Kindred In Death

22

“LUCK?” EVE TIPPED BACK IN HER CHAIR, meeting his smirk with one of her own. “Luck that EDD killed your virus? Or that we know what you were wearing on New Year’s Eve when you lifted Darian Powders’s ID? I know where you bought the shoes you’re wearing, Darrin, and how much you paid for them. The backpack, too, and the Columbia sweatshirt you had on when you lured Deena into the first meet in Central Park.”

Now she smirked, deliberately, leaning back in a way that transmitted casual derision. “I know what kind of airboard you ride, and exactly where you rode it, with Deena, on a rainy afternoon in May.”

“That’s bullshit.”

He didn’t look afraid, not yet, Eve thought. But he looked puzzled, and just a bit defiant.

“You keep thinking that, asshole.” Peabody all but growled the words, and made Eve think she’d have to teach her new “bad” cop to tune it back.

“I knew what you looked like when I set you up at the media conference, the day after you raped and strangled Karlene Robins. Drew. I know your name, where you were born, oh, and the name you were using when your mother bought it in Chicago.”

There, Eve thought, that hit the mark. Rage boiled out of his eyes. He turned it back, quickly, she’d give him that. But she’d seen it and the trigger she needed.

“We’re just smarter than you, Darrin. You got lucky at the memorial, no question. But, gee, looks like your luck ran out. Like your mother’s did in that prossy flop in Chicago.”

“You’re going to want to be careful.”

“About what? You’re nailed. You’ve got some skills with electronics, but they’re average. You couldn’t find a way to jam the cameras or the lock, you couldn’t bypass the system without being inside. The virus?”

She rolled her shoulders, stretched lazily. “It was a good try, kept our e-team entertained for a while. But the fact is, an e-rookie has more chops than you. But then, you learned most of them from your father.”

“Well, that depends.” Peabody shrugged. “We’re not sure if Vincent or Vance Pauley is his father. His mother let both of them have the bangs.”

“Right, right.” Eve waved agreement as Darrin’s jaw clenched. “I wonder if your mother knew, since she fucked both of them. But, hey, it could’ve been someone else altogether. Since she was a whore.”

“Shut your fucking mouth.”

“Want to shut it for me, Darrin? The way you shut Deena’s, Karlene’s, when you held a pillow over their faces after you raped them? I wonder, when you were raping them, looking at their faces when you pounded and tore into them, did you see your mother? Is that how you got it up, Darrin? Thinking about Mom, and how you really wanted to fuck her?”

She didn’t blink when he lurched up. His hands balled into fists as the lead of his restraints clanged against the bolt.

“Want to take a shot at me? It’s a pisser not to be able to fight back, isn’t it? I guess you know how Deena and Karlene felt. You must be disappointed that you won’t be able to watch Judge Mimoto’s mother struggle, hear her scream. Or Elysse Wagman,” she said and looking into his eyes recited the names of his other targets.

“We found them all,” Peabody said, piling on scorn. “That’s how lucky we are.”

“Now you won’t be able to finish your sick homage to your whore of a mother.”

He got his hands under the table, tried to lift it, heave it, but Eve and Peabody simply counterweighted the other side.

“Frustrating, isn’t it?” Eve commented. “To be helpless. To be controlled.”

His muscles trembled with the effort, but he pulled back, sat again. “If you’ve got me nailed, why are we wasting time with all this?”

“That’s what they pay us for. So, if you’re in a hurry, why don’t you lay it out for the record?” Eve prompted. “You know you want to. It has to be satisfying to brag about what you did manage to pull off. I can give you a little springboard. You’ve been stalking your targets for months, researching them, planning. Hell, you’ve been thinking about it for years. All your life, basically. I have to figure you picked Deena to start as she was the easiest. Just a kid, a shy girl-the virgin-easily dazzled by attention, excited by the idea of a secret boyfriend. You used the Columbia connection. You’d gone there, so you knew the campus. And since her friend Jamie Lingstrom goes there, a little field-work and you could toss out some names she’d recognize. Lower her defenses.”

