Portrait In Death

Chapter 14

Eve found Leeanne Browning at her apartment. The professor wore a long red shirt over a black skinsuit, and had her hair bundled back in a braid.

"Lieutenant Dallas. Officer. You just caught me. Angie and I were about to head out." She gestured them inside as she spoke. "We're going to spend a few hours working in Central Park. The heat brings out all sorts of interesting characters."

"Including us," Angie said, hauling a large toolbox into the room.

Leeanne laughed, low and lusty. "Oh, absolutely including us. What can we do for you?"

"I have some questions."

"All right. Let's sit down and try to answer them. Is this about poor Rachel? There's a memorial service for her tomorrow evening."

"Yes, I know. I'd like you to look at these. Do you recognize the subject?"

Leeanne took the image of Kenby, standing in front of Juilliard. "No." While Eve watched her face, Leeanne pursed her lips. "No," she said again. "I don't think he's one of mine. I'd remember this face. Striking face."

"Good form," Angie added, leaning over the back of the sofa. "Nice, graceful body type."

"An excellent study. Very well done. The same, isn't it?" Leeanne asked. "It's the same portrait artist. Is this handsome young man dead?"

"How about this one?" Eve offered the picture of the dance troupe.

"Ah, a dancer. Of course. He's built like one, isn't he?" She made a small sound, a little breath of distress. "No, he's not familiar to me. None of them are. But this isn't the same photographer, is it?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Different style, technique. Such drama, and a wonderful use of shadows here. Of course, you'd want drama in this study, but… It seems to me that whoever took this dance study is more experienced, more trained, or simply more talented. Both, by my critique. Actually, at a guess, I'd say this was a Hastings."

Intrigued, Eve sat back. "You can look at a photo and identify the photographer."

"Certainly, if the artist has a distinct style. Of course, a clever student or fan could copy it very well, digital manipulation and so on. But this first isn't what I'd call a stylistic homage."

Setting them side-by-side, she studied them again. "No. It's very distinct and different. Two artists, interested in the same subject, and seeing it through different perspectives."

"Do you know Hastings, personally?"

"Yes. Not well, I doubt anyone does. Such a temperamental soul. But I use his work quite often in class, and he's allowed me, with some considerable persuasion, to conduct some workshops for my students in his studio over the years."

"She had to pay him out of pocket," Angie chimed in. She was still leaning over the sofa, with her chin nearly resting on Leeanne's shoulder. "Hastings likes his money."

"That's true." Leeanne's tone was cheerful. "When it comes to his art, he doesn't compromise, but he's firm on making a profit. His store, his commercial work, his time."

Eve began to play another angle in her head. "Any of your students ever work for him as models or assistants?"

"Oh yeah," Leeanne answered with a chuckle. "And most had a maxibus full of complaints afterward. He's rude, impatient, cheap, violent. But they learned, I can promise you that."

"I'd like the names."

"My God, Lieutenant, I've been sending students to Hastings for more than five years."

"I'd like the names," Eve repeated. "All you have on record, or in your memory. What about this one?" She held out the death photo.

"Oh." Her hand lifted, linked with Angie's. "Macabre, horrible. Brilliant. He's getting better at his work."

"Why do you say that?"

"So stark. It's meant to be. Death Dances. That's what I'd call it. The use of shadow and light here. The fact that he chose black-and-white, the fluid pose of the body. He could have done more with the face-yes, untapped potential there-but overall it's brilliant. And terrible."

"You often choose black-and-white. Most of your book is dedicated to the art of black-and-white photography and imaging."

With a look of surprise, Leeanne glanced up again. "You've read my book?"

"I've looked it over. There's a great deal about light-the exploitation of it, the building or taking of it, the filtering of it. The absence of it."

"Without light, there is no image and the tone of the light determines the tone of the image. How it's used, how the artist manipulates it or sees it, will be a part of his skill. Wait just a moment."

She rose and hurried out of the room.

"You suspect her." Angie straightened, studying Eve. "How can you? Leeanne would never harm anyone, much less a child. She isn't capable of evil."

