Vengeance in Death

Is that how she'd wanted Liam to see themselves? Eve wondered. As saints and sufferers? As divine mother and sanctified child? And Audrey herself as the untouched, the wise, the chosen.

"I bet she'd bring him a nice cup of tea and a sandwich with the crusts cut off while he was baiting traps in here. Then pray with him before she sent him off to kill."

Feeney barely heard Eve's comment as he ran reverent hands over the equipment. "Have you ever seen the like of this, Ian McNab? This oscillator? What a beauty. And the cross-transmitter with multitask options. Nothing like this on the market."

"There will be, by next spring," McNab told him. "I saw this unit down at Roarke's R and D division. More than half of these components are his, and nearly half of them aren't on the market yet."

Eve grabbed his arm. "Who'd you talk to down at Roarke's? Who'd you work with. Every name, McNab."

"Only three techs. Roarke kept it low-key, didn't want the whole department to know there was a cop sniffing around. Suwan-Lee, Billings Nibb, and A. A. Dillard."

"Suwan, female?"

"Yeah, tidy little Oriental dish. She was – "

"Nibb?"

"E-lifer. Knows everything. The teams joke that he was around when Bell called Watson."

"Dillard?"

"Smart. I told you about him. Got great hands."

"Fair, green eyes, about twenty, five-ten, a hundred sixty?"

"Yeah, how did you – "

"Christ, Roarke's been paying the son of a bitch. Feeney can you get this equipment up and ru

"You bet."

"Let's go, Peabody."

"Are we going to interview Mary Calhoun?"

"Soon enough. Right now we're going to give A. A. Dillard his fucking pink slip."

A. A. had missed his shift. It was the first such incident, she was told by Nibb, the department manager. A. A. was a model employee, prompt, efficient, cooperative, and creative.

"I need to see all his files, perso

Nibb – who wasn't quite old enough to have known A. G. Bell, but who had celebrated his cente

"A great deal of those records include confidential material. Research and development in the electronics field is highly competitive. Cutthroat. One leak and – "

"This is a murder investigation, Nibb. And I'm hardly going to sell data to my husband's competitors."

"Nonetheless, Lieutenant, I can't give you files on works in progress without the boss's personal consent."

"You have it," Roarke said as he walked up.

"What are you doing here?" Eve demanded.

"Following my nose – correctly, I see. Nibb, get the lieutenant everything she requested," he added, then drew Eve aside. "I reviewed the recording of the dustup in the lobby of the Arms again, then ran it through an analysis procedure we're working on here. Not to be technical, it assessed angles, distances, and so forth. The probability quotient that the killer was focused on McNab rather than the cop outside was very high."

"So you asked yourself who might be co

"And the answer was someone in this department. I've just run a perso

"You'd make a halfway decent cop."

"I see no reason to insult me. I'd just accessed A. A.'s home address when the word came through we had cops sniffing. I assume our noses had caught the same scent."

"What's the address? I want some uniforms to pick him up."

"Saint Patrick's Cathedral. I doubt you'll find him nibbling his lunch there."

"That's sloppy of your perso

His smile was not amused. "Believe me, they'll be so informed. What have you got?"

"He's Liam Calhoun, the son. And I've got his queen, Roarke. I've got his mama." She filled him in, watching as his eyes grew darker, colder. "Feeney and McNab are working on the equipment we found in Audrey's apartment. And they'll analyze the bugs we took from Summerset's quarters. Where is he now? Summerset."

"Home. Bail was set and paid." His jaw set. "They put a bracelet on him."

"The charges will be dropped – and it'll come off. I'll take care of it as soon as I get to Central. Whitney's meeting me to observe the interview with the mother."

"I believe you'll find we manufacture the bugs here, and we're testing a new shield coat that protects them from detection from currently marketed sca

"We've got him pi

"Obviously I have quite a bit of work to do here. I'll probably be later. I spoke to the head of Pat Murray's medical team. He's regained consciousness. At this point he isn't able to speak or move his legs, but they believe with proper treatment, he'll make a full recovery."

She knew Roarke would be paying for that proper treatment, and touched his arm briefly. "I've got two uniforms on his room. I'll get over there myself tomorrow."

"We'll go." He spotted Nibb bringing a box of disc files. "Good hunting, Lieutenant."

In hour five of the interview with Audrey, Eve switched from coffee to water. The simulated caffeine the station house offered its weary cops tended to eat stomach lining on continued use.

Audrey insisted on tea by the gallon, and though she sipped it hour after hour with delicacy, her polish was wearing thin. Her hair was losing its shape and starting to straggle. It was damp and sticky at the temples from sweat. Cosmetics were fading, leaving her skin overly pale, her mouth thin and hard without the softening color. The whites of her eyes were begi

"Why don't I encapsulate for this session? When your husband was killed – "

"Was murdered," Audrey interrupted. "Murdered in cold blood by that street-rat bastard Roarke, murdered over a little harlot so that I lived a widow and my son lived without a father all his life."

"So you wanted your son to believe. You fed him that, day after day, year after year, twisting his mind, darkening his heart. He was to be your tool for vengeance."

"I told him nothing but God's truth from the day he was born. I was to be a nun, to go through my life without knowing a man. But Liam Calhoun was sent to me. An angel called me to him, and so I laid with him and conceived a son."

"An angel," Eve repeated and leaned back.

"A bright light," she said her eyes gleaming. "A golden light. So I married the man who was only an instrument to create the boy. Then he was murdered, his life taken, and I understood the purpose of his son. He wasn't born to die for sins, but to avenge them."

"You taught him that. That his purpose in life was to kill."

"To take what had been taken. To balance the scales. He was a sickly boy. He suffered to purify himself for his mission. I dedicated my life to him, to teaching him." Her lips curved. "And I taught him well. You'll never find him. He's too smart. A fine mind has my boy. A genius, he is. And a soul as white as new snow. We are," she said with a chilling smile, "beyond you."

"Your son's a killer, a sociopath with a god-complex. And you made sure he got a good education, in the area you'd decided would be most useful."