrugged again. “It’s not much.”

“Your instincts on a very brief acquaintance told you she was a woman of subtlety—not flashy. Comfortable with her sexuality, who took her time and who liked order, respected her own tastes, and who was willing to try something new. A new city, a new man. That’s considerable, I’d say. Your instincts and what you’ve learned since confirm that her work was just that to her. Work. It didn’t drive her life. Given that, it’s very possible, isn’t it, that a sexual woman of taste could find herself attracted to a man like Alex Ricker. And he to her. Wouldn’t that relationship, if one developed, have eventually conflicted with her work, or become somewhat problematic?”

“A cop hooking up with a guy with a shady rep?” She arched her eyebrows. “Gee, why should that be a problem?”

He laughed. “We’re different, you and I.” He put his arms around her. “But it’s interesting, isn’t it, to speculate how a similiar situation might go very, very badly.”

“We could’ve taken a turn, ended up—”

He shook his head, touched his lips to hers to stop the words. “No. We were always meant to end up here.” He pressed the release on her weapon harness. “Always meant to find each other. Save each other. Be with each other.”

She laid her hands on his cheeks. “That’s the Irish. But I like the thought of it. Those weird intersects in the past—your father, mine, Ricker. They didn’t stop us from getting here. Roarke.” She lowered her hands, removed her harness. “When Ricker intersected with us again, it screwed us up for a while. I don’t want that to happen again. I don’t want wherever this investigation may lead to cause a rift between us again.”

“I wouldn’t want to see you take this investigation into an area that causes a rift. Same goal,” he said at her frown. “Different angles of approach. Do you want me to promise, Eve, that I won’t get pissed off if you put yourself in Alex Ricker’s sights, as you did with his father? I can’t. The name Ricker makes it personal. There’s no way around that.”

“You have to trust me to do my job, to handle myself.”

“I do. Every day of my life.”

She understood then it was his trust in her, his belief in her that held his fear for her at bay. “Then I’ll promise something. That I’ll try to tell you beforehand whenever I have to deal with Alex Ricker during this investigation.”

“Try?”

“If something comes up, if I can’t take the time, or hell, don’t know ahead of time, then I can’t tell you. I can’t make a promise to you I might have to break.”

“All right. That’s fair enough. I’ll promise to try not to get pissed off.”

She smiled now. “I’ll probably have to do something, and you’ll probably get pissed off.”

“But we’ll have tried.”

“Yeah. So in case trying doesn’t turn out to be enough, let me say this now. I love you.”

The pleasure rose warm in him, circled his heart. Again his arms went around her, again his mouth lowered to hers. “No one but you,” he murmured. “Always.”

She wrapped around him, hard and tight, giving what he needed before he asked. All. Everything. It undid him, this love, for her and from her. The depth and breadth of it left him weak and wanting, desperate and staggered.

She poured herself into the kiss and filled him. And still, he thought, there would always be more.

However many times they’d loved each other, how many ways, it was always now, and always new. The taste of her, familiar and fresh, stirred him like the first time. Those strong arms around him, that mouth both pliant and avid. Yes, this was everything. This was all.

His murmur came from the core of his heart, in the language of his blood. “ A grha. ”

He lifted her. That quick, careless strength, the sensation of being taken made her head spin. His power, hers, combined so she felt just a little drunk when he laid her on the bed, when his body covered hers. The weight, the shape, the feel of him. How could she ever get enough?

Had all the years they’d both starved for love caused this bottomless need for each other? His scent—she turned her face into his throat, breathing him in. His touch—and arched under the stroke of his hands. His taste—that punch of sensation whenever their mouths met.

No one else had ever brought her here. No one else had ever compelled her to take him with her.

Slow, dreamy, drugging, hands and lips, sighs and movement. His shirt and hers peeled away so flesh could meet flesh, so hands could roam over curves, over planes to entice and delight.

The long lines of her never failed to fascinate and arouse him. The shape of her—the subtle curves captivated him with those seductive contrasts. Skin so soft, so smooth over rigidly toned muscle.

A warrior’s body, he often thought. One who gave herself to him and brought him endless thrill, and impossible peace. She trembled for him, rose up and over. Lost as he was lost. And when he slipped inside her, she said his name. Said his name as her body arched up to his, as she twined around him, as their eyes met.

He was inside there, too, he thought. In those eyes, in that gilted brown. Lost, and found. And it was her name on his lips as they took each other.