He shrugged.

“If you think we’re going to offer you a deal, like your mother got when she was caught using and whoring twenty years ago, think again.”

Darrin bared his teeth in a vicious smile. “You can tell MacMasters his precious daughter was the whore. I’ve been fucking her for weeks.”

Eve glanced at Peabody. “Did we actually think this moron had some smarts?”

“We did. He’s sure proving us wrong since we know, conclusively, the only way he could get his pathetic dick into Deena was to drug her, restrain her, and rape her.”

“All you had to do with his mother was pay her.”

“Shut the fuck up. You don’t know anything.”

“Enlighten me. Explain to me why the people involved in your mother’s bust in New York twenty-one years ago are responsible for her death in Chicago nineteen years ago? Help me make that leap, Darrin.”

“It was that fucking cop who ruined her. Set her up.”

“MacMasters set her up?”

“Planted the illegals on her, blackmailed her into having sex with him, the same as rape. Then he covers it up, says she’s whoring. My mother was the best shifter on the grift there was.”

Eve changed her tone, put a touch of admiration into it. “She had the ID skills.”

“She could be anybody she wanted to be, take anything she wanted to take. And so what? Nobody got hurt.”

“How about the people she swindled? How about Vincent Pauley?”

“Marks.” He shrugged again. “They’re lame enough to get taken, they get taken. Vinnie? He’s always been a dick, always been jealous of my father, always came in second best to him. My mother needed somewhere to stay when she was pregnant with me and my father got railroaded into prison. She only slept with that asshole for my sake.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“She never talked about it, any of it. What happened to her ruined her. Took the life out of her before those cops set her up with the Stallions in Chicago. Before they killed her.”

“Interesting.” Eve furrowed her brow, flipped through the papers in the file on the table. “None of that’s in my file. Where did you get this information?”

“My father told me everything. How they tore the life out of her before they killed her, how they ripped our family apart because the cops blackmailed her into trying to get the goods on them.”

“So… the Chicago cops blackmailed your mother to infiltrate the Stallions.”

“MacMasters set it up. She was worn out when she got out of prison, and he used that. He had an in with that crooked judge, and made her weasel for him or he’d send her back in.”

“But she was killed in Chicago.”

“She tried to get away, take me away, but he tracked her, and set her up with the Chicago cops.”

“He must’ve been pretty obsessed with her to go to all that trouble.”

“That’s the way it was.”

“Your father gave you all this information.”

“He had to raise me on his own, because they killed her. They humiliated her, locked her away, raped her. She was beautiful, and they killed her.”

“And she loved you,” Peabody said, with a hint of sympathy. “She sacrificed for you.”

“She lived for me. We had a good life. We didn’t have to play by anyone else’s rules.” Darrin balled his hands into fists on the table. “She was free, and beautiful. That’s why MacMasters wanted her, why he forced her. Then he had to cover it up. They had that bitch take me away.”

“Jaynie Robins.”

“In MacMasters’s pocket, like the rest of them. They tried to keep me from my father, but he fought to get me back. He promised my mother he’d take care of me.”

“And Robins’s supervisor, the APA, the judge, the rest?”

His face went cold again, blank again. “They were all responsible, one way or the other.”

“So you and your father worked out how you’d avenge your mother, how you’d make those who’d hurt her pay.”

“Why should they get away with it? Why should they have their lives, their families?”

“So your father-Vance-picked the order. He picked Deena as the first target, the first kill.”

“We decided together. We’re a team, we’ve always been a team.”

“So he could do some of the research, the stalking on one target while you worked another. Very efficient.”

“We’re a team,” Darrin repeated. “We’ve always been a team.”

“Plus he could go to Colorado to research the APA while you stayed here to work Deena. How did he decide you’d plan to kill the sister there, and not the mother, for instance?”

