CHAPTER 10
There was a headache simmering like a hot stew behind her eyes by the time Eve got home. She’d only managed to hit three sites. Construction workers, she learned, called it a day long before cops did. She’d gotten nothing from the ones she’d managed to survey but the headache from the clatter of tools, the blasts of music, the calls of workers all echoing in empty or near-empty buildings.
Added to that was the hassle of cajoling, browbeating or begging suppliers for their customer lists. If she never visited another building-supply warehouse or outlet in this lifetime, she would die a happy woman.
She wanted a shower, a ten-minute nap and a gallon of ice water.
Since she’d pulled up behind Feeney’s vehicle, she didn’t bother to check the in-house. Roarke would be upstairs with him, in the office or the computer lab, playing their e-geek games. Since the cat didn’t come out to greet her, she assumed he was with them.
She scotched the idea of ten minutes with her eyes shut. She couldn’t quite bring herself to get horizontal with another cop in the house, especially if the cop was on the clock. It would be too embarrassing if she got caught. She compromised with an extra ten minutes in the shower and felt justified when the headache backed off to threatening.
She traded in the day’s separates—she was going to remember that one—for a T-shirt and jeans. She thought about going barefoot, but there was that cop-in-the-house factor, and bare feet always made her feel partially naked.
She went for tennis shoes.
Since she felt nearly human again, she stopped by the computer lab on her way to her office.
Roarke and Feeney were manning individual stations. Roarke had his sleeves rolled up and his hair tied back, as was his habit when he settled into serious work. Feeney’s short-sleeved shirt looked as if he’d mashed it into a ball and bounced it a few times before putting it on that morning. It also showed off his bony elbows. She wondered why she found them endearing.
She must be seriously tired.
There were screens up with data zipping across them too quickly for her eye to read. The men tossed comments or questions at each other in the geek language she’d never been able to decipher.
“You guys got anything for me in regular English?”
They both looked over their shoulders in her direction, and she was struck how two men who couldn’t have been more different in appearance could have identical looks in their eyes.
A kind of nerdy distraction.
“Making some headway.” Feeney reached into the bag of sugared nuts on his work counter. “Going back a ways.”
“You look . . . fresh, Lieutenant,” Roarke commented.
“I didn’t a few minutes ago. Grabbed a shower.” She moved into the room as she studied the screens. “What’s running?”
Roarke’s smile spread slowly. “If we tried to explain, your eyes would glaze over. This one here might be a little more straightforward.” He gestured her closer so she could see the split screen working with a photo of Judith Crew on one side and a blur of images running on the other.
“Trying for a face match?”
“We dug up her driver’s license from before the divorce,” Feeney explained. “Got another run going over there from the license she used when the insurance guy located her. Different name, and she’d changed her hair, lost weight. Computer’s kicking out possible matches. We’re moving from those dates forward.”
“Then we’re using a morph program on yet another unit,” Roarke continued. “Searching for a match on what the computer thinks she looks like now.”
“The civilian thinks if the image was close, we’d have matched by now.”
“I do, yes.”
Feeney shrugged, nibbled nuts. “Lot of people in the world. Lots of women in that age group. And she could be living off-planet.”
“She could be dead,” Eve added. “Or she could have evaded standard IDing. She could be, shit, living in a grass shack on some uncharted island, weaving mats.”
“Or had facial restructuring.”
“Kids today.” Feeney blew out an aggrieved breath. “No faith.”
“What about the son?”
“Working a morph on that, too. We’ve hit some possibles. Doing a secondary on them. And our boy here’s looking for the money.”
Eve looked away from the screens. The rapid movements were bringing back the headache. “What money?”
“She sold the house in Ohio,” Roarke reminded her. “It takes a bit of time for the settlement, the payoff. The bank or the realtor would have had to send the check to her, or make an e-transfer per instructions. In the name she was using at the time, unless she authorized it to be paid to another party.”
“You can find out stuff like that? From that long ago?”
“If you’re persistent. She was a careful woman. She authorized the settlement check to be transferred electronically to her lawyer, at that time, then sent to another law firm in Tucson.”
“Tucson?”
