Promises in Death (In Death #28)(40)

He hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. “You may never see captain. They may never pull the bars out of their tight asses for you.”

“I know. It doesn’t matter.”

“It should.”

It surprised her to hear the resentment—for her sake—in his voice. And left her without a clue what to say.

“Anyway.” Webster shrugged. “I’ll take a look at things, on my own time. So we don’t put a smear on her if she didn’t earn it. If you get any more on Ricker, either way it leans, I’d appreciate if you’d pass it on.”

“Okay. I can do that.”

“How much does Morris know?”

“I told him about Ricker before I tagged you. I’m not going around him on this.”

“So he knows you were going to run this up with IAB.”

“He put the dots together, yeah.”

“If you talk to him again, tell him I’ll be keeping a lid on it.”

“I will. He’ll appreciate it.”

“Yeah, unless I find something. Then he’ll want to eat my heart with cranberry sauce. I have to get back.” He got to his feet. “Be careful around Ricker. You put his father over. Odds are he’d be happy to eat your heart raw.”

Eve waited until Webster walked out, then went over to say her good-byes to Crack.

Eve supposed it would be weird to most, and just another day in the life of a cop, to go from a meeting in a sex club to a consultation in the pretty, cool-aired office of Dr. Charlotte Mira.

As the department’s top profiler and head shrink, Mira claimed a roomy space, decorated to her own liking. Which edged toward female and class.

Just like the doctor herself.

Mira sat, her legs crossed and shown to advantage in a pale pink suit. Her deep brown hair curled softly around her calm, lovely face as she sipped tea.

“I sent a card of condolence to Morris,” she told Eve. “It seems such a small thing to do for a friend at such a time. You’ve seen him, of course.”

“Yeah. He’s holding on. It’s wrecked him, you can see it, but he’s holding. You were able to read the files, the updates? Everything?”

“Yes. One of our own goes down, it’s a priority. She had an affair with Max Ricker’s son. A dangerous business. A professional risk. Yet I wouldn’t characterize her as a risk taker.”

“She was a cop.”

“Yes, which always involves risks. But according to her files, she never once in her career discharged her weapon. She solved puzzles. She was a thinker. An organized, detail-oriented thinker. She came from a good background, upper-middle-class, single-marriage family. She excelled in school. Her job evaluations were always solid and steady. No black marks, no shiny stars. This was a careful woman. Alex Ricker was the exception.”

“Love, lust, or gain?”

“If gain, or only gain, why risk the connection, the closeness? To continue in the relationship for more than a year, to go to the trouble to hide it from her colleagues, her family? Lust can start the fire, but it rarely keeps it burning for long. It may have been all three.”

“The attraction first—the lust. Hot guy, interesting guy, classy. Dangerous. The good girl gets a tingle from the bad boy.”

Mira smiled a little. “Are you projecting?”

“I didn’t get a tingle. I got hit with a brick. Yeah, I see some parallels, but the way she played it . . .”

“Wasn’t the way you did,” Mira finished, “or ever would. It’s possible the clandestine nature added some excitement. Everything I’ve studied about it indicates she followed the rules. Except here. That’s another form of excitement.”

“So she leads with lust, and there’s all those tingles—the excitement. Come away with me to Paris tonight. Hotdog. And yeah, she jumped through a lot of hoops to be with him,” Eve considered, “and to stay with him, so love—or what she thought was—had to play a part. She’s in love, and he says, maybe you could do me this little favor. Not a big thing. Stars in the eyes, you do the little favor. What does it hurt?”

“And the next favor’s bigger. You’re in deeper.” Mira nodded. “It’s a logical pattern.”

“Maybe he starts to ask too much. There’s more risk for a woman not wired for them, and it starts going south. It went south, according to my source, right around the time Ricker went down. She sees what happened, wonders if that’s going to happen to the son and to her.”

“It changes the pattern,” Mira agreed. “Alex is now, with his father’s defeat, in charge.”

“She can’t handle it, breaks it off. Puts distance between them. Clean slate, that’s what she told Morris. Fresh start. Alex Ricker loses a lover and a resource. Bad break for him.”

“His father is a violent, unstable man. A known criminal, a man of power and no conscience. His mother died when he was very young. Accident, suicide.”

“Or murder,” Eve added.

“Yes, or. While he was given a superior education, and raised with the advantages money can buy, he was placed in confined institutions, regimented schools. As his only acknowledged blood kin—as only son—Max Ricker would have expected a great deal. Demanded it. He’d be expected to excel, and expected—when his father was ready—to step up and take the helm. He, too, from what I’ve studied, is a careful man. While he may be in the business of risk, he’s certainly minimized it by covering himself with layers of protection. His public persona is much more polished than his father’s. He has, with careful, even meticulous PR, evaded the scandal of having a parent convicted of all the crimes Max Ricker was convicted of.”