Kindred In Death

“He gave you his name, his credentials.”

“Yes. I guess it was kind of quick, he was a bit fumbly. But we were right on the street. He just walked with me for a few blocks, asked the right sort of questions. He’d done some good background on the clinic. I was impressed, and pleased. We can use some positive exposure. He bought me a cup of coffee from a glide-cart, and asked if he could contact me if he had any follow-ups.”

“And did he?”

“The next week, he was waiting outside the clinic when I closed up, with coffee. I had some time, so we walked over to the park, sat on a bench, drank coffee while we did his follow-up. He was… he was a little flirty, nothing over the top or offensive. I was flattered. He’s twenty years younger, easily, and I… I’m an idiot.”

“No. He’s very good at what he does.”

“We talked, that’s all, and it came out he’s a fan of Zapoto’s films.”

“Jesus,” Drobski murmured.

“I know. I’m a rabid fan, and we got into that, debating, dissecting. There was a mini-festival in Tribeca that weekend.”

“You went out with him.”

Elysse moistened her lips, pushed at her hair.

Nervous, Eve thought, but equal parts embarrassed.

“I met him there Saturday night. We had drinks after, a little di

“We went out again the next week-just lunch, soy dogs down on the wharf. He made me feel young, sexy-and eager,” she confessed, “because he said he wanted me to have a little more time. I’d told him about the divorce, and my daughter. I told him about my girl. He wanted me to have more time because he wanted me to be sure.”

“When are you seeing him again?”

“A week from Friday. He’s working this weekend.”

Not if I can help it, Eve thought.

19

“SHE’S NOT THE NEXT IN LINE,” EVE SAID. “He’s playing her along, stringing it out. Divorced-that’s a couple steps further along. He plays her perfectly. Changes his look, his image. Young, but not too young, flirtatious, but not too, interested in what interests her-knowledgeable about those interests.”

“She doesn’t tell anybody about him because it’s early days yet,” Peabody put in. “And she feels a little foolish contemplating an affair with someone twenty years younger.”

“He doesn’t have a house ’link, he tells her, his pocket’s broken. He hasn’t gotten around to replacing it. He doesn’t want her contacting him yet. He needs to keep her anxious and off balance. He’s got the power. But she’s not next.”

“Somebody else is.” Concern covered Peabody’s face as she studied the images of possible targets Eve had displayed on the rear wall screen. “And probably this weekend.”

“He doesn’t get another one. Let’s take the child services supervisor, then the APA.”

She downed coffee between interviews and gave Peabody a twenty-minute break to grab a sandwich of her own.

She began to see the steps, the stages, the story that took place twenty years before, and thought she understood the players, their roles, their choices.

“She went down for him,” Roarke concluded. “He co

“That, maybe,” Eve agreed, “but he’d already been in once. Prints on file. They’d bust him hard on the ID fraud if she admitted he’d been involved, and he’d do more than the eighteen months for the second offense. He’d use that. ‘You’ll do a year, sugar, and I’ll be there for you. If they look at me, it’s five to seven.’ ”

“You got that right. He had more on the line than she did.”

“And he’d need her to go down quick and clean, make it easy for the cops and the PA. No fuss, no muss, no looking too hard at him.”

“And more, I think more, if they both went down, there’d be no one to maintain their identities. He could push that. The center wouldn’t hold, and they’d be exposed for what they were. A lot more than a year and a half at stake. And she’s the one who got caught, wasn’t she? She’s the one who got careless. Why should they lose it all when she could suck it up?”

“That’s my take,” Eve agreed. “He’d already gone in once, and he wasn’t going back. Some time, some dealing, some pleading hardship, she could’ve gotten off with the year, and part of that, maybe most, in a halfway, mandatory rehab. But that would’ve made it risky for him. The quicker she goes down, the quicker he’s clear. But it’s more, I think.”

Sliding her hands into her pockets, she wandered the room so familiar-an illusion, but familiar. And remembered.

“With my mother, I’m vague. It’s blurry with only a few clear flashes. But I know-I knew-she hated the… fact of me. But she had me, and she stayed at least long enough for me to have a few pictures in my head, to remember specific events.”

“As Darrin Pauley does?”

“Whatever he remembers, or has been taught to remember is different. I know I wasn’t a child to either of them. I was a commodity. A potential income. But did they come up with that together, or did one convince the other? That’s a question I’ll never have the answer to, and isn’t important.”

She wouldn’t let it be important.

“But in this case, maybe it is.”

“Why she chose, or they chose to have the boy,” Roarke continued.

“She’s the player, the brains, the front man. He’s the manipulator who likes the flash and she taught him what she knew. The sex, the drugs, that’s cheap money, and lacks finesse. Quick and greedy, like you said. She had to have finesse to play Pauley for a year. And the kid? He should’ve been baggage, she should have shucked that off. She didn’t. So she either wanted the kid or she wanted Pauley-maybe both. The kid wasn’t a commodity. Maybe a cover, but even that’s a stretch.”

“Easier to move, to blend, to work the grift without an infant to tend to,” Roarke agreed.

“When Pauley got out, they could’ve left the kid with Vi

“Taking them both, the woman Vi

“Fits the pattern. She was clean and healthy, and they had a decent stake-one they stole from Vi

“Easy money,” Roarke concurred, “with her doing the work.”

“It’s Pauley, he was her weakness. She whored for him, and dealt for him-and somewhere along the line he started ru

She took a breath. “That’s the way it was, that’s the way I remember it. The way it felt to me when I remember them together, or get those flashes of events. She was a junkie and a whore-and he ran the show. So maybe I’m projecting.”

“I don’t think so.”

She shook her head. “That’s for later, maybe it’ll be useful. We have to deal with the now. Let’s get Peabody back and take the judge.”

He went to her first, took her face in his hands. “Whatever you remember, or feel, you need to know that whatever they were they did one worthwhile thing in their miserable lives. And that was you. Whatever they were, they couldn’t destroy that. They couldn’t stop you from becoming.”

Judge Serenity Mimoto, a trim and tiny woman, studied the sketch of Darrin Pauley on screen. “He looks like his father.”

“You remember the father?”

Mimoto cut intense eyes to Eve. Their striking azure color radiated against smooth hazelnut skin. “I refreshed myself on the matter, and those involved, when your office contacted me earlier. I’m familiar with the details of the case. The defendant, through her attorney, had reached an agreement with the prosecutor. She pled guilty to all charges, with the APA recommending a sentence of eighteen months. Taking into account the nonviolent nature of the crimes, the lack of previous criminal record, the defendant’s cooperation and plea, I so ordered. She was remanded to the Minimum Security facility at Rikers.”