J. Robb - Judgment in Death

"Where? Where are you going?"

"Back to the dead," Eve said. "Push this thing," she added as Roarke headed out of the lot. "He could have heard about Ricker by now."

"Strap in," Roarke advised, and he punched the accelerator.

– =O=-***-=O=-

The dead rested in sunlight and dappled shade, in gentle green hills, with markers of soft white, soft gray. The rows of them, the crosses and curves, made Eve wonder how the living could find comfort there, faced with the unassailable proof of their own mortality.

But some must. For even in these days when few chose to go into the ground or could afford the real estate, many of the graves were splashed with flowers. That symbol of life given to the dead.

"Which way?"

Roarke had a diagram of the cemetery on his pocket screen. "To the left, over that rise."

They walked around the markers together. "The first time I spoke to you," she remembered, "we were in a graveyard. Kind of creepy, I guess."

"Apt." He laid a hand on her shoulder. "There he is. Your instincts are excellent."

She paused, taking a moment to study the man sitting on the tended grass beside a flower-strewn grave. And the marker was indeed a cross, pure and white.

"I need you to hang back."

"No."

Saying nothing, she crouched, pulled out her clinch piece. "I'm trusting you not to use this unless you have no choice." She handed it to him. "Trust me to do my job. I need to try to talk him in. I'm asking you to let me give him that chance. Compromise."

"All right."

"Thanks. Call Peabody. Tell her where to come. I need her here."

Alone, she walked down the gentle slope and through the graves. He knew she was coming. He was cop enough to hold his ground, to bide his time, but she saw from the slightest shift in his body, he knew.

Better that way, she thought. She preferred not to surprise him.

"Sergeant."

"Lieutenant." He still didn't look at her, didn't take his attention from the name carved in that perfect white cross. "I want you to know I'm carrying. I don't want to harm you."

"I appreciate that. You should know I'm carrying, and I don't want to harm you, either. I need to talk to you, Sergeant. Can I sit down here?"

He looked at her then. His eyes were dry, but she could see he'd been weeping. There were still tracks of the tears on his cheeks. And she saw, too, that his weapon, the same make and model as her own, was in the hand resting in his lap.

"You've come to take me in. I don't intend to go."

"Can I sit down?"

"Sure. Sit. It's a good spot for it. That's why we picked it. But I always thought that Thad would be the one to sit here, to sit and talk to me and his mother. Not that I would be the one to sit. He was the light of my life."

"I read his service record." She sat on the opposite side of the grave. "He was a good cop."

"Yeah, he was. Oh, I was proud of him. The way he carried himself, the way he took to the job like he was born to it. Maybe he was. I was always proud of him, though, from the first instant they put him in my arms and he was squalling and wriggling. All that life in one little package."

With his free hand, he brushed at the grass that grew over his son. "You don't have children as yet, do you, Lieutenant?"

"No."

"I'll tell you that whatever you feel for anyone, however much love's inside you, there's more of it when you have a child. You can't understand it until you've experienced it. And it doesn't change as they grow into men, into women. It just grows with them. It should be me in there, and not my boy. Not my Thad."

"We took Ricker." She said it quickly, because she'd seen his hand tighten on his weapon.

"I know it." And relax again. "I heard it on-screen in the little room where I've been staying. My hidey-hole. We all need our hidey-holes, don't we?"

"He's going down for your son, Sergeant."

She used his rank, and would use it, again and again, to remind him what he was.

"I want you to know that. Conspiracy to commit murder. The murder of a police officer. And he'll go down for the others, the same way. With everything else we'll nail on, he'll never get out of a cage. He'll die there."

"It's some comfort. I never thought you were part of it. Not in my gut. I can't say I've been clear in my mind for the last bit of time. After Taj…"

"Sergeant-"

"I took that boy's life, a life as innocent as my son's. Made a widow of his sweet wife, and took away a good father from those babies. I'll carry that regret, that shame, that horror to my own grave."

"Don't." She said it quietly, urgently, as he lifted his weapon and placed it to the pulse at his throat. It would be lethal there. And on maximum setting would end it instantly. "Wait. Is that the way you honor your son, by taking another life on his grave? Is that what Thad would want? Is that what he'd expect from his father?"

He was so tired. It showed in his face now, in his voice. "What else is there?"

"I'm asking you to listen to me. If you're set on this, I can't stop you. But you owe me some time."

"Maybe I do. The boy who was with you when you came to my door, when I knew you knew. I panicked. Panicked," he said again like an oath. "I don't even know who he was."

"His name's Webster. Lieutenant Don Webster. He's alive, Sergeant. He's going to be okay."

"I'm glad of that. One less stone to carry."

"Sergeant…" She fumbled for the words. "I'm a murder cop," she began. "You ever work Homicide?" She knew he hadn't. She knew it all.

"No, not as such. But you deal with it wherever you are if you're a cop. And you deal with it too much if you've been one as long as me."

"I work for the dead. I can't count the number of them I've stood over. I don't think I could stand to try. But I dream of them. All those lost faces, those stolen lives. It's hard."

She was surprised she was telling him this, surprised it seemed the way. "Sometimes it's so hard to see those faces in your sleep, you wake up hurting. But I can't do anything else. I've wanted to be a cop as long as I can remember. It was my one clear vision, and it's all I can do."

"Are you a good cop?" The tears were overflowing again. In sympathy or despair, she couldn't tell. "Eve. Your name's Eve, isn't it? Are you a good cop, Eve?"

"Yeah. I'm a damn good cop."

Now he wept, and she felt her eyes tear up in concert. "Thad, he wanted the same as you. The one clear vision. I like that. Yeah, his one clear vision. They let him bleed to death. They let him die. And for what? For what? Money. It rips my heart."

"They've paid, Sergeant. I can't tell you what you did was right, or what the judgment on you will be in the end of things. But they've paid for what they did to your boy, for what they did to their badge. Ricker's going to pay, too, I swear it to you, here on the grave of this good cop. He'll pay for playing them all like puppets. He played you, too. Played on your love for your son. Your grief. Your pride. Will you let him keep pulling your strings? Will you dishonor yourself and your son by letting him win?"

"What can I do?" Tears streamed down his cheeks. "I've lost. I'm lost."

"You can do what Thad would expect of you. You can face it."

"I'm shamed," he whispered. "I thought when it was over, I'd be glad. I'd be free. But I'm shamed."

"You can make up for it, best you can. You can erase some of the shame. You can come with me, Sergeant. You can be a cop now and come with me."

"Prison or death." He looked at her again. "Those are hard choices."

"Yes, very hard. Harder to live, Sergeant, and balance the scales. Let the system make its judgment on you. That's what we believe in, people like us, what we work for when we pick up the badge. I'm asking you to do that, Sergeant. I'm asking you not to be one of the faces I see in my sleep."