Promises in Death (14 page)

“Yeah, but he’s waiting for her. Already in. Could be he managed to get her key card when she came to visit, or his pal Sandy did—clone it, get it back without her realizing it. Takes her out on the stairs, carries her down, brings her back so he can tell her no woman tells him it’s over. Maybe he lets her plead with him, promise him, tell him she loves him—whatever she thinks will save her life. But he knows she’s lying, and that just makes it worse, so zap. Lights out.”

She shook her head. “And it just doesn’t ring all the bells for me.”

“He’d have hurt her more. That’s what you’re thinking.”

“Wouldn’t you? Bitch dumped you, now she’s spreading them for some other man. Gotta pay.”

“He loved her. Maybe enough to kill her, and too much to hurt her.”

Since she understood exactly what he meant, she shook her head. “People are so screwy. It wasn’t impulse, that’s the other thing. It wasn’t like: I’m going over there and deal with that bitch. It was too organized for that. So, you take it back, figure he’d planned it awhile. Before he even got to New York. He’d have known about Morris. He could have had her shadowed, and then he’d have known about Morris. Plays nearly the same way then, except he invites her over, makes nice. So good to see you again, glad you’re happy. Aren’t we mature adults? Then he calls her, tells her he needs to see her, or he’s in trouble, needs her help, whatever it takes. And she goes.”

She shoved her way across town. “Or, and here’s one I don’t like because it could work. They were still screwing around. She was in his pocket. Things went south, and he did her or had her done. I hate that it’s the one that works the best.”

“It only works best with the current data,” Roarke pointed out. “Is there anything I can do to help with Morris?”

“No, there’s really not. I called, straight to his voice mail this morning. I didn’t want to . . . you know. Just said I wanted him to know we’re working on it, and he could tag me whenever he needed. I’ve got to ask him if he knew she’d been tangled up with Alex Ricker. I have to ask, and I don’t think he did. He’d have told me yesterday. However much shock he was in, he’d have told me that, given me the lead. So I’m going to be the one to kick him in the gut again.”

Harder for her, Roarke knew, than facing down an armed psychopath. “I can reschedule some things, go with you. We can go see him now.”

The offer made her throat burn. He would do that. He would always do that. She had that. “I can’t. I have to get back, get all this down in the book, get the stunner to the lab. I need to fill Peabody in. And other stuff. I’m hoping I’ll have something more solid when I talk to Morris.”

She got as close to the big black tower that housed Roarke Industries as the madness of New York allowed. “Thanks.”

“Actions speak louder.” He cupped her neck, and leaning to her took her mouth in a kiss that made her swear she could see little red hearts dancing over her head. “Take care of my cop.”

“I try to make a habit of it.”

“If only you did.” He stepped out, shot her a last look with those blue laser eyes, then strode down the sidewalk to the black spire he’d created.

 

 

 

S
he went by the lab first, hand-delivered the stunner. On her way to Homicide, she made a mental list of what had to be done. Get the Alex Ricker interview into the file, along with her impressions. Check, for her own curiosity, how often father and son communicated. Run probabilities on all the scenarios she’d run through with Roarke. Meet with Mira to get a solid profile on both vic and killer. Update Peabody, study EDD results.

Then, because it couldn’t be put off, she’d deal with the “other stuff” she hadn’t explained to Roarke.

She’d contact Don Webster in IAB.

Because, goddamn it, if anybody’d had a whiff of Coltraine and Max Ricker’s son, it would’ve been IAB. If they’d known, the info on that relationship would’ve been passed along from Atlanta to New York.

Webster would know.

The idea of having to wheedle information out of Internal Affairs—and out of a former one-night stand—just burned her ass. Stewing about it, she strode into the bullpen, annoyed.

“Dallas! Hey! Wait!”

Scowling, she waved off Peabody’s shout. “I need five.”

“But—”

“Five!” Eve shouted back, and stomped into her office.

Morris sat in her visitor’s chair.

“Oh, hey.” The next time Peabody told her to wait, Eve promised herself, she’d wait.

“I know better.” He got to his feet. She could see the long, sleepless night on him—the shadowed eyes, the pallor. “Better than to get in your way, better than to ask questions, to push at you when you push yourself harder than anyone could. I know better. But it doesn’t matter.”