"Part of my job is asking questions."

Angie nodded, and coming around the sofa sat across from Eve. "Your job weighs on you. It puts pity in your eyes when you look at death." She turned the portrait of Kenby over. "It doesn't stay there, not in your eyes. But I think it stays inside you."

"He doesn't need my pity anymore."

"No, I suppose not," Angie replied as Leeanne came back in carrying a small box.

"Hey, it's a pinhole camera." Peabody blurted it out, then flushed a little at her own outburst. "My uncle had one, showed me how to make one when I was a kid."

Eve was studying the odd little box and said simply, "Free-Ager," by way of explanation.

"Ah, yes. This is a very old technique." Leeanne set the box on a table, removed a bit of tape, then aimed the tiny hole that had been shielded beneath it toward Eve. "A handmade box, the photographic paper inside, the light outside with the pinhole as the lens that captures that light, and the image. I'd like you to keep still," she told Eve.

"That box is taking my picture."

"Yes. It's the light, you see, that creates the miracle here. I ask each of my students to make a pinhole camera like this, and to experiment with it. Those that don't understand the miracle, well, they may go on to take good pictures, but they'll never create art. It isn't all technology and tools, you see. It isn't all equipment and manipulation. The core is the light, and what it sees. What we see through it."

"What we take out of it?" Eve asked, watching her. "What we absorb from it?"

"Perhaps. While some primitive cultures feared that the camera, by reproducing their image, stole their souls, others believed that it gave them a kind of immortality. We have, in many ways, blended those two beliefs. Certainly, we immortalize with imaging, we steal moments of time and hold them. And we take something from each subject, each time. That moment again, that thought, that mood, that light. It will never be exactly the same again. Not even a second afterward. It's gone-and it's preserved, forever, in the photograph. There's power in that."

"There's no thought, no mood, no light in a photograph of the dead."

"Ah, but there is. The artist's. Death, most certainly death, would be a defining moment. Here, let's see what we've got."

She covered the hole on the box again, then slid out a sheet of paper. On it, Eve's image was reproduced, almost like a pale pencil sketch.

"The light etches the image, burns it into the paper, and preserves it. The light," she said, handing the paper to Eve, "is the tool, the magic. The soul."

"She's really interesting," Peabody commented. "I bet she's a terrific teacher."

"And as someone who knows how to manipulate images, she had the skill to dick with the security discs on her building, shift the time stamp. Her alibi, therefore, has holes. So we give her, potentially, opportunity. Means-she clicks there. Method, another click. Give me motive."

"Well, I don't…"

"Set aside the fact you like her." Eve merged into traffic. "What's her motive for selecting, stalking, and killing two attractive college students?"

"Art. It all deals with art."

"Deeper, Peabody."

"Okay." She wanted to take off her cap, scratch her head, but resisted. "Controlling the subject? Controlling the art in order to create?"

"On one level," Eve agreed. "Control, creation, and the accolades that result. The attention, anyway, the recognition. In this case we have a teacher. She instructs, she gives her knowledge, her skill, her experience, and others take it and go on to become what she hasn't. She's written a couple of books, published some images, but she isn't considered an artist, is she? She's considered a teacher."

"It's a very respected, and often under-appreciated vocation. You're a really good teacher, for instance."

"I don't teach anybody. Train maybe, but that's different."

"I wouldn't have the shot at a gold shield, not this soon, if you hadn't taught me."

"Trained you, and let's stay on target here. The other level is taking from the subject and seeing them as just that. A subject, not a person with a life, a family, with needs or rights. A subject, like-I don't know-a tree. If you've got to cut down the tree to get what you want, well, too bad. Plenty more trees."

"You're talking to a Free-Ager here." Peabody shuddered. "Talking about indiscriminately mowing down trees hits me in a primal area."

"The killer isn't killing just for the thrill of taking a life. It isn't done with rage, or for profit. It isn't sexual. But it is personal. It's intimate-for the killer. This person, this specific person, has what I need, so I'll take it. I'll take what they have, then it becomes mine. They become mine, and the result is art. Admire me."

