Reunion in Death (16 page)

"You didn't stay broken," Eve pointed out. "You rebuilt your life. She'd know that. She's cleaning up old business, Mr. Parker. Odds are strong that you're part of that."

"You think she'll come after me?"

"Yes, I do. Sooner or later. You're going to want to alert your security. Thoroughly screen any new employees at your place of business, at your home. It would be wise for you to speak with the local authorities, as I will, so they'll know who and what to look for."

"That girl couldn't wait to kick the Texas dust off her heels." He looked down at the toes of his boots, shook his head. "Can't see her coming back here to try killing a man who meant less than that dust to her." He blew out a breath. "But I'm sixty-six years old, and that's old enough to know you don't sit scratching your butt waiting for a snake to crawl up your pant's leg. Been meaning to take me a little busman's holiday, go over to Europe and look at some studs. Might do it sooner than later now."

"I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know where you go and when."

He studied Eve again. "You're going to get her, aren't you, city girl?"

"Yes, sir. I am."

"I believe it. But I don't know if anything I've said here's a help to that, and I can't see her wasting time on me. I wasn't the first for her."

"How do you know?" Eve asked.

"She wasn't a virgin when she slid on my lap that night. At least that's one sin off my plate."

"Do you know who she'd been with before you?"

Parker shifted his feet. "Telling tales on myself, and telling them on somebody else-"

"This isn't gossip. This is a murder investigation."

"No point getting riled," he said mildly, and puffed out his cheeks. "I suspect she'd been tumbling with Chuck Springer. I know her mama had some worries about that. But then as I recollect, he started seeing one of the Larson girls. Maybe it was the Rolley girl. They were kids," he added. "I didn't pay much mind to it. Then when I started up with Julianna, I didn't pay mind to much of anything but her."

"Do you know where I can find this Chuck Springer?"

"He's one of my wranglers. Look no, he's a married man, got a little boy and another on the way."

"Wrangler? Would that be a cowboy?"

Parker snorted out another laugh, adjusted the brim of his hat. "New York City," he said with a shake of his head. "What the hell else is a wrangler but a cowboy?"

"I'd like to speak with him."

Parker sighed. "Then let's go hunt him down." He circled the paddock, jerked a head in the direction of the horses prancing inside. "Got some fine stock there. You ride?"

"Not on anything with more legs than I have," Eve answered and made him hoot with laughter.

"You?" he asked Roarke.

"I have done."

That stopped Eve dead. "On a horse? You've ridden a horse?"

"And survived. Actually, it's exhilarating. You'd probably like it."

"I don't think so."

"Just gotta let 'em know who's boss," Parker told her.

"They're bigger, they're stronger. I'd say that makes them boss."

He chuckled, then let out a shout to one of the hands. "Where's Springer?"

"Out the east pasture."

"Nice ride out there," Parker said conversationally, and tucked his tongue into his cheek. "Could set you up on a nice, gentle hack."

"I'm going to pretend you didn't just threaten a police officer."

"I like you, city girl." He jerked a thumb. "We'll take a Jeep."

...

It was probably an exhilarating ride. It certainly seemed to Eve that Roarke enjoyed it. But as far as she was concerned, they were bumping through dangerous terrain full of large bovines, cow shit, and whatever might lurk in the tall grass.

She saw another Jeep. On the flat plain it might have been half a mile away, and closer in, riding along a fence line, a trio of men on horseback. Parker veered toward them, giving his horn a little toot-toot. Cattle lumbered out of the way with a few annoyed moos.

"Need a word with you here, Chuck."

A lean, rawboned man in the ranch uniform of boots, jeans, checked shirt, and hat, gave some signal to his mount. They trotted up, and had Eve easing cautiously toward the far door of the Jeep.

"Boss." He nodded at Roarke, tapped the brim of his hat at Eve. "Ma'am."

"This lady here's Lieutenant Dallas, city cop from New York. She needs to talk to you."

"Me?" He had a long face, tanned nearly as deep and gold as a deer hide. It registered puzzled shock. "I ain't never been to New York City."

"You're not in any trouble, Mr. Springer, but you might be able to help me in an investigation." And how the hell was she supposed to interview him when he was all the way up there on that horse? "If I could have a few minutes of your time."

"Well." He shifted in the saddle. It creaked. "If the boss says."

He dismounted, with more creaking, yet with a fluidity that made Eve think of water sliding down a sleek rock. He kept the reins in one hand as his mount lowered its head and began to crop grass.

"It's regarding Julianna Dunne," Eve began.

"I heard she got out of prison. They say she killed a man."

"Her counts up to three on this leg," Eve corrected. "You knew her when she lived in this area."

