Devoted in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. If Zed got into trouble, got himself killed, it’s not on us. We were just watching the place for him.”

  “Were Jayla Campbell and Reed Mulligan watching the place, too?”

  He aimed his gaze just above her head. “I don’t know who that is.”

  She heard truth for the first time. He didn’t even know their names. “The two people you had tied down so you could torture them. So you and Ella-Loo could cut them and burn them and beat them because torturing and killing gets you off, you miserable fuck.”

  He stretched his legs out under the table, sucked air through his teeth. “You don’t know nothing. We met up with the two of them, and they said they were into that sort of thing, that lots were here in the big city. We were all just fooling around, is all. They say different, they’re liars and you can’t prove otherwise.”

  Eve opened the file, dumped photos of the tortured dead on the table. “All these people, Darryl. Were all these people into it?”

  “I don’t know those people.” But he looked at them avidly, with hints of excitement and pride in his eyes.

  Eve started to push up, increase the pressure. But in a quiet voice, Banner said, “Melvin Little.”

  “Say what?”

  “Melvin Little. Right here.” Banner nudged the photo closer.

  “Where you from?”

  “Silby’s Pond, Arkansas, same as him. He was a friend of mine.”

  “I’m right sorry about your friend, but me and my Ella-Loo ain’t never been to Silby’s Pond.”

  “You want to protect Ella-Loo, don’t you, Darryl?”

  “I’d do anything for her.”

  With his finger he traced a heart over his chest.

  “I’m not going to let anybody hurt her. I’d die for her.”

  “I can see that.” A hint of admiration eked into Banner’s tone. “I can see the two of you are meant, just like you said. So you need to understand, we can prove what you did to my friend, and to all these others. We can prove you were in Silby’s Pond, and how you and Ella-Loo met in the Rope ’N Ride back in Oklahoma.”

  “  ‘No sooner looked but they loved.’ That’s Shakespeare, friend.”

  “All right. We can prove you and Ella-Loo loved your way across country, how when you got out of prison, the two of you started east in the truck you’d stolen about four years before from Barlow Hanks.”

  “Hell.” The cocky smirk came back. “I gave Barlow cash money for that truck, and if he says different, he’s a liar.”

  “You crossed into Arkansas,” Banner continued in that same easy, conversational tone, “and you killed Robert Jansen with a tire iron, took his car, and you drove on to Silby’s Pond, and broke into that cabin. Then Little Mel came along.”

  “Don’t know those people,” Darryl said with the same stubborn stupidity. “You saying so don’t make it true.”

  “We can prove all that, prove all these people died at your hands. You need to understand, Darryl, we’re just giving you a chance to help yourself now and protect Ella-Loo. You don’t tell us what you did, it’s likely you won’t see her again. It’s likely they’re going to put her someplace where somebody’s going to hurt her ’cause you’re not there to look out for her.”

  Darryl leaned forward, fists clenched. “I won’t let you do that.”

  Eve pushed up, out of the chair, changed the focus. “We’ll do what we want. Buy a clue, asshole. Think about it, think about Ella-Loo being in that cage where you can’t get to her, can’t touch her, can’t help her. Think about it,” she repeated, tapping the table, the photos. “And see if you remember any of these people when we come back. Dallas and Banner exited interview, record off.”

  She stepped out. “Not bad,” she said to Banner, “not bad at all.”

  “I wanted to reach over, take him by the throat, ram his face into the table until it was nothing but blood. I never felt that kind of violence in me before.”

  “Killers can bring it out.” He’d gone a little pale, Eve noted, as he leaned back against the wall. “Why don’t you take a break?”

  “I think I will. I’ll come into the observation place, but I’m going to take a break first.”

  She watched him go, then went back to her office, generated another set of photos before tagging Peabody on her comm. “Heading for Parsens now.”

  “I’m on the door.”

  Different strategy, Eve decided, and said the same to Peabody. “We hit her hard. No good cop.”

  “Hot damn.”

