by Robb, J. D.
“I can tell you that quite easily. Her parents, Oliver and Paula Huffman, and Merit Caine.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes, it is. Instructions are, any of those three may go right up, but the desk is to inform her of their arrival.”
“My partner and I will be there shortly. I need you to clear us up without informing her. We have a warrant to enter that’s still valid.”
“Understood.”
“Thanks.”
Eve clicked off, looked at Peabody.
“They’re really long and complicated. I don’t get a lot of it, so we’ll need legal on it, but I get the bottom line.”
“I’ll take that.”
“The son’s in here only to expressly disinherit him. Whoever kicks first leaves the rest—minus some specific bequests—to the other spouse. I think that’s kind of normal. When they both kick, and if she’s met the terms of the trust, and that’s all outlined, Gwen gets their house in New York, the house in the Hamptons, her mother’s jewelry, some other specific stuff, and five hundred million. Any full Caucasian child she produces, in wedlock, gets fifty mil—in trust with her in charge. Natural Order gets the rest.”
“It’s a lot of rest.”
“If she fails to meet the terms of the trust, she gets zip.”
“You could say her cold comes from the natural order of things.” Eve started the car. “Let’s go heat her up.”
10
The doormen didn’t bother to scowl this time.
In the lobby, Felicity merely nodded in their direction as she signed for a delivery at the desk.
“I’ve got a prenup on this disc.” Peabody continued to read as they got on the elevator. “I don’t know much about them, but it looks like she gets to keep any gifts—jewelry, and so on—given to her by him before or during the marriage should they dissolve the engagement or marriage.”
“She’ll sell that million-dollar rock on her finger,” Eve predicted. “Bet your ass on it.”
“She gets half of any property purchased during the marriage,” Peabody continued. “If they have children, he agrees to pay ten K a month, per child, in addition to all educational and medical expenses for each child until they reach the age of twenty-one or graduate from college, whichever is later. If she chooses professional parent status with said children, he agrees to pay her an additional five, per month, per child, until they reach that same marker.”
“So brew up a kid, keep raking it in, in addition to raking in the trust. She sure couldn’t afford for Ariel to have a snit and blab.”
Eve walked down the hallway on the forty-eighth floor. “It’s a hell of a lot of motive.”
She pressed the buzzer.
Ms. Huffman has issued a Do Not Disturb. Please see the desk staff in the lobby.
Eve held up her badge. “Inform Ms. Huffman the cops are at the door, and the warrant to enter and search is still in effect. We will enter the premises, one way or the other.”
One moment please.
Gwen wrenched open the door.
No virginal white and subdued makeup this time. She wore bold red lounging pajamas and no makeup at all to disguise swollen, red-rimmed eyes.
“Haven’t you done enough?” She nearly screeched it. “You’ve ruined my life, broken my engagement, humiliated me.”
“From where I’m standing you did that all by yourself. We can talk about all this out in the hall. I bet some of your neighbors would love it. Or you can step back and let us in.”
“What do you want?” She whirled away from the door.
“Answers that don’t include lies.”
“Bitches, both of you. You think you’re so important because they made some idiotic vid about you? You’re nothing. You’ll be less than nothing when I’m finished with you.”
Deliberately, Eve hooked her thumbs in her front pockets. “Well, now I’m terrified. How about you, Peabody?”
“I just can’t stop shaking.”
“I hate you!” Gwen grabbed a used wineglass off the table, reared back with it.
“You throw that, you’re back in a cage for assaulting police officers. Record’s on, Gwen. You might want to pull yourself together.”
On a frustrated scream, Gwen threw it against the wall instead.
Eve surveyed the shards of glass, the splatter of the swallow or so of red wine that had been in the glass.
“Boy, that’ll teach us.”
“This is harassment. My new lawyer’s going to sue you for harassment.”
“Got one of those yet?”
“I’ve been too upset. I’ve lost the love of my life!”