“For Christ’s sake, the sister’s in New Jersey. It’s basic geography.”

“He did the preliminary stalking there then, right? Until the contact.”

“Didn’t I say we’re a team? He’d start the field- and e-work, gather the data, then I…” His face tightened. “I’m not saying anything else about my father.”

“Fine. Protect him like your mother did. You go down, he walks. There’s déjà vu. Only you don’t go away for a year and a half like she did. You’re going away for two life terms, no possibility of parole, with the extra twenty-five for intent on Mrs. Mimoto.”

“Long time,” Peabody commented, “when you go in this young. You know, Dallas, I bet Vance had alibis set up for himself each time the kid here went on a kill. That’s his pattern.”

“Doesn’t matter, the old man’s got no balls. We’ve got the big fish here, and he can flop and gasp on the shore alone.”

“If you think I’ll turn on my father, you’re crazy. And you’ll never find him.”

“Couldn’t care less. You’re all I need, Darrin. You’re young, and that just makes me want to sing and dance. Because that means you’ll be in a cage on a rock off planet for about a century. You’re going to have a really, really long time to think, to figure out how you’ve been screwed with.”

“You think you scare me? It was worth it, just to see MacMasters standing there, and his dead daughter in a box. It’s better, even better, because now he knows why. He’ll know why, every day he sucks in air, that he killed his own daughter the day he killed my mother.”

“I’ll give you the bonus. Make him suffer even more. Walk us through what you did to Deena.”

His lips twitched into a smile. “You were right. She was easy.”

It made her sick, turned her stomach into a raw, churning mass of revulsion. She’d seen it, most of it, in her head already. But now he spoke for the record, relaying every detail. Not reveling in it, Eve noted. Somehow his pragmatic step-by-step was worse than glee.

He’d done what he had to do. What, she believed, he’d been created to do.

When he’d finished relating the murders of Deena and Karlene, his framework and intentions for murdering the others, he sat back, eye ing Eve quietly.

“Is that enough for you?”

“We’re done. You’ll be taken back to a cell. The court will appoint counsel for you if you don’t select an attorney of your own.”

“I don’t need a lawyer. I don’t need a trial. Your laws mean nothing to me. I’m young, like you said. Eventually I’ll find my way out, my way back. And I’ll finish what I started.”

“Sure you will.” Eve rose. “Record off. Peabody, get someone to take Darrin back to his cage.”

She waited until Peabody stepped out. “He set you up, Darrin, this man you worship. He twisted your mind from the time you were a baby, so he could cover his own actions, maybe his own guilt. He set you up, like he set your mother up, his brother up. He set your mother up, here in New York, and again in Chicago. Because he wanted quick money. Because he wanted her to do the work. Because he was, is, a coward.”

“You’re a lying cunt.” He spat at her, with that vicious smile in place.

“Why would I lie? You’ll ask yourself that eventually. Vance Pauley? He’s a user.”

“You don’t know shit.”

“More than you can imagine,” she said, thinking of the first eight years of her life. “The reason I’m telling you this is because sometime in the long, long decades you’re in that concrete cage, you’re going to think about it. You’re going to think, and wonder, and maybe realize the truth. I really hope you realize the truth. Because it’ll make you suffer. Your father killed your mother.”

“You’re a liar.”

She only shook her head. “No gain in it for me. I’ve closed this case, and you’re finished. You’ll have a long time to think about that.” She turned to the door, nodded to the pair of uniforms who stepped in. “Take this worthless shit back to his cage.”

Eve stood where she was, pressed her hands to her face. Rubbed hard as if to scrub away a film of ugly memories.

She turned to MacMasters when he came to the door. “I’m sorry you had to hear that.”

“Don’t be. She was mine, and I needed to know… everything. I needed to know. You’re going after the father now.”

“Yes, I am.”

He nodded. “This is enough for me, has to be. I’m taking a leave of absence. My wife and I need time. She asked me to apologize to you.”

“There’s no need.”

