"Want to play as a civilian consultant, Ace?"
"Huh?" Roarke managed to say while recovering from their previous orgasms. She was lying on top of him, trying to regulate her breathing.
"Is this your bribery? Now I feel used."
"You're too good for my plaything, pal," she answered with a smug.
After they dressed, they went to her office for some dinner, and there she told him everything.
"So to summarize, our princess has threats unreported upon her arrival and escalated when the consul died on the same hotel that she stayed. You want my take if it sounds like a total bluff? No, it's not.", he said, then took a bite of his steak.
"Harmin made its independence a decade ago, still on the shaky ground, has a left and right wings, and barely holding its position as a Third World country. With some remnants from the Urban Wars, political assassinations are quite rampant around Asia and Pacific regions. And for a fragile country to survive from its borders, America is your greatest ally. But sometimes, a treaty is not enough."
"And that's how the marriage entered.", she concluded, "Who's this Stephanos Levinski, by the way?"
"Ah, a pompous third-generation moniker born with a pea-sized brain and a fucked-up attitude."
"You sound like you don't like this guy, Roarke."
"I bloody well don't."
Eve raised her brow on that comment. She has seen different sides of him – the Scary Roarke, the Serious Roarke, the Playful Roarke – and this one was the rarest.
"What did Levinski do? Did he conned you – hey!", she gawked when he left the table, only to retrieve his PPC and punched something on the keys before handing it to her. As she flipped the details, she paused and stared at the visual image.
"Holy shit! Is this the Levinski who will marry the princess?"
According to the data, his grandfather was a senator while his father was a governor, a Harvard graduate with flying colors, made a name in the business world, and similar as Roarke, he was a billionaire with properties on and off-planet. These were just salient anyways, so nothing popped out, and probably she would grasp a bigger picture if she will run it using the Central's database.
But what surprised her the most were his unattractive looks. She was not very particular about it, but his features were quite alarming. He looked like twice as his age, with deformed teeth, crooked nose, creased forehead, and saggy eye bags. She verified his medical records twice for abnormalities, but all test results showed as normal.
"It's now clear as the sun why she's marrying him, but for a man with the same stature as you, he could've done some enhancement on his face. Geez, even a sidewalk-sleeper is more handsome than him. No cosmetic surgeries, no trauma or accidents. What does he have, a huge ego?"
"I could have divorced you for associating his name with mine, but you're right, he has a very huge ego and he's proud of it. He doesn't know what respect means, even he foul-mouthed his own parents and colleagues alike."
"And something happened between the two of you"
He made a non-committal hum "His face was all over the screens lately, attaching the news of his upcoming marriage."
"You know that I'm not fond of watching entertainment news."
He's stalling, she thought, that he never answered her question. Something did happen between him and Levinski, but she didn't probe further.
"He was jealous on us.", he concluded.
"What?"
"You heard me, Darling, he was jealous of our relationship. He made a lot of public announcements recently, wanted to have a wedding of the year, and probably a sensational one like ours. How fascinating it sounded to others back then that a two completely opposite person met in a scandalous investigation, became an item, and after a few months, they got married and still in love until now?"
She reminded her again of DeBlass case years ago. It baffled her how she lured herself to Roarke, even accepted his marriage proposal in an untimely fashion, and now they shared everything that they have locked inside their consciousness.
Two lost souls, he said, and now...
"That reminds me of our anniversary next week.", Roarke said as he arranged the dishes as Eve programmed a coffee for two.
"Just so you know, I'm not that sorry that I busted your surprise for next year." she bemused.
"Ouch, that hurts. Then I'll just name it for our future child. Of course, it's not yet, Eve.", he went to her side when she froze on his comment, "We're both on our recovery stage from our inner wounds, and on our way of understanding a child's life. We must not force ourselves, alright?"
"You know what Roarke, I think I must give you one hell of a gift enough to whack your brains out this anniversary.", she stated with a wink.
"I love competitions, Darling. Let's see who will win this time."
The couple went to their respective office tables – him for money trails, hers for relationships. She first ran Levinski's and compared it from Roarke's salient. She also pulled some data about Howe and crossed his to Roarke's as well.
"Computer, show all the data connected to Howe and Levinski on the first screen. Second screen, the connection of Howe and Levinski to Roarke."
Data running. On screen.
Eve suddenly felt dizzy as she read the information. Her head swayed a bit; good thing she was able to hold herself not to slump on the desk. Maybe she was wired with caffeine, and probably her body was commanding her brain to rest, but she wasn't a type to leave her work unfinished especially that she knew she was missing something.
"Computer, run all the data about Princess Petun of Harmin."
While waiting, she decided to close her eyes for a moment, trying to settle her nausea. She had this withdrawal symptom since the end of her last case, and because her body was used to do legwork every day, being forced in a desk all of a sudden and eat normal meals that she normally skips, her body clock was still recuperating from the routine.
