Visions In Death

CHAPTER 14

The interviews took them past end-of-shift. And, Eve thought, unless she was going to screw up her personal life, she had to set the rest aside and head uptown.

"We could manage Rose Donnelly, that would finish it off." Peabody gestured west. "She doesn't live far." "If it wasn't her night off, we might've caught her here.

We can swing by, then I'll dump you and… Hold that thought." She dragged out her signaling "link. "Dallas." "I'm hoping I could speak to you." Celina's tired face filled the screen. "I can come to you." "Something new?" "No. Just… I'd like a few minutes."

"I'm downtown anyway. I'll come by now." "Good. Thanks." "I'll take Sanchez," Eve told Peabody. "See if you can link up with Donnelly, get her statement." "Works for me. I'll see you later, at dinner. Walking another two blocks." Peabody rubbed her hands together. "I get to eat everything that's not nailed down." Eve jumped back in the car, headed for SoHo. And called Roarke. "Hi. I'm running a little late." "Shock and amazement." "Everybody's got a joke today. I'll be there. I've just got to make another stop first."

"Don't worry about it. If little becomes very, do you prefer to go straight to Charles's, meet me there?" "I'll let you know, but I hope to hell not. I want a goddamn shower. I think I can make it in an hour. Probably.

Around." "Close enough. I saw your press conference. They ran its entirety, and are following up with various sound bites." "Goodie." "I was very proud of you." "Well… jeez." "And I thought, if I were the man this woman with the cold and tired eyes was after, I would tremble." "You wouldn't tremble if I was holding my weapon at your throat, but thanks. I'm going to take this last meet, then I'm heading home." The, too." "Oh." She brightened a bit. "You're still at work, didn't realize. That's good, that's better. I'm not the only one scrambling.

See you." Pleased with the situation, she pulled up in front of Celina's loft. Even as she crossed to the entrance, Celina's voice came through the intercom.

"I've cleared locks. Come right up." Anxious, Eve thought as she went inside and entered the elevator. When it reached level two Celina was waiting to open the gate.

"Thanks for coming. Thanks for being so quick." "I wasn't that far away. What's going on?" "I need to… can I get you something? Tea? A glass of wine?" "No. I'm heading home. I've got a thing." "Oh." Distractedly, Celina brushed a hand through her hair.

"Sorry. Let's sit down anyway. I made tea. Needed to keep busy while I waited for you."

Tea, Eve noted, along with little cookies, some neat wedges of cheese. Looked like girl-chat time to her, and she didn't have the time or the inclination. "You said there wasn't anything new." "I haven't had another vision." She sat, poured tea for herself. "I kept some of my appointments today. Thought I should try. But I ended up cancelling the rest after taking the first two. I just can't concentrate." "Tough on business." "I can afford the time off. The regulars understand, and as for new clients…" She moved her shoulders, elegantly. "It adds to the mystique. But that's not the point." "And the point is?" "I'm getting to it." Celina tilted her head. "Not much on small talk, are you?" "I figure there's a reason it's called small." "Suppose you're right. To begin, I watched your media conference. I wasn't going to, but I felt, I thought, I should." She curled up her legs. "And it made me think." "It made you think what?" "I can do more. I should do more. There's a reason I'm getting these visions. I don't know what it is, not specifically, but I know there's a purpose. And while I'm doing the minimum I feel is required of me, I could do more." She sipped tea, then set the cup down. "I want to discuss going under hypnosis." Eve lifted her eyebrows. Just when you're ready to bail, she thought, something interesting comes along. "How would that help?" "There's a part of me that's blocking." Celina touched her hands to either side of her head, then her heart. "Call it a survival mechanism, which I like better than yellow-bellied cowardice. Something in me that doesn't want to know, to see, to remember, so I don't."

"Blocking the way you block picking up impressions or whatever you call them from people without their consent?" "Not really. That's a conscious act, though it becomes as elemental as breathing. This is subconscious. The human mind is a powerful and efficient tool. We don't use it to its capacity. I don't think we dare." She picked up one of the little golden cookies she'd set out with the tea, and nibbled. "We are able to block. Trauma victims often do. They're unable or unwilling to remember the trauma, or details of it, because they can't or won't face it. You must see this sort of thing in your work." And in herself, Eve thought. In all the years she'd blocked out what had happened in that room in Dallas. "Yes." "Under hypnosis, those blocks can be removed or lowered.

