Promises in Death

AS EVE DROVE HOME, SHE WONDERED IF COLtraine’s killer understood the full import of having the weapons and the badge back in official hands. Despite the insult of the message, and its implicit threat, their return meant a great deal.

The messenger wasn’t connected. The kid had just been doing his job. She’d leaned on him pretty hard, Eve admitted, pushed, prodded, maybe scared a few weeks off his life. But now she was sure he wasn’t in on it.

The mail drop led nowhere. Bogus name and address on the receipt, prepaid, comp-generated form the killer could have picked up at any of hundreds of locations at any time, or, in fact, downloaded on his own unit or at any cyber-café.

He’d been prepared, she thought now. Prepared to move on it as soon as the media ran with the story and reported the murder—and the name of the primary investigating officer. Fill in her name, dump the package, go.

That told her it had always been part of the plan. Not just the in-your-face shipment to Cop Central, but the use of Coltraine’s weapon against her. The entire setup was all planned in steps and stages.

She thought of Morris, what he was doing, how he was coping, when she turned through the gates toward home. The spring she’d nearly forgotten about during the long day, exploded here. White and pink blossoms shimmered on the trees, glowing like chains of pastel jewels against the twilight.

Cheerful heads of daffodils danced with the more elegant cups of tulips in cheerfully elaborate sweeps. It seemed to her as if some happy artist had dabbed and stroked and twirled all his joy across this one secluded slice of the city, spilling it out here so the grand house could rise through it.

The towers and turrets speared up into the deepening sky, the terraces and strong lines jutted out. The lights in the many windows welcomed her, and sent the rich stone to a sparkle as evening shifted toward night.

She left her humble vehicle at the foot of grandeur, walked between the pansies Roarke had planted for her—that blooming welcome home—and into the house.

Summerset wasn’t lurking in the foyer like a black cloud over a sunny spring day. It threw her off-stride for an instant not to immediately confront Roarke’s majordomo and her personal nemesis. But she heard the voices from the main parlor and realized he was probably serving somebody something.

She considered skulking up the stairs, closing herself in her office. But security would have already registered her coming through the gates. Stuck, she crossed the foyer to the parlor.

She saw Roarke first—it occurred to her she almost always did. He sat in one of the rich-toned, high-backed chairs looking relaxed, amused. At home.

Several things tumbled into her brain at once. Her friend Mavis’s happy giggle, Leonardo’s contented smile as he lifted his wife’s hand to kiss her fingers. Summerset’s skinny, black-clad presence, and the big grin—scary, she thought—on his bony face as the fat cat squatted at his feet.

“Dallas!” A bundle of color and cheer with her artfully tangled pink-tipped blond curls, Mavis bounced up.

She tended to bounce, Eve thought, as Mavis hurried over in towering, triangular-shaped heels covered with rainbow zigzags. The bounce sent the green-and-pink diamond pattern of her microskirt fluttering. She wrapped Eve in a hug, then just beamed pleasure out of eyes currently the same sharp green as her skirt.

“You missed the best time. We ate like oinkers, and Belle showed everybody how she can roll over, and shake her rattle.”

Leonardo started over. He was big where Mavis was tiny, copper-skinned where his wife was rosy pale. And together, Eve had to admit, they looked pretty damn perfect.

He leaned down, kissed Eve’s cheek. The sausage twists of hair in the style he was currently sporting brushed her skin like silk. “We missed you.”

“Not a thing.” Mavis gave Eve’s arm a squeeze. “We know how complete the job is. Come see the baby!”

Mavis dragged her across the room. It wasn’t that she was reluctant to see Belle, Eve told herself. Exactly. It was just that the baby looked so perfect—like a doll. And dolls were just freaky.

“Yeah.” She might have kissed him—more as apology than greeting—but that meant leaning over the perfect pink-and-gold doll with its big, bright staring eyes.

“You haven’t greeted all our guests.” Smoothly, so smoothly she didn’t see it coming, he rose and plunked the baby into her arms.

Eve managed to choke back a curse so the sound she made was more of a raw-throated squeak. She held Belle at arm’s length, much as she might a potentially incendiary device. “Ah, hi. Nice dress.”

The fact that it was pink and full and fluffy had hidden the tiny reality under it. How could anything that small be human? And what went on inside its brain when it stared that way? Stared until a thin line of sweat crept down your back?