His face was unbearably sad, unbearably weary. “There is, for her. Please accept.”

“Then I do.”

He nodded again. “Good-bye, Lieutenant.”

“Good-bye, Captain.”

She made a copy of the recording, gathered her files. When she walked into her office, Roarke turned from her window.

“This is getting to be a habit. I didn’t know you were here.”

“I haven’t been here long. Long enough to have heard the last of that.” He came to her, stroked her cheek. “Difficult for you. Hideous to hear him go step-by-step on what he did to that girl, and to that young woman.”

“There’ll be worse. There’s always worse.” For a moment she felt inside her what she’d seen in MacMasters’s eyes. Unbearable sadness. Unbearable weariness. “Something like that, like him? It makes you realize there’s never a limit on cruel.”

“Dallas?” Peabody hesitated at the door. “I just wanted to tell you I’d write this up. Mira was in Observation as requested, and she’ll write up her findings.”

“Good. Don’t worry about the paperwork. Go. I’ve got a few things left to deal with. Do me a favor and go take care of the Louise thing. Whatever’s left of the rehearsal, the rest of it.”

“We can be late. She’ll get it.”

“Yeah, she will. But there’s no point. Go. If you’re handling it I don’t have to feel guilty for being late.”

“Okay. It’ll be good to shake this off, just shake all this off and do something… bright.”

“Yeah. I’ll be another hour or two.” She let out a long breath when Peabody’s footsteps echoed away. “Bright. I’m not in the mood for bright. Computer, display map of Manhattan, Lower West.”

“Why?” Roarke asked when the computer acknowledged.

“You weren’t there for the whole thing. He gave me the old man. Gave me conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to attempted. I’m not sure he realized it. He didn’t give me where the nest is. Not directly. But he said he walked home. After he killed Robins, he walked home.”

She rubbed the rocks of tension in the back of her neck. “And the coffee. The go-cup. Those Hotz Cafés are all over the place. But figuring he didn’t walk from one side of the island to the other, he picked up the coffee between his nest and the scene. Probably closer to his nest. And the nest is going to be within reasonable walking distance of the loft.”

Roarke stepped behind her, gave her neck and shoulders a good, hard rub. “Then you’re going to like the data I brought you.”

“What data?”

“On the security system. No, try to relax for one damn minute,” he ordered. “Let’s get a couple of these boulders out of here. I’ve been running various data streams on that, adding some Nadine’s research team came up with. And I’d refined it to about a dozen most likelies, which I assumed you’d want to check out.”

“That’s good. Excellent. The data,” she added. “The shoulder rub’s not so bad either.”

“Just doing my job. There now, that’s a little better.” Stepping back, he took out his PPC. “If we add the geographical element to the data I have… We have not a dozen, but… one.”

Her eyes lit with purpose. “Give me that.”

“This is my job, too.” He held it out of reach. “A Peredyne Company in the West Village.”

“Not an individual, not the usual initials. Just the P, which could be why I kept missing it.”

“It may also be because Peredyne’s listed as an arm of Iris Sommer Memorial.”

“I.S. Clever. Well, you’re more clever since you found it. I need to run it to make sure it’s not-”

“Already doing it,” he told her. “And… there’s no listing in New York for either of those companies. It’s a shell within a shell.”

She turned, rushed out to the bullpen. “Baxter.”

“Nice job, Dallas.” He gave her a wink, a salute. “I love going off the roll on the upside.”

“You’re not going off the roll. Conference room, five minutes. Trueheart, with Baxter.”

“But-”

She simply turned and pulled her new communicator out of her pocket as she got moving. “Feeney,” she said. “We found the bastard’s hole. Conference room. Now.”

“I want to play,” Roarke told her.

“You’ve earned it.” She caught herself before she grabbed him, kissed him, right in front of a corridor full of cops. Instead, she sent him a fierce grin. “Get me a tube of Pepsi, will you?”

