“Fuck me.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I just said we’d bumped her down.” Frustration pumped out of him. “We don’t crucify cops, goddamn it. She’d screwed around with the son of a known bad guy, but nobody can pin anything on the son. It smelled, sure, but nobody found anything to pin on her either. She came here, by all appearances kept her nose clean. We weren’t dogging her. I wish we had been. I don’t like dirty cops, Dallas, but I sure as hell hate dead ones.”
“Okay, fine. Throttle back, Webster.”
“Fuck that, too. Are you looking at jealous former lover here? He does her or has her done because she walked away, and she’s heating sheets with Morris?”
Eve lifted her eyebrows.
“Christ, everyfuckingbody knows Morris had a thing going with her. I’m goddamn sorry for him.”
“Okay. Okay.” She did her own throttling back because she knew that as truth. “Yeah, it could play that way. The problem is, he has a really crappy alibi. If he’s a bad guy, he’s a really smart one, so why doesn’t he have a solid alibi?”
“Sometimes the crappy ones are more believable.”
“Yeah, I’ve gone there, too. He was still in love with her, at least part of the way. Still stuck on her.”
Webster twisted his lips into a pained smile. “I know how that goes.”
Eve eased back, cursed herself for walking straight into it. “Come on.”
“I’ve recovered,” he said easily. “But I do know how it goes. It pisses you off, and pushes at you. I never wanted to kill you though.”
“Whoever did her wanted it. Planned it. You can’t tell me either way, if she was dirty or not.”
“No. You can’t tell me either. You can’t give her the benefit of the doubt. Whatever you want to say about IAB, you know you have to look at her for being on the take, or at least under the influence of her feelings for the guy. You have to follow the line.”
“I don’t have to like it.”
Heat leapt back into his eyes. “You think I do?”
“Why do it otherwise?”
“Because we’re sworn to uphold the law, not use it. Protect and serve, not grab whatever you want along the way. Not do whatever you want. We’re supposed to stand f
or something.”
She couldn’t argue. “Did IAB look at me when I hooked up with Roarke?”
“Yeah, some. You knew it, in your gut. Your rep, your record held up. Plus,” he added with a quick grin, “nobody’s ever pinned anything on him either. The fact is, I know from personal experience, he could be the baddest of the badasses out there, and he’d never use you.”
He hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. “You may never see captain. They may never pull the bars out of their tight asses for you.”
“I know. It doesn’t matter.”
“It should.”
It surprised her to hear the resentment—for her sake—in his voice. And left her without a clue what to say.
“Anyway.” Webster shrugged. “I’ll take a look at things, on my own time. So we don’t put a smear on her if she didn’t earn it. If you get any more on Ricker, either way it leans, I’d appreciate if you’d pass it on.”
“Okay. I can do that.”
“How much does Morris know?”
“I told him about Ricker before I tagged you. I’m not going around him on this.”