by J. D. Robb
“You keep that positive outlook, Beaver. How old’s the blood?”
“Come on, Lieutenant.” Behind the sensor lenses, his eyes were huge and cynical. “You know I can’t give you that from one of the portables. Gotta take it in. All this little girl does is identify. No skin,” he announced. “Be better if you had some skin.”
“I’ll take the blood.” As she sealed the knife into evidence, a movement caught her eyes. She looked up and into the dark, damning eyes of Marco Angelini.
He glanced down at the knife, then back into her face. Something moved across his, something wrenching that had the muscle jerking in his jaw.
“I’d like a moment of your time, Lieutenant Dallas.”
“I can’t give you much more than that.”
“It won’t take long.” His eyes flicked to Beaver, then back to the knife as Dallas slipped it into her bag. “In private, please.”
“All right.” She nodded to the uniform who stood at Angelini’s shoulder. “Tell one of the team to come up and finish the hands-on search in here,” she ordered Beaver, then followed Angelini out of the room.
He turned toward a set of narrow, carpeted steps, his hand trailing along a glossy banister as he climbed. At the top, he shifted right and stepped into a room.
An office, Eve discovered. Sunwashed now in the brilliant afternoon. Light beamed and glinted off the surfaces of communication equipment, struck and bounced from the smooth semi-circular console of sober black, flashed and pooled on the surface of the gleaming floor.
As if annoyed with the strength of the sunlight, Angelini hit a switch that had the windows tinted to a soft amber. Now the room had shadows around pale gold edges.
Angelini walked directly to a wall unit and ordered a bourbon on the rocks. He held the square glass in his hand, took one careful sip.
“You believe my son murdered his mother and two other women.”
“Your son has been questioned on those charges, Mr. Angelini. He is a suspect. If you have any questions about the procedure, you should speak with his counsel.”
“I’ve spoken with them.” He took another sip. “They believe there’s a good chance you will charge him, but that he won’t be indicted.”
“That’s up to the grand jury.”
“But you think he will.”
“Mr. Angelini, if and when I have arrested your son and charged him with three counts of first-degree murder, it will be because I believe he will be indicted, tried, and convicted on those charges, and that I have the evidence to ensure that conviction.”
He looked at her field bag where she’d put some of that evidence. “I’ve done some research on you, Lieutenant Dallas.”
“Have you?”
“I like to know the odds,” he said with a humorless smile that came and went in a blink. “Commander Whitney respects you. And I respect him. My former wife admired your tenacity and your thoroughness, and she was not a fool. She spoke of you, did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“She was impressed by your mind. A clean cop’s mind she called it. You’re good at your job, aren’t you, Lieutenant?”
“Yeah, I’m good at it.”
“But you make mistakes.”
“I try to keep them to a minimum.”
“A mistake in your profession, however minimal, can cause incredible pain to the innocent.” His eyes stayed on hers, relentlessly. “You found a knife in my son’s room.”
“I can’t discuss that with you.”
“He rarely uses this house,” Angelini said carefully. “Three or four times a year perhaps. He prefers the Long Island estate when he’s in the area.”
“That may be, Mr. Angelini, but he used this house on the night Louise Kirski was killed.” Impatient now, eager to get the evidence to the lab, Eve moved a shoulder. “Mr. Angelini, I can’t debate the state’s case with you—”
“But you’re very confident that the state has a good case,” he interrupted. When she didn’t answer, he took another long study of her face. Then he finished the drink in one swallow, set the glass aside. “But you’re wrong, Lieutenant. You’ve got the wrong man.”
“You believe in your son’s innocence, Mr. Angelini. I understand that.”
“Not believe, Lieutenant, know. My son didn’t kill those women.” He took a breath, like a diver about to plunge under the surface. “I did.”
chapter fifteen
Eve had no choice. She took him in and grilled him. After a full hour, she had a vicious headache and the calm, unshakable statement from Marco Angelini that he had killed three women.
He refused counsel, and refused to or was unable to elaborate.
Each time Eve asked him why he had killed, he stared straight into her eyes and claimed it had been impulse. He’d been annoyed with his wife, he stated. Personally embarrassed by her continued intimacy with a business partner. He’d killed her because he couldn’t have her back. Then he’d gotten a taste for it.
It was all very simple, and to Eve’s mind, very rehearsed. She could picture him repeating and refining the lines in his head before he spoke them.
“This is bullshit,” she said abruptly and pushed back from the conference table. “You didn’t kill anybody.”
“I say I did.” His voice was eerily calm. “You have my confession on record.”
“Then tell me again.” Leaning forward, she slapped her hands on the table. “Why did you ask your wife to meet you at the Five Moons?”
“I wanted it to happen somewhere out of our milieu. I thought I could get away with it, you see. I told her there was trouble with Randy. She didn’t know the full problem of his gambling. I did. So, of course, she came.”
“And you slit her throat.”
“Yes.” His skin whitened slightly. “It was very quick.”
“What did you do then?”
“I went home.”
“How?”
He blinked. “I drove. I’d parked my car a couple of blocks away.”