Not sure what to do next, Eve started to turn—very slowly—to pass the baby to Mavis, Leonardo. Even Summerset. Possibly the cat. When Belle blinked those big baby-doll eyes, and shot out a huge, gummy grin.

Slightly less scary that way, especially with the drool sliding down her chin. And damned if she wasn’t ridiculously cute. Eve bent her elbows a fraction, gave the baby a small, experimental bounce. And something white bubbled out of her grinning mouth.

“It’s just a little milk puke.” Laughing, Mavis dabbed Belle’s mouth with a tiny pink cloth. “She ate like an oinker, too.”

As Mavis took Belle, Leonardo whipped out a larger pink cloth—like a magician—and draped it over Mavis’s shoulder.

Summerset’s voice had Eve’s shoulders tightening. Here it comes, she thought. He’d ooze his disapproval all over her—like milk puke—because she’d forgotten they were having company and missed dinner.

She braced for it, ran several snarling responses through her brain, and turned. He simply handed her a glass of wine. “I’ll bring your meal in here.”

Her eyes stayed narrowed as she watched him leave the room. “That’s it? That’s all? Is he sick or something?”

“He knows why you’re late,” Roarke said. “That you’re investigating the murder of a fellow officer. Give him some credit.”

Since it was obvious she couldn’t head straight up to work, she sat on the arm of Roarke’s chair. “Anyway, I left you a message about being late. I remembered to do that. I get credit, too.”

“Not much. It’s hard enough when it’s another cop. But having to tell Morris, seeing his face . . .”

“Oh. No.” Mavis clutched Belle tighter. “This was Ammy? The woman he’s been seeing? We never turned the screen on today, never heard. Roarke just told us you’d caught a case, a cop killer. We didn’t know it was . . . Oh, Leonardo.”

He put his arm around her, drew both his girls closer. “This is . . . horrible. We ran into them at a club one night, sat down with them. You could see how much they . . . It was there between them,” Leonardo said with sorrow in his gilted eyes. “I’m so sorry, so sorry. Is there anything we can do for him?”

“We only met her that one time.” A tear slid down Mavis’s cheek before she pressed it to the top of Belle’s head. “She seemed so up, and they were so into each other. Total vibe, total sparkage. Remember, honey-pot, how I said after they were just gone squared over each other.”

“It’s good it’s you.” Mavis firmed her chin, patted Belle’s back. “You’ll find the bastard who did it. Morris knows that. We’re going to leave so you can do the cop stuff. If there’s anything—you know, stuff I know how to do—you just tag me. I’m there.”

“Bellissimo needs to go night-night.” Mavis rose on her rainbow tip-toes to kiss Summerset’s cheek. “We’ll be back—us girls—for the big bash. A bridal shower and all that girl stuff’s just what we all need. And you guys.” She elbowed her husband. “Zipping off to Vegas for the man party.”

When she was alone with Roarke, the wine, and an elegantly arranged plate of food, she frowned. “Why do you have to go all the way to Las Vegas—shit, you do mean Las Vegas, right? You’re not going off planet to Vegas II.”

“But, what if I need help with all those women? I don’t even know what they’re planning because Peabody and Nadine are doing all that, so what if—”

“You could easily find out the plans instead of pretending it won’t actually happen. And you’ll be just fine. They’re your friends.” He tapped her chin with a fingertip. “Eat your dinner before it gets cold.”

“Fine. Then you can tell me what happened to Morris’s lady, and what I can do to help you find her killer. He’s my friend, too,” Roarke added.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” She gave in for a moment, moved into him, dropped her forehead on his shoulder. “God. Oh, God, it was horrible. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. It made me sick inside, just sick to knock on his door. To know I was about to break a friend in two. I have to find the answers for him. It’s more than the job.”

“It is, yes.” He held her close and tight, and as Mavis had with Belle, rested his cheek on her head. Battled back his own fears. “Whatever you need from me.”

She nodded, drew back. “Let’s take it upstairs. It always helps me see things clearer, or from other angles, when I run the case by you.”

“No. I ran into her a couple of times at the morgue. She transferred here a few months ago. From Atlanta. Mavis had it—the vibe thing. He was in love with her, Roarke, and with everything I’ve learned since this morning, she felt the same about him. I get that she was a good cop, detail-oriented. She didn’t live the job.” She glanced over at him. “I guess you get what I mean by that.”

“Organized, feminine. She had eight years on the job. No big flash in her jacket, no big lows. Steady. People liked her, a lot. Her squad, her main weasel, hell, the woman who owns the Chinese place where she ordered her takeout. I can’t figure out what she did, who she twisted, to be targeted like this.”

