Reunion in Death (15 page)

"He should've known," Peabody murmured. "Of all people, he should've known."

"Her eyes would be shining, all those lies in them. He's old enough to be her grandfather, and there she is. Young and beautiful, with that tight, smooth body. He likes them young. Younger even than she, but she's here. She lets him do whatever he wants to her, take all the time he needs. It doesn't matter to her. He's already dead. Her mind's on the next, even as she groans and writhes and pretends to get off. Afterwards, she'll natter him. It was wonderful. Amazing. She knows what to say, how to say it to make him feel like the fuck king of the world. She'd have researched him, too."

She turned back into the living area. "She knows he likes brandy. She poisoned the bottle while he was in the shower, or taking a piss. Doesn't take long. Doesn't matter if he drinks it now, or later, but she'd rather now so she can watch. Cozy up to him on the couch, tell him all about what and who she's doing next. Can she have some wine? Can she stay awhile? It's so good to have someone to talk to, to be with.

"He pours the wine, he pours the brandy. It's his wine, his brandy. He's not worried. She probably drinks first, while she chats, just bubbling over with energy and enthusiasm. He'd smile at her while he drinks, caught up in her, sated from the sex, wondering if he'll be able to get it up for a second round. When he feels the poison in him, it's too late. He's shocked, horrified. Not him. It can't be. But he'd see it on her face then. She'd let him see it. That cold pleasure. Tidy herself up, secure the apartment. Run into the neighbor and have a friendly conversation. Uncle Eli's going out of town for several weeks, isn't that nice?"

"And she walks away," Peabody finished.

"And she walks away. Seal it up, Peabody. I'll go in, file the report. Then I'm going home."

CHAPTER 12

If the appeal of the suburbs baffled steadfast urbanite Eve Dallas, the appeal of the great flat stretches of Texas was foreign as a moonscape. Texas had cities, great, sprawling, crowded cities.

So why did anyone actually choose to live on the pancake grass of the prairie where you could see for miles, where you were surrounded by an endless spread of space?

Even so, there were towns, of course, with buildings that blocked that uneasy view, and straight-arrow roads that spilled into pretzel-curved freeways leading to and from civilization.

She could certainly understand people driving toward those towns and cities and buildings. But she'd never comprehend what pushed them to drive out into the nothingness.

"What do they get from this?" she asked Roarke as they zoomed down one of those roads. "There's nothing here but grass and fences and four-legged animals. Really big four-legged animals," she added as they traveled past a herd of horses with cautious suspicion.

"Yippee-ky-yay."

She shifted that suspicious stare to Roarke only briefly. She preferred to keep close watch on the animals. Just in case.

"This guy's loaded," she went on, slightly mollified by the roaring clack of a helicopter that buzzed the near field. "He's got a thriving, successful business in Dallas. But he chooses to live out here. Voluntarily. There's something really sick about that."

With a laugh, Roarke picked up her hand, the one that kept inching up toward her weapon, and kissed it. "There are all kinds of people in the world."

"Yeah, and most of them are crazy. Jesus, are those cows! Cows shouldn't be that big, should they? It's unnatural."

"Just think steaks, darling."

"Uh-uh, that's just creepy. Are you sure this is the right way? This can't be right. There's nothing out here."

"May I point out the several houses we're passing along this route?"

"Yeah, but I think the cows must live in them." She had a flash of bovine activities inside the low-slung houses. Watching some screen, having cow parties, making cow love in four-poster beds. And shuddered. "God, that's creepy, too. I hate the country."

Roarke glanced down at the in-dash navigation screen. He'd worn jeans and a white T-shirt, and a pair of sleek, black sunshades. It was a casual look for him, even simple. But he still looked like city. Rich city, Eve mused.

"We should be there in a few minutes," he told her. "There's a bit of civilization up ahead."

"Where?" She risked taking her attention away from the cows, looked through the windshield and saw the spread of a town. Buildings, fuel stations, shops, restaurants, more houses. Her gut loosened a little. "Okay, that's good."

"But we're not going through there. We veer off here." So saying, he turned off the wide ribbon of road onto a narrow offshoot. One that, in Eve's opinion, brought them entirely too close for comfort to those strange, flat grassy fields.

"Those fences don't look all that strong."

"If there's a stampede, we'll outrun them."

She moistened her lips, swallowed. "I bet you think that's funny."

But she was somewhat mollified as there were other vehicles on the road. Other cars, trucks, long sleek trailers, and a few topless power Jeeps.

Buildings began to spring up. Not houses, Eve thought. Farm buildings or ranch buildings. Whatever. Barns and sheds and animal shelters. Stables, she supposed. Granaries or whatever they were. Silos, and what kind of word was that? It looked like a painting with all that grass, the crops, the bored-faced cattle, and the strong reds and whites of the outbuildings.

