J. Robb - Conspiracy in Death

"I'm not using him or his money to clean up my mess."

"You've always been a stubborn bitch, Dallas. It's one of the many things I find attractive about you."

"Bite me."

"I did. It didn't take." Eyes sober again, he stepped forward. "I care about you – as a friend and a colleague. I'm warning you, she intends to take you under. And not everyone's going to hold out a hand to keep you from sinking. When you're in the position you've reached – professional and personal – there's a lot of latent jealousy simmering. This is the kind of thing that pops the lid on it."

"I'll handle it."

"Fine." He shook his head and started out. "I'll just tell you again: Watch your excellent ass."

She sat, lowered her head to her hands, and wondered what the hell to do next.

At the end of her shift, she opted to get the hell out. She took the files with her, including the data Chicago had finally transferred. But she was by God going home on time. A vicious headache kept her company on the drive.

She was snarled in northbound traffic, between Fifty-first and Fifty-second on Madison when Bowers stomped up the stairs from the subway at Delancy. She was, for Ellen Bowers, decidedly cheerful. As far as she was concerned, she'd scalded Eve Dallas's ass. Fried the bitch, she thought and very nearly skipped down the sidewalk.

It had been so gratifying to stand in front of a camera, have a reporter nod understandingly, while she detailed all the abuse she'd suffered.

Man oh man, it was about fucking time it was her face on-screen, her words being heard.

She'd wanted, oh, she'd wanted to tell them how it had all started years ago, back in the academy when Dallas had walked in and taken over. Fucking taken over. Broken all the records. Yeah, she'd broken them, all right. Broken them by giving instructors blow jobs. Probably gone down on the female supervisors, too. And anybody with any sense knew the slut had been doing Feeney and probably goddamn Whitney for years. God knew what kind of sick sex games she played with Roarke in that big, fancy house.

Her days were over, Bowers decided and treated herself by stopping into a 24/7 and springing for a quart of chocolate chunky ice cream. She'd eat the whole goddamn quart while she wrote her daily report in her private journal.

Bitch thought she could kick Ellen Bowers around and get away with it. Surprise, surprise. All that bouncing around from precinct to precinct, from assignment to assignment had finally paid off.

She had contacts. Damn right. She knew people.

She knew the right people.

This time, the destruction of Eve Dallas would be her springboard to fame, respect, and she'd be the one sitting at a desk in Homicide.

She'd be the one with her face on the screen.

Yeah, yeah, it was about goddamn time, she thought again as black hate crawled into her belly. And when she was done grinding Dallas into dust, she was going to see to it that prick Trueheart paid for his disloyalty.

She knew damn well Dallas had let him fuck her.

That's the way it was, that's the way it worked. That's why she'd never let some slick-talking creep stick his dick into her. She knew what people thought; she knew what people said. Sure she did.

They said she was a troublemaker. They said she was a sloppy cop. They said maybe she had a little blip in the brain somewhere.

They were all assholes, every last one of them, from Tibble right on down to Trueheart.

They weren't going to slide her quietly out of the department, shake her loose of the job with half pension. She'd fucking own the NYPSD when she was done.

All of them were coming down, all of them, starting with Dallas.

Because it all started with Dallas.

The rage worked under her cheer. It was always there, whispering to her. But she could control it. She'd controlled it for years. Because she was smart, smarter than all of them. Every time some department asshole ordered her to take a personality test, she hushed those whispers with a careful dose of Calm-It and passed.

Maybe she needed higher doses just lately, and it was best if she mixed some Zoner in for a nice soothing cocktail, but she was still in control.

She knew how to get around the assholes and their tests and their questions. And she knew what buttons to push, you bet she did. Her finger was on the trigger now, and it was staying there.

She had an inside track – and nobody knew but her. And now she had a nice, tidy pile of untraceable credits just for doing what she'd wanted to do in the first place: going public.

Her teeth flashed in a smile as she turned the comer and headed down the dark street toward her building. She was going to be rich, famous, powerful, as she was meant to be.

And with a little help from her friend, she'd pin Dallas to the wall.

"Officer Bowers?"

"Yeah?" Eyes narrowed, she turned, peered into the dark. Her hand lowered, hovered near her stunner. "What?"

"I have a message. From your friend."

"Oh yeah?" Her hand shifted, reached up to pat her container of ice cream. "What's the message?"

"It's delicate. We need privacy."

"No problem." She stepped forward, thrilled that there might be more she could use. "Come on up."

"I'm afraid you need to come down." The droid leaped out of the dark, his eyes colorless, his face blank. He swung the metal pipe once, cracking it against the side of her head before she could suck in air to scream.

The ice cream flew, landed with a splat. Blood smeared the sidewalk as he dragged her across. Her body bounced with muffled bumps on the stairs as he pulled it through the open basement door and down.

Efficiently, he climbed up again, locked the door. He didn't need the light. He'd been programmed to see in the dark. Quickly, he stripped off the uniform, took her ID, her weapon, and bundled all, including the pipe, in the large bag he'd brought with him. It would be placed in a recycle bin he'd already chosen and sabotaged.

And there in the cold dark, with emotionless skill, he used his hands and feet to break her to pieces.

"Sloppy, half-assed work." Eve fumed as she paced Roarke's office. She had to bitch to someone, and he was there. He made sympathetic noises while he scanned an incoming fax and went over the latest progress report from one of his largest interplanetary undertakings, the Olympus Resort.

It occurred to him that the resort could use another personal visit and that his wife could use a vacation. He made a mental note to work it in around their schedules.

"Two different primaries," she continued, striding around the office. "Two different cops, and both of them fucked up the case. What are they using to train them in Chicago – old videos of the Three Boobs?"

"I think that's Stooges," Roarke murmured.

"What?"

He glanced up, focused fully on her, and smiled at the absolute baffled fury on her face. "Stooges, darling. The Three Stooges."

"What's the difference, they're still incompetent knot-heads. Half the paperwork's missing. There's no documentation of witness interviews or reports, the postmortem documents are lost. They did manage to ID the victim, but nobody did a background check. Or if it was done, it's not in the file."

Roarke made some notations on the fax – a small adjustment that dealt with approximately three quarters of a million and change, and shot it off to his midtown office and his assistant's attention. "What do you have?"

"A dead guy," she snapped, "with a missing heart." She frowned as Roarke rose and walked over to select a bottle of wine from his chill box. "I can see one cop screwing up a case. I don't like it, but I can see it. But two cops screwing up the same one, it just doesn't hold. And now both of them are out of touch, so I'm going to have to do some dance with their boss tomorrow."