  “Put on your bitch face, Peabody.” Eve opened the door, noted orange didn’t do much for Parsens, either. “Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Peabody, Detective Delia, entering Interview with Parsens, Ella-Loo.” She fed in the case numbers, talking steadily as Ella-Loo bitched.

  “You can’t push me around this way! I’m all cut up. I want to go to the hospital. You molested me, you grabbed my tits. I don’t want to talk to you.” And finally. “What did you do with Darryl? I want my Darryl!”

  “Have you been read your rights, Ella-Loo?”

  “Fuck you and your rights. I want to go to the hospital. I want Darryl.”

  “You’ve been medically cleared, and seeing Darryl’s not going to happen. Probably ever.”

  Pure shock leached color from her face. “What do you mean ‘ever’? He’s the husband of my heart and I got every right to see him.”

  “The only rights you have are these: You have the right to remain silent.”

  She continued to read out the Revised Miranda over Ella-Loo’s shouts and demands. “Do you understand your rights and obligations?”

  “I understand you’re a titless bitch.”

  “I can read them off again, and keep reading them off until you say, for the record, whether or not you understand them. Or we can go, leave you alone here to think about it for a few hours.”

  “I understand them just fine. I want my own clothes, and I want Darryl, and I don’t have to say nothing to some dyke cop.”

  “We don’t give much of a shit about what you want,” Peabody said, made Eve proud with the grinding, vicious tone she used. “The only clothes you’re going to be wearing from now on are what you’ve got and prison blues. You look like an overbaked pumpkin in orange, but I bet the women at Riker’s are going to eat you right up.”

  “I don’t know what Riker’s is, and I’m not going.”

  “Just temporarily,” Eve continued. “After a short stay I’m betting on Omega. That’s off-planet. Jayla Campbell and Reed Mulligan – the two you were torturing when we met? They have a lot to say about you and Darryl.”

  “They’re liars. We were partying. No law against doing what you want to do in your own home. Consenting adults.”

  “They consented to being bound, cut, burned, beaten, raped?”

  “They’re sick, that’s what. Darryl and me were just going along, just experimenting. But we’d had enough and were going to make them get out of our place.”

  “Your place?” Peabody roared it, grabbed the file, dumped the photos, found Samuel Zed. “His place, you twisted twat. Are you so stupid you think cutting off his fingers meant we couldn’t ID him? Look what you did to him.”

  When Peabody shoved up, rushed around the table, pushed the photo in Parsens’s face, Eve just sat back, let her ride.

  Go, Peabody, she thought.

  “Get away from me!” Ella-Loo shrieked it. “Don’t touch me. You’re not allowed to put hands on me.”

  “I’m allowed to do whatever the hell I want to sick, psychopathic sluts.”

  “Are not! Darryl! Get her off me! I’ll tell!”

  “Tell who?” Eve wondered. “Who’s going to believe you over cops? And things happen to recordings all the time. Glitchy equipment. How about we unlock her restraints, Peabody? You can do what you did to the last one. I’ve got your back.”

  Peabody bared her teeth; her eyes glittered. “Let’s go.”

>   When Eve started to rise, Ella-Loo tried to hunch into a ball. “You can’t, you can’t. He attacked me, that’s what happened. Darryl was just protecting me. That guy there, that guy he was trying to rape me, so Darryl protected me. It was self-defense.”

  “And somehow in this self-defense, Samuel Zed lost all his fingers.”

  “We… we were afraid. We were afraid we’d get in trouble, so we dropped him in the water.”

  She kept herself hunched, shot hate-filled looks at Peabody.

  “We needed a place to stay, so we went to where he lived. That’s all we did. He was raping me, and Darryl stopped him. Darryl’s a hero.”

  “Clearly. Where were you when this alleged attempted rape occurred?” Eve asked.

  “I don’t know. We just got to New York City. It was dark. We were having a drink somewhere, and I just went outside for a minute, and this guy grabbed me and started tearing my clothes, and Darryl came out and stopped him.”

  “Outside some bar, at night, in single-digit temperatures, some guy grabs you and tears at your clothes.”

  “That’s what happened. Self-defense.”

