Chapter 5

Roarke programmed spaghetti and meatballs, a particular favorite of hers, so it would be a comfort. He poured them both a generous glass of Chianti.

"You'll work better for it," he told her when she simply stood in the middle of her home office, staring at the murder board she'd barely begun to set up. "Eat, and tell me from the beginning. A fresh eye," he reminded her. "And viewpoint."

"Okay." She let out a breath. "Okay." She joined him at the little table by the window. "I want to say, first off, I forgot about this deal tonight. I just forgot it. I don't know that I'd have remembered if this had been... well, a more usual case. I don't know if I would've remembered."

"I was a bit busy myself today." Watching her, he drank some wine. "I hadn't given this evening a thought until Caro reminded me late this afternoon. Maybe what you need, Lieutenant, is an admin of your own."

"The last thing I want is somebody telling me about stuff when I'm trying to do other stuff. And the department can't afford sticking me with a keeper if I wanted one."

She poked at a meatball. "Don't say Caro or a Caro-like substitute could send me reminders. I'd want to rip their lungs out and play a tune with them within two days."

"It takes years of practice and dedication to play a proper tune on the lungs."

"Maybe, but I'd be up for it. It's a charity thing, right, this thing tonight? They were probably counting on you and your big buckets of dough."

"The ticket price covers at least a bucket or two, and we'll make a donation."

"I should do it." Guilty, annoyed by the guilt, she poked at another meatball, decided maybe pasta first. "You could tell me how much and where it goes, and I should do it."

"Easy enough. I was thinking in the neighborhood of five million."

She swallowed—hard—the spaghetti she'd wound around her fork. "I don't have that big a bucket, or spend much time in that neighborhood. You make it."

"Done." He reached over, squeezed her hand. "Let that go, Eve. It's just a night out in fancy dress."

"You like those."

"Well enough. I find I like this more. Having dinner with you, here in the quiet. And while murder might not be a particularly appealing dinner conversation for some—those some aren't you and me. Now tell me, from the start of it."

However guilty and unsettled she felt, knowing he spoke the absolute truth reminded her just how lucky she was.

"Her admin, speaking of them, found her this morning," Eve began, going step by step.

"I'd like to see the security run. I assume you've had it enhanced, analyzed."

"Feeney's on that. The best guess is on race—killer's white or mixed race. And the height, unless there's lifts in the boots, hits about five feet ten inches. Estimate on hands and feet—small side for a man, but not unusually small. The clothes? Common, nondescript. No way to pin them down."

"He'd cased the building prior."

Really lucky, Eve thought, because Roarke caught on, and quick.

"Yeah, had to. The feed automatically overwrites every seventy-two hours, so there's no way to go back and... Vacancies." As it hit her, she jabbed a finger in the air. "I need to check, see if there's any unit or units in there that have been shown in the last few weeks. Hell, the killer could have walked through the place months ago, but it's likely he did at least one fresh pass in the last few weeks, to make sure nothing changed."

"Requests for building schematics?"

"I've got that working, but everything's slow because of the damn holidays."

"It's unlikely to matter. This one strikes as too efficient to make it that easy."

"Efficient, professional, dispassionate."

"You're considering a pro?"

"Peabody likes the angle." Now that she could talk it through—facts, evidence, probabilities—the food went down easier. But she still couldn't find her appetite.

"Somebody Bastwick knew hired the hit, is using me as that herring thing."

"Red herring."

"Yeah, yeah, I got it's red. I don't know why it's red. A purple herring makes more sense—or less, which is kind of the point—but I got it's red."

"I love you."

She smiled a little. "I got that, too. We ID'd the murder weapon, but that's not going to get us far. Piano wire, as easy to come by as brown pants. The tongue—Morris said it was a clean cut, no sign of hesitation marks. The symbolism there's pretty obvious."

She wound, unwound, wound pasta on her fork without eating.

"What about her electronics?"

"McNab's on that. So far nothing that rings. She didn't have close friends, that's how it's reading. No exclusive lover, or, apparently, the wish for one. She made a play for Fitzhugh—dead partner—back when he wasn't dead."

"Ah yes, I remember something of that. He had a spouse."

"Spouse is in Hawaii and covered. I can't find anything that indicates she was making another play. Fitzhugh had some punch and power, so there was motive for her there. She was, essentially, top dog once he kicked, so why bother?"

"For the fun?" Roarke suggested.

"Seems she went another way for her fun. She booked a hotel room and an LC for Christmas. She had three LCs she used on a kind of rotation, and what we get is she'd settled into a kind of routine there when it came to sex."

"Safe, unemotional, and she remains in control."

