Conspiracy in Death

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The sun was already dipping down in the western sky, sending shadows to droop over Chicago's jagged skyline. She saw the last glints of it shimmer and bounce off the lake.

Should she remember the lake? she wondered.

Had she been born there, or had she just passed through to spend a few nights in that cold room with the broken window? If she could stand in that same room now, how would she feel? What images would dance through her head? Would she have the courage to turn and face them?

"You're not a child now." Roarke slipped a hand over hers as the transport began its gentle descent into the Chicago Air and Space Complex. "You're not alone now, and you're not helpless now."

She continued to concentrate on breathing evenly, in and out. "It's not always comfortable to realize you can see what goes on in my head."

"It's not always easy to read your head, or your heart. And I don't care for it when they're troubled and you try to hide it from me."

"I'm not trying to hide it. I'm trying to deal with it." Because the descent always made her stomach jitter, she turned away from the view port. "I didn't come here on some personal odyssey, Roarke. I came here to gather data on a case. That's priority."

"It doesn't stop you from wondering."

"No." She looked down at their joined hands. There was so much that should have separated them, she thought. How was it nothing did? Nothing could. "When you went back to Ireland last fall, you had issues, personal issues to deal with, to face or resolve. You didn't let them get in the way of what had to be done."

"I remember my yesterdays all too clearly. Ghosts are easier to fight when you know their shape." Linking their fingers, he brought hers to his lips in a gesture that never failed to stir her. "You never asked me where I went the day I went off alone."

"No, because I saw when you came back you'd stopped grieving so much."

His lips curved against her knuckles. "So, you read my head and heart fairly well, yourself. I went back to where I lived as a boy, back to the alley where they found my father dead, and some thought I'd put the knife in him. I lived with the regret that it hadn't been my hand that ended him."

"It's not a thing to regret," she said quietly as the transport touched down with barely a whisper.

"There we part ways, Lieutenant." His voice, so beautiful with that Irish lilt, was cold and final. "But I stood there, in that stinking alley, smelling the smells of my youth, feeling that same burn in the blood, the fire in the belly. And I realized, standing there, that some of what I'd been was still inside me and always will be. But there was more." Now his voice warmed again, like whiskey in candlelight. "I'd made myself different. Other, you could say. I'd made myself other, and it was you who's made me more."

He smiled again as blank surprise filled her eyes. "What I have with you, darling Eve, I never thought to have with anyone. Never thought to want it or need it. So I realized as I stood there in an alley where he must have beaten me black a dozen times or more, where he'd laid drunk and finally dead, that what mattered about what had come before was that it had led me to where I was. That he hadn't won, after all. He'd never won a bloody thing from me."

He flipped the catch on her safety harness, then his own, while she said nothing. "When I walked away through the rain, I knew you'd be there. You have to know that whenever you decide to look into your own, whatever you find, when you walk away from it, I'll be there."

Emotions swirled inside her, filling her to bursting. "I don't know how I managed to get through a day before you."

It was his turn to look surprised. He drew her to her feet. "Ah, every once in a while you manage to say the perfect thing. Steady now?"

"Yeah, and I'm staying that way."

Because power clears paths and money waxes them smooth, they were through the jammed shuttle terminal in minutes and out to the private valet area where he had a car waiting.

She took one look at the sleek silver torpedo shape with its elaborate and streamlined two-seater cockpit and scowled. "Couldn't you have booked something a little less conspicuous?"

"I don't see why we should be inconvenienced. Besides," he added as they climbed in, "this thing drives like a fucking rocket." So saying, he engaged the engine, hit the accelerator, and blasted out of the lot.

"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, slow down! You maniac." She struggled into her harness as he laughed. "The airport cops will tag your ass before we clear the first gate."

"Have to catch me first," he said cheerfully. He punched a control, sent them into a screaming vertical lift that had her mixing curses and prayers. "You can open your eyes now, darling, we're clear of airport traffic."

Her stomach was still somewhere around her ankles. "Why do you do things like that?"

"Because it's fun. Now, why don't you program in the address of this retired cop you want to talk to, and we'll see which is the best route." She opened one eye, saw they were horizontal again and zipping smoothly along a six-lane thruway. Still scowling, she started to search the glossy dash for the destination and map feature.

