Origin in Death (24 page)

"I'm not irritated with you, which is approaching a term record, I believe. You don't want them punished. Charged and tried and judged."

"No. I don't want them punished. Not my call, but it's not what I want. It's not justice to lock them up. They've been locked up all their lives. It has to stop. What's being done, what they're doing."

He leaned over, kissed the top of her head.

"They've got a place to go already. Got a place to run already set up. Deena would have that nailed down. I could probably find it, sooner or later."

"Given enough time, I imagine so." Now he stroked her hair. "Is that what you want?"

"No." She reached back to take his hand. "Once they get sprung, I don't want to know where they are. Then I don't have to lie about it. I've got to get back to this."

He turned her, kissed her. "Let me know if you need me."

She worked them. Took them as a group, separated them. She tag-teamed them with Peabody. She let them sit alone, then hit them once more.

She was going by the book, right down the line. No one studying the record of the interview could claim it wasn't thorough or correct.

They never demanded a lawyer, not even when she fit them with homing bracelets. When she took them back to the Icove residence in the early hours of the morning, they showed considerable fatigue, but that same unruffled calm.

"Peabody, wait for the droids, will you? Get that set up." She left her partner in the foyer, moved the three women into the living area.

"You're not permitted to leave the premises. If you attempt to do so, your bracelets will send out a signal, and you'll be picked up and-due to the violation-brought into Central holding. Believe me, you'll be more comfortable here."

"How long do we have to stay?"

"Until such time as you're released from this restriction by the NYPSD or another authority." She glanced back to make certain Peabody was out of earshot, and still kept her voice low. "The record's off. Tell me where Deena is. If she kills again, it's not going to help anyone. You want this stopped, and I can help stop it. You want this public, and I've got a line on that."

"Your superiors, and any government authority that gets involved, won't want this public."

"I'm telling you I've got a line on it, but you're squeezing me. They'll block me out. They'll block me and my team and the department out. They'll scoop you up like hamsters, you and anyone else like you they can find, and put you in a fucking habitrail so they can study you. You'll be back to where you started."

"Why would you care what happens to us? We've killed."

So had she, Eve thought. To save herself, to escape the life someone else planned for her. To live her own.

"And you could've gotten out of this without taking lives. You could've gotten your kids and poofed. But you chose this way."

"It wasn't revenge." The one who spoke closed those strange and lovely lavender eyes. "It was liberty. For us, for our children, for all the others."

"They would never have stopped. They'd have made us again, replicated the children."

"I know. It's not my job to say whether or not you were justified, and I'm already going outside the lines. If you won't give me Deena, find a way to contact her. Tell her to stop, tell her to run. You're going to get most of what you're after. You've got my word."

"What of all the others, the students, the babies?"

Eve's eyes went flat and blank. "I can't save them all. Neither can you. But you can save more if you tell me where she is. If you tell me where the Icoves have their base of operations."

"We don't know. But..." The one who spoke looked at her twins, waited for their nod. "We'll find a way to contact her, and do what we can."

"You don't have much time," Eve told them, and left them alone.

Outside, the air was cold on her face, her hands. It made her think of winter, the long, dark months coming.

"I'll drive you home."

Peabody's tired face brightened. "Really? All the way downtown:"

"I need to think anyway."

"Think all you want." Peabody climbed into the car. "Gotta get ahold of my parents in the morning. Let them know we'll be delayed if we make it out there at all."

"When were you going?"

"Tomorrow afternoon." Peabody yawned, enormously. "Maybe beat the most insane of the holiday shuttle traffic."

"Go."

"Go where?"

"Go as planned."

Peabody stopped rubbing her exhausted eyes to blink. "Dallas, I can't just take off to go eat pie at this point of the investigation."

"I'm telling you that you can." Traffic was blissfully light. She avoided Broadway and its endless party, and drove through the canyons of her city nearly as alone as a lunar tech on the far side of the moon. "You've got plans, you're entitled to keep them. I'm stalling this," she said when Peabody opened her mouth again.

