Origin in Death (In Death #21)(90)

"What about the school, the kids, the staff?"

"I'm still thinking."

"I asked Avril, well one of them, what they were going to do about the kids. How they were going to explain that there were three mommies. She said they'd be told they were sisters who'd found each other after a long separation. They don't want them to know, not about them. Not about what their father was doing. They're going to go under, Dallas, first opportunity."

"No question."

"We're going to give them one."

Eve kept her eyes straight ahead. "As police officers we won't, in any way, facilitate the escape of material witnesses."

"Right. I want to talk to my parents. Funny how when something really twists up your thinking-the order of things for you-you want to talk to Mom and Dad."

"Wouldn't know."

Peabody winced. "Sorry. Shit, I get stupid when I'm this tired."

"No problem. I'm saying I wouldn't know because I didn't have any-not normal ones. Neither did they. If that's what makes them artificial, then so am I."

"I want to talk to my parents," Peabody repeated after a long moment. "I know I'm lucky to have them, and my brothers, my sisters, all the rest. I know they'll listen, that's the thing. But not having that, having to make yourself out of what gets dumped on you, creating your life out of that. . . it's not artificial. It's as real as it gets."

The streets and sky were nearly empty. Occasionally an animated board bloomed out color and light. Dreams of pleasure and beauty and happiness. Bargain prices.

"Do you know why I came to New York?" Eve said.

"No, not really."

"Because it's a place where you can be alone. You can step out on the street with thousands of other people and be completely alone. Besides being a cop, that's what I thought I wanted most."

"Was it?"

"For a while, yeah. For a long while it was what I wanted. I'd gone from being anonymous to being monitored constantly through the foster program and state schools. I wanted to be anonymous again, on my terms. To be a badge, period. I don't know, if I'd caught this case ten years ago-five years ago-if I'd have handled it the way I'm doing now. Maybe I'd just have taken them down. Black and white. It's not just the job, the years on it that bring in all the gray. It's the people, dead and alive, you end up connected to who paint it in."

"I go with the last part. But no matter when you'd caught this, you i go this way. Because it's right. And that's what counts, that's what do. Avril Icove's a victim. Somebody needs to be on her side."

Eve smiled a little. "She has each other."

"Good one. A little bit of a cheap shot, but good nonetheless."

"Get some sleep." Eve pulled up in front of Peabody's building, tag you if I need you to come in, but for now plan to catch some sleep, pack, and go."

"Thanks for the lift." Peabody yawned again as she got out. "Happy Thanksgiving, if I don't see you before."

Eve eased from the curve, and saw in the rearview that McNab had left a light on in the apartment for Peabody.

There'd be a light on for her, too, she thought. And someone who'd listen.

But not yet.

She put her vehicle on autopilot, pulled out her personal 'link.

"Blah," Nadine said, and Eve could see the faintest of silhouettes on screen.

"Meet me at the Down and Dirty."

"Huh? What? Now?"

"Now. Bring a notebook-paper not electronic. No record Nadine, no cams. Just you, old-fashioned paper and pencils. I'll be waiting."

"But-"

Eve just clicked off, and kept driving.

The bouncer on the door of the sex club was big as a sequoia, black as onyx. He wore gold. A skin-shirt stretched across his massive chest, boots molded their way up the leather pants that coated his legs, and the trio of chains around his neck she imagined could be used as a weapon.

There was a tattoo of a snake slithering over his left cheek.

He was rousting two mopes as she walked up. One white, maybe two-fifty of hard fat, the other mixed race, heavy on the Asian, who looked like a contender for the sumo arena.

He had them both by the scruff of the neck and was quick-stepping them toward the curb.

"Next time you try to stiff one of my em-ploy-ees, I'm gonna twist your cocks clean off before you get a chance to use 'em."

He knocked their heads together-a technically illegal action- then let them fall in the gutter.

He turned, spotted Eve. "Hey there, white girl."

"Hey, Crack, how's it going?"

"Oh, can't bitch much." He slapped his palms together in a drying motion, twice. "What you doing down here? Somebody dead I ain't heard about?"

"I need a privacy room. I've got a meet," she said when his eyebrows rose up into his wide forehead. "Nadine's on her way. We were never here."

"Since I figure you two don't want one of my rooms so you can roll around naked together-and ain't that a shame-this must be official. I don't know nothing about official. Come on in."

She stepped into the blast of noise, of smells that included stale brew, Zoner-and a variety of illegals that could be smoked or otherwise ingested-fresh sex, sweat, and other bodily fluids she didn't choose to identify.