Apprentice in Death (In Death #43)(45)

They went upstairs to the second floor, cleared that: the master suite, the attached office, the boy’s room—a minor disaster area with strewn toys, vid games, clothes. A guest room identified as such by its pristine, unlived-in feel, then the girl’s.

And there was a third floor, a kind of casual family area for watching screen, hanging out—which the scatter of games proved they did—with a small kitchenette and a half bath.

Eve headed straight back down to Willow’s room.

Bed, sloppily made, and with none of the fussy pillows or weird stuffed animals Eve had encountered in other teenagers’ rooms. A desk and comp under the window, a lounge chair, some shelves.

Posters on the walls. Some music group all in black with snarling faces and lots of tats. The rest were weapons, or someone holding weapons. Knives, banned guns, blasters.

“Clear where her interests are,” Eve commented, moving to the closet.

A few girlie dresses—some with the tags still on them. Most of the clothes ran to black or dark colors, rougher styles.

“There’s an order in here,” she observed. “She knows where she puts her things, wants everything in its place. And if her mother or her brother poke around in here, she knows it.”

Roarke had already started on the computer. “She has this passcoded, and fail-safed. A very intricate job for someone her age.” He pulled out the desk chair and sat to work.

Eve started on the dresser. Plain underwear, winter socks, sweaters, sweats, all organized without looking overly so.

Purposely, she thought. Yes, she’d know if her mother shifted a pair of socks in the drawer.

“Keep going on that, but she wouldn’t leave anything in here she didn’t want her mother to find.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“She put a slide lock on the inside of the door—they took it off.” Eve nodded toward the door and the telltale marks. “Everything in here is arranged in a kind of system. I always did the same—in foster care, in state. You want to know where your things are so, if necessary, you can grab what matters most, is needed most, and run. Or so you know when they’ve done the look-through. I’m betting her mother does the regular look-through. Mother swallows the posters,” Eve continued as she kept searching. “Making the girl take them down only entrenches the interest, drives it deeper under. So she swallows that. But she’s had the room painted in this pale, pretty blue, buys dresses that aren’t worn—unless she forces that issue. She comes in, looking for something, anything, to give her more insight into her daughter. Or—more and—because she’s worried she’ll find illegals or weapons or a journal full of ugly thoughts.”

“Did you have one? A journal.”

“No, I kept my ugly thoughts to myself because they always . . . The brother’s room!”

When Eve walked out, Roarke arched his eyebrows. He finished bypassing the fail-safe, then rose to see what his cop was up to.

She sat at the boy’s comp in the middle of his boy mess.

“I didn’t always keep my thoughts—ugly or otherwise—to myself. That’s learned behavior, that’s experience. Sometimes you’re just writing a paper for school, and they get into your comp, and you get punished for writing how you like riding an airboard. So you start doing those papers in school, mostly. Or you’re bored and unhappy and you write down some stupid wish list, and they find that, and you get your ass kicked over it.”

Roarke brushed a kiss over the top of her head, said nothing—which said everything.

“It’s not about me, it’s just about . . . A couple of times when I needed to write something down—when you just need that tangible act—I figured out how to sort of hide it on another comp. One they didn’t bother with. You’ve got a real kid—I mean the foster’s real kid—in the house, and he’s gold in their eyes, you can use that. The thing is, if she used that method, she’s probably a hell of a lot better at it than I was—than I am.”

“Let me.”

When she rose, he took her by her shoulders, looked into her eyes. “What did you need to write down?”

“I kept a calendar—almost always, wherever I was—marking time till I could get out. For good. How many years, months, weeks, days, hours sometimes, before I could. How I was going to get out, go to New York. New York seemed so big and full, so I focused on New York pretty early. And the Academy. How I was going to be a cop because cops took care of themselves, and everyone else. Good cops, anyway, and I was going to be a good cop, and no one was ever going to tell me what and when to eat, what to wear—”

“And now I do.”

She shook her head. “Not the same. Not close to the same. No one loved me, and maybe along the way that became my fault as much as the system’s, but no one loved me. No one said eat something because I love you, because you matter. I was just another number until I earned the badge. I was just a badge, mostly just a badge, until I earned you.”

She took a breath. “I could have been this girl, Roarke.”

“No.”

“Yes, or at least something like her. If Feeney had been a different kind of cop, a different kind of man. If he’d been like Mackie, broken and twisted like Mackie. He saw me. Really saw me, and he pulled me out of the rest, paid attention, gave me time, gave me him. No one had, ever, offered me what he did. No one, ever, saw me like he did. I wanted to make him proud of me, wanted to be the kind of cop he’d be proud of. It drove me.