“Oh, cut the crap. You didn’t love Merit Caine any more than you love the guy who delivers pizza.”
“You don’t know my heart.” Gwen slapped a dramatic hand against it.
“That’s not going to work. It may be good practice for your parents, but it’s not going to work with us. We’ve just come from your safe deposit box.”
Drama hit shock, shock hit outrage. “How dare you!”
“Badge, cop, warrant. We dare a lot. Getting your engagement ring appraised—and the other baubles Merit gave you? That indicates greedy calculation, not heart.”
“That’s for insurance purposes.”
“No. You have your insurance papers in your closet safe. And Merit has the appraisal, is carrying the insurance on what he gave you. Cut the crap,” Eve said again. “I bet Chad never knew you were adding up the value of his heart. Or hearts, since he gave you several.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“We should just take her in, Dallas. She’s lying to cops again. The judge is going to revoke her bail, so—”
“No!” This time Gwen slapped both hands on her heart, and meant it. “I’m not going back to that horrible place. I can’t.”
The tears looked real this time, too, as she dropped down on the sofa, covered her face with her hands. “Oh God, oh God, what am I going to do?”
“You could try telling the truth.” Eve nodded at Peabody. They each took a chair. “We might be able to help you if you do.”
“You don’t understand. You don’t understand what it’s like for me.”
“I understand you’re a gay woman whose parents condemn that orientation, and because of that, you had many millions of dollars riding on your marriage to Merit Caine.”
“They wanted me to marry another member of the order—they had candidates.”
“Names.”
She looked up again with eyes drenched, swollen and red. No more pretty crying.
“I don’t know—I swear it. As soon as my father brought it up I told him I was in love with Merit. We’d barely started seeing each other, but I had to do something. If I married someone from the order, it would never end. Merit hit all the qualifications, except that one thing—and my father believed he could recruit him, in time. That would be a coup.”
She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “So I went after Merit, and so what? I gave him everything he wanted except for sex, and I was prepared to give him that, after marriage. My mother explained sex to me as a wife’s duty. She must never, never deny her lawful husband sex. Not in the mood? Well, take a quick whiff of this, and you’ll relax and feel agreeable.”
“You’re saying your mother gave you illegals. Whore? Rabbit?”
With the heels of her hands, Gwen rubbed her red-rimmed eyes. “Whore, I think, diluted. I don’t know what with. My mother came up with the … formula or whatever it is. She promised it was perfectly safe, and she used it herself. What does it matter? He wouldn’t know the difference.”
“And once you were married, you’d get pregnant as soon as possible.”
Now those red-rimmed eyes fired with defiance. “Damn right. I’d meet the terms of the trust, get my money. I deserve that money. And after a while, there could be a divorce. Merit would never join the order, I knew that. And my father would come to dislike and distrust him, so I c
ould divorce him. I could claim he’d been unfaithful. I had time to work all that out.”
“More money, from the terms of the prenup.”
“I’d have earned it.” Unashamed, she snapped it out. “I could move away, far enough away. I’d have to be careful, until they died I’d have to be careful. But then I’d have my life—all of it. I need money to have my life.”
Eve nodded. “Time plan: get married, have a kid, get a divorce—with him to blame. Put a little distance between yourself and your parents. But there’s still all that money—well over a billion with the houses you’d inherit. Why wait, when you could arrange another tragedy?”
“What tragedy?” When it hit, her eyes widened. “Oh my God, I wouldn’t kill my own parents! I despise them, okay? I despise them, their ridiculous rules, their ridiculous order, but my God. If I could do something like that, I’d have done it after they sent me to Realignment.”
“What’s Realignment?”
Gwen held up her hands. “I need a drink. I don’t care what fucking time it is.”
She got up, left the room. At Eve’s signal, Peabody followed her.
“I’m getting some goddamn wine, for God’s sake.” With Peabody, Gwen came back holding a half-empty bottle and a fresh glass.
She poured wine nearly to the rim, drank deep.
