Imitation in Death (14 page)

"Wipe that ridiculous look off your face, lose the hat, and get' us a ride to Central," Eve snapped.

"Huh?" She let out a long sigh. "Oh, yes, sir. Doing all that."

"Do you have to do that?" Eve demanded of Roarke when Peabody walked dreamily away.

"Yes. When she makes detective, I'm going to miss seeing our girl in uniform, but it should be interesting to see how she suits up otherwise. I'll see you at home, Lieutenant." And not caring if it annoyed her, he caught her chin in his hand, pressed his lips firmly to hers. "You are, as always, delicious."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Jamming her hands in her pockets, she stalked away.

It was dark when she got home. Whether it was bullheadedness or not, she hadn't tagged Roarke for transpo even after realizing she didn't have cab fare on her. But she had dug up subway tokens, and found the underground ride jammed with people going home after a Sunday out on the town.

She opted to stand, swaying with the rhythm of the train as it headed uptown.

She didn't ride the subway enough anymore, Eve thought. Not that she missed it. Half the ads were in languages not her own, half the passengers were zoned or irritated. And there would always be one or two who smelled as if they had a religious objection to soap-and water.

Such as the wizened, toothless beggar with his license around his grubby neck who gave her a gummy grin. Still, it only took one steely stare to have him looking elsewhere.

She supposed she'd missed that, just a little.

She shifted, whiling away the trip by studying the other passengers. Students, buried in their disc books. Kids heading - out to the vids. An old man snoring loud enough to make her wonder if he'd slept through his stop already. Some tired looking women with children, a couple of tough guys looking bored.

And the skinny, geeky guy in the unseasonable trench coat currently masturbating at the far end of the car.

"Oh, for Christ's sake." She started over, but, one of the tough guys spotted the geek, and obviously taking exception to the activity smashed a fist into the whacker's face.

Blood spurted. Several people screamed. Though his nose was now a fountain, the geek kept himself in hand.

"Break it up." Eve surged, reached down to grab tough guy number one when a fellow passenger panicked, sprang to his feet, and knocked Eve into the fist of tough guy number two.

"Goddamn it to hell!" She saw a couple of shooting stars, shook her head clear. "I'm the frigging police." With her cheek throbbing, she smashed her elbow into tough guy number one to stop him from pounding on the giggling pervert still whacking off on the floor of the car, then stomped her foot on the instep of tough'guy two.

When she hauled up the geek, snarled, everyone else stepped back. Something about the glint in her eye did what the tough guy's fist hadn't. The geek went limp.

She glanced down as he deflated, and let out a sigh. "Put that thing away," she ordered.

Screw the subway, she grumbled as she strode up the long drive toward home. The ride had given her a sore jaw and a headache, and cost her the time it had taken to get off the damn car and turn the idiot over to the transit authority.

She didn't much care that there was a nice breeze stirring up, an almost balmy one. Or that it carried hints of something sweet and floral into the air. She didn't care that the sky was so clear she could see a three-quarter moon hanging in it like a lamp.

Okay, it looked nice, but hell.

She stomped inside, and after a terse inquiry, was told by the house system that Roarke was in the family media room.

Which was opposed to the main media room, she thought. Where the hell was it again?

Because she wasn't entirely sure and the hike from the subway stop to the front door had been considerable, she went into the elevator.

"Family media room," she ordered, and was whisked up, and east.

The main media room was for parties and events, she remembered. It could fit more than a hundred people in plush chairs, and offered a wall screen as wide as a theater's.

But the family media room was-she supposed he'd say more intimate. Deep colors, she recalled, cushy seats. Two screens-one for vids, one for games. And the complex and complicated sound system that could play anything from the old- fashioned clunky vinyl records Roarke liked to fiddle with on occasion to the minute sound sticks.

She stepped into the room to a blast of sound that seemed to come from everywhere. Her eyes widened in reaction to the fast-moving space battle being waged over the wall screen.

Roarke was kicked back in a lounge chair, the cat in his lap, a glass of wine in his hand.

She should go to work, she told herself. Do more research on the Boston Strangler, keep digging for a connection between Wooton and. Gregg. Though she was dead sure there would be no connection.

