J. Robb - Kindred In Death

“Yes, I am.”

He nodded. “This is enough for me, has to be. I’m taking a leave of absence. My wife and I need time. She asked me to apologize to you.”

“There’s no need.”

His face was unbearably sad, unbearably weary. “There is, for her. Please accept.”

“Then I do.”

He nodded again. “Good-bye, Lieutenant.”

“Good-bye, Captain.”

She made a copy of the recording, gathered her files. When she walked into her office, Roarke turned from her window.

“This is getting to be a habit. I didn’t know you were here.”

“I haven’t been here long. Long enough to have heard the last of that.” He came to her, stroked her cheek. “Difficult for you. Hideous to hear him go step-by-step on what he did to that girl, and to that young woman.”

“There’ll be worse. There’s always worse.” For a moment she felt inside her what she’d seen in MacMasters’s eyes. Unbearable sadness. Unbearable weariness. “Something like that, like him? It makes you realize there’s never a limit on cruel.”

“Dallas?” Peabody hesitated at the door. “I just wanted to tell you I’d write this up. Mira was in Observation as requested, and she’ll write up her findings.”

“Good. Don’t worry about the paperwork. Go. I’ve got a few things left to deal with. Do me a favor and go take care of the Louise thing. Whatever’s left of the rehearsal, the rest of it.”

“We can be late. She’ll get it.”

“Yeah, she will. But there’s no point. Go. If you’re handling it I don’t have to feel guilty for being late.”

“Okay. It’ll be good to shake this off, just shake all this off and do something… bright.”

“Yeah. I’ll be another hour or two.” She let out a long breath when Peabody’s footsteps echoed away. “Bright. I’m not in the mood for bright. Computer, display map of Manhattan, Lower West.”

“Why?” Roarke asked when the computer acknowledged.

“You weren’t there for the whole thing. He gave me the old man. Gave me conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to attempted. I’m not sure he realized it. He didn’t give me where the nest is. Not directly. But he said he walked home. After he killed Robins, he walked home.”

She rubbed the rocks of tension in the back of her neck. “And the coffee. The go-cup. Those Hotz Cafés are all over the place. But figuring he didn’t walk from one side of the island to the other, he picked up the coffee between his nest and the scene. Probably closer to his nest. And the nest is going to be within reasonable walking distance of the loft.”

Roarke stepped behind her, gave her neck and shoulders a good, hard rub. “Then you’re going to like the data I brought you.”

“What data?”

“On the security system. No, try to relax for one damn minute,” he ordered. “Let’s get a couple of these boulders out of here. I’ve been running various data streams on that, adding some Nadine’s research team came up with. And I’d refined it to about a dozen most likelies, which I assumed you’d want to check out.”

“That’s good. Excellent. The data,” she added. “The shoulder rub’s not so bad either.”

“Just doing my job. There now, that’s a little better.” Stepping back, he took out his PPC. “If we add the geographical element to the data I have… We have not a dozen, but… one.”

Her eyes lit with purpose. “Give me that.”

“This is my job, too.” He held it out of reach. “A Peredyne Company in the West Village.”

“Not an individual, not the usual initials. Just the P, which could be why I kept missing it.”

“It may also be because Peredyne’s listed as an arm of Iris Sommer Memorial.”

“I.S. Clever. Well, you’re more clever since you found it. I need to run it to make sure it’s not-”

“Already doing it,” he told her. “And… there’s no listing in New York for either of those companies. It’s a shell within a shell.”

She turned, rushed out to the bullpen. “Baxter.”

“Nice job, Dallas.” He gave her a wink, a salute. “I love going off the roll on the upside.”

“You’re not going off the roll. Conference room, five minutes. Trueheart, with Baxter.”

“But-”

She simply turned and pulled her new communicator out of her pocket as she got moving. “Feeney,” she said. “We found the bastard’s hole. Conference room. Now.”

“I want to play,” Roarke told her.

“You’ve earned it.” She caught herself before she grabbed him, kissed him, right in front of a corridor full of cops. Instead, she sent him a fierce grin. “Get me a tube of Pepsi, will you?”

In under ninety minutes, Eve had the pretty brick town house in the West Village covered. Cops in soft clothes sat at a bistro table outside a tiny restaurant, hunched in vehicles, strolled the sidewalks. Eve bought a soy dog from a glide-cart manned by Jenkinson.

“Some of them give tips,” he said. “I’m keeping the tips.”

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

“Maybe he rabbited, LT.” He handed her the dog.

“No reason to. The son didn’t make a call, hasn’t asked to yet. If he thinks about it, makes the demand, we can stall him. As far as Pauley knows, the fruit of his fucking loins is busy killing an old woman.”

Roarke took the second dog, strolled away with Eve. “I could easily get in the place.”

“Yeah, and that’s what we’ll do if he doesn’t show in another hour. We’ve got our warrant. But since the sensors show the place is empty, I’d rather wait.”

She bit into the dog. “We wait until he comes back, until he’s in that little gated area. Nowhere to run. Jesus, Louise’s place is only a block away. I practically walked by this place a few days ago. I might’ve passed the bastard on the street.”

Roarke took her hand, laced his fingers with hers. “Part of our cover,” he said easily.

“Sure. He’s not home because he’s out somewhere he can be seen, where he can buy something, get a time-stamped receipt. Just in case. It’s always been about covering his own ass.”

A difficult topic for a pretty summer evening, Roarke thought, but she needed to talk it through. “Why mold the boy into a killer?”

“Maybe he didn’t have to mold that much. Hell if I know. That’s for Mira or someone like her. I have to figure, maybe it ate at him some. Maybe it was his way to turn it around, not just so he’d be a hero to Darrin, but so he could believe what he was spewing. Everyone else’s fault, everyone else is to blame. Punish them.”

“Will the reasons matter to you?”

“No. I don’t think they will.”

“Dallas?”

She turned, saw Charles Monroe, groom-to-be, smiling as he hurried toward them. “Shit.”

“What in the world are you two doing around here? I left your place less than an hour ago. I thought there were major plans for the ladies tonight.”

“There are. They should be doing some… thing right now.” What the hell, she thought, it was good cover. Just some friends running into each other on the street. “This isn’t your block.”

“No. I’m just out walking off some nerves. Tomorrow’s… it.”

“You don’t look a bit nervous to me,” Roarke commented.

He didn’t, Eve agreed. He looked stupid with happy, just like Louise. And elegant despite the casual shirt and pants.

“I take it the rehearsal went off okay. Sorry about needing stand-ins.”

“No problem, and it went very well. As far as I could tell.” He laughed a little. “I want it to be perfect for her. I caught myself checking the weather forecasts every ten minutes on my way home, and once I got there. So I got out of the house. You should come back, come have a drink, save me from my weather obsession.”