In Death 30 - Fantasy in Death

late in the day. The shadows cast, the glare tossed back at certain angles. Yes, they’d want the artificial light. For comfort, she thought, and for practicality.
    Just as she imagined they’d want to be together, the three of them, in that space. For comfort, and maybe for practicality.
    “Are you seriously imagining them in there discussing how they’d managed murder and what steps to take next?”
    “Maybe.” She tilted her head, studied him. “You don’t like it because you like them, and because you see something of yourself in all four of them. Just a little piece here and there. Because of that, because you’d never kill a friend, never kill an innocent or kill simply because killing was expedient, you don’t like the idea one of them did.”
    “That may be true, all of it true enough. But you and I have both killed, Eve, and once you have you know taking a life isn’t a game. Only the mad think otherwise. Do you believe one of them is mad?”
    “No. I think they’re all very sane. I’m not looking for a mad scientist or a geek gone psycho. This is something else.” She watched as a shadow passed behind one of the windows. “Whoever did it may regret it now, may feel it’s all a terrible mistake, a nightmare that won’t let go. I may crack the killer open like an egg with that guilt and horror when we get that far.”
    She watched those windows, the lights and shadows, for another moment in silence.
    “Or, and we both know this, too, sometimes the taking of a life hardens you, it . . . calcifies your conscience. He deserved it, I only did what I had to do. Or worse yet, it excites. It opens a door in you that was so secret, so small, so tightly locked no one, even you, knew it was there. And there’s a kind of joy in that. Look what I did! Look at the power I have.”
    It could still make her sick, deep in the belly, if she let it.
    “That’s the type who can never go back,” she said quietly, but her eyes were hard, almost fierce. “Who have to do it again because sooner or later, the power demands it. Some of the shrinks will claim that’s a kind of madness, that compulsion to feel that power and excitement again. But it’s not. It’s greed, that’s all.”
    She shifted to him. “I know this. I felt that power, even the excitement, when I killed my father.”
    “You can’t toss self-defense in with murder. You can’t equate murder with a child fighting for her life against a monster.”
    “It wasn’t murder, but it was killing. It was ending a life. It was blood on my hands.”
    He took the hand she held out, shook his head, pressed his lips to the palm.
    “Roarke, I know the power of that, the sick excitement. I know the horrible, tearing guilt, and even the hardening of the heart, the soul, because I felt all of that over time. All of it. I know, even though what I did wasn’t murder, what the murdering can and does feel. It helps me find them. It’s a tool.”
    She touched his cheek, understanding that the memories, the idea of what she’d been through until the night when she’d been eight, hurt him as much as they hurt her. Maybe more now, she realized. Maybe more.
    “I was twenty-three the next time I took a life,” she continued. “Fifteen years between. Feeney and I went after a suspect. He’d beaten two people to death, in front of witnesses, left DNA and trace all over the scene. Slam dunk, just have to find him. We followed a lead to this dive. Sex club where his girlfriend worked. We figured we’d shake her down a little, see if she knew where he was. Well, where he was happened to be the sex club. Idiot girlfriend screams for him to run, and runs with him. He’s mowing people down right and left, and those who aren’t mowed are stampeding. We chased him all the way up to the roof, and now he’s got a ten-inch blade against the idiot girlfriend’s throat, who is now singing another tune.
    “It’s summer.” She could still feel it, smell it, see it. “Hot as a fuck in hell. Sweat’s pouring down his face. Hers, too. He’s screaming at us how he’ll slice her open if we come any closer. And now there’s blood trickling down with her sweat where he’s given her a jab to show he means it. He’s using her as a shield, and Feeney doesn’t have the angle for a stun stream.”
    “But you do,” Roarke murmured.
    “Yeah, I do. Barely, but I’ve got it. And we’re trying to talk him down, and it’s not going to happen. He gives her a second