Purity in Death (In Death #15)(7)

"Hi. Sorry about dinner."

"No, you're not."

She tucked her hands in her pockets. It was ridiculous, really, the way they continually itched to take hold of him. "I'm sort of sorry about dinner."

He grinned, that lightning bolt of charm and humor. "You wouldn't have been as bored as you think."

"You're probably right. If I'd been as bored as I thought, I'd have slipped into a coma. But I am sorry I let you down."

"You don't let me down." He crossed to her, tapped her chin up with his finger and kissed her lightly. "It adds considerably to my cachet when I apologize for my wife, who's been called to duty on a case. Murder always makes lively dinner conversation. Who's dead?"

"Couple of guys downtown. Small-time chem dealer whaled on his neighbor with a ball bat, then went after a woman and a cop. Cop took him out."

Roarke lifted a brow. More, he thought. There was a deal more trouble in her eyes than her quick rundown warranted. "That doesn't seem like the sort of wrangle that would keep you on duty so late."

"The cop was Trueheart."

"Ah." He laid his hands on her shoulders, rubbed. "How's he doing?"

She opened her mouth, then shook her head and paced away. "Shit. Shit, shit, shit."

"That bad, huh?"

"Kid breaks his cherry it's tough enough."

Roarke stroked a hand over the fat cat that sprawled over the console, then gave Galahad a little nudge to move him along. "That's an interesting way to put it."

"There are cops who go through the whole life of the job without deploying. Kid's in uniform under a year, and he's racked up a termination. It changes everything."

"Did it for you? Your first termination on the job," he added. They both knew she'd killed long before she had a badge.

"It was different for me." She often wondered if the way she'd started life made death somehow different for her.

A cold and personal insult.

"Trueheart, he's barely twenty-two and he's . . . shiny yet." Pity-a dark, slippery blossom-bloomed inside her. She crouched down, gave Galahad an absent scratch under the chin. "He won't sleep tonight. He'll go over it and over it and over it in his head. If I'd done this, if I'd done that. And tomorrow . . ." She rubbed her hands over her face as she straightened. "I can't block Testing for him. I can't stop the process."

She knew what it was. Stripped bare, monitored, questioned, forced to let machines and techs into your head. Into your gut like a tumor.

"Are you worried he won't pass through it?"

She glanced over, took the glass of wine he'd poured her. "He's tougher than he looks, but he's scared down to the bone. And he's swimming in guilt. Take all that guilt, all those doubts into Testing, they can drown you. And there's got to be an investigation. Internal."

"Why is that?"

She sat, gave him the details while the cat leaped up and kneaded a nest in her lap. It helped clear her mind to say it aloud, particularly to someone who caught on quickly and saw the full picture before you painted in all the lines.

"A uniform's stunner can't terminate under those conditions."

"Yeah." Eve nodded. "Exactly. It would have to be on full stun and jammed on the throat pulse. Even then it would take more than one jolt."

"Which means Trueheart's version of the events doesn't quite hold."

IAB wouldn't think so, she knew, and ran it through for herself as she would for them. "He was under serious duress. A civilian dead, another in extreme jeopardy, himself injured."

"Is that how you're going to play it with IAB?"

Yeah, he always saw the whole picture. "Pretty close to that." She drummed her fingers restlessly on her thigh, on the cat, sipped her wine. "I need the ME's report. But there's no way it's going to come out Trueheart terminated with deliberation. Panic, okay. He'll take a slap for panic, thirty days' suspension, some mandatory therapy. I can't get in the way of it. It's already dicey for him because he tagged me instead of calling it in through Dispatch. IAB smells cover-up, and the kid's finished."

Roarke sat, sipped his own wine. "Have you considered speaking to your old friend Webster?"

She tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair now and kept her gaze steady on Roarke's. There might have been amusement on his face-or something else. It was often tough to call.

Don Webster wasn't precisely an old friend. He had been very briefly and years before a lover. The fact that he, for reasons that would never be clear to Eve, had never gotten over that single night they'd shared had caused a violent and fascinating altercation between him and Roarke.

It wasn't something she wanted to repeat.

"Maybe, unless you're thinking that'd be a nice opportunity to pound his face in again."

Roarke sipped, smiled. "I believe Webster and I have a reasonable understanding. I can't fault him for being attracted to my wife, as I'm very attracted to her myself. And he knows that if he puts his hands on what's mine again, I'll break every bone in his body into small, jagged pieces. It works well for us."

"Great. Dandy." She said it between her teeth. "He's over it. He said so," she added and Roarke merely smiled again. Lazily now. Catlike.