Echoes in Death (In Death #44)(92)

Galahad sprawled over one of the legs of the command center, tail switching as he eyed the holo.

She gave Roarke a half salute, stepped back into her own space.

For a moment she just stood, staring at her board, staring at the dead, the blood, the cruelty.

Grimly, she tossed her coat aside, the scarf and cap with it, and began the work by adding the last victims to the board. Then the crime scene photos, the ME’s findings, the lab results—no hair, no fibers, no DNA.

She expanded the board—a handy new feature—and put up ID shots and data of the couples interviewed that day. She looked over as Roarke walked in, the cat padding ahead of him to greet her with body rubs.

“You looked busy,” she said.

“Just a few final touches on the meeting I was in when you contacted me earlier.”

“I’m sorry to add more stuff to your day.”

“Why? It all gets done, doesn’t it? Dennis was a bit baffled and more than fascinated with the new toys I added to their system. Our Mira was initially annoyed you’d … add stuff to my day and your own, but she came around.

“And you, Lieutenant,” he continued as he went to her, skimming a finger down the dent in her chin, “look tired.”

“It’s not that kind of tired.”

She surprised them both when he drew her in for a kiss by clinging to him, by the tears that spilled.

“There now. What is it?”

She shook her head, clung tighter. “I can’t explain. I can’t. Just, just hang on, okay? Hang on. I have to let go. I just have to let go.”

He picked her up, carried her to the sofa, cradled her on his lap. “Let go then, baby. I’m right here.”

The words, the way he held her, stroked her hair, had the grief, the exhaustion from fighting it, the sheer sorrow pouring out.

“I can’t explain,” she managed when the tears slowed.

“We’ll worry about that later.”

While her head banged from the crying jag, it was a comfort to rest it on his shoulder. “I have so much to do.”

“And you’ll do it. You’ll tell me how I can help.”

“If I’d caught this case three years ago. February, three years ago, right before you? I think it would have broken me. I think it might have been the end of me. Now it just … Maybe it bruises some, but it won’t break me. It won’t because you hang on when I have to let go.”

“Tell me what you can.”

“There’s a lot. Starting with the victims this morning. What he did to them … Well, it’s right there, on the board. Reveled in it, I think. More than before, even more. Because taking those lives, that was the grand finale—isn’t that the term—he’d missed that before. He didn’t realize he’d missed that, and now he knows.”

She started to get up, settled back when he held her against him. Yes, she thought, stay for now.

“He’s made moves—virtually and face-to-face—with other women. Before the first assaults, between assaults. It fed the beast just enough.”

She ran it through for him, through to the trip with McNab to the destroyed drop ’link while she sat in his arms with the fire crackling.

“He may be able to salvage something,” Roarke said. “But isn’t the question: How was it all timed so very well?”

“Yeah, that’s the question. It’s arrogance. It’s finding himself in the spotlight, feeling invincible. He likes to taunt—and that taunt was for me—for the cops, but I think for me. Female cop.”

“All that’s difficult, but it’s not altogether what tied you into knots.”

“The finish was Daphne Strazza.”

She closed her eyes, told him.

“Nobel’s right. She’s dangerously fragile right now, struggling just to get through one day to the next. She’s so damaged she doesn’t know how to make a decision, is so indoctrinated she can’t make one without being told. I know what it’s like. I remember what it’s like when you’re so terrified of making the smallest mistake you do nothing. And still it’s not right. I saw her face when her sister came in. Her first reaction was raw fear. Not of her sister. Maybe for her, not sure.”

“You think Strazza threatened to hurt her family, used that as another level.”

“I think it’s possible—probable. The fear was the first reaction, instant, ingrained. Then she flinched, jerked back like she’d been slapped when the sister said Strazza was dead. Period. It’s almost as if she didn’t completely understand it or believe it until that moment. Then she let go. What I saw in the sister was someone who knew how to hang on, to hold on.”

She turned her face into his throat. “I saw myself, and you. What it is to have that, to be stunned you do. I saw love, and a chance to heal.

“It took brutality to give her that chance. It took brutality to give me mine. Fighting that understanding, that mirror I see when I look at her, is exhausting.”

“Why would you fight it?”

“I have to be objective to do the job, and if I don’t do the job, do it right, another couple could end up on that board.”

“Darling Eve.” He stroked her hair, pressed his lips to it. “It’s the blend of your objectivity, observations, instincts, and your empathy for the victim that makes you what you are. It’s that very blend that’ll lead you to the answers, lead you to him.”