"Yeah, my take. She had a short 'link conversation with her family on Christmas Day, didn't travel, didn't party that we can find. She worked—that was her focus. I see her pretty clear. I used to look in the mirror at her."

"Not true. Not at all true," Roarke countered. "You had Mavis—and she's been family as well as friend for a very long time. Feeney's the same. He wasn't just your trainer, or your partner. He was, and is, a father to you."

"I didn't go out looking for them."

"You didn't shut them out, either, did you?"

"Nobody shuts Mavis out if she doesn't want to be shut." She brooded down at her spaghetti. "I tried shutting you out."

"And look how that worked out. Do you want to say there's some surface similarity between you and her? I'll agree. Strong-willed, successful women, on either side of a line of law, but both serving it in their way. Attractive, intelligent, ambitious women, solitary in their ways. Or you were, and would like to be more than you might find yourself these days."

"I don't think I could live without you anymore. That's how that worked out for me. Maybe somebody wanted her." She wound pasta again, ate without thinking. "And she didn't want him, or her, back. But..." She shook her head, reached for her wine.

"No passion in the kill."

"None. When you want someone, and they keep you shut out, there's despair or anger or payback. I can't make the motive about her. I can't find the angle for that. All the angles say it's about me. And I can't figure it."

"Another cop, one who admires you, and resents the defense attorney who works as diligently to ensure the freedom of the criminals you take off the street."

"Yeah, that's one of the angles. It's not one of mine, Roarke. It's not one of my cops. I don't just say that because they're mine, but because I know them, inside and out."

"I'm going to agree with you because I've come to know them as well. There's no one in your division who'd take a life this way, or use you as an excuse to do so."

"None of them are psychotic, and that's how this feels."

"But you don't only work with your own. Uniforms who respond first to a scene, who help secure a scene or canvass. A cop from another division whose investigation crossed with yours. One who consulted you, or vice versa."

"I couldn't count them," she admitted.

"And that doesn't begin to address all those who work on processing and forensics and so on."

"I stood in the lab today, and I thought: All these people in their white coats, they'd know how to do a clean kill, to keep evidence off a crime scene. And I don't know them—a handful of them, but that's it. There's the sweepers, there's the morgue doctors, techs, support. Or it's just some crazy person who got juiced up from the book and vid."

"Bastwick's not in either."

"No, she's not."

"Then why her? Specifically her?"

"Okay." She sat back with her wine. "I spent some time scanning some interviews she did around the Barrow trial. She tried to make a case in the court of public opinion that I had a vendetta going, that I had a score to settle—a personal one. She tried to get in I'd physically assaulted Barrow, covered it up, and she wasn't wrong. But it didn't play out. If they'd copped to the reason I did indeed punch the fucker, they'd have had to cop to why. As long as they were stringing the line he'd inadvertently developed a system of mind control using subliminals, they had a shot of getting him off with a light tap. If they had to say I'd punched him because he'd used that system on us, and on you, that meant the law would punch him right along with me."

"I hurt you. I forced you—"

"He did those things," Eve interrupted. "He used you, me, Mavis. He did it all for fun and profit. And now he's doing a good long stretch in a cage. He didn't kill, but he provided a weapon."

"Bastwick didn't get him off," Roarke pointed out. "Could he have found a way to get back at both of you from that cage?"

"I checked on him. He's restricted. Isn't allowed electronics. He doesn't have access to money, so he can't pay anybody to do it. I could see him trying to find a way to come after me—the sniveling little coward—but I can't see him going after Bastwick.

"But I'm going to look at him again," Eve added. "I'm going to look at her firm—eliminate that connection, and the idea of anyone there hiring a pro."

"You'd want a good eye on the financials."

"I thought yours would qualify."

"So it does. Her family?"

"Yeah, elimination again, because why? Maybe you hate your sister, decide to kill her or have her killed. Why muck it up with me? But we eliminate, we play it right down the line."

"All right then. Give me a list, and I'll entertain myself."

She nodded, looked down at her wine. Set it aside. "I told Summerset not to open the gates for any deliveries or whatever unless he could confirm ID—and not to open the door period. You might want to add your weight to that."

"I will, though you should know yours is enough for him. You're concerned because the two of you like to swipe at each other, someone might... misinterpret your relationship?"

"It would mean the killer has more personal information on me—us—but I'm not taking chances. It wouldn't hurt for you to beef up your personal security until."

"Because, at some point, I might be viewed as a rival for your affections."

She lifted her gaze, held his. "Something like that."

"I should point out that as it's most likely you're the center of this, your personal security is a vital issue."

