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“Eve.” He took her hand then, holding firm when she tried to yank free. “I’m sorry. Terribly sorry.”
“They said I was eight when they found me, in some alley in Dallas. I was bleeding, and my arm was broken. He must have dumped me there. I don’t know. Maybe I ran away. I don’t remember. But he never came for me. No one ever came for me.”
“Your mother?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember her. Maybe she was dead. Maybe she was like Catherine’s mother and pretended not to know. I only get flashes, nightmares of the worst of it. I don’t even know my name. They weren’t able to identify me.”
“You were safe then.”
“You’ve never been shuffled through the system. There’s no feeling of safety. Only impotence. They strip you bare with good intentions.” She sighed, let her head fall back, her eyes close. “I didn’t want to arrest DeBlass, Roarke. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill him with my own hands because of what happened to me. I let it get personal.”
“You did your job.”
“Yeah. I did my job. And I’ll keep doing it.” But it wasn’t the job she was thinking of now. It was life. Hers, and his. “Roarke, you’ve got to know I’ve got some bad stuff inside. It’s like a virus that sneaks around the system, pops out when your resistance is low. I’m not a good bet.”
“I like long odds.” He lifted her hand, kissed it. “Why don’t we see it through? Find out if we can both win.”
“I’ve never told anybody before.”
“Did it help?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Christ, I’m so tired.”
“You could lean on me.” He slipped an arm around her, nestled her head in the curve of his shoulder.
“For a little while,” she murmured. “Until we get to New York.”
“For a little while then.” He pressed his lips to her hair and hoped she would sleep.
chapter nineteen
DeBlass wouldn’t talk. His lawyers put the muzzle on him early, and they put in on tight. The interrogation process was slow, and it was tedious. There were times Eve thought he would burst, when the temper that reddened his face would tip the scales in her favor.
She’d stopped denying it was personal. She didn’t want a tricky, media blitzed trial. She wanted a confession.
“You were engaged in an incestuous affair with your granddaughter, Sharon DeBlass.”
“My client has not confirmed those allegations.”
Eve ignored the lawyer, watched DeBlass’s face. “I have here a transcript of a portion of Sharon DeBlass’s diary, dated on the night of her murder.”
She shoved the paper across the table. DeBlass’s lawyer, a trim, tidy man with a neat sandy beard and mild blue eyes picked it up, studied it. Whatever his reaction was, he hid it behind cool indifference.
“This proves nothing, lieutenant, as I’m sure you know. The destructive fantasies of a dead woman. A woman of dubious reputation who has long been estranged from her family.”
“There’s a pattern here, Senator DeBlass.” Eve stubbornly continued to address the accused rather than his knight at arms. “You sexually abused your daughter, Catherine.”
“Preposterous,” DeBlass blurted out before his attorney lifted a hand to silence him.
“I have a statement, signed and verified before witnesses from Congresswoman Catherine DeBlass.” Eve offered it, and the lawyer nipped it out of her fingers before the senator could move.
He scanned it, then folded his carefully manicured hands over it. “You may not be aware, lieutenant, that there is an unfortunate history of mental disorder here. Senator DeBlass’s wife is even now under observation for a breakdown.”
“We are aware.” She spared the lawyer a glance. “And we will be investigating her condition, and the cause of it.”
“Congresswoman DeBlass has also been treated for symptoms of depression, paranoia, and stress,” the lawyer continued in the same neutral tone.
“If she has, Senator DeBlass, we’ll find that the roots of it are due to your systematic and continued abuse of her as a child. You were in New York on the night of Sharon DeBlass’s murder,” she said, switching gears smoothly. “Not, as you previously claimed, in East Washington.”
