Brotherhood in Death (In Death #42)(92)

“I guess she looked resigned on top of the tired.”

“Resigned, resolved—pretty much the same. They’ll finish it. Or they’ll try. There’s no going back now, not for any of them. She’ll go get the van after we shake her in the morning, wherever she has it, pick up the others, and they’ll all gather where they’re holding Betz. They won’t take him back to his house. They have to be smart enough to know we’ll be on the house.”

Suddenly exhausted, Eve sat on the side of the bed. “We’ll pull Baxter and Trueheart off that, but put another team on. Wouldn’t pay to be wrong on that. The keys, Betz’s keys. Maybe they’re an angle. Let’s go harass EDD.”

“I have to say something.”

Eve shoved her hair back, rose. “What?”

“This case, and what we’re looking at as motive. It has to affect you. It has to make you think of what happened to you. But it’s not the same, Dallas. It’s not the same.”

“Yeah, it does. But my kill was justified. Him or me, and I was a child. That’s not the same. He was raping me, and my arm—” She brought her hand up, all but felt the bone snap again. “When the bone broke, when he broke my arm, that shock and that pain, it was alive. Killing him was the only way to make it stop, to make him stop, to survive. So that’s not the same as this.”

She let out a breath, but her stomach still clenched and roiled.

“But the rest? The fear, that pain, the violation, what takes root in you and never really goes away? That’s the same. So I know they’re not going to find peace, or the justice they tell themselves they’re after, through blood. I sure as hell didn’t.”

“How did you? Find peace?”

“I’ll let you know when I do.”

When Peabody nodded, bent to pick up her field kit, Eve jammed her hands in her pockets.

“That’s not fair, and it’s not all the way true, either.”

“You don’t have to talk about it. I didn’t mean to push on that. I just needed to say what I said.”

Fuck the sick stomach, Eve thought, and the dull throb in the back of her skull.

They wouldn’t win.

“I’ve got insight on this investigation—and I think that insight is partly why we got closer faster than they expected. You’re my partner, and . . . You’re my partner,” she repeated, as that said it all.

“There were doctors and shrinks and counselors and cops. Child services. They could address the physical injuries, the rapes, the broken bones, the beating. But the rest? I’d locked that away where even I couldn’t find it. That was survival for me, just like putting that little knife in Richard Troy.”

Standing there, she felt around in her pocket, closed her hand over her badge. That tangible shape.

“I got through. I had flashes, sure, and nightmares, but I locked all that away, too. If I couldn’t get to them, nobody else could. And nobody could hurt me with all that, ever again. Then there was purpose. As far as I can see, clear back from waking up in that hospital in Dallas, I had to be a cop. That got me through, all of it, the good and the bad. And when I got my badge, I felt . . . strong, directed. That was my goal, like wiping these men out of existence is theirs. The badge, the job, protect and serve, stand for the victim. I had to. Survival. Then there was Mavis and Feeney, and with them and the job, it was something like family even if I didn’t know it. And every day, every fucking day, when I picked up the badge?”

She took it out of her pocket, studied it. “Every day, I had purpose. I had beaten back what I’d locked away. I stood for something. The victims mattered, Peabody, whoever they were, whatever they’d done. They were mine to stand for.”

“I know that. You taught me that.”

“Maybe you think I don’t know what you felt the day you got your gold shield, what Trueheart felt the other day. But I do. I remember exactly what I felt. Detective Dallas. Oh yeah, I remember the thrill and the terror of that all mixed up with pride inside me. And when I made Lieutenant, Christ, all that thrill and terror again, and that pride, that purpose. The victims mattered, and the cops under me. I needed to be the best I could, for the victims, for the cops.”

She tested the weight of the badge in her hand, slipped it away again.

“And I set my sight on the bars. Captain Dallas, that’s got a ring. I’d beat back what I’d locked inside me until it was nothing. Until those flashes that made me sick, scared me to the bone, those nightmares that would grip me by the throat in the middle of the night were nothing. I had purpose, goddamn it, and I was never going back to being the victim. But . . .

“Let’s move,” she said abruptly. “We’re wasting time here.”

Saying nothing, Peabody grabbed up her coat, shrugging into it as Eve headed for the door. She kept a respectful, if concerned, silence all the way down to the lobby.

“Let’s get a four-man team at the Betz residence. Uniform Carmichael to head it, so three more. Two from our unit, then see if Officer Shelby’s available.”

“Shelby?”

“She’s with the Five-two. First on scene at the Catiana Dubois homicide.”

“Oh yeah, I got her.”

“I’m looking at her. If she holds up like I think she will, and wants it, I’m bringing her into Homicide. We need a fresh uniform.”