Brotherhood in Death (In Death 42)

Somebody was getting lucky, and somebody wasn’t.

“There she is. Just past four hundred hours. Doesn’t look smug now,” Eve continued as they followed Su’s progress into the building, up to her floor.

“No, she looks really tired—I’m not sympathizing, especially since we’re pretty damn sure she just got finished killing Wymann, and probably spent some time working on Betz. But she looks more than tired, Dallas.”

Fighting tears, Eve thought. Though Su threw one defiant look at the camera as she fumbled with her own key swipe, the look glittered with tears.

“She’s churned up, maybe even a little sick to her stomach, because the kill, this second kill, didn’t give her what she needs, what she wants more than anything else.”

“What does she want?”

“Peace. She wants that inner fucking peace.”

It’s all you want when the nightmares come, Eve thought. And the only thing you can’t find.

“The justice they tag on the bodies? That’s small change. She wants to be able to sleep at night. She wants it to be over. She wants, more than anything, for it to never have happened. But the killings? It’s not going to give her any of that. If she didn’t know it before, she’s starting to know it now. When no matter how much she washes, she can still smell the blood on her hands.”

“But they still have Betz.”

“Yeah. Knowing it won’t make her—any of them—stop. She thinks maybe, just maybe, when they finish it, she’ll find what she needs. Maybe, just maybe, she’ll be able to sleep. But she won’t.”

“I guess she looked resigned on top of the tired.”

“Resigned, resolved—pretty much the same. They’ll finish it. Or they’ll try. There’s no going back now, not for any of them. She’ll go get the van after we shake her in the morning, wherever she has it, pick up the others, and they’ll all gather where they’re holding Betz. They won’t take him back to his house. They have to be smart enough to know we’ll be on the house.”

Suddenly exhausted, Eve sat on the side of the bed. “We’ll pull Baxter and Trueheart off that, but put another team on. Wouldn’t pay to be wrong on that. The keys, Betz’s keys. Maybe they’re an angle. Let’s go harass EDD.”

“I have to say something.”

Eve shoved her hair back, rose. “What?”

“This case, and what we’re looking at as motive. It has to affect you. It has to make you think of what happened to you. But it’s not the same, Dallas. It’s not the same.”

“Yeah, it does. But my kill was justified. Him or me, and I was a child. That’s not the same. He was raping me, and my arm—” She brought her hand up, all but felt the bone snap again. “When the bone broke, when he broke my arm, that shock and that pain, it was alive. Killing him was the only way to make it stop, to make him stop, to survive. So that’s not the same as this.”

She let out a breath, but her stomach still clenched and roiled.

“But the rest? The fear, that pain, the violation, what takes root in you and never really goes away? That’s the same. So I know they’re not going to find peace, or the justice they tell themselves they’re after, through blood. I sure as hell didn’t.”

“How did you? Find peace?”

“I’ll let you know when I do.”

When Peabody nodded, bent to pick up her field kit, Eve jammed her hands in her pockets.

“That’s not fair, and it’s not all the way true, either.”

“You don’t have to talk about it. I didn’t mean to push on that. I just needed to say what I said.”

Fuck the sick stomach, Eve thought, and the dull throb in the back of her skull.

They wouldn’t win.

“I’ve got insight on this investigation—and I think that insight is partly why we got closer faster than they expected. You’re my partner, and . . . You’re my partner,” she repeated, as that said it all.

“There were doctors and shrinks and counselors and cops. Child services. They could address the physical injuries, the rapes, the broken bones, the beating. But the rest? I’d locked that away where even I couldn’t find it. That was survival for me, just like putting that little knife in Richard Troy.”

Standing there, she felt around in her pocket, closed her hand over her badge. That tangible shape.