“Come in, Jimmy. How’s your ma doing then?”
“She’s well, thanks.”
“How about a cup of tea?”
“Sure I could use one.”
“Come on back to the kitchen.” Without looking around, she pointed a finger at Sean when he got to his feet. “Sit where you are, lad.”
“But, Gran, I—”
“And not a word out of you. Eve, why don’t you come on back? You and Jimmy can have a cup and talk in private.”
Removing his uniform hat, Jimmy stepped in, looked around. “How’s it all going then?”
“Well enough,” Aidan Brody told him. “You’ve had a hard day, lad. Go have your tea.”
Sinead fussed a little, setting out the tea, adding a plate of the cookies they called—for reasons that eluded Eve—biscuits. She gave Leary a motherly pat on the shoulder.
“Take all the time you need. I’ll keep that lot out of your way.”
“Thanks for that.” Leary added sugar and milk to his tea, then with eyes closed took a long sip. “Missed my supper,” he told Eve and grabbed a cookie.
He looked tired, and considerably less green—in complexion and experience—than he had that afternoon. “Murder usually trumps food.”
“I know that now, that’s for certain. We have him.” He let out a little breath, almost a surprised laugh. “We have the one who killed Holly Curlow. I wanted to tell you in person.”
“Boyfriend?”
He nodded. “Or one who thought he ought to be the one and only for her, and who she’d decided to shake off. They’d been at a party in Ennis last night, got into a bit of a spat. They’d come, it seems, as a kind of reunion for her with some mates from that neck. They’d—Kevin Donahue is his name—been seeing each other for a few months with him more serious about the thing than she. I went up to Limerick myself when we got the DNA, and they’d picked him up. She’s scored both his cheeks like a cat would, and good for her, I say about that.”
He took another sip of tea. “It just tumbled down from there, you could say. They had me sit in on the interview, but it was quick. Three minutes in and he’s bawling like a baby and telling all.”
He sighed now, and Eve said nothing, asked no questions, let him gather it up in his head.
“They’d fought again in the car,” Leary went on, “and she’d told him she was good and done and to take her on to her ma’s, or just let her out. They’d been drinking, the both of them, and probably that added to the temper of it. He said he pulled over, and they shouted at each other more. It got physical. Him slapping, her scratching, then he said he just snapped. Hit her with his fists, and she kicked and hit and screamed. He claims he doesn’t remember putting his hands around her throat, and it might be the truth. But he came back to himself, and she was dead.”
Leary shook his head at the waste of it, scooted up a bit to hunch over his tea. “He told how he tried to bring her back somehow, how he just drove around a bit, trying to make it all not so. Then he pulled off at the wood, you see, carried her in—her other shoe was still in his car when they picked him up. He says he said a prayer over her and left her.
“He’s very sorry for it,” Leary added, with a hard bitterness in the tone that told Eve he’d lost a lot of his innocence that day. “He said, more than once, as if that would make it all right and tight again. He was very sorry for choking the life out of the girl because she didn’t want him. Bloody gobshite.”
He flushed a little. “Beg your pardon.”
“I’d say that’s a pretty good description.”
Gobshite
, she thought. She had to remember that one. “You did good work.”
“If I did, it was because you told me how.” His gaze lifted to hers. “The worst of it all was standing on her mother’s doorstep, saying what you’d told me to say. Watching that woman break apart that way. Knowing, even though it wasn’t you who’d done what was done, you brought that pain to her.”
“Now you’ve given her and her daughter justice. You did the job, and that’s all you can do.”
“Aye. Well, I could live my life easy with never having to break a mother’s heart again. But the rest . . .”
“Felt good.”
“It did, yes. And does. Does it still for you when you’ve done it?”
“If it didn’t, I don’t think I could knock on another mother’s door.”
He sat another moment, nodding to himself. “All right then.” He rose, held out a hand. “Thank you for all your help.”
“You’re welcome.” She shook.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll just go out the back and not disturb your family again. Would you tell them good night for me?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“It was fine meeting you, Lieutenant, even under the circumstances.”
He went out the back, and Eve shoved aside the tea she had no desire for. Like Leary she sat for a moment in silence. Then she pushed to her feet and went back to where the family gathered. The music stopped.
