"Of course we are." And he wouldn't mention, now or then, the illegal nine-millimeter automatic he had in his pocket. Why distress the woman you loved with minor details?
But he kept a hand in that pocket, firm over the grip as he watched her search each room, watched those cool eyes scan corner to corner.
"Why is a place like this empty?" she wanted to know after she'd assured herself it was indeed empty.
"It won't be next week. We're renting it, furnished, primarily on the short term to off-planet businesses who don't care to have their high execs in hotels. We'll furnish staff, droid or human."
"Classy."
"We try." He smiled at Peabody as they descended the stairs. "All clear, Officer?"
"Nothing here except a couple really lucky spiders."
"Spiders?" Lifting a brow, Roarke took out his memo and plugged in a note to contact the exterminators.
"Where's the next place?" Eve asked him.
"It's only a couple of blocks. I'll lead you over."
"You could give me the code and go home."
He brushed a hand over her hair as they stepped outside. "No, I couldn't."
The second home was back off the street, tucked behind now leafless trees. Though houses crowded in on either side, residents had sacrificed their yards for privacy. Trees and shrubs formed a high fence between buildings.
Eve felt her blood begin to stir. Here, she thought, in this quiet, wealthy arena, where the houses were soundproofed and protected from prying eyes, murder would be a private business.
"He'd like this one," she said under her breath. "This would suit him. Decode it," she told Roarke, then gestured for Peabody to move to the right.
Eve shifted in front of Roarke, opened the door herself. That was all it took.
She smelled fresh death.
Shawn Conroy's luck had run out in a gorgeously appointed parlor, just off a small, elegant foyer. His blood stained the wild roses climbing over the antique rug. His arms were stretched wide as if in supplication. His palms had been nailed to the floor.
"Don't touch anything." She gripped Roarke's arm before he could step inside. "You're not to go in. You'll contaminate the scene. You give me your word you won't go in or I'll lock you outside. Peabody and I have to check the rest of the house."
"I won't go in." He turned his head, and his eyes were hot with emotions she couldn't name. "He'll be gone."
"I know. We check the house anyway. Peabody, take the back. I'll do upstairs."
There was nothing and no one, which was what she'd expected. To give herself a moment alone with Roarke, she sent Peabody out to the unit for her field kit.
"He wants it to be personal," she began.
"It is personal. I grew up with Shawn. I knew his family. His younger brother and I were of an age. We chased some of the same girls on the streets of Dublin, and made them sigh in dark alleys. He was a friend. A lifetime ago, but a friend."
"I'm sorry. I was too late."
Roarke only shook his head, and stared hard at the man who'd once been a boy with him. Another lost boy, he thought. Eve turned away, pulled out her communicator. "I have a homicide," she said.
When her hands and boots were clear sealed, she knelt in blood. She could see that death had come slowly, obscenely to Shawn Conroy. His wrists and throat had been slashed, but not deeply, not so that the blood would gush and jet and take him away quickly. He would have bled out slowly, over hours.
He was sliced, neatly, almost surgically from breastbone to crotch, again so that the pain would be hideous, and release would be slow. His right eye was gone. So was his tongue.
Her gauge told her he'd been dead less than two hours.
She had no doubt he'd died struggling to scream.
Eve stood back as the stills and videos of the body and scene were taken. Turning, she picked up the trousers that had been tossed aside. They'd been sliced off him, she noted, but the wallet remained in the back pocket.
"Victim is identified as Shawn Conroy, Irish citizen, age forty-one, residence 783 West Seventy-ninth. Contents of wallet are victim's green card and work permit, twelve dollars in credits, three photographs."
She checked the other pocket, found key cards, loose credits in the amount of three dollars and a quarter, a slip of torn paper with the address of the house where he'd died. And an enameled token with a bright green shamrock on one side and a line sketch of a fish on the other.
"Lieutenant?" The field team medic approached. "Are you finished with the body?"
"Yeah, bag him. Tell Dr. Morris I need his personal attention on this one." She slipped the wallet and the pocket contents into an evidence bag as she glanced over at Roarke. He'd said nothing, his face revealed nothing, not even to her.
Automatically, she reached for the solvent to remove the blood and sealant from her hands, then walked to him.
"Have you ever seen one of these before?"
He looked down into the bag that held what Shawn had carried with him, saw the token. "No."
She took one last scan of the scene – the obscenity in the midst of grandeur. Eyes narrowed, she cocked her head and stared thoughtfully at the small, elegant statue on a pedestal with a vase of pastel silk flowers.
A woman, she mused, carved out of white stone and wearing a long gown and veil. Not a bridal suit, but something else. Because it seemed both out of place and vaguely familiar she pointed. "What is that – the little statue there?"
"What?" Distracted, Roarke glanced over. Puzzled, he stepped around a field tech and might have picked it up if Eve hadn't snagged his hand. "The BVM. Odd."
"The what?"
His laugh was short and far from humorous. "Sorry. Catholic shorthand. The Blessed Virgin Mary."
Surprised, she frowned at him. "Are you Catholic?" And shouldn't she have known something like that?
"In another life," he said absently. "Never made it to altar boy. It doesn't belong here," he added. "My decorating firm isn't in the habit of adding religious statues to the rental units."
He studied the lovely and serene face, beautifully carved in white marble. "He put it there, turned it just so."
He could see by the cool look in Eve's eyes that she'd already come to the same conclusion. "His audience," she agreed. "So, what was he, like showing off for her?"
Roarke might not have thought of himself as Catholic or anything else for too many years to count, but it sickened him. "He wanted her to bless his work, I'd say. It comes to the same thing more or less."
Eve was already pulling out an evidence bag. "I think I've seen another just like this – at Brennen's. On the wife's dresser, facing the bed. It didn't seem out of place there, so I didn't really notice. There were those bead things you pray with, holos of the kids, a statue like this, silver-backed hairbrush, comb, a blue glass perfume bottle."
"But you didn't really notice," Roarke murmured. Some cops, he mused, missed nothing.
"Just that it was there. Not that it shouldn't have been. Heavy," she commented as she slipped the statue into the bag. "Looks expensive." She frowned at the markings on the base. "What's this, Italian?"
"Mmm. Made in Rome."
"Maybe we can run it."
Roarke shook his head. "You're going to find that thousands of these were sold in the last year alone. The shops near the Vatican do a bustling business on such things. I have interests in a few myself."
"We'll run it anyway." Taking his arm, she led him outside. It wouldn't help for him to watch the body bagged and readied for transport. "There's nothing for you to do here. I have to go in, file the report, do some work. I'll be home in a few hours."
"I want to talk to his family."
"I can't let you do that. Not yet. Not yet," she repeated when his eyes went narrow and cold. "Give me a few hours. Roarke…" Helplessly she fell back on the standard line. "I'm sorry for your loss."
He surprised her by grabbing her close, pressing his face into her hair and just holding on. Awkwardly she smoothed her hands over his back, patted his rigid shoulders.