Data on screen.
She was surprised how little the information was.
The princess was the second child from the current king's tenth wife, making her the 35th heir of the royalty. Eve tried to remember the princess from their first meeting – quite tall, slim, with long bushy hair, and brown eyes. Her face was bandaged so she was not able to see her face fully.
"Visual profile, on screen.", she commanded.
Visual profile not found.
She slammed her hands on the table "What?"
If only she could walk straight without stumbling, she will make her husband find it.
She remembered asking him once if he saw the princess up close. No, he told her, since it was part of their tradition to hide the face of an unwed female unless there was a blessing from the royal court.
In short, nobody outside the family has seen Princess Petun except Levinski. Eve was lucky to be the second.
She started to dig some profiles from the royal family and noticed the similarities of all women consorts to Petun. Their profiles were available after their marriage – some with other royal princes that exercised polygamy; others with political and business icons. The only uniqueness to Petun was that her betrothal came from a different continent.
She also focused on her male half-siblings and found some discrepancies, starting from the past five generations. With her limited e-skills, she was able to retrieve old case files of accidents and murders within the royal family.
Eve didn't realize she spent a full hour of reading about Harmin. It gave her the same sickness with the Red Horse cult during the Urbans, hitting her gut after seeing the innocent eyes of the children from pain and famine. Nausea became excruciating after she read the Bukot system, wherein the royal females were locked in a room since birth until they reached a marriageable age.
It brought her back again when she was eight in that dark, smelly room, and the blinking red light from the window.
Unable to control her building sickness, Eve ran to her office kitchen to vomit. Roarke was able to rush beside her, sliding his hand slowly to her back as she poured all of the food that she consumed.
"Eve, your body is rejecting the caffeine that you've taken. You need to get some rest now."
She agreed immediately, which increased the worries that Roarke felt, especially when she took a tranqued soother willingly. She cried in his arms after he stripped her off and laid on their bed.
"They were born for political slavery, Roarke, like a commodity sold by their parents. Just like me."
"Hush, baby, you've never been a commodity. You're my beloved Lieutenant Eve Dallas who stands for the dead." Roarke whispered lovingly "You make yourself, Eve, and you always have me."
When she calmed down and fell asleep, he followed her. She did not even miss telling him to search for Petun's picture.
Everybody arrived at Eve's home office before eight with a single thing on their minds – breakfast. Much to Eve's annoyance, Summerset has no problem serving them bacon and eggs, and the reason why she lost the control of food indulgence he and Roarke did to her division.
"Before you all die from indigestion, let me hear your reports. Trueheart, you're first."
"Yes, sir." the fresh-looking cop replied, sliding a disk on the projector.
"The smoke bombs were examined first, with a component of potassium nitrate, sugar, and baking soda, favoring the theory as a homemade. Dickie gave a list of the ingredients and its brands as well, indicating that the suspect used some of our local products. The sweepers found four types of hair strands on the floor, two from the victims, while the other one from the unknown person. We ran the DNA to the last one and hit a Harminian citizen."
The image was projected on the screen. It was Afef.
"He looked like Summerset.", Peabody muttered absentmindedly.
Trueheart went on "Sweepers found some blood smears on the carpet other than the two victims, and they were not in our database. The first sample matched the hair strand of our unsub."
"Which means that one of them is our third victim," Feeney interjected.
"I agree, Captain. Also, the scratches found on the scene were tagged as a curvy weapon with an approximate blade length of eighteen centimeters. It appears to be a sabre sir, a Hussar."
"That's a szabla, I believe, and inspired from Polish weaponry. You can check my collections later.", Roarke suggested.
"It will be much delighted.", Trueheart beamed then focused again on his report. "We ran some fingerprints around the crime scene, and one of it matched the fingerprints that we found on the computer keys from the reception. It appears to be from Afef."
Baxter whistled. "Seems like my boy already answered the missing questions in the puzzle, LT."
Eve was somehow shocked, not on Afef's involvement but on the young cop's efficiency "Wait, Trueheart. You manage to purge all of these data to Dickhead alone in just, what, half a day?"
"Ah, well, sir, I just followed your advice of using my anatomy, so I used one aspect of mine." he explained shyly, "I told him that the Lieutenant will stop her briberies since she didn't want to tolerate sloppiness and maybe, she found someone way better than him."
Well, brain is also part of the body.
She studied the blushing young cop as he received a friendly pat from Baxter. It seems that Baxter taught Trueheart well, she thought, not only by shedding his greenness but also developing some shrewdness.
She was hoping that some of his trainer's habits will not stick to his trainee.
"It only concludes that Dickhead is a masochist. Anyway, good job Trueheart. Let's see if your maestro will have the same ability. Baxter, your report."
Baxter stood up and slipped a disc, projecting two cartographic sketches from Yancy. The first one was a spiky-haired person, with sharp-looking stares, good cheekbones, and a firm mouth. The second one shared the same, only with tufty locks and a cheek mole.
