Because she needed to shake it off, she grabbed a shower. And with the water beating hot, the steam rising thick, she pressed her forehead to the tiles.
All those faces on the walls. All those faces filled with rage becoming men and women.
Cops, who’d sworn to protect and serve.
They’d torn Greenleaf to pieces, and he hadn’t fought back. He’d just accepted, as if he considered that, too, a part of the job.
No gray, she thought. He’d seen the job, his world, in black-and-white.
Was that her perception of him, she wondered, or the reality of him?
Did it matter?
She’d fought, as she’d fought Lansing and countless others since she’d taken the badge, taken the oath.
Because she was a violent woman, or because she considered it a part of the job? Some of both?
Did it matter?
Either way, she decided, she’d fight till the bitter, bloody end.
So she let it go until the dregs of the dream drained away with the water.
And because she couldn’t see a way out of it, she sat while Roarke tended her bruises.
“Better,” he said after another wanding, and traced a finger along her jaw. “Considerably better.”
“Bruises heal; death doesn’t.” “Now, that’s a statement.”
“You fight back, deal with the bruises, and you keep doing the job. That’s the deal you make. But he didn’t fight back—in the dream, I mean.”
Which, she realized, hadn’t drained away after all. “He just sat there and took it. Is that how I see him, or is that who he was?”
“He didn’t have a chance to fight back, did he? In the reality of it. Taken from behind as he was.”
“Didn’t have a chance,” she repeated slowly. “Taken from behind. Looks like you get my subconscious more than I do. He didn’t have a chance to fight, not at the end. But he spent his entire career fighting—his way, in absolutes. From a desk mostly,” she considered. “And he died at a desk. Was that irony or planning?”
She pushed up, stalking around the room in a raspberry-colored robe. “Irony’s sort of like coincidence—unless it’s deliberate. This was planning. Wife’s night out, he sits at his desk, back to the door. Ball game on the wall screen while he’s checking headlines, reading articles, playing comp games, having a cold drink.
“Waiting for Webster, but the killer doesn’t know that.”
“You’re back to the neighbor who could put him just there, at his desk, when they left.”
“Yeah, that’s handy. But it’s a habit, so Arnez wouldn’t be the only one who knew or counted on him being just there. At a desk where—if that’s how you needed to see it—he passed judgment.”
“All right.”
He poured more coffee, then patted the seat beside him. “Come sit now.
Eat. Food fuels the brain as well.”
“Does it matter he died at the desk?” she wondered as she walked back to sit. “And that’s a bullshit question. Everything matters.”
Under the warming lids Roarke lifted were pancakes. She barely registered them before globbing on butter, swamping them in syrup.
“It’s a precise plan—I knew that—but if the desk played in, it adds another weight to the planning, the motive. It’ll matter. Maybe not right now, but eventually.
“I didn’t like him.”
“You’re not required to, Eve. Haven’t I seen you go to the wall for a victim you actively disliked?”
“I didn’t like him,” she said again. “But I didn’t really see him beyond the IAB head who sat in judgment at his desk. I knew better. Christ, I know
the damage dirty cops can do, but I didn’t like him, didn’t like his hard-line absolutes. Even though…”
“You’re often a hard-line-absolute sort yourself.”
“I’m sitting here eating pancakes with a former criminal, so how absolute could I be?”
“Suspected only—and certainly reformed.”
She shifted to him, smiled. “If I had a massive brain fart and asked you to steal … What’s a good one? Has to be a—the Mona Lisa, because everyone knows that one. I needed you to give me the Mona Lisa to hang in my closet, you’d break into the—Where is it?”
“The Louvre, darling.”
“Yeah, there. And I’d have it in my closet.”
“What a man might do for love,” he murmured, and ate pancakes. “Sadly, you’d never ask.”
“No, but I’m eating breakfast with someone who could and would if I did. What is it with that painting anyway? Just some woman with a smirk.”
“Ah, but she’s glorious.” The Irish in his voice warmed with admiration. “You have to see her in person, have her eyes meet yours to fully appreciate the sheer magnificence of her. Not a smirk, no, not at all, but a smile both benevolent and knowing.”
“So you’ve seen her in person, and had her eyes meet yours.” “I have.”
“When the place—the Louvre place—was open or closed?”
Now he smiled—not so benevolent, but very knowing. “Why not both?” “And again, eating pancakes with you, so my absolutes are pretty well
shot to shit. But Greenleaf’s stayed firmly in place. I didn’t like him much, but since I’ve looked into him, his work, his … code, Feeney called it, I’ve sure as hell come to respect him.”