"It's voice controlled, Eve. Just engage the computer and give it your destination of choice."

"I knew that," she snapped. "I was just looking. I want to have a clear picture of the place where we're going to die when you crash this toy and kill us dead."

"The Stargrazer 5000X is loaded with safety and life support systems," he said mildly. "As I helped design it, I'm fully aware of all of them."

"Yeah, that just figures. Engage computer."

Computer engaged. How may I assist you?

As it was the same husky female voice he'd installed in her home unit, Eve felt obliged to give him a baleful stare. "Who the hell is this?"

"You don't recognize it, do you?"

"Should I?"

"It's you, darling. After sex."

"Get out."

He laughed again, a quick rumble of amusement. "Get the directions, Lieutenant, before we end up in Michigan."

"That isn't my voice," she muttered, but began to worry about it as she read off the address.

A holographic map shimmered into place on the windscreen, the most direct route blinking in red.

"Isn't that handy?" Roarke commented. "This is our exit."

The sudden sharp turn at ninety miles an hour had Eve jerking back in the seat. She would hurt him later, she promised herself as he careened down the ramp. Hurt him really, really bad.

If they lived long enough.

Wilson McRae lived in a tidy white house in a line of other tidy white houses, all centered on thumb-sized lawns. Each driveway was a glossy black, and though the grass was winter withered, it was trimmed neatly and uncluttered.

The road ran straight as a ruler with young maple trees planted every twelve feet.

"It's like something out of a horror video," Eve commented.

"Darling, you're such an urbanite."

"No, really. There was this one where aliens invade, you know, undercover and all, and they'd – what do you call it – zombiedized the people. So they all dressed alike and walked alike. Ate the same stuff at the same time of day."

Her gaze shifted from house to house suspiciously while Roarke looked on in amusement. "They're kind of like…hives, you know? Don't you expect to see all these doors open at exactly the same moment and have people who look exactly the same way walk out of these exactly the same houses?"

He sat back in the snazzy car and studied her. "Eve, you're scaring me."

"See?" She laughed as she climbed out her side. "Creepy place, if you ask me. I bet you don't even know you're being zombiedized when it's happening."

"Probably not. You go first."

She snickered and didn't feel the least foolish to have her hand linked with his as they started up the perfectly straight walkway to the white door. "I got the personal background on him. Nothing jars. Eight years married, one kid and another on the way. House is mortgaged and well within their financial scope. I couldn't find any sudden influx of income to indicate he'd been paid off."

"You're banking that he's straight."

"I've got to hope he is and can give me a handle. I don't have any authority," she added. "He doesn't have to talk to me. I can't check in with the local cops, I can't use any cop-to-cop pressure."

"Try charm," Roarke suggested.

"You're the one with the charm."

"True. Try anyway."

"How's this?" She smiled winningly.

"You're scaring me again."

"Smart-ass," she muttered and when she rang the bell and heard the echo of three cheery chimes, rolled her eyes. "Man, I would self-terminate before I lived in a place like this. I bet all their furniture matches, and they've got cute little cows or something sitting around the kitchen."

"Kittens. Fifty says it's kittens."

"Bet. Cows are sillier. It's going to be cows." She tried the smile, slightly less winning, when the door opened. A pretty woman leading with her hugely pregnant belly answered.

"Hello. Can I help you?"

"I hope so. We'd like to speak with Wilson McRae."

"Oh, he's down in his workshop. Can I tell him what this is about?"

"We've come from New York." Now that she was here, facing big, curious brown eyes, Eve wasn't sure how to begin. "It's in reference to one of your husband's cases, before he retired from the force."

"Oh." Her dark eyes clouded. "You're cops? Come in, I'm sorry. Will so rarely sees any of his associates anymore. I think he misses them terribly. If you don't mind waiting in the living room? I'll go down and get him."

"She didn't ask to see ID." Eve shook her head as she wandered the living room. "A cop's wife, and she lets strangers into the house. What's wrong with people?"

"They should be shot for being so trusting."

She sent him a slanted look. "This from the guy with enough security to keep alien invaders out of his house."