"Cop, badge, weapon."

"Criminal—reformed. But reformation doesn't negate experience. Why don't we do as you said? We play this down the line, eliminate. Then we'll worry about the rest."

"You're going to worry about me, more than usual. When you do, remember something else I said before. I don't think I could live without you." She got up. "I'll get you the list, and we'll get started."

···

With Roarke settled in his own office, Galahad sprawled and snoring on her sleep chair, Eve finished setting up her board.

She finished it by adding her own ID photo.

Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, she thought, studying herself. Potential victim, potential witness, potential motive.

She'd been a victim once, and wouldn't be one again. Witness? That was fine, and she intended to grill herself thoroughly. Motive. That one made her sick, and that had to stop.

Routine, she told herself, could be a cop's best friend. She was counting on it.

She went into the little kitchen, programmed a pot of strong, black coffee. At her desk, she brought up her incomings, saw communication from Mira, from Nadine, McNab, Feeney, another from Cher Reo.

The tough APA inside the stylish shell hadn't been on the Barrow or Fitzhugh case, but Eve had no doubt Whitney had talked to the prosecutor's office about the current situation. Reo wanted to be updated, wanted to discuss. And part of that, Eve knew, would be personal.

Unlike Bastwick, Eve hadn't been able to block or hold off friendships.

Your true and loyal friend,Eve thought as she looked back at the board, at the copy of the message. What did that mean? Did the killer believe the others who'd become friends in her life were false ones?

I'm the only one you can count on,Eve speculated. Look what I did for you.

Yeah, that's how it read to her.

Though tempted to pull up Mira's communications first, she opted for potential evidence.

Feeney. Nothing much new, but he'd sent her a full report, including all probability ratios on height, shoe size. He'd even managed to identify the box. Common recycled material, twenty-four-inch square, sealed with standard strapping tape.

And interesting, she noted, he'd been able to find an angle, enhance, and get a readout on a shipping label.

The vic's name and address in the same block printing as the wall message. Sender's listed as the law firm.

She'd check it out, but she'd bet heavy that had been more cover. Somebody asks what you're doing—even the vic? Why, delivering this package to a Ms. Leanore Bastwick from Bastwick and Stern law offices.

Nothing left to chance, Eve mused. Smart and careful.

She moved on to McNab.

Nothing suspicious on any communications. No arguments, no threats, no one, in fact, asking what she might be doing on the day she was murdered. Nor had she volunteered that information in any of her'link conversations.

He'd logged several communications with clients, with the prosecutor's office, with the law firm's internal investigator of ongoing cases.

Eve read them over, looking for anything that set off a bell, uncovered a hunch. And like McNab, got nothing.

Reams of work on her office comp—much of it redacted. Stern wasn't being that cooperative, but she hadn't expected him to be. He repped criminals, or at least those accused of a crime.

And he'd already filed a restraint on her home comp, citing attorney/client privilege.

Okay, we'll play that way, Eve thought, and tagged Reo.

"Dallas, how're you doing?"

"I'm beating my head against the wall Stern or Bastwick and Stern put up. We're restricted from full access on Bastwick's comps, which impedes our investigation of her murder."

"I know about that. Dallas, attorney/client privilege isn't bullshit."

Eve scowled at the screen, and the image of the pretty APA with her fluffy blond hair and deceptively guileless blue eyes. "Come on, Reo, she's dead. One of her clients may have killed her."

"Do you have a suspect? Is one or more of her clients a suspect?"

"All of them are."

"Dallas, if you want me to fight privilege, I have to have cause. Solid cause. What I can and will do is talk to Stern tomorrow, demand he initiate an internal investigation."

"Great, and if he cut out her tongue, he's going to lead us right to himself."

"Dallas." Reo held up her hands, inner wrists touching. "Tied. But I'm going to do everything I can do, leverage wherever I can leverage, push where I can push. Tell me, do you, the primary, believe one of Bastwick's clients killed her?"

"I don't have enough information to believe or disbelieve. I've got a file of threats made over the years. It's hefty."

"Send me a copy. There I can help."

"I did a quick cross, and I wasn't involved directly in any of the cases that elicited a threat. Baxter and Trueheart got the collar on one last year, Reineke took another like five years back, and he and Jenkinson were on one more than three years ago."

"Flag those."

"All three are doing time. She got the Baxter and the solo Reineke knocked down from Second Degree to Man One—your office made the deal."

"Okay."

"The last she lost, big, and the client's doing life on Omega. I'm looking at the possibility someone hired a hit on her."

"Then I'll look over these three first, and thoroughly. I'll do whatever I can, Dallas, that's what I wanted you to know."

