Creation in Death (In Death #25)(13)

“An hour.” Eve strode toward the elevator. “Take it, then report to the conference room. I’ll need you to help me set up.”

“You don’t have to get pissed just because I dropped out for a couple minutes.”

“If I was pissed I’d be kicking your ass instead of giving you an hour down. And you don’t want to argue with me when I’m jonesing for coffee. Take the hour. You’re going to need it.”

When the doors opened, Eve stepped off with Roarke, then turned, jabbed a finger at Peabody’s sulky face. “That hour starts now.”

Roarke waited until the doors closed. “You could use an hour yourself.”

“I could use coffee more.”

“And food.”

She slid her eyes up to his. “If you start nagging me about eating and sleeping, I’m booting you off my team.”

“If I didn’t nag you about eating and sleeping, you’d do precious little of either. What’s in your office AutoChef?”

“Coffee,” she said, and yearned for it.

“I’ll meet you there shortly.” When he turned and headed in the opposite direction, she only scowled after him.

Still, if he was off doing whatever, it would be easier for her to write her initial report, call in the members of her team.

She passed through the bullpen. It was nearly change of shift. In her office, she went straight for the coffee, then stood where she was and drank the first half of the first cup.

There hadn’t been real coffee to wake up her blood the first time around, she remembered. Instead of a cramped office, she’d had a cramped desk in the bullpen. She hadn’t been in charge then; Feeney had. She knew that was weighing on him, knew he was remembering all the steps, all the fizzled leads, the dead ends. All the bodies.

It needed to be remembered. It all needed to be remembered, so it didn’t happen again.

She sat at her desk, shot out transmissions to Baxter and to Jenkinson, with orders for them to notify their respective aides and partners, and report.

She mercilessly dumped their caseloads on other detectives.

There would, she knew, be some extensive bitching and moaning in the bullpen, very shortly.

She ordered up the cold-case files from nine years before—including Mira’s initial profile—sent out the request for the files and reports on the other cases, yet unsolved, that matched the MO.

She contacted the lab and pushed for any and all results, left a clipped voice mail for the chief lab tech, Dick Berenski.

And with a second cup of coffee on her desk, began to write her report.

She was fine-tuning it when Roarke came in. He set an insulated bowl on her desk, handed her a toss-away spoon. “Eat.”

Cautious, Eve pried up the lid of the bowl and peeked. “Damn it. If you were going to go to the trouble to get food, why did you get oatmeal?”

“Because it’s good for you.” He sat in her single visitor chair with his own bowl. “Are you aware that the Eatery here serves nothing that could be considered remotely palatable?”

“The eggs aren’t that bad. If you put a lot of salt on them.”

Roarke simply angled his head. “You put a lot of salt on everything, but it doesn’t make it palatable.”

Because it was there, she spooned up some oatmeal. It would fill the hole. “Cop food’s what you get around here.” She ate, frowned. As oatmeal went, it wasn’t completely disgusting. “And this isn’t cop food.”

“No. I got it from the deli around the corner.”

For a moment, her face rivaled Peabody’s for full sulk. “They have bagels there, and danishes.”

“So they do.” He smiled at her. “You’ll do better with the oatmeal.”

Maybe, she thought, but she wouldn’t be as happy about it. “I want to say something before this really gets started. If you feel, at any time, you want to step out, you step out.”

“I won’t, but understood.”

She took another spoonful of oatmeal, then swiveled in her chair so they were face-to-face. “Understand, too, that if I feel your involvement is doing more harm—on a personal level—than it’s adding to the investigation, I’ll have to cut you loose.”

“Personally or professionally?”

“Roarke.”

He set his bowl aside to get up and program coffee for himself. She could attempt to cut him loose, he thought, but they both knew she wouldn’t shake him off the line. And that, he acknowledged, would be a problem indeed.

“Our personal life has, and will, weather the bumps and bruises it takes when we work together, or more accurately, when I contribute to your work.”

“This one’s different.”

“Yes, I understand that as well.” He turned with his coffee, met her eyes. “You couldn’t stop him once before.”

“Didn’t stop him,” Eve corrected.

“You’d think that, and so it’s personal. However much you try to keep it otherwise, it’s personal. It’s harder for you, and it may be harder for us. But things have changed in nine years, a great many things.”

“I didn’t have anybody pushing oatmeal on me nine years ago.”

“There.” His lips curved. “That’s one.”