"You'd do better to ask him." He reached up, pressed a button on a monitor without glancing at it. "Summerset, would you come up to my office, please? My wife has a question for you."
"Very well."
"I've known the man since I was a boy," Roarke said to Eve. "I've told you most of it, trusted you with that. Now I'm trusting you with him."
She felt a fist squeeze around her heart. "I can't let this be personal. You can't ask that of me."
"You can't let it be anything else. Because that's exactly what it is. Personal," he continued, walking to her. "Intimate." With fingertips only, he skimmed her cheek. "Mine."
He dropped his hand as the door opened.
Summerset stepped inside. His silver hair was perfectly groomed, his black suit ruthlessly pressed, his shoes shone with a mirror gleam.
"Lieutenant," he said, as if the word was ever so slightly distasteful to his palette. "Can I help you?"
"Why were you at the Luxury Towers yesterday at noon?"
He stared at her, through her, and his mouth thinned to a line sharp as a blade. "That is certainly none of your business."
"Wrong, it's exactly my business. Why did you go see Thomas Brennen?"
"Thomas Brennen? I haven't seen Thomas Brennen since we left Ireland."
"Then what were you doing at the Luxury Towers?"
"I fail to see what one has to do with the other. My free time is…" He trailed off, and his eyes darted to Roarke, went wide. "Is that where – Tommy lived at the Luxury Towers?"
"You're talking to me." Eve stepped between them so that Summerset focused on her face. "I'll ask you again, what were you doing at the Luxury Towers yesterday at noon?''
"I have an acquaintance who lives there. We had an engagement, for lunch and a matinee."
"All right." Relieved, Eve pulled out her recorder. "Give me her name."
"Audrey, Audrey Morrell."
"Apartment number?"
"Twelve eighteen."
"And Ms. Morrell will verify that you met at noon and spent the day together?''
His already pale face was slowly going whiter. "No."
"No?" Eve looked up, and said nothing when Roarke brought Summerset a glass of brandy.
"Audrey – Ms. Morrell wasn't in when I arrived. I waited for a time, then realized she'd… Something must have come up."
"How long did you wait?"
"Thirty or forty minutes." Some color seeped back into his cheeks now, of the embarrassed sort. "Then I left."
"By the lobby exit."
"Of course."
"I don't have you on the security discs coming out. Maybe you left by another exit."
"I certainly did not."
Eve bit her tongue. She'd tossed him a rope, she thought, and he hadn't grabbed for it. "Fine, you stick to that. What did you do then?"
"I decided against the matinee. I went to the park."
"The park. Great." She leaned back on Roarke's desk. "What park?"
"Central Park. There was an outdoor art exhibit. I browsed for a time."
"It was raining."
"There were inclement weather domes."
"How did you get from the apartment complex to the park? What kind of transpo?"
"I walked."
Her head began to throb. "In the rain?"
"Yes." He said it stiffly and sipped his brandy.
"Did you speak to anyone, meet someone you know?"
"No."
"Shit." She sighed it, then rubbed absently at her temple. "Where were you at midnight last night?"
"Eve – "
She cut Roarke off with a look. "This is what I do. What I have to do. Were you at the Green Shamrock last night at midnight?"
"I was in bed with a book."
"What was your relationship with Shawn Conroy?"
Summerset set the brandy down, stared at Roarke over Eve's shoulder. "Shawn Conroy was a boy in Dublin years ago. He's dead, then?"
"Someone claiming to represent Roarke lured him to one of Roarke's rental units, nailed him to the floor, and opened up pieces of him. Let him bleed to death." There was shock on his face, she noted. Good, she wanted him to be shocked. "And you're going to have to give me a solid alibi, something I can confirm, or I'm going to have to take you in for a formal interview."
"I don't have one."
"Find one," she suggested, "before eight a.m. tomorrow. That's when I want you at Cop Central."
His eyes were cold and bitter when they met Eve's. "You'll enjoy interrogating me, won't you, Lieutenant?"
"Hauling you in on suspicion of a couple of torture murders is just the chance I've been waiting for. The fact that the media will be screaming the news of your connection to Roarke by midday is only a minor inconvenience." Disgusted, she stalked toward the door that connected her office with Roarke's.
"Eve." Roarke's voice was quiet. "I need to speak with you."
"Not now" was all she said as she closed the door between them. Roarke heard the bad-tempered snick of locks engaging.
"She's already decided I'm guilty." Summerset drank brandy now, deeply.
"No." While regret warred with irritation, Roarke studied the panel that closed him off from his wife. "She's decided she has no choice but to gather the facts." His gaze shifted to Summerset's, held it. "She needs to know all of them."
"That would only worsen the situation."
"She's entitled to know."
Summerset set the snifter down, and his voice was as stiff as his spine. "I see where your loyalties lie, Roarke."
"Do you?" Roarke murmured as Summerset left him alone. "Do you really?"
Eve slept in her office suite, and slept poorly. She didn't care that her deliberate avoidance of Roarke was petty. She needed the distance. Well before eight she was at Cop Central. After toying with a bagel the consistency of cardboard and coffee that bore too close a relationship with raw sewage, she shot off a transmission to Peabody with orders to report to Interview Room C.
Prompt as a palace guard, Peabody was already in the small tiled and mirror-walled room checking the recording equipment when Eve came in. "We've got a suspect?"
"Yeah, we've got one." Eve filled a pitcher from the water distiller herself. "Let's try to keep a cork in it until the interview's wrapped."
"Sure, but who…" Peabody trailed off when a uniform brought Summerset and Roarke to the door. Her eyes darted to Eve's, rounded. "Oh."
"Officer." Eve nodded to the uniform. "You're dismissed. Roarke, you can wait outside, or in my office."
"Summerset is entitled to representation."
"You're not a lawyer."
"His representative isn't required to be."
She had to consciously unclench her jaw. "You're making this worse."
"Perhaps." He sat, folding his hands on the scarred table, an elegant presence in an unfriendly room.
Eve turned to Summerset. "You want a lawyer," she said, spacing her words carefully. "Not a friend."
"I dislike lawyers. Nearly as much as I dislike cops." He sat as well, his bony fingers hitching the knees of his trousers to preserve the knife-edge pleats.
Eve thrust her hands into her pockets before she could pull at her hair. "Secure the door, Peabody. Recorder, engage." Taking a deep breath, she began. "Interview with Summerset – Please state your full name for the record."
"Lawrence Charles Summerset."
"Interview with Summerset, Lawrence Charles re case number 44591-H, Thomas X. Brennen and case number 44599-H, Shawn Conroy. Homicides. The date is November seventeen, twenty fifty-eight, time is oh eight hundred point three hours. Present are subject; his chosen representative, Roarke; Peabody, Officer Delia; and Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, conducting interview. Subject has come into Interview voluntarily."
Still standing, she recited the revised Miranda. "Do you understand your rights and obligations, Summerset?"
"Perfectly."
"And you waive legal representation at this time?"
"That's correct."
"What was your connection with Thomas Brennen and Shawn Conroy?"
Summerset blinked once, surprised she'd shot straight to the heart. "I knew them, casually, when I lived in Dublin."