  “Nobody noticed the attempted rape, the self-defense that resulted in a dead body. And somehow you still had time to dig out the dead man’s identification, had time to transport said dead body – in the van you stole.”

  Confusion flickered over her face. “I – we – nobody wanted to help us. Nobody. We didn’t steal nothing.”

  “The van you stole,” Eve continued, “from long-term parking at Newark Transportation. In your worry and distress – attempted rape, killing the alleged attacker, you devised a plan – not to run and leave the body, or contact the authorities, but to haul him up, bash in his face, cut off his fingers, stuff him in a bag with bricks and dump him in the Hudson.”

  “We didn’t want any trouble. We just borrowed that van. We were going to put it back.”

  “Like you were going to put Robert Jansen’s vehicle back?” Still snarling, Peabody shoved a new photo in Ella-Loo’s face. “After you beat him to death with a tire iron and dragged him into the brush off Highway 12 in Arkansas? Or did he try to rape you, too?”

  “I don’t —”

  “Say you don’t know what we’re talking about.” Eve said it coldly, and had Ella-Loo’s eyes shifting to hers. “Just try it. Were they all self-defense and partying? I won’t bother with names – you didn’t know or care about names. “From Highway 12 to Silby’s Pond.”

  As Eve ran through locations, Peabody grabbed each photo, pushed it in front of Ella-Loo’s face.

  “You’re going away, and nothing’s going to change that. Digest that for a while. Where you go, how long? You’ve maybe got a little wiggle room there. Are there more than this? That’s one. And two, chapter and verse, Ella-Loo. You tell us everything you did, you and Darryl, and maybe we can make you a deal where you won’t get eaten alive, where you’ve got some chance of getting out again. Keep up the bullshit, you’re gone until you die.”

  “I’ve got a kid!”

  Now Eve rose, walked around, leaned down behind Ella-Loo. “I know. I know you dumped her on your mother, just dumped her and walked away and haven’t seen her since. Use her, Ella-Loo? Use her and I’ll find new ways to hurt you, ways that’ll make what you and Darryl did to everyone on this table look like a picnic in a springtime meadow. That’s a promise.”

  Eve straightened. “One chance, and one only. You tell us about everyone on this table. Details. And you tell us if there are any more. We have live witnesses, we have physical and forensic evidence, we have your trail, we’ve got everything we need to put you away. Keep lying, and we’re done. You’re in an off-planet hole for the rest of your life. And Darryl’s in another. You’ll never see each other again. Dallas and Peabody exiting Interview. Record off.”

  Outside the room where Ella-Loo wept hysterically, Eve turned to Peabody. “  ‘Twisted twat’? ‘Sick, psychopathic sluts’?”

  “I liked the alliteration. It just came to me.”

  Eve punched her shoulder, a sign of high marks. “Scary Peabody did good.”

  “I liked it. Scared myself a little, too, but I don’t get the deal, Dallas. We don’t need to deal on this.”

  “If it plays out, you’ll get it.” She went with Peabody to Observation. “Banner, you’re up. Agent Zweck, I’m going to set them up for you.”

  “They both believed they could and would continue,” Mira told her. “That they were entitled to as what they did brought them together, fulfilled their needs, enhanced what they see as their love. I don’t believe she’ll turn on him. She may, as she has done, insist he only protected her. But she’s as devoted as he, on the basic level.”

  “I don’t need her to turn. It’s going to be saving each other as much as themselves that locks it. Let’s finish off Darryl. These two aren’t going to take as long as I thought.”

  With Banner she went back into the room, resumed recording, sat.

  “Okay, Darryl, thinking time’s up. Here’s how it’s going to go. Two choices now, the same two I just gave to Ella-Loo.”

  “I want to see her. You have to let me see her. We swore we’d never be parted again.”

  “No, I don’t have to let you see her. But…” She paused, as if thinking. “I will if you choose wisely. Now, she’s already told me some of it because she’s looking out for herself, and for you, but this is only going to work if both of you cooperate.”

  “What’d she say?”