I may see more. I know there's more, and I may see it. With the right practitioner… I'd need someone I'd insist on someone very skilled not only in hypnosis, but in dealing with sensitives. I'd want a medical doctor present as well.

I'd want Dr Mira to do it." "Mira." "After you gave me her name, I did some research. She's very qualified in all the areas I'd need. She's also a criminologist, so it seems to me she'd be more cognizant of what to ask me, where to guide me while I was under. You trust her." "Absolutely." Celina gestured with the cookie. "And I trust you. I don't put myself in just any hands, Dallas. To be honest, I'm afraid of this. But I'm more afraid of doing nothing. And you know what's worse?" "No." "I'm terrified I've been pushed into a new arena. That what I have, what I am, is moving down a path I never wanted for myself." She hugged her right arm, rubbing it gently as if to soothe a spasm. "That I'm going to spend the next phase of my life seeing murder and violence, linking with victims.

I liked my life the way it was. It makes it harder to realize it may never be just that way again." "And still you want me to contact Dr Mira?" She nodded. "The sooner the better. If I stall, I might lose the courage to follow it through." "Give me a minute," Eve said as she pulled out her "link.

"Oh. Right." Celina rose, picked up the tea tray. She carried it into the kitchen.

With slow, deliberate moves, she put the clean cup and saucer away, set her own in the sink.

Then she laid her hands on her face, pressed her fingers to her closed lids. And hoped, with everything she was, that she was ready for what was coming.

"Celina?" "Yes." On a quick jerk, she dropped her hands, then turned to the doorway where Eve stood.

"Dr Mira can see you tomorrow, at nine. She'll need to do a consult first, and a physical exam before she agrees to hypnotherapy." "Yes, good." She squared her shoulders as if adjusting to a weight, or shrugging one off. "That makes sense. Will you could you be there?" "If and when the hypnosis is approved, yes. Up until you're set to go under, you can change your mind." Clasping a hand over the crystals dangling from her neck chain, Celina shook her head. "No, I won't. I thought this through, up and down and sideways before I contacted you.

I won't change my mind. We're going to move ahead. I can promise you, I won't turn back now."

Eve dashed in the house, slammed the door at her back. "I'm late," she snapped before Summerset could speak. "But here's the thing, I'm not always late, but you're always ugly. Who's got the real problem?" Since she finished the question at the top of the stairs and kept going, she wasn't annoyed with any reply he might have made.

She stripped off her jacket as she hit the bedroom door.

Released her weapon harness and tossed it on the sofa.

Yanked off boots by hopping one-footed toward the bathroom, and had her shirt off when she heard the water running.

Damn, he'd beaten her home after all.

She peeled off the rest. "Turn that water temp up." "Done. I adjusted when I heard the graceful patter of your delicate feet stomping about in the bedroom." Knowing Roarke wasn't above being hysterically amused by having her scream after jumping into cold water, she stuck her hand in the spray first.

"Trusting soul," he said and grabbing her hand hauled her in. "Let's stay home and make hot, wet love in the shower." "Forget it." She elbowed him aside, pumped soap into her hand. "We're going to dinner. We're going to sit around somebody else's house and make stupid conversation and eat food we don't even get to pick for ourselves and pretend not to wonder exactly where in the apartment McNab and Charles punched each other out." "I can hardly wait." He pumped shampoo and began to lather it into her hair.

"What are you doing?" "Saving you time. What have you done here?" She hunched her shoulders. "Nothing." "You have. You've been whacking at your hair again." "It was in my eyes." "Back here?" He tugged. "Fascinating. Does the NYPSD know they have a cop with eyes in the back of her head? Has the CIA been notified?"