“Arizona, darling.”
“I know where Tucson is.” More or less. “How do you know this?”
“I have my ways.”
She narrowed her eyes when Feeney looked up at the ceiling. “You lied, you bribed and you broke any number of privacy laws.”
“And this is the thanks I get. She was in Tucson, from what I can find, less than a month in early 2004. Long enough to pick up the check, deposit it in a local bank. My educated guess would be, she used that point and those funds to change identities once again, then moved to another location.”
“We’re narrowing it down. Once the matches are complete, we’ll take a hard look at the hits.” Feeney rubbed his temple. “I need a break.”
“Why don’t you go down, have a swim, a beer?” Roarke suggested. “We’ll see what we’ve got in another half hour.”
“That’s a plan I can get behind. You got anything for us, kid?”
Nobody but Feeney ever called her “kid.” “I’ll bring you up to date after you take a thirty,” Eve told him. “I need to set a few things up in my office.”
“Meet you there then.”
“I could use a beer myself,” Eve commented when Feeney walked out.
“A break seems to be in order.” Roarke ran a finger down the back of her hand, then tugged it closer to nibble.
She knew that move.
“Don’t even start sniffing at me.”
“Too late. What is this scent? All over your skin?”
“I don’t know.” Warily, she lifted her shoulder, sniffed at it herself. Smelled like soap to her. “Whatever was in the shower.” She gave her hand a little yank, but made the mistake of glancing around in case Feeney was still nearby. The instant of distraction gave him the opening to hook a foot around hers, tip her off balance and into his lap.
“Jesus, cut it out!” Her voice was a fierce and frantic whisper. On the mortification scale, getting caught snuggled in Roarke’s lap hit the top three, even above getting caught napping or barefoot by another cop. “I’m on the clock. Feeney’s right here.”
“I don’t see Feeney.” He was already nuzzling his way along her neck toward her ear. “And as an expert consultant, civilian, I’m entitled to a recreational break. I’ve decided I prefer adult activity to adult beverage.”
Little demons of lust began to dance along her skin. “You can’t even think I’m going to mess around with you in the computer lab. Feeney could come back in here.”
“Adds to the excitement. Yes, yes.” He chuckled as he nipped at a spot—his personal favorite—just under her jaw. “Sick and perverted. And though I’d wager Feeney suspects we have occasional sex, we’ll take our recreational break elsewhere.”
“I’ve got work to do, Roarke, and . . . Hey! Hands!”
“Why, yes, those are indeed my hands.” Laughing now, he cupped them under her and levered out of the chair. “I want my thirty,” he said, and carted her toward the elevator.
“The way you’re going, you’ll be done in five.”
“Bet.”
She struggled against a laugh of her own and put up a token struggle by clamping a hand on the opening of the elevator. “I can’t just go off and get naked with Feeney in the house. It’s too weird. And if he comes back and—”
“You know, I suspect Feeney gets naked with Mrs. Feeney, and this is probably how they had their little Feeneys.”
“Oh my God!” Her hand trembled, went limp, and her face paled considerably. “That’s just despicable, the dirtiest of dirty fighting to shove that one into my head.”
Because he wanted to keep her unbalanced, he reached behind her and keyed in the bedroom rather than using audio command. “Whatever works. Now you’re too weak to hold me off.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“Do you remember the first time we made love?” He touched his lips to hers as he said it, changing tactics with a gentle brush.
“I have a vague recollection.”
“We rode up in the elevator like this and couldn’t keep our hands off each other, couldn’t get to each other quick enough. I was mad for you. I wanted you more than I wanted to keep breathing. I still do.” He deepened the kiss as the elevator doors opened. “It’s never going to change.”
“I don’t want it to change.” She combed her fingers through his hair, shoving the band away so all that thick, soft black slid through her fingers. “You’re so damn good at this.” She pressed her lips to his throat. “But not quite good enough to have me doing this with the door open. Feeney could, you know, wander in. I can’t focus.”
“We’ll fix that.” With her legs hooked around his waist, her arms around his neck and her lips beginning to lay a hot line over his skin, he went to the door. He closed it. Locked it. “Better?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe you should remind me how we did this the first time again.”