“It’s okay.” She shut the door. “It’s okay.”

“I’m going to see her. I needed to come here first, needed you to tell me whatever you could before I went to see her.”

Eve’s ’link beeped, and she ignored it. “A little milk in your coffee, right?”

“Yes, a little. Thanks.”

She programmed coffee, using the time to organize her thoughts. “I spoke with her family.”

“I know. So have I now.”

She gave him the coffee, took her own seat, swiveling it to face him. “And I spoke with her lieutenant here and in Atlanta. With her partner there, with her squad here. She was very well liked.”

He nodded. “You’re trying to comfort me, and I’m grateful. I need more. I need facts. Theories if that’s all you have. I need to know what you think happened. And why. I need you to promise you’ll tell me the truth. If you give me your word, you won’t break it. Will you promise me the truth?”

“Okay.” She nodded. “The truth. I give you my word. I need the same from you. I have to ask you something, and I need the truth.”

“Lies won’t help her.”

“No, they won’t. Morris, did you know that Detective—that Amaryllis had had an intimate relationship with Max Ricker’s son, with Alex Ricker, before she transferred to New York?”

SHE KNEW THE ANSWER INSTANTLY. HIS EYES widened; his lips trembled open. He said nothing for a moment or two while she watched him drink coffee and compose himself. He sat, not in one of his sharp, stylish suits, but in a lightweight black sweater and jeans, with his hair pulled back in a simple tail with none of the usual ornamentation.

As he sat, in silence, she knew just as she’d told Roarke, she’d kicked a friend in the gut a second time.

“Morris—”

He held up a hand asking for another minute. “You’ve confirmed this?”

“Yes.”

“I knew there had been someone, that she’d been involved with someone before she left Atlanta.” He lifted a hand to rub at his temple. “They’d broken it off, and it left her upset, at loose ends. It was one of the reasons she decided to transfer. Just a fresh start, a clean slate—some distance between what had been and what could be. That’s how she put it. I should’ve told you yesterday. I didn’t think of it. I couldn’t think—”

“It’s okay.”

“She mentioned it, the way you do when you’re getting to know someone. She said . . . What did she say? I’m trying to remember. Just that they couldn’t make it work, couldn’t be what each other needed them to be. She never mentioned his name. I never asked. Why would I?”

“Can you tell me, did you get a sense she was worried about him, about how they’d ended it?”

“No. I only remember thinking what kind of fool had let her get away. She didn’t bring it up again, and neither did I. It was the past. We were both focused on now, on where we were going. On what could be, I suppose. Did he do this?”

“I don’t know. It’s a lead, and I’ll follow it. But I don’t know, Morris. I’ll tell you what I know, if you trust me to handle it.”

“There’s no one I trust more. That’s the truth.”

“Alex Ricker is in New York.”

The color that came into his face was rage, barely controlled. “Hear me out,” she demanded. “He contacted her, and she went to see him the day before she died. He volunteered this information to me this morning when I went to see him.”

Morris set his coffee aside and, rising, walked to Eve’s skinny window. “They weren’t still involved. I would have known.”

“He said they weren’t, and that they broke off their relationship amicably. They met as friends. They had a drink and a catch-up conversation during which she told him she’d met someone, was involved. He stated that she looked happy.”

“Did you believe him?”

Hell, she thought, how did she dance around her suspicions and keep her word? “I believe he might have been telling the truth, or part of the truth. If she’d felt threatened or worried, would she have told you?”

“I want to think so. I want to think even if she hadn’t I would have seen it, felt it. She didn’t tell me she was meeting him, and now I can’t ask her why she didn’t. What it means that she didn’t.”

She didn’t have to see his face to know there was pain. “It could be it meant so little to her she didn’t feel it was worth mentioning.”

He turned back. “But you don’t think so.”

“Morris, I know people in relationships do strange things. They say too much, don’t say enough.” Take me, she thought. Had she told Roarke she intended to contact Webster?

“Or it could be, especially since our relationship had become very serious, I might have asked questions. Ones she didn’t want to answer. It’s not that she’d been involved with someone before, neither of us were children. But she’d been involved with Alex Ricker.”

