Memory in Death (In Death #22)(69)

She gestured to the board, and Trudy's picture. "Still, he did that, so we're dealing with someone who can and will kill if motivated. I want everybody home for Christmas."

She held Peabody back when the others left. "I'm going to see Mira, run this by her and get her behind me on this warrant. I've got names of former fosters. The ones I was unable to reach are marked. See what you can do with them. But first, contact Carly Tween from that list. She wouldn't talk to me.

She's eight months pregnant, scared, and cranky. Use your soft sell. If you can confirm her husband's whereabouts for the murder, so much the better."

"She got a father? Brothers?"

"Shit." Eve rubbed her neck. "Can't remember. Doubtful on the father as she was in foster, but check it out."

"On that. Good luck with the warrant."

* * *

To Eve's shock and surprise, Mira's admin didn't throw herself bodily in front of the office door.

Instead, she beeped through, got the okay, then gestured Eve in.

"Oh, Merry Christmas, Lieutenant, if I don't see you before."

"Ah, thanks. Same to you."

She glanced back, still baffled, as the dragon at the gates began to hum "Jingle Bells."

"You'd better do a head exam on your admin," Eve said to Mira as she shut the door. "She's suddenly perky and she's out there singing."

"The holidays do that to people. I told her to put you through at any time, unless I was in session. It's important that I keep up, not just with the progress of your investigation, but with your emotional state."

"I'm fine. I'm good. I just need—"

"Sit down, Eve."

Because Mira turned to her AutoChef, Eve rolled her eyes behind Mira's back. But she sat, dropping into one of the pretty blue scoop chairs. "I'm hitting snags and dead-ends on the investigation, so I'm pushing it open. I want to—"

"Have some tea."

"I really don't—"

"I know, but indulge me. I can tell you didn't get much sleep. Are you having nightmares?"

"No. Not exactly. I worked late last night." She took the tea—what choice did she have? "I dropped off for a few minutes. Had a weird dream. Nothing major."

"Tell me anyway."

She hadn't come for a session, damn it. But she knew that arguing with Mira on her own turf was like beating your head against rock.

She described the dream, shrugged. "Weird, mostly. I didn't feel threatened or out of control."

"Even when the other women stampeded you?"

"No, that just pissed me off."

"You saw yourself, as a child, through the glass."

"Yeah. Having a sandwich. I think it was ham and cheese."

"And, at the end of it, your father."

"He's always there. Can't get around it. Look, I get it. Him on one side, her on the other. Me in the middle. Then and now. I'm squeezed on this, but it's not a problem. For once, nobody's trying to kill me."

"Do you really feel that different—that distance from the others? The other women?"

"I feel different from most of the women I know. Never can figure out how I end up pals with them, when half the time they're like another species. Okay, I understood where Maxie was coming from.

I know why she felt the way she did, at least initially. Somebody who screwed with her is dead. I don't feel the same way. Not like busting out the champagne. If I wanted everyone I disliked dead, the city'd be a bloodbath.

"I don't blame her, but I don't agree with her. Death isn't an answer, it's an end. And murder's a crime. That makes Trudy, whether I liked her or not, mine. Whoever ended her has to pay for it."

She hesitated a moment, then decided to finish it out, to close it off with what had just gone through her mind. "I wish I'd had the chance to say what I went there to say to her. To face her like that. More, I wish she were alive so I could help put her away for dogging those women all these years, exploiting them, taking their money and their peace of mind."

"And you can't."

"No. Life's full of disappointments."

"Cheery thought," Mira added.

"Here's a cheerier one, then: She can't take from me what I've got. I know that. She didn't. She thought she could get under me, use me. She wouldn't have. It helps knowing that. Part of what she couldn't take was what I am. What I am is the cop who's going to close this case. That's it."

"All right. What do you need from me?"

Eve told her of the plans to try for a warrant.

Mira sipped at her tea, and from the expression on her face, Eve knew she was far from convinced. "That's a shaky line, Eve."

"I'm freezing the accounts. Money's cut off. Nobody can get to them in the hotel. Sooner or later I've got to spring them. So maybe he waits until I do, until they're back in Texas. Maybe he goes after one of them there, when they're not being protected. There's no motive, at this point, to attack them. Approach, yes, but not attack. Not if money's the root."

"What else?"

"Payback, maybe. But I'm hitting dead ends there. The fact is, she could've—and probably did—piss off a lot of people we don't know about. But Zana's abduction points to money. So that's our first stop."