“I believe, if memory serves, it went something like this.” He spun her around, trapping her between the wall and his body. And his mouth was fever hot on hers.
She felt the need, instant and primal, slice through her. It was like being cleaved in two—the woman she’d been before him, the woman she’d discovered with him.
She could be what she was, and he understood her. She could be what she’d become, and he cherished her. And the wanting each other, through all the changes, all the discoveries, never abated.
She let him ravish her, and felt the power in surrender. It pumped and swelled inside her as she slid down his body. Her hands were as busy as his, her mouth as impatient as they dragged each other toward the bed.
They stumbled up the platform, and remembering, she laughed. “We were in a hurry then, too.”
They fell on the bed in a tangle of limbs, then rolled as they struggled to strip away clothes, to take and devour. Before, that first time, it had been in the dark. Groping and grasping and desperation in the dark. Now they were in the light that spilled through the windows, through the sky window over the bed, but the desperation was the same.
It ached in her like a wound that would never quite heal.
She’d been a mass and a maze of demands then, too, he remembered. All heat and motion, driving him toward frenzy so that he’d burned to ram himself into her and batter them both toward release.
But he’d wanted more. Even then, he’d wanted more of her. And for her. He gripped her hands, drawing her arms over her head, and she arched, pressing center to center until his pulse was a pounding of jungle drums.
“Inside me.” Her eyes were blurred and dark. “I want you inside me. Hard. Fast.”
“Wait.” He knew what it would be now, where they would take each other, and control was a thin and slippery wire. He cuffed her wrists with one hand. If she touched him now, that wire would snap.
But he could touch her. God, he needed to touch her, to watch her, to feel her body gather and quake from the assault of pleasure. Her skin was damp when he ran his free hand down her. The moan trembled from her lips, then broke with a hoarse cry as he used those clever fingers on her.
He watched those blurry eyes go blind, felt the scramble of her pulse in the wrists he held and heard her release a sob in the air before she went pliant. Wax melted in the heat.
Again, was all he could think as his mouth came down on hers, fierce and frantic. Again and again and again.
Then her arms were free and banded around him, and her hips pistoned up. He was inside her as she’d demanded. Hard and fast.
She knew, with the part of her brain that could still reason, that he’d gone over, gone where he could so often send her. Somewhere beyond the civilized and sensible, where there were only sensations fueled by needs. She wanted him there with her, where control was impossible and pleasure saturated both mind and body.
As her own system quivered toward that last leap, she heard his breath catch, as if on a pain. Wrapping around him, she gave herself over. “Now,” she said, and pulled him with her.
She stretched under him, curled and uncurled her toes. She felt, Eve discovered, pretty damn good. “Okay.” She gave Roarke a noisy slap on the ass. “Recreational break’s over.”
“Christ. Christ Jesus.”
“Come on, you’ve had your thirty.”
“I’m sure you’re wrong. I’m sure I have five or six minutes left. And if I don’t, I’m having them anyway.”
“Off.” She gave his butt another slap, then a pinch. When neither budged him, she shifted her knee over, and up.
“Son of a bitch.” That moved him. “Mind the merchandise.”
“You mind it. I’ve already used it.” She was smart enough to roll over and away before he could retaliate. She landed on her feet, rolled up to the balls, back to the heels. “Man, I’m revved.”
He stayed where he was, flat on his back, and eyed her. Long, lean, naked, with her skin glowing from the energetic recreational break.
“You look it.” Then he smiled, slyly. “I wonder if Feeney’s finished his swim.”
The color drained out of her cheeks. “Oh jeez, oh, shit!” She made a dive for her clothes. “He’ll know. He’ll just know, and then we’ll have to avoid looking at each other while we pretend he doesn’t know. Damn it.”
Roarke was laughing as she dashed with her bundle of clothes into the bath.
Feeney beat her into her office, and that made her wince. But she strode in briskly and moved straight to her desk to set up files.
“Where were you?”
“Just, ah, you know . . . dealing with a couple things.”
