Festive in Death (In Death #39)(58)

“Yeah, there’s that.” She snuggled in. “I had a dream.”

“I know. It disturbed you.”

“Some of it. Everybody was in this enormous gym. Like Buff Bodies, but bigger. Just as loud, but bigger. All my suspects and players pumping and sweating, with Ziegler on this platform running the show. Even in the dream he was a f**khead. ‘I’m the trainer,’ he kept saying.”

She lifted her head. “That’s the thing, was the thing for him. Without him, the way he figured, they’d all be fat, lazy slobs. He made them. He’s the trainer, and they did what he told them to do. The sex—willing or coerced—was just another aspect of it. Same with the money. All just his due because he—in his mind—was the one in charge. His whole existence, really, was one big power trip. The people who came to him for training had more money, more prestige, more whatever, but he called the shots, and they fell in line.”

“Does that help you?”

“Mostly it’s just reaffirming what I already knew, maybe kicking it up a little. Stay on a power trip long enough without real power? Somebody’s going to kick your ass. He put his hands on me.”

“So you kicked his ass, dream-wise speaking?”

“No. I could have. I could have done worse. He baited me. He said we were the same, taking money for service. That’s too stupid to get the rise, so he put his hands on me and asked what I was going to do about it? Was I going to carve him up like I had Richard Troy.”

“Ah, Eve.” He shifted to wrap around her.

“No, that’s the thing. Maybe part of me wanted to. And I closed my hand around the hilt of the knife—he had the knife in him, like he did when I found him. But I didn’t use it, didn’t even consider using it. Because I’m a cop. Because even though I can see he shared some traits with Troy—the power trip, the utter contempt for others—I’m a cop and he’s a victim. He’s mine, and that’s that. I walked out, and my hands were clean.”

“Darling Eve, they always have been.”

She pressed into him again, into comfort. “I wasn’t sure, I don’t know why, but I wasn’t a hundred percent until that moment in the stupid dream when I put my hand on the hilt of that knife if I’d kill him—if I hadn’t killed Troy back then and he walked up to me now, would I, could I, kill him for what he’d done to me?”

She let out a breath. “No. I’d do whatever it took to lock him up, to put him away, to make him pay even though payment never balances the scales. I killed him then because I was powerless and terrified. I’m not either of those anymore. I’m a cop, and my hands are clean.”

He took her hands, kissed them.

“Maybe it’s not all the way behind me,” she said. “I keep thinking it is—when the worst of the nightmares stopped, when I went back to Dallas, when I got through my mother, McQueen. But there’s always some other angle to deal with. I’m okay with it. It happened, all of it happened, and it leaves a mark, like I said. But I’m okay with it.”

She curled in close. “And I’ve got you on a Saturday morning.” They stayed as they were, taking just a little more time.

12

Over breakfast in the bedroom sitting area, she outlined her strategy for the day.

“I thought about tagging Reo, trying to wrangle a warrant to search Copley’s love nest.” Eve bit into some bacon—honestly, good sex, a hot shower, then bacon? Did a morning get any better? “Reo’s a smart APA, and she’ll follow the dots I lay out. But even so, it’s a long, skinny stretch for probable cause.”

“I could get you in.”

“Yeah.” She slid a glance his way. “It’s tempting to go the clever-fingers and lock-pick route, but no.”

“I own the building,” he said and ate some eggs.

“I should’ve figured. But even with that, there’s no legal peg to hang an entry and search on.”

“General maintenance, possible gas leak, suspicious sounds, smells, behavior. I imagine there are pegs.”

“Weak ones.”

“So your plan is?”

“To lie, if and when necessary. I’ll get through building security, I’ve got a badge. If nothing else, I’ll knock on doors, see if I can get a name and/or description of the side piece from neighbors, track her from that. I want a conversation.”

“It may be she lives there.”

“Yeah, that’s the hope, but I’m not counting on that much good luck. Either way, it won’t take long. Unless . . .”

“Unless?”

“Say I track her down, have a conversation and she says: JJ went to see that awful man, and there was a terrible accident. It wasn’t Sugar Daddy’s fault.”

“Sugar Daddy.”

“He qualifies. And she says how Copley tried to reason with Ziegler, but Ziegler got physical and then one thing led to another. Boo-hoo.”

“But you’re not counting on much good luck.”

“I’m just pointing out the—very slim—possibility I might be more than a couple hours, considering if I find her, if she blabs, I’d have to go arrest Copley and try to grill him before he screams get me a lawyer. Like that.”

“All very reasonable, but you don’t have to explain to me. I’m bound to be fairly well occupied myself. I’ve some work to tidy up, then some preparation to oversee.”