Peabody shut it, smiled smugly. "Yeah, I know. Just wanted you to say it. How much time you figure we can buy?"

"Not that much. But my partner's off with her face in the family pie. I got Roarke's relations zeroing in on us. People start scattering with turkey on the brain, they're harder to get in touch with, get balls rolling."

"Most federal offices are closed tomorrow, and through to Monday. Tibble knew that."

"Yeah. So maybe it slows things another few hours, maybe another day if God is good. He wants the same thing, so he'll make noises, but he'll stall, too."

"What about the school, the kids, the staff?"

"I'm still thinking."

"I asked Avril, well one of them, what they were going to do about the kids. How they were going to explain that there were three mommies. She said they'd be told they were sisters who'd found each other after a long separation. They don't want them to know, not about them. Not about what their father was doing. They're going to go under, Dallas, first opportunity."

"No question."

"We're going to give them one."

Eve kept her eyes straight ahead. "As police officers we won't, in any way, facilitate the escape of material witnesses."

"Right. I want to talk to my parents. Funny how when something really twists up your thinking-the order of things for you-you want to talk to Mom and Dad."

"Wouldn't know."

Peabody winced. "Sorry. Shit, I get stupid when I'm this tired."

"No problem. I'm saying I wouldn't know because I didn't have any-not normal ones. Neither did they. If that's what makes them artificial, then so am I."

"I want to talk to my parents," Peabody repeated after a long moment. "I know I'm lucky to have them, and my brothers, my sisters, all the rest. I know they'll listen, that's the thing. But not having that, having to make yourself out of what gets dumped on you, creating your life out of that. . . it's not artificial. It's as real as it gets."

The streets and sky were nearly empty. Occasionally an animated board bloomed out color and light. Dreams of pleasure and beauty and happiness. Bargain prices.

"Do you know why I came to New York?" Eve said.

"No, not really."

"Because it's a place where you can be alone. You can step out on the street with thousands of other people and be completely alone. Besides being a cop, that's what I thought I wanted most."

"Was it?"

"For a while, yeah. For a long while it was what I wanted. I'd gone from being anonymous to being monitored constantly through the foster program and state schools. I wanted to be anonymous again, on my terms. To be a badge, period. I don't know, if I'd caught this case ten years ago-five years ago-if I'd have handled it the way I'm doing now. Maybe I'd just have taken them down. Black and white. It's not just the job, the years on it that bring in all the gray. It's the people, dead and alive, you end up connected to who paint it in."

"I go with the last part. But no matter when you'd caught this, you i go this way. Because it's right. And that's what counts, that's what do. Avril Icove's a victim. Somebody needs to be on her side."

Eve smiled a little. "She has each other."

"Good one. A little bit of a cheap shot, but good nonetheless."

"Get some sleep." Eve pulled up in front of Peabody's building, tag you if I need you to come in, but for now plan to catch some sleep, pack, and go."

"Thanks for the lift." Peabody yawned again as she got out. "Happy Thanksgiving, if I don't see you before."

Eve eased from the curve, and saw in the rearview that McNab had left a light on in the apartment for Peabody.

There'd be a light on for her, too, she thought. And someone who'd listen.

But not yet.

She put her vehicle on autopilot, pulled out her personal 'link.

"Blah," Nadine said, and Eve could see the faintest of silhouettes on screen.

"Meet me at the Down and Dirty."

"Huh? What? Now?"

"Now. Bring a notebook-paper not electronic. No record Nadine, no cams. Just you, old-fashioned paper and pencils. I'll be waiting."

"But-"

Eve just clicked off, and kept driving.

The bouncer on the door of the sex club was big as a sequoia, black as onyx. He wore gold. A skin-shirt stretched across his massive chest, boots molded their way up the leather pants that coated his legs, and the trio of chains around his neck she imagined could be used as a weapon.

There was a tattoo of a snake slithering over his left cheek.

He was rousting two mopes as she walked up. One white, maybe two-fifty of hard fat, the other mixed race, heavy on the Asian, who looked like a contender for the sumo arena.

