Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(73)

“Your word.”

“Is good, which is why I rarely give it. How did they die? How did he—”

“I can’t tell you at this time.” She slid out of the booth again, hated that she saw genuine grief on his face. “But when I can, I will.”

“Thank you.”

“If I find out you had anything to do with it, the wrath of God has nothing on mine.”

“I hope that’s true. I hope when you find him, the wrath of a thousand gods comes down on him.”

She turned to go, scowled when Roarke held out a hand to him. “It was good to meet you.”

“And you. Both of you.”

Eve kept her silence until they were out in the cold and the wind. “You’re freaking polite.”

“No reason for me to be otherwise.”

“You liked him.”

“I didn’t dislike him,” Roarke qualified, as he grabbed her hand and walked toward the car.

“He conceals girls from the authorities, teaches them to distrust, disrespect, and break the law, cheat people, steal from people when they should be . . .” She waved her free hand. “In school and whatever.”

“They should be in school and whatever,” he agreed. “They shouldn’t be used as a punching bag, or worse, by a parent. They shouldn’t be neglected and left to fend for themselves or exposed to violence, illegals, indiscriminate sex, and everything else they’d be exposed to in a bloody awful home.”

He opened the car door for her. After one fulminating glare, she got inside.

“And just how many of the girls who’ve run through his system,” she began the minute Roarke slid behind the wheel, “are in a cage, or dead, or working the streets because of the lifestyle he promoted?”

“I expect some are, and likely would have been with or without him. I also know at least one who’s happy, successful, has a family, and a very fine life.”

“Just because Mavis—”

“Where do you think she’d be, given how she was, where she was, her age, if he hadn’t given her a place?”

“I think she’d have been scooped up, the cops and CPS would’ve interviewed and examined her, would’ve tossed her worthless, bat-shit mother in a padded cage, and put Mavis in foster care.”

“That’s possible,” he said as he drove. “As it’s possible someone prone to taking young girls would have raped her at the least, sold her, killed her. Many possibles, but the fact is she wouldn’t be who she is, you wouldn’t be more than sisters if not for Sebastian. Change something by a hair, darling, change it all.”

“It’s not right, what he’s doing. I let it go because I needed her to get him to talk to me. And because—”

“You gave her your word you wouldn’t arrest him.”

“It’s different now.”

“You don’t think he killed those girls.”

Damn it, no, she didn’t—and hoped to hell she wasn’t being conned. “Thinking isn’t proof, and he’s connected. Liar, thief, con man.”

“Are you speaking of him or me?”

She slumped down in her seat with a fresh scowl. “Stop it.”

“Well now, I didn’t run a gang of girls, but I ran with a gang. I lied, I stole, and certainly ran the occasional scam. You’ve learned to live with that, but it niggles now and then.”

“You gave it up.”

“Some for myself before I met you. The rest for you. For what I wanted for us. I had Summerset, or else the old man would’ve beat me bloody time and again until he did me in. You know, better than most, that the system does fail, however much those in it try. And that not all who take children in, within that system, do so with open hearts. You have your lines, Lieutenant, and I’ve my own. I don’t think we’re too far apart in this case. More a bit of a lean in two directions, but not far. Not with Mavis in the middle of it.”

He reached over, rubbed her thigh. “Where’s her mother? You’d have looked into that.”

“In a facility for the bat-shit who carve an equally bat-shit up with a butcher knife. She’s been in for about eight years now—before that she moved around, joined a cult, left it, did some time for trading sex for Zeus. Got out, got on the funk. She was wasted on it when she sliced up the woman she ran with—and was sleeping with by that point. Mavis was right. She just fried her own brain over time. She’s mostly sedated.”

“You haven’t told her.”

“I will if and when she needs to know. If and when she ever wants to know. She’s pushed it all out, or had until tonight. Really pushed it out. She had some moments tying herself up in knots that she wouldn’t be a good mother, but she figured out how to set it away, and be happy. Telling her just throws it back at her.”

Eve leaned her head back. “And she was right. If her mother wasn’t shit-house crazy, she’d never recognize the kid she knocked around in Mavis Freestone, music star and fashion . . . wonder. I often wonder about her fashion.”

“That’s part of the point, isn’t it? Forced to wear dull clothes, having her hair whacked off. It’s not just shoving it out, it’s beating it with sticks and setting it on fire.”