"What's that guy doing?" she demanded, inching up in the seat to stare beyond Roarke's profile.

"He appears to be riding a horse."

"Yeah, yeah, I can see that. But why?"

"I have no idea. Perhaps he wants to."

"See?" To punctuate it, she slapped Roarke's shoulder. "Sick. People are just sick." She let out a little breath of relief when she spotted the ranch house.

It was enormous, sprawling all over hell and back on one story. Portions of it were painted that same bright white and others looked to be fashioned from stones cobbled all together on a whim. There were sections built of glass, and she nearly shuddered at the idea of standing there looking out at field after field. And having what was in those fields looking in at her.

There were smaller fenced areas, and while there were horses in them, there was also considerable human activity. That relieved her, even if those humans were all wearing cowboy hats.

She saw a helipad and a number of vehicles, many of which she couldn't begin to identify. She had to assume they were used for some sort of rural labor.

They drove through enormous stone pillars topped by rearing horses.

"Okay, he knows we're coming, and he's not happy about it," she began. "He's bound to be hostile, defensive, and uncooperative. But he's also smart enough to know I can complicate his life, dredge up the past, and press the local cops to add some pressure. He doesn't want all this crap uncovered in his backyard. Doing this on his turf lets him feel more in control."

"And how long are you going to let him feel that way?"

"We'll see how it goes." She stepped out of the car and nearly lost her breath in the heat.

A baking heat, she realized, very unlike the steambath of a New York City summer. She smelled grass and what had to be manure. "What's that clacking sound?" she asked Roarke.

"I'm not altogether sure. I think it might be chickens."

"Christ almighty. Chickens. If you tell me to think omelettes, I'll have to hit you."

"Understood." He walked up the pathway beside her. He knew her well enough to be certain her preoccupation with the local scene helped to keep her mind off her fears and worries. She'd yet to say anything about heading into Dallas itself, or what she could or would do there.

The doors were ten feet wide and crowned by the bleached-out horns of some sort of animal. Roarke pondered it, and the type of personality that enjoyed decorating with dead animals, while Eve rang the bell.

Moments later, the image of the old American West yanked open the door.

He was weathered as leather, tall as a mountain, wide as a river. He wore boots with toes sharp as stilettos and crusted with dirt. His jeans were dark indigo and looked stiff enough to stand tall without him while his shirt was a faded red-and-white check. His hair was a dull silver, slicked back from a hard and ruddy face, mapped with lines, toughened in a scowl.

When he spoke, his voice rattled like loose gravel in a very deep bucket. "You the city cops?"

"Lieutenant Dallas." Eve offered her badge. "This is my field assistant-"

"I know you." He pointed a finger, thick as a soy dog on his ham of a hand, at Roarke. "Roarke. You're Roarke, and you're no cop."

"Praise be," Roarke acknowledged. "I happen to be married to one."

"Yeah." He nodded as he considered Eve. "Recognize you now, too. Big city New York cop." He looked like he might spit, but restrained himself. "Jake T. Parker, and I don't have to talk to you. Fact is, my lawyers advise against it."

"You're not now under any legal obligation to speak with me, Mr. Parker. But you can be put under that legal obligation, and I'm sure your lawyers advised you of that as well."

He hooked his wide thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans. His scarred belt creaked at the movement. "Take you some little while to pull that off, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, sir, it would. I wonder how many more people Julianna can kill before the lawyers wrangle that out? You care to speculate?"

"I've got nothing to do with her, haven't in more than a dozen years. I made my peace there, and I don't need some city-girl cop from New York coming here and throwing that dirt in my face."

"I'm not here to throw dirt, Mr. Parker. I'm not here to judge you. I'm here to learn anything that might help me stop Julianna from taking more lives. One of them might be yours."

"Shit. Pardon my French," he added. "That girl's nothing but a ghost to me, and I'm less than that to her."

Eve pulled stills out of her field bag. "This is Walter Pettibone. He was nothing to her, either. And Henry Mouton. They had families, Mr. Parker. They had lives. She destroyed all that."

He looked at the stills, looked away. "Never should've let her out of prison."

"You won't get an argument there from me. I helped put her in a cage once before. I'm asking you to help me do it again."

"I got a life of my own. It took me a long time to get it back so I could wake up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror."

He took a dirt-brown Stetson hat from a stand with pegs just inside the door, fit it on his head. Then he stepped out, shut the door at his back. "I don't want this in my house. I'm sorry not to be hospitable, but I don't want her in my house. We'll talk outside. I want to take a look at the stock anyhow."

As a concession against the white glare of the sun, Eve dug out shaded glasses. "Has she been in contact with you at all?"

"I haven't heard a peep from that girl since she walked out the day she turned eighteen. The day she told her mama what had been going on. The day she laughed in my face."