“Yes.”

“The son of a known criminal, a known killer. One who, when they were involved, was still at large. Still in power. How likely is it that Alex Ricker is uninvolved, unconnected to his father’s activities? But she, a police official, became involved with him.”

“He’s never been arrested or charged with any crime.”

“Dallas.”

“Okay, yeah, it’s dicey, it’s tricky. It’s sticky. I’m a police official, Morris, and I not only got involved with a man cops all over the planet—and off it—gave the hard eye to, I married him.”

“One forgets,” he murmured. He came back to sit, to pick up his coffee again. “It would’ve caused some friction for her on the job. As it did for you.” When she said nothing, Morris lowered the mug. “Was she investigated?”

“I’m going to find that out. But . . .” Truth, she reminded herself. That was the deal here. “She kept it to herself. From Ricker’s statement, from what I’ve gotten out of Atlanta, and out of her squad here, nobody knew she’d had a personal relationship with him.”

“I see.”

Worse, Eve realized, worse for him that the relationship with Alex had been
important
enough for her to have kept it a secret.

“It could’ve been for a lot of reasons. The simplest is she wanted to keep her personal life off the job.”

“No, you’re trying to comfort me again, to spare me. I know how the grapevine works. Everyone in my house, in hers, I’d wager nearly every cop, clerk, drone, and tech in Central knows Ammy and I were involved. Keeping it quiet had to be deliberate, and because of who he was. And to keep it quiet for that long? That’s serious.”

He paused a moment, and his brows drew together. “You’re going to find out. You mean you’re going to talk to IAB?”

“It’s necessary.”

“If they didn’t know, they will now. After you talk to them.”

“I can’t go around it. I’ll be as careful as I can, but—”

“Give me a minute.” He stared down into his coffee. “Max Ricker carried cops in his pockets like other men carry loose credits. You’re wondering now if his son had Ammy in his.”

“I have to ask. I have to look at it. If I factor it out, push it off to spare her rep, maybe her killer slips through the gap. That’s not going to happen. Not even for you.”

“I
knew
her. I know how she thought, how she felt, how she slept and ate and lived. I’d have known if she was dirty. I know how she defined her work and how she felt about doing it.”

“You didn’t know about Alex Ricker.”

He stared. She watched the shutter come down, the one that shut her out as a friend, as a cop, as a colleague. “No, I didn’t.” He got back up onto his feet, spoke stiffly. “Thank you for keeping me informed.”

She got to hers before he could get to the door of her office. “Morris, I can’t and won’t apologize for doing my job, but I can be sorry that the way I need to do it causes you pain. Just like I’m sorry to have to say this. Stay away from Alex Ricker. If I don’t have your word you’ll keep clear, make no contact with him, I’ll put a tail on you. I won’t let you impede the investigation.”

“You have my word.” He went out and closed the door behind him.

Alone, Eve sat at her desk, dropped her head into her hands. Friendships, she thought, were so damn complicated, so bound with sharp edges that could jab a hole through you at any given point.

Why did people always get tangled up with other people? Why put ourselves through this
shit
?

She
had
to consider the possibility Coltraine had been dirty. Wasn’t that hard enough? Did she have to carry the guilt for hurting Morris along with it?

Crap. Yeah, she did. No way out of it.

She wanted to ignore the knock on her door, really wanted just to wallow for a while in a little stew of self-pity. But duty won.

“What? What the fuck do you want?”

The door eased open a few inches, and Peabody peered in. “Ah. Are you okay?”

There it was, Eve supposed. There was the answer to why people got tangled with people. Because when you were down, when you were wallowing, someone you mattered to would ask if you were okay.

“No. Really not. Come in. Shut the door.” When she had, Eve blew out a breath and shook it off. “EDD?”

“There’s nothing off on her home or work units. Nothing off on her house or office ’links. Nothing referencing an appointment or meet for the night she died. Her date books check out. The only one we haven’t been able to pin down, so far, is a notation for AR, the day before her murder. It’s listed under personal. No address, no number, with the additional notation of a-slash-s, which corresponds with ‘after shift’ in her other notes.”