"I can do this myself." She pulled back, scrubbed vigorously at her hair while glaring at him. "Don't tell Trina." He smiled, wolfishly. "And what would my silence be worth to you?" "You want a quick hand job?" "See, you're being deliberately crude to put me off." He tapped her chin. "Oddly enough, it doesn't work." "She'll know anyway," Eve muttered, and stuck her head under the jets. "She'll know, the next time she gets her hands on me. And she'll make me pay. She'll pour goo all over me, and lecture, and paint my nipples blue or something." "What an interesting picture that creates in my fevered brain." "I don't know why I did it." She jumped out and into the drying tube. "I couldn't help myself." Tell it to the judge," Roarke advised.

They weren't very late, Peabody thought. And when you had two cops two currently overworked, sleep-deprived cops being on time wasn't even in the realm.

Besides, she'd wanted to take as much time as she could squeeze out to make sure she looked her best. Since McNab had given her a big, "Oh, baby!" she figured she'd pulled it off.

He looked pretty adorable himself. His hair was all shiny and slick, and his cute little butt was nice and snug against the seat of black pants saved from being too conservative by the fluorescent silver stripe running down each leg.

She had her hostess gift a clutch of fairly fresh tiger lilies she'd snagged from a vender near her subway stop and they'd been cleared through the lobby to the elevator.

"Now, you're going to play nice, right?" "Of course I'm going to play nice." He fiddled with the collar of his silver shirt and wondered if he should've added a tie. Give Monroe a run for his sophisticated money. "Why wouldn't I?" She rolled her eyes at him as they stepped into the elevator.

"Then. Now. Then you were sleeping with him, and I was drunk and pissed off. Now you're not and neither am I. Drunk and pissed off," he qualified.

She ordered Charles's floor, fluffed at her hair, and wished she'd had time to curl it, just for a change. "Neither was I." "What did you have to be drunk and pissed off about?" he asked.

"Sleeping with him. You sure my ass doesn't look fat in these pants?" "What?" "My ass." She craned her head around to try to see for herself. "It feels like it looks fat." "What do you mean you weren't sleeping with him? After Louise? You mean after Louise." "I mean ever. There ought to be a mirror in here so I could check my fat ass." "Your ass isn't fat, and shut up. You were going around with him for months." She gave the flowers she carried a little sniff. "You sleep with everybody you go around with?" "Pretty much. Now just a damn minute." "We're going to be late," she said as she stepped off the elevator and into the hall.

"We're going to be later. You telling me you never boinked the LC? Ever?" "Charles and I were, are, friends. That's it." McNab grabbed her arm, hauled her back a step. "You let me think you were boinking him." "No, you let you think I was." She poked a finger into his chest. "And made an ass of yourself, which is a pretty short walk, really."

"You -he-" He paced down the hall and back again.

"Why?" "Because we were friends, and because I was boinking you, moron." "But we broke up because…" "Because, instead of asking what was going on, you accused and you ordered, and took that short walk to Assville." "And you tell me now, a minute before we walk in his door." "Yeah." "That's cold, Peabody." "Yeah." She patted his cheek. "I wait for payback, and I deliver. You were a jerk coming over here toasted and punching him, but I like that part. Which is why I was magnanimous enough to forgive you for sleeping with the twins." "I didn't." He tapped a finger on her nose. "Gotcha." "You didn't?" "I was going to, and I could have because we were on the breakup shuttle. But I didn't want the twins." "You bragged about it." "Hey, I've got a dick. Man's got a dick, he's gotta have pride in it." "You are a dick," she said, but with a sloppy grin. "Now I forgive you for thinking I was bouncing back and forth between you and Charles like some sex bunny." "She-body, you're my little sex bunny." "Aw." She flung her arms around him to exchange the sloppy grin for a big, sloppy kiss.

The elevator doors opened behind them. "Oh God! There goes my appetite." "Dallas." Peabody sent a dreamy look over McNab's shoulder. "We're making up."

"Next time make up in a dark, locked room. McNab, your hands are in violation of several civil codes." "Whoops." Still, he gave Peabody's butt a final squeeze.