“Yeah, and they say no. Could’ve used a master, could be another tenant in the same building. Could have managed to dupe her key card, or someone else’s in the building. Or he could be as good as you, and didn’t leave a trace.”

“She was taken down with a stunner,” Roarke mused. “They’re not easy to come by, and very pricey. Could he have disarmed her first and used her own weapon both times?”

“It doesn’t play. No defensive wounds, and other than the kill burns, and the bumps on the back of her head, her shoulder blades, no offensive wounds. No cop turns over her weapon like that, not even to someone she knows.”

“You’d give yours to me,” he pointed out. “If I asked to see it for a moment, you’d give it to me.”

Eve considered that. “Okay, maybe she would, to someone she was really tight with. But it still doesn’t stream that way for me. She was heading out, sidearm and clutch piece. Taking the stairs, because she always did. That’s a setup. And it had to be done fast and smooth. No time to ask her nice if she’d let you hold her stunner.”

She pushed up, began to pace. After, Roarke noted, she’d eaten only half her meal. “We ran all the tenants. Got a few criminal pops, but nothing major. We’ll interview everyone again who came up with any sort of a sheet, but I have to ask myself why she’d be going out, armed, to meet one of her neighbors.”

Eve stopped, frowned. “Okay, that’s a thought. She arms herself first, though, so it’s not a neighborly visit. It wouldn’t be smart, going to another apartment for a meet when it’s on the shady. Then why did the killer, if he’s inside, need to jam the rear door security camera? Maybe to throw us off,” she said, answering herself. “So we’re looking outside the building.”

She paced again. “Unnecessary complication. But we’ll interview the tenants again. It just feels like an extra step to take, when SOP would be to run and interview everyone anyway.”

“That’s Feeney’s call. He’s always happy to have the uber e-geek on board, but he may have it well under control. I’ve got a lot of case files to wade through. I need to study her currents, her closed, her open, and what I got from Atlanta. You can—yeah, yeah, it’s an insult to you—but you can think like a cop. Maybe you can take a look at Atlanta while I do New York. Plus, they need to be cross-referenced. I need to know if anything from before connects with now.”

“Yeah, you can.” She angled her head. “You can also think like a criminal, which is handy. Would you have sent her weapons to the primary? Why or why not?”

“I wouldn’t have taken them in the first place. A smart criminal takes nothing—unless it’s straight thievery, which this wasn’t—and leaves nothing of himself behind. Otherwise, there’s that connection.”

“They must have served a purpose. Leaving them—especially if he used one to kill her—would be, in my opinion, more of an insult to her. And you, or whoever caught the case. So taking them served another purpose, even if it was just the jab to you by sending them back. He’s not a pro.”

“Agreed. He might be a professional criminal, but it wasn’t a professional hit. It looks simple, on the surface, but it was actually much too elaborate—and too personal—for a straight hit. A straight hit, you don’t take her in a populated building, but lure her out of it, maybe to a meet. Take her there, or along the way. He wanted something, information or something she might have taken with her we can’t know about. Or he wanted to give her a message before he finished her. And he wanted her found without much delay.

“I want to set up my board here, and run some probabilities before I start on the case files.” She dug out a disc. “Here’s Atlanta. All data’s on my office unit, which I know you can access.”

“Roarke.” It had niggled at her all day, and still she hadn’t meant to ask. Hadn’t meant to bring it up. “Morris . . . when I was with him today, he said that being involved with a cop, being in a relationship with one . . . He said every day you have to block out the worry. Fear,” she corrected. “He said fear. Is that how it is?”

He slipped the disc into his pocket to take her hands, and rubbed his thumb along her wedding ring. The design he’d had etched into it was an ancient charm. For protection. “I fell in love with who you are, with what you are. I took on the whole package.”

His gaze lifted from her ring, met hers. Held hers. “How can I love you and not be afraid? You’re my life, Eve, my heart. You’re asking, you’re wondering if I ever worry, if I ever fear, that one day Peabody or Feeney, your commander—a cop who’s become a friend—will knock on my door? Of course I do.”

He cut her off by brushing his mouth over hers—once, then twice. “I wouldn’t change a thing. Morris is right, you have to block it out, and live your life. If I didn’t, couldn’t, I’d never let you leave the house.” He brought her hands to his lips now. “Then where would we be?”

