Festive in Death (In Death #39)(53)

The cat gathered himself, leaped onto Roarke’s lap with a ringing of bells, kneaded and circled while Eve wandered to the wide window.

His home office space was sleeker and snappier than hers, she thought—by design. He’d created hers to mirror her old apartment, and to lure her in with the familiar.

Clever.

Wasn’t it interesting how that single room was indeed just about as large as her former living space altogether? She hadn’t given that much thought before, had just found herself—initially—baffled and touched that he would go to the trouble, that he would understand her so well so quickly.

She looked out the window, over the grounds, the holiday fantasy of them shining against the dark. He’d thought of that, too, built that, too. For both of them now.

She glanced over her shoulder at the painting she’d given him on their first anniversary, one of the two of them under the blooming arbor on that summer day. Their wedding day.

He’d placed it there, where he could see it from his workstation. She’d come to know him, too, hadn’t she? Enough to know he’d cherish that image of them in that moment of promise.

He could see that when he worked, when he wheeled and dealed from this spot. When he bought and sold, ordered and cajoled, and did all the things she didn’t fully comprehend.

He sat now, hair tied back in work mode, the sleeves of his sweater shoved up to the elbows, the cat curled in his lap, and his eyes—so brilliantly blue—focused on one of the three screens he utilized to do the slipping and sliding he’d talked about.

“You have something inside the brain you brought in here,” Roarke said as he continued to work. “You might as well let it out. I’m just tying things up here.”

“I have three people hovering at the top of my suspect list. The computer doesn’t completely agree, probability-wise, but they’re my three.”

“Copley being one.”

“Definitely. And his wife—Natasha Quigley. I’ve got a couple of theories that could put her in the mix.”

“She developed actual feelings for Ziegler, no longer wanted to share. Killed him rather than watch him bed other women for fun and profit?”

“Huh. That wasn’t one of them, but I’ll toss it in, roll it around.”

“Who’s your third?”

“Kira Robbins, the fashion writer.”

Roarke’s brows lifted as he looked away from the screens. “Really?”

“No alibi. Physically she fits the reconstruction. Add in former rape victim. I can’t positively confirm that, but it rang true. You . . . you get an ear for it when you’ve been through it.”

He picked up his wine, sipped, said nothing.

“There’s a part of me, I can admit, that hopes it’s not her because of that. But I have to consider it. If she was raped as she said, as a teenager, it left a mark. No amount of healing erases the mark, and what I didn’t pull in when I talked to her? If it had been done to her before, wouldn’t she have wondered, suspected it had been done again? For the second time in her life she experiences date rape, but could she, did she, just pass this one off as bad judgment, as personal weakness? The more I ask myself that, the more I call it bullshit.”

“You believe she knew what had happened, what he’d done.”

“I believe she had to wonder, and I know I have to talk to her again, and push that. And I’m sorry for it. If it turns out she’s the killer, I’m going to be sorrier.”

He sat back. “There was a time I’d have questioned you on this. There’s a part of me that still does, even though I know the answer. Even though I understand it, and almost fully accept it.”

“Can’t change what was,” she said with a shrug. “So you deal with what is.”

“It leaves a mark.” Eyes on hers, he repeated her words. “No amount of healing fully erases it. She was a victim, and if she killed him she had reason. A reason you and I both understand far too well. He was an ugly sort, a vicious user of people, a ra**st. But you’ll stand for him even over a woman he used so meanly. You have to. You have to.”

He repeated it because that single reality lived in both of them now.

“More than the job, it’s a duty, and your sense of right. Your line.”

“My line and yours run only so far together before they fork off. Sometimes that’s a balance. Sometimes it’s a problem.”

Considering, she ran a finger around the lip of one of the wobbly bowls Feeney’s wife had given them.

He’d put that here, too, she thought—like the painting—in his space. Because he understood, he valued, connections, symbols of family—far better than she.

“So. If it turns out to be her, I’ll push for Mira to evaluate her, the circumstances, her state of mind, the PTSD angle. Mira’s evals have weight.”

“They do. As do yours.”

“But that’s jumping forward, and jumping far. Where it is now, I’ll lean on her, push buttons, even knowing how it feels to have them pushed.”

“You’ll stand for her, too, if she’s killed. Because it’s always more than the job, more than duty.”

“It’s not about me.”

“Bollocks.” He said it mildly, even smiled a little when she frowned, though her words stirred up memories of what he knew she’d survived. “Investigating objectively doesn’t remove you. Your experiences, your understanding of victimology from the viewpoint of the victim is as much a part of what you do, who you are, as your training and your instincts. You are, forever, all points of the triad, Lieutenant: victim, killer, cop. And you know each section intimately.”