CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Time was running short. Running two critical operations meant every hour was crammed with two hours' work and worry. She left Purgatory in Roarke's perhaps too-competent hands and, switching gears, drove out to Clooney's suburban house.

"Whitney already had Baxter question the wife," Peabody said and earned a steel-tipped stare from Eve.

"I'm following up. Do you have a problem with that, Officer?"

"No, sir. No problem at all."

Time might have been rushing by for Eve, but for Peabody it seemed the next thirty hours were going to crawl like a slug. She decided it best not to mention the surveillance car parked in full view of the single-story ranch house on the postage-stamp lot.

Clooney would spot it, too, if he attempted to get to the house. Maybe that was the point.

Keeping her silence, she followed Eve up the walk, waited at the door.

The woman who opened it might have been pretty in a round, homey way. But at the moment she merely looked exhausted, unhappy, and afraid. Eve identified herself and held up her badge.

"You found him. He's dead."

"No. No, Mrs. Clooney, your husband hasn't been located. May we come in?"

"There's nothing I can tell you that hasn't already been said." But she turned away, shoulders slumped as if they carried a fierce burden, and walked across the tidy little living area.

Chintz and lace. Faded rugs, old, comfortable chairs. An entertainment screen that had seen better days. And, she noted, a statue of The Virgin-mother of Christ-on a table with her serene, compassionate face looking out over the room.

"Mrs. Clooney, I have to ask if your husband's contacted you."

"He hasn't. He wouldn't. It's just as I told the other detective. I think, somehow, there's been a terrible mistake." Absently, she pushed a lock of brown hair, as faded as the rugs, away from her face. "Art hasn't been well, hasn't been himself for a long time. But he wouldn't do the things you're saying he did."

"Why wouldn't he contact you, Mrs. Clooney? You're his wife. This is his home."

"Yes." She sat, as if her legs just couldn't hold her up any longer. "It is. But he stopped seeing that, stopped believing that. He's lost. Lost his way, his hope, his faith. Nothing's been the same to us since Thad died."

"Mrs. Clooney." Eve sat, leaning forward in an attitude that invited trust and confidence. "I want to help him. I want to get him the kind of help he needs. Where would he go?"

"I just don't know. I would have once." She took a tattered tissue from her pocket. "He stopped talking to me, stopped letting me in. At first, when Thad was killed, we clung together, we grieved together. He was the most wonderful young man, our Thad."

She looked toward a photograph, in a frame of polished silver, of a young man in full dress uniform. "We were so proud of him. When we lost him, we held on tight, to each other, to that love and pride. We shared that love and pride with his wife and sweet baby. It helped, having our grandchild close by."

She rose, picked up another photograph. This time Thad posed with a smiling young woman and a round-cheeked infant. "What a lovely family they made."

Her fingers brushed lovingly over the faces before she set the photograph down again, sat.

"Then, a few weeks after we lost Thad, Art began to change, to brood and snap. He wouldn't share with me. He wouldn't go to Mass. We argued, then we stopped even that. Existing in this house," she said, looking around at the familiar, the comforting, as if it all belonged to strangers, "instead of living in it."

"Do you remember, Mrs. Clooney, when that change in your husband began?"

"Oh, nearly four months ago. Doesn't seem like a long time, I suppose, when you think of more than thirty years together. But it felt like forever."

The timing worked, Eve calculated, slid the puzzle piece of the first murder into place.

"Some nights he wouldn't come home at all. And when he did, he slept in Thad's old room. Then he moved out. He told me he was sorry. That he had to set things right before he could be a husband to me again. Nothing I could say could change his mind. And God forgive me, at that point I was so tired, so angry, so empty inside, I didn't care that he was going."

She pressed her lips together, blinked away the tears. "I don't know where he is or what he's done. But I want my husband back. If I knew anything that would make that happen, I'd tell you."

Eve left, canvassed the neighborhood, talked to neighbors, and was given nothing but a picture of puzzled disbelief. Clooney had been a good friend, a loving husband and father, a trusted member of the community.

No one had heard from him-or would admit to it.

"Do you believe them?" Peabody asked as they headed back to the city.

"I believe his wife. She's too afraid and confused to lie. He knows we'd cover the house. Friends and relatives. He's not stupid enough to go to any knowns, but I had to check. We'll go back to Central, run through his data again. Maybe something will click."

But two hours through, and nothing had. She pressed her fingers to her eyes, thought about more coffee, then opened them and saw Mira in the doorway.

"You're overdoing it, Eve."

"My back's to the wall. I'm sorry, did we have a meeting?"

"No, but I thought you could use my professional opinion on Clooney at this point."

"Yeah, I could." She glanced around, sighed. "This place is a dump. I wouldn't let the cleaning crew in the last few days. Security clearances aren't enough right now."

"Don't worry about it." Mira made herself comfortable with a hip on the side of Eve's desk. "I don't believe he has, or can, change his agenda. He'll still be focused on you, which means he'll stay close."

"He said he wouldn't kill another cop, too. But he sure didn't hesitate to slice that knife into Webster."

"That was impulse rather than calculated. He wanted you, and even then he would have considered it self-defense. You were coming for him. You and a member of Internal Affairs. I believe he's still in the city, still using whatever considerable skill he has to observe and regroup. Wouldn't you?"

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'd do if I'd decided I had to end something, would die trying." She'd thought it over carefully, in one of her journeys into Clooney's head. "He means to die, doesn't he, Doctor?"

"Yes, I think so. He'll give you until the stated deadline, and if you don't prove yourself to his satisfaction, he'll try to kill you. He may finish this by an attempted assassination of Ricker, then he will, almost certainly, self-terminate. He will not be able to face his wife, his colleagues, his priest. But he will face his son."

"I'm not going to let that happen."

– =O=-***-=O=-

She intended to go straight home. She'd called the hospital to check on Webster and was told there was no change. But, as with Clooney's wife, she had to check for herself.

She strode down the corridor toward ICU, dreading every step. Hating the scent, the sound, the feel of the hospital. When the nurse on duty demanded if she was family, she didn't hesitate. She lied.

And moments later found herself in the narrow cubicle, made smaller by the bed and machines, looking down on Webster's white face.

"Well, this is just dandy, isn't it? Didn't I tell you this was going to piss me off? You know how bad it makes me look for you to be lying here, taking the easy way? Damn it, Webster."

She broke down and laid a hand over his. Cold, she thought. His was too cold. "You think I have time for this? I'm up to my ears in work, and instead of lending a hand, you're just stretched out hiding in a coma. You'd better get up off your ass."

She leaned down, spoke clear and strong into his face. "You hear me, you bastard? You'd better get up off your ass, because I've had too many cops die on my watch just lately. I'm not letting you add to the number. And if you think I'll put a posy on your grave and shed a tear, you are wrong, pal. I'll spit on it."