She walked to Sean, waited while he stood up.
“His name is Kevin Donahue. They’d come this way to go to a party, and had a fight. In the car after they’d left, they had a bigger fight and he killed her in what he claims and probably was what we call a moment of passion.”
“Just . . . just because he was mad at her?”
“More or less, yes. Then he got scared and sorry, but it was too late for sorry. Too late for
I didn’t mean to
or
I wish I hadn’t
. He’s weak and stupid and selfish, so he took her into the woods and left her there, and ran away. You found her less than twelve hours after he’d done that. Because you did, the police were able to find him, arrest him. He’ll be punished for what he did.”
“They’ll put him in a cage.”
“He’s in one now.”
“For how long?”
Jesus, Eve thought, kids were merciless. “I don’t know. Sometimes it doesn’t seem long enough, but it’s what we’ve got.”
“I hope they coshed him first, good and proper.”
Eve struggled back a grin. “Kid, if you want to be a cop, you have to learn not to say that out loud. Bad guy’s in a cage. Case closed. Have some cake or something.”
“A fine idea.” Sinead moved in to take Sean’s hand. “Help me slice up what’s left of it, that’s a good lad.” She sent Eve a quick smile. “Eemon, get that fiddle going. Our Yank will think we don’t know how to have a ceili.”
Eve started to sit as the music flew out again, but Brian grabbed her, gave her a swing. “I’ll have a dance, Lieutenant darling.”
“I don’t do that. The dance thing.”
“You do tonight.”
Apparently she did. And so did everyone else until the middle of the night, when her legs were rubber and barely carried her to bed.
Where the rooster woke her at dawn.
They said some good-byes over breakfast. Good-byes included a great many hugs, a lot of kissing. Or, in the case of Brian, being lifted right off her feet.
“I’ll come courting the minute you’re done with that one.”
What the hell
, she thought, and kissed him back. “Okay, but he’s got some miles in him yet.”
He laughed, turned to slap hands with Roarke. “Lucky bastard. Take care of yourself, and her.”
“The best I can.”
“I’m walking you to the car.” Sinead took Roarke’s hand. “I’m going to miss you.” She smiled at Eve as they walked through misting rain. “Both of you.”
“Come for Thanksgiving.” Roarke squeezed her hand.
“Oh . . .”
“We’d like all of you to come again, as you did last year. I can make the arrangements.”
“I know you can. I would love it. I think I’d be safe in saying we’d all love it.” She sighed, just leaned into Roarke for a moment. Then she drew back, kissed his cheek. “From your mother,” she murmured, then kissed the other. “From me.” Then laid her lips lightly to his. “And from all of us.”
She repeated the benediction on Eve before blinking her damp eyes.
“Go on now, go enjoy your holiday. Safe journey.” She grabbed Roarke’s hand another moment, spoke in Irish, then backed up, waving them away.
“What did she say?” Eve asked when they got into the car.
“Here’s love, she said, to hold until next we meet and I give you more.”
He watched her in the rearview until they’d turned out of sight.
In the silence Eve stretched out her legs. “I guess you are a pretty lucky bastard.”
It made him smile; he sent her a quick, cocky look. “As they come,” he agreed.
“Eyes on the road, Lucky Bastard.”
She tried not to hold her breath all the way to the airport.
4
IT WAS GOOD TO BE HOME. DRIVING DOWNTOWN to Cop Central through ugly traffic, blasting horns, hyping ad blimps, belching maxibuses just put her in a cheerful mood.
Vacations were great, but to Eve’s mind New York had it all and a bag of soy chips.
The temperature might have been as brutal as a tax audit, with sweaty waves of heat bouncing off concrete and steel, but she wouldn’t trade her city for any place on or off planet.
She was rested, revved, and ready for work.
She rode the elevator up from the garage, shuffling over as more cops squeezed in on every floor. When she felt the oxygen supply depleting, she pried her way out to take the glides the rest of the way up.
It smelled like home, she thought—cop, criminal, the pissed off, the unhappy, the resigned. Sweat and bad coffee merged together in an aroma she wasn’t sure could be found anywhere but a cop shop.
And that was fine with her.
