“People are fucked up,” she told him.
“So you’ve said before.”
“How can they be even more fucked up than I thought? I’ve seen what they’ll do to each other over a harsh word, or because they wake up one day and think: Hey, disemboweling somebody could be fun. But that’s violence, and mostly I understand violence. But where does stupid and fucked up come from? Screw it,” she decided. “Nobody knows that.”
She strode over to the coffeepot, but Roarke beat her to it, held it out of reach.
“Enough.”
“I say when it’s enough. I want some goddamn coffee.”
“There’ll be no more coffee, at all, if you abuse it.” When her eyes fired hot into his, he just lifted his brows over his cool ones. “You want to punch something. You can take a shot at me, but it won’t be free.”
“Fuck it.” She spun away, paced again. “Just fuck it.”
To solve the problem, he took the pot back into the kitchen, came back with a bottle of water. “Hydrate,” he suggested, but she ignored him.
“Read that!” She pointed to the wall screen, kept pacing.
Dear Eve,
I understand few call you Eve, but it’s how I think of you, and always have. All my life I’ve felt something – someone – was missing. I searched, and I let people come in and go out of my life during that search. But no one really connected. You know what I mean, I know you do. I sense it’s been the same for you.
Then one day, I saw you, only on screen, but the rush of feeling that swept through me was amazing. You stood on the steps of Cop Central in New York, so fierce, so strong, so real. And I knew. There you are, I thought. At last.
Did you sense me? I think you did. For a moment, just one moment, our eyes met. You looked right into me, Eve. I know you felt it.
I felt giddy and whole at the same time.
We’ve been together before, time and time before. Loved as few love, time and time before. I’ve been to a sensitive, and had this confirmed. We’re destined to meet, to be together, life after life.
I know I must be patient. I’ve followed your life now, your career. I’m so proud of you! I understand you’re married – as was I – and I must wait for you to come to the end of that relationship. It will be soon, though every day without you is a thousand years.
Only know I’m waiting.
Yours, always yours, throughout time,
Morgan
“Well,” Roarke said, “well. At least he’s patient until you give me the boot.”
“She,” Eve corrected. “Morgan Larkin, a forty-year-old woman, a mother of an eight-year-old boy. Three divorces – all from guys. A systems analyst from Columbus, Ohio, who ought to know better.
“And you can wipe that smirk off your face, pal.”
“Sorry, but my wife getting love letters from a thrice-divorced woman with a son does have some amusing factors.”
“You won’t think it’s so funny if you read the following fourteen letters she’s sent.”
“Ah. All right then, she’s one of your suspects. But you say she lives in Ohio?”
“And has a full-time job. A kid. I don’t find any travel to New York except for a long weekend last February. And she doesn’t have the scratch to hire a pro. This first letter came in three years ago this coming March. I barely remember it. I think I rolled my eyes, tossed it in the file. You’ve got to keep this kind of thing – for reasons that are pretty fucking clear right now. I sort of remember another coming in a few months later, but by then Peabody was working as my admin, and I had her deal. No answer because the standard is not to encourage.”
She sat, opened the water after all. “She came to New York specifically to meet me – there’s a letter dealing with that. She understands I’m unable to come to her, to dump you right away, but she needs to see me, to hear my voice and blah blah, so we’d meet on Valentine’s Day at the top of the Empire State Building.”
“An Affair to Remember,” Roarke murmured. “A classic vid. A love story.”
“Yeah, she put that in there. I got the next in March. She was a little pissed that time. How could I break her heart and all that. You could say we had our first spat. Then a couple months later, it’s like it never happened when she writes again, but she starts getting explicit about our physical love, more demanding about starting our lives together.”
Eve rolled the cool bottle over her forehead. “I don’t see how it could be this one. Whoever killed Bastwick spent time here, studied her routines, knows the city and how to get around. Knows something about cop work. But this is…”
“Disturbing.” He moved over, stood behind her, rubbed her shoulders.
“There’s a sixty-nine-year-old man in Boca Raton who’s been writing me once a month like clockwork since he read Nadine’s book. Starts off kind of normal. Admiration, thank you for your service, then it gets progressively more personal until he’s asking me to run away with him, how we’ll sail around the world and he’ll treat me like a queen. Christ, I’m half his age, and he should know better. He’s got the scratch.” She sighed. “Not Roarke scratch, but he’s not hurting. So we’ll give him a closer look, but he’s never had any criminal. A couple stints in facilities for emotional issues.
“Another guy in England,” she continued, wound up. “Apparently I come to him in dreams, and we bang like jackrabbits. Over and above the sex, we have this connection – emotional, psychic, depends on the day. He’s the only one I can trust. Dark forces surround me. The law, stupid as it is, hampers my destiny, so when we’re not dream-banging, he’s helping me on my cases. He tried to enlist in the cops over there, but failed the psych.”