Secrets in Death (In Death #45)(83)

“He, if you’re right, would have been protecting his son.”

“He should have gone to the cops.”

“Who knows how the boy would have reacted? Who knows if he’d have been believed? What would it serve, after all these years? We both know what it is to be abused as a child. For me, it was neglect or beatings, but you and that boy have more in common. Summerset saved me,” Roarke continued, more passionately than he’d intended. “And someone did me the favor of putting a knife in Patrick Roarke, as he’d have found me and likely done for me sooner or later.”

Eve slid her hands into her pockets, looked away, walked to the window to look out.

She didn’t respond, just stared out the window.

“You saved yourself,” Roarke continued. “We don’t know what it is to have a child, but we know what it is to be one. What wouldn’t we do, either of us, to protect what we loved and cherished?”

“I need to look—for my own case, not for someone else’s. If it turns out either the father or the son learned what Mars was doing to Stamford and took action to stop her, it all comes out. If not … I don’t know. I need to let it settle.”

“Fair enough.” He walked to her, took her hand. “Let it all settle for the night.”

She’d disappointed him, she could see it. And still felt herself torn. She had a duty, and yet …

She believed she knew who’d killed a man—or a monster disguised as a man. Just as she knew who’d killed Patrick Roarke.

So she knew just how far a man might go to protect—or avenge—his son. Or the boy he’d made his son.





17

Even tucked in, Roarke’s arm around her, the cat curled at the small of her back, dreams slipping through. Alleyways, crumbling projects marred and scarred with grafitti, the stench of garbage gone ripe with the undertone of brew-fueled piss.

Deep shadows and muddy pools of light from failing security lamps smeared the stained ground.

She knew it to be that urban, hopeless anywhere.

She’d hidden in one like it as a broken child. Though the bloody body of the man who’d broken her lay at her feet, she knew it wasn’t the alley in Dallas.

It was anywhere. It was nowhere. It was everywhere.

Another body lay to the right, a knife protruding from its throat. Dazzling blue eyes, Patrick Roarke’s eyes, stared up at her.

To the left, another. A big man, beaten ruthlessly into shattered bones and torn flesh. She imagined his face haunted Wylee Stamford’s dreams.

Three monsters disguised as men. Three secrets of violence and pain and terror.

She knew the secrets. How they’d died, why they’d died, and who had ended them.

Her badge weighed heavy.

“What about me?”

Larinda Mars strolled into the alley on the high, thin heels of her green boots, her pink skin suit highlighting every curve, her golden hair sweeping around her expertly crafted face.

“What are you doing about me?”

“My job,” Eve said, and got a dismissive pftt in return.

“Your job? Dreaming about three men long dead while I’m still fresh in a drawer at the fucking morgue is your job?”

“Maybe. What was yours?”

As Mars stood hipshot, she waved a hand in the air. “To get the dish, to dig it out, cook it up, and serve it to millions on a silver platter. Nobody did it better.”

Even in death, even in dreams, Mars projected sheer, unapologetic arrogance.

“That might be because others in your line of work don’t stoop to blackmail and extortion.”

Larinda threw back her head and laughed—a good, hearty one that echoed down the fetid alley. “Oh, don’t be naive. Besides, if someone chooses to pay or barter to keep a secret buried, it’s their choice, isn’t it? They should’ve gone to the police,” she added in a sneering mimic of Eve’s words. “But they didn’t. That’s not on me.”

“It’s all on you.”

“So I deserved to die?”

“No. That’s on your killer.”

Hands on hips now, Mars gave an exaggerated look around the alley. “Well, my killer’s not here, is he? So why are you?”

Eve studied the bodies. “Sometimes old business crawls up over the new.”

“What bullshit!” Anger now, the fierce lash of it skinned with disgust. “You’re wallowing. You’d kill him again, wouldn’t you? Stick that knife in him a thousand times again to save yourself. Go to the police, my ass. You made your choice.”

“He was raping me.”

“Oh, boo hoo! And that dead Irish bastard? You wouldn’t have minded a shot at him. You didn’t get one, but you’re protecting the man who got one, and took it. That’s personal, sister. Murder’s murder, but you let it ride. And that last one, the little boy diddler? Same goes. You feel for the man who bashed his head in, broke his bones. Go to the cops?”

She snarled it as blood began to run down her arm.

“You were there, right there, and you let me die. What good are you?”

Truth, Eve thought, enough truth mixed in with the accusations and dismissals, she wouldn’t deny it.

But she could answer it with truth.

“Good enough to look at you,” she said, “to know you were a stone bitch and still work my ass off to find who killed you, to gather the evidence to put them away for it. Just the way I’d have put you away for screwing with people’s lives.”