"You start on the transit discs?" "Eve." Roarke laid a hand on her shoulder, aimed her toward Charles's apartment. "Let's at least try to make it through the door before you grill the detectives. Peabody, you look charming." "Thanks. This is going to be fun." They answered together, Charles Monroe, the urbane LC, and Louise Dimatto, the blue-blooded doctor dedicated to the downtrodden. Eve had to admit, they looked good together. He with his handsome vid king looks, and she with her polished-gold beauty.

It didn't mean she didn't consider it one of the oddest couplings of her acquaintance, but they looked good together.

"Everyone at once." Louise laughed and reached for Eve, the closest. "Come in. It's so good to see everybody when none of us is working." She kissed Eve's cheek, then made a fuss over the flowers Peabody offered.

"Lieutenant Sugar." Charles went for the hello kiss as well, but he aimed for the mouth. There was a twinkle in his eye shot in McNab's direction, as he gave Peabody the same greeting.

It was going to be, Eve decided, a really weird evening.

The wine Roarke brought was welcomed, and opened.

Conversation, Eve realized after ten minutes, wasn't stilted or sparse. Everyone appeared to be in a party mood. She'd just have to tuck the case into another area of the brain and get into the personal game for a few hours.

There was Louise, looking happy and picture pretty perched on the arm of Charles's chair, and wearing the casual gear of a dark pink sweater and black pants. Bare feet with pink toenails. And to Eve's considerable surprise, a little gold toe ring.

Charles kept touching her in that absent and intimate way a man touched a woman who was his focus. A brush on the arm, a stroke on the knee.

Didn't she wonder about the women who paid him to touch them and a hell of a lot more? Apparently not, Eve decided, by the gooey looks they sent each other every five minutes.

And there were McNab and Peabody, snuggled together on the cushy leather couch laughing and talking without any sign of awkwardness. Just one big happy family.

As a trained observer, she could safely say she was the only one weirded out.

Even as she thought it, Roarke leaned toward her, laid his lips close to her ear. "Relax." "Working on it," she mumbled.

"Louise has been fussing half the day," Charles commented.

"I have." Louise shook back her cloud of hair. "It's the first time we've entertained friends together. And I like to fuss." Fussing, Eve concluded, ran to putting small arrangements of color-coordinated flowers in little clear vases and positioning them in strategic spots throughout the apartment, and marrying the flowers with lots of white candles in different shapes and sizes so the light was subtle and gold.

She'd probably selected the background music, too.

Something muted and bluesy that suited the lighting. The table was already set with lots of candles and flowers there, too. And glassware that glinted.

Put it all together with the wine and predinner finger food, and you had a cozy, relaxing atmosphere for an intimate gathering of friends.

How did people know how to put it together? she wondered.

Did they take classes? Punt and hope for the best? Buy instruction discs?

"It was worth it," Peabody commented. "Everything looks mag." "I'm just glad we're all here." Louise sent her smile around the room. "I wasn't sure you'd be able to make it you particularly, Dallas. I've been following the case in the media reports." "People keep telling me I need an actual life outside the job." Eve shrugged. "I figure if you get away from it for a little while, maybe you'll come back fresh." "A healthy attitude," Louise said.

"Yeah, that's me." Eve leaned over and plucked one of the colorfully topped crackers from a canape tray. "My "tude's always healthy." "Especially when she's kicking your ass." With a grin, McNab ate a tiny stuffed shrimp.

"Skinny as yours is, pal, it doesn't take much." "Do you ever get your skinny ass back to Scotland?" Louise asked him.

"Not really. I was born here and all that. Went back and forth a lot when I was a kid. My parents decided to roost back there, outside Edinburgh about five years ago, I guess.

I was thinking, maybe next time Peabody and I have some real time, we could go check it out." "Scotland?" She goggled at him. "Really?" "They've got to meet my girl." Her cheeks pinked. "I always wanted to go over and see Europe. You know, the countryside. Tromp around in fields and gawk at ruins." Conversation turned to travel.

"Dallas," Louise said in an aside. "Give me a hand in the kitchen?" "The kitchen? Me?" "For a minute." "Ah. Okay."

