Seduction in Death (In Death #13)(29)

"That's right."

"Just a minute." Nadine's face disappeared from the 'link screen for ten seconds. "Just wanted to check with the meteorologist. It appears, despite indications to the contrary, hell has not frozen over."

"Pardon me while I fall into an uncontrollable fit of giggles. You want the data or not?"

"Yeah, I want it."

"A top police source confirms that the investigations of the Bryna Bankhead and the Grace Lutz cases are linked."

"Hold on." Everything about Nadine sharpened as she leaped into full reporter mode. "There's been no confirmation to this point as to whether the Bankhead death was accidental, self-termination, or homicide."

"It's homicide. Confirmed."

"My information is that the Lutz murder was sexual homicide." Nadine's voice was brisk now. All business. "Is that the case in the Bankhead homicide? Did the victims know each other, and are we dealing with one suspect?"

"Don't interview me, Nadine. This isn't a one-on-one. Both victims were young, single women who, on the night of their deaths, met with an individual they had corresponded with via e-mail and online chat rooms."

"What kind of chat rooms? Where did they meet?"

"Shut up, Nadine. Evidence indicates that both victims were given an illegal substance, possibly without their knowledge, during the evening."

"A date rape drug?"

"You're quick. Your source neither denies nor confirms that information. Take the freebie, Nadine, and run with it. That's all you get for now."

"I can get out of here in ninety minutes. I'll meet you wherever you want."

"Not tonight. I'll let you know where or when."

"Wait!" If it had been possible, Nadine would have burst through the 'link screen. "Give me something on the suspect. Do you have a description, a name?"

"All avenues of investigation are being vigorously pursued. Blah, blah, blah." Eve broke transmission on Nadine's curse.

Satisfied, she walked into the kitchen, ordered coffee. Then just stood by the window, looking out at the gathering dark.

He was out there now. Somewhere. Did he already have another date? Was he, even now, making himself into some hopeful woman's fantasy?

Tomorrow, the next day, would there be other friends, more family she would have to shatter?

The Lutzes would never fully recover. They'd go on with their lives, and after a while they wouldn't think of it every minute of every day. They'd laugh again, work, shop, breathe in and out. But there would always be a hole. Just a little hollow inside their lives.

They'd been a family. A unit. She'd sensed that unification in the house. In the comfort and clutter of it. In the flowers outside the door, and the easy give of the sofa.

Now rather than parents, they were survivors. Those who survived lived forever with that echo of what was gone sounding inside their heads.

They'd kept her room, Eve thought now while her coffee sat in the AutoChef going cold. When she'd gone through it, looking for something, anything to add to the sum of Grace Lutz, she'd seen the stages of a life, from child to young girl to young woman.

Dolls carefully arranged on a shelf. Decoration now rather than toys, but still treasured. Books, photographs, holograms. Trinket boxes in the shapes of hearts or flowers. The bed had had a canopy the color of sunbeams, and the walls had been virgin white.

Eve couldn't imagine growing up there, in all that sweet, girlish fuss. Ruffled curtains at the windows, the inexpensive minicomputer on the desk that had been decorated with daisies to match the shade on the bedside lamp.

The girl who's slept in that bed, read by that lamplight had been happy, secure, and loved.

Eve had never had a doll, nor curtains at the windows. There'd been no precious little pieces of girlhood to tuck away in heart-shaped boxes. The childhood rooms she remembered were cramped, anonymous boxes in cheap hotels where the walls were thin and often, too often, things skittered in dark corners.

The air smelled stale, and there was no place to hide, no place to run if he came back and wasn't drunk enough to forget you were there.

The girl who had slept in those beds, trembled in those shadows had been terrified, desperate, and lost.

She jolted as a hand touched her shoulder, and instinctively reached for her weapon as she spun around.

"Steady, Lieutenant." Roarke ran his hand down her arm, rested it lightly on her weapon hand as he studied her face. "Where were you?"

"Trying to make a circle." She eased away from him, opened the AutoChef for her coffee. "I didn't know you were home."

"I haven't been for long." He laid his hands on her shoulders now, rubbed at the tension. "Did you have a memory flash?"

She shook her head, sipped the cold coffee, continued to stare out the window into the dark. But she knew if she didn't rid herself of it, it could fester. "When you were gone," she began, "I had a dream. A bad one. He wasn't dead. He was covered with blood, but he wasn't dead. He talked to me. He said I'd never kill him, never get away."

She saw Roarke's reflection in the glass, saw her own merging with it. "He had to punish me. He got up. Blood was pouring out of him, but he stood up. And he came for me."