Survivor In Death (In Death #20)(79)

“It's all right, we're fine.” Peabody went into comfort mode. “This is a nice place. Great sofa.”

“I like it. I mean the whole shot. It's a quiet building, close to work. And when I want to play, I can scoot half a block to the subway and head toward the action.”

“Full apartment in this neighborhood doesn't come cheap,” Eve commented.

“No. I have a roommate. Had,” she corrected. “Jilly's a flight attendant--handles the New York to Vegas II route, mostly. She's gone so much we don't get in each other's way, or on each other's nerves.”

“Had?” Eve prompted.

“She got in touch a couple of days ago. She's going to base on Vegas II now, so . . .” Sade shrugged. “No big for me. I can handle the rent now on my salary. Grant and Dave--hell. Dave's not stingy. I've gotten raises along the way.”

She looked down at herself. “Do you think this is the right thing to wear? Maybe it's too morbid. Black suit. I mean, a funeral's morbid, but maybe--”

“I think it's very appropriate,” Peabody told her. “Respectful.”

“Okay. Okay. I know it's a stupid thing to worry about. Why the hell should they care what I'm wearing when . .. I'm going to get some water. Do you want any water?”

“No, go ahead.” But Eve rose, wandered toward the trim galley kitchen. “Sade, do you remember a case Grant worked on? Kirkendall. His client was Dian.”

“Give me a sec.” She got a bottle of water from a minifriggie, leaned back on the lipstick-red counter. “Divorce and custody deal. Guy used to knock her around. Army guy--well, he was retired army by then. But one mean son of a bitch. They had a couple of kids--boy and girl. Dian finally got her butt in gear when he started on the kids. Well, not straight off.”

She opened the bottle, sipped thoughtfully. “Seems he ran the show like he was the general. More the tyrant. Schedules, orders, discipline. Had the three of them pretty well cowed. She went into a shelter, finally, and one of the people who ran it recommended our firm. Woman was terrified, seriously terrified. We see that sometimes. Too many times.”

“The court ruled in her favor.”

“All the way. Grant worked hard on that case.” Her eyes went shiny, and she paused to take a long drink, fight back the tears. “She'd screwed herself pretty good along the way, a lot of them do. Not calling the cops, or telling them that there was no trouble if somebody else called them. Going to various health clinics so she wouldn't send up a red flag. But Grant, he put a lot of hours in--pro bono, too--finding doctors, health techs, getting psych evals. The guy had some slick lawyers. Tried to make it like Dian was unstable, that her injuries were both self-induced and a result of affairs with abusive men. It didn't wash, especially when Grant put Jaynene on the stand.”

“Jaynene Brenegan?”

“Yeah.” Sade frowned. “You knew her?”

“Why was her testimony important?”

“Trauma expert--and she just blew the bastard's lawyers out of the water. Made it clear that her exam of Dian showed consistent and long term physical abuse, impossible to self-inflict. They couldn't shake her, and it was one of the things that really turned the tide. She was killed two, no, must be three years ago now. Some goddamn junkie knifed her after her shift. Bastard claimed he found her dead, just helped himself to her money, but they slapped his ass away.”

“Dian Kirkendall got full custody.”

“Right, with him getting monthly supervised visits. He never got the chance to make one. She whiffed a day or two later. Grant was sick about it, we all were. Worried he might have gotten to her somehow.”

“You believed he might've done her violence.”

“Grant did. Cops never found a trace of her, or the kids.”

“Did Kirkendall make any threats to her, or to Grant?”

“He was too cool for that. Like arctic. Never broke a sweat, never said a word that you could construe as threatening. But believe me, you could see he had it in him.”

Eve nodded to Peabody who drew the sketches out of her bag. “Do you recognize these men?”

Sade set the bottle down, took a good long look. “No. And I'd remember if I'd seen them. Scary. Are these the men who--” She broke off. “Kirkendall? You think he had something to do with what happened to Grant and his family? That bastard son of a bitch!”

“We have questions we'd like to ask him.”

“He could have done it,” she said softly. “He's capable. You know how you see someone, or brush up against them on the street, and everything in you freezes? That's the thing with him. Makes your blood run cold. But, Jesus, it was so long ago. It was years ago. I'd just started with the firm, was living in this one-room box up on One Hundred and Seventh.”

“We're checking several leads,” Eve said. “Thanks for the details on this. Oh, just curious. How'd you find this place, the roommate?”

“They found me, basically. I met Jilly at this club I used to hang at. Friend of a friend of a friend sort of thing. We hit it off. Then she told me she had this place, was looking for a roommate since she was away so much. Just wanted somebody there, you know, so it wasn't empty half the time. I snapped it.”