She considered as she drank coffee. “He’d have had a file on me. That’s SOP when a cop uses maximum force, and I have. IAB investigates, and the cop goes through Testing. But he never came after me.”
“Perhaps the respect was mutual.”
“Maybe.” She polished off the last bite of syrup-soaked pancake before she stood. “I’m wearing black in case I can squeeze time to make his memorial, and can’t squeeze it to change into uniform.”
“Make it lightweight,” Roarke advised her. “We’re in for a steam bath today.”
“I like it hot.”
“As well I know,” he said as she walked into her closet.
She came out moments later—black trousers, black tank, black boots and belt, black jacket in hand—and thought how quick and easy mornings could be if she could grab black daily.
She strapped on her weapon harness.
“He said, in the dream, they’d haunt you. The dead and disgraced cops.” Eve nodded. “Yeah, he said that.”
“Will they?”
She picked up her badge, studied it. “No. Dreams are weird, and I think that he’d think they would. But no. One thing the captain and I can agree on, in the absolute? Wrong cops taint us all. If he made a mistake, if he pushed too hard on any of the cops on those dream walls, that’s on him.”
She pocketed her badge and the rest.
“The ones he took down who earned it? They’d come after me, same as him, but they don’t haunt me.”
“Only put bruises on you.”
“Before I kicked their asses.”
“Before,” he said, and walked to her, rubbed his hands on her shoulders. “Do me a favor then and take better care of my cop today.”
“If you’d seen the other guy, you’d know I took pretty good care of her yesterday.”
He’d worry, she thought as she walked downstairs. Wishing he wouldn’t couldn’t stop it. So she’d take the best care of his cop she could manage.
She’d meet Peabody at the apartment of Taylor Noy, age twenty-four, the daughter of former Captain Louis Noy, Anti-crime.
Noy had taken his own life—with his service weapon—at the age of fifty while under investigation for what turned out to be a twenty-six-year career span of corruption.
Over two decades of bad acts, Eve thought as she drove through the gates, polished over with citations for bravery, shiny medals, promotions. He’d run a small, tight syndicate of cops on the take. Witness tampering, political bribery, protection rackets.
A syndicate Greenleaf had exposed with the help of a rookie Noy had begun to groom. Officer Kent Boxer’s body had been found in a meat locker, hanging from a hook. He’d been tortured and beaten before his throat was slit.
Two days later, with the walls closing in, Noy opted out rather than face charges.
His family lost their home and everything else Noy had accumulated through his corruption.
Just shy of five months later, his nineteen-year-old son, Brice—criminal justice major, NYU—hanged himself.
Noy’s wife, Ella, now living on Long Island, had remarried the previous year.
The daughter, Taylor, Eve’s first stop, had an apartment, Lower West, so convenient to Greenleaf’s—and worked as an on-air reporter for Inside Sports, New York Bureau.
Pretty sweet gig for a twenty-four-year-old, Eve mused as she drove downtown. But how did it feel to have your father go from hero cop—one with bars—to disgraced and dead? To lose everything, including your older brother?
Instead of living your nice upper-middle-class life, you have to struggle.
No more lovely brownstone, no more private school.
Now your own mother shakes all of that off, marries someone else, moves to a fancy neighborhood on Long Island.
Could trigger something, could demand payback for all those years, all those losses.
Worth a conversation.
She hunted for parking, lucked into a spot only a block and a half away from her destination.
Roarke hit it on the steam bath, she thought as she started to walk. It might’ve been shy of eight A.M., but the temperature was already on the rise, and the air lay still and thick over the city.
She passed a glide-cart already doing brisk business on iced coffee. It smelled like someone had tried to freeze bricks of mud.
She considered the circumstances where she might actually drink iced cart coffee, and found none.
She paused outside of Taylor Noy’s building. An old pre-Urban brick, well maintained, good security.
Maybe a brisk ten-minute walk from Greenleaf’s building. Very possible their paths could cross.
She glanced at the time, then spotted Peabody hustling down the sidewalk.
She wore her red-streaked dark hair up in a high, bouncy little tail. Jesus.
The pink boots, black pants (that was something, at least), and a shirt and thin, flowy jacket in pale, pale green.
“What, are you going to a garden party?”
“What? The jacket? Come on, it’s mag-plus. Leonardo was helping me organize some of my fabrics, and he saw this, sketched out this jacket design in like two minutes. Then he made it, right there and then.”