"Yep."

"Have you had any contact with her since she left?"

"Nope."

"You were friends with her when she lived here."

"Not 'xactly."

Eve waited a beat. Texas interview rhythm, she decided, was a whole lot different from New York's. "What exactly were you then, Mr. Springer?"

"I knew her. She was my daddy's boss's stepdaughter. My boss, too. Haven't seen hide nor hair of her since she lit out. No reason I should. Boss, I got fence to ride."

"Chuck, Lieutenant Dallas is trying to do her job. Now if you're thinking I'm going to be peeved over something that went on between you and Julianna when you were a knot-headed teenager, put that aside. You know me well enough, know what happened with me well enough." He paused there as Chuck frowned down at his boots. "I figure you don't hold that against me. The same's gonna go. The lieutenant wants to know if you tumbled Julianna."

The man blushed. Eve watched, fascinated, as dull red crept under the deep gold tan. "Aw, Jake T., I can't talk about that sort of thing with a woman."

Eve pulled out her shield. "Talk to the badge."

"Mr. Parker," Roarke began. "I wonder if we might walk the field a bit. I've a cattle ranch in Montana and some interest in the process."

"Watch your step," Parker advised, and climbed out. "Chuck, you do what's right here."

Because she felt stupid sitting in the Jeep alone, Eve risked getting out. The horse immediately raised its head, butted her shoulder. She didn't punch it with the fist balled at her side, but it was very close.

"He's just seeing if you got anything more interesting to eat than grass on you." Chuck ran a hand down the horse's nose. "This one's always looking for a handout."

"Tell him I'm empty." Eve scooted to the side, put Chuck firmly between herself and the horse. When it whinnied, it sounded like laughter. "Tell me about Julianna, Chuck."

"Jeez. I was sixteen." He pushed his hat back on his head, took out a bandanna to mop sweat from his brow. "Boy's sixteen, he doesn't think with his brain. If you know what I mean."

"You had sex with her."

"She'd come out to the stables. Mucking out was part of my chores. She'd smell like glory and be wearing some tight shirt and tiny little shorts. God almighty, she was a looker. We started fooling around the way kids do. Then we started fooling around some more." He stared down at his boots again. "We'd sneak out of the house a lot that summer, make love in one of the stalls. I'd always put fresh hay in. Then she started coming up to the house, climbing in through my window. It was exciting at first, but, Jesus, my ma found out, she'd of skinned me alive. And, well damn it, I was sixteen, and there were all these other girls. Guy starts looking around. Julianna, she'd barely give me room to breathe, and it started making me itchy."

"You broke it off with her."

"Tried to once, and she tore into me like a hellcat." He looked up again. "Biting, scratching. Nobody pushed her aside, she said. Scared me, cause she looked half- crazy. Then she started crying and begging, and well, one thing led to another and we were at it again. And the next day, Julianna marches right into my house, into the kitchen, and tells my mother I've been poking at her. And if she doesn't send me away somewhere, she's going to her step-daddy and have my daddy fired."

He paused, then to Eve's surprise, smiled. "My ma, she never did take shit off anybody. Boss's daughter or not. Tells Julianna she's not to come into her home without an invitation ever again. And she won't tolerate some little tramp-called her that-standing in her kitchen threatening her family. Told her to scat, and if there'd been poking going on, that poking would damn well stop. Said she'd be speaking to Julianna's ma about it."

"Did she?"

"My ma says she's going to do something, she does it, so I gotta figure. Never told me what was said between them, but Julianna didn't come 'round the stables again that summer. Didn't see her around at all. But I got house arrest for a damn month myself and a lecture that burned my ears off."

"And after that summer?"

"I never really talked with her again. She came up to me once when I was out with a girl, said insulting things about a sensitive part of my anatomy. Said it in a quiet voice, real cold, with a smirk on her face. And once I found a dead skunk in my bed-had to figure it was her. And..."

"And?"

"Never told anybody." He shifted, set his jaw. "Night before my wedding, that would be six years ago last month, she called me. Said she wanted to give me her best wishes. But it was the way she said it, like she was, beg pardon, telling me to screw myself. And how she knew I'd be thinking of her on my wedding night, because she'd be thinking of me. How maybe she'd come see me sometime, and we'd talk about old times. I knew she was in prison. It shook me up a little, but I didn't see the point in telling anybody. I was getting married the next day."

"Has she contacted you since?"

"No, but this past Valentine's Day I got a package. There was a dead rat inside. Looked like it'd been poisoned. I didn't tell anybody about that either. Just got rid of it. Ma'am, I was sixteen. We just rolled in the hay for a couple months one summer. I got a wife, a son, a baby on the way. What the hell does she want to mess with me for after all this time?"