“It’s one of the order’s big secrets. On the island, they have a medical center, and in the medical center, they have the Realignment section. Only for blood relatives of members at a certain level or beyond. I think. That’s what I think. Mostly for kids, young adults. Gay kids. They sent me there after they found out about Jan.”
Bitterness hardened her eyes, her voice. “If I could kill anyone, it would be whoever told them.”
“What do they do in Realignment?”
“Evaluate you, physically, whether you want them to or not.”
She took a long, deep drink. The drama, the hysteria faded. Flat, bitter tones replaced it.
“They take your clothes, everything, and you wear a uniform. It says ‘Deviant’ on the back in big red letters. You wear a collar, like a dog. I’ve been told they have a section there for those who get involved—romantically—with someone of another race, or mixed race, but they keep them separate.”
She lifted her shoulders, let them fall. “I don’t know what they put on the back of their uniforms. You have a small room, only a cot, a toilet, a sink. And there are cameras, so you know they’re watching you. They play lectures on homosexuality, the evils of it, all day, all night.”
She closed her eyes, leaned her head back. “You’re not allowed to speak to anyone but your counselor. That’s what your jailer’s called. You eat in your cell—what they bring you, when they bring it. If you leave anything on the plate, no food the next day. You shower daily in the presence of your counselor. No privacy. If you complain, object, fight back? They push this button they carry, and the collar …”
She closed her eyes, and the hand holding the wineglass shook. “It’s like being set on fire from the inside.
“I learned, fast, to keep my mouth shut.” She sat up, drank more wine. “They show vids that would be laughable if they weren’t so awful and demeaning. You have daily counseling and prayer, evaluations, menial labor. And if it doesn’t take in ten days, there’s shock therapy.”
She smiled, thin and hard, as she toasted with her glass. “I escaped that by seeing the error of my deviant ways in five.”
Fury didn’t cover what Eve felt, but she kept her voice even. “You understand all of that is illegal?”
“No, really?” On a laugh, Gwen lifted her glass. “Good luck with that. They’ve got cops and judges and congresspeople, more money than God.”
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” Peabody murmured.
Gwen met sympathy with a sneer of contempt. “Screw your pity. I know how to deal with it. I was dealing with it. I had a plan and it worked. Until the two of you ruined it. And me.”
“Ariel was going to ruin it,” Eve reminded her.
“No, she wouldn’t have.” Gwen gulped more wine. “Yes, she got pissed, yes, she threatened to tell Merit, but it wasn’t the first time we’d argued about it. Maybe she was more angry this time, and it got a lot more heated. So I knew I had to end it—the relationship,” she qualified. “But I knew how to get around her, and I would have. That’s why I went back in the morning. I knew how to play her, and if she got pissy, well, she didn’t have any proof. She’d never been to my place, we never went out. I paid cash for everything when I went downtown.”
“Her calendar.”
“I didn’t know about that. I should have,” Gwen admitted. “She was a romantic. That was part of her appeal to me.”
“Text messages,” Eve added.
“She always left her ’link in the kitchen or turned off in the bedroom drawer. She didn’t like it interrupting her in bed or in the studio. If she got pissy, I’d get her ’link, get rid of it. No problem. But when I saw her like that, I didn’t think, not at first. Not about the ’link or the stupid wineglasses or the sheets or anything. I just knew I had to get out, and I had to start to protect myself.
“I didn’t kill her. She was crazy about me. You can always work somebody when they’re crazy about you.”
“You got rid of your ’link, her key card—your copy.”
“I knew damn well I shouldn’t have the card—too intimate. And yeah, the messages on my ’link.”
Eve started to tell her they’d recovered the ’link, but Gwen frowned into the distance. “I was going to get a new one anyway, I’d been meaning to. It started echoing.”
“Echoing?”
“Yeah, when somebody called, left a v-mail or voice text, their voice would echo some, and annoy me. People said my voice echoed, too. So I was going to get a new one anyway.”
“Who has access to your ’link?”