“What about the blood?” She peered into his eyes, watching his pupils. “There’d have been a lot of it. She’d have gushed all over you.”
The pupils dilated, but his voice remained steady. “I was wearing a top coat, rain resistant. I discarded it along the way.” He smiled a little. “I imagine some itinerant found it and made use of it.”
“What did you take from the scene?”
“The knife, of course.”
“Nothing of hers?” She waited a beat. “Nothing to make it look like a robbery, a mugging?”
He hesitated. She could almost see his mind working behind his eyes. “I was shaken. I hadn’t expected it to be so unpleasant. I had planned to take her bag, the jewelry, but I forgot, and just ran.”
“You ran, taking nothing, but were smart enough to ditch your blood-splattered coat.”
“That’s right.”
“Then you went after Metcalf.”
“She was an impulse. I kept dreaming about what it had been like, and I wanted to do it again. She was easy.” His breathing leveled and his hands lay still on the table. “She was ambitious and rather naive. I knew David had written a screenplay with her in mind. He was determined to complete this entertainment project—it was something we disagreed over. It annoyed me, and it would have cost the company resources that are, at the moment, a bit strained. I decided to kill her, and I contacted her. Of course she agreed to meet me.”
“What was she wearing?”
“Wearing?” He fumbled for a moment. “I didn’t pay attention. It wasn’t important. She smiled, held out both of her hands as I walked toward her. And I did it.”
“Why are you coming forward now?”
“As I said, I thought I could get away with it. Perhaps I could have. I never expected my son to be arrested in my place.”
“So, you’re protecting him?”
“I killed them, Lieutenant. What more do you want?”
“Why did you leave the knife i
n his drawer, in his room?”
His eyes slid away, slid back. “As I said, he rarely stays there. I thought it was safe. Then I was contacted about the search warrant. I didn’t have time to remove it.”
“You expect me to buy this? You think you’re helping him by clouding the case, by coming forward with this lame confession. You think he’s guilty.” She lowered her voice, bit off each word. “You’re so terrified that your son is a murderer that you’re willing to take the rap rather than see him face the consequences. Are you going to let another woman die, Angelini? Or two, or three before you swallow reality?”
His lips trembled once, then firmed. “I’ve given you my statement.”
“You’ve given me bullshit.” Turning on her heel, Eve left the room. Struggling to calm herself, she stood outside, watched with a jaundiced eye as Angelini pressed his face into his hands.
She could break him, eventually. But there was always a chance that word would leak and the media would scream that there was a confession from someone other than the prime.
She looked over at the sound of footsteps, and her body stiffened like steel. “Commander.”
“Lieutenant. Progress?”
“He’s sticking to his story. It’s got holes you could drive a shuttle through. I’ve given him the opening to bring up the souvenirs from the first two hits. He didn’t bite.”
“I’d like to talk to him. Privately, Lieutenant, and off the record.” Before she could speak, he held up a hand. “I realize it’s not procedure. I’m asking you for a favor.”
“And if he incriminates himself or his son?”
Whitney’s jaw tightened. “I’m still a cop, Dallas. Goddamn it.”
“Yes, sir.” She unlocked the door, then after only a faint hesitation, darkened the two-way glass and shut off audio. “I’ll be in my office.”
“Thank you.” He stepped inside. He gave her one last look before shutting the door and turning to the man slumped at the table. “Marco,” Whitney said on a long sigh. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“Jack.” Marco offered a thin smile. “I wondered if you’d be along. We never did make that golf date.”
“Talk to me.” Whitney sat down heavily.
“Hasn’t your efficient and dogged lieutenant filled you in?”
“The recorder’s off,” Whitney said sharply. “We’re alone. Talk to me, Marco. We both know you didn’t kill Cicely or anyone else.”
For a moment, Marco stared up at the ceiling, as if pondering. “People never know each other as well as they believe. Not even the people they care for. I loved her, Jack. I never stopped loving her. But she stopped loving me. Part of me was always waiting for her to start loving me again. But she never would have.”
“Damn it, Marco, do you expect me to believe that you slit her throat because she divorced you twelve years ago?”
“Maybe I thought she might have married Hammett. He wanted that,” Marco said quietly. “I could see that he wanted that. Cicely was reluctant.” His voice remained calm, quiet, faintly nostalgic. “She enjoyed her independence, but she was sorry to disappoint Hammett. Sorry enough that she might have given in eventually. Married him. It would have really been over then, wouldn’t it?”
“You killed Cicely because she might have married another man?”
“She was my wife, Jack. Whatever the courts and the Church said.”
Whitney sat a moment, silent. “I’ve played poker with you too many times over the years, Marco. You’ve got tells.” Folding his arms on the table, he leaned forward. “When you bluff, you tap your finger on your knee.”
The finger stopped tapping. “This is a long way from poker, Jack.”
“You can’t help David this way. You’ve got to let the system work.”
“David and I . . . there’s been a lot of friction between us in the last several months. Business disagreements and personal ones.” For the first time he sighed, deep and long and wearily. “There shouldn’t be distance between father and son over such foolishness.”
“This is hardly the way to mend fences, Marco.”
