Secrets in Death (In Death 45)

“Head butt.” Absently, Eve rubbed at it. “I had to at least half admire her style. Not evil, but the potential’s always there, depending on circumstance. You could have turned evil. Me, too. The potential’s there,” she said as she shifted to look at him again.

“That may be. While I’ve done my share in cold blood, and more than my share of deeds the cop in you may understand and will never approve of. And still, I’ve looked at myself before and after you, and come to realize that as lost as I was before you, there were lines I couldn’t and wouldn’t cross. And you, Lieutenant?”

He studied her as she did him. “You? Your lines are, and have always been, closer and deeper than mine. There’s mean in you, just another of the countless reasons I adore you. But your potential for evil—and I agree that’s in all of us—is far, far outweighed by your absolute dedication to protecting and serving, not just people, but that amorphous goal of justice.”

“I can see myself before and after you, just as clearly. And I can see me doing the job I’m doing now. With this.” She gestured to the board. “And not letting myself feel what I’m feeling. Not admitting it to myself, much less anyone else.”

There it was, Roarke thought, the under it all. “What are you feeling?”

“Those degrees of evil. Mars? She’s on the scale. She doesn’t ring the bell, but she’s on the scale. She didn’t kill or rape or beat small children. She didn’t disembowel some stranger for kicks. I’ve s

een worse. We’ve seen worse.”

He had to touch her now, just glide a hand down her back.

“And you’ve stood for dead higher on that scale than Mars. What troubles you?”

“Her victims, because that’s what they are, every one. We say marks—it’s an easier word, and even puts some of the blame on them. Well, some of it is on them, as they made a choice. But they’re still her victims. Some of them hit close to home, but it’s not even that.”

“How close?”

She scrubbed her hands over her face. “Annie Knight. You know who she is.”

“I do.”

“At thirteen she found out the good, loving woman she thought was her mother was her aunt, and her mother was a junkie whore. So the kid did the stupid, ran off to confront the junkie whore, and ended up stabbing a junkie john who tried, with the whore’s cooperation, to rape her.”

Saying nothing, he crossed the room, took her face in his hands, kissed her gently.

“It’s not like me. She gave him a jab and ran. She had a mother—because the aunt was her mother—to run to. And unless the case file from the asshole in St. Louis leads me in a different direction, she didn’t kill him like she thinks she did. He and the whore ended up putting several holes in each other. But she’s carried that around, and that I understand. We’ve got another mother trying to protect her kid from rape by sick fuck ex, and the kid ends up killing him. Santiago and Carmichael caught that one. We’ve got people, so far on this one, mostly trying to protect loved ones as much, maybe more, than themselves. That was Mars’s skill.”

“She sniffed out people with dark secrets who could pay.”

“Had to have some misses, like with you, but I think she, yeah, sniff’s a good word. She had a sense, at least about where to start looking. Maybe she had some form of sensitivity, maybe who she was will help us pin that down. She sniffed out, then she preyed. In at least one case, she had somebody drug a potential mark’s drink, set him up so she could squeeze him. It likely wasn’t the first time she helped her hobby along. Was it business or pleasure, or a mix? I should talk to Mira, get her take.”

“Because the more you understand the victim, the more you might the killer.”

“Usually.” Her computer signaled an incoming. “Feeney’s report,” she said after a glance. “Excellent.”

“I’ll leave you to it.”

“I have a seven o’clock interview with another mark, close to home—I mean our literal home this time.”

“I’ll wait and go with you. I’ll find a place to work in the meantime.”

“Where do you hole up?”

“Here and there.” He kissed the top of her head when she sat back down at her desk. “Just tag me when you’re ready to go.”

“Will— Shit, wait. I’ll walk out with you. I want to cut Peabody and McNab loose.”

“Now who’s being a mother?”

Mildly insulted, she scowled. “I’m being a lieutenant. If my team’s burnt, they’re useless to me.”

She walked out and up to Peabody’s desk. “Do you have the run on Hyatt?”

“Just finished. Hey,” she said to Roarke. “You guys push through?”