In under ninety minutes, Eve had the pretty brick town house in the West Village covered. Cops in soft clothes sat at a bistro table outside a tiny restaurant, hunched in vehicles, strolled the sidewalks. Eve bought a soy dog from a glide-cart manned by Jenkinson.

“Some of them give tips,” he said. “I’m keeping the tips.”

“I don’t want to hear about it.”

“Maybe he rabbited, LT.” He handed her the dog.

“No reason to. The son didn’t make a call, hasn’t asked to yet. If he thinks about it, makes the demand, we can stall him. As far as Pauley knows, the fruit of his fucking loins is busy killing an old woman.”

Roarke took the second dog, strolled away with Eve. “I could easily get in the place.”

“Yeah, and that’s what we’ll do if he doesn’t show in another hour. We’ve got our warrant. But since the sensors show the place is empty, I’d rather wait.”

She bit into the dog. “We wait until he comes back, until he’s in that little gated area. Nowhere to run. Jesus, Louise’s place is only a block away. I practically walked by this place a few days ago. I might’ve passed the bastard on the street.”

Roarke took her hand, laced his fingers with hers. “Part of our cover,” he said easily.

“Sure. He’s not home because he’s out somewhere he can be seen, where he can buy something, get a time-stamped receipt. Just in case. It’s always been about covering his own ass.”

A difficult topic for a pretty summer evening, Roarke thought, but she needed to talk it through. “Why mold the boy into a killer?”

“Maybe he didn’t have to mold that much. Hell if I know. That’s for Mira or someone like her. I have to figure, maybe it ate at him some. Maybe it was his way to turn it around, not just so he’d be a hero to Darrin, but so he could believe what he was spewing. Everyone else’s fault, everyone else is to blame. Punish them.”

“Will the reasons matter to you?”

“No. I don’t think they will.”

“Dallas?”

She turned, saw Charles Monroe, groom-to-be, smiling as he hurried toward them. “Shit.”

“What in the world are you two doing around here? I left your place less than an hour ago. I thought there were major plans for the ladies tonight.”

“There are. They should be doing some… thing right now.” What the hell, she thought, it was good cover. Just some friends running into each other on the street. “This isn’t your block.”

“No. I’m just out walking off some nerves. Tomorrow’s… it.”

“You don’t look a bit nervous to me,” Roarke commented.

He didn’t, Eve agreed. He looked stupid with happy, just like Louise. And elegant despite the casual shirt and pants.

“I take it the rehearsal went off okay. Sorry about needing stand-ins.”

“No problem, and it went very well. As far as I could tell.” He laughed a little. “I want it to be perfect for her. I caught myself checking the weather forecasts every ten minutes on my way home, and once I got there. So I got out of the house. You should come back, come have a drink, save me from my weather obsession.”

“Can’t. I’m on an op, and subject sighted,” she said. “Hold positions. Let him get inside the gate, then move in.”

“What?”

“Just keep talking,” she said to Charles. “Roarke, talk to Charles.”

“Have you made your honeymoon plans?” Roarke asked pleasantly even as his eyes tracked over to the man who strolled down the sidewalk carrying a shopping bag.

“Ah, yes. We’re going to Tuscany.”

“Don’t look around, Charles. Talk to Roarke.”

“We… have a villa there for a couple of weeks. Then we-”

“It was great to see you.” Eve shot him a huge smile, lifting her voice as Pauley reached out for his garden gate. “Wish we had more time, but we have to… Go!”

She sprinted, caught the gate Pauley left to swing shut behind him. And pressed her weapon to the back of his neck. “You don’t want to move.”

Ten armed officers surrounded the courtyard, weapons aimed. The bag Pauley held fell to the ground, shattering the contents.

“What’s going on? What’s the problem?”

“Hands behind your back. Oh, please hesitate. Please try to run or resist. Give me an excuse.”

“I’m cooperating.” He put his hands behind his back, and Eve cuffed him. “I don’t want any trouble. I don’t understand.”

