Portrait In Death

It was probably worse when the dead were young, and the end was violent. She'd been to too many memorials for violent death.

They'd laid Rachel in a glass-sided coffin-one of the trends of mourning Eve found particularly creepy. They'd put her in a dress, a blue one and probably her best, and fixed a little spray of pink roses in her hands.

She watched people file by. The parents, both looking shell-shocked and too calm. Tranq'd to get through the event. And the younger sister who simply looked ravaged and lost.

She saw students she'd questioned, the merchants from the shops near where she'd worked. Teachers, neighbors, friends.

Leea

She saw faces she'd already filed away; and new ones, as she stood by searching for an average white guy. There were plenty of them that fit into the age span. Rachel, a friendly girl, had met a lot of people in her short life.

There was Hooper, neatly dressed in a suit and tie, his face somber, his shoulders straight as a soldier's. A group of what Eve assumed was his peers surrounded him the way groups tend to surround the attractive.

But when he looked around, his eyes were empty. Whatever they said didn't reach him, and he turned and walked away, through those young bodies as if they were ghosts.

He didn't look at the people, nor, she noted, did he look at the box, the clear box that held the girl he'd said he thought he might have loved.

She lifted her chin, a kind of reverse nod signal to McNab. "See where he goes," she ordered when McNab moved into place beside her. "See what he does."

"Got him."

She went back to studying the crowd, though she wished she could have been the one to step outside after Hooper, into the night. Into the air. Despite the overworked climate control the room was too warm, too close, and the smell of the flowers cloying.

She spotted Hastings across the room. As though he felt her eyes on him, he glanced toward her, then lumbered over.

"Thought I should come, that's all. Hate this kind of shit. I'm not staying."

He was embarrassed, she realized. And a little guilty.

"They shouldn't have dressed her up that way," he said after a moment. "Looks false. I'd've put her in her favorite shirt. Some old shirt she liked, given her a couple of yellow daisies to hold. Face like that, it's for daisies. Anyway…" He downed his glass of sparkling water. "Nobody asked me."

He shifted from foot to foot. "You'd better catch whoever put that kid in that glass box."

"Working on it."

She watched him go. Watched others come and go.

"He went outside," McNab reported. "Walked down to the corner and back a couple times." McNab hunched his shoulders, stuck his hands in his pockets. "Crying. Just walking up and down and crying. A group came out, gathered him up, into a car. I got the make and tag if you want me to run and pick them up."

"No." She shook her head. "No, not tonight. Pack it in. Get Peabody, and tell her she's off the clock."

"Don't have to tell me twice. I want to go somewhere people are talking about something stupid and eating lousy food. Always do after a memorial. You want to come along?"

"I'll pass. We'll pick this up again in the morning."

As the crowd thi

"I don't know. You look at it from his perspective, he got what he wanted from her, so he's done."

"Maybe, but it's like a circle, and this closes it. Something tells me he'd want to see her like this. Still, if he was here, I couldn't make him."

"Fucking average white guy." He puffed out his cheeks. She looked beat, he thought. Beat and worried and under the gun. He patted her shoulder. "What do you say we go get a beer?"

"I say, that's a damn fine idea."

"Been a while since we did this," Feeney commented.

"Guess it has." Eve sampled her beer.

By tacit agreement, they'd avoided the known cop bars. Kicking back in one of them meant somebody would stop by to shoot the shit or talk shop. Instead, they'd caught a booth in a place called The Leprechaun, a dim little bar with aspirations of simulating an Irish pub.

There was piped in music with someone singing about drinking and war, and a lot of signs written in Gaelic, and framed pictures of what Eve assumed were famous Irish people. The waitstaff all talked with Irish accents, though their server's accent had a definite Brooklyn edge to it.

Since she'd had occasion to spend some time in an actual Irish pub, she could tell the owner-who she imagined was somebody named Greenburg-wasn't even close to being Irish.

And thinking it made her think of the Pe

"Why don't you tell me what's on your mind, kid?"

"I think he's going to move within the next forty-eight hours, so-"

"No, not about the case." There was a bowl of peanuts in the shell between them, but he shoved it aside, got out his bag of candied almonds. "You got trouble at home?"

"Shit, Feeney." Because it was there, she dug into the bag. "I've got Summerset at home. Isn't that enough?"

"And Roarke off somewhere while his man's at home with a busted pin. Must've been important to pull him away just now."

"It was. It is. God." She braced her elbows on the table, then dropped her head into her hands. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I don't know if I should tell you. I don't know if he'd want me to tell you."

"He doesn't have to know you did. It doesn't go beyond here."

"I know that." He'd trained her, Eve thought. Taken her green from the Academy. And she'd trusted him. He'd partnered with her, gone through every door. And she'd trusted him.

"I'll have to tell him I told you. I think that's one of those marriage rules. There are too fricking many of them."

Feeney didn't interrupt her, and when he'd finished his beer, ordered another.

"It's got to mess him up, you know? You go your whole life thinking one thing, dealing with what you believe is truth, then you get slammed in the gut, and it all changes around on you." She sipped her beer. "He doesn't get drunk. He'll dance up to the line, should the occasion call for it. But even when it's just the two of us off somewhere, he doesn't go over the line. He's going to stay aware, in control. That's core Roarke."

"You shouldn't worry because a man ties one on."

"I wouldn't, if the man wasn't Roarke. He did it because he's hurting and needed to get away from the pain. Feeney, he can take a hell of a lot of pain."

So can you,Feeney thought. "Where is he now?"

"In Clare. He left me a message-damn time difference. He said I shouldn't worry, he was fine. He was probably going to stay there, another day at least, and he'd be in touch."

"Did you tag him back?"

She shook her head. "I started to, then I started second-guessing myself. Is it like nagging? I don't know. He said he wanted to handle this himself. He's made it pretty clear he doesn't want me involved."

"And you're letting him get away with that." He sighed, heavy, and his basset hound eyes seemed to droop lower. "You disappoint me."

"What am I supposed todo! I'm in the middle of this investigation, and he says he's going to Ireland. He won't wait, won't give me time to figure things out. Okay, he can't wait-I can get that. He's got a problem, and he'd want to deal, straight off."

"One of those marriage rules is if one of you's in pain or trouble, you're not in it alone. You suffering here, him there. That doesn't work for either of you."