He had them both by the scruff of the neck and was quick-stepping them toward the curb.

"Next time you try to stiff one of my em-ploy-ees, I'm gonna twist your cocks clean off before you get a chance to use 'em."

He knocked their heads together-a technically illegal action- then let them fall in the gutter.

He turned, spotted Eve. "Hey there, white girl."

"Hey, Crack, how's it going?"

"Oh, can't bitch much." He slapped his palms together in a drying motion, twice. "What you doing down here? Somebody dead I ain't heard about?"

"I need a privacy room. I've got a meet," she said when his eyebrows rose up into his wide forehead. "Nadine's on her way. We were never here."

"Since I figure you two don't want one of my rooms so you can roll around naked together-and ain't that a shame-this must be official. I don't know nothing about official. Come on in."

She stepped into the blast of noise, of smells that included stale brew, Zoner-and a variety of illegals that could be smoked or otherwise ingested-fresh sex, sweat, and other bodily fluids she didn't choose to identify.

The stage at the front was jammed with naked dancers and a live band outfitted in neon loincloths. Table dancers wearing feathers, glitter, or nothing at all jiggled or wiggled to the obvious delight of the paying patrons.

The bar was jammed, most of the occupants well drunk or stoned.

It was perfect.

"Business is good," she said at a conversational shout as he blazed a path through the packs of people.

"Holiday time. We be slammed from now 'til January, then we be slammed 'cause it's too fucking cold to party outside. Life's good. How 'bout you, skinny white cop girl."

"Good enough."

He led the way upstairs to the privacy rooms. "Your man treating you right?"

"Yeah. Yeah, he mostly has that down cold."

They backed up when a couple stumbled out of one of the rooms, half-dressed, laughing wildly, and smelling very ripe.

"I don't want their room."

Crack just grinned, uncoded another. "This here is our deluxe accommodations. Crowd tonight, mostly they're going for economy. She be clean. Make yourself at home, sweet buns, and I'll bring that sexy Nadine right on up when she shows.

"Don't you think about paying me," he said when Eve dug into her pocket. "I went to the park this morning, had a talk with my baby girl by the tree you and your man had planted for her. Don't ever think about paying me for a favor."

"Okay." She thought about Crack's younger sister, and how he'd wept in Eve's arms beside her body in the morgue. "Ah, you got any plans for Thursday?"

She'd been his family. His only family.

"Gobble Day. I got me a fine-looking female. Figure we might fit some turkey-eating in between other festivities."

"Well, if you want the full spread, without certain areas of festivities, we're having a dinner thing. You can bring your fine-looking female."

His eyes softened, and the street jive vanished from his voice. "I appreciate that. I'd be pleased to come and bring my lady friend." He laid the slab of his hand on Eve's shoulder. "I'll go keep watch for Nadine, even though I haven't seen either of you."

"Thanks."

She stepped into the room, gave it a quick study. Apparently "deluxe" meant the room had an actual bed rather than a cot or pallet. The ceiling was mirrored, which was a little intimidating. But there was a menu screen and an order slot, along with a very small table and two chairs.

She looked at the bed, and a long, liquid longing rose up in her. She'd have given up food for the next forty-eight hours for twenty minutes horizontal. Rather than risk it, she went to the menu screen and ordered a pot of coffee, two cups.

It would be hideous. Soy products and chemicals married together to, inexplicably, resemble rancid tar. But there'd be enough caffeine juiced through it to keep her awake.

She sat, tried to focus her mind on the business at hand while she waited. Her eyes drooped, her head nodded. She felt the dream crawling into her, a monster with sharp, slick claws that snatched and bit at her mind.

A white room, blazing white. Dozens upon dozens of glass coffins. She was in all of them, the child she'd been, bloody and bruised from the last beating, weeping and pleading as she tried to fight her way out.

And he stood there, the man who'd made her, grinning.

Made to order, he said, and laughed. Laughed. One doesn't work right, you just throw it away and try the next. Never going to be done with you, little girl. Never going to be finished.