J. Robb - Innocent In Death

“Fuck me,” Roarke muttered. “What bloody bullshit. I’m sorry they-”

He stopped whatever he was going to say as she was pulling very slowly, very deliberately away from him. And he saw her face. It was sheet white, her eyes dark and shocked against the utter pallor.

“Christ Jesus, Eve, you can’t-”

“I have to go to work.” The words jumped so in her throat, in her head, she wasn’t sure they came out in the right order.

“Bollocks to that. Toall of this. I did nothing, and you should know it-damn it, you should know without me saying it. I walked her out of the building. She came to see me, and I gave her less than ten minutes before I showed her the door. I felt small doing so, if you must know, but I’d rather hurt her feelings than cause you a moment of unhappiness.”

She spoke as slowly and deliberately as she’d moved. “I need you to back off.”

“Fuck that! Fuck it, Eve. Am I to be tried and condemned because some moron had a vid-cam at the right moment? A moment when a woman I once cared for said good-bye? Do you think I’d have embarrassed you, or myself come to that, in this way?”

“You did, you did embarrass both of us this way. But that’s not important, that’s not the point.”

“Damn if I’ll apologize for helping a woman into her car on a public street in the middle of the bleeding day.” He dragged his hand through his hair in a gesture she recognized, even now, as absolute frustration. “You’re too smart for this. You know there are people who love nothing more than to spread dirt about people like us. And you would accuse me-”

“I haven’t accused you.”

“Oh, aye, you have, of all manner of things.” Frustration turned on a dime to rage and insult. “And you do it without a word. I’d rather have the words as hard as they might be than that look on your face. It’s killing me. Let’s have this out then, once and for all, and be bloody well done with it.”

“No. No. I don’t want to be here right now.” Carefully, she picked up her jacket. “I don’t want to be with you right now. Because I can’t fight right now. I can’t think. I’ve got nothing. So you’ll win, if that’s what you need, because I’ve got nothing.”

“This isn’t about winning.” The utter misery on her face, in her voice, drowned the temper. “What I need is to know you believe me. That you trust me. That you know me.”

The tears were coming; she wouldn’t be able to hold them back much longer. She put on her jacket. “We’ll get into it later.”

“That one thing, Eve,” he said as she turned away. “Answer that one thing. Do you believe I’d betray you with her?”

She drew in what little she had and turned to face him. “No. No, I don’t believe you’d betray me with her. I don’t believe you’d cheat on me. But I’m afraid, and I’m sick in my heart that you might look at her, then at me. And regret.”

He took a step toward her. “Eve.”

“If you don’t let me go now, this will never be right.”

She made it out of the room, down the stairs. She heard Summerset say her name, and kept moving. Get out, was all she could think. Get away.

“You need your coat.” As she yanked at the door, Summerset draped it over her shoulders. “It’s very cold. Eve.” He spoke her given name quietly, and nearly shattered her last line of defense. “Will you let her use you both this way?”

“I don’t know. I-” Her communicator beeped. “Oh God, oh God.” She bore down. “Block video,” she ordered. “Dallas.”

Dispatch, Dallas, Lieutenant Eve…

She shoved her arms into the sleeves of the coat as she was ordered to Sarah Child. She responded as she strode out to the car.

And she felt Roarke watching her from their bedroom window as she drove away to do the job.

Eve stood over the body of Reed Williams and blocked out everything but the work. She knew Eric Dawson-who’d found Williams floating and had jumped in to try to save him-was currently in the locker room with a uniform.

The med-techs who responded had fought to revive him, even after Dawson’s attempts, then Nurse Brennan’s, as CPR had failed.

So her crime scene and the body had been severely compromised. And Reed Williams was still very dead.

She crouched down, examined the bruise and shallow laceration along his jaw. Otherwise, from her exam, his body was unmarked. He was wearing black swim trunks, and a pair of blue-lens minigoggles floated in the pool.

As Peabody hadn’t yet arrived on scene, she turned the body herself to study the back, the legs, the shoulders.

“No visible trauma other than the jawline, some superficial scratches consistent with being pulled out of the pool on the back. No sign of struggle. She rose, began to walk around the pool. “No visible blood. Might’ve been blood, and it was washed away.” Frowning, she looked around for a weapon that might have caused the wound on the jaw.

“Vic stands near the pool. Somebody strikes out, vic falls back into the water. Lost consciousness and drowns? Maybe, maybe, but the bruise isn’t that severe. But maybe.”

She kept walking, and studied the edge of the pool. Walked back, hunkered down again, and used microgoggles and a penlight to get a better look at the wound. “Flat. More a scrape than a cut. In the water already maybe. Yeah, it’s the right angle, isn’t it? Vic’s taking his swim, gets to the wall, holds onto the edge for a minute. That’s what you do. Slips, loses his grip, knocks his chin on the skirting. But why? Just clumsiness? Didn’t strike me as a clumsy guy. And does that knock end up drowning him? Or did he have help?”

She went back to the body, shook her head. “There’s no skin under his nails. No sealant, no nothing. Clean as a damn whistle. What do you do if somebody holds your head under? You fight, you scratch. And if I’m standing on the skirt of the pool holding some guy under-for instance, a strong guy, a guy who works out regularly-I’m probably going to give his head a good thump against the wall for insurance. Easy to mistake a head knock for accidental.”

Frowning again, she began to search, to feel the back of Williams’s head. No bump, no laceration, no trauma.

Looked simple, looked easy. Looked accidental.

And she thought: No fucking way.

“Bag and tag him,” Eve ordered and straightened. “ME to determine. Priority request for Morris. I want the sweepers to go over the edging. I’m looking for blood or skin.”

She moved off, into the locker room where Dawson sat in a baggy sweatsuit drinking hot coffee. “Officer.” Eve nodded to the uniform. “Detective Peabody should be arriving momentarily. Direct her here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. Dawson.”

“He was floating.” Dawson’s hands began to shake a little. “He was floating. I thought at first he was just…just floating, the way you do. Then I saw he wasn’t.”

“Mr. Dawson, I’m going to record this. Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Mr. Williams was already in the pool when you came in to the area?”

“Yes, he was…” He drew a long breath, set the coffee cup aside. “Actually, I was looking for him. I’d seen Arnette-Principal Mosebly, and she asked if I would take Reed’s fourth-period class today-that’s my study period. She told me he’d been suspended and she was going to initiate termination proceedings, unless he resigned within the next twenty-four hours. I felt terrible about it.”

“You were friendly with Mr. Williams?”

“We all got along here. We were all friendly, there was never any trouble here. Until…Oh, God.” He dropped his head again, pinched the bridge of his nose. “I agreed to monitor the class, but asked if I could speak with him, to get some idea of his lesson plan. I don’t know.”