"You're awfully hung up on aliens today."

"It's this place." Restless, she moved her shoulders. "Didn't I tell you? Everything matches." She poked a finger into the tidy cushion of the blue and white sofa that matched the blue and white chair that matched the white curtains and blue rug.

"I imagine it's a comfort to some people." He cocked his head as he studied her. She needed a quick round with her hairdresser, and though she was in desperate need of new boots, he knew she wouldn't even consider it. She looked long, lean, edgy, and just a little dangerous pacing around the solid suburban room. "You, on the other hand, would go mad here."

She jingled the loose credits in her pockets. "Oh yeah. What about you?"

"I'd make a break for it in about two hours." He reached up to skim his finger down her chin. "But I'd take you with me, darling."

She grinned at him. "I guess that means we match. That doesn't bother me."

She turned when she heard voices. She didn't have to see Wilson McRae to understand he wasn't terribly pleased to have company. He came in just ahead of his now frazzled looking wife with his mouth set in a dissatisfied frown, his eyes wary.

All cop, Eve decided on the spot. He was sizing them up, scanning for threat or weapon and braced to defend.

She judged him at just under six feet, a well-built one eighty. His light brown hair was cut ruthlessly short over a square, sturdy face. Shades darker than his hair, his eyes stayed cool as they skimmed from her to Roarke and back.

"My wife didn't get your names."

"Eve Dallas." She didn't offer her hand. "This is Roarke."

"Roarke?" It piped out of the woman just before color flooded her face. "I thought I recognized you. I've seen you on-screen dozens of times. Oh, please, sit down."

"Karen." With one quiet word he had her subsiding, in obvious distress and puzzlement. "You a cop?" he asked Roarke.

"No, indeed not." He laid a hand on Eve's shoulder. "She's the cop."

"Out of New York," Eve continued. "I need some of your time. A case I've been working on crosses one you had before you retired."

"That's the operative word." She caught resentment mixed in the wariness in his tone. "I'm retired."

"Yeah." She kept her eyes steady and level on him. "Just recently, someone's been wanting to see me retire. One way or the other. Could be a… medical thing."

His eyes flickered, his mouth tightened. Before he could speak, Roarke stepped forward and aimed a charming smile at Karen. "Ms. McRae, I wonder if I could trouble you for some coffee? My wife and I drove straight in from the airport."

"Oh, of course. I'm so sorry." Her hands fluttered up from their resting place on her belly to her throat. "I'll make some right away."

"Why don't I help you?" With a smile in place that could have melted a woman's heart at fifty paces, he put a gentle hand on the small of her back. "We'll let our respective spouses talk shop. You have a lovely home."

"Thank you. Will and I have been putting it together for nearly two years now."

As their voices faded, Will never took his eyes off Eve's. "I'm not going to be able to help you."

"You don't know what I want or what I need. Yet. I can't show you ID, McRae, because they took my badge a few days ago." She watched his eyes narrow. "They found a way to get me out, off the case, so I figure I was getting close to something. Or they just didn't like the heat. And I figure they found a way to get you out and have that asshole Kimiki take over the investigation."

Will snorted, and some of the wariness faded. "Kimiki can barely find his own dick with both hands."

"Yeah, I got that. I'm a good cop, McRae, and their mistake this time was another good cop's got the case now. We've got three bodies in New York with parts missing. You had one here, same MO. There's another in Paris, one in London. We're still running like crimes."

"I can't help you, Dallas."

"What'd they use on you?"

"I've got a family." He said it, low and fierce. "A wife, a five-year-old son, a baby on the way. Nothing happens to them. Nothing. You get that?"

"Yeah." She got something else, too. Fear that wasn't for himself. Frustration at being helpless against it. "Nobody knows I'm here, and nobody's going to know. I'm on my own in this, and I'm not letting go."

He walked past her to the window, smoothed the pretty white curtains. "You got kids?"

"No."

"My boy, he's spending a couple of days with Karen's mother. She's due any day. The kid's amazing. Beautiful." He turned, gestured with a jerk of his head to a framed holoprint on the end table.

