Immortal in Death (In Death #3)(44)

“And a great butt,” Peabody said before she could stop herself. “Just an observation.”

“One I have to agree with. Well, Peabody, we won that battle. Let’s go try for the war.”

By the time the report was complete, Eve’s eyes were all but crossed. She sent Peabody off duty as soon as copies were transmitted to all necessary parties. She considered canceling her session with the shrink, thought of all the reasons why she could and should postpone it.

But she found herself in Dr. Mira’s office at the appointed time, taking in the familiar scents of herbal tea and subtle perfume.

“I’m glad you came to see me.” Mira crossed her silk-draped legs. She’d had her hair restyled, Eve noted. It was cut short and sleek rather than tucked up in a smooth roll. The eyes were the same, of course, quiet and blue and filled with ready understanding. “You look well.”

“I’m fine.”

“I can’t see how you would be, with so much going on in your life. Professionally and personally. It must be tremendously difficult for you to have such a close friend charged with a murder you’re investigating. How are you handling it?”

“I’m doing my job. By doing it, I’ll clear Mavis and find out who set her up.”

“Do you find your loyalties divided?”

“No, not after I thought about it.” Eve rubbed her hands on the knees of her trousers. Damp palms were a usual side effect of her meetings with Mira. “If I had any doubt, any doubt at all that Mavis was innocent, I’m not sure what I would do. But I don’t, so the answer’s clear.”

“That’s a comfort to you.”

“Yeah, you could say that. I’ll feel a hell of a lot more comfortable after I close the case and she’s out of it. I guess I was worried when I made the appointment to see you. But I feel more in control now.”

“That’s important to you. Feeling in control.”

“I can’t do my job unless I know I have the wheel.”

“And in your personal life?”

“Shit, nobody grabs the wheel from Roarke.”

“He’s running things then?”

“He would if you let him.” She gave a short laugh. “He’d probably say the same about me. I guess we do a lot of juggling for the controls, end up heading in the same direction anyway. He loves me.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Nobody ever did. Not like this. It’s easy to say, for some people. The words. But it’s not just words with Roarke. He sees inside me, and it doesn’t matter.”

“Should it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t always like what I see there, but he does. Or at least he understands it.” And now Eve understood that this was what she’d needed to talk through. Those black, ragged edges inside her. “Maybe it’s because we both had lousy beginnings. We knew, when we should have been too young to know, how cruel people can be. How power doesn’t just corrupt in the wrong hands, it mutilates. He — I never made love before him. I had sex, but I never felt anything but basic release. But I could never be… intimate,” she decided. “Is that the word?”

“Yes, I think that’s exactly the word. Why do you think you achieved intimacy with him?”

“He wouldn’t have it any other way. Because he…” She felt her eyes begin to tear and blinked them dry. “Because he opened something inside me I’d closed off. No, that had been scarred shut. Somehow, he took control of that part of me, or I let him have control of that part of me that died. That was killed when I was a child when…”

“You’ll feel better if you say it, Eve.”

“When my father raped me.” She let out a shuddering breath and the tears didn’t matter any longer. “He raped me, and he violated me, and he hurt me. He used me like a whore when I was too small and too weak to stop him. He would hold me down, or tie me up. He would hit me until I could hardly see, or he would hold his hand over my mouth so that I couldn’t scream. And he would push himself into me, and ram himself into me until the pain was almost as obscene as the act. And there was no one to help me, and nothing to do but wait for the next time.”

“Do you understand that you weren’t to blame?” Mira asked gently. When an abscess was finally lanced, she thought, one had to carefully, thoroughly, slowly, squeeze out all the poison. “Not then, not now, not ever?”

Eve used the back of her hand to wipe her cheeks dry. “I wanted to be a cop. Because cops have control. They stop the bad guys. It seemed simple. After I was a cop for a while, I began to see that there are some who always prey on the weak and the innocent.” Her breath steadied. “No, it wasn’t my fault. It was his, and the fault of the people who pretended not to see or to hear. But I still have to live with it, and it was easier to live with it when I didn’t remember.”

“But you’ve been remembering for a long time, haven’t you?”

“Bits and pieces. Everything before I was found in the alley when I was eight was just bits and pieces.”

“And now?”

“More pieces, too many pieces. And it’s clearer, closer.” She rubbed a hand over her mouth, deliberately lowered it to her lap again. “I can see his face. I didn’t used to be able to see his face. During the DeBlass case last winter — I guess there were enough similarities there to click. Then there was Roarke, and it all started to come back clearer and faster. I can’t stop it.”