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“And why not?” he countered. “They’ll get here faster, and drier.” He rubbed a hand on her thigh. “What is it—under it all?”
“Dreams,” she admitted. “Just ugly dreams. Ledo playing pool with a broken cue, with the other half stuck in his chest. Reminding me I broke the cue in the first place. Reminding me he helped me on the dead sleeper—Snooks, the sleeper went by Snooks. Not a lot of help, but he did give me a little. And Bastwick, pounding at me on the witness stand again.”
Eve shook her head, went back to coffee.
“And the killer. She looked like me—sort of. A reflection, I guess, smudged. I guess that came from Hastings talking about her eyes being something like mine. And I get the shrink-wrap of that,” she added. “We’re sitting there, drinking wine. Or she’s drinking it. There’s a big, bubbly pizza on the table between us. Like we’re sharing a friendly moment, you know? And she’s making her case. Just how many murderers, rapists, pedophiles, spouse beaters would Bastwick have gotten off if she’d lived? How many people would mug or steal or kill to get the scratch to buy what Ledo sold? Couldn’t I see the greater good here? Wasn’t it about that? About protect and serve? About justice? About respect for the law and the people who enforce it?”
She fell silent a moment, but he knew she wasn’t finished. She was working up to the rest.
“I said something like killing, taking a life, wasn’t respecting or enforcing the law. That’s when she leaned over, and it was all blood then. The wine, the pie. Just blood. She’s looking at me, and she says I did the same. I killed my father. She’s smiling when she says it, like we’re just a couple of pals having a friendly chat.”
She needed another moment, just one more. “In the dream, I felt panic. She can’t know that. She shouldn’t know that. I said she didn’t know anything about it, but she just kept smiling, told me she knew everything. Everything about me.”
To soothe, Roarke lifted her hand, kissed it. “She doesn’t know anything about you.”
“It felt like she did. ‘You killed Richard Troy,’ she said to me, ‘because he needed killing.’ That I knew what it was like, same as her, to do what needed doing, and to like it.”
“Bloody bollocks to that.”
“I know it.” She pushed up, had to stand, walk it off. “I was eight, and he was raping me—again. And so crazy drunk he might’ve killed me. I believed he would. That little knife on the floor, then in my hand, then going into him. It’s not the same, not the same as killing someone who poses no threat, not to you or anyone. It’s not even in the same universe.”
She shoved her hands through her hair then made herself sit again. “I know that,” she said, calmly now.
Still, he put an arm around her, drew her closer. “You don’t believe what she said in this dream, but you think she does—or would if she knew.”
“Yeah. She’d see it as something that makes us more alike. She sees us as alike, and this would cement it. She needs to convince me, that’s what I think. She needs to show me how right she is, and how it’s all a kind of partnership. She could pick anybody, right, but she needs to pick people she sees as against me, who’ve hurt or offended me in some way. To her twisted mind. Jesus, if a cop isn’t hurt or offended every other day, she’s not doing the job.”
She poked at the waffles on her plate. Shame to waste them, she thought, but her appetite had dropped out. “She asked if I wanted to pick the next one.”
“She thinks she knows you, that’s true enough in dream and reality. But she couldn’t be more wrong.”
“I don’t know her—that’s the problem. Just pieces. But I will, I’ll know her, and all of it. I’m going to wake up Peabody,” she decided, and got up again to do just that.
Once she’d verbally dragged her partner out of a warm bed, Eve headed straight to the computer lab. She brought up the next batch of results, gave them a quick scan.
A pattern here, she decided—definitely a pattern starting to form. She ordered the results on her own comp, started for her office. She could leave any e-nudging to McNab, if Feeney cleared him for her.
With the door connecting her office to Roarke’s open, she heard him on the ’link, and a sizzly female French accent speaking back to him.
Eve listened for a minute, realized despite the sizzly French it was all geek speak. The same, as far as she was concerned, in any language. Incomprehensible.
She went directly to her desk, began to sort and order the latest results with the ones she’d sorted and ordered late the night before.
She ran probabilities, re-sorted, re-ran.
Considered, then wrote up a summary of her conclusions, sent it all to Whitney, to Mira, and for good measure to Feeney as well.
Then sat back and began to read the correspondence she’d highlighted, beginning with the earliest. August of ’59, she mused. Before the Icove investigation. So that . . . notoriety hadn’t set it all off—if she was on the right track.
The interest—no, obsession—hadn’t rooted there.
Dear Lieutenant Dallas,
You don’t know me—yet—but I’ve been following your career for some time, and with admiration and great respect. Up until now, I couldn’t find the courage to contact you, but the tragedy of the Swisher family, and the bravery of young Nixie compelled me. If an orphaned child has the courage to be heard, why can’t I?
You risked your life to bring the Swishers justice, as you have before and will again. You inspire me, and challenge me to work for justice, to take risks, to do what must be done.
It pains me to know how often those you seek to protect and serve give you no thanks, give you no respect. I know, too well, what it’s like to be unappreciated, not respected.
