Memory in Death (25 page)

"Yeah, I used to wear it long back then. Figured it was less trouble because I could just tie it back out of my way. Then in hand-to-hand training, my opponent grabbed it, yanked, and took me down. I lopped it off."

"Look at your eyes. Cop's eyes even then. Hardly more than a child, and you knew."

"I knew if she didn't get that camera out of my face so I could study, I was going to clock her."

He laughed, took her hand, but remained riveted on the photograph. "What happened to her?"

"She washed out, made it about a month. She was okay. She just wasn't—"

"A cop," he finished. "Thank you for this. It's so exactly what I wanted."

She leaned her head on his shoulder, let the lights of the tree dazzle her and thought, Who needs champagne?

19

SHE WOKE, THOUGHT SHE WOKE, IN THE brilliantly lit room with the glass wall. She was wearing her diamonds, and the cashmere robe. There was a towering pine in the corner, rising up to the ceiling. The ornaments draping its arching boughs, she saw, were corpses. Hundreds of bodies hung, covered with blood red as Christmas.

All the women, only women, were gathered around it.

"Not very celebratory," Maxie, the lawyer, said, and gave Eve a little elbow poke. "But you've got to make do, right? How many of those are yours?"

She didn't need the magnifying glass weighing down her pocket to identify the faces, the bodies, the dead. "All of them."

"That's a little greedy, don't you think?" Maxie turned, nodded toward the body splayed in the center of the room. "She hasn't been put up yet."

"No, she can't go up yet. She isn't finished."

"Looks done to me. But here." She tossed Eve a white sock weighed with credits. "Go ahead."

"That's not the answer."

"Maybe you just haven't asked the right question."

She found herself in the glass room with the children. The child she'd been sat on the floor and looked up at her with tired eyes.

"I don't have any presents. I don't care."

"You can have this." Eve crouched down, held out her badge. "You'll need it."

"She has all the presents."

Eve looked through the glass and saw that gifts were piled now around the body. "Lot of good they'll do her now."

"It's one of us, you know."

Eve glanced back, studied the room full of little girls. Then looked into her own eyes. "Yes, I know."

"What will you do?"

"Take the one who did it away. That's what happens when you kill someone. You have to pay. There has to be payment."

The girl she'd been held up her hands, and they were smeared with blood. "Am I going, too?"

"No." And she felt it, even in the dream she knew was a dream, she felt the ache in her belly. "No,"

she said again, "it's different for you."

"But I can't get out."

"You will one day." She looked back through the glass, frowned. "Weren't there more presents a minute ago?"

"People steal." The child hooked the bloodied badge on her shirt. "People are just no damn good."

Eve woke with a hard jolt, the dream already fading. It was weird, she thought, to have dreams where you talked to yourself.

And the tree. She remembered the tree with the bodies draped like morbid tinsel. To comfort herself she turned, studied the tree in the window. She ran a hand over the sheet beside her, found it cool.

It didn't surprise her that Roarke was up before her, or that he'd been up long enough for the sheets to lose his warmth. But it did give her a shock to see that it was nearly eleven in the morning.

She started to roll out of her own side, and saw the blinking memo cube on the nightstand. She switched in on, heard his voice.

"Morning, darling Eve. I'm in the game room. Come play with me."

It made her smile. "Such a sap," she murmured.

She showered, dressed, grabbed coffee, then headed down. Proving, she decided, she was a sap, too.

He had the main screen engaged, and it gave her yet another jolt to see herself up there, in a pitched and bloody battle. Why she was wielding a sword instead of a blaster, she couldn't say.

He fought back-to-back with her, as he had, she remembered, in reality. And there was Peabody, wounded, but still game. But what the hell was her partner wearing?

More important, what was she wearing. It looked like some soft of leather deal more suited for S and M than swordplay.

Iced, she decided, when she lopped off her opponent's head. Moments later, Roarke dispatched his, and the comp announced he'd reached Level Eight.

"I'm good," she announced and crossed to him.

"You are. And so am I."

She nodded at the paused screen. "What's up with the outfits?"

"Feeney added costume options. I've had an entertaining hour fiddling with wardrobe as well as taking over most of Europe and North America. How'd you sleep?"

"Okay. Weird dream again. I can probably blame it on champagne, and the chocolate souffle I pigged out on at two in the morning."

