by J. D. Robb
“I’m going to have to take you in. I’m going to have to charge you. The charge is going to be Murder in the First, two counts.” She watched Reva’s color drain. “I don’t know you,” Eve continued, “but I know your mother, and I know Roarke. Neither of them are pushovers. They both believe in you, so here’s what I’m going to tell you. Off record. Get a lawyer. Get a damn good fleet of lawyers. And don’t lie to me. Don’t lie to me about anything I might ask you. Those lawyers are good enough, they’ll have you out on bond first thing in the morning. Stay clean, stay straight, and stay available to me. You hide something, I’ll find it, and that’ll piss me off.”
“I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“You might think of something. If and when you do, think again. I want you to volunteer for a Truth Test, third level. It’s hell, it’s intrusive, and it can be painful, but if you’ve got nothing to hide and you’re being straight with me, you’ll pass it. A third level will weigh heavy on your side.”
She closed her eyes, breathed deep. “I can handle third level.”
Eve smiled thinly. “Don’t go in with a chip on your shoulder. I’ve been there, and it’s going to flatten you. I can get a warrant to search your house, your office, your vehicles, everything. But if you give me permission to do so, on record, that’s going to weigh, too.”
“I’m putting a hell of a lot in your hands, Dallas.”
“It’s in them anyway.”
She took Reva in, booked her. Due to the hour she could opt, without breaking procedure, to continue their interview until morning. But she still had work, and she still had Roarke.
She walked through the bull pen in Homicide where the scatter of detectives on graveyard shift yawned their way through the last couple of hours of work. As she expected, Roarke waited in her office.
“I need to speak with you,” he began.
“Figured. Don’t speak until I have coffee.” She went directly to the AutoChef, programmed a double serving, strong and black.
He stood where he was, only turned to stare out of her miserly window at the fitful predawn traffic. As she drank, she could all but see impatience and outrage snaking out of his skin like lightning bolts.
“I arranged it so Caro could have fifteen minutes with her. That’s the best I can do. Then you need to take Caro out of here, take her home, settle her down. You’ll know how.”
“She’s out of her mind with worry.”
“I expect she is.”
“You expect?” He turned around then, slowly. Slowly enough for her to understand his temper was on its shortest, thinnest leash. “You’ve just booked her only child for two first-degree murders. You have her daughter in a cage.”
“And did you think because you’re fond of them, and I of you, I’d just let her waltz into the night when I have her prints all over a murder weapon? When I have her on the scene of a double murder and the victims just happen to be her husband and her pal, both naked in bed? When she fucking admits she broke in after learning he was sticking it to her good pal Felicity?”
She took a deep gulp of the coffee, gestured toward him with the cup. “Hey, maybe I should’ve pulled the religious cop routine, and nudged her out the door with the advice to go forth and sin no more.”
“She didn’t kill anyone. It’s obvious Reva was set up, and that whoever killed them marked her for it, planned it out and left her twisting in the wind.”
“I happen to agree with you.”
“And locking her up only gives whoever did this time and opportunity to—what?”
“I said I agree with you, about the setup. But not with what you didn’t quite finish saying there.” She drank more coffee, slower this time, letting it slide deliciously into her system. “I’m not giving whoever did this the time and opportunity to get away. I’m giving them the time and opportunity to think they’ll get away—and keeping Reva safe in the meantime. And following the pesky little letter of the law while I’m at it. I’m doing my job, so get off my back.”
He sat because he was suddenly tired, and because he, too, was sick with worry over the mother, the daughter. Both of whom he considered his responsibility. “You believed her.”
“Yeah, I believed her. And I believe my own eyes.”
“I’m sorry. I seem to be a little dull this morning. What did your own eyes tell you?”
“That it was too staged. The scene. Like a vid set. Viciously murdered naked couple, knife—from the prime suspect’s own kitchen, sticking out of the mattress. Blood in the bathroom drain, suspect’s print on the sink—one little spot she just happened to miss on the wipe-down. Her prints all over the weapons, just in case the investigating officer needs to be led by the fucking nose.”
“And you certainly don’t. Should I apologize for doubting you?”
“You get a free one, seeing as it’s five in the morning and we’ve put in a long night.” She felt generous enough to give him the coffee, and program another mug for herself. “Classy frame job for the most part, though. Whoever did it had to know your girl—what she does for a living, how she reacts. Had to be dead sure she’d rush over to her pal’s house with blood in her eye. That she’d bypass security. Might have figured she’d just beat on the door first, but that she wouldn’t turn around and slink off home when nobody answered. But they missed a few.”
“Which were?”
“If she’d walked in with a big, nasty knife in her hand, she wouldn’t have dug into her bag of tricks for a minidrill to go at the jacket. If she washed up, why’d she use the other upstairs bath to get sick? Why leave her prints there? How come there’s no blood in her hair? Spatter hits the lamp, some of the wall, and to do what she did, she’d have been right on top of them, but there’s no spatter in her hair. She wash that, too? Then why didn’t the sweepers find any of her hair in the bathroom drains?
“You’re very thorough.”