"That's a pretty twisted route."

"It's a pretty twisted mind. And a smart one, a cool one."

"You think it's Professor Browning?"

"She's connected, so we line up the connections. Who knows her, and Hastings, and the two victims? Who had contact with all of them? Let's find out."

She started at Juilliard, at the theater department. At some point in their young lives, Rachel Howard and Kenby Sulu had intersected.

She sent Peabody off to make the rounds with the photograph of Rachel while she made her own.

When her 'link beeped, she was standing at the back of a rehearsal hall watching a bunch of young people pretend to be various animals.

"Dallas."

"Hello, Lieutenant." Roarke's face filled her screen, and almost immediately shifted from an easy smile to puzzlement. "Where are you? The zoo?"

"In a manner of speaking." Wanting to cut out some of the background noise, she stepped out into the hall. "Everything okay?"

"Well enough. Eve, I have to go out of town for a few days."

"Oh." It wasn't unusual for him to have to buzz around the planet, or off it. The man had interests all over the developed universe. But the timing was poor. "If you could-"

"I have to go to Ireland," he said before she could finish. "I need to go back, and deal with this."

Stupid, she thought immediately. Stupid to have this blindside her. Of course he'd need to go back. "Look, okay, I can see how you'd feel that, but I'm in the middle of things here. I need to stick with this until I close the case, then I can take some time. I'll put in for it when I get back to Central."

"I need to deal with this myself."

She opened her mouth, ordered herself to breathe before she spoke. "Right."

"Eve, it has to be done, and isn't something you need to worry about. I don't want you to worry about it, or me. I'm sorry to leave you to handle Summerset, and I'll try to make it as quick as I can."

She kept her face blank, her voice even for both their sakes. "When are you leaving?"

"Now. Immediately. Fact is, I'm on the shuttle now. I can't tell you precisely where I'll be-I don't know yet. But I'll have my personal 'link with me. You'll be able to reach me anytime."

"You knew you were going." She lowered her voice, turning her back on the corridor as students rushed by behind her. "You knew this morning."

"I had to see to some details first."

"But you'd already made up your mind to go."

"I had, yes."

"And you're telling me like this so I can't do anything to stop you."

"Eve, you wouldn't stop me. And I won't have to put your work in a holding pattern so you can come along and nurse me through this."

"Is that what you did when you went with me to Dallas? Nursed me through it?"

Frustration ran over his face. "That was a different matter."

"Oh yeah, with you being a man and all, with unbreakable balls. I keep forgetting."

"I have to go." He spoke coolly now. "I'll let you know where I am as soon as I can manage, and I'll be back in a few days. Probably sooner. You can kick my unbreakable balls then. Meanwhile, I love you. Ridiculously."

"Roarke-" But he'd already ended the transmission. "Damn it.Damn it." She kicked the wall, twice.

She marched back into the rehearsal room and vented her frustration by stalking through the slinking tigers and leaping chimps.

The instructor was a pencil-thin woman with a high shock of blue hair. "Ah," she said, "and here we have the lone wolf."

"Shut them down," Eve ordered.

"Class is in progress."

"Shut them down." Eve whipped out her badge. "Now."

"Oh damn it, not another Illegals sweep. Stop!" For a thin woman, she had a big voice, and her order shut off the din.

Eve stepped in front of her. "I'm Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD." There was a communal groan at the announcement, and two students edged toward the rear doors. "Hold it! I'm not interested in what you've got in your pockets or your bloodstream, but anybody goes out those doors, I will be."

Movement stopped.

"I have a picture. I want you to come up here, one at a time, and look at it. I want to know if you know this girl, have seen her, or have any information on her. You." She pointed at a boy in a black unitard and baggy shorts. "Here."

He swaggered up. "Nope."

"Look at the picture, smart-ass, or this is going to turn into an Illegals sweep."

He smirked at her, but he looked. "Don't know her, never seen her. Can I go, Officer?"

