"She's not you."

"Could've been. Who knows what Richard Troy would've twisted me into if he'd had more time."

"No. Nature, nurture, both matter, both form us. But at some point, at so many points, the choices we make, the paths we take, they define us. You made yours. She's made hers."

"Yeah. Yeah. And we're going to come together, I swear to Christ we are. Then we'll see what each other is made of. So I need to break Mackie. I will break Mackie."

"I'll be in Observation. If you need me."

"Okay."

As Mira turned to go, Cher Reo stepped into Eve's doorway. "Mackie's in Interview A," the APA stated. "I'm here to tell you that my boss says no deals for him. Former cop, now a mass murderer, and a cop killer. Evidence is thick and heavy. A confession would be nice, of course, but the PA's office believes we have more than enough for a conviction."

"I hear that."

"However -"

"Bugger the howevers."

"However," Reo continued, "if Mackie gives us the location of his daughter before she takes another life or injures anyone else, and if she surrenders peaceably, the PA's office will agree to try Willow Mackie as a minor."

"Bullshit, Reo."

Reo held up a hand, skimmed the other through her windblown, curly hair. "We're giving you ammunition, Dallas. He needs incentive to lead us to her before she takes out another swath of people. Dr. Mira?"

"It could play on two levels. On his paternal instincts to protect, and on his need to have the mission complete however long it might take."

"Which is just what she will do if we let her walk at eighteen."

Reo angled her head. "And what are the odds of that actually happening? The odds of a peaceful surrender and no further harm done?"

Eve started to speak, then waited for her initial outrage to fade, and for more caffeine to kick in. "Okay. Okay, I get it. No way she surrenders without a fight. That's in stone? That part's nonrefundable?"

Reo smiled. "She resists in any way, stomps her evil little foot and stubs your toe, the deal's void."

"Let me work him awhile first. If I can't break him down, we'll toss this in. That way it sounds and feels like a concession. I don't want to walk in with any deal."

"That's good, that works. He's got a court-appointed as his counsel. Guy named Kent Pratt. He's got a rep as the public defenders' patron saint of lost causes."

"All right. Let me get started."

"I'll be in Observation if you need to pull me in for the deal."

"If I do, we play it up. I'm going to be really pissed. I may call you rude names."

Reo smiled again, sunnily. "Wouldn't be the first."

16.

E.

ve tagged Peabody as she gathered what she needed.

"One of the injured who'd stabilized has taken a turn," Peabody told her. "I don't have all the details it's medical and complicated but she's back in surgery."

"Name?"

"Adele Ninsky."

The woman Summerset was treating when she'd arrived on scene, Eve thought, then set it aside.

"I want you to play up the father-daughter connection. Parental duty, poor young girl. You can be tough on him, but soften up with the girl."

"Got it. I guess it's not much of a stretch."

"It should be. Look at the board. It damn well should be."

Scooping up files, Eve strode out.

Peabody quickened her pace to catch up. "Baxter and Trueheart hit one wit they think saw her minutes after the Times Square attack. He didn't recognize her until they interviewed him, showed him Yancy's sketch. He says he was heading into the building as she was coming out. He held the door for her. She was carrying a large metal case, and a rolling duffle. Had a backpack. He remembers because he said, like, 'Let me help you,' and held the door, and he claims she gave him this, quote 'scary smile' unquote, and said she didn't need anybody's help. He was a little steamed so he stared after her for a minute. He thinks she was headed for the bus stop. Half a block down. They're checking it out."

"Good." Eve paused at the door to the Interview room. "No mistakes," she said and then walked in.

"Record on," she began, reading the data into that record as she sized up the two men at the table.

Mackie, pale, defiant, his eyes shielded behind lightly tinted goggles. Through them she noted the eyes were bloodshot, bruised, and she felt nothing.

The lawyer wore a cheap suit and a skinny black tie. His face sported a night's worth of scruff, with his idealism shining bright under it.

Eve sat, stacked up her files, folded her hands over them. "Well, Mackie, here we are."

"My client is under medical care for severe injuries sustained under questionable circumstances. Therefore -"

"Bullshit. If you reviewed the record, Counselor, you know there are no questions. Your client fired on police officers."

"It's questionable if said officers clearly indentified themselves as same. We will be pursuing charges of illegal entry, police harassment, and excessive force."

"Yeah, good luck with that." She smiled at Mackie as she spoke. "You know that's lawyer bullshit, and it doesn't change a thing. Here we are."

"Due to my client's injuries, you're limited to one-hour intervals for Interview. My client will take his guaranteed thirty minutes after the hour. I request on my client's behalf that he be returned to the hospital for a full medical evaluation after said hour."

"Denied, which is within my authority, as his medical team has signed off. He can take his thirty in a cage, or if you insist, be evaluated here, medically, by a doctor. He's done with the hospital. You're done with the outside, Mackie. It's all cages all the time now. That's going to be fun for you in general population. You know how much they love ex-cops in GP. Don't waste my hour," Eve snapped at Pratt. "I have questions for your client. Here's the first: Where is she? Where is your daughter? Where is Willow Mackie?"

"How would I know? I've been in the hospital."