...

"He rejected her," Eve told Roarke when they were back in the car. "She went after a boy her own age, and he stopped wanting her before she stopped wanting him. Then his mother stood up to her. Two slaps. Intolerable."

"If she'd been a normal girl, that would have crushed her temporarily. Then she'd have moved on. Instead, she decided to seduce her stepfather. Older men, like her father, were more easily controlled, more inclined to see her as flawless."

"It was more than seducing him. It was using the sex to crush him, and her mother. To punish and to profit. She hadn't worked up to killing yet, but it was only a matter of time. Why damage when you can utterly destroy? She got what she wanted from that, but still couldn't forget that rejection."

She couldn't remember what it felt like to be a fifteen-year-old girl. Small wonder, Eve thought. She'd never been a normal teenager. And neither, it seemed, had Julianna Dunne.

"Calls him on his wedding night," Eve went on. "She's careful what she says in case he reports it, but she says enough to know he'll be upset, shaken up, and that he won't be able to stop himself from thinking about her on his wedding night. Plant the seed,"

"What are you going to do about him?"

"He's worried enough about his family to work with the locals. He's going to talk to Parker as well, and my impression is Parker will go the extra mile with ranch security. I'll talk to the cops down here, make sure they're doing their job. Then I'll do mine and find her."

"Then we're off for New York now?"

She stared out the window. "No." Then shut her eyes. "No, we'll go into Dallas."

CHAPTER 13

When the Dallas skyline swam into view through waves of heat, it triggered no memory inside her, but instead brought on a vague puzzlement. It had the towering buildings, the urban sprawl, the jammed spaces. But it was so different from New York.

Age, she realized, was part of it. All of this was young when compared to the east. Brasher somehow, but without the edge. Dallas was, after all, one of so many settlements that had grown into towns, then towns that had boomed into cities, long after New York, Boston, Philadelphia were established.

And the architecture lacked the fancy fuss found in the older buildings of the east that had survived the Urban Wars or been restored afterward. Here the towers were sleek and gleaming and for the most part unadorned.

Blimps and billboards announced rodeos, cattle drive tours, sales on cowboy boots and hats. And barbecue was king.

They might as well be driving on Venus.

"There's more sky," she said absently. "More sky here, almost too much of it."

Sun flashed blindingly off steel towers, walls of glass, the ringing people glides. She pushed her shaded glasses more securely on her nose.

"More roads," she said, and could hear the steadiness in her own voice. "Not as much air traffic."

"Do you want to go to the hotel?"

"No, I... maybe you could just drive around or something."

He laid a hand over hers, then took a downtown exit.

It seemed more closed in, with the blue plate of the sky like a lid over the buildings, pressing down on the streets jammed with too many cars driving too fast in too many directions.

She felt a wave of dizziness and fought it back.

"I don't know what I'm looking for." But it wasn't this abrupt sense of panic. "He never let me out of the goddamn room, and when I... after I got out, I was in shock. Besides it was more than twenty years ago. Cities change."

Her hand trembled lightly under his, and his own clamped on the wheel. He stopped at a light, turned to study her face. It was pale now. "Eve, look at me."

"I'm okay. I'm all right." But it took a great deal of courage to turn her head, meet his eyes. "I'm okay."

"We can drive to the hotel, and let this go for now. Forever, if that's what you want. We can drive straight to the airport and go back to New York. Or we can go to where they found you. You know where it was. It's in your file."

"Did you read my file?"

"Yes."

She started to pull her hand back, but his fingers closed tight. "Did you do anything else? Run any searches?" She asked.

"No. I didn't, no, because you wouldn't want it. But it can be done that way if and when you do."

"I don't want it that way. I don't want that." Her stomach began to hitch. "The light's turned."

"Fuck the light."

"No, just drive." She took a deep breath as horns began to blast behind them. "Just drive for a minute. I need to settle down."

She slid down a bit in the seat and fought a vicious war with her own fears. "You wouldn't think less of me if I asked you to turn around and drive out of here?"

"Of course not."

"But I would. I'd think less of me. I need to ask you for something."

"Anything."

"Don't let me back out. Whatever I say later, I'm telling you now I have to see this through. Wherever it goes. If I don't, I'll hate myself. I know it's a lot to ask, but don't let me rabbit out."

"We'll see it through then."

He wove through traffic, turning onto roads that weren't so wide now, weren't so clean. The storefronts here, when they weren't boarded up, were dull with grime.

Then everything began to spruce up again, slowly, as if some industrious domestic droid had begun work at one end and was polishing its way down to the other.