Obligingly, Eve moved over, lifted it, and studied the cheerfully grinning face. Big brown eyes, dusty blond hair, and dimples. Kids mostly looked the same to her. Cute, innocent, and unfathomable. But she knew the response expected of her. "He's a beaut, all right."

"They said they'd do him first."

Eve's fingers tightened on the frame before she set it carefully down again. "They contacted you?"

"Set a fucking droid on me. Caught me by surprise, knocked me around some. I don't give a shit about that." He whirled back. "Told him to tell his keeper to go to hell. I did the job, Dallas. Then the droid explains just what'll happen to my family, my little boy, my wife, the baby she's carrying. Scared me bloodless. So I figure I'll send them away, do the job, get these bastards. Then I get pictures in the mail, pictures of Karen and Will, coming out of a toy store, the market, playing in the yard at my mother's, where I sent them. And one of that fucking droid holding Will. Holding him," he said in a voice pitched low but vibrating with vicious fury. "He had his hands on my son. Message that came with it said the next time they'd cut out his heart. He's five years old."

He sat, buried his head in his hands. "Sometimes the badge can't come first."

She understood love now, and the terror it could bring to you. "Did you tell your boss?"

"I didn't tell anybody. It's been eating at me for months." He sat, continued to lean over, while his fingers kept raking through his close-cropped hair. "I'm working private security at night, playing down in that idiot workshop half the day making birdhouses. I'm going crazy here."

Eve sat beside him, leaned in. "Help me get them. Help me put them away where they can't touch your family."

"I can't ever go back to the job." He lowered his hands. "I can't ever pick up a badge again. And I can't be sure just how far they can reach out."

"Nothing you tell me goes in a report, official or otherwise. Tell me about the droid; give me a line here."

"Hell." He rubbed his eyes. For weeks he'd lived with doing nothing, with backing down, with the fear. "Six two, two ten. Caucasian, brown and brown. Sharp features. Top-line model. Combat trained."

"I met his brother," she said with a thin smile. "What buttons were you pushing when the threats started?"

"I'd shaken out some slime from the black market, but it wasn't going anywhere. Nothing I'd run on the victim turned up anything that made it look like a personal hit. I went in circles awhile, but I kept coming back to how it was done. So goddamn neat, right?"

"Yeah, very neat and tidy."

"There's a free clinic a few blocks from the crime scene. The victim had been in there a few times. I interviewed the rotation doctors, ran them. It looked like a dead end, too. But it didn't feel like one," he added, relaxing a little when Eve nodded.

"I started circling out, hitting other med centers, crosschecking surgeons. I started scratching at the Nordic Clinic, and the next thing I know, the boss calls me in and says that fathead Waylan's making noises about harassment, entrapment, Christ knows what, and demanding that we show some respect for the medical community. Shit."

"Waylan. He cropped up on my watch, too."

"Damn embarrassment to the state," Will began. "Karen's the one who gets into politics. Don't get her started on Waylan." For the first time, he grinned, and his face looked abruptly younger. "In this house, we hate him. Anyhow, I figured there was something there, too. What the hell does he care – except he's got relatives in the AMA. I'm starting to check it out, then I'm blind-sided, flat on my back, and the goddamn droid's got a laser at my throat."

He sighed, rose to pace. "I was going to tell my boss, put it in the report, but on my next shift, I get called upstairs. Commander tells me that there's more complaints about the tone of my investigation. I'm not getting support from the brass; instead, they're warning me to watch my step, don't step on the wrong toes. Ease back, it was only scum that got taken out, anyway. Don't hassle nice people. Rich, powerful people," McRae said, turning back. "Pissed me off. That's when I decided to send my family away and dig in deeper. Until I got the pictures, then I folded. Faced with the same choice, I'd do the same thing again."

"I'm not going to beat you up over it, Will. I don't have what you have to risk. The way I look at it, you took it as far as you could, for as long as you could."

"I gave up my badge." His voice cracked, and she watched him suck it in. "They took yours."

He needed something, she thought, and worked up a smile for him. "We got fucked either way, didn't we."

"Yeah. We got fucked royal, Dallas."

"I'm going to ask you to give me anything you can, and maybe we can return the favor. Did you copy any of your files?"