“Then I’ll explain.” She jerked him around to face her. “Vance Pauley, you’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder, two counts, and conspiracy with intent to murder, one count. You have the right to remain silent.”

“I don’t-”

“Shut up. Didn’t I just tell you you have the right to remain silent?” She completed the Revised Miranda, then kicked at the shards of glass on the ground. “Bought some prime brew. I guess you planned a little celebration for your son when he got home tonight. The thing is, he won’t be coming home, for the rest of his life. And he flipped on you, Daddy.”

He went pale, and his eyes dark and angry. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where is my son? I have a right to-”

“I gave you all the rights you’re going to get. Like father, like son. When push came to shove, he covered his own ass.”

“That’s bullshit. He’d never say anything against me.”

She smiled. “Take this delusional asshole into Central. Book him on the counts charged and put him in a cage. We’ll be talking soon, Vance. Real soon.”

She turned to Roarke and a fascinated Charles. “Now you and the e-geeks can bypass security. By the numbers, people,” she called out. “Records on, I want top to bottom, inside and out. Bag it, tag it, log it.”

“Well.” Charles smiled at her. “This was certainly an exciting walk around the neighborhood.”

“Making your streets safer for newlyweds. I gotta go. I’ll see you to morrow.”

“I’ll be there. Oh, tell Louise, when you see her, tell her I can’t wait.”

“I’ll do that.”

She took him alone. She saw no reason to keep any of the team on the clock any longer. Carrying a large box, she went into Interview.

“Record on,” she began.

“This is some sort of ridiculous mistake. I haven’t asked for a lawyer-yet-because I don’t want to make it more complicated. Now, I demand to see my son.”

“No. Shut up and listen, because this really isn’t going to take that long. And I’ve got things to do. We’ve confiscated all your electronics, and we already have all the data you accumulated on Deena MacMasters, Karlene Robins, Charity Mimoto, Elysse-well, you know who they are. You kept excellent records of your research, your video documentation. Oh, just for the hell of it, we’re throwing in the ID fraud charges and all that. We brought your workshop in, too. Plus, there’s the illegals. It just keeps piling on, Vance.”

“Look, you don’t understand.” He spread his hands, a man of perfect reason. “I have to see my boy. I have to make sure he’s all right. You… something’s wrong with him. I’m afraid he might have done something. He might have done something horrible. I’ve tried to take care of him, but he’s been-”

“Do you think I’m going to buy that bullshit?” She let her fury go, just go, and hauled him out of the chair. “You disgusting fucker. You made him, and now you’d let him fry. Just like you let her. To save yourself.”

She all but threw him back into the chair. “You have no idea what I’d like to do to you, with my bare hands. So don’t fuck with me. You made a monster out of him. You raped his mind, filled it with hate and loathing and lies. What makes people like you, fathers like you who’d do that to their children?”

She stepped away, stared at herself in the two-way mirror. Her heart beat too fast, and her hands wanted to tremble. It was getting away from her, she thought. She couldn’t let it get away from her.

She lifted one hand, laid her palm on the glass. A mirror on one side, a window on the other. And she imagined Roarke’s palm pressed to hers.

He knew her, she reminded herself. All there was. He was there, and he’d keep being there. She could handle this. She could handle anything.

Okay, she thought. I’m okay.

For another moment, she stared into her own eyes. “She didn’t love him either, or not enough. He was… secondary to her. It was all about you.” Steady again, she turned back. “She protected you and didn’t spare him a backward glance. And when you got over your head with the Stallions, you offered her. She was secondary to you, after your own ass. She was someone to be used. That’s all she was to you. A bargaining chip.”

“That’s not true.” He said it slowly, his voice thickening, his eyes taking on a sheen. “I loved my son’s mother.”

“You can’t even say his name. You don’t know which name to use. He never really had one,” she added. Neither had she. They hadn’t named her so she’d remain nothing.

“He told us everything.”