Small, trendy shops and eateries, freshly rehabbed apartments and town homes. It spoke, clearly, of the gradual takeover of the disenfranchised area by the upwardly mobile young urbanite with money, energy, and time.

"This is wrong. It's not like this." Staring out the window, she saw the shamble of public housing, the broken glass, the screaming lights of yesterday's slum quarter superimposed over today's brisk renewal.

Roarke pulled into a parking garage, found a slot, cut the engine. "It might be better if we walked a bit."

Her legs were weak, but she got out of the car. "I walked then. I don't know how long. It was hot then, too. Hot like this."

"You'll walk with me now." He took her hand.

"It wasn't clean like this." She clung to his hand as they walked out of the garage, onto the sidewalk. "It was getting dark. People were shouting. There was music." She looked around, staring through the present into the past. "A strip club. I didn't know what it was, exactly, but there was music pouring out whenever someone opened the door. I looked inside, and I thought maybe I could go in because I could smell food. I was so hungry. But I could smell something else. Sex and booze. He'd smelled like that. So I ran away as fast as I could. Someone yelled after me."

Her head felt light, her stomach clutched with a sharp, drilling hunger that came from memory.

"Little girl. Hey, little girl. He called me that. I ran across the street, through the cars. People shouted, beeped horns. I think... I think I fell, but I got up again."

Roarke kept her hand in his as they crossed.

"I couldn't run very far because my arm hurt so much, and I was dizzy. Sick."

She was sick now. Oily waves pitched in her belly and rose into her throat. "Nobody paid attention to me. Two men." She stopped. "Two men here. Must've been an illegals deal gone bad. They started to fight. One fell and knocked me over. I think I passed out for a minute. I must have because when I woke up, one of them was lying on the sidewalk beside me. Bleeding, groaning. And I crawled away. Into here. In here."

She stood at the mouth of an alley, tidy as a church pew now with a sparkling recycler.

"I can't do this."

He wanted to scoop her up, carry her away. Anywhere but here. But she'd asked, and he'd promised to see her through it. "Yes, you can."

"I can't go in there."

"I'm going with you." He brought her icy hand to his lips. "I'm with you, Eve. I won't leave you."

"It got dark, and I was cold." She made herself take the first step into the alley, then the second. "Everything hurt again, and I just wanted to sleep. But the smell. Horrible smell from the garbage. The recycler was broken, and there was garbage all over the alley. Someone came in, so I had to hide. If he comes after me, if he finds me, he'll take me back to the room and do awful things to me. I hide in the dark, but it isn't him. It's somebody else, and they're pissing against the wall, then they go away."

She swayed a little, didn't feel Roarke's hand steady her. "I'm so tired. I'm so tired, I'm so hungry. I want to get up, to find another hiding place. One that doesn't smell so bad, that isn't so dark. It's awfully dark here. I don't know what's in the dark."

"Eve." It worried him that she was speaking as if it were all happening now, that her voice was going thin and shaky as if she were in pain. "You're not hurt now, or alone, or a child." He took her shoulders, squeezed them firmly. "You can remember without going back."

"Yeah, okay." But she was afraid. Her belly was slick with fear. She concentrated on his face, on the clean, clear blue of his eyes until she felt steady again. "I was afraid to be in the dark, afraid to be out of it. But..." She looked back to where she'd huddled. "I couldn't get up anyway because I was sick again. Then I don't remember anything until it was light."

She lifted one shaking hand to point. "Here. I was here. I remember. There were people standing over me when I woke up. Blue uniforms. Police. If you talk to the cops they'll put you in a hole with the snakes and the bugs that like to eat you. Roarke."

"Steady. I'm right here. Hold on to me."

She turned to him. Turned into him. "I couldn't get away from them. I couldn't even move. I didn't remember where I was, or who. They kept asking questions, but I didn't know the answers. They took me away, to the hospital. There was a different smell there, just as scary. And I couldn't get away. They wouldn't let me go. But they didn't put me in a hole with the snakes. That was a lie. Even when I couldn't tell them who I was they didn't try to hurt me."

"No." He stroked her hair as he thought how she'd found the courage to grab on to a badge and make it her own. "They wanted to help you."

She let out a shaky breath, rested her head on his shoulder. "I couldn't tell them what I didn't know. I wouldn't have told them if I'd known. They would have taken me back to that room, and that would've been worse than any pit. I did something terrible in that room. I couldn't remember, but it was bad, and I couldn't go back. I can't breathe in here anymore."

He slid an arm around her waist, led her out of the alley where she bent from the waist, braced her hands on her thighs and drew greedy breaths.