"Why don't you stretch out here with me? This game's programmed for multiple players. You can try to invade my territories."

"Maybe later." She ran an absent hand over his hair. "I've got this dream on my brain. Sometimes they're supposed to mean stuff, right? There's something in there. I'm not asking the right question,"

she murmured. "What's the right question?"

Playtime, he decided, was over for now.

"Why don't we have a little brunch? You can talk it through."

"No, go ahead and play the game. I'm good with coffee."

"I slept in myself, didn't get up until about nine."

"Has anyone looked outside, checked to see if the world is still spinning on its axis?"

"At which time," he continued dryly, "I had a workout—I had souffle, too. Then, before I came down here to enjoy one of my gifts, I worked about an hour in my office."

She studied him over the rim of her cup. "You worked."

"I did."

"On Christmas morning."

"Guilty."

She lowered the cup, grinned hugely. "We're really sick people, aren't we?"

"I prefer thinking we're very healthy individuals who know what suits us best." He rose, lithe as a cat in black jeans and sweater. "And what would suit us, I believe, is something light, up in the solarium where we can lord it over the city while you talk through your latest weird dream."

"You know what I said last night?"

"Drunk or sober?"

"Either. I said I loved you. Still do."

They had fresh fruit at the top of the house, looking through the glass at a sky that decided to give New York a break and coast over it bright and blue.

She didn't argue with his notion that as it was Christmas they should have mimosas.

"You gave her—you, that is—your badge."

"I don't know why exactly. Mira'd probably have interpretations and all that shrink stuff. I guess it was what I wanted most. Or would, eventually, want most."

"The tree ornaments are easy enough."

"Yeah, even I can get that. They're dead, so they're mine. But Trudy wasn't up there."

"Because you haven't finished with her. You can't put her up with the others—I won't say 'aside'

because you never put them aside. You won't put her up until you've closed the case."

"This lawyer keeps showing up. She's not in it. I know she's not, but she's the one I talked to. Both times."

"She's the one you understand best, I'd say. She was up-front with you on her feelings toward Trudy, didn't quibble about them. And she fought back, eventually."

He offered her a raspberry. "She stood up, as you would."

"One of us. I knew it, or the kid did."

"A cop even then, in some part of you."

"She also knew people mostly aren't any damn good." She said it lightly, tried another raspberry. Then sat up straight. "Wait a minute, wait a minute. The presents. Let me think."

She pushed out of the chair, roamed the solarium with its potted trees, musical fountain.

"Presents and greed and Christmas and shopping. She bought stuff. I know Trudy bought stuff before she hit on either of us. I went through her credits and debits. She went on a fast, hard spree."

"And?"

"Bags in her room, shopping bags. I've got the stuff in inventory, but I never checked all the contents, one by one, with the accounts. She didn't buy anything like, you know, diamonds. Clothes, some perfume, shoes. She wasn't killed for new shoes, so I didn't go through it all, do a checklist. Just a quick skim. Some of it wasn't there, but she had some shipped from stores. I checked that. But I didn't go through it all, every piece."

"Why would you?"

"Greed, envy, coveting. Women are all the time, 'Oooh, I love your outfit, your shoes, those earrings.' Whatever." She circled a hand in the air when he laughed. "They went shopping together, the three of them, when they got in. Zana knew what she bought. Some of the stuff got shipped. Why would we bother to make sure some damn shirt made it to Texas? Gives her open season, doesn't it?"

She whirled back. "She's vain, under it. Always puts herself together. I bet Trudy bought some nice things for herself, and they're close enough to the same size. Who's going to know if her killer helped herself to a couple of things she liked best? Bobby's not going to notice. Men don't. Present company excepted."

"And you get that from dreaming about a corpse surrounded by presents."

"I get that because I'm groping. And I don't know, maybe my subconscious is working something out. The thing is, it fits with my sense of her, of Zana. Opportunistic. If she took something, if I can prove she had something from the room... it's still wild circumstantial evidence any PD in his first week could blow holes in, but it's something to needle her with."

She sat again. "She was one of us," Eve continued. "And we didn't get the good stuff. Handouts, hand-me-downs. Crumbs from the table when everyone else is having a big, fat slab of cake."

"Baby."