"Do you know if she's been in contact with her mother?"

"Couldn't say. Lost track of Kara when she left me. Heard she'd taken a job off planet. Farming satellite. Far away from me, I'd say, as she could manage."

Eve nodded. She knew Kara Dunne Parker Rowan's location. She'd remarried four years earlier, and refused to speak to Eve regarding her daughter. Her daughter, she'd informed Eve during their brief transmission, was dead. Eve imagined Julianna had the same attitude toward the woman who'd birthed her.

"Did you rape Julianna, Mr. Parker?"

His face tightened, like old leather stretching over a frame. "If you mean did I force myself on her, I did not. I've done a lot of atoning for what I did, Lieutenant."

He paused at a paddock fence, propped one booted foot on a bottom rung, and stared out at his men and horses. "There was a time I put all the blame on her. Took me a long while before I could spread that out to myself and deal with it. She was fifteen, chronologically speaking anyways. Fifteen, and a man more than fifty has no right touching those kinda goods. A man married to a good woman, hell to any woman's got no right touching her daughter. No excuses."

"But you did touch her."

"I did." He straightened his massive shoulders as if taking on weight. "I'm gonna tell this my way, just saying up front I know what I did was as wrong as it gets, and I take the blame and responsibility for that."

"All right, Mr. Parker. Tell me your way."

"She'd slither around the house wearing next to nothing. Crawl in my lap and call me Daddy, but there wasn't anything daughterly in how she said it."

He set his teeth, looked away from Eve, and out over his land. "Her own daddy was a man hard on women, but he next to worshipped that girl, so her mama told me. Julianna could do no wrong and when she did, he blamed her mama. I loved that woman. I loved my wife," he said, stepping back, flicking his gaze to Eve's face before he began to walk again. "She was a good woman, churchgoing, quiet-natured, sturdy. If she had a blind spot, it was that girl. She has a way of blinding people."

"She behaved provocatively with you."

"Shit. Pardon my French. Fifteen years old, and she knew just how to wrap a man around her finger, get whatever she wanted. She stirred up something in me that shouldn't've been stirred up. I shouldn't have let it happen. I started thinking about her, looking at her in a way that damned me straight to hell. But I couldn't stop. Maybe didn't want to, not then. I know right from wrong, Lieutenant. I know damn well where the line is."

"And you crossed it."

"I did. One night when her mama's out at one of her women's meetings, she came into the study, slid on my lap. I ain't going into the details of it, except to say I didn't force her into a damn thing. She was as willing as they come. But I crossed that line, one a man can't ever step back over."

"You were intimate with her."

"I was. That night, and whenever I could manage it for nearly three years after. She made it easy to manage. She talked her mother into going off with friends on a weekend shopping spree. And I lay with my stepdaughter in my marriage bed. I loved her, God is my witness, I loved her in a kind of insane way. I believed she felt the same."

He shook his head at his own foolishness. "Man old enough to know better. I gave her money. God only knows how much over those three years. Bought her cars, fancy clothes, whatever she asked for. I told myself we'd go away together. Soon as she was old enough, I'd leave her mama and we'd go off anywhere she wanted. I was a fool. I've learned to live with that. Harder was to learn to live with the sins I'd committed."

She imagined him sitting in the witness chair at Julianna's trial, speaking in just that no bullshit way. Things, Eve decided, would have gone differently if he had.

"After her arrest, during her trial, she claimed you had raped and abused her, and used that to bargain for a lesser sentence. You made no attempt to set the record straight, to defend yourself."

"No, I did not." He looked down at Eve from under the wide brim of his hat. "Have you ever done anything, Lieutenant, something that shames you so deep it puts fear in your throat and ice in your belly?"

She thought of Dallas, and what lurked there. "I know what it's like to be afraid, Mr. Parker."

"I was afraid of her. I was afraid of what I became with her. If I'd testified about how it was, I'd still have been a grown man who'd committed adultery with the minor child of his own wife. That's about the time I went into counseling, starting working at accepting my responsibility. Nothing I could do for the men she'd killed. And the fact was, it would've been her word against mine. If I hadn't been there at the time, I'd've believed hers."

"Did she demonstrate violent behavior during the time she lived with you?"

"Hell." He snorted out a laugh. "Had a temper like a whiplash, struck out fast and sharp, cut straight through. Then it was done. Easier to see now what I couldn't then. She's cold, right down through the bone. She hated me from the moment I starting seeing her mother. I see that now, too. Hated me in that icy way of hers because I was a man, because I was a man who could step in and have some say over her. So she twisted that around until she had all the say. Then she humiliated me because I was weak, humiliated her mother because she'd loved me. She strutted out that door and left us broken. Just the way she wanted us."