"Appreciate it. Okay. I have to get back to this."

She went from lawyer to shrink, opened Mira's messages.

Eve, I'm sending you a list of five individuals, with their communication to you. While it will take several days to read and evaluate all the communication, I felt these five warranted a closer look. Although only one of the five resides in New York, all have written to you multiple times, and correspondence shows an unhealthy attachment. There are three males, two females, with age ranges between twenty-eight and sixty-nine.

Please let me know immediately if your investigation into them turns up any additional element of concern or connection.

I'm also sending you, by separate cover, my profile of Leanore Bastwick's killer. Please contact me, at any time, to discuss. Meanwhile, I expect to provide you with another list of names sometime tomorrow.

Okay, Eve thought, took a breath, poured more coffee. And opened the first name with its correspondence.

When Roarke came back in, she was up and pacing.

"People are fucked up," she told him.

"So you've said before."

"How can they be even more fucked up than I thought? I've seen what they'll do to each other over a harsh word, or because they wake up one day and think: Hey, disemboweling somebody could be fun. But that's violence, and mostly I understand violence. But where does stupid and fucked up come from? Screw it," she decided. "Nobody knows that."

She strode over to the coffeepot, but Roarke beat her to it, held it out of reach.

"Enough."

"I say when it's enough. I want some goddamn coffee."

"There'll be no more coffee, at all, if you abuse it." When her eyes fired hot into his, he just lifted his brows over his cool ones. "You want to punch something. You can take a shot at me, but it won't be free."

"Fuck it." She spun away, paced again. "Just fuck it."

To solve the problem, he took the pot back into the kitchen, came back with a bottle of water. "Hydrate," he suggested, but she ignored him.

"Read that!" She pointed to the wall screen, kept pacing.

Dear Eve,

I understand few call you Eve, but it's how I think of you, and always have. All my life I've felt something—someone—was missing. I searched, and I let people come in and go out of my life during that search. But no one really connected. You know what I mean, I know you do. I sense it's been the same for you.

Then one day, I saw you, only on screen, but the rush of feeling that swept through me was amazing. You stood on the steps of Cop Central in New York, so fierce, so strong, so real. And I knew. There you are, I thought. At last.

Did you sense me? I think you did. For a moment, just one moment, our eyes met. You looked right into me, Eve. I know you felt it.

I felt giddy and whole at the same time.

We've been together before, time and time before. Loved as few love, time and time before. I've been to a sensitive, and had this confirmed. We're destined to meet, to be together, life after life.

I know I must be patient. I've followed your life now, your career. I'm so proud of you! I understand you're married—as was I—and I must wait for you to come to the end of that relationship. It will be soon, though every day without you is a thousand years.

Only know I'm waiting.

Yours, always yours, throughout time,

Morgan

"Well," Roarke said, "well. At least he's patient until you give me the boot."

"She," Eve corrected. "Morgan Larkin, a forty-year-old woman, a mother of an eight-year-old boy. Three divorces—all from guys. A systems analyst from Columbus, Ohio, who ought to know better.

"And you can wipe that smirk off your face, pal."

"Sorry, but my wife getting love letters from a thrice-divorced woman with a son does have some amusing factors."

"You won't think it's so funny if you read the following fourteen letters she's sent."

"Ah. All right then, she's one of your suspects. But you say she lives in Ohio?"

"And has a full-time job. A kid. I don't find any travel to New York except for a long weekend last February. And she doesn't have the scratch to hire a pro. This first letter came in three years ago this coming March. I barely remember it. I think I rolled my eyes, tossed it in the file. You've got to keep this kind of thing—for reasons that are pretty fucking clear right now. I sort of remember another coming in a few months later, but by then Peabody was working as my admin, and I had her deal. No answer because the standard is not to encourage."

She sat, opened the water after all. "She came to New York specifically to meet me—there's a letter dealing with that. She understands I'm unable to come to her, to dump you right away, but she needs to see me, to hear my voice and blah blah, so we'd meet on Valentine's Day at the top of the Empire State Building."

"An Affair to Remember,"Roarke murmured. "A classic vid. A love story."

"Yeah, she put that in there. I got the next in March. She was a little pissed that time. How could I break her heart and all that. You could say we had our first spat. Then a couple months later, it's like it never happened when she writes again, but she starts getting explicit about our physical love, more demanding about starting our lives together."

Eve rolled the cool bottle over her forehead. "I don't see how it could be this one. Whoever killed Bastwick spent time here, studied her routines, knows the city and how to get around. Knows something about cop work. But this is..."

"Disturbing." He moved over, stood behind her, rubbed her shoulders.