She should hound the sweepers, the ME, the lab. None of whom, she knew, would pay much attention to her at nearly ten on a Sunday night. But she could harass them anyway.

She could run probabilities, go over her notes, her suspect lists, stare at her murder board.

Instead, she walked over, plucked the cat off Roarke's lap. "You're in my seat," she told him, and set him on another chair.

She slid into Roarke's lap, took his wine. "What's this one about?"

"It seems water is the commodity in fashion. This particular planet in the Zero quadrant

"There isn't any Zero quadrant."

"It's fictional, my darling, literal-minded Eve." He snuggled her in, pressing an absent kiss to her head as he watched the action.

"Anyway, this planet's all but out of water. Potable water. And there's a rescue attempt being made to get the colony there a supply, and the means to clean. up what they have. But there's this other faction who wants the water for themselves. There've been a couple of bloody battles over it already."

Something exploded on screen, a shower of color, an earsplinting boom of sound.

"Nicely -done," Roarke commented. "And there's a woman, head of the environmental police--the good guys who's reluctantly in love with the rogue cargo captain who's helping deliver the goods-for a price. It's about thirty minutes in. I can start it over."

"No, I'll catch up."

She intended to sit with him for a few minutes only, let her mind rest. But she got caught up in the story, and it was so nice, so simple to stay, stretched out in the chair with him while fictional battles raged.

And good overcame evil.

"Not bad," she said when the credits began to roll. "I'm going to get another hour or two of work in."

"Are you going to tell me about it?"

"Probably." She climbed out of the chair, stretched then blinked like an owl when he turned on the light.

"Well, damn it, Eve, what have you done to your face now?"

"It wasn't my fault." Sulking a little, she touched fingers gingerly to her jaw. "Somebody knocked me into this guy's fist when I was trying to stop him from beating this other guy who was whacking off in the subway to a bloody pulp. I couldn't blame the guy, the-guy with the fist, because he wasn't aiming it at me. But still."

"My life," Roarke said after a moment, "was gray before you walked into it."

"Yeah, I'm a rainbow." She wiggled her jaw. "My face anyway. You up-for some drone work?"

"I might be persuaded. After we put something on that bruise."

"It's not so bad. You know, the transit cop told me that guy's a -regular on that line. They call him Willy the Wanker "

'That's a fascinating bit of New York trivia. He pulled her toward the elevator. "It makes me yearn to ride the subway!,

Chapter 8

In Peabody's cramped apartment, McNab ran her through a series of intense computer simulations. He'd proven himself, Peabody had discovered in the last few weeks, a strict and fairly irritating instructor.

With her shoulders hunched, she carefully picked her way through a murder scene, selecting her choices and options in a field investigation of a double homicide.

And cursed when her selection resulted in a. blasting buzz-McNab's personal addition to the sim-and a sternfaced figure of a robed judge shaking his finger at her.

Ah-ah-ah-improper procedure, scene contamination. Evidence suppressed. Suspect gets a free walk due to detective investigator's screwup.

"Does he have to say that?"

"Cuts through the legal mumbo," McNab pointed out, and stuffed potato chips in his face. "Digs down to the point."

"I don't want to do any more sims." Her face fellinto a pout that had McNab's libido jiggling. "My brain's going to leak out of my ears in a minute."

He loved her, enough to mostly ignore the image of peeling her out of her clothes and doing her on the rug. "Look, you're aces on the written. You've got a memory for details and points of law, blab blab. You get thumbs-up on the oral, once your voice settles down from a squeak." "It does not squeak."

"Sort of like how it does when I bite your toes.". He grinned toothily when she scowled at him.

"And while I like how it sounds myself, the test team's going to be less romantically inclined. So you're going to want to oil the squeaks It

She continued to pout, then her mouth dropped open in shock when he slapped her hand away from the bag of chips. "None for you until you get through a sim."

"Jesus, McNab, I'm not a puppy performing for a biscuit."

"No, you're a cop who wants to make detective." He moved the bag out of her reach. "And you're scared."

