Nora Roberts - Remember When

"Can you tell me where you were on the night of September sixteenth?"

"I don't know. Probably here at home. I need to check my book."

He rose to go to the desk for a sleek little day calendar. "Well, I'm wrong about that. Pat and I had dinner out with friends. I remember now. We met at about seven-thirty at the Mermaid. It's a seafood place on First Avenue between Seventy-first and -second. We had drinks first, then took the table about eight. Didn't get home until around midnight."

"The names of the people you were with?"

"James and Keira Sutherland."

"And after midnight?"

"I'm sorry?"

"After midnight, Mr. Whittier, what did you do?"

"We went to bed. My wife and I went to bed." He flushed when he said it, and the expression reminded her of Feeney's embarrassment when he'd realized what she and Roarke had been up to on their recreational break.

She deduced Whittier and wife had indulged in some recreation before sleep.

"How about the night of September fourteenth?"

"I don't understand this." He muttered it, but checked his book. "I don't have anything down. A Thursday, a Thursday," he said, closing his eyes. "I think we were home, but I'd have to ask Pat. She remembers these things better than I do. We tend to stay home most evenings. It's too hot to go out."

He was a lamb, she thought, innocent as a lamb, just as he'd been at seven.

She'd have bet the bank on it. "Do you know a Tina Cobb?"

"I don't think... the name's a little familiar-one of those things you think you've heard somewhere. I'm sorry. Lieutenant Dallas, if you could just tell me what's going on, exactly what's..." He trailed off.

Eve saw on his face the minute the name clicked for him. And seeing it, she knew she'd been right in betting the bank. This man had had no part in splattering the girl's blood.

"Oh my sweet Jesus. The girl who was burned, burned in the lot a few blocks from the site. You're here about her."

Eve reached in her bag, just as the bell rang at the door. Roarke, she thought. She'd made the right choice in contacting him after all. Not to help her determine Whittier's involvement, but to give the man someone familiar in the room when she pushed him about his son.

"My partner will get the door," she said, and took Tina's photo out of the bag. "Do you recognize this woman, Mr. Whittier?"

"God, yes, oh God. From the media reports. I saw her on the reports. She was hardly more than a child. You think she was killed in my building, but I don't understand. She was found burned to death in that lot."

"She wasn't killed there."

"You can't expect me to believe anyone on my crew would have a part in something like this." He glanced up, confusion running over his face as he got to his feet. "Roarke?"

"Steve."

"Roarke is a civilian consultant in this investigation," Eve explained. "Do you have any objection to his presence here at this time?"

"No. I don't-"

"Who has the security codes to your building on Avenue B?"

"Ah. God." Steve pressed a hand to his head a moment. "I have them, and the security company, of course. Hinkey, ah... can't think straight. Yule, Gainer.

That should be it."

"Your wife?"

"Pat?" He smiled weakly. "No. No point in that."

"Your son?"

"No." But his eyes went blank. "No. Trevor doesn't work on sites."

"But he's been to that building?"

"Yes. I don't like the implication here, Lieutenant. I don't like it at all."

"Is your son aware that his grandfather was Alex Crew?"

Every ounce of color drained from Steve's cheeks. "I believe I'd like that lawyer now."

"That's your choice." Standing as shield, Eve thought. Instinct. A father protecting his son. "More difficult to keep certain facts out of the media once the lawyers come into it, of course. Difficult to keep your connection to Alex Crew and events that transpired fifty years ago out of the public stream.

I assume you'd prefer if certain details of your past remained private, Mr.

Whittier."

"What does this have to do with Alex Crew?"

"What would you do to keep your parentage private, Mr. Whittier?"

"Nearly anything. Nearly. The fact of it, the fear of it has ruined my mother's health. If this is exposed, it might kill her."

"Samantha Gannon's book exposed quite a bit."

"It didn't make the connection. And my mother doesn't know about the book. I can control, somewhat, what she hears about. She needs to be protected from those memories, Lieutenant. She's never hurt anyone, and she doesn't deserve to be put on display. She's not well."

"I've no intention of doing that. I don't want to have to speak to her, to force her to speak to me about any of this."

"You want to shield your mother," Roarke said quietly. "As she shielded you.

But there are prices to be paid, Steve, just as she paid them in her day.

You'll have to speak for her."

"What can I tell you? For God's sake, I was a child the last time I saw him.

He died in prison. He's nothing to do with me, with any of us. We made this life."

"Did the diamonds pay for it?" Eve wondered, and his head snapped around, insult plain on his face.

"They did not. Even if I knew where they were, I wouldn't have touched them. I used nothing of his, want nothing of his."

"Your son knows about them."

"That doesn't make him a killer! That doesn't mean he'd kill some poor girl.

You're talking about my son."

"Could he have gotten access to the security codes?"

"I didn't give him the codes. You're asking me to implicate my son. My child."

"I'm asking you for the truth. I'm asking you to help me close the door your father opened all those years ago."

"Close the circle," Steve mumbled and buried his face in his hands. "God.

God."

"What did Alex Crew bring you that night? What did he bring to the house in Columbus?"

"What?" With a half laugh, Steve shook his head. "A toy. Just a toy." He gestured to the shelves, and the antique toys. "He gave me a scale-model bulldozer. I didn't want it. I was afraid of him, but I took it because I was more afraid not to. Then he sent me upstairs. I don't know what he said to my mother in the next few minutes, other than his usual threats. I know I heard her crying for an hour after he left. Then we were packing."

"Do you still have the toy?"

"I keep it to remind me what he was, what I overcame thanks to my mother's sacrifices. Ironic really. A bulldozer. I like to think I razed and buried the past." He looked over to the shelves, then, frowning, rose. "It should be here. I can't remember moving it. Odd."

Antique toys, Eve mused while Whittier searched. Gannon's ex had antique toys in his office and an advance copy of the book.

"Does your son collect this sort of thing, too?"

"Yes, it's the one thing Trevor and I shared. He's more interested in collector's values, more serious about it than I from that standpoint. It's not here."

He turned, his face was sheet-white now and seemed to have fallen in on itself. "It doesn't mean anything. I must have misplaced it. It's just a toy."

Chapter 29

"Could it have been moved?" Eve studied the shelves. She had a vague sort of idea what a bulldozer looked like. Her knowledge of machines was more finely tuned to urban style. The maxibuses that belched up and down the avenues, the airjacks that tore up the streets in the most inconvenient places at the most inconvenient times, the droning street-cleaning units, the clanking recycler trucks.

But she recognized models of old-fashioned pickup trucks and service vans, and a shiny red tractor, not unlike the one she'd seen on Roarke's aunt's farm recently.

There were toy replicas of emergency vehicles that were boxier, clunkier to her eye than what zipped around the streets or skies of New York. And a number of bulky trucklike things with scoops or toothy blades or massive tubes attached.