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As she drove, she engaged her computer. “Computer, status on David Palmer, mental-defective inmate on Rexal penal facility.”
Working…. David Palmer, sentenced to eight consecutive life terms in off-planet facility Rexal reported escaped during transport to prison infirmary, December nineteen. Man-hunt ongoing.
“I guess Dave decided to come home for the holidays.” She glanced up, scowling, as a blimp cruised over, blasting Christmas tunes as dawn broke over the city. Screw the herald angels, she thought, and called her commander.
“Sir,” she said when Whitney’s face filled her screen. “I’m sorry to disturb your Christmas.”
“I’ve already been notified about Judge Wainger. He was a good man.”
“Yes, sir, he was.” She noted that Whitney was wearing a robe—a thick, rich burgundy that she imagined had been a gift from his wife. Roarke was always giving her fancy presents. She wondered if Whitney was as baffled by them as she usually was. “His body’s being transferred to the morgue. I have the evidence sealed and am en route to my home office now.”
“I would have preferred another primary on this, Lieutenant.” He saw her tired eyes flash, the golden brown darkening. Still, her face, with its sharp angles, the firm chin with its shallow dent, the full, unsmiling mouth, stayed cool and controlled.
“Do you intend to remove me from the case?”
“You’ve just come off a difficult and demanding investigation. Your aide was attacked.”
“I’m not calling Peabody in,” Eve said quickly. “She’s had enough.”
“And you haven’t?”
She opened her mouth, closed it again. Tricky ground, she acknowledged. “Commander, my name’s on the list.”
“Exactly. One more reason for you to take a pass here.”
Part of her wanted to—the part that wanted, badly, to put it all aside for the day, to go home and have the kind of normal Christmas she’d never experienced. But she thought of Wainger, stripped of all life and all dignity.
“I tracked David Palmer, and I broke him. He was my collar, and no one knows the inside of his mind the way I do.”
“Palmer?” Whitney’s wide brow furrowed. “Palmer’s in prison.”
“Not anymore. He escaped on the nineteenth. And he’s back, Commander. You could say I recognized his signature. The names on the list,” she continued, pressing her point. “They’re all connected to him. Wainger was the judge during his trial. Stephanie Ring was APA. Cicely Towers prosecuted the case, but she’s dead. Ring assisted. Carl Neissan was his court-appointed attorney when Palmer refused to hire his own counsel, Justine Polinksy served as jury foreman. Dr. Mira tested him and testified against him at trial. I brought him in.”
“The names on the list need to be notified.”
“Already done, sir, and bodyguards assigned. I can pull the data from the files into my home unit to refresh my memory, but it’s fairly fresh as it is. You don’t forget someone like David Palmer. Another primary will have to start at the beginning, taking time that we don’t have. I know this man, how he works, how he thinks. What he wants.”
“What he wants, Lieutenant?”
“What he always wanted. Acknowledgment for his genius.”
“It’s your case, Dallas,” Whitney said after a long silence. “Close it.”
“Yes, sir.”
She broke transmission as she drove through the gates of the staggering estate that Roarke had made his home.
Ice from the previous night’s storm glinted like silver silk on naked branches. Ornamental shrubs and evergreens glistened with it. Beyond them, the house rose and spread, an elegant fortress, a testament to an earlier century with its beautiful stone, its acres of glass.
In the gloomy half-light of morning, gorgeously decorated trees shimmered in several windows. Roarke, she thought with a little smile, had gotten heavily into the Christmas spirit.
Neither of them had had much in the way of pretty holiday trees with gaily wrapped gifts stacked under them in their lives. Their childhoods had been miseries, and they had compensated for it in different ways. His had been to acquire, to become one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. By whatever means available. Hers had been to take control, to become part of the system that had failed her when she was a child.
Hers was law. His was—or had been—circumventing law.
Now, not quite a year since another murder had put them on the same ground, they were a unit. She wondered if she would ever understand how they’d managed it.
She left her car out front, walked up the steps and through the door into the kind of wealth that fantasies were made of. Old polished wood, sparkling crystal, ancient rugs lovingly preserved, art that museums would have wept for.
