In Death 22 - Memory in Death

see the truth. She won’t. I know it wasn’t easy for you, to do what you did. To do it from
    the start of this. How do you feel?”
    “I’ve got to go to the hospital and tell that poor son of a bitch what she did, and why. I’ve got to go
    there and break his heart, leave that scar on him. I could feel a hell of a lot better.”
    “Do you want me to go with you?”
    “He’s going to need something, somebody, after. It’ll be up to him. But I think I have to do this, just
    the two of us. I think I owe him that. What do you think if I contacted the partner, they seem to be
    tight. Tell him to get his ass up here.”
    “I think Bobby’s lucky to have you looking out for him.”
    “Friends give you a cushion for the fall, even when you think you don’t need or want one. I appreciate you stopping by here, to see if I needed one. I’m okay.”
    “Then I’ll let you finish.”
    * * *
    An hour later Eve was sitting beside Bobby’s hospital bed, helpless and miserable as tears tracked down his cheeks.
    “There has to be a mistake. You’ve made a mistake.”
    “There’s not. I haven’t. And I’m sorry, but I don’t know how else to tell you but straight out. She used you. She planned it. Parts of it maybe since she was thirteen. She claims she didn’t plan to kill your mother, and that may be true. It was of the moment. It always looked that way, so it could be that way. But beyond that, Bobby, and I know it’s a punch in the face, she planned, she covered up, she used. She wasn’t the woman she pretended to be. That woman never existed.”
    “Sheshe just isn’t capable …”
    “Zana Kline Lombard wasn’t capable. Marnie Ralston was and is. She confessed, Bobby, she walked
    me through it.”
    “But we were married, all these months. We lived together. I know her.”
    “You know what she wanted you to know. She’s a pro, a manipulator with a sheet as long as my arm. Bobby. Look at me, Bobby. You were raised by a manipulative woman, primed to be taken by another.”
    “What does that make me?” His hand fisted, punched lightly on the bed. “What the hell does all that
    make me?”
    “A target. But you don’t have to keep being one. She’s going to try to play you. She’s going to cry and apologize and tell you things like she started all this before she really knew you, that she fell for you on the way. She’ll say that part was never a lie. She’ll say things like she did this for you. She’ll have all the right words. Don’t be a target for her again.”
    “I love her.”
    “You love smoke. That’s all she is.” Impatient, a cinder of anger burning in her belly, Eve got to her feet. “You’ll do what you do. I can’t stop you. But I’m saying that you deserve better. I figure it took guts for
    a twelve-year-old kid to sneak me food, to try to make things a little easier for me. It’s going to take guts for you to face what you’re going to have to face. I’ll make it easier for you if I can.”
    “My mother’s dead. My wife’s in prison, charged with her murder. With maybe trying to kill me. For God’s sake, how can you make it easier?”
    I guess I can’t.
    “I need to talk to Zana. I want to see her.”
    Eve nodded. “Yeah, fine. You’re free to go down for visitation once they spring you.”
    “There’ll be an explanation. You’ll see.”
    You won’t,she decided.Maybe you can’t. “Good luck, Bobby.”
    * * *
    She went home, hating that she’d closed a case and still carried a sense of discouragement, of failure.
    The man would be manipulated. Maybe the system would as well.
    She’d closed the case, but it wasn’t over. Sometimes, she thought, they never were.
    She walked in, glanced at Summerset. “Let’s just keep this moratorium going another few hours. I’m
    too damn tired to screw around with you.”
    She went straight to the bedroom. And there he was, stripped to the waist, pulling a T-shirt out of a drawer.
    “Lieutenant. I don’t have to ask you about your day. It’s all over your face. She slipped through?”
    “No, I got her. Full confession, for what it’s worth. PA’s going with Murder Two on Trudy, reckless endangerment on Bobby. She’ll go over, and for a long time.”
    He pulled on the shirt as he crossed to her. “What is it?”
    “I just left the hospital. Told Bobby.”
    “You would do that yourself,” Roarke murmured, and touched her hair. “How horrible was it?”
    “As much as it gets. He doesn’t believe it, or