“The statute of limitations.”
“They formed a conspiracy—and that changes things, Counselor. You should’ve stuck with corporate. A conspiracy to drug and incapacitate, to kidnap, to hold individuals against their will, to rape and cause bodily, mental, and emotional harm to same. I would have put every one of them away, if you’d given me the chance—the way I’m going to put Marshall Easterday and Ethan MacNamee away.”
“They’re wealthy, powerful men, and the law is slippery, full of loopholes. They would have—”
“Look at me!” Eve slapped a fist on the table. “I would have put them away, and they’d have paid for years. Think about that. They’d have paid for years, not for one night. You decided to be judge, jury, and hangman. So now you’ll pay, too. I would have stood for you, the law would have stood for you. Now I have to stand for the men who raped you. I have to stand for the men you killed.”
“We couldn’t take it anymore.” Tears glittered in her eyes. “We couldn’t bear it, not after Elsi. They’re monsters. Monsters. Imagine a monster forcing his way into you. Imagine revisiting that horror night after night in your dreams. We couldn’t take it anymore.”
She wiped at her wet cheeks. “Each one of us will tell you the same. But they’ll speak to you with counsel present. That’s all I have to say until I, too, have counsel present.”
Eve nodded, rose. “Subject has invoked right to counsel. Interview end. Peabody, will you take Ms. Blake back to Holding where she’ll be permitted to contact her chosen representative?”
“Yes, sir. Ms. Blake.”
Blake got to her feet. “Each one of us was on a path to a life, to work, maybe to love and family. To children. Who knows? Each one of us was ripped off that path and thrown into a dark place where there would always be nightmares. They killed who we were, Lieutenant. Who we might have been. How does the law punish that?”
“The two left will never get out of a cage—it’s their turn to be the animal. You have and had a choice, to make yourself into what you could be, and you made that choice.”
“Elsi was a virgin. Rape was her only sexual experience. She never had a chance.”
As Peabody led Blake out, Eve pressed her hands to her eyes. Her throat burned, raw and dry. Her head pounded in an ugly beat.
She dropped her hands when Mira stepped in.
“So?” Eve shrugged. “Diminished capacity? Despite the calculation?”
“It’s possible they’ll spend their years in a facility, get treatment, therapy. But they conspired to murder, and succeeded with three.”
“But the law’s slippery and full of loopholes.”
“It is. But you’ve done your job, and more. You stood for those women, too, Eve, and you’ll stand for the rest as they’re identified.”
“Harvo’s come through with more names. Do I contact them? What if they don’t remember, are living their lives? What good would it do?”
Mira laid her hands on Eve’s shoulders, rubbed at the knotted muscles as she met Eve’s eyes in the wide mirror.
“You needed to remember, or you couldn’t live your life, not fully, not as you were meant. You could pass the notifications off, with no shame.”
“It would shame me.”
Turning Eve toward her, Mira cupped Eve’s face. “Because you chose to take a terrible thing and make yourself who you are. You and I, we feel for Grace Blake, for all of them. But what you said to her was truth. It was truth, Eve. I’ll help with the notifications. I’ll offer counseling to every one you find, if they want it from me.”
“You deserve each other.”
“Excuse me?”
“You and Mr. Mira. You really deserve each other. Lucky when that happens. You’ll tell him it’s done.”
“I will.”
“I guess he told you I told him because I thought you’d already told him.”
Understanding perfectly, Mira nodded. “Yes, we talked. He’ll be your champion. He’s a quiet hero, Eve, but he’s steadfast, and he’s true. He’ll never betray your trust, and will always be there for you.”
This time when Eve pressed her fingers to her eyes, tears pressed back. “Okay. I’ve got to finish this. I just want to go home and sleep for a couple days.”
“Go home. Sleep awhile.”
“No, I need to interview the rest of them.”
“Then I’ll observe.”
“And then I have to go there. To where this all happened. I need to see it, document it, secure it. There will be other recordings. Goddamn tradition.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“No. No. You should go home. You don’t look like you’ve slept in a week. No offense.”
“None taken, as I have a mirror. Will you do something for me?”
“Sure, if I can.”
“When this is finished, and we both get some sleep, will you come to dinner? You and Roarke. Come to dinner. Dennis will make his chocolate trifle, and you haven’t lived until you’ve tasted it.”
“I’m not sure what it is.”
“Amazing.” She kissed Eve’s cheek. Then, maybe because she needed it just as much, left her cheek pressed against Eve’s. “I’m going to cook you and Roarke a lovely meal, followed by Dennis’s amazing trifle. And we won’t talk about any of this.”
She drew back now. “Will you do that for me?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it sounds good.”
“Go finish it, because you must.”
Eve went to where Peabody waited discreetly outside the door. “Let’s take Downing next, once her lawyer’s here. She’s the one closest to the edge.”
“I’ll have her brought up. She’s contacted the lawyer. She can wait in the box. They should have trusted us. Trusted cops like us to find the proof, to work for justice.”
“Yeah. But they didn’t.”
—
Hours later, what felt like days later, she sat in the cockpit of the copter, winging toward Connecticut.
“They all told basically the same story, but not so exact that it felt rehearsed. I think, yeah, they talked it all through before. If we get caught, we have to say this and that. But they’re not lying.”
“Easterday?”
“Took the deal. Contacted his wife. My intel is she came in, and within thirty minutes, walked out of his hospital room. She kept walking.”
“And the last one?”
“MacNamee. He took Reo’s deal. Both of them are smart enough to know a trial would slaughter them. The recordings—of which there are forty-eight more locked in a safe in the basement of the house—would slaughter them. They don’t want the public humiliation. They don’t know real humiliation. Just how to inflict it.”
He laid a hand over hers. “And you?”
“I’m holding. I had to talk to Edward Mira’s son and daughter. And that slaughtered them. No way around it. Same with Wymann’s family.”
She closed her eyes. “And Harvo’s ID’d more than half of the women. I ran them. Two are dead—self-termination. Another death by misadventure. Two are street LCs. One’s doing time for assault—illegals junkie. Two more have done a revolving door in and out of rehab. But a few of them seem to have reasonably stable lives. Mira says they need to know.”
“Some part of them does know, as some part of you always did. Bringing it to light may help them in ways you can’t see.”
“Maybe. God, I hope so. That road down there? That’s the one Betz racked up speeding tickets on. I wonder how many times he drove up here to watch those tapes. That’s the campus?”
She looked down at it—snow-covered and elegant, spires and dignity.
“Monsters can grow anywhere,” he said. “We both know it. It wasn’t the place or the time. It was the men.”
“Dennis Mira went here, same time, same place. That’s good enough for me.”
When Roarke touched down, with snow shooting up like a storm, she sat, studying the house.
Large, old, dignified, beautifully kept. Even now the walks were cleared of snow, the trees glistened with it.
She saw the Celtic symbol for brotherhood carved into the center of the main door.
It sickened her.