Promises in Death (In Death #28)(102)

“If he tips it the wrong way, and she pulls out her weapon or a knife, McNab will get it on record. Morris is still down. I couldn’t work out a way to do it myself. She’ll be on alert with me. I thought about pushing her into taking a swing at me, so I could swing back. Then, oops, I’ve got her blood on my shirt. But then I’ve provoked her into giving up DNA instead of her—essentially—volunteering it.”

“He’ll get it done. He needs to, so he will.”

“Right. Contact Alex Ricker, and ask him real nice to come on down so we can chat.”

“He’ll bring a bunch of lawyers.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

She went into her office to prep, to line up all the threads she intended to tie together. She could wrap that knot tight around Cleo Grady, but she needed all those threads to put the bow on it.

Now it was wait, she thought. Wait for Reo to get the warrants, wait for Callendar and Sisto to deliver Rouche, wait for Morris to play out his role.

Alex Ricker? At this point he was more a pawn than a thread. She’d use him—and prove his father, his friend, and his half sister had used him. And she’d prove all the threads ran out from him, simply because he was.

She wouldn’t be sorry for it. He’d made his choices—to follow in his father’s footsteps, or close enough alongside them to cross the lines. He’d chosen to stay on that path rather than change it for a woman who must have loved him. A woman who died because she’d loved him, and left him.

She stood at her window, drinking coffee, considering choices. When she heard the knock on her door, she called out, “Come on.”

Mira stepped in, closed the door behind her. “Do you want me to observe when you interview Alex Ricker?”

“I’ve got it.”

“All right. I will want to observe if and when you interview Cleo Grady.”

“When. The DNA’s going to lock it. I need that because the law says I do. But I know who she is. She’s Ricker’s spawn. What I don’t know, what I’m curious about is what she wanted, or needed, from him. Was it the recognition, the money, the thrill? Maybe all of it. It fits that she sought him out rather than the other way. It fits their profiles.”

“Yes. She’d be nothing to him, and he’d be important to her. She could make herself important to him.”

“He educated her, so she must have. The college money, coming through a scholarship—with her the only recipient. That was stupid and greedy on Ricker’s part. Why not spend some bucks to send off a few other kids? He’d buried the payment, putting it through one of the arms of one of his fronts. He could’ve made it a legit deal, done the same a few times. Gotten the tax break or whatever.”

“He wouldn’t give a dollar to anyone without a purpose, a personal interest. It’s not in his scope.”

“Once she took it, he owned her. Was she too stupid to see that, or didn’t she care? She didn’t care,” Eve said before Mira spoke. “I read your profile. I’m just talking out loud.”

“It troubles you, all of this. The genetics of it.”

“Maybe it does. But that only makes me more determined to put her away. She had a pretty good life from what I can see. Parents who stuck, a decent home. She tossed it. Some people are just born f**ked up. I know that.”

She studied Grady’s photo on her board. “Maybe she was, maybe she was always going to go bad—even without knowing Ricker, without knowing she came from him. And maybe needing to know where she came from and finding out turned her, just enough. Just enough so she kept going, and couldn’t go back. I’m curious.”

“Will it make a difference in what you do?” Mira asked her. “Or how you handle what you’ve done, afterward?”

“No to the first. I’m not sure to the second. I’m not going to say taking her down isn’t personal, because it is. Because she’s a cop, because of Ricker. Because of Morris and because of Coltraine. It’s personal, right down the line.”

“And it’s easier, clearer, to take the steps, do what has to be done when it’s not. Or not this personal.”

Eve met Mira’s eyes and spoke calmly, coolly. “I want to hurt her, to use my hands on her, get her blood on them. I want that for all the reasons I just said. And I want it just for me.”

“But you won’t.”

Eve shrugged. “I guess we’ll see.”

“You won’t jeopardize the case for your own satisfaction, however much you’d enjoy it. That alone should answer one of your questions, Eve. Genetics stamp us, we can’t deny it. But we build from there. At the end of the day you’ll do what needs to be done, for all the reasons you named. But at the core of it, at the heart, you’ll do what needs to be done for Amaryllis Coltraine.”

“I didn’t give her a chance, you know?”

“In what way?”

She let out a breath, shoved at her hair. “When she was alive, with Morris. I didn’t give her a chance. It kind of irritated me for some reason that he was stuck on her. Stupid.”

“Not stupid, really. You didn’t know her, and you’re very attached to him.”

“Not that way.”

Mira smiled. “Not that way. But you’re not one who trusts quickly, or easily. God knows. You didn’t trust her yet.”