You’re cleared for it.”
“I’d like Detective Strong from Illegals, Commander, if she’s up for it.”
“Make it happen. You’ll need more to run the tip line after the media breaks this. One hour, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir. Get moving,” she told the team. “Peabody, contact Lester, Devon. Ask him to come in. Just a follow-up.”
“And the brother?”
“Not until Devon’s in the house. We’ll send a couple of stern-faced uniforms to bring him in. I need to reconnect with Morris, with Dickhead. And I want to go back to the scene. Get Devon in here asap, and we’ll take him after I meet the liaison, shift to the brother, then go out in the field.”
“On it.”
Eve turned back to the board, started toward it.
“Eve.” Mira moved to her. “You have an hour now. Why don’t we go to my office?”
“I really should—” Get it over with, she reminded herself. “Sure. I’ll be there in five.”
7
Eve approached the dragon who guarded Mira’s office expecting her to sniff in disapproval and tell her to wait. Instead the woman spared Eve a brief nod.
“The doctor’s expecting you. Go right in.”
With no choice, no reasonable excuse, Eve stepped into Mira’s sunny, comfortable office.
“You’re very prompt.” Mira stood by her little AutoChef. “I’m just getting tea. Sit down, relax a minute.”
“I’m kind of pressed.”
“I know. I’m going to look over the data you sent me, and your notes, and see if I can be of any more help. But meanwhile …”
In her quiet, easy way, Mira handed Eve floral-scented tea in a delicate china cup, then took her own. She settled in one of her set of blue scoop-chairs, sipped in silence until Eve felt obligated to sit.
Shrinks, she thought, knew the value of silence, just like a cop in Interview.
“You look well,” Mira said conversationally. “How’s your arm?”
“It’s fine.” She rolled her shoulder, got a flash of pain memory. “I heal fast.”
“You’re a physical woman in excellent shape.”
“Meaning the body heals fast.”
Mira merely watched her with those quiet blue eyes. “How do you feel otherwise?”
“I’m good. I’m mostly good. That should be enough. Nobody gets through perfect. There’s always something, some ding, some cloud, some shit. And cops have more of all of that than most. So.”
“But you said this was personal, not work-related.”
“There’s not much distance between the two for me. Sometimes none at all. I’m okay with that, too. I’m good with that.”
Stalling, Mira thought. So reluctant to be here. “You’ve found a way to blend them very well. Will you tell me what’s troubling you?”
“It’s not me. It’s Roarke.”
“I see.”
“Look, I’ve always had vivid dreams.” Eve set the tea aside. She wasn’t in the mood to pretend to drink it. “Ever since I can remember. They’re not always pretty. Why would they be? Where I came from, what I do and see every day now. Maybe they were an escape when I was a kid. I could go somewhere else if I tried hard enough, and even if that place wasn’t all warm and cozy, it was better than the reality. And the nightmares, the flashbacks, with my father, I’d beaten them back. I’d worked through it. I’d finished it.”
Mira just waited her out, waited for the pause. “And now?”
“They’re not as bad as before, but okay, I’m having some issues since Dallas.”
“Not as bad,” Eve insisted. “And I know I’m dreaming. I’m in it, but I know it’s not real. They’re nothing as bad as the one I had when I couldn’t get out, and I hurt Roarke. I won’t ever let that happen again.”
She couldn’t sit. How did people talk about internal horrors sitting down? Pushing up, she let herself move. “Maybe last night was a little more intense, but I’d had a damn vicious day. It’s not surprising I mixed it all together.”
“Mixed what together?”
“The bar, the victims, the whole mess of it.”
She told herself to stay calm, just report. Ordered herself to stay fucking calm.
“I can put myself in a scene. It’s part of being a cop. Seeing what happened, how, and maybe that takes you to why and who. I can see it, smell it, almost touch it. And Jesus, it was on my mind, wasn’t it?”
She heard it, that pissy bite in her tone, worked to smooth it out again. “So I went back to the bar, in my head, in the dream. But they were there, too. Stella, sitting at the bar. Her throat’s open, the way it was when McQueen finished her. When I found her on the floor of his place. She comes back first when I dream now, sometimes without him. She blames me, always blames me, just like she always did.”
“Do you?”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“He’d have killed her eventually. That was pattern for McQueen. Maybe I speeded it up.”
“How?”
“How?” Eve stopped, confused. “I caught her, arrested her. Hell, I put her in the hospital where I put the fear of God in her trying to get her to flip on McQueen.”
“Let me qualify.” With her elegant cup of fragrant tea perfectly balanced, Mira studied Eve. “You caught her and arrested her. Doing so, as she ran, involved a vehicular chase during which she wrecked the van—the van she and McQueen had used in their abduction of Melinda Jones and thirteen-year-old Darlie Morgansten. She put herself in the hospital, where you did your job—again—pressuring her to tell you where McQueen was holding the woman and the child. Is that accurate?”
“Yes.”
“Did you aid in her escape from the hospital? Help her kill the guard, injure the nurse? Did you help her steal a car so she could run to McQueen to warn him you were closing in?”
“Of course not, but—”
“Then how did you speed her death?”
Eve sat again. “It feels like I did. Maybe it’s not accurate. It just feels that way.”
“Do you feel that way, here and now?”
“You mean do I feel guilty or responsible? Not guilty,” Eve said. “Not when I look at it, step by step. Responsible, yeah, to an extent. The same as I’d be if she’d been anyone. I was in charge. I took her in, and I pushed her hard. But she was what she was, did what she did. I’m not responsible for that.”
“She’s not anyone. She was your biological mother.”
“I’m not responsible for that, either.”
“No.” Mira smiled, gently, and for the first time. “You’re not.”
“She didn’t know who I was. In reality. When she was alive and looking right at me, she didn’t know who I was. I was just a fucking cop who’d screwed things up for her. But in the dreams, she knows.”
“Did you want her to recognize you, before she died?”
“No.”
“So sure?”
“Absolutely.” Saying it, knowing it was true, settled her a little. “I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it while it happened. Everything moved so fast, and it rocked me, I admit, when I saw her face-to-face. And I knew. If she’d known me, somehow, it would have been a living nightmare. She could, and I know would, have done everything to ruin me, to ruin Roarke. To try to extort money. My life would have been hell if she’d known me, and