"Lieutenant. No. Stand over there." She pointed to the right wall, then gestured to a girl, also in black.

She started up, flicking a toothy grin at the boy now lounging against the wall, as though they shared a private joke. But when she looked at the photo, the humor drained out of her face.

"On the news. I saw her on the news. It's that girl from Columbia who was killed. Like Kenby."

The murmuring started from the crowd of students, and Eve let it roll. "That's right. Did you know Kenby?"

"Sure. Sure I did. Everybody did. Man, oh man, this sucks so large."

"Have you seen this girl before?"

Even as she shook her head, someone called out. "I have. I think."

Eve shifted, looked at the boy who stood with his hand raised. "Come up here. Go stand over there," she told the girl.

"I sort of think I saw her." The boy wore the black uniform, and a forest of silver loops along the curve of his ear. He had a trio of matching hoops at the peak of his left eyebrow.

"What's your name?"

"Mica, Mica Constantine. Kenby and I had a lot of classes together, and we hung out sometimes. We weren't real tight, but sometimes we partied with the same group."

"Where did you see her?"

"Ithink I saw her. When I saw her on the news reports, she looked sort of familiar. And when Kenby-when I heard about what happened to him, like with her, I thought, hey, isn't that the chick from the club?"

Eve felt the vibe at the base of her spine. "What club?"

"Make The Scene. Some of us go there sometimes, and I think I've seen her there. I think I remember seeing her and Kenby dancing a couple of times. I'm not absolute about it, just it seems to me."

"When do you think you saw them together?"

"Not together. I mean they weren't like a thing. I think I saw them dancing a couple of times, like last month maybe. I haven't been to the club in a while. Only reason I remember is they looked good, you know. I'm taking this class to learn how to free up my body, how to move it. So I was watching the dancing especially, and they really moved."

"I bet other people noticed them."

"I guess."

When she reconnected with Peabody, they had three witnesses between them who'd seen Rachel and Kenby dancing at the club.

"They didn't come in together, sit together, leave together," Eve summed up as she headed back downtown. "A few casual dances, over a few weeks in the summer, from what we have so far. No way it's a coincidence."

"Someone saw them there, and that cemented it?"

"Saw them there, or saw them at some point, somewhere else. Individually or together. They both liked to dance, so maybe they hooked up elsewhere. Both college kids. She might've gone to see one of his performances. Diego and Hooper both frequent the club. Odds are either or both of them saw these two together. We'll sweep Columbia again, see if any of Rachel's friends or classmates remembers seeing her with Kenby. Or mentioning him."

While Eve tugged on the next line, Roarke walked down the streets of South Dublin. The area had once been as familiar to him as his own face. There'd been changes since his youth, plenty for the good.

The Urban Wars had crushed this part of the city, turned the projects into slums, and the streets into a battlefield. He remembered the aftermath only dimly. Most of it had been over and done before he'd been born.

But the consequences had lasted a generation.

Poverty and the thieves it bred still haunted this area. Hunger and the anger it fed lived here, day by day.

But it was coming back, slowly. The Irish knew all about wars, conflicts, hunger, and poverty. And they dealt with it, sang of it, wrote of it. And drank around it of an evening.

So, there was the Penny Pig. It had been a neighborhood pub when he'd been a boy and most of his neighbors were villains of one sort or the other.

He supposed it wouldn't be inaccurate to name him one of the villains.

It had been a haunt for him, and those he ran with. A place to go and have a pint and not worry about the cops coming in to roust you. There'd been a girl there he'd loved as much as he was able, and friends he'd valued.

All of them, dead and gone now, he thought as he stood outside the door. All but one. He'd come back to the Penny Pig, and the one friend alive from his boyhood. Maybe he'd find some of the answers.

He stepped inside, to the dark wood, the smokey light, the smell of beer and whiskey and cigarettes, and the sounds of rebel songs played low.

Brian was behind the bar, building a Guinness and holding a conversation with a man who looked to be older than dirt. There were a few at the low tables, drinking or having a sandwich. A miniscreen playing some Brit soap opera sat over the bar with the sound muted.

