Possession in Death (In Death #31.5)(17)

“I know the difference between dead and alive.” She stepped up to the body. “Why can’t I see her? Why can’t I talk to her? I look at her, and I feel… rage and frustration. And… obligation.”

“I spoke with Chale,” Morris told her. At the sink he ran cold water over a cloth, wrung it out. Then he came to her and smoothed it over her face himself to cool it.

“He said the same, but he also said that she took your hand, spoke to you, and there was a light—a blast of light and energy. And for a moment after it, you seemed to be blank. Just blank. He said something seemed to pass between you.”

She took the cloth, mildly embarrassed he’d tended to her—that she’d let him. “You don’t believe that kind of thing.”

“The science says this woman died at one this afternoon—irrefutably—but there’s more in the world than science.”

Maybe, she thought—hard to argue about it right at the moment. But it had been routine and order that had gotten her through the experience with Janna. So she’d stay there as long as she could.

“Let’s stick with science for the moment. What can you tell me about the weapon?”

“All right. A thin, double-edged blade. Seven and a quarter inches in length.” He turned to a screen to bring up the image he’d reconstructed from the wounds, then turned back to the body. “You see here where the killer thrust it fully into her, the bruising from the bolster.”

She leaned in, studying the gouges, the slices. “A dagger.”

“Yes. He hit bone. The tip will be chipped.” Morris showed her a tiny piece of steel, sealed in a tray. “I recovered this.”

“Okay, that’s good. He stabbed her in the back first—back of the shoulder.” She remembered the shocking, tearing pain. “Because he’s a coward, and because he feared her. She didn’t see his face—he wore a mask or makeup. A kind of costume, because he’s theatrical. A devil,” she murmured, “because it’s a role he plays, or wants to. Because it’s powerful, because it instills fear, because he wanted that image to be the last she saw.”

“Why?” Morris asked.

“He has something she wanted, and she wouldn’t have stopped until she got it back. Exposed him. Punished him. Deprived him.”

“Now you’ll get it back.”

She turned to Roarke, nodded. “Yeah. I will. I need to go home. You could drive while I talk to some cops.”

“Dallas,” Morris said, “I’d like to talk about this at some point.”

“Yeah. At some point.” She hesitated, handed him back the cloth, then closed her hand over his for just a moment. “Thanks.”

Cooler, steadier, she walked down the tunnel with Roarke.

“Is she there?”

Eve paused, looked down at the floor where she’d sat with Jenna. “No. I guess she’s gone wherever she had to go. Jesus, Roarke.”

He took her hand firmly. “Let’s get to the bottom of this, because right now I don’t know if you need a doctor or a bloody priest.”

“A priest?”

“For an exorcism.”

“That’s not funny,” she muttered.

“It’s not, no.”

Chapter Seven

Roarke gave her the time she needed while he drove. He said nothing, listening to her talk with a handful of cops about someone named Alexi Barin. Since her color was back, and her skin no longer felt as though it might burn off her bones, he checked the impulse to take her straight to a health center.

He considered his wife, among other things, cynical, stable, and often annoyingly rooted in reality and logic.

When she told him, straight-faced and clear-eyed, she’d had a conversation with the dead, he leaned toward believing her. Particularly adding in her unhesitating response to his simple How are you? in Russian.

She clicked off her ‘link again, said, “Hmmm.”

“How do you make Hungarian goulash?”

“What? I’m not making goulash.”

“I didn’t ask you to make it, but how you would.”

“Oh, it’s a test. Well, you’d cut up some onions and brown them in hot oil —just to golden brown, then you’d take this beef you’d cut in cubes and coated with flour, add that and some paprika to the oil and onions. Then—”

“That’s enough.”

“Why would you coat good meat with flour? I thought flour was for baking stuff.”

“Which proves you know less about cooking than I do, which is next to nothing, and yet you can toss off a recipe for goulash.”

“It’s weird, and it’s pretty f**king irritating. Which is why I’m going home instead of in to Central. I’m not going to find myself talking to some dead guy or whatever in front of other cops.”

“You’re still you,” he murmured, foolishly relieved. “You’re more embarrassed than frightened by the situation you appear to be in.”

“I don’t even believe this is happening, but I know it is. I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather have a brain tumor.”

She took a breath, then another. “I’m going back over it in my head. She was walking—staggering—bleeding all over the place. Science says she was dead, but Lopez saw her, too—and the medics when they got there. She talked to me. She looked at me.”