"No. But I remember a lot of it. I've been going over the details in my head for months. I've written some of it down for myself." He glanced over his shoulder as he heard his wife's voice. "Karen doesn't know anything about this. I don't want her upset."

"Give me the name of somebody you put away who's been sprung."

"Drury. Simon Drury."

"I'm here about Drury." She glanced over, lifted a brow as Roarke strolled in carrying a tray loaded with cups, plates. Coffee and cookies, she mused, then struggled with a scowl as she noted the cream pitcher in the shape of a cheerful white kitten.

The man never lost a damn bet.

"Looks great." She helped herself to a cookie, mildly fascinated by the way Karen had to maneuver her body, shift her spectacular belly in order to sit down. How, Eve wondered, did a woman function on any level hauling all that bulk around?

Noting where Eve's gaze had focused, Karen smiled and stroked a hand over the mound. "I'm due today."

Eve choked on the cookie. If Karen had whipped out a laser on full and blasted it in her direction, she'd have felt less panic. "Today? Like now?"

"Well, not this minute, apparently." Laughing, Karen sent Roarke an adoring look as he served her tea. Quite obviously, they'd bonded between cookies and kittens. "But I don't think she's going to wait much longer."

"I guess you'll be glad to – you know – get it out of there."

"I can't wait to meet her – hold her. But I love being pregnant."

"Why?"

She laughed again at Eve's obvious puzzlement, then shared a tender look with her husband. "Making a miracle."

"Well." Since that dried up her pregnancy conversation, Eve turned back to Will. "We don't want to take up any more of your time. I appreciate the help. If you could get me any of your old notes on Drury, I'd be grateful."

"I can dig them out." He rose, paused by his wife to lay a hand over hers, linking them over their child.

At Eve's request, Roarke drove aimlessly while she filled him in on her conversation with Wilson McRae.

"Do you blame him?"

She shook her head. "Everyone has their own, what do you call it, Achilles' heel. They found his and put the pressure on. Guy's got a kid, another on the way, a pretty little wife in a pretty little house. They knew just where to jam him."

"She's a teacher." Roarke cruised the freeway under the flood of safety lights and kept the speed steady. "She's been working on-screen for the last six months and plans to continue that way for at least another year or two. But she misses the personal contact with her students. She's a very sweet woman who's worried about her husband."

"How much does she know?"

"Not all, but more, I believe, than he thinks. Will he go back when you close the case?"

Not if, she noted, but when. It bolstered the heart to have someone with so much faith in her. More faith, she realized, than she had in herself just now. "No. He'll never get past giving it up. They stole that from him. And sometimes you never get back everything."

She closed her eyes a moment. "Will you drive downtown? I need to look. I need to see if I remember."

"There's no need to take on more now, Eve."

"Sometimes you never get rid of everything, either. I need to look."

Another city, she thought, with some of its old stone and brick desperately preserved, and so much of it crumbled to dust to make room for sleek steel and quick prefab.

There would be snazzy restaurants and clubs, slick hotels and glittering shops in the areas where the power board wanted the tourists, and their I'm-on-vacation money, to congregate. And there would be sex joints, dives, scarred units, and alley filth in others where only the doomed and the foolish gathered.

It was there Roarke drove the gleaming silver car through the narrow streets, where the lights pumped in hard colors and promised all the darker delights. Street LCs shivered on corners and hoped for a trick to take them out of the wind. Dealers prowled, angling for a mark, ready to do business at discounted rates because the cold kept all but the desperately addicted inside.

Sidewalk sleepers huddled inside their cribs, drank their brew, and waited for morning.

"Stop here," she murmured it, squinting at a corner building with bricks pitted and laced with graffiti.- The lower windows were barred and blocked with wood. It called itself Hotel South Side in a sign that blinked jerkily in watery blue.

She got out, staring up at the windows. Some were cracked, all were blackened with cheap privacy screens. "Too much the same," she said quietly. "All these places are too much the same. I don't know."

"Do you want to go in?"

"I don't know." As she dragged a hand over her face, through her hair, a lanky man with icy eyes moved out of the shadows.

