J. Robb: Indulgence in death

She took her time, played her attitude in her head. She spotted her cops, but she knew where to look. She staggered into the church.

He’d lit some of the fake candles, she noted, so the light shifted and swayed. She took a couple more unsteady steps until she stood in the aisle formed by the back pews. “Dudley, you asshole.” Her voice echoed. “You better not be wasting my time.”

“I’m here.” His voice shook. She supposed he hoped it sounded fearful, but she caught the edge of laughter. “I-I wanted to be sure it was you. That he didn’t follow me.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll protect you. I get paid to protect the city’s assholes.”

“It can’t be enough.” He eased out of the shadows at the far end of the church.

“You’re damn skippy. It’s not the pay, it’s the power. Nothing like watching suspects piss themselves when I lean on them. You got five minutes,” she said as Carmichael murmured in her ear that Moriarity was on his way.

“You can’t know what it means to me that you’d come like this. I know you’re under terrible pressure.”

“That’s what drinking’s for. And screw pressure. I close this one, I’ll be on-screen for weeks. Maybe get another book out of it. Couple of rich assholes like you and Moriarity, the media’s going to slather all over me.”

“Sly’s the one.” He moved toward her, stopped again. “I covered for him, but I didn’t know what he’d done. If I had… I didn’t know, not until tonight.”

“You’re eating up your five, Dudley. Lay it out or I’m going to haul you in for annoying an officer. Believe me, I’m not in the mood to haul your ass or mine down to Central.”

Moriarity at the door, she heard in her ear, even as she caught the faint vibration from the ’link in Dudley’s pocket. He slid his hand in.

“Hey, hands where I can see them!” She reached clumsily in her bag.

“I’m sorry.” He tossed his hands up. “I’m nervous. I’m sick at heart. You have to help me!” He grabbed her wrists as if in desperation.

The door burst open behind her. She had to squelch her instinct to defend, staggered instead. Then felt the stunner press to her throat.

“Hold very still,” Moriarity ordered.

“Not yet, not yet!” Dudley shouted it. “Damn it, Sly. No cheating.”

“Just getting her attention.” He slid the stunner down to her shoulder.

It would take her down, Eve thought, but it wouldn’t kill her.

“What the hell kind of game is this?”

“Not a game, Lieutenant,” Dudley told her. “Games are for children. This is adventure. It’s competition. Drop that very attractive evening bag, or Sly will give you a very nasty jolt. Very nasty,” he repeated when she hesitated.

“Let’s all take it easy.” She let the bag drop.

“I wish we had more time.” Dudley walked down a few pews, bent down. “We’d hoped to have more time when we got to you. And we’d planned on using St. Pat’s. Wouldn’t that have been glorious?”

“It would’ve made a statement.” She felt Sly shift slightly. “This place? It’s nothing important.”

“It will be after this.” Dudley straightened, whipped the sword in the air. “We’ll have made it important.”

“What the hell is that?” Eve demanded.

“This.” Dudley struck a fencing pose, tore the air with the blade. “It’s a foil, you ignorant bitch. Italian, very old and very valuable. It’s the blade of an aristocrat.”

“You won’t get away with this. My partner knows where I am, who I was going to meet.”

“Lies won’t help. You’re so drunk you barely knew your own name when I talked you out of whatever bar you were in. And you came just like I told you to.”

“You killed them. All of them. Houston, Crampton, Delaflote, Jonas. Both of you, working together, just like I thought.”

“It wasn’t work,” Dudley corrected.

“It was pleasure.”

“We had another round planned before you, but…”

“I knew it!” Still playing the helpless drunk, she swayed a little in Moriarity’s hold. “The two of you conspired to kill four people.”

“In New York,” Dudley confirmed with a wide, wide grin. “But we’ve racked up more points elsewhere.”

“But why? Who were they to you?”

“Old nobodies, new luxuries.” Dudley laughed until he shook.

“Winnie, we have to get back.”

“You’re right. It’s a shame we can’t play with her awhile. It has to be at the same time, remember. At exactly the same time so the score stays tied. Your trigger, my blade. Let’s say on three.”

Moriarity leaned in, let his lips caress her ear. “Who’s the asshole now?” he said to Eve.

“That would be you.”

She knocked Moriarity’s weapon hand with an elbow strike, slammed the sharp point of her left shoe into his instep. As she pivoted, Dudley charged. The blade skipped lightly over her biceps, jerked as she finished the turn. And ran Moriarity through.

Eyes wide, Moriarity looked down at the blood seeping through the snow white of his shirt. “Winnie, you killed me.”

As he fell, Dudley let out a howl, a wild combination of grief and rage. While cops flooded the room, weapons drawn, she indulged herself with one short-armed, vicious punch to his face.

Roarke barely glanced at Dudley as he stepped over the man. “That’s two jackets ruined this week.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“Whose then, I’d like to know? And look here, you’ve bruised your knuckles.”

“Don’t-” She hissed it when he lifted her hand, and winced when he kissed her knuckles.

“You deserved that,” he said, “for knocking him out when you knew I wanted to.”

“Bus and wagon on the way.” Peabody glanced back at Moriarity. “That was a nice move. It’s too bad about the jacket.”

Eve pressed a hand to the tear, in the cloth and her arm. “It was worth it. All right, people, let’s finish this up. Peabody, book an interview room. Oh, and tell the MTs to try to keep that one breathing. It may be poetic if it turns out his pal killed him, but I’m not looking for poetry. I’m going back to Central to change, and update the commander.”

“Not until the MTs have tended that wound,” Roarke corrected.

“He barely nicked me-and he wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t had to deal with these idiot shoes.”

“Two choices. Sit and wait for a medic, or I’ll embarrass you in front of your men and kiss you.”

She sat.

Since Dudley demanded a lawyer with his first conscious breath, Eve had time to shower and change, update Whitney, debrief, and dismiss her team.

She stood in the conference room, alone, in front of the board, in front of the faces of the dead. She thought of Jamal Houston’s wife, of his partner and friend, of Adrianne Jonas’s weeping parents, the trembling control of her assistant, and of all the others she’d had to crush with news of death.

She would speak to them, all of them again, tell them the men who’d taken those lives, shattered those worlds had been stopped. Would, she was determined, pay for their actions.

She had to hope it would help the living, and continued to believe, for reasons she didn’t fully understand, it gave solace to the dead.

“Eve.”

“Doctor Mira.” Eve turned from the board. “What are you still doing here?”

“I wanted to see this through.” She stepped beside Eve, and studied those faces in turn. “So many. Such utter selfishness.”

“There would be more. We stopped them tonight and we’re sealing that cage door. A lot of that’s because of you. If I’d clicked to them targeting me earlier, there might not be so many faces on this board.”