“Tom, please—”
“Why don’t you make some coffee?” He turned and pressed his lips to his wife’s brow. He murmured something to her, and she let out a shuddering breath and nodded.
“I’ll make this as quick as I can, Mr. Palmer,” Eve told him, as Helen walked quickly down a central hallway.
“You dealt very fairly with us during an unbearable time, Lieutenant.” He showed them into a small living area. “I haven’t forgotten that. Helen—my wife’s been on edge all day. For several days,” he corrected himself. “Since we were informed that David escaped. We’ve worked very hard to keep that out of the center, but…”
He gestured helplessly and sat down.
Eve remembered these decent people very well, their shock and grief over what their son was. They had raised him with love, with discipline, with care, and still they had been faced with a monster.
There had been no abuse, no cruelty, no underlying gruel for that monster to feed on. Mira’s testing and analysis had corroborated Eve’s impression of a normal couple who’d given their only child their affection and the monetary and social advantages that had been at their disposal.
“I don’t have good news for you, Mr. Palmer. I don’t have easy news.”
He folded his hands in his lap. “He’s dead.”
“No.”
Tom closed his eyes. “God help me. I’d hoped—I’d actually hoped he was.” He got up quickly when he heard his wife coming back. “Here, I’ll take that.” He bent to take the tray she carried. “We’ll get through this, Helen.”
“I know. I know we will.” She came in, sat, busied herself pouring the coffee she’d made. “Lieutenant, do you think D
avid’s come back to New York?”
“We know he has.” She hesitated, then decided they would hear the news soon enough through the media. “Early this morning the body of Judge Wainger was found in Rockefeller Plaza. It’s David’s work,” she continued as Helen moaned. “He’s contacted me, with proof. There’s no doubt of it.”
“He was supposed to be given treatment. Kept away from people so he couldn’t hurt them, hurt himself.”
“Sometimes the system fails, Mrs. Palmer. Sometimes you can do everything right, and it just fails.”
Helen rose, walked to the window, and stood looking out. “You said something like that to me before. To us. That we’d done everything right, everything we could. That it was something in David that had failed. That was kind of you, Lieutenant, but you can’t know what it’s like, you can’t know how it feels to know that a monster has come from you.”
No, Eve thought, but she knew what it was to come from a monster, to have been raised by one for the first eight years of her life. And she lived with it.
“I need your help,” she said instead. “I need you to tell me if you have any idea where he might go, who he might go to. He has a place,” she continued. “A private place where he can work. A house, a small building somewhere in New York. In the city or very close by.”
“He has nowhere.” Tom lifted his hands. “We sold everything when we relocated. Our home, my business, Helen’s. Even our holiday place in the Hamptons. We cut all ties. The house where David—where he lived that last year—was sold as well. We live quietly here, simply. The money we’d accumulated, the money from the sales is sitting in an account. We haven’t had the heart to…we don’t need it.”
“He had money of his own,” Eve prompted.
“Yes, inheritance, a trust fund. It was how he financed what he was doing.” Tom reached out a hand for his wife’s and clasped her fingers tightly. “We donated that money to charity. Lieutenant, all the places where he might have gone are in the hands of others now.”
“All right. You may think of something later. However far-fetched, please contact me.” She rose. “When David’s in custody again, I’ll let you know. After that, I’ll forget where you are.”
Eve said nothing more until she and Roarke were in the car and headed back. “They still love him. After all he did, after what he is, there’s a part of them that loves him.”
“Yes, and enough, I think, to help you stop him, if they knew how.”
“No one ever cared for us that way.” She took her eyes off the road briefly, met his. “No one ever felt that bond.”
“No.” He brushed the hair from her cheek. “Not until we found each other. Don’t grieve, Eve.”
“He has his mother’s eyes,” she murmured. “Soft and blue and clear. She’s the one who had to change them, I imagine, because she couldn’t look in the mirror and face them every morning.”
She sighed, shook it off.
“But he can,” she said quietly.