It was early in the day yet, but never too early to stop by a pub. If you wanted conversation, information, or just a sociable drink, where else would you go?

Roarke stepped up to the bar and waited for Brian to glance over.

And when he did, Brian's wide face creased in smiles. "Well now, here's himself come to grace my humble establishment once more. We'd break out the French champagne had we any."

"A pint of that'll do well enough."

"Do you see here, Mister O'Leary, sir, who we have among us today?"

The old man turned his head, and his rheumy eyes stared at Roarke out of a face as flat and thin as a plank. He lifted the pint Brian had just passed him, drank slow and deep.

"It's Roarke, is it, all grown up and fancy as a prince. Bit rougher around the edges, you were, when you came around to pinch wares from my shop down the street."

"You chased me out with a broom more than once."

"Aye, and it's no doubt your pockets were heavier when you lit out than when you came in."

"True enough. It's good to see you again, Mr. O'Leary."

"Got rich, didn't you?"

"I did, yes."

"So he'll pay for your pint as well as his own," Brian said and slid a pint down to Roarke.

"Happy to." Roarke took out a bill large enough to pay for a dozen pints, set it on the bar. "I need to speak with you, Brian, on a private matter."

Friends or not, the note disappeared into Brian's pocket. "Come back to the snug then." As he turned, he pounded a fist on the door behind the bar. "Johnny, get off your lazy arse and mind the bar."

He walked down to a small room at the end, opened the door for Roarke. "And where's Lieutenant Darling?"

"She's home."

"And well, is she?"

"She's well, thanks. Busy."

"Rounding up criminals, no doubt. You give her a kiss for me, and remind her when she's done with you, I'm waiting to make her mine."

He sat at one of the spindly chairs at the single table gracing the little room. Then grinned. "I'll be damned to hell and back, it's good to see you. Happier circumstances I hope, than the last."

"I haven't come to bury another friend."

"God bless him." Brian clicked the glass he'd brought with him against Roarke's. "To Mick then."

"To Mick, and the rest of them that's gone." He drank, then just stared into the foam.

"What's troubling your mind?"

"Long story."

"Since when haven't I had the time and the inclination to hear a long one? And when you're buying?"

"Do you remember when Meg Roarke left?"

Brian's eyebrows lowered, his lips pursed. "I remember she was here, then she was gone, and nobody was sorry to see the back of her."

"Do you have any recollection of… of someone else living with him-before she came. Do you remember anyone speaking of a young girl who was with him?"

"Seems to me there were a number of women who came and went. But before Meg? Can't say. Christ, Roarke, I'd've been in nappies, same as you."

"Your father knew him, and well. Did you never hear the name Siobhan Brody mentioned in your house, or around the neighborhood?"

"I don't remember, no. What's this about then?"

"She was my mother, Bri." It still caught in his throat. "I've learned Meg wasn't, and this young girl from Clare was." Roarke lifted his eyes. "The bastard killed her, Brian. He murdered her."

"Sweet singing Jesus. I don't know of this. I swear to you."

"I don't think he could have managed it alone. Not without a bit of help, or not without someone knowing what he'd done."

"My father ran with him off and on, and did things-all of us did-that weren't right along the clean side of the law. But murder a girl?" Looking Roarke dead in the eye, Brian shook his head. "My da wouldn't have had any of that."

"No. He wasn't one I thought of for this."

"But you're thinking." Brian nodded, and put his mind to it himself. "It was an ugly time. There were still petty little wars raging. Death was everywhere and cheaper in many ways than living."

"He had mates. Two I remember especially. Donal Grogin and Jimmy Bennigan. They would have known."

"Maybe. That may be," Brian said slowly. "But Bennigan died in a cage sometime back, and would be no help to you."

"I know." He'd done his research. "Grogin's still around, and not far from here come to that."

"That's true. He doesn't come in here much, and hasn't for the last years. Frequents a place a bit closer to the river, known as Thief's Haven. Tourists think it's a colorful name until they step inside. Then most step out again quick."

