Remember When

23.

Eve woke, as usual, to find Roarke up before her, already dressed and settled into the sitting area of the bedroom with coffee, the cat and the morning stock reports on screen.

He was, she saw through one bleary eye, eating what looked like fresh melon and manually keying in codes, figures or state secrets for all she knew on a 'link pad.

She gave a grunt as way of good morning and stumbled off to the bathroom.

As she closed the door, she heard Roarke address the cat. "Not at her best before coffee, is she?"

By the time she came out, he'd switched the screen to news, added the audio and was doctoring up a bagel. She nipped it out of his hand, stole his coffee and carried them both to her closet.

"You're as bad as the cat," he complained.

"But faster. I've got a morning briefing. Did you catch a weather report?"

"Hot."

"Bitching hot or just regular hot?"

"It's September in New York, Eve. Guess."

Resigned, she pulled out whatever looked less likely to plaster itself against her skin after five minutes outside.

"Oh, I've a bit of information on the diamonds for you. I did some poking around yesterday."

"You did?" She glanced around, half expecting him to tell her the shirt didn't go with the pants, or the jacket didn't suit the shirt. But it seemed she'd lucked out and grabbed pieces that met his standards. "I didn't think you'd have time with all that ass-kicking."

"That did eat up considerable time and effort. But I carved out a little time between bloodbaths. I've just put it together for you this morning, while you were getting a little more beauty sleep."

"Is that a dig?"

"Darling, how is telling you you're beautiful a dig?"

Her answer was a snort as she strapped on her weapon.

"That jacket looks well on you."

She eyed him warily as she adjusted her weapon harness under the shoulder. "But?"

"No buts."

It was tan, though she imagined he'd call it something else. Like pumpernickel. She never understood why people had to assign strange names to colors.

"My lovely urban warrior."

"Cut it out. What did you get?"

"Precious little, really." He tapped the disk he'd set on the table. "The insurance company paid out for the quarter of them and the investigator's fee of five percent on the rest. So it was a heavy loss. Could've been considerably worse, but insurance companies tend to take a dim view on multimillion-dollar payouts."

"It's their gamble," she said with a shrug. "Don't play if you don't wanna pay."

"Indeed. They did a hard press on O'Hara's daughter, but couldn't squeeze anything out. Added to that, she was the one to find or help the investigator find what there was to recover, and she was instrumental in nailing Crew for the police."

"Yeah, I got that far. Tell me what I don't know."

"They pushed at the inside man's family, associates, at his coworkers. Came up empty there, but watched them for years. Any one of them had upped their lifestyle without having, say, won the lottery, they'd have been hauled in. But they could never find Crew's ex-wife or his son."

"He had a kid?" And she kicked herself for not going back in and checking the runs after they'd returned home the night before.

"He did, apparently. Though it's not in Gannon's book. He was married, divorced and had a son who'd have been just shy of seven when the heist went down. I couldn't find anything on her with a standard starting six months after the divorce."

Interest piqued, she walked back to the sitting area. "She went under?"

"She went under, the way it looks, and stayed there."

He'd gotten another bagel while he spoke, and more coffee. Now he sat again. "I could track her, if you like. It'd take a bit more than a standard, and some time as we're going back half a century. I wouldn't mind it. It's the sort of thing I find entertaining."

"Why isn't it in the book?"

"I imagine you'll ask Samantha just that."

"Damn right. It's a thread." She considered it as she disbursed her equipment in various pockets: communicator, memo book, 'link, restraints. "If you've got time, great. I'll pass it to Feeney. EDD ought to be able to sniff out a woman and a kid. We've got better toys for that than they did fifty years ago."

She thought of the Electronic Detective Division's captain, her former partner. "I bet it's the sort of thing that gets him off, too. Peabody's picking me up." She checked her wrist unit. "Pretty much now. I'll tag Feeney, see if he's got some time."

She scooped up the disk. "The ex-Mrs. Crew's data on here?"

"Naturally." He heard the signal from the gate and, after a quick check, cleared Peabody through. "I'll walk you down."

"You going to be in the city today?"

"That's my plan." He skimmed a hand over her hair as they started down the steps, then stopped when she turned her head and smiled at him. "What's that about?"

"Maybe I just think you're pretty. Or it could be I'm remembering other uses for stairs. Or maybe, just maybe, it's because I know there's no bony-assed, droid-brained puss face waiting down there to curl his lip at me on my way out."