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks. Whoever did this knows her, Roarke, and the victims. Wanted one or the other of them dead, maybe both. Or maybe just want Reva Ewing doing life in a cage. That’s a puzzler.”
She sat on the corner of her desk sipping her coffee. “I’m going to turn her life inside out, and do the same job on the victims. At least one of them is the key. Whoever did it surveilled the vics, got the photos, the discs. Good quality. And they got into the house as slick as Reva did, so security’s no problem for them. Had a military-style stunner. I need it analyzed yet, but I’m betting it’s no black market knockoff. They think the cop’s going to step into that scene and gobble all that shit right up, then go eat a fricking doughnut.”
“Not my cop.”
“Not any cop in this division or that cop deserves a boot up the ass,” Eve said with feeling. “When something looks that perfect on the surface, it never is down below. Whoever set this up was just a little too creative. Maybe he figured she’d run. That when she woke up, she’d panic and run. But she didn’t. I’m having the medicals go over her, see if she was knocked out, or given a dose of something that knocked her out. She doesn’t strike me as the fainting type.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
Still sipping, she looked at him over the rim of her mug. “You’re going to get in my face on this again?”
“I am, yes.” He touched her arm, ran his hand down it, then let her go. “Both Caro and Reva are important to me. I’ll ask you to let me help. If you refuse, I’ll go around you. I’ll be sorry for it, but I’ll do it. Caro isn’t just an employee to me, Eve. She’s asked me for help, and she’s never asked me for anything before. Not once in all the years she’s been with me. I can’t step aside on this, not even for you.”
She took another contemplative sip. “If you could step aside on this, even for me, you wouldn’t be the man I fell for in the first place, would you?”
He set his coffee down, stepped over to frame her face in his hands. “Remember this moment, won’t you, the next time you’re furious with me? And I’ll do t
he same.” He lowered his head to press his lips to her forehead.
“I’ll send you my files on both Caro and Reva, which contain considerable personal data. And I’ll get you more.”
“That’s a good start.”
“Caro asked me to do so.” He eased back. “I would’ve done it anyway, but it’s easier all around that she asked. You’ll find, in your dealings with her, she is scrupulous.”
“How’d she get that way working for you?”
He grinned now. “A paradox, isn’t it? You’ll call Feeney in?”
“I’m going to need ace EDD men, so yeah, it’ll be Feeney—and he’ll bring in McNab.”
“I could help with the electronics.”
“If Feeney wants you, he can have you. I’ll clear it with the commander. But you know it’s going to be touchy, your connection to the suspect. If I don’t convince Commander Whitney this is a frame, he’s not going to go along, even unofficially.”
“My money’s on you.”
“Let’s take it a step at a time. Get Caro home.”
“I will. I’m going to clear my calendar as much as possible until this is finished.”
“You paying for the lawyers?”
“She won’t let me.” A shadow of annoyance rippled over his face. “Neither of them will budge in that particular area.”
“One more. Did you and Reva ever tango?”
“Do you mean were we ever lovers? No.”
“Good. Slightly less sticky that way. Clear out,” she ordered. “I’ve got to round up my partner and drive to Queens.”
“Could I ask a question first?”
“Make it snappy.”
“If you’d walked into that scene tonight, and there’d been no connection, would you have looked at it the same way?”
“There was no connection when I walked onto the scene,” she told him. “That’s how I could see it for what it was. I couldn’t take you in with me, not literally, not in my head. You’d’ve done the same.”
“I like to think so.”
“You would have. You know how to be cold when you have to be. I mean that in a good way.”
“I believe you do,” he said with a half laugh.
“I did let you in a minute after I stepped out of it.”
“Did you?”
“I thought: If Roarke had set this up, nobody would’ve seen the frame. Whoever did it should’ve taken lessons.”
This time he did laugh, and she was pleased to see some of the worry warm out of his eyes. “Well now, that is high praise.”
“Just calling them as I see them, and another reason I’ve agreed to use you. I want to find out the how and why of a classy frame, I might as well make use of somebody who’d know the hows and whys. Start thinking about what Reva’s working on for you—or what she has been working on, or will be.”
“I already am.”
“See, just one more reason. You’re going to want a bodyguard for Caro, just in case. She’d prefer private to a cop.”
“It’s already done.”
“And the reasons just keep on ticking. Beat it.”
“Since you ask so nice.” He kissed her first, a soft touch of mouth to mouth. “Get something decent to eat,” he called out as he left.
And though her gaze went to the ceiling tile where she was currently hiding her candy stash, she didn’t think that was quite what he had in mind.
3 SHE WAS EXPECTING a midlevel suburban house. The Ewing-Bissel place was several steps up from mid. It was a very contemporary streamlined white box on box behind a recycled-stone riot fence. Lots of one-way glass and sharp angles.
The entrance area was that same recycled stone, tinted a strong red. There were ornamental trees and shrubs growing out of large pots and several odd metal sculptures she attributed to Blair Bissel.
But it struck her as cold, and more pretentious than gingerbread and gilt.
“Ewing knows her security,” Peabody commented after they’d dealt with the layers of it just to get through the riot wall. “Fancy digs, too, if you go for this kind of thing.”
