„What was it?“
„His watch. The watch he had on the night he shot me. The one I bought him when my album hit number one. He had it on his wrist and was grinning at me. I shot him, and I kept shooting him until the clip was empty. Then I pushed the murdering bastard over, and I put the gun right against his head, right against it, and I shot him again. Like he did to me.“
She sat back a little, smiled a little. „Now he can wander around in that damn place night after night after night. Let’s see how he likes it.“
Epilogue
When Eve stepped out, rubbed her hands over her face, Mira slipped out of observation.
„Don’t tell me,“ Eve began. „Crazy as a shithouse rat.“
„That might not be my precise diagnosis, but I believe we’ll find with testing that Maeve Buchanan is legally insane and in desperate need of treatment.“
„As long as she gets it in a cage. Not a bit of remorse. Not a bit of fear. No hedging.“
„She believes everything she did was justified, even necessary. My impression, at least from observing this initial interview, is she’s telling you the truth exactly as she knows it. There’s the history of mental illness on both sides of her family. This may very well be genetic. Then discovering who her great-grandmother was helped push her over some edge she may very well have been teetering on.“
„How did she discover it?“ Eve added. „There’s a question. Father must have let something slip.“
„Possibly. Haven’t you ever simplyknown something?
Or felt it? Of course, you have. And from what I’m told happened tonight, you had an encounter.“
Frowning, Eve ran her fingers over her sore cheek. „I’m not going to stand here and say I was clocked by a ghost. I’m sure as hell not putting that in my report.“
„Regardless, you may at the end of this discover the only reasonable way Maeve learned of her heritage was from Bobbie Bray herself. That she also learned of the location of the remains from the same source.“
„That tips out of the reasonable.“
„But not the plausible. And that learning these things snapped something inside her. Her way of coping was to make herself Bobbie. To believe she’s the reincarnation of a woman who was killed before her full potential was realized. And who, if she’d lived – if she’d come back to claim her child – would have changed everything.“
„Putting a lot of faith in a junkie,“ Eve commented. „And using, if you ask me, a woman who was used, exploited and murdered, to make your life a little more important.“
Now she rubbed her eyes. „I’m going to get some coffee, then hit the father again. Thanks for coming down.“
„It’s been fascinating. I’d like to do the testing on her personally. If you’ve no objection.“
„When I’m done, she’s all yours.“
Because her own AutoChef had the only real coffee in all of cop central, Eve detoured there first.
There he was, sitting at her desk, fiddling with his ppc.
„You should go home,“ Eve told Roarke. „I’m going to have an all-nighter on this.“
„I will, but I wanted to see you first.“ He rose, touched his hand to her cheek. „Put something on that, will you?“ Until she did, he put his lips there. „Do you have a confession?“
„She’s singing – ha-ha. Chapter and verse. Mira says she’s nuts, but that won’t keep her out of lockup.“
„Sad, really, that an obsession with one woman could cause so much grief, and for so long.“
„Some of it ends tonight.“
This time he laid his lips on hers. „Come back to me when you can.“
„You can count on that one.“
Alone, she sat. And alone she wrote up a report, and the paperwork that charged Radcliff C. Hopkins I with murder in the first degree in the unlawful death of Bobbie Bray. She filed it, then after a moment’s thought, put in another form.
She requested the release of Bobbie Bray’s remains to herself – if they weren’t claimed by next of kin – so that she could arrange for their burial. Quietly.
„Somebody should do it,“ she stated aloud.
She got her coffee, rolled her aching shoulders. Then headed back to work.
In Number Twelve, there was silence in the dark. No one sang, or wept or laughed. No one walked there.
For the first time in eighty-five years, Number Twelve sat empty.