"Looking for action? Need a boost? You got some jingles, I got what you need. Prime Zeus, Ecstasy, Zoner. Mix or match."

Eve flicked him a glance. "Back off, creep, or I'll pop your eyes out of your head and make you eat them."

"Hey, bitch, you're on my turf, you get some manners." He'd already tagged the car, and figured his marks as stupid, rich tourists. He flipped out his pocket blade, grinning as he tipped the killing point. "Let's have the wallets and jewelry and all that good shit. We'll call it even."

She took a second to debate whether to kick his teeth in or restrain him for the beat cop. A second was all Roarke needed. With her mouth pursed, Eve watched his fist flash out, a fast flurry of movement that had the knife skittering down the sidewalk. She didn't have time to blink before he had the dealer by the throat two inches off the ground.

"I believe you called my wife a bitch."

The only response was a wheezing gag as the man struggled like a landed trout. Merely shaking her head, Eve strolled over, scooped up the knife, folded the blade back in place.

"Now," Roarke continued in a mild, amazingly pleasant voice, "if I pop your eyes out, I get to eat them. If I still see you, say, five seconds after I toss your pitiful ass aside, I'm going to have a hell of an appetite."

He bared his teeth in a grin, heaved. The dealer hit the sidewalk with a rattle of bones, scrambled up, and took off in a limping sprint.

"Now." Fastidiously, Roarke dusted off his hands. "Where were we?"

"I liked the part about you eating his eyes. I'll have to use that one." She slipped the knife into her pocket, kept her hand over it. "Let's go in."

There was a single yellow light in the lobby, and a single burly droid behind the smeared security glass. He eyed them balefully, jerked a thumb at the rate sign.

For a dollar a minute, you got a room with a bed. For two, you got the additional amenity of a toilet.

"Third floor," Eve said briefly. "East corner."

"You get the room I give you."

"Third floor," she said again. "East corner."

His gaze lowered to the hundred dollar credit Roarke flipped into the tray. "Don't mean a shit to me." He reached behind, took a key code from a rack. His fingers snagged the credit, then tossed down the key. "Fifty minutes. You go over, you pay double."

Eve took the key for 3C, relieved to see her hand was still steady. They took the stairs.

It wasn't familiar, yet it was painfully familiar. Narrow steps, dirty walls, thin sounds of sex and misery seeping through them. Cold, from the wind battering the brick and glass, reached down and froze the bones.

She said nothing as she slipped the key into the slot, pushed the door open.

The air was bitter and stale, with echoes of sweat and sex. The sheets on the bed shoved into the corner were stained with both and the rusty shadows of old blood.

With the breath strangling in her throat, she stepped inside. Roarke closed the door behind them, waited.

A single window, cracked. But so many were. The old floor, slanted and scarred. But she'd seen hundreds like it. Her legs trembled as she made herself walk across it, stand at that window and stare out.

How many times, she wondered, had she stood at windows in filthy little rooms and imagined herself leaping out, letting her body fall, feeling it smash and break on the street below? What had held her back, time after time, made her face the next day and the next?

How many times had she heard the door open and prayed to a God she didn't understand to help her. To spare her. To save her.

"I don't know if this is the room. There were so many rooms. But it was one like it. It's not so different from the last room, in Dallas. Where I killed him. But I was younger here. That's all I know for sure. I get a faded image of myself in my head. And of him. His hands around my throat."

Absently, she reached up, soothed the memory of the ache. "Over my mouth. The shock of him pushing himself inside me. Not knowing, not knowing at first, what that meant. Except pain. Then you know what it means. You know you can't stop it. And as much as it hurts when he beats you, you hope when you hear the door open that's all he'll do. Sometimes it is."

Eyes closed now, she rested her brow on the cracked glass. "I thought maybe I'd remember something from before. Before it all started. I had to come from somewhere. Some woman had to carry me inside her the way Karen's carrying her goddamn miracle. For God's sake, how could she leave me with him?"

He turned her, wrapped his arms around her, drew her in. "She might not have had a choice."

Eve swallowed back the grief and the rage, and finally the questions. "You always have a choice." She stepped back, but kept her hands on his shoulders. "None of this matters now. Let's go home."