Promises in Death (In Death #28)(27)

“Maybe.” She stood as she was, hands in pockets, and stared into Coltraine’s face. “And maybe she found out more about Alex Ricker three years ago than she noted in her files.”

“You think he, like his father, had cops in his pocket? Including her?”

“I don’t know.” Inside her belly knots twisted. “God, I hope not, for Morris’s sake. But if she was dirty, I need to find out. If she was clean, and if Alex Ricker had something to do with her death, I need to find out.”

In Roarke’s secured office, the privacy-screened windows opened to the lights of the city. The slick U-shaped console held the sharpest of cutting-edge equipment—shielded as well—from the vigilent eye of CompuGuard.

Illegal, Eve thought, so whatever they found here couldn’t leave the room. But she’d know. For Morris, she needed to know.

Roarke, his hair pulled back in a short tail, his sleeves rolled up, stepped behind the console. He laid his hand on the palm plate. “Roarke. Power on.”

The console flashed on, a sea of jeweled lights and controls.

Roarke acknowledged. Power on.

“We’ll want coffee,” he said to Eve.

“I’ll get it.” She programmed a full pot from the office AutoChef, poured two tall mugs. When she turned, Roarke stood where he was, watched her. Waited.

“All right.” She crossed over, set his mug down, placed hers on the jut that held the auxiliary computer.

For Morris, yes, she thought. But not only.

“My father worked for Ricker. Your father worked for him, and we’ve established before that they met, and were working on the same job before the night in Dallas. Before I killed my father.”

“Before you, an eight-year-old girl, stopped him from raping you again.”

“Okay.” Truth could still dry the throat and chill the blood. “The fact is, he’s still dead. So’s your father. And your father pulled a double-cross, on Ricker, on a weapons deal. About twenty-four years ago.”

“In Atlanta.”

“Yeah. In Atlanta. Down the line, you worked for Ricker.”

Roarke’s tone turned very cool. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Were associated with him. Jump further down the line, Ricker shows up in New York, and he’s hell-bent on destroying you.”

“And you.”

“Three years ago, when Ricker was probably dreaming about eating your liver, Coltraine connects with Ricker’s son. In Atlanta. Between that point and this point, we brought Max Ricker down. One year ago. And a couple months after that Coltraine requests a transfer to New York. She gets cozy with the chief medical examiner. A man I have a close work relationship with, and who we both consider a friend. Alex Ricker comes to New York; she dies. I think when you’ve got that many intersections, you have to take a real hard look at the road.”

“And how will this be, for you, if this somehow tracks back to your father and mine?”

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to find out.” She took a breath. “I don’t know how it’ll be for either of us, but we need to find out.”

“We do, yes.”

“The killer sent her weapons, her badge back to me. Personally. Maybe he’s got a mole in Dispatch, and arranged for me to be assigned. But the fact is, it doesn’t take a brain trust to figure out that even if someone else had caught this case, I’d have been involved. Because of Morris. That package was always going to come to me.”

“Then we’re on the same page. And the note inside the package becomes more a threat than bravado.”

“Possibly. She wasn’t a street cop, Roarke. She was a puzzle solver, a detail chaser. But she wasn’t street, sure as hell wasn’t New York street. Nobody’s going to take me with my own weapon. Damn if I’ll have that in my jacket at the end of the day.”

He nearly smiled. “So pride will keep you safe?”

“Among other things. If I’m a target, why take her down? Why put every cop in the city on alert, then go for me?” She faced Roarke over the wink of jeweled lights. “I’m better than she was. That’s not bragging, that’s just fact. So it’s smarter to try to take me out cold than to try it when I’m already looking for a cop killer. And when, within the first twenty-four hours, I’ll find Alex Ricker in her files.”

“Logical. And somewhat comforting.”

“In any case, that’s all speculation. We need data.”

“It’ll take some time, to get under the layers.”

“I’ll use the auxiliary and keep going through her case files.”

Roarke sat, and began to peel at the first layers.

Ricker, he thought. The name was like a virus in his life, springing out, spreading, then crawling back into hiding only to slither out again. And again.

He had reason to wonder if Ricker had been responsible for jamming the knife in Patrick Roarke’s throat in that alley in Dublin years ago. And that, Roarke admitted, was the single thing he’d have to be grateful to Ricker for.

Not true, he corrected, not entirely true.

He could be grateful for what he’d learned during his association with Ricker. He’d learned how far he would go, and where he wouldn’t go. He knew it had both amused and annoyed Max Ricker that he wouldn’t deal in the sex trade when it involved minors or the unwilling. That he wouldn’t kill on command, or for the sake of spilling blood.