Holiday in Death (In Death #7)(94)

“I’ll be right back.” He pressed his lips to Piper’s knuckles. “I’m just outside the door. I don’t want to leave her,” he said to Eve as soon as the door closed behind them.

“She’s going to need to talk to someone.”

“She’s talked enough. She told you everything, for God’s sake — “

“She’ll need counseling,” Eve interrupted. “She’ll need treatment. Taking her away isn’t going to help her cope. I gave her a card a couple of days ago, one of mine with a name and number on the back. Contact Dr. Mira, Rudy. Let her help your sister.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again and seemed to make an effort to level himself. “You were very kind to her in there, Lieutenant. Very gentle. And hearing her describe what happened to her, I understand why you were neither kind nor gentle with me when you believed I was responsible for… what was done to the others. I’m grateful to you.”

“You can be grateful when I’ve taken him down.” She rocked back on her heels. “You know him pretty well, right?”

“I thought I did.”

“Where would he go? Is there a place, a person?”

“I would have said he’d come to me or Piper. We spent a great deal of time in each other’s company, professionally and personally.” He closed his eyes. “Which explains how he was able to access the match lists. He wouldn’t have been questioned by anyone in the organization. If I had told you that, if I had opened those doors to you freely rather than trying to protect myself and my business, I might have prevented this.”

“Open them now. Tell me about him, his mother.”

“She self-terminated. I don’t know if anyone’s aware of that but me.” Absently, Rudy pinched the bridge of his nose. “He broke down one night and told me. She was a troubled woman, mentally unstable. He blamed his father. There was a divorce when Simon was a child and his mother never got over it. She was certain that her husband would come back one day.”

“Her one true love?”

“Oh God.” Now he covered his face. “Yes, yes, I suppose. She was an actress, not a particularly successful one, but Simon thought she was marvelous, stunning. He worshipped her. But he was often distressed by her behavior. She would slide into a depression and there were men. She used men to bolster her moods. He was the most tolerant of men, but in this area, he was very close-minded. She was his mother and had no right to give herself sexually. He only spoke about it to me once, shortly after her death when he was lost in grief. She’d hanged herself. He found her Christmas morning.”

“It’s a perfect fit.” Peabody sat rigidly in the passenger seat as Eve fought through traffic. “He has a mother complex, and he’s replacing her, punishing her, loving her, every time he picks out a victim. The two males either represent his father, or his own dominant sexual preferences.”

“Thanks for the bulletin,” Eve said dryly, then rapped the wheel with the heel of her hand as she was jammed in once again on all sides. “This f**king Christmas shit! No wonder hospitals and mental clinics do booming business in December.”

“It’s Christmas Eve.”

“I know what the hell day it is, goddamn it.” She jammed the controls into straight vertical, veered sharply to the left, and zipped across the roofs of stopped cars.

“Uh, the maxibus.”

“I got eyes.” Eve skimmed past the bus with a stingy inch to spare.

“That Rapid Cab’s going to — ” Peabody braced and shut her eyes as the cab, obviously in the same mood as Eve, shot up out of the line of traffic.

Eve swore, swerved, skinned bumpers, and hit the siren full blast. “Set it down, you stupid son of a bitch.” She tipped, squeezed over, and dumped her car so that it teetered half on the street, half on the sidewalk in front of a mass of irritated pedestrians.

She slammed out and stalked toward the cab. The driver slammed out and stalked toward her. Peabody could have told him if he wanted to go nose-to-nose with a cop, he’d picked the wrong one.

But, she thought, as she climbed out and elbowed through the crowd, maybe kicking a cabbie’s ass would put Eve in a better mood.

“I signaled. I gotta right to a vertical lift same as you. You didn’t have your lights or siren going, did ya? The city’s gonna pay for that bumper, right? You cops don’t own the road. I ain’t taking the credit dip on the damage here, sister.”

“Sister?”

Peabody actually shuddered at the jagged ice in Eve’s tone. Behind Eve’s back she shook her head with pity for the driver and took out her violation coder.

“Let me tell you something, brother. First thing you do is step back out of my face before I write you up for assault on an officer.”

“Hey, I never laid hands on — “

“I said step back. Let’s see how fast you can assume the position.”

“Jesus, it’s only a skinned bumper.”

“You want resisting?”

“No.” Muttering under his breath, he turned, splayed his legs and laid his hands on the roof of his cab. “Man, it’s Christmas Eve. Let’s cut each other a break here. Whaddaya say?”

“I’d say you’d better learn a little respect for cops.”