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.
“I got through. I had flashes, sure, and nightmares, but I locked all that away, too. If I couldn’t get to them, nobody else could. And nobody could hurt me with all that, ever again. Then there was purpose. As far as I can see, clear back from waking up in that hospital in Dallas, I had to be a cop. That got me through, all of it, the good and the bad. And when I got my badge, I felt . . . strong, directed. That was my goal, like wiping these men out of existence is theirs. The badge, the job, protect and serve, stand for the victim. I had to. Survival. Then there was Mavis and Feeney, and with them and the job, it was something like family even if I didn’t know it. And every day, every fucking day, when I picked up the badge?”
She took it out of her pocket, studied it. “Every day, I had purpose. I had beaten back what I’d locked away. I stood for something. The victims mattered, Peabody, whoever they were, whatever they’d done. They were mine to stand for.”
“I know that. You taught me that.”
“Maybe you think I don’t know what you felt the day you got your gold shield, what Trueheart felt the other day. But I do. I remember exactly what I felt. Detective Dallas. Oh yeah, I remember the thrill and the terror of that all mixed up with pride inside me. And when I made Lieutenant, Christ, all that thrill and terror again, and that pride, that purpose. The victims mattered, and the cops under me. I needed to be the best I could, for the victims, for the cops.”
She tested the weight of the badge in her hand, slipped it away again.
“And I set my sight on the bars. Captain Dallas, that’s got a ring. I’d beat back what I’d locked inside me until it was nothing. Until those flashes that made me sick, scared me to the bone, those nightmares that would grip me by the throat in the middle of the night were nothing. I had purpose, goddamn it, and I was never going back to being the victim. But . . .
“Let’s move,” she said abruptly. “We’re wasting time here.”
Saying nothing, Peabody grabbed up her coat, shrugging into it as Eve headed for the door. She kept a respectful, if concerned, silence all the way down to the lobby.
“Let’s get a four-man team at the Betz residence. Uniform Carmichael to head it, so three more. Two from our unit, then see if Officer Shelby’s available.”
“Shelby?”
“She’s with the Five-two. First on scene at the Catiana Dubois homicide.”
“Oh yeah, I got her.”
“I’m looking at her. If she holds up like I think she will, and wants it, I’m bringing her into Homicide. We need a fresh uniform.”
As they walked, Eve took out her own ’link, contacted Baxter, brought him up to date.
“So when your relief gets there, go back to Central. Once EDD nails the key swipes, we’ll move there. And maybe the lab will hit a miracle with the old keys. Meanwhile, we start digging deeper on the three women we know. You and Trueheart take MacKensie. I want to know what her first fucking word was, what her mother eats for breakfast, where she shops, banks, plays. Everywhere she’s lived since before she was freaking born.”
“Got that, LT. We’ll review with the relief and we’re all over it.”
She grunted, clicked off. When they got in the car, it released a new blast of resentment from other drivers. Eve mentally flicked them the bird, turned off her On Duty light, pulled out.
“But,” she continued as if there had been no pause in the conversation, “it wasn’t going to be enough. I had to believe it would be, but it wasn’t going to be enough to keep getting me through. Mira saw that, and, God, I resented the hell out of her back then because she saw what I didn’t want her to see. What I didn’t want to see. Just stay the fuck out of my head, I’m fine.
“There was an incident—asshole flying on Zeus, and a kid—just a baby. And I couldn’t get there in time. Just too late to stop it. I don’t know why that one came so close to breaking me, but it did. Maybe I’d hit some threshold, maybe it was—What do you call it?—cumulative, but it knocked me hard, and this was just as the DeBlass case landed on me. I’m fine, I can handle it. Handle seeing that baby cut to pieces, handle Testing because I’d had to terminate the asshole who cut the baby to pieces, handle the DeBlass case with its Code Five.”
She paused at a light, scrubbed her hands over her face, wishing she could will away the fatigue and the raw feeling in her gut. “And then there was Roarke. I still remember doing the first run on him, having his face come on my screen. And thinking: Well, look at him. Rich guy—stupidly rich guy. Mr. Mystery with no first name and a face that just took your breath. I shouldn’t have gotten involved with him. And I couldn’t stop—it was there right from the first second, and I couldn’t stop. It wasn’t physical.”
Then she laughed, took off at the green. “Hell yeah, it was physical, but I mean it wasn’t just.”
“I know what you mean. I get that.”
“It was like something out there said, ‘Hell, let’s give these two a break. It’s time they found each other.’ And it broke, those first cracks on what I’d locked away. I could start facing it because I could trust him to stand for me. Trust him to let me stand for myself. There was no way to lock away what I felt for him. I couldn’t make it stop or go back, and somewhere along the line I stopped wanting it to. I think, without that, I’d have lost myself. Somewhere down the line the victims would stop mattering so much, the job would just be the job. Maybe I’d have gotten the bars first, who knows, but I’d have stopped being the kind of cop I needed to be.”
And that, she knew absolutely, that would have ended her.
“I’d have stopped surviving without what I let in, with him. Without what letting that in let me let in otherwise. I might have pulled you in, like maybe I’ll pull in Shelby, but we wouldn’t be partners. I wouldn’t have had the chops for it.”