Eve followed her in, looked around. "We're not going to actually cook or anything?" "What, do I look simple? Everything's stocked from a very nice restaurant around the corner. It's just a matter of putting it together for the table, which I'll take care of in a minute." Louise sipped her wine, studying Eve over the rim. "Are you taking care of yourself?" "What? Why?"

"Because you look tired." "Well, shit. I spent a good five minutes slapping goop on my face. What's the point?" "Your eyes look tired. I'm a doctor, I know these things.

And I would've understood if you'd needed to cancel tonight." "Thought about it, but the fact is I couldn't do anymore.

Maybe I needed a break from it. Maybe I've got to learn how to take a break from it." "That's good. But we'll make this an early evening." "We'll see how it goes. You and Charles… things cruising there?" They are. He makes me awfully happy. No one has, in just that way, in a very long time." "You look happy. Both of you." "Funny, isn't it, how you find someone when you've stopped looking." "I don't know. I never looked." "Now that hurts." With a laugh, Louise leaned back against the counter. "You don't even bother to look, and you end up with Roarke." "He just got in my way. Couldn't get around him, so I figured I might as well keep him." And oddly, she realized, it wasn't small talk when it was with a friend. It was just… talk.

"We're thinking about taking a little holiday together, maybe next month. Go up to Maine or Vermont, look at the fall foliage and stay in some quaint little inn." "You're going to go look at trees?" Laughing, Louise brushed Eve aside to set up the salads.

"People do, Dallas." "Yeah." Eve drank. "Takes all kinds."

Bitches. Whores.

All but consumed with rage, he stormed around the apartment.

He had the screen on repeat, playing the Channel 75 interview and the media conference over and over and over.

He couldn't help himself.

They'd sent women out after him. Women discussing him, analyzing him, condemning him. Did they think he was going to take that? Look at them. Pretending to be so good, so clean, so righteous. But he knew better. He'd seen, and he knew.

Underneath they were cheap and vicious. Weak and vile.

He was stronger. Look at him now. Just look.

He did, turning to one of the walls of mirrors to admire his body. The sheer shape and strength. The perfection he'd worked so hard to achieve. He was a man.

"Do you see? Do you see what I am?" He turned, holding out his arms, and a dozen pairs of eyes stared back at him as they floated in their jars.

They could see him now. She could see him. She had no choice but to look at him. Forever.

"What do you think now, Mother? Who's in charge now?" They were all hers. All those staring eyes. But she was still out there, judging him, ready with her punishing hand, her slashing belt. Ready to lock him in the dark so he couldn't see. So he wouldn't know.

He'd take care of that. Oh, yes, he would. He'd fix her little red wagon. He'd show her who was boss. He'd show all of them.

They'd pay. This mother's son would make them pay, he thought as he stared back at the screen. He'd show them what he could do.

These three. He moved closer to the screen, gritting his teeth as he looked at Eve, at Peabody, at Nadine. They'd have to be punished. Sometimes you had to deviate from the plan, that's all. So they'd have to be punished. You were punished when you were bad. You were punished when you were good.

He'd save the top bitch for last, that's what he'd do. He smiled fiercely at Eve.

It was always smart to save the best for last.

It was a good meal, with good company. For nearly two hours, murder didn't play in her head. She enjoyed, particularly, watching Roarke relate. The way he slid, so smoothly, between Charles's urbane sophisticate and McNab's street-smart wiseass. How he mixed with the women, flattering without being oily, flirting without being obnoxious.

Effortlessly. Or it seemed effortless. But wouldn't he have things on his mind, too? The big wheels and complex deals that made up his work and a large part of his life. He would've spent the day buying and selling God knew what, coordinating and supervising projects she couldn't begin to imagine. Taking meetings, making decisions, contemplating the enormous chessboard of his empire.

Then he could sit, over coffee and dessert, telling a story about some bar fight from his youth to make McNab roll with laughter, or exchanging opinions about great art with Charles.

On the way home, he reached over, brushed a hand over hers. "That was a very nice evening."