“What do you mean? It’s my ’link.”
“Who could get to it?”
“I don’t know. People.” She gestured impatiently with the wineglass. “At a party or a club, or who knows? It’s just a ’link, so I’m not paranoid about it.”
“When did it start echoing?”
“A couple of months ago, I guess. I didn’t really notice. I don’t make that many actual calls, just texts. I ditched it, so who cares?”
“We recovered it.”
“What? How?”
“Search warrant.”
“You—you had people in here, going through my things?” Outrage pushed Gwen to her feet again. “You have no right!”
“Search warrant,” Eve said mildly. “Warrant gives us the right. And we recovered your ’link from your kitchen recycler.”
“Fine then. Good. Then you’ll see I didn’t contact anybody after I left Ariel.”
“Gwen.” Eve waited until she poured more wine. “Did you tell anyone about Ariel, at any time?”
“Jesus, no.” Visibly exhausted, Gwen dropped down to sit again. “Look, I liked her, I really did, but she wasn’t the one and only. I’ve had other relationships, and I’m careful. I have to be.”
“I want names.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”
“Do you want these charges to go away?”
Slowly, Gwen lowered her glass. “You can do that?”
“If you tell us the truth, if I can clear this up, satisfy myself you weren’t involved in Ariel’s murder, I can have the current charges dropped.”
“My parents wouldn’t have to know?”
“If I’m satisfied you’re truthful—and you don’t hide relevant information—I’d do whatever I can to maintain your privacy.”
“How far back do you want me to go?”
“To the first.”
“I’m probably not going to remember everybody. I’m being truthful! I might not remember last names, or somebody I had a one-nighter with.”
“Start with who you can—but first, tell me about Chad.”
“Chadwick Billingsly.” She closed her eyes again, smiled. Not dreamily, not fondly. Smugly. “College. I needed my parents to believe I had a solid boyfriend, a good family, one who respected my vow to stay pure until marriage. He fit. Then he asks me to marry him, and I have to say yes, and then I have to string that along awhile until I can find a way to break it off.
“I set him up, put some sleeping pills in his beer, and I paid an LC who’d lost her license to get into bed with him and take pictures. Throw those up on the Internet, and I’ve got a tearful breakup.
“‘Daddy.’” She let those slow tears roll. “ ‘I loved him! He promised we’d wait until we were married. And he cheated on me, cheated on me with a prostitute! Oh, Daddy, I just want to die. I can’t go back to college, please, please, I can’t face it. Please let me stay home.’ ”
She shrugged. “Two birds. I hated college.”
“You’re a piece of work.”
Gwen shrugged again. “I do what I have to do.”
“Start with the first,” Eve told her, “and give me as many names as you can.”
After they left, in the elevator, Eve gave Peabody a moment of silence. She could almost hear her partner wrestle with her thoughts and feelings.
“You want to feel sorry for her,” Eve began, “because she’s a victim of horrible and ugly child abuse. And worse.”
“I do feel sorry for her about that, and it’s not just the Free-Ager thing, it’s the cop thing, the human-being thing.”
“Because what happened to her, what her parents did to her at sixteen was horrible and ugly, illegal and immoral. And she had no choice, not at sixteen. Two years later, she did, and from then until now, her choice has been to lie, to cheat, to use others, then betray them, and all for money she didn’t earn. For money she’ll rake in simply because she was born, and lived a life of lies and greed and betrayal.”
“When you put it like that.”
“It is like that,” Eve said as they walked across the lobby. “It’s exactly like that. Our problem here is that doesn’t make her a murderer. She doesn’t want your compassion.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“She also doesn’t want to accept blame or responsibility for anything.” They stepped outside, crossed the sidewalk to the car. “She despises her parents, and she’s got plenty of cause, but she panders to them, is willing to ruin lives and reputations—because that’s what she’d have done to Merit Caine—and she’d have done everything she could to have a kid—a kid who’d be just another step to the money for her—to get what she wants.”