  “She loves you, Darryl, anybody can see that.”

  “We’re two people, but inside one heart.”

  “Right. I know that’s why you carved the heart with your initials into the people you killed for each other. Now, I can’t tell you what she said or I’d be influencing your statement. I can only say she explained some of it to me. Like how you borrowed the van you’ve been using from long-term parking in Newark.”

  “That’s right. We just borrowed it. Nobody was using it.”

  “And she told me about Samuel Zed. The man whose apartment you’ve been living in. You have to tell us what you did to him, Darryl. If you lie, that’s it. It’s over. The prosecuting attorney, she’s pushing this hard. It’s going to be what I told you before. Off-planet, forever, for both of you. The place they’ll put her, Darryl, if this goes to trial in New York? If our PA takes it?”

  Eve shook her head.

  “The other inmates, the guards? They’re going to look at a beautiful woman like Ella-Loo, somebody like her, and they’re going to hurt her. They’re going to do terrible things to her. I know you don’t want that. I know you want to protect her. She told me how you protect her, always.”

  “I do! And I will.”

  “Then protect her now, Darryl, and I can work this with the State of New York, I can try to keep the two of you together. You’re going in, that’s something I can’t do anything about. But if you give me what I need, I’ll go to bat for both of you with the PA.”

  “If I could just see her —”

  “When we’re done, I’ll fix it so you see her.”

  “Promise?”

  “On the record, I promise when we’re done, you’ll see each other.”

  “And we’ll be together after?”

  “As long as I’m in charge, you’ll be together. But you have to tell us everything, on the record. If you lie, it’s done. We’re going to start with Zed, the one you dumped in the river.”

  “Okay. You gotta understand. It’s all about love. Our love is bigger than anything else in the world. Ella-Loo really wanted to come to New York. It was her dream. And we needed a place to stay, a place to have our life here. She was talking up this guy, this guy here.” He tapped the picture. “In the bar, and she got him to say where he lived, how he lived by himself and all that. It was meant, you see. It was like fate. After a while, she said how she’d like to see his place, and they went. Just a couple blocks away. And she made sure the door stayed unlocked.”


  “Okay,” Eve prompted. “That’s good. Then what happened?”

  “When I went in after them, he had his hands all over her. It just brought on the fury. We didn’t mean to kill him so quick. It happened fast. We were going to keep him around, see how it all went, but he had his hands on her, so I hurt him more than I meant.”

  “But you still kept him alive for a bit, right?”

  “For a little while, yeah. He had to tell us some stuff so I could go on into his computer and send off an email to where he worked. Said he had a family emergency and had to be away for a while. Then we had to get rid of him, and we talked it over, and we took his fingers off, ’cause of the prints.”

  “Was he still alive when you cut off his fingers? Remember, if you lie, I can’t keep you and Ella-Loo together.”

  Darryl wet his lips. “Might be he was still alive for some of it. And when we beat up his face some, but he was dead pretty quick. Then I went out, and got some bricks from this place I saw where we were maybe going to stay. But it was too cold in there for Ella-Loo, so that’s why we needed a real place.

  “If you’re going to start a life together, you need a place.”

  “And you wanted Zed’s.”

  “It was fate. Just like me and Ella-Loo finding each other. So we loaded him into a bag with the bricks, tied it up, and took him out to the river.”

  “That’s good, Darryl. Telling the truth’s going to help. But I think you left something out. Something you and Ella-Loo did, together? After you killed Zed, before you dumped his body. Did you use his bed for it?”

  He grinned now, wide. “We couldn’t wait for the bed. We’ve got such a powerful need for each other, and we were all keyed up from killing him so fast. The floor’s a featherbed when you’re in love.”

  “So you… made love,” Banner said, “on the floor by the body?”

  “Then we got the bag and the bricks.”

  Sensing Banner’s rage, Eve squeezed his wrist under the table. “Okay, Darryl, we’re on track now. Let’s go back to the beginning. You can’t leave anything out, or I can’t protect Ella-Loo. Was Jansen, on Highway 12, the first person you killed together?”