“I thought you were gonna . . . ” He trailed off with a sound she recognized as embarrassed horror not quite suppressed. She could feel her skin heat and kept her attention trained on her computer as if it might leap off the desk and grab her by the throat.
“I think I’ll—um—” His voice cracked a bit. She didn’t glance over but she could feel him looking frantically around the room. “Get some coffee.”
“Coffee’s good. That’d be good.”
When she heard him escape to the kitchen, she rubbed her hands over her face. “Might as well be wearing a sign,” she muttered. “ ‘Just Got Laid.’ ”
She set up her disks, her case board, then shot Roarke a vicious glare when he strolled in. “I don’t want that look on your face,” she hissed.
“Which look?”
“You know which look. Wipe it off.”
Relaxed, amused, he sat on the corner of her desk. When Feeney walked in, he could see the fading flush. Feeney cleared his throat, very deliberately, then set the second mug of coffee he carried on the desk. “Didn’t zap you one,” he said to Roarke.
“It’s all right. I’m fine for now. How was your swim?”
“Fine. Good.” He rubbed a hand over the drying sproings of ginger and silver hair. “Good and fine.”
He turned away to study the board.
Weren’t they a pair? Roarke thought, two veteran cops who’ve waded through blood and madness. But put a bit of sex on the table between them, and they’re fidgety as virgins at an orgy.
“I’m going to bring you both up to date,” Eve began. “Then I’ll work on my angles while you work on yours. You see the artist’s sketch on the board, and on screen.”
She picked up a laser pointer, aimed it toward the wall screen. “Detective Yancy did the Ident, but isn’t confident enough in this rendering for us to pass it to the media. But I think it gives us some basics. Coloring and basic facial structure, in any case.”
“Looks, what,” Feeney asked, “range of thirty?”
“Yeah. Even if Crew’s son has spent the better part of a fortune on face work and sculpting, I don’t think a guy in his sixties is going to look this young. And the witness never put him over forty. We may be looking for a family connection, or a young friend, protégé. We have to pursue the connection. It’s the most logical, given pattern and profile.”
“Yeah, and it opens it up instead of narrowing it down,” Feeney commented.
“We caught a break on narrowing it.”
Eve told them about the trace evidence, and her field-work to date attempting to find the location of the Cobb crime scene.
“It’s the first trace he’s left. When we nail this down, we’ll have another link toward identifying this creep. He chose the place, so he knows the place. He knew he could get in, do what he wanted to do in private and clean it up enough to have the crime undetected.”
“Yeah.” Feeney nodded agreement. “Had to splash some blood around. He cleaned up, or there’d be a report. A construction crew’s not going to strap on tool belts with blood all over the damn place.”
“Which means he had to spend time doing so. Again in private. Had to have transpo, had to know there was a handy dump site and access to the flammable.”
“Probably didn’t seal up for that one,” Feeney commented. “Why bother?”
“Not an efficient use of his time,” Eve agreed. “He’s going to burn the body and destroy any possible trace to him, or so he believed. Why bother to avoid any trace on the scene as long as it’s reasonably cleaned? Particularly if he had some legitimate reasons for being there.”
“Could own the place, work or live in it.”
“Could be a building or construction inspector,” Roarke put in. “Though if he is, it wouldn’t have been bright of him to forget about the fire sealant.”
“You got the data I asked for, the properties being built or rehabbed in that area. Is what you sent me the whole shot?”
“It is, yes. But that doesn’t take into account ones that are under the table. Small jobs,” he explained. “A private home or apartment where the owner might decide to do some work, or hires a contractor who’s willing to forgo the permits and fees and work off the books.”
Eve visualized the map of her investigation suddenly crisscrossed with hundreds of dead ends and detours. “I’m not going to worry about side deals until we exhaust the legitimate ones. Sticking with that, don’t they sometimes use gas on construction sites?”
“For some of the vehicles and machines.” Roarke nodded. “As it’s inconvenient to transport it from one of the stations outside the city, you might use a storage compartment on-site or nearby. You’ve a fee to pay for that as well.”
“Then we follow that down, too.”
“Bureaucrats in Permits and Licensing are going to make you jump through hoops,” Feeney reminded her.