She listened to a beanpole of a man in restraints mutter his mantra as a pair of uniforms muscled him up the glide.
Fucking cops, fucking cops, fucking cops.
It was music to her ears.
She stepped off, angled toward Homicide, and spotted Jenkinson, one of her detectives, studying the offerings at Vending with a hopeless expression.
“Detective.”
He brightened slightly. “Hey, Lieutenant, good to see you.”
He looked as if he’d slept in his clothes for a couple days.
“You pull a double?”
“Caught one late, me and Reineke.” He settled on something that looked like a cheese Danish if you were blind in one eye. “Just wrapping it up. Vic’s in a titty bar over on Avenue A, getting himself a lap dance. Asshole comes in, starts it up. The titty doing the lap dance is his ex. Gives her a couple smacks. The guy with the hard-on clocks him. Asshole gets hauled out. He goes home, gets his souvenir Yankees baseball bat, lays in wait. Vic comes out, and the asshole jumps him. Beat the holy shit out of him and left his brains on the sidewalk.”
“High price for a lap dance.”
“You’re telling me. Asshole’s stupid, but slippery.” Jenkinson ripped the wrapping off the sad-looking Danish, took a resigned bite. “Leaves the bat and runs. We got wits falling out of our pockets, got his prints, got his name, his address. Slam-fucking-dunk. He doesn’t go home and make our lives easier, but what he does, a couple hours after, is go to the ex’s. Brings her freaking flowers he dug up out of a sidewalk planter deal. Dirt’s still falling off the roots.”
“Classy guy,” Eve observed.
“Oh, yeah.” He downed the rest of the Danish. “She won’t let him in—stripper’s got more sense—but calls it in while he’s crying and banging on the door, and dumping flower dirt all over the hallway. We get there to pick him up, and what does he do? He jumps out the freaking window end of the hall. Four flights up. Still holding the damn flowers and trailing dirt all the way.”
He shifted to order coffee with two hits of fake sugar. “Got the luck of God ’cause he lands on a couple chemi-heads doing a deal down below—killed one of them dead, other’s smashed up good. But they broke his fall.”
Deeply entertained, Eve shook her head. “You can’t make this shit up.”
“Gets better,” Jenkinson told her, slurping coffee. “Now we got to chase his ass. I go down the fire escape—and let me tell you smashed chemi-heads make one hell of a mess—Reineke goes out the front. He spots him. Asshole runs through the kitchen of an all-night Chinese place, and people are yelling and tumbling like dice. This fucker is throwing shit at us, pots and food and Christ knows. Reineke slips on some moo goo something, goes down. Hell no, you can’t make this shit up, LT.”
He grinned now, slurped more coffee. “He heads for this sex joint, but the bouncer sees this freaking blood-covered maniac coming and blocks the door. The bouncer’s built like a tank—so the asshole just bounces off him like a basketball off the rim, goes airborne for a minute and plows right into me. Jesus. Now I’ve got blood and chemi-head brains on me, and Reineke’s hauling ass over, and he’s covered with moo goo. And this asshole starts yelling police brutality. Took some restraint not to give him some.
“Anyway.” He blew out a breath. “We’re wrapping it up.”
Was it any wonder she loved New York?
“Good work. Do you want me to take you off the roll?”
“Nah. We’ll flex a couple hours, grab some sleep up in the crib once the asshole’s processed. You look at the big picture, boss? All that, over a pair of tits.”
“Love screws you up.”
“Fucking A.”
She turned into the bullpen, acknowledged “heys” from cops finishing up the night tour. She walked into her office, left the door open. Detective Sergeant Moynahan had, as she’d expected, left her desk pristine. Everything was exactly as it had been when she’d walked out her office door three weeks before, except cleaner. Even her skinny window sparkled, and the air smelled vaguely—not altogether unpleasantly—like the woods she’d walked through in Ireland.
Minus the dead body.
She programmed coffee from her AutoChef and, with a satisfied sigh, sat at her desk to read over the reports and logs generated during her absence.
Murder hadn’t taken a holiday during hers, she noted, but her division had run pretty smooth. She moved through closed and open cases, requests for leave, overtime, personal time, reimbursements.