"There's a sixty-nine-year-old man in Boca Raton who's been writing me once a month like clockwork since he read Nadine's book. Starts off kind of normal. Admiration, thank you for your service, then it gets progressively more personal until he's asking me to run away with him, how we'll sail around the world and he'll treat me like a queen. Christ, I'm half his age, and he should know better. He's got the scratch." She sighed. "Not Roarke scratch, but he's not hurting. So we'll give him a closer look, but he's never had any criminal. A couple stints in facilities for emotional issues.

"Another guy in England," she continued, wound up. "Apparently I come to him in dreams, and we bang like jackrabbits. Over and above the sex, we have this connection—emotional, psychic, depends on the day. He's the only one I can trust. Dark forces surround me. The law, stupid as it is, hampers my destiny, so when we're not dream-banging, he's helping me on my cases. He tried to enlist in the cops over there, but failed the psych."

"I'm shocked."

"Yeah." She pressed her fingers to her eyes. "One more guy, out in California. Seems sane initially if over-the-top. Big fan of book, vid, me. He, too, fights crime in his way—he claims. And would like to work with me. Then sleep with me. He's also fine if you participate in that."

The back of her neck was tight, knotted like twisted wires. Roarke used his thumbs to try to loosen them, kept his voice easy. "The work or the sex?"

"Both. He's very open-minded. With my assistance, he'd like to come to New York, work as my consultant, one who will find ways around the system to bring the bad guys to justice. He doesn't believe I get the admiration or respect I'm due, as—according to his last letter—I should be commanding the NYPSD, and he's outraged on my behalf."

"Travel?"

"He's been to New York twice, but not in the last six months. I'll take a closer look at all of them, but..."

"Another?"

"The last Mira sent tonight. Twenty-eight-year-old female, lives in New York, Lower West Side, works as a paralegal for a firm—her specialty is family law. She's written eight times in the last year, with the gap between the correspondence narrowing as it goes. She knows we'd be best friends if we ever got together. She tries to advocate for victims and the innocent, too. We're so much alike. Her boyfriend dumped her last summer, and there's a long letter—more like a short story—where she cried on my shoulder, knew I was the only one who would understand. Nothing sexual in this one, it's more like she's decided we're like sisters, best friends, and she wants to help me the way she thinks I've helped her. I helped her stand up for herself, take better care of herself, to be strong and find her courage.

"God."

"Criminal?"

"No, nothing. A light tap for illegals possession a few years back. I've got a couple of DD calls. Neighbors complaining about shouting, crashing around. Fights with boyfriend, but no charges. I can't find a connection to Bastwick. Can't find a trigger, but... She comes off smart, has an unhealthy and completely fictional relationship with me, sees our work as similar, and is often frustrated by the rules of law not fully serving justice. She sounds weird but harmless, and yet—"

He leaned down, kissed the top of her head. "You're upset because whether or not any of these apply to your investigation, you now understand you're a central point in the lives of people you don't know—and don't really want to know. You dislike the center stage at the best of times. For you, it's the victim, the perpetrator, the survivors, the job. Your life, our life."

"Is that wrong?"

"It's absolutely not wrong. But it's a fact you'll need to deal with to do your job this time."

"It's not just the book, the book and the vid. I wanted to blame it all on that—this weird attention—but some of it started before that. It's fucking creepy."

He made a sound of agreement, kissed the top of her head again. "You'll deal with it because you are who you are, you do what you do. What you haven't said, and we both know, is some of it springs from me—from the media and attention you get being mine."

"I am what I am, do what I do, and a big part of that is being yours."

"All right." He came around, sat on the edge of her desk so they were face-to-face. "My people will also start looking at correspondence. I get quite a bit myself, so we'll coordinate there, see if there's any cross. Meanwhile, the finances I've looked at so far don't lead to hiring a hit man. Stern does indeed have a couple of tucked-away accounts, as one might expect. But I haven't found any withdrawals or transfers of funds that apply here."

"Are they illegal enough I could use them as leverage?"

"Weak." With a shake of his head, Roarke took a pull of her water. "Leverage for what?"

"Letting me see all of Bastwick's client correspondence. He's citing privilege. Reo's on it," she added, "and hell, if there was anything, Bastwick would've pulled it for the threat file. But it pisses me off getting blocked out."

"That's for tomorrow, as is all the rest."

She would've argued, but the simple fact was she'd done all she could until morning.

Roarke waited until she'd shut down, took her hand. As he walked out of the room with her, he glanced at her board.

Seeing her face there brought him a quick and violent anger, and a cold, clammy fear.