"It didn't even nearly suck." "High praise indeed." She laughed at herself, stretched out her legs. Somewhere along the line she'd taken his advice. She'd relaxed. And after she'd relaxed, damn if she hadn't enjoyed. "I mean it." "Darling Eve, I know you do." "You're a layered guy, Roarke." "I'm nothing if not." "I don't know why I'm surrounded by smart-asses." "Birds of a feather." "Anyway," she said after a beat. "It was educational to watch you schmooze." "I wasn't schmoozing. Schmoozing is business, or business-related.

This was personal and friendly conversation." "Ha. The things you learn." She leaned her head back. She was tired, but she realized, she wasn't weighed down by fatigue. "There was a lot of conversation. And it wasn't even boring or irritating." "God." He picked up her hand, pressed it to his lips as he drove through the gates. "I adore you." "Lot of that going around tonight, too." "It was pleasant to spend time with two couples so obviously in love." "Hard to miss it with all the gooey looks and pats and strokes. Sex sizzling in the air and all that. You ever think how it'd be if you switched them around?" "Sizzling looks, gooey sex? I think of little else." She snickered as they got out of the car to walk to the door. "No. The people. You put Peabody with Charles and McNab with Louise. It'd be totally screwed up." "You could put Peabody with Louise." "Sick. You're a sick man." "Just playing the game." He took her hand as they walked upstairs to the bedroom. "You seem to have your second wind, Lieutenant." "I think it's my third, maybe fourth of the day. I actually feel pretty good." She booted the door shut behind her. "In fact, sitting around in all that sizzle's got me hyped. How about some gooey sex?" "Thought you'd never ask." Hooking an arm around his neck, she jumped so he could catch her in his arms. She calculated her weight, his, narrowed her eyes. "How far do you figure you can carry me?" "To the bed would be my first guess." "No, I mean how far do you think you could haul me like this? Especially if I'm…" She went limp, dropped her weight, let her arms dangle.

She felt him shift and adjust, not quite stagger. "Tougher this way, right?" "I still think I can manage the bed, where I certainly hope you plan to revive a bit." "You're in good shape, but I bet you'd feel it if you had to carry me, say, twenty, thirty yards like this." "Since I haven't strangled you, yet, I won't have to." She boosted back up as he climbed the platform with her.

"Sorry. No murder in the bedroom tonight." She kept her arms locked around his neck when he lowered her to the bed. "You touch me." Obviously amused, he nipped at her chin and that wonderful hair brushed her cheeks like strands of silk. "That's definitely on the agenda." "No." She laughed again, then rolled over on top of him.

"When we're just hanging out, when you don't even think about it. I like it." She leaned down to rub her lips over his, and linking fingers, stretching sinuously down, slid his arms over his head. "I like this."

"Enjoy yourself," he invited.

"Probably should make it fairly quick, in case I lose this third, fourth wind." She closed her teeth over his jaw, nipping lightly.

Keeping his hands locked with hers, she ran her lips down his throat, traced them back to his. Then she curled back like a cat to unbutton his shirt.

"Yeah." She rubbed her hands over his chest. "You're in shape." Then her lips.

She could feel his heartbeat pick up, drum lightly under her hands and lips. He wanted. Wasn't it amazing he always wanted her? The muscles of his belly quivered when she tasted there, and jumped when she ran her tongue under his waistband.

She slid down the zipper, freed him. Tormented him.

Then uncurling, she watched him as she peeled off her shirt, as she took his hands and pressed them to her breasts.

On a low hum of pleasure her head fell back. His hands were hard and smooth and skilled. The long, liquid tugs began, from heart to belly, from belly to loins, when he used them on her.

"Let me. Let me have-" He reared up, clamped his mouth on her, and the hum became a sob, the tugs a burn.

Now it could be desperate, now it could be urgent. Slick body straining to slick body, hands and mouths greedy for more. The sharp nip of teeth, the quick bite of nails, the hot slide of tongues.

She was trembling when she straddled him. Once again their hands and eyes locked. She took him in, took him deep.

And cried out.

Breathless, she lowered her brow to his, fought for breath, for sanity. "A minute," she managed. "It's too much. Wait a minute."

"It's not too much." His mouth seared over hers. "It's never too much." Never would be. She rose up, and rode.