"He might be there now, but more likely at home this time of the day."

"More like." Brian kept his gaze on Roarke's face.

"I can do this myself, and there's no hardship between us if you'd rather not come along with me. But it'd go faster and cleaner with a friend."

"Now?"

"I'd as soon move fast."

"Then we'd best be going," Brian replied.

"Is this why you came without your cop?" Brian asked him as they walked one of the meaner streets.

"One of the reasons." Absently, Roarke fingered the mini-blaster in his pocket. "We have different methods of interviewing a witness."

Brian patted his own pocket, and the leather sap inside. "I recall getting my face busted a time or two by the cops."

"She can bust faces herself, but she tends to let the other throw the first punch. Her way's effective, believe me, but it takes longer, and I want this done."

He worried the wedding ring on his finger as he walked along a street his cop would have recognized. She couldn't have read the graffiti as most of it was in the Gaelic that had come into fashion with street toughs when he'd been a boy. But she'd have understood the meaning where it smeared the pocked sides of buildings, and have understood the faces of the men who loitered in doorways.

Here a child would learn how to pinch a wallet from an unguarded pocket before he learned to read. And that child would be put to bed at night more often with a backhand rather than a kiss.

He knew this street, too. It had spawned him.

"She's irritated with me," Roarke said at length. "Hell, she's right pissed, and I deserve it. But I couldn't have her with me for this, Bri. I'll kill him if it comes to it. I couldn't have her in the middle of that."

"Well now, how could you? No place for a wife or a cop, is it?"

It wasn't. No, it wasn't. But if he dealt death today, he'd have to tell her of it. And he wasn't sure what it would do to what they'd become. He wasn't sure if she would ever look at him the same way again.

They went inside one of the ugly concrete boxes on the hard edge of the district. The stink of urine took him back to his own childhood. The sharp sting of it, the softer stench of vomit. It was the kind of place where rats didn't wait until dark to come hunting, and where violence was so thick it clogged the corners like greased grime.

Roarke looked toward the stairs. There were twenty units in the building, he knew, twelve of them officially occupied, with squatters in some of the rest. Few who lived in such a place worked by day, so there was likely forty or fifty people at home or within earshot of a shout.

He doubted any would interfere. In such circumstances, people minded their own, unless it was to their advantage to do otherwise.

He had money in his pocket along with the blaster, and would use whichever came most easily into play to convince anyone who needed convincing that he was conducting private business.

"Ground floor for Grogin," Roarke said. "Easy in and out."

"You want me to go outside, round to the window in case he gets past you?"

"He won't get past me." Roarke knocked, then stepped to the side so Brian was in view of the Judas hole.

"What the fucking hell do you want?"

"A moment of your time, if you will, Mr. Grogin. I have a business opportunity I believe could be mutually profitable for both of us."

"Is that so?" There was a snorting laugh. "Well then, come right into my office."

He opened the door, and Roarke stepped through.

The man looked old. Not so old as O'Leary, but much more used. His face hung in sags at the jaw, and his cheeks were an explosion of broken blood vessels. But his reflexes remained sharp. A knife appeared in his hand, a hand that moved as quick and smooth as a magician's. But even as he started to sneer his eyes widened on Roarke's face.

"You're dead. Saw you myself. How'd you climb out of hell, Paddy?"

"Wrong Roarke." Roarke bared his teeth. And rammed his fist into Grogin's face.

He had the knife in his own hand now, and crouching, held it to Grogin's throat before Brian could finish shutting the door.

Not a soul had stirred into the hallway beyond.

"Still as quick as ever you were," Brian said.

"What's this about? What the fucking hell is this about?"

"Remember me, Mr. Grogin, sir?" Roarke spoke softly, a voice smooth as satin as he let Grogin feel the point of the blade. "You used to backhand me for sport."

"Paddy's boy." He licked his lips. "Now, come, you're not holding a grudge all these years, are ya? A boy needs the back of a hand from time to time to help him grow to a man. I never meant you any harm."