"You miss him."

The sound she made was the vocal equivalent of a sneer. "Please. You must need a pill."

"You do. You miss the little routine, the dance of it."

"Oh ick. Now you've got this picture in my head of Summerset dancing. It's horrible. He's wearing one of those . . ." She made brushing motions at her hips.

"Tutus?"

"Yeah, that's it."

"Thanks very much for putting that in my head."

"Love to share. Know what? You really are pretty." She stopped at the bottom of the steps, grabbed two handfuls of his hair and jerked his head toward hers for a long, smoldering kiss.

"Well, that put other images entirely in my head," he managed when she released him.

"Me too. Good for us." Satisfied, she strode to the door, pulled it open.

Her brow knit when she saw Peabody along with the young EDD ace McNab climbing out of opposite sides of her pea-green police unit. They looked like . . . She didn't know what the hell they looked like.

She was used to seeing McNab, Central's top fashion plate, in something eye-searing and strange, so the shiny chili-pepper pants with their dozen pockets and the electric-blue tank shirt covered with—ha ha—pictures of chili peppers didn't give her more than a moment's pause. Neither did the hip-length vest in hot red, or the blue air boots that climbed up to his knobby knees.

That was just McNab, with his shiny gold hair slicked back in a long, sleek tail, his narrow and oddly attractive face half covered by red sunshades with mirrored blue lenses and a dozen or so silver spikes glinting at his ears.

But her aide—no, partner now, she had to remember that—was a different story. She wore skinpants that stopped abruptly mid-calf and were the color of . . . mold, Eve decided. The mold that grew on cheese you'd forgotten you stuck in the back of the fridge. She wore some sort of drapey, blousy number of the same color that looked like it had been slept in for a couple of weeks, and a shit-colored jacket that hung to her knees. Rather than the fancy shoes she'd suffered through the day before, she'd opted for some sort of sandal deal that seemed to be made of rope tied into knots by a crazed Youth Scout. There were a lot of chains and pendants and strange-colored stones hanging around her neck and from her ears.

"What are you supposed to be, some upscale street peddler from a Third World country and her pet monkey?"

"This is a nod to my Free-Ager upbringing. And it's comfortable. All natural fabrics." Peabody adjusted her sunshades with their tiny round lenses. "Mostly."

"I think she looks hot," McNab said, giving Peabody a quick squeeze. "Sort of medieval."

"You think tree bark looks hot," Eve tossed back.

"Yeah. Makes me think of the forest. She-body running naked through the forest."

Peabody elbowed him, but she chuckled. "I'm searching for my detective look," she told Roarke. "It's a work in progress."

"I think you look charming."

"Oh shut up " was Eve's response as Peabody's cheeks pinked in pleasure. "You fix that heap?" she asked McNab.

"There's good news and bad news. Bad news is that's a piece of crap with a faulty comp system, which makes it about the same as every other police-issue on the streets. Good news is I'm a fricking genius and got her up and running with some spare parts I keep around. She'll hold until you get lucky and wreck it or some asshole who doesn't know better boosts it."

"Thanks. Backseat," she ordered. "Behind the driver. I'm afraid if I keep catching sight of you in the rearview I'll go blind." She turned to Roarke. "Later."

"I'll look forward to it. Hey." He caught her chin in his hand before she could walk away, then, ignoring her wince, brushed his lips lightly over hers. "Be careful with my cop."

Peabody sighed as she slid into the car. "I just love the way he says that. 'My cop.'" She scooted around to face McNab. "You never call me that."

"It doesn't work when you're a cop, too."

"Yeah, and you don't have the accent anyway. But you're cute." She pursed her lips at him.

"And you're my absolutely female She-body."

"Stop it, stop it, stop it! The neurons in my head are popping." Eve slapped her safety harness in place. "There will be no gooey talk in this vehicle. There will be no gooey talk within ten yards of my person. This is my official ban on gooey talk, and violators will be beaten unconscious with a lead pipe."

"You don't have a lead pipe," Peabody pointed out.

"I'll get one." She slid her eyes over as she drove toward the gates. "Why do you wear something that's wrinkled all to shit?"

"It's the natural state of the natural fabric. My sister wove this material."

"Well, why didn't she smooth it out or something while she was at it? And I can't believe how much time I waste these days discussing your wardrobe."