To Eve’s sorrow, Peabody executed a stylish turn. “I’m wearing a Leonardo!”
“Now that we’ve got that settled, the hair. What’s your excuse there?” “It’s really hot?”
Since she couldn’t dispute that point, Eve headed toward the main doors. “Did you read the file?”
“Affirmative. Captain Louis Noy. Seriously bad cop. We’re here to talk to Taylor Noy, his only surviving offspring, since her older brother followed his father’s lead and self-terminated. Nothing popped on him—the son. Still shy of twenty. Sad.”
“He had an application in for the Academy, and had already been accepted, deferred until he graduated from NYU.”
“Yeah, I saw that,” Peabody said as Eve mastered in.
“Noy was grooming the rookie who rolled on him—and Boxer died for it. Hard to swallow he hadn’t started grooming the son. Either way, Taylor Noy lost her father, her brother, her home, her school—and now her mother’s remarried.
“She’s first floor,” Eve added. “Happy day. No stairs.”
Eve walked to the apartment door. Door cam, intercom, solid locks. Knocked.
A female voice came throatily through the intercom. “Yes? Can I help you?”
“Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody, NYPSD.” Eve held her badge up to the camera. “We’d like to speak with you, Ms. Noy.”
Suspicion tinted the voice now. “About what?” “Captain Martin Greenleaf.”
“I’m going to verify your identification.” “Go right ahead.”
A couple minutes later the locks thunked. The woman who opened the door wore a short, body-skimming red dress and had bare feet. Her honey- brown hair fell in perfect twists nearly to her shoulders and framed a stunning face.
She’d won the DNA lottery with diamond-edged cheekbones, a full, shapely mouth currently dyed the same color as the dress. Perfect skin, polished bronze, only made deep green eyes greener.
“I’m a reporter,” she said, “so I know how reporters work. I needed to make sure you weren’t. Come in.”
She stepped back into a living area full of color and clutter. “I don’t apologize for the mess because I like it. I’ve got about twenty minutes before I have to leave for work, so I’ll start by saying I heard about Captain Greenleaf. I’m sorry about it. I’m sorry for his family. I know what it’s like to lose a father.”
“He headed the investigation into yours.”
“Yes, he did. Crap. Sit down. That was nine years ago,” she added as she plopped down on a sofa. “What does that have to do with what happened to Captain Greenleaf?”
Since it faced the canary-yellow sofa Taylor chose, Eve sat in a chair of shockingly bright blue with yellow swirls. It made her think of Jenkinson’s ties.
“Why don’t you tell us where you were on Sunday night, between eight and ten P.M.?”
“I’m a suspect?” What came off as genuine shock widened those green eyes. “A murder suspect? Because of my dad? Whoa. Wow. You’re really reaching back.”
“We’d appreciate knowing your whereabouts.”
“That’s easy, and easy for you to verify. I was covering the Mets—home game. They took the field at eight-ten. Skimmed the Pirates, two to one.”
Sitting back, Taylor crossed her legs.
“Highlights. The Pirates scored their only run with a two-out, solo homer top of the fifth. Kato drove it out on a one-one pitch. Fastball,” she added. “Right over the plate, and Kato got the fat of the bat on it, and bam!
“Bottom of the eighth,” she continued, “Macron took first with a base on balls, then took second on a wild pitch. Blanski’s on deck. The Pirates brought in Willes as relief, but it didn’t help. Blanski’s double made it two to one, Mets. In the ninth, Parks put the Pirates down, one, two, three. Strikeout, fly ball, a chopper—Blanski at short to Rodrigo at first—for the final out at about nine-forty-five. I spent the next twenty minutes—give or take—interviewing players. On air. Live.”
She smiled a little. “Damn good game.”
The same game, Eve thought, playing on Greenleaf’s wall screen.
“Why the hell would I kill Captain Greenleaf? My father,” Taylor said before Eve spoke. “Let me tell you about my father, Lieutenant, Detective. He was a good dad. Hell, a great dad. Attentive, loving, fair—firm, but fair. If he had to miss one of my games—I played baseball spring and summer, basketball fall and winter—he got the recording and watched it.
“I had a damn good childhood—until. Happy, secure. I adored my dad. He was a hero to me. Then I learned that outside our house, our family— where he’s always going to be a hero to me—he was anything but. It was all a lie. He cheated, he stole, he manipulated.”