"I'm not scared; I'm understandably anxious about the testing process and proving myself ready to..." She hissed out a breath as he merely studied her with patient green eyes. "I'm terrified." Because his arm came around her, she snuggled into his bony shoulder. "I'm terrified I'll blow it, and I'll. let Dallas down. And you, and Feeney, the commander, my family. Jesus."

"You're not going to blow it, and you won't let anyone down. This isn't about Dallas, or anybody else. It's all about you."

"She trained me, she put me up for it."

"So she must figure you're ready. It ain't no snap, SheBody." He gave her cheek a quick'nuzzle.

"It's not supposed to be. But you've got the training, you've got the field time, the instincts, the brains. And, honey, you've got the guts and heart, too."

She turned her head to look up at him. "That's so damn sweet."

"It's a fact, and here's another one, here's what you don't have right now. You don't have the balls."

Her gooey affection toward him transformed into brittle insult. "Hey."

"And because you don't have the balls," he continued calmly, "you're not trusting your gut, or your training. You're second- guessing yourself. Instead of going with what you know, you keep wondering what you don't know, and that's why you keep missing up on the sims."

She'd pulled away from him. Her breath hissed out. "I hate you for being right."

"Nah. You love me because I'm so damn good looking."

"Asshole."

"Fraidy cat."

"'Fraidy cat." Her lips twitched into a reluctant smile, "Jeez. Okay, set up another one. Make it tough:_ And when I nail it, I not only get the chips, but :." Her smile widened. "You wear the hat."

"You're on."

She rose to pace and clear out her head while he programmed the sim. She'd been afraid, she admitted. Afraid she wanted it too much. So she hadn't used the hunger, but had let it eat away at her confidence. That had to stop. Even if her palms were damp and her stomach in knots it had to stop.

Dallas never let nerves get in the way, she thought. And she had them, nerves and something deeper, darker. It had peeked through on the Gregg scene, for just a moment that afternoon. Now and again on a sexual homicide, it peeked through. It turned her lieutenant's cheeks pale. Took her back, Peabody was sure, to something horrible.

Something personal.

Rape, Peabody was sure, just as she was sure' it had to have been brutal. And she'd have been young. Before the job. Peabody had studied Eve's career with the NYPSD like a template, but there'd been no report of a sexual assault on Dallas.

So it had been before, before the Academy. When she was a teenager, or possibly younger. In automatic sympathy, Peabody's stomach roiled. It would take guts, and balls, to face that, to revisit whatever had happened every time you walked into a scene that reverberated-with sexual violence.

But to use it, instead of being used by it, that took more, Peabody determined. It took what she could only define as valor.

"Ready here," McNab told her. "And it's a doozy."

She sucked in a breath, squared her shoulders. "I'm ready, too. Go in the bedroom or something, okay? I want to do it on my own."

He looked at her face, saw what he'd hoped to see, and nodded. "Sure. Nail the bad guy, She-Body."

"Damn right."

She sweated through it, but stayed focused. She stopped asking herself what Dallas would want her to do, even after a point what Dallas would do, and just concentrated on what needed to be done. Preserve and observe, collect and identify.

Question, report, investigate. It began to click for her, the pattern emerging. She waded her way through conflicting witness statements, shaky memories, facts and lies, forensics and procedure.

She built, she realized with rising excitement, a case.

Though she wanted to hesitate on the final stage, the arrest, she bore down and selected. And was rewarded with the graphic of a prosecuting attorney.

Pick him up. Murder One.

"Yes!" She popped up from the chair, did her little victory dance. "I got an arrest. Nailed the murdering bastard. Hey, McNab, bring me those damn potato chips."

"Sure." He stepped out, grinning. He carried the bag in one hand, and was naked but for her summer straw hat. Since it was perched jauntily at his crotch, she assumed her success made him as happy as it made her.

She laughed until she thought her ribs would crack. "You're such a moron," she managed, and jumped him.

For Eve it was a matter of merging bare facts with educated speculation. "He had to know their routines, which means he knew them. Doesn't mean they knew him, doesn't connect them, but he knew. He's too cocky for them to have been random. He trolled first."