Nora Roberts - Sacred Sins

For a moment she said nothing because under the anger, she heard grief. “It must’ve been a very bad experience,” she murmured. "I'm sorry.

Uncomfortable, he shifted. “No tabletop analysis,” he reminded her.

A very bad experience, she thought again. But he wasn’t a man who wanted sympathy. “All right, let’s try a different angle. You’re a homicide detective. I guess all you do all day is two-wheel it down dark alleys with guns blazing. You dodge a few bullets in the morning, slap the cuffs on in the afternoon, then read the suspect his rights and haul him in for interrogation. Is that general enough for you?”

A reluctant smile touched him mouth. “Pretty clever, aren’t you?”

“So I’ve been told.”

It wasn’t like him to make absolute judgments of someone he didn’t know. His innate sense of fair play struggled with a long, ingrained prejudice. He signaled for another drink. “What’s your first name. I’m tired of calling you Dr. Court.”

“Yours is Ben.” She gave him a smile that made him focus on her mouth again. “Teresa.”

“No.” He shook his head. “That’s not what you’re called. Teresa’s too ordinary. Terry doesn’t have enough class.”

She leaned forward and dropped her chin on her folded hands. “You might be a good detective after all. It’s Tess.”

“Tess.” He tried it out slowly, then nodded. “Very nice. Tell me, Tess, why psychiatry?”

She watched him a moment, admiring the easy way he sprawled in his seat. Not indolent, she thought, not sloppy, just relaxed. She envied that. “Curiosity,” she said again. “The human mind is full of unanswered questions. I wanted to find the answers. If you can find the answers, you can help, sometimes. Heal the mind, ease the heart.”

It touched him. The simplicity. “Ease the heart,” he repeated, and thought of his brother. No one had been able to ease his. “You think if you heal one, you can ease the other?”

“It’s the same thing.” Tess looked beyond him to a couple who huddled laughing over a pitcher of beer.

“I thought all you got paid to do was look in heads.”

Her lips curved a little, but her eyes still focused beyond him. “The mind, the heart, and the soul. ‘Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased. Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow. Raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart.’ ”

He’d lifted his gaze from his drink as she’d spoken. Her voice remained quiet, but he’d stopped hearing the juke, the clatter, the laughter.

“ Macbeth .” When she smiled at him, he shrugged. “Cops read too.”

Tess lifted her glass in what might have been a toast. “Maybe we should both reevaluate.”

It was still drizzling when they turned back into the parking lot at headquarters. The gloom had brought the dark quickly, so that puddles shone beneath streetlights and the sidewalks were wet and deserted. Washington kept early hours. She’d waited until now to ask him what she’d wondered all evening.

“Ben, why did you become a cop?”

“I told you, I like catching bad guys.”

The seed of truth was there, she thought, but not the whole. “So you grew up playing cops and robbers, and decided to keep right on playing?”

“I always played doctor.” He pulled up beside her car and set the brake. “It was educational.”

“I’m sure. Then why the switch to public service?”

He could’ve been glib, he could’ve evaded. Part of his charm for women was his ability to do both with an easy smile. Somehow, for once, he wanted to tell the simple truth. “All right, now I’ve a quote for you. ‘The law is but words and paper without the hands and swords of men.’ ” With a half smile he turned to see her studying him calmly. “Words and paper aren’t my way of handling things.”

“And the sword is?”

“That’s right.” He leaned over to open her door. Their bodies brushed but neither acknowledged the physical tug. “I believe in justice, Tess. It’s a hell of a lot more than words on paper.”

She sat a moment, digesting. There was violence in him, ordered and controlled. Perhaps the word was trained , but it was violence nonetheless. He’d certainly killed, something her education and personality completely rejected. He’d taken lives, risked his own. And he believed in law and order and justice. Just as he believed in the sword.

He wasn’t the simple man she’d first pegged him to be. It was a lot to learn in one evening. More than enough, she thought, and slid aside.

“Well, thanks for the drink, Detective.”

As she pushed out of the car, Ben was out on the other side. “Don’t you have an umbrella?”

She sent him an easy smile as she dug for her keys. “I never carry it when it rains.”

Hands in his back pockets, he sauntered over to her. For reasons he couldn’t pinpoint, he was reluctant to let her go. “Wonder what a head doctor would make of that?”

“You don’t have one either. Good night, Ben.”

He knew she wasn’t the shallow, overeducated sophisticate he’d labeled her. He found himself holding her door open after she’d slid into the driver’s seat. “I’ve got this friend who works at the Kennedy-Center. He passed me a couple of tickets for the Noel Coward play tomorrow night. Interested?”

It was on the tip of her tongue to refuse, politely. Oil and water didn’t mix. Neither did business and pleasure. “Yes, I’m interested.”

Because he wasn’t sure how he felt about her agreement, he just nodded. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

When he slammed her door shut, she rolled down the window. “Don’t you want my address?”

He sent her a cocky smile she should’ve detested. “I’m a detective.”

When he strolled back to his car, Tess found herself laughing.

By ten the rain had stopped. Absorbed in the profile she was compiling, Tess didn’t notice the quiet, or the dull light from the moon. The take-out Chinese had slipped her mind, and her dinner of a roast beef sandwich was half eaten and forgotten.

Fascinating. She read over the reports again. Fascinating and chilling. How did he choose his victims? she wondered. All blond, all late twenties, all small to medium builds. Who did they symbolize to him, and why?

Did he watch them, follow them? Did he choose them arbitrarily? Maybe the hair color and build were simply coincidence. Any woman alone at night could end up being saved .

No. It was a pattern, she was sure of it. Somehow he selected each victim because of general physical appearance. Then he managed to peg her routine. Three killings, and he hadn’t made one mistake. He was ill, but he was methodical.

Blond, late twenties, small to medium build. She found herself staring at her own vague reflection in the window. Hadn’t she just described herself?

The knock at the door jolted her, then she cursed her foolishness. She checked her watch for the first time since she’d sat down, and saw she’d worked for three hours straight. Another two and she might have something to give Captain Harris. Whoever was at the door was going to have to make it quick.

Letting her glasses drop on the pile of papers, she went to answer. “Grandpa.” Annoyance evaporated as she rose on her toes to kiss him with the gusto he’d helped instill in her life. He smelled of peppermint and Old Spice and carried himself like a general. “You’re out late.”

“Late?” His voice boomed. It always had. Off the walls of the kitchen where he fried up fresh fish, at a ball game where he cheered for whatever team suited his whim, on the floor of the Senate where he’d served for twenty-five years. “It’s barely ten. I’m not ready for a lap robe and warm milk yet, little girl. Fix me a drink.”