In Death 06 - Vengeance in Death

this request."
    Mira's expression, mild and interested, didn't alter by a blink. "Why don't you explain the situation to me, Eve, and let me make up my own mind?"
    "The three murders are connected, and the probability that they're linked to a... series of events that took place several years ago is high. The motive is revenge. It's my opinion that Roarke is primary target and that Summerset is being used to get to him. There's circumstantial evidence attached to each murder that points to Summerset, and that evidence is piling up along with the bodies. If I believed he was responsible I'd close the cage door on him myself without a minute's regret, no matter what he means to Roarke. But it's a setup, cleverly planned and executed, and just obvious enough to be insulting to my intelligence."
    "You'd like me to do a profile on the killer, and examine Summerset for violent tendencies, unofficially."
    "No, I want those official. Black and white, by the book. I want to be able to turn them in to Whitney. I haven't given him a hell of a lot else."
    "I'll be happy to do both. You've only to clear it with your commander, get me the data. I can shift it to priority for you."
    "I'd appreciate it."
    "And the rest?"
    Eve's palms went damp. Impatient, she swiped them on the thighs of her slacks. "I have information that is vital to the investigation, and your profile, that I can't -- no, that I won't -- record in full. I'll only share this information with you under the scope of doctor-patient confidentiality. That protects you, doesn't it?"
    Mira lifted her hands, folded her fingers. "Anything you tell me as a patient is privileged. I can't report it."
    "And you're protected? Personally, professionally?" Eve insisted.
    "I am, yes. How many people are you determined to protect here, Eve?"
    "The ones who matter."
    Mira smiled now, a full bloom. "Thank you." She held out a hand. "Sit, and tell me."
    Eve hesitated, then took the hand Mira offered. "You... when I remembered what had happened to me in that room in Dallas. When I remembered my father coming in drunk, raping me again, hurting me again. When I remembered killing him that night, and I told you, you said it was pointless, even wrong, to punish the child. You said" -- she had to clear her throat -- "you said I'd killed a monster, and that I'd made myself into something worthwhile, something I had no right to destroy because of what I'd done before."
    "You don't still doubt that?"
    Eve shook her head, though there were times, there were still times she doubted it. "Did you mean it? Do you really believe there are times, there are circumstances when taking the life of a monster is justified?"
    "The state believed so until less than two decades ago when capital punishment was, yet again, abolished."
    "I'm asking you, as a person, a doctor, a woman."
    "Yes, I believe it. To survive, to protect your life or the life of another."
    "Only in self-defense?" Eve's eyes were intense on Mira's, reading every flicker. "Is that the only justification?"
    "I couldn't generalize in such a manner, Eve. Each circumstance, each person goes to defining the situation."
    "It used to be black and white for me," Eve said quietly. "The law." She held up one fist. "The breaking of it." Then the other. On a long breath, she tapped the two fists together, held them close. "Now... I need to tell you about Marlena."
    Mira didn't interrupt. She asked no questions, made no comments. It took Eve twenty minutes to tell it all. She was thorough, and made the effort to be dispassionate. Facts only, without opinion. And when she was finished, she was drained.
    They sat in silence, while a few birds chattered, the fountain gurgled, and bruised clouds drifted over the sun.
    "To lose a child that way," Mira commented at length. "There is nothing worse to be faced. I can't tell you the men who did that to her deserved to die, Eve. But I can tell you, as a woman, as a mother, that if she had been my child, I would have celebrated their deaths, and I would have sworn my gratitude to their executioner. That isn't scientific, it isn't the law. But it's human."
    "I don't know if I'm shielding Roarke because I believe what he did was justice or because I love him."
    "Why can't it be both? Oh, you complicate things, Eve."
    "I complicate things." She nearly laughed, and pushed up from the bench. "I have three murders that I can't investigate in an open, logical manner unless I want to see my husband locked away for the