She closed her eyes. “And worse. He didn’t tell us about the investigation, about the trouble, not at first. Looking back, I think he assumed he’d shake it off. I didn’t really notice anything was wrong—I was fifteen, sports mad, starting to think seriously about boys, and thrilled I got permission to do this very part-time job at a fashion boutique. Because I liked clothes.
“Then…”
She breathed deep, shifted her gaze toward the window and the street beyond.
“There was something different in the house. He told my mother—I didn’t know that until later. I sort of noticed, but Brice, he noticed. My dad
favored him. I can say that without rancor,” she added as she looked back at Eve.
“Brice was the golden child. He was going to be a cop, like our dad. It’s all he ever wanted—to be like our dad. But there was something different between them, right before it happened. Brice wouldn’t talk about it, not to me. I didn’t really ask because my life was rolling. I had this little job, school, friends, and this boy who liked me.
“Maybe I noticed Dad was distracted. He didn’t ask about practice or the game he’d missed. But I noticed the night two of his cops came to talk to him. Detective Riley and Detective Krotter—they’d come around plenty. Barbecues, holidays, whatever. But this was different, and even I could tell.”
“Different how?”
“No joking around, no chitchat. They just went into my father’s office, closed the door. Brice was out on a date. My mom was up in their room. Crying. I didn’t know about the crying then, but she knew terrible things were coming. I went up to my room, listened to music, talked to this boy who liked me. He asked me out. I was so excited.”
It brought a slow, sweet smile to her face.
“My first date—slow starter there because baseball, basketball. It was just pizza and a vid, but I had to ask my dad. I went downstairs—his door was still closed. I knocked. I opened the door because this boy wanted to take me out. And I found him.”
“That must’ve been horrible for you,” Peabody said.
“It was horrible, in every possible way. There he was, my hero, sitting at his desk, his weapon, which he always, always secured when he got home, on the floor. I told myself he was asleep, even though I knew he wasn’t. I kept telling myself he was asleep as I screamed.”
“When did you find out about the investigation, about Greenleaf and IAB?”
“I honestly don’t know exactly. A lot of it’s blurry. Brice was angry, inconsolable. My mother struggled to be strong. Everything came down around us, all he’d done. Brice said it was lies, all lies. I believed that. I had to.”
She paused, shook her head. “But it wasn’t. It was truth.
“We lost the house, I had to switch schools—which at fifteen was just another tragedy to me. I gave my mother such grief over that, put the blame on her. I’m ashamed of that. Then, just as I was beginning to see and feel clear again, Brice.
“My mother found him—another gift to the family.”
Taylor curled her legs up under her in a move Eve saw not as much casual as looking for comfort.
“He lived at home. He had a partial scholarship, and I know Mom scraped together enough to fill the gap, to keep him in college. We found out later he’d stopped going to classes, and he’d been struggling to bring his grades back up. We had this little apartment—me sharing a room with Mom. Brice had a small bedroom of his own. She found him in the morning. He’d been gone for hours when she went in.”
“You lost your father, your brother in under six months.”
“That’s right.” Taylor nodded at Eve. “If you think I blame Greenleaf for any of it, you couldn’t be more wrong. It’s on my father. All of it. Every bit of it. I loved and love my father, but the man, the cop, he was? He left us in disgrace, in grief, in despair. I don’t forgive him for that.”
She closed her eyes again; when they opened, the green shined clear and hard. “I’ll never forgive him for that. I know he didn’t kill that young officer—one barely older than his own son. But he was responsible. I think that’s what he couldn’t live with. But I’ll never know, will I?”
“And your mother?” Eve asked.
“Unlike Brice, and because of Brice, me for a while, Mom never blamed Greenleaf. She hadn’t known, Lieutenant. My father was very skilled. He handled all our finances, and he had complete control. That’s how he did things.
“It shattered her when she found out. She’d have stood by him if he’d faced the consequences. She loved him and, even shattered, she’d have stood by him. You must know she was investigated, too, and found blameless. She’s happy now—all the way happy. She got married—almost a year ago. They’re happy. Cal’s a great guy, an honest guy. Please don’t drag her into this. She’s never hurt anyone in her life.”
“Did your brother know?” Eve wondered.
“I’ll never know that, either. I can only tell you he worshipped our dad, and he refused to accept what happened and why. He was nineteen,
Lieutenant. Nineteen, and he couldn’t live with the sins of the father. My mother and I have, for nine years. It’s enough.”
“We appreciate your time and cooperation,” Eve said as she rose. “I’m sorry for your losses.”