"The first one was from Andrea Cali, a cleaning staff who happened to pass along the kitchen. The other one was from Lewis Remington, the security officer. Andrea sighted him around the same time Lewis received his go-cup from the suspect. I interviewed the kitchen staffs if they spotted the same person that Andrea described, and it was negative. Same as all the hotel staffs for the two sketches. I also run visual recognition from our database and outside the borders, only to receive a negative result as well. They might be in disguise, LT."
"Ah, on the matched hair and blood DNA from the unsub, we got it as female, same with the sample number 2 blood DNA.", Trueheart added.
"That means we have two female unsubs, and one of them is a suspect that bears one of Yancy's sketches?"
"We can't assume that, Baxter. As what you've said, they might be in disguise." Eve sneered "Feeney and I discussed it as a serious overkill, but having an accomplice? Why not."
After Baxter finished his findings, Peabody began hers, mumbling about using Trueheart's tactics the next time she handled the crime lab.
"Screen one is the list of royal family who has arrived here a week ago. Screen two is the list of the royal family who has declared plans of attending the wedding. Screen three is the guest list of the wedding. Those names on screens one and two are on the screen three list, making them thirty-five. As of the moment, only fifteen persons are in the city. Afef is one of them."
"LT..."
Eve raised her hand to silence Baxter. Everybody in the room looked at her with curious eyes, except Roarke who knows the answer.
The room went into silence as Eve shared the data that she found out last night.
"Is the princess sexy?", asked Mcnab, which immediately earned an elbow jab from Peabody.
"If you want me to describe her just to indulge you men from your sexual fantasies, then better start your report."
McNab stood up as he cleared his throat "The cams, except the room, were not seriously fried. Thus, I was able to get a one-minute surveillance cut from the time the recording was killed. Well, praised to be that they were using Roarke's with an internal memory recorder, with a similar approach to UPS. All of them stopped at 0420. Flat."
Eve squeezed her eyes shut.
"Please tell me you have the hallways, with someone standing at the door."
McNab played the recovered surveillance of the hallway. After the one-minute playback, Eve made a satisfied grin.
"Over-verification can give sloppy results. Roarke, what have you got there?"
Taking as a cue, the screen flashed several numbers, account statements divided into several screens.
"Here's the data from Levinski, with a cross-reference to Howe's account and the Royal Treasury of Harmin. Below is another data from Levinski, with a cross-reference to the master list of his withdrawals. Highlighted are the lists of persons that have accounts with Levinski's previous and current properties for the past ten years."
As they read other pieces of pieces of evidence, Eve's gut began to churn.
"Dammit, Roarke. I told you not to use – "
"Use what, Darling? Your source is my source as well. Besides, that man was very willing to help me. And as I recalled last night, you told me to follow the money. Now here I am.", he announced proudly with a lopsided grin.
When she saw some political names locally and internationally, she immediately knew that Roarke used the unregistered. Accessing their hidden accounts could alert several flags, yet Roarke didn't mind it at all.
If nothing really happened, then why would he go all means to destroy Levinski?
"Fuck Dallas, this is not a stinky shit. This is a sceptic tank!", Feeney groaned.
"Care to explain what Graft and Corruption is, boy?", Baxter asked Trueheart.
"Hold on, guys. We're all going inside this shit so don't you ever complain.", Eve said when the murmurs increased. "The unsub has been named, and if we check that DNA you've got Trueheart, it will tell you that it's from Petun. And for the other unsub and Baxter's two friends, that gives us another aspect for a possible two perpetrators. What you have, Roarke, is our peace offering to Feds in case they got winded with our case. This is a Homicide folks, so we have to deal with the dead. What we need to focus now is the remaining days until the wedding."
A computer beep sounded, making Roarke excuse himself to retrieve it.
"Since the royal family believes that the princess has been kidnapped, it will be an easy entrance for us to infiltrate. And with the butler as our mole, we have to find a double for the princess – not only for the bait but to give the princess an ample time to recover. The only people who know her condition besides us are Afef and the killer."
Roarke was pale-faced as he entered the room pale-faced, waving a slim drive to Eve.
"I have the bloody image of the princess.", he blurted out before she could even ask. Abandoning the thought, she took it from his hand then slipped the drive to the projector.
The picture was taken inside a room, with patterned tapestries hung on the walls. Sitting on the center was a beautiful woman in a traditional gown, with long tawny hair and amber-colored eyes. Despite her innocent looks, there was wisdom radiating in her eyes. She was slim, with good facial structure, and a little dent on her chin.
Baxter gasped as he stood up from his seat "Holy Mary, mother of God, I think I have seen her before!"
"Amen," Trueheart respond.
Everybody looked at the stupefied lieutenant who just gulped audibly "She looks like me."