New York to Dallas (In Death #33)(30)

He couldn’t help it. He gave her a quick one-armed hug, brushed his lips over her hair. “Cut it out, yes, I know,” he said with a laugh. “But it seemed appropriate enough in a world of smiling cops. And here’s one who isn’t.”

Eve made Bree Jones the minute the detective stepped through the doors. For an instant then overlaid now and she had a perfect image of the young face, bruised, swollen, twisted with rage and fear.

Then it vanished, and she saw a pretty woman, blond hair short, spiky, with soft features overset by a sharp, firm chin. Blue eyes dominated a face pale and shadowed.

She couldn’t cover the fatigue, Eve thought, but she cloaked the fear. It barely showed around the edges.

She walked briskly to Eve, a small, compact woman in faded jeans, a white T-shirt, and brown boots.

“Lieutenant Dallas.”

The voice didn’t quiver. There was an inherent drawl in it that made it sound lazy and overcasual to Eve’s ears. But there was nothing lazy or casual about the handshake.

“Detective Jones. This is Roarke. He’s cleared as consultant.”

“Yes. Thank you for coming. Thank you both for coming so quickly. I asked my loo to let me escort you in. I wanted a moment to thank you personally.”

“There’s no need.”

“So you said before, but there is. And was. I’ll take you in to Lieutenant Ricchio.”

“Are you working the case, Detective?”

“Lieutenant Ricchio is persuaded I’ll be an asset.”

“Did you persuade him?”

Bree glanced at Eve, away again as they passed through the doors. “Yes, Lieutenant, I did. It’s my sister. I wouldn’t have attempted to persuade him unless I believed, completely, I can and will be an asset.”

Eve said nothing. Bree walked like a cop—and excusing the drawl, talked like a cop. But the place? Everything glimmered clean and shiny. Treated glass on generous windows diffused the light, and the air hung steady at a pleasant temperature, belying the wet blanket of heat that smothered the city outside.

“Is this a new facility, Detective?”

“Relatively, Lieutenant. It’s about five years old.”

Five years? Eve thought. Every cop she knew could’ve taken the shine off the place in five days.

They turned into SVU with its wide bullpen, its line of cubes for aides and uniforms. Cops at the desks, some in jackets, some in shirtsleeves, working the ’links, the comps. She wouldn’t say every movement stopped when she walked in, but there was a beat.

In it she got stares close enough to the beady eye to put her at ease.

Ricchio used the traditional boss’s attached office with unshuttered window. He stepped out immediately, held out a hand to Eve.

“Lieutenant Dallas, Mr. Roarke, thank you for responding so quickly. Please, come into my office. How about some coffee?”

She started to refuse. Let’s get down to business. But she remembered this was a world where cops smiled and said please a lot. “Thanks, just black.”

“The same,” Roarke told him.

He programmed the AutoChef, and after passing out the coffee, gesturing to his visitor’s chairs—ones with actual cushions—he sat on the edge of his desk.

He wore a suit and tie, and had a lot of wavy brown hair around a face with a deep tan and lantern jaw. His eyes shifted to Bree, back to Eve.

“I expect you’ve read Detective Jones’s statement and report.”

“I have. But I’d rather hear her account, if you don’t mind.”

“Bree?”

“Yes, sir. I didn’t get home until a few minutes after four this morning. My partner, Detective Walker, and I worked a long one. My sister and I share an apartment. I assumed Melinda was home in bed. I never checked. I went directly to bed, and as I’d taken the next day off, I slept late. I . . .”

She wavered a moment.

“It’s my policy,” Ricchio said, “when my detectives put in long hours, close a case, and have nothing hot waiting, they take a day to recoup.”

“Understood.”

“I didn’t get up until about ten-thirty,” Bree continued. “And I assumed Melinda had gone to work. There was a message from her on the fridge, as is our routine. She said she’d gotten a call, had gone out to meet with a rape victim she’d been counseling. She left the message at twenty-three-thirty.”

“Is it usual for her to meet a vic that late?”

“Yes, ma’am—sir. Pardon me, Lieutenant, I understand you prefer sir.”

“Ma’am’s somebody’s tight-assed aunt.”

It nearly got a smile from Bree. “Yes, sir. It’s never too late or too early for Melly. If somebody needs her, she’d be there. I didn’t think anything of it. I’d have known if she’d left the message under duress. She didn’t.”

“She didn’t tell you who she intended to meet or where?”

“No, but that wasn’t unusual, but . . . if she’d come back, she’d have deleted the message, so it gave me a bad feeling. I decided to check in with her. When I did so, I got McQueen’s message.”

As she said McQueen’s name, Bree began to turn a silver ring around and around her finger.

“I checked the apartment, cleared it. I contacted my lieutenant and apprised him of the situation. He dispatched two officers and a Crime Scene Unit to my location, and put out an alert on Melinda and her vehicle. Her vehicle was found in the unsecured lot of a motel approximately three-quarters of a mile from our apartment. No one interviewed remembered seeing Melinda or McQueen.”