“I’ll deal with it.”
“You’re going to need to put the arm on these guys, get the warrants and assorted paperwork and other bullshit. We get lucky with the matches, you’ll cut back on that.” Feeney considered, pulled on his nose. “But you got a lot to wade through one way or the other. I can put my leave off a few days, until this is closed.”
“Leave?” She frowned at him until she remembered his scheduled vacation. “Crap. I forgot all about it. When are you going?”
“Got two more days on the clock, but I can juggle some things around.”
She was tempted to take him up on it. But she paced it off, heaved out a breath. “Yeah, fine, you do that and your wife will eat both our livers for breakfast. Raw.”
“She’s a cop’s wife. She knows how it goes.” But there wasn’t much conviction behind his words.
“Bet she’s already packed.”
Feeney offered a hangdog smile. “Been packed damn near a week now.”
“Well, I’m not facing her wrath. Besides, you’ve already juggled enough to give me this much time. We can handle the rest of it.”
He looked back at the board, as she did. “I don’t like leaving a case hanging.”
“I’ve got McNab and this guy.” She jerked a thumb toward Roarke. “If we don’t wrap it before you have to go, we’ll keep you in the loop. Long distance. Can you give me a couple more hours tonight?”
“No problem. Look, why don’t I get back to it, see if I can work some magic?”
“Do that. I’ll see if I can wrangle some warrants. Okay with you if we brief here tomorrow, oh-eight hundred?”
“Only if it comes with breakfast.”
“I’ll be right along,” Roarke told him, and waited until he was alone with Eve. “I can save you time with the red tape. A little time on the unregistered, and I can have a list of permits for you.”
She jammed her hands into her pockets as she studied her murder board, as she looked at the faces of the dead. Roarke’s unregistered equipment would blind the unblinking eye of CompuGuard. No one would know he’d hacked into secured areas and nipped out data with his skilled hands.
“I can’t justify it for this. I can’t shortcut this just to save myself a little time and a lot of aggravation. Gannon’s secure. To my knowledge she’s the only one who might be in immediate jeopardy from this guy. I’ll play it by the book.”
He stepped up behind her, rubbed her shoulders as they both looked at the images of Jacobs and Cobb. Before and after.
“When you don’t play it by the book, when you do take that shortcut, it’s always for them, Eve. It’s never for yourself.”
“It’s not supposed to be for me. Or about me.”
“If it wasn’t for you, or about you, in some sense, you wouldn’t be able to go on day after day, facing this and caring, day after day. And if you didn’t, who would pick up the standard for people like Andrea Jacobs and Tina Cobb and carry it into the battle?”
“Some other cop,” she said.
“There is no other like you.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “There’s no other who understands them, the victims and those who victimize them, quite like you. Seeing that, knowing that, well, it’s made an honest man out of me, hasn’t it?”
She turned now to look him straight in the eye. “You made yourself.”
She knew he thought of his mother, of what he’d learned only a short time before, and she knew he suffered. She couldn’t stand for Roarke’s dead as she did for those of strangers. She couldn’t help him find justice for the woman he never knew existed, for the woman who’d loved him and died at the brutal hand of his own father.
“If I could go back,” she said slowly, “if there was a way to twist time and go back, I’d do everything I could to bring him down and put him away for what he did. I wish I could stand for her, for you.”
“We can’t change history, can we? Not for my mother, not for ourselves. If we could, you’re the only one in this world I would trust with it. The only one who might make me stand back and let the law do what the law does.” He traced his finger down the dent in her chin. “So, Lieutenant, whenever you do take one of those shortcuts, you should remember there are those of us who depend on you who don’t give a rat’s ass about the book.”
“Maybe not. But I do. Go help Feeney. Get me something I can use so we can make him pay for what he did to them.”
She sat alone when he’d gone, her coffee forgotten and her gaze on the murder board. She saw herself in each of the victims. In Andrea Jacobs, struck down and abandoned. In Tina Cobb, robbed of her own identity and discarded.
But she’d come back from those things. She’d been created from those things. No, you couldn’t change history, she thought. But you could sure as hell use it.