"Better now?"

She nodded. "Yeah. I'm okay. Just need a minute. Sorry-"

"Don't apologize to me for this." His voice snapped out, whipped by fury before he could bank it. "Don't. Just take your time.

"The room was in a hotel," she said. "Old. Riot bars on the lower windows, middle of the street. Across from it was a sex club. Live Sex. Red light." Her stomach clutched, threatened to pitch, but she bore down. "The room was high up. He always got a high room so I couldn't get out the window. Ninth floor. I counted the windows across the street. There was a lighted sign out front, with the letters running down. Something foreign, because I couldn't read it. I could read some, but I didn't know what it said. C, A... C, A, S, A. Casa, Casa Diablo."

She let out a short laugh, straightened. Her face was clammy, white as ivory, but set. "Devil House. That's what that means, isn't it? Isn't that fucking perfect? Can you find it?"

"If that's what you want, yes. I'll find it."

"Now. Before I lose my nerve."

He went back to the car first. He wanted to get her away from the alley, to give her time to gather her resources. While she sat, head back, eyes closed, he took out his PPC and began the search.

"You've put a lot into one day already, Eve."

"I want to finish it."

The year before he'd finally gone back to the alley where his father had met someone meaner, someone quick enough to jam a knife in his throat. And he remembered the fury, the pain, and the ultimate release he'd experienced standing there as a man, looking down, and knowing it was finished.

"It's still there." He told her and saw her flinch. "The name's changed, but it's still a hotel. It's called The Traveler's Inn now, and rates three stars. It's fucking three miles from here."

When she opened her eyes, looked at him, he shook his head. "I'm with you, but by Christ, Eve, it's punishing to know you walked all that way, hurt and hungry and lost."

"Is that why you went alone when you went back to where you'd lived in Dublin? Because you didn't want to share that punishment with me?"

He shoved the PPC back in his pocket. "Give me a bit of room, would you, for wanting to tuck you up safe when I can manage it."

"You're churned up." She swiped the back of her hand over her damp face, didn't know if it was wet from sweat or tears. "The Irish gets thicker when you're churned up."

"Bugger it."

"I feel better because you're churned up. Go figure." She leaned over to touch her lips to his cheek. "Thanks."

"Happy to help. You're ready then?"

"Yeah."

...

Nothing looked particularly familiar. She thought they'd come in at night. Maybe at night. On a bus. Maybe on a bus.

What the hell did it matter?

The city itself wasn't a huge revelation to her. There was no sudden epiphany with all questions answered. She didn't know if she wanted all questions answered, only that she needed to do this one thing.

Wanted to do this one thing, she corrected. But despite the climate control that kept the interior of the car comfortably cool, a line of sweat dribbled down her back.

Roarke swung to the curb, held up a hand to hold off the uniformed doorman who hustled over. "Take your time," he told Eve. "Take whatever time you need."

The building was a simple block with a rippled tile roof. But it was painted a pleasant stucco pink now, and rather than the lurid sign, there was a shady portico and a couple of big concrete tubs filled with a rainbow of flowers.

"Are you sure this is right?" She felt his hand close gently over hers. "Yeah, of course you're sure. It didn't look like this."

"It was rehabbed in the late forties. From the looks of it, I'd say most of this area got the same treatment."

"It won't be the same inside either. This is probably a waste of time, and I should be talking to the locals about Dunne."

He said nothing, just waited her out.

"I'm so scared. I'm so fucking scared. I can't even work up any spit in my mouth. If this was the job, I'd just do it. You just go through the door."

"I'm going through the door with you." He kissed her hand again, because he needed it. "We've been through others. We can go through this one."

"Okay." She sucked in a breath. "Okay." And got out of the car.

She didn't know what Roarke said to the doorman, or how much money changed hands, but the car remained parked where it was.

There was a roaring in her head she knew was fear, adrenaline, and dread. It remained there, dimming her hearing so that it was like walking through water as they entered the lobby.

The floors were a sea of blues, and added to the sensation of passing through some thin liquid. There were pleasant seating areas arranged, and a bank of elevators with silver doors to one side, a long check-in counter on the other where two bright-faced young clerks worked.

There were white carnations in the buttonholes of their snappy red jackets, and a generous bowl of hard candy on the counter.

"He had funny eyes." She stared at the tidy check-in area and remembered the grubby rat hole where a single droid had worked. "One wandered everywhere and the other stared right at you. He smelled, like burning. Fucking droid's blown some circuits. That's what he said. You just stay there, little girl. Stay there with the bags and keep your mouth shut if you know what's good for you. And he went up to the counter and got a room."