"Yeah. It's kind of frosty." Her smile turned to a frown as she looked down at her legs. "Do you think these pants make my calves look fat?"

"I can't hear you because something just burst in my brain and my ears are filled with blood."

"In that case, McNab and I will return to our rudely interrupted gooey talk." She yipped when Eve snaked out a hand and twisted her earlobe. "Jeez. Just checking."

***

Eve considered it a testament to her astounding self-control that she didn't kill either one of them on the way to Central. To keep her record clean, she strode away from them in the garage, nabbing the elevator alone. She had no doubt they'd have to exchange sloppy words or kisses before each separated to check in with their squad.

And judging by the sleepy, satisfied look in Peabody's eye when she strolled in, Eve assumed there'd been some groping added to the lip locks.

It didn't bear thinking about.

"Briefing in fifteen," Eve said briskly. "I have some new data and need to skim over it. I want to bring Feeney in, if he can manage it. To pursue one angle, we're going to need a person search that goes back over fifty years."

Peabody sobered. "The diamonds. We're looking for one of the thieves? Aren't they all dead?"

"Records would indicate. We're looking for the ex-wife and son of Alex Crew. They went into the wind shortly after the divorce and weren't mentioned in Gannon's book. I want to know why."

"Do you want me to contact Feeney?"

"I'll do that. You contact Gannon, schedule a meeting with her."

"Yes, sir."

After loading the disk Roarke had given her and getting coffee, Eve called Feeney's office in EDD.

His familiar, droopy face came on screen. "Seventy-two," he said before she could speak, "and I'm outta here."

She'd forgotten he had vacation coming up and juggled the time factor in with her other internal data. "Got time for a person search before you clock out with your sunscreen and party hat?"

"Didn't say I wasn't on the job until. Besides, you need a person search, I can put one of my boys on it." All his department were boys to Feeney, regardless of chromosomes.

"I'm looking for brilliance on this one, so I'm asking you to see to it personally."

"How much butter you got to slather on me to grease me up for it? I've got a lot of i 's to dot before I take off."

"It involves multiple homicides, a shitload of diamonds and a vanishing act going back over half a century. But if you're too busy packing your hula skirt, I can order up a couple of drones."

"Hula skirt's the wife's." He drew air in and out his nose. "Fifty years?"

"Plus a few. I've got a briefing down here in about ten."

"The one you hooked McNab for?"

"That's the one."

He pulled on his lips, scratched his chin. "I'll be there."

"Thanks." She cut off, then opened Roarke's file to familiarize herself with the data. While it played, she made copies, added them to the packs she'd already put together for the team, made up another for Feeney.

And thought fondly of the days when Peabody would've done all the grunt work.

As a result, she was the last one in the conference room.

"Detective Peabody, brief Captain Feeney on the investigation to date."

Peabody blinked. "Huh?"

"All those things in your ears clogging your hearing? Summarize the case, Detective, and bring Captain Feeney up to speed."

"Yes, sir."

Her voice squeaked a bit, and she stumbled over the initial data, but Eve was pleased Peabody found her rhythm. It would be a while yet before she had the stones to lead a team, but she had a good, agile mind and, once she got past the nerves, a straightforward and cohesive method of relaying data.

"Thank you, Detective." Eve waited while Feeney finished up making notes. "Baxter, anything from the club on Jacobs?"

"No leads. She was a regular. Came in solo or with a date, with a group. Night in question it was solo, and that's how she left. Hit the dance floor, had some drinks, chatted up a couple guys. Bartender knows she left alone because she talked to him over the last drink. Told him she was in a dry spell. Nobody she met lately did it for her. We got some names, and we'll check them out today, but it looks like a bust."

"Well, tie it up. Pursuant to the information gathered re Cobb, I flashed her picture around the restaurant Ciprioni's, where it's believed she had a date with the man we know as Bobby Smith."

"You went to Ciprioni's?" Peabody exclaimed.

"I needed to eat, I needed to follow up the lead. Two birds."

"Other people like Italian food," Peabody whined.

Eve ignored her. "I found the waitress who had their table in July. She remembers Cobb, and I've set her up with a police artist to try to jog her memory a little more on her description of Cobb's date. We can check the museums, galleries, theaters we believe they visited. Somebody might remember them."

"We'll take it," Baxter told her. "We've knocked down a few already."