“He wouldn’t do that.”

“Oh yes, he would.” Some of her fatigue came through, so she used it and angled it toward a kind of boredom. “In his twisted way, he was making you a hero.” She walked back, leaned down. “He was bragging about you, Vance. How you taught him everything, told him everything. How you found your targets together. How you did the stalking, the research, shared that with him. How you planned it all out.

“And even if I didn’t have all that-on the record…”

She began pulling items out of the box. “Discs-with data on the two people he murdered, the woman he tried to kill just today, on the one he planned to kill next week, and so on. On their families, their habits, their work, their friends.

“Very thorough.”

She pulled out stacks of photos. “Visuals of same-including the ones he took of Deena and Karlene after he’d finished with them, so he could share the triumph with you. There’s more. There’s so much more. It’s just a freaking banquet of evidence. I know an APA who’s going to be shedding tears of joy.”

“I can make a deal.” He gestured with his hands, like a politician, she thought, emphasizing a talking point. “There’s a lot you don’t know. I’ll give you information.”

“Gee, that’s some offer. But, no thanks. I’ve got more than I need, and jeez, it’s been a long day already. Your prints are all over this stuff. All over it.”

He rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I’m showing remorse. He pulled me into it. He’s my son, and he needed my help. I raised him on my own, just him and me. And losing his mother the way we did, it… marked us. I was going to talk him into turning himself in, to get help.”

“Would that be after he killed Judge Mimoto’s mother today, or maybe just one or two more?”

“I didn’t know about today. About Mimoto. I… thought he was at work. He consults for Biodent, he’s a data analyst. I thought he was at work.”

“Jesus, Vance.” She paused, let out a belly laugh. “You’re so completely screwed. You have today’s hit marked on your freaking datebook like a dentist appointment.”

“I couldn’t stop him.”

“Are you just going to keep throwing this shit at the wall until something sticks?”

“I never killed anybody. That has to mean something. I helped him, sure. Okay, I helped him set it all up, but that’s all. And I’m remorseful. You can cut me a break. I never killed anybody.”

“Yes, you did.” The fatigue vanished, the boredom flipped into icy rage. “And if I could, I’d charge you with the murder of Illya Schooner, and with a kid of about four who died and became what you wanted him to be. The only break you’ll get from me is the recommendation you be placed in a cage in another sector of Omega, so you never have contact with your son. Because he’ll figure it out sooner or later, I gave him a start on that today. And once he does, he’ll turn his talents on you. So the break you get, Vance? You live.”

“I want a lawyer.”

“Subject has requested representation. Interview end.”

“There’s money,” he said as she began loading the box. “I have a lot of money hidden away. Secure. I can make it worth your while if you lose that evidence.”

“Really? My while’s worth a lot.”

“Five million.”

“So, if I tamper with this evidence so you get off, you’ll give me five million dollars?”

“Cash.”

“Thanks.” She tapped her lapel. “I guess you didn’t notice my recorder. We’ll add attempting to bribe a police office to the roll.”

He screamed at her as she walked out, ugly invectives that were music to her ears. “Walk this down to Evidence.” She passed the box to the uniform she had waiting. “And you can take that ball of puss. He wants a lawyer.”

She kept walking. Roarke met her with a tube of Pepsi.

“God, that felt good. Now I feel good.” She cracked the tube and drank deep. “Now bright sounds right.”

“Peabody called to check. I told her I thought you were wrapping things up. I’m to tell you Trina’s waiting for you.”

“Shit. That was mean of you.”

He walked with her. “You did well. You… decimated him.”

“You were in Observation? I… I felt you.”

“Where else would I be?”

This time she took his hand, laced her fingers with his. Palm to palm, she thought. He was there. He always would be.

“I know it sounds weird, but when I started to fill up with him, with my father, I felt you. I guess you could say I leaned on you. It helped me stay steady.”

He brought her hand to his lips. “Let’s you and I go find some of that bright.”