"Did you keep up with current events? Has your counsel informed you of what your daughter did last night? Eighteen dead this time around. Must swell your chest with pride."

"My client was held incommunicado during the time of that incident, and cannot be held responsible for -"

"And the bullshit keeps coming. You're responsible. You're responsible for turning your own flesh and blood into a stone-cold killer. Eighteen people. Fathers, mothers, sons, daughters. And all because you had some bad luck."

"Bad luck?" Mackie lunged forward in the chair.

"Yeah, bad luck. Your wife didn't look where she was going. Now she's dead."

"They ran her down in the street!"

"No, she ran out into the street, into traffic, because she was too stupid to pay attention. And you couldn't handle it so you went on the funk. Look at your hands shake. Pathetic. What they give you to keep you level just isn't enough, is it? It's never going to be enough. You destroyed yourself because your wife couldn't remember to walk down to the fucking crosswalk. And when that didn't fix it for you, you decided to destroy everyone else you could think of."

"Including his own daughter." Peabody said it just loud enough to be heard, and in a voice that rang with emotion. "That's what I can't get under, can't get through. She's just a kid, and he used her, he screwed her up. You destroyed her, Mr. Mackie. How is she ever going to live with what she's done? What you, her own father, told her to do?"

"You don't know anything about my Will."

"I know at fifteen she should be thinking about boys and music and schoolwork and meeting friends for pizza and vids. I know she should be angsting over what to wear."

"Not my Will."

"Not your Will," Peabody repeated, with disdain. "Because you wouldn't approve. You think all those things are frivolous, aren't important, but they are. They're building blocks, they're rites of passage. They're part of the childhood you stole from her. Now she's a murderer, a fugitive. Her life's over."

"Just beginning," he replied.

"He thinks she's going to Alaska," Eve tossed out with a deliberate smirk, "to live off the land, free as a... What the hell do they have in Alaska?"

"Bear. Moose. Wolves, too, I think. Deer. Lots of deer."

"There you go. Like a deer. But people hunt deer, don't they? Don't they do that up there? Isn't that part of living off the land?"

Eve leaned back. "I'm hunting her right now like a deer. I've got some of my best trackers on her. She's left a trail, Mackie." Eve opened a file, read off the addresses of the three nests. And saw his trembling hands close into trembling fists. "Already got a wit at one of them who saw her exiting the building. Here's what I wonder. Did you tell her to get her ass to Alaska when you sent her off, or did you tell her to finish the job first?"

"My client denies any and all allegations pertaining to his daughter, Willow Mackie. She is missing due to her fear of the police, due to your department's false accusations against her."

"Right. I'll wade through the lawyer bullshit all day. A decent father would have told her to run, run far and fast."

"He's not a decent father," Peabody put in.

"I'm a good father!" Insult and rage flashed hard color into Mackie's cheeks. "I'm a hell of a lot better than that useless prick her mother married."

"That would be the useless prick with the good job, the nice house." Eve studied his ruined and furious eyes through the goggles. "The one who's not a funky-junkie. Yeah, that's a burn on the butt all right."

"He's not her father."

"Nope, but she lived with him half the time. You were working to change that, to get full custody, then oops, dead wife. That got messed up."

The trembling of Mackie's hands increased. Red splotches came and went on his face.

"I figure you said run. 'Get to Alaska. Live a little.' Then you're the sacrifice, the distraction. She can come back in a couple years, finish the mission: Marta Beck, Marian Jacoby, Jonah Rothstein, Brian Fine, Alyce Ellison. But, hey, that's a teenager, isn't it? Defiant, rebellious. She disobeyed Daddy. Now eighteen more people are dead."

Eve opened a file, spread out the photos. "Eighteen people who did nothing but go to a concert."

She watched his gaze skim over the photos, back and forth.

"Their bad luck this time. Bad luck they were in the same place at the same time as Rothstein. He's a lawyer," she told Pratt. "Like you. Mackie hired him to try to sue the driver who hit his jaywalking wife, and the cop who gauged the scene correctly. Just a lawyer, like you, doing his job, like you. But he couldn't get Mackie what he wanted, so he was supposed to die."

"My client denies -"

"But she missed." Eve watched Mackie's shielded eyes jerk up. "That's her oops. Got so excited, I guess, and missed the target."

"Will never misses."

Eve leaned forward. "How would you know? Have you ever seen her aim at a human being?"

"I said she never misses. Where's his picture?" He shoved at the dead. "Where is it?"

"Who chose the collaterals? Did you let her pick? You picked the main target, so did you let her pick the rest?"

"Where is Rothstein's picture?"

"I said she missed."

"You're lying. Will can pick the left ear off a rabbit at a half mile."

"Mr. Mackie," Pratt began, laying a hand on his arm.

Mackie shook him off. "I want to see his picture on this table."

"It was crowded. Night, late, crowded."

"I trained her." Not just his hands shook now, but his arms, his shoulders. "She wouldn't take the shot unless she was sure."

"Maybe it's different when you're not there to give her the green. You were there, giving her the green for the ice rink, for Times Square."

"It's no different, not for her. She doesn't miss."

"But you were there before, giving her the green, to kill Dr. Michaelson, to kill Officer Russo. Yes or no."