Visions In Death

"I did what I had to do. Why do you lock a man up for doing what he has to do?"

Eve pulled a red cord out of her pocket. "Why did you use this?" When he only stared, she wrapped it around her own throat, watched his eyes go glassy. "You like how it looks on me? Want to get your hands on the ends, John, and pull?"

"Should've killed you first." "Yeah, you got that right." His gaze was locked on the cord, and beads of sweat were popping out on his face, on the dome of his head. "Where's your mother, John?" "Shut up, I said, about my mother!" "She liked to do crafts. We got her account from Total Crafts. But you know what, word is nobody's seen her around, in months. Damn near a year now. You kill her first, John? You take some of her ribbon, like all that red ribbon we found in the house, and wrap it around her neck? You rape your own mother, John? Did you rape and strangle your mother, and take her eyes?" "She was a whore." "What did she do to you, John?" "Deserved what she got." Breathing shallow, he stared at the mirror again. Nodded slowly. "Deserved it. Every time." "What did she do?" There was nothing wrong with his eyes.

She could see that, and she'd checked his medicals. And she thought of the bright lights. Sunshades and bright lights. Eyes in jars.

"It's a little bright in here," she said conversationally.

"Lights, fifty percent." Turn them back up." The sweat was rolling now. "I'm not talking to you in the dark." "You're not saying anything I want to hear. Lights, thirty percent." Turn them on, turn them on! I don't like the dark. Don't leave me in the dark. I didn't mean to see!" His tone had gone high. A boy's voice in panic and plea.

It touched something in her, but she tamped it down. "See what? Tell me, John. Tell me, and I'll turn the lights up again." "Whore, naked in bed. Letting him touch her, touching him. I didn't mean to see."

"What did she do to you?" "Put the cloth over your eyes. Tie it tight. Little prick, got no business spying on me when I'm working. Lock you in again. Lock you in the dark. Maybe I'll poke your eyes out next time, then you won't see what you're not supposed to see." Chains rattled as he struggled in the chair. "I don't want to be in the dark. I'm not weak and puny and stupid." "What happened in the park?" "Just playing, that's all. Just playing, me and Shelley. I just let her touch it. It hurts, it hurts when Mommy hits it with a stick. Burns, burns when she scrubs it with the powder.

Pour acid on it next time and see how you like it. In the dark, can't see, can't get out." He fell against the table, weeping.

"You got strong, didn't you, John? You got strong and paid her back for it." "She shouldn't have said those things to me. She shouldn't laugh at me and call me names. I'm not a freak. I'm not good-for-nothing. I'm a man." "And you showed her you were a man. A man who can rape whores when he wants to. You shut her up." "Shut her right up." He lifted his head, and madness rolled in his eyes even as tears streamed out of them. "How do you like it now? She only sees what I tell her to see now. That's what. I'm in charge now. And when I see her again, I know what to do." "Tell me where she is now, John. Where the rest of her is." "It's dark. Too dark in here." "Tell me so I can turn the lights back up." "Buried. Decent burial, but she kept coming back! It's dark in the ground. Maybe she doesn't like it there. Put her outside, put her in the park. Make her remember! Make her sorry."

"Where did you bury her?" "Little farm. Gra

Maybe leave you there for the rats to eat you don't do what she says, when she damn well says it. Gra

"But she won't sell it. Greedy bitch won't sell it and give me my share. She won't give me anything. Not giving her hard-earned to some freak. Time to take it, take it all. Bitch." "Lights on full." He blinked against them, like a man coming out of a trance.

"I don't have to say anything to you." "No, you've said enough."

CHAPTER 22

She ordered droids and dogs, a search unit, and the equipment necessary for multiple remains location, identification, and removal.

And knew it would be a very long, very difficult procedure.

She requested Morris personally, and asked that he select a team. She expected and was unsurprised when Whitney and Tibbie arranged to make the trip upstate.

For the moment, for a small window of time, they would keep the media at bay. But it would leak soon enough, she knew, and the ugly carnival would begin.

Because she wanted time to prepare, to think, without the distraction of cop chatter or questions, she traveled upstate in one of Roarke's jet-copters, with him in the pilot seat.

They flew through a steady, dreary rain. Nature's way of weighing in, she thought, to make a hideous job more so. She saw a little burst of lightning bloom on the horizon, far to the north, and hoped it stayed there.

Roarke didn't ask questions, and his silence throughout the flight helped steady her for what was to come. This sort of procedure would never be routine. Never could be routine.

"Nearly there." Roarke glanced at the comp map highlighting their destination, then nodded toward the windscreen.

"At two o'clock."

It wasn't much of a house. She could see that from the air as they started the descent. Small, ill-kept, poorly maintained, if she was any judge. It looked to her as if the roof sagged probably leaked, and the lawn fronting the steep, narrow road was weedy and littered with trash.

But the back was blocked in with trees, and in front of them ranged a high fence. The lawn, such as it was, spread up, dipped down, following the rise and fall of land.

There were other houses, and the curious would come out of them before long. None of those houses were close, not to the bumpy land back of the house. A man with a mission, she thought, a man with a job to do, could carry it out in relative privacy in such a place.

Uniforms would knock on doors and ask about the Blues, and a dark van, and any odd activities.

They set down. Roarke killed the engines.

"You feel some sympathy for him. John Blue." Through the rain, she stared at the house, the dark, dirty windows, the scabs of paint puckering its skin. "I feel some sympathy for a defenseless child tortured by a parent, by a woman who most certainly was vicious and cruel. We know what that's like." She turned her head, looked at him. "We know how it can twist and scar. What it can drive you to. And I feel a twinge, maybe more than a twinge, at the way I played the child in Interview. You saw how I went after him." "I saw you doing what needed to be done, even when it hurt you. Hurt you, Eve, as much as him. Maybe more." "Needed to be done," she agreed, and would live with that.

"Because a child didn't kill these women. A child didn't rape and beat and strangle them, mutilate their bodies. A child didn't put Peabody in the hospital. So no, when it comes down to the line, I don't feel for John Blue. We had as bad." "You had worse."

"Maybe." She breathed deep. "Maybe. And like him, I killed my tormentor." "Not like him, Eve. Nothing like him." It was that point, that vital point he'd wanted to make to her. "You were a child, in desperate terror and pain. Defending yourself, doing whatever you could to make it stop. He was a man, and had the choice of walking away. However she twisted him, he was a man when he committed these acts." "The child lives inside. I know that's shrink pap, but it's true enough. We've both got that lost child in us." "And?" "And we don't allow that lost, damaged child to strike the i