Roarke nicked Grogin, just under the jaw. "Let's say I don't mean you any more harm now than you meant me then. I'm going to ask you some questions. If I don't like your answers, I'm going to slit your throat and leave you for the rats. But I'll let Brian have a go at you first."

Smiling cheerfully, Brian took the sap out of his pocket, slapped it on his palm. "You knocked me about plenty as well. I'd like a bit of my own back, so I wouldn't mind if your answers don't suit my mate here."

"I don't have anything." Grogin's eye ticked back and forth, from face to face. "I don't know anything."

"Better hope you do." Roarke hauled him up, heaved him toward a filthy sofa. "You can try it," he said, kicking a chair around when Grogin's eyes flicked toward the rear window. "We'll be on you like jackals, of course. But I'll just hunt up someone else for the answers I need."

"What do you want?" he whined. "There's no need for all this, lad. Why, I'm practically an uncle to you."

"You're nothing to me but a bad memory." Sitting down, Roarke ran the tip of the knife over his thumb, watched the thin line of blood bead. "Keep it honed, I see. That's fine. I'll start with your balls, if you've still got them. Siobhan Brody."

Grogin's gaze stayed locked on the knife. "What?"

"You'd best remember the name, if you want to live so long as another hour. Siobhan Brody. Young and pretty, fresh. Red-haired, green-eyed."

"Lad, now be reasonable. How many young girls such as that might I have known in my life?"

"I'm only interested in this one." Stone-faced, Roarke sucked blood from his thumb. "The one who lived with him more than two years. The one he planted a child in, and she gave birth to me. Ah there now." Roarke nodded as he saw Grogin's pupils widen. "That's stirred the juices some."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Before Brian could move in, Roarke simply reached over, and snapped the bone in Grogin's index finger. "There's one for Siobhan. I'm told he broke three of hers, so I've two more to even that score."

Grogin went deathly white and let out a long, thin scream.

"I'm feeling superfluous here," Brian complained and settled himself on the ratty arm of the sofa.

"He beat her," Roarke said flatly. "Blackened her eyes, broke her bones. She was all of nineteen. He let you have a go at her, Grogin? Or did he keep her to himself?"

"I never laid a hand on her. Not a hand." Tears leaked from Grogin's eyes as he cradled his injured hand. "She was Patrick's woman. Nothing to do with me."

"You knew he beat her."

"A man, well, a man's liable to need to teach his woman a lesson now and then. Paddy, he had a heavy hand, you've cause to know yourself. It's not my doing."

"She left him for a while, took me and left him."

"I can't say." He jerked when Roarke leaned forward again, and yelping, cupped his hands at his own throat. "For God's sake, have pity. It wasn't me! How am I to know what went on behind Patrick's door? I didn't live in the man's pocket, for Christ's sake."

"Brian," Roarke said smoothly. "Have a go here."

"All right, all right!" Grogin was shouting before Brian so much as shifted his weight. "She might've gone off for a bit. Seems I recall him saying something."

When Roarke's hand snaked out, took a hold of Grogin's wrist, the man curled into a ball, weeping as his bladder let go. "Yes! I'll tell you. She took off with you, and he was mad to get her back. A woman didn't walk out on a man, take his son that way. Had to be shown her place, you know? Had to be disciplined, so he said. She came back."

"And was shown her place?"

"I don't know what happened." Grogin began to sob now, fat tears, snotty sobs. "Could I have a drink? God's pity, let me have a drink. My hand's broken."

"One bleeding finger, and he's crying like a lass." On a huff of disgust, Brian heaved himself up and fetched the bottle of whiskey from a table, poured some into a cloudy glass.

"Here then. Fuckingslainte to you."

Wrapping his good hand around it, Grogin brought the glass to his lips, gulped down the whiskey. "He's dead now, you know. Paddy's dead, so what does it matter? It's him that done it," he said to Roarke. "You know how he was."

"Aye. I know just how he was."

"And this night, well, he was drunk when he called me. Stinking. I heard the boy-heard you wailing away in the background, and him saying I was to come straight away, to cop a car and come. Well, you did what Paddy said you were to do in those days. You did it or you paid dear. So I boosted a car and came straight away. When I got there… I had nothing to do with it. I can't be blamed for it."