He gave her a look filled with a mix of amusement and frustration. “You’re smart,” he corrected, “you’re skilled. But not always as careful as you might be. I married a cop.”

Now he laughed, and kissed her again where her brow had furrowed. “And would I listen? I’m damn good at being married to a cop.”

“I don’t take it for granted. I know it seems maybe like I do, but I don’t. I don’t take for granted that when I walk in two hours—or maybe it was three—late like tonight, forget we had plans, you don’t get mad. Or all the other things. I don’t take it for granted.”

“That’s good to know.” Odd, he realized, that she would need reassurance here. Or not so odd, really. The death of another cop, and one a friend had loved, brought it home. “We made promises to each other, nearly two years ago now. I’d say we’ve done a damn fine job at keeping them so far.”

“I guess we have. Listen, if sometimes you can’t block it, you should say it. Even if we fight about it, you’ve got a right to say it.”

He traced his finger down the dent in her chin. “Go to work, Lieutenant. There’s no worries tonight.”

Sure there were, she thought when he went into his office. But it seemed like they were handling them okay.

She set up her board, pinning up Coltraine, her squad, the names of any tenant in her building with a sheet, the names of the particulars in her most current cases. She added a photo of the shipping box, the weapons, the note, the badge. Lab reports, the established time line. She had a description of the ring the victim should have been wearing, and a close-up of it she’d extracted from a photo in Coltraine’s apartment.

She studied the board, angled it so she could study it from her desk. Armed with a fresh cup of coffee, she sat to run a series of probabilities.

The computer calculated an eighty-two-point-six percent that the victim and her killer had known each other or had some previous contact. A ninety-eight-point-eight percent that the victim was a specific target.

Neither case contained any actual violence, she noted. The threat of it in the Chinatown case, but no execution of violence. Two males, wearing masks, rush into a market at closing, grabbing the female owner as she wheeled in one of the sidewalk carts, and holding a knife to her throat. Demand all cash and credits on the premises, and the security discs. Get both. Order both the owners—husband and wife—to lie on the floor. Apparently grab a few snack packs and book.

The vics had been shaken up, but unharmed. Though they’d turned over the discs, the husband had noticed a tattoo on the wrist of the knifeman—a small red dragon—and both had stated they believed the robbers had been young. Teens to early twenties.

They’d given the police a very decent—and unusually consistent—idea of height, weight, build, coloring, clothing. Two witnesses saw two young men matching the description running away from the direction of the market.

Penny-ante, Eve mused. A couple of stupid kids. Confirmed, as the investigating officers had tracked down the tattoo parlor, and were ready to hunt up and pick up one seventeen-year-old Denny Su who’d had the ink on his right wrist.

No idiot teenager, and his as-yet-unidentified dumb friend, had the smarts to access Coltraine’s building and get the drop on a cop.

The break-in—literally, as a window had been smashed to access—netted a bigger profit. But a guy who could finesse the solid security at Coltraine’s building had the skills to finesse the less solid on the electronics shop. Plus, the glass had been broken from the inside, leading the investigators to conclude—ta-da—inside job. They’d begun to lean on one of the employees. From the notes Eve read, she’d say they were leaning in the right direction.

In this case, the suspect was again young, fairly stupid, and had a short sheet of shoplifting charges. Guy liked to steal, simple as that, Eve mused. He didn’t score for her as a cop killer.

She took the time to run both through probability, and in each case the machine agreed with her, with both percentages under eighteen percent.

Eve sat back, studied the board. “Do I run your squad through my comp, Coltraine? It’s an ugly business, cops running cops. The comp’s going to favor them. Nothing in their data to hint at the dirty. Why does a clean cop, at least clean on record, kill another cop? The machine’s not going to find that logical.

“What?” She glanced over, saw Roarke in the doorway that adjoined their home offices. “Sorry, talking to myself. You found something interesting in Atlanta.”

“I found something. A case she worked about three years ago. You haven’t gone through these files yet?”

“A robbery. An upscale antique shop. The manager was beaten, several thousand dollars’ worth of merchandise taken, nearly that much destroyed. They also forced him to open the safe and turn over all the cash, credits, and receipts—which carried the credit and debit card data. One of the other employees found him when he went in to work, notified the police and the MTs. Coltraine was assigned.”

“During the investigation she interviewed the owner of the shop, and according to her case file, spoke with him on the matter several times. His name’s Ricker. Alex Ricker.”