"Good. Now that the media's announced the possible connection between these murders, our quarry is aware, almost certainly aware, we've made the link and are investigating concurrently. I don't see this as a deterrent to the investigation."

She waited a beat. "In your packs you'll find data relating to Alex Crew, one of the diamond thieves, and the only one of the four who demonstrated violent behavior. My source related that Crew had an ex-wife and a son. Both of these individuals vanished between the divorce and the heist. I want to find them."

"Crew might have killed them," Peabody suggested.

"Yes, I've considered that. He didn't have any problem killing one of his partners, or attempting murder on another partner's daughter. He'd done some time previously and was suspected of other crimes. He was into the life. Killing an ex wouldn't have been beyond his pathology. Neither would harming or killing a child. His child."

Fathers did, she thought. Fathers could be monsters as easily as anyone else.

"Dead or alive, I want to find them. We have their birth names, and their locations prior to their disappearance. Peabody and I will talk to Gannon this morning." She cocked a brow at Peabody.

"Eleven hundred at the Rembrandt."

"It's possible she has more information on them gathered through her family or her research for her book. I also want her reasoning for leaving them out of that book when others are named. Feeney, you're on the search?"

"On it."

"Ah . . . Roarke has offered to assist, if necessary, as civilian consultant. As he gathered the current data for me, he has an interest in following through."

"Never a problem for me to use the boy. I'll tag him."

"McNab, I want anything you can get me off Cobb's d and c, her 'links. Gannon's and Jacobs's communications equipment are already in-house. Check with the officer assigned to clearing those units."

"You got it."

"I've urged Gannon to consider private security, and she appears to be amenable. We'll keep a man on her as long as the budget allows. This perpetrator is very specific in his goal. Very specific in his targets. Both victims connected to Gannon. If he feels she's in his way, or has information he wants, he won't hesitate to try for her. At this point, we have nothing that leads to him but a fifty-year-old crime. Let's get more."

On the way back to the division, Eve watched idly as two plainclothes muscled along a restrained woman who weighed in at about three hundred pounds and was flinging out an impressive array of obscenities. Since both cops had facial cuts and bruises, Eve assumed the prisoner had flung more than curses before they'd cuffed her.

God, she loved the job.

"Peabody, my office."

She led the way in, closed the door, which had Peabody sending it a puzzled look. Then she programmed two cups of coffee, gestured to a chair.

"Am I in trouble?"

"No."

"I know I didn't handle the briefing very well. It threw me a minute, that's all, to do the stand-up. I—"

"You did fine. You want to work on focusing on the data instead of yourself. Self-conscious cops don't lead teams. Neither do cops who second-guess themselves every two minutes. You earned the shield, Peabody, now you have to use it. But that's not what this is about."

"The clothes are . . ." She trailed off at Eve's stony stare. "Self-conscious again. Putting it away. What is this about, then?"

"I work after shift a lot. Regularly. Go back out into the field to tug on a lead, work up various scenarios or do 'link or comp work in my home office. Bounce the case off Roarke. It's how I work. Are you going to have a problem with me not hooking you in every time I do?"

"Well, no. Well . . . I guess I'm trying to find the partner rhythm. Maybe you are, too."

"Maybe I am. It's not because I'm flipping you off. Let's get that clear. I live the job, Peabody. I breathe it and I eat it and I sleep with it. I don't recommend it."

"It works for you."

"Yeah, it works for me. There are reasons it works for me. My reasons. They're not yours."

She looked down into her coffee and thought of the long line of victims, and they all led back to herself, a child, bleeding and broken in a freezing hotel room in Dallas.

"I can't do this any other way. I won't do this any other way. I need what this gives me. You don't need the same thing. That doesn't make you less of a cop. And when I go out on my own on something, I'm not thinking you're less of a cop."

"I can't always put it away either."

"None of us can. And those who can't find a way to deal with that burnout, get mean, get drunk or off themselves. You've got ways to deal. You've got family and outside interests. And shit, I'll say it this once, you've got McNab."

Peabody's lips curved. "That must've hurt."

"Some."

"I love him. It's weird, but I love him."

Eve met her eyes, a brief but steady acknowledgment. "Yeah, I get that."

"And it does make a difference. And I get what you're saying, too. I can't always put it away, but sometimes I have to. So I do. I probably won't ever be able to spin it around in my head the way you do, but that's okay. I'm probably still going to bitch some when I find out you went out without me."