“You don’t?”
“Uh-uh.” Peabody grimaced as they walked over the red stone lawn. “This kind of design makes me think of a prison, and I can’t quite figure out if it keeps people in, or keeps them out. And the art.”
She stopped to study a squat metal shape with eight spindly legs and an elongated triangular head, lined with sparkling teeth.
“We’ve got a lot of artists in the family,” Peabody went on. “A couple who work primarily in metals, and some of the stuff’s odd. But it’s . . . interesting odd and usually kind of fun or poignant.”
“Poignant metal.”
“Yeah, really. But this, I guess it’s a cross between a watchdog and a spider. It’s creepy, and a little mean. And what about that?”
She pointed to another sculpture. This, Eve saw when she wandered closer, was of two figures, closely entwined. Male and female, which was obvious when you saw the exaggerated length of the penis painted royal purple. It was honed to a knife-point at the end, and an inch away from penetrating the female figure.
She was, Eve noted, bowed back in either passion or terror, the long gleaming tendrils of her hair streaming back.
They were faceless, just form and feeling. And after a moment she decided that feeling wasn’t romantic, or even sexual. It was violent.
“I’d say he was probably talented, and even talent can be sick.”
Because it made her uncomfortable, she turned away from the figures and approached the door. Even with the codes and clearance Reva had provided, it took some time and some trouble to access entry.
The door opened into a kind of atrium with tinted sky windows three floors up, and slick ocean blue tiles for the floor.
There was a fountain in the center of the space, burbling as the half man, half fish figures that circled it vomited violently into the pool.
The walls were mirrored, tossing back their reflections dozens of times. Rooms fanned off from this center, through wide, doorless rectangles.
“This doesn’t fit her,” Eve said. “I’d say he picked the place and the decor, and she went along.”
Peabody looked up, studied the nightmarish bird sculptures hanging high in the air. They looked like they were circling over a meal. “Would you?”
“I don’t fit where I live either.”
“That’s not true.”
Eve shrugged, cautiously circled the fountain. “I didn’t when I moved into it. Okay, it’s not like this. It’s beautiful, and it’s livable, and it’s, well, it’s warm. But it was Roarke’s place. It’s still more his than mine, and that’s okay.”
“She really loved him.” The place gave Peabody the creeps, which she didn’t bother to hide. “If she could live here because he wanted it, she had to really love him.”
“That’s my take,” Eve agreed.
“I’ll find the kitchen, verify the murder weapon was taken from here.”
Eve nodded, and using the blueprint Reva had drawn for her, started upstairs.
She’d been sleeping, Eve thought. Heard the gate bell. Got up, checked the security screen. Saw the package.
She paused by a sheer window that looked down over a stone and metal garden. Nothing living, she mused. Nothing real.
Got up, she continued, went down and out to retrieve the package. Took a scanner, checked the contents for explosives. Careful, cautious woman.
Brought the package back inside.
Eve entered the master bedroom and saw the first signs of life in the house. There were more mirrors, silvery panels of them on one wall, more forming a double door. The bed, wide as a canyon, was unmade, with a nightshirt tossed into a tangle over in one corner. One closet door was open—Reva’s closet, Eve noted after a glance.
She’d opened the package, sat on the bed when her legs gave out from under her, Eve imagined. Looked at the photographs again and again while her brain tried to compute the me
aning. Studied the receipts. Went to the data center across the room, loaded the discs.
Some pacing, Eve was sure. That’s what she’d’ve done. Paced, cursed, shed a few tears of rage. Tossed something breakable.
And she noted, with some satisfaction, the shards of glass in the far corner.
Okay, then it’s time for action. Dress, gather the tools. Work out the plan in your head in between rages and more curses.
It took, what, an hour, an hour tops, from the time she opened the package until she headed out.
Eve turned to the bedroom ’link, and replayed the transmissions for the last twenty-four hours.
There was one from Felicity that was timed in at fourteen hundred.
Hi, Reev. I know you’re at work, but I hate to bother you there. Just wanted to let you know I’ve got a hot date tonight. Hoping we can get together Friday or Saturday. I’ll spill all the dirty deets. Be a good girl while Blair’s away. Or if you’re not, tell me everything. Ciao!
Eve froze the visual and took a hard look at Felicity Kade. The wealthy, stylish bombshell type, Eve mused. Blonde and rosy, with ice-edged cheekbones and a full, seductive mouth. Eyes so deeply blue they were nearly purple, with a tiny black mole at the outside tip of the left.
Eve was willing to bet she’d paid plenty for the face.
She’d been covering herself with the transmission. Don’t call me tonight, I’ve got a hot one. It just happens to be your husband, but what you don’t know won’t hurt me.
Or so she’d believed when she’d placed the bubbling call.
And there was a look in those eyes, a kind of live-wire excitement that told Eve Blair Bissel had likely been with her already, just out of range of the ’link.
And when he’d called home, at seventeen-twenty, Eve noted, he’d been very careful to have nothing but his own face on screen. His eyes, cat green, were heavy. The smile, curve of that handsome mouth, was weary, like his voice.