"When you got there?"

"Another drink, then? Just to ease my throat."

"Tell me the rest," Roarke demanded. "Or you won't have a throat to ease."

Grogin's breath wheezed. "She was dead already. Dead when I got there. It was a bloody mess. He'd gone crazy on her, and there was nothing to be done about it. Nothing I could've done. I thought he'd killed you, too, as you were quiet. But he'd given you something to put you to sleep, a bit of a tranq, is all. You were on the couch sleeping. He'd called Jimmy, too. Jimmy Bennigan."

"Give him another drink, Bri."

"Thanks for that." Grogin held out his glass. "So you see, you understand, the deed was done when I got there."

"What did you do with her? You and Jimmy and the one who murdered her."

"We, ah, we rolled her up in the rug, and carried her out to the car." He gulped at the whiskey, licked his lips. "As Paddy said. We drove along the river, as far as we could. We weighed the body down with stones, and dumped her in. There was nothing else to be done. She was dead, after all."

"And then?"

"We went back and cleaned things up, in case, and we put 'round that she'd dumped the boy and taken off. And how if anyone spoke of it, of her, they'd pay. No one lived in the neighborhood that wasn't scared of Roarke. He got Meg to come back, don't know how. Paid her I think, promised her more. And called her your mam, so everyone did."

He swiped his good hand under his dripping nose. "He could've killed you as well. Nothing to it. Bashed your brains in, smothered you."

"Why didn't he?"

"You had his face, didn't you?" Grogin continued. "Spitting image. A man wants a legacy, doesn't he? A man wants a son. If you'd been a girl, he might have tossed you in the river with your mam, but a man wants a son."

Roarke got to his feet, and whatever was on his face had Grogin cringing back. "His pocket cops went along with it?"

"Wasn't nothing to them, was it?"

"No, it was nothing to them." Just a girl, beaten to death and tossed aside. "They came looking for her, her family, some time after. Her brother, I'm told, was set on and laid into. Who'd have done that?"

"Ah… Of course, Paddy would've wanted to see to that matter himself."

A lie, Roarke thought. "As I recall, that was the sort of petty business he had you for."

In a lightning flash, Roarke had the man's head jerked back by a hank of dirty hair. And the knife at his throat.

"How do I know?" Spittle slid out of Grogin's trembling lips. "For pity, how do I know? I bashed heads for him. Too many to count. You can't do me for it now. You can't. It was years back."

One easy move of the wrist, Roarke thought. That was all it would take to have the man's blood flooding out on his hands. He could feel his own muscles trembling for that single, simple action.

He could hear ugly shouting on the street. A brawl brewing. He could smell Grogin's terror in stale sweat, fresh blood, in the urine spreading a new stain over the crotch of his pants. For a heartbeat, for eternity, the keen edge of the blade bit against flesh. Then he stepped back, slid the knife into his boot.

"You're not worth killing."

They left Grogin sitting in his own piss and sobbing.

"There was a time," Brian said as they walked, "back in the day, when you'd have done more than break his finger."

"There was a time." Roarke fisted his hand, imagined the satisfaction of pummelling it, again and again, into Grogin's face. "Not worth it, as I said. He was nothing but Patrick Roarke's pet cur. Still, he'll wonder for a while, a long while, if I might come back and do more. And that'll keep him cold at night."

"You knew already most of what he told you."

"I had to hear it said." It was cooler in Dublin than in New York. And he could see the river. The River Liffey, with its lovely bridges shining in the summer sun. The river where they'd tossed the broken shell of her. "I had to see it, how it was, before I can go on to the next."

"What's the next?"

"She had family. They're in Clare. They need to be told what happened to her, and why. Oh, Christ, Brian. I need to go and tell them, but I need a night's drunk first."

"You've come to the right place." Brian draped an arm over Roarke's shoulder, steered him away from the river. "You'll come home and stay with me tonight."