"Understood. We're all right then?"

"We're all right."

"Then get out of my office so I can get some work done before we see Gannon."

***

She wrangled for a consult with Mira and after some heated negotiations with the doctor's admin, was given a thirty-minute during lunch break at Central's infamous Eatery. Eve couldn't figure out why anyone with Mira's class would suffer the Eatery's indignities, but she didn't argue.

She managed, with considerable footwork, to delay her report to Commander Whitney until late that afternoon.

Another call included threats of doubtful anatomical possibility and a bribe of box seats at a Mets game. The combination netted her the promise from the chief lab tech of a full report on both cases by fourteen hundred.

Considering her 'link work a job well done, she grabbed her files, signaled Peabody and went into the field.

***

Peabody fisted her hands on her hips. "This is returning to the scene of the crime way, way after the fact."

"We didn't commit a crime, so technically we're not returning." Eve ignored the people who trooped or stalked around her as she stood at the corner of Fifth and Forty-seventh. "I just wanted a look at the place."

"Got hit pretty hard in the Urban Wars," Peabody commented. "Easy target, I guess. Conspicuous consumption. The haves and have-nots. All that fancy jewelry showcased while the economy took a nosedive, illegals were sold on the street like soy dogs and guns were strapped on like fashion accessories."

She edged closer to one of the displays. "Shiny."

"So three guys walk in, do a little switch-and-grab with the fourth, and walk out with pockets full of diamonds. Nobody's prepared for it as the inside guy's long-term, trusted, considered above reproach."

Eve studied the window displays as she spoke, and the people who stopped to huddle at them, dreaming over that shine. Gold and silver—metals; rubies and emeralds, and diamonds bright as the sun—stones. Since they couldn't be consumed for fuel, didn't keep you warm in the winter, it was tough for her to relate to the pull.

Yet she wore a circle of gold on her finger and a bright, glittering diamond on a chain under her shirt. Symbols, she thought. Just symbols. But she'd fight for them, wouldn't she?

"Inside man has to walk out, too," she went on, "practically on their heels, and go straight under. Finger's going to point at him, he knows that going in. But he wants what he wants and he tosses everything else away for it. And gets taken out before he can pat himself on the back. Crew did him, so Crew had to know how to get to him. Not only his location, but how to lure him out."

She looked up, as a tourist might, to the upper floors. No people glides on a building like this. There wouldn't have been any early century either, she mused. It had been rehabbed and rebuilt after the wars but was, essentially, the same as the history image she'd studied.

And leading down from the corner it dominated were shop after shop, display after display of body adornments. This single cross-town block held millions in merchandise. It was a wonder it wasn't hit on a daily basis.

"They didn't even bother to take out the security cams," she commented. "In and out and no sweat. But the cops would've ID'd them eventually. Every one of them had a sheet but the inside guy, and his gambling problem would've flagged him. So they were just going to stay under, keep the stones tucked away, wait for the air to cool. Then poof. You know why it might've worked?"

"The investigation would have focused, at least initially, on the inside man. They'd figure he cracked up, planned and executed. He's gone, diamonds are gone. They move on him."

"Yeah, while the rest of them scatter and wait it out. Crew was smart to eliminate him, but he went off when he didn't dispose of the body. Smarter, much smarter to dump the guy in the river so the cops waste time and resources looking for a dead man. Didn't think it through all the way, because he wanted what he wanted, too. Once he had it, he just wanted more. That's why he ended up dying in prison. This guy, our guy, he's a little smarter."

She studied a group of three women who stopped by a display window to make ooohing noises and exclamations. Yeah, the stuff was shiny and sparkly. She wasn't entirely sure why people wanted to shine and sparkle, but they did—and had since the dawn.

"But he's just as obsessed," Peabody commented. "Crew was obsessed with the diamonds, I think. That's what I get from the book. He had to have all of them. He couldn't settle for his cut, no matter what it took. I think this guy's the same in that area. Obsessed. Even possessed, in a way. Like they were—the diamonds—cursed."

"They're carbon-based stones, Peabody. Inanimate objects." Unconsciously she rubbed a finger over the tear-shaped diamond she wore on a chain under her shirt. "They don't do anything but sit there."

Peabody looked back in the window. "Shiny," she said again with her eyes unfocused and her jaw slack.

Despite herself, Eve laughed. "Let's get out of this heat and go see Gannon."