The steel came back into Angelini’s eyes. There would be no more sighs. “Let me ask you something, Jack, just between us. If it was one of yours, and there was the slightest chance—just the slightest—that they’d be convicted of murder, would anything stop you from protecting them?”
“You can’t protect David by stepping in with some bullshit confession.”
“Who said it was bullshit?” The word sounded like cream in Angelini’s cultured voice. “I did it, and I’m confessing because I can’t live with myself if my own child pays for my crime. Now tell me, Jack, would you stand behind your son, or in front of him?”
“Ah, hell, Marco,” was all Whitney could say.
He stayed for twenty minutes, but got nothing more. For a time he guided the conversation into casual lines, golf scores, the standings of the baseball team Marco had a piece of. Then, quick and sleek as a snake, he’d toss out a hard, leading question on the murders.
But Marco Angelini was an expert negotiator, and had already given his bottom line. He wouldn’t budge.
Guilt, grief, and the beginnings of real fear made an unsettling stew in Whitney’s stomach as he stepped into Eve’s office. She was hunched over her computer, scanning data, calling up more.
For the first time in days, his eyes cleared of their own fatigue and saw hers. She was pale, her eyes shadowed, her mouth grim. Her hair stood up in spikes as if she’d dragged her hands through it countless times. Even as he watched, she did so again, then pressed her fingers to her eyes as if they burned.
He remembered the morning in his office, the morning after Cicely had been murdered. And the responsibility he’d hung around Eve’s neck.
“Lieutenant.”
Her shoulders straightened as if she’d slammed steel poles into them. Her head came up, her eyes carefully blank.
“Commander.” She got to her feet. Got to attention, Whitney thought, annoyed by the stiff and impersonal formality.
“Marco’s in holding. We can keep him for forty-eight hours without charging him. I thought it best to let him think behind bars for a while. He still refuses counsel.”
Whitney stepped in while she stood there, and he looked around. He wasn’t often in this sector of the complex. His officers came to him. Another weight of command.
She could have had a bigger office. She’d earned one. But she seemed to prefer to work in a room so small that if three people crowded into it, they’d be in sin.
“Good thing you’re not claustrophobic,” he commented. She gave no response, didn’t so much as twitch an eyebrow. Whitney muttered an oath. “Listen, Dallas—”
“Sir.” Her interruption was fast and brittle. “Forensics has the weapon retrieved from David Angelini’s room. I’m informed that there will be some delay on the results as the blood traces detected by the sweeper are of an amount borderline for typing and DNA.”
“So noted, Lieutenant.”
“The fingerprints on the weapon in evidence have been matched to those of David Angelini. My report—”
“We’ll get to your report momentarily.”
Her chin jutted up. “Yes, sir.”
“Goddamn it, Dallas, yank that stick out of your butt and sit down.”
“Is that an order, Commander?”
“Ah, hell,” he began.
Mirina Angelini burst through the doorway in a clatter of high heels and a crackle of silk. “Why are you trying to destroy my family?” she demanded, shaking off the restraining hand of Slade who had come in behind her.
“Mirina, this isn’t going to help.”
She jerked away and crowded into Eve. “Isn’t it enough that my mother was murdered on the street? Murdered because American cops are too busy chasing shadows and filling out useless reports to protect the innocent?”
“Mirina,” Whitney said, “come on to my office. We’ll talk.”
“Mirina, Marco came in voluntarily. We’ll talk about this. I’ll explain it all to you.”
“There’s nothing to explain.” She turned her back on him and aimed her scorching fury at Eve. “I went to my father’s house. He wanted me to stay in Rome, but I couldn’t. Not when every report in the media is smearing my brother’s name. When we arrived, a neighbor was more than happy, even gleeful, to tell me that my father had been taken away by the police.”
“I can arrange for you to speak with your father, Ms. Angelini,” Eve said coolly. “And your brother.”
“You’re damn right you’ll arrange it. And now. Where is my father?” She used both hands to shove Eve back a pace before Whitney or Slade could stop her. “What have you done with him, you bitch!”
“You want to keep your hands off me,” Eve warned. “I’ve just about had my fill of Angelinis. Your father’s in holding, here. Your brother’s in the tower at Riker’s. You can see your father now. If you want to see your brother, you’ll be shuttled over.” Her gaze flicked to Whitney, and stung. “Or since you’ve got some pull around here, you can probably have him transported to Visitation for an hour.”
“I know what you’re doing.” This was no fragile flower now. Mirina fairly vibrated with power. “You need a scapegoat. You need an arrest so that the media will get out of your face. You’re playing politics, using my brother, even my murdered mother, so that you won’t lose your job.”
“Yeah, some cushy job.” She smiled sourly. “I toss innocent people in a cage every day so I can keep all the benefits.”
“It keeps your face on the screen, doesn’t it?” Mirina tossed her glorious hair. “How much publicity have you traded over my mother’s dead body?”
“That’s enough, Mirina.” Whitney’s voice lashed like a whip, in one vicious snap. “Go to my office and wait.” He looked over her shoulder at Slade. “Take her out of here.”