"I don't care about that." She rubbed her hand over his shoulder. "Never really did. But I'm betting she does, and did. Opportunity." She closed her eyes, sipped the mimosa without thinking. "Here in New York—big, bad city where anything can happen to anybody. Mark's running a scam that just makes it easier. It's like she's putting herself on a platter. Weapon's right there, easily used, easily disposed of. Gotta go out the window, but that's no trouble. Room next-door is empty. She had to wash up somewhere, and it wasn't in her own room or Trudy's. Had to be there, in the empty room."

She pushed up again. "Shit, shit. She stowed the weapon there, her bloody clothes, the towels. It's perfect—opportunity again. Stow the stuff, go back to your own room clean, where Bobby's sleeping. He'd never know the difference. And who's right on the spot the next morning, knocking on a dead woman's door?"

"Then you walk in."

"Yeah, she's not expecting that, but she adjusts. She's quick and she's smart. Patient, too. Ducks out the next morning, gets the stuff from the empty room. She could've ditched it anywhere, any recycler from the hotel to the bar where she staged the abduction, left her purse to add a flourish. Gone now.

Son of a bitch. We didn't canvass that far, not for the weapon or bloody clothes."

"Keep going," he said when she paused. "I'm fascinated."

"It's speculation, that's all it is. But it feels right." For the first time since the beginning, it felt exactly right. "Now she has the cops out looking for some guy, and chasing down an account that doesn't exist. Gives her time. Now she's a victim. She's got Trudy's discs. The case files, and the record Trudy made of her injuries."

Yes, she could see it, Eve thought. Gather stuff up, take what you need, what you want, don't leave any trace of yourself behind.

"Does she keep the discs? Hard to toss away that kind of opportunity for a future date. You could try the squeeze down the road."

"She didn't squeeze now, when it's ripe for it," Roarke pointed out. "Anonymous delivery of a copy of the recording—if it exists—an account number and instructions."

"It's too ripe. Yeah, too hot. Why push her luck? She needs time to think that angle through. Is it worth taking on a cop and a guy with your resources? Maybe not. Maybe later. But if she's smart, and she is, she checks, sees if we're alibied tight for the times in questions. And we were. Could've hired somebody to do it, back to that, but she's going to think if that's going to fly. If we're going to pay big piles of money over it or tough it out. More, go after her with a vengeance."

She paused. "Waiting's smarter. Isn't that what you'd do? It's what I'd do."

"I'd have destroyed the camera and the discs. Anything that tied me to that room. If it could be tracked to me, I'm in a cage." Roarke poured coffee for both of them. "Not worth it, especially not when I'm going to rake in whatever Trudy's socked away."

"There's that. Of course, you'd get it all if Bobby's gone. More important, if he has an accident, fatal or otherwise, the cops're going to investigate, looking for that invisible man again. Meanwhile, you play it like it was an accident altogether. Gee, it had to be an accident, and it's all my fault for making him go shopping. I spilled my coffee. Boo-hoo."

He had to laugh. "You really dislike her."

"From the get. Just one of those itches between the shoulder blades." She moved them now as if to relieve it. "Now you've got Bobby in the hospital, and everyone—including him—is all there. So you're center, just where you deserve to be. Taken a backseat to that bitch long enough, haven't you?"

She looked back at him. Jeans and a sweater today, she thought. Day off, easy does it. Well, hell.

"Listen, I'm going to ask, and it's crappy to ask, but I'm going to. The record from the tail. I'll be lucky to get them on it tomorrow. If I could just hear it clean, individual voices, tones, separate the sounds."

"Computer lab."

"Look, I'll make it up to you."

"How? And be specific."

"I'll play that game with you. Holo-mode."

"There's a start."

"I'll wear the getup."

"Really?" He expanded the word, lasciviously. "And to the victor will go the spoils?"

"Which would be me."

"It's medieval at the moment. You'll have to call me Sir Roarke."

"Oh, step back."

He laughed. "That may be going too far. We'll see how it goes." He pushed to his feet. "Where's the disc?"

"I'll get it. I'll start on the shopping spree. Thanks. Really."

He handed her the coffee so she could take it with her. "How else would we spend our Christmas afternoon?"

*  *  *

She went to work, happy, she realized, to be back at it. With a hot pot of coffee and reams of data. Whatever she found, or didn't, this angle was going to mean interviewing sales clerks. Which meant the horror of going into retail establishments on the day after Christmas when everyone and their mothers would be in them exchanging gifts, looking for bargains, arguing about credit.