Naked in Death (In Death #1)(8)

But that hadn’t been all. Not this time. This time he’d kept coming. And she’d been naked, kneeling in a pool of satin. The knife had become a gun, held by the man whose face she’d studied hours before. The man called Roarke.

He’d smiled, and she’d wanted him. Her body had tingled with terror and sexual desperation even as he’d shot her. Head, heart, and loins.

And somewhere through it all, the little girl, the poor little girl, had been screaming for help.

Too tired to fight it, Eve simply rolled over, pressed her face into her pillow and wept.

“Lieutenant.” At precisely seven A. M., Commander Whitney gestured Eve toward a chair in his office. Despite the fact, or perhaps due to the fact that he’d been riding a desk for twelve years, he had sharp eyes.

He could see that she’d slept badly and had worked to disguise the signs of a disturbed night. In silence, he held out a hand.

She’d put the disc and its cover into an evidence bag. Whitney glanced at it, then laid it in the center of his desk.

“According to protocol, I’m obliged to ask you if you want to be relieved from this case.” He waited a beat. “We’ll pretend I did.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is your residence secure, Dallas?”

“I thought so.” She took hard copy out of her briefcase. “I reviewed the security discs after I contacted you. There’s a ten minute time lapse. As you’ll see in my report, he has the capability of undermining security, a knowledge of videos, editing, and, of course, antique weapons.”

Whitney took her report, set it aside. “That doesn’t narrow the field overmuch.”

“No, sir. I have several more people I need to interview. With this perpetrator, electronic investigation isn’t primary, though Captain Feeney’s help is invaluable. This guy covers his tracks. We have no physical evidence other than the weapon he chose to leave at the scene. Feeney hadn’t been able to trace it through normal channels. We have to assume it was black market. I’ve started on her trick books and her personal appointments, but she wasn’t the retiring kind. It’s going to take time.”

“Time’s part of the problem. One of six, lieutenant. What does that say to you?”

“That he has five more in mind, and wants us to know it. He enjoys his work and wants to be the focus of our attention.” She took a careful breath. “There’s not enough for a full psychiatric profile. We can’t say how long he’ll be satisfied by the thrill of this murder, when he’ll need his next fix. It could be today. It could be a year from now. We can’t bank on him being careless.”

Whitney merely nodded. “Are you having problems with the rightful termination?”

The knife slicked with blood. The small ruined body at her feet. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Be sure of it, Dallas. I don’t need an officer on a sensitive case like this who’s worried whether she should or shouldn’t use her weapon.”

“I’m sure of it.”

She was the best he had, and he couldn’t afford to doubt her. “Are you up to playing politics?” His lips curved thinly. “Senator DeBlass is on his way over. He flew into New York last night.”

“Diplomacy isn’t my strong suit.”

“I’m aware of that. But you’re going to work on it. He wants to talk to the investigating officer, and he went over my head to arrange it. Orders came down from the chief. You’re to give the senator your full cooperation.”

“This is a Code Five investigation,” Eve said stiffly. “I don’t care if orders came down from God Almighty, I’m not giving confidential data to a civilian.”

Whitney’s smile widened. He had a good, ordinary face, probably the one he was born with. But when he smiled and meant it, the flash of white teeth against the cocoa colored skin turned the plain features into the special.

“I didn’t hear that. And you didn’t hear me tell you to give him no more than the obvious facts. What you do hear me tell you, Lieutenant Dallas, is that the gentleman from Virginia is a pompous, arrogant ass**le. Unfortunately, the ass**le has power. So watch your step.”

“Yes, sir.”

He glanced at his watch, then slipped the file and disc into his safe drawer. “You’ve got time for a cup of coffee… and, lieutenant,” he added as she rose. “If you’re having trouble sleeping, take your authorized sedative. I want my officers sharp.”

“I’m sharp enough.”

Senator Gerald DeBlass was undoubtedly pompous. He was unquestionably arrogant. After one full minute in his company, Eve agreed that he was undeniably an ass**le.

He was a compact, bull of a man, perhaps six feet, two hundred and twenty. His crop of white hair was cut sharp and thin as a razor so that his head seemed huge and bullet sleek. His eyes were nearly black, as were the heavy brows over them. They were large, like his nose, his mouth.

His hands were enormous, and when he clasped Eve’s briefly on introduction, she noted they were smooth and soft as a baby’s.

He brought his adjutant with him. Derrick Rockman was a whiplike man in his early forties. Though he was nearly six-five, Eve gave DeBlass twenty pounds on him. Neat, tidy, his pin-striped suit and slate blue tie showed not a crease. His face was solemn, attractively even featured, his movements restrained and controlled as he assisted the more flamboyant senator out of his cashmere overcoat.