by J. D. Robb
He’d lit some of the fake candles, she noted, so the light shifted and swayed. She took a couple more unsteady steps until she stood in the aisle formed by the back pews. “Dudley, you asshole.” Her voice echoed. “You better not be wasting my time.”
“I’m here.” His voice shook. She supposed he hoped it sounded fearful, but she caught the edge of laughter. “I—I wanted to be sure it was you. That he didn’t follow me.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll protect you. I get paid to protect the city’s assholes.”
“It can’t be enough.” He eased out of the shadows at the far end of the church.
“You’re damn skippy. It’s not the pay, it’s the power. Nothing like watching suspects piss themselves when I lean on them. You got five minutes,” she said as Carmichael murmured in her ear that Moriarity was on his way.
“You can’t know what it means to me that you’d come like this. I know you’re under terrible pressure.”
“That’s what drinking’s for. And screw pressure. I close this one, I’ll be on-screen for weeks. Maybe get another book out of it. Couple of rich assholes like you and Moriarity, the media’s going to slather all over me.”
“Sly’s the one.” He moved toward her, stopped again. “I covered for him, but I didn’t know what he’d done. If I had . . . I didn’t know, not until tonight.”
“You’re eating up your five, Dudley. Lay it out or I’m going to haul you in for annoying an officer. Believe me, I’m not in the mood to haul your ass or mine down to Central.”
Moriarity at the door, she heard in her ear, even as she caught the faint vibration from the ’link in Dudley’s pocket. He slid his hand in.
“Hey, hands where I can see them!” She reached clumsily in her bag.
“I’m sorry.” He tossed his hands up. “I’m nervous. I’m sick at heart. You have to help me!” He grabbed her wrists as if in desperation.
The door burst open behind her. She had to squelch her instinct to defend, staggered instead. Then felt the stunner press to her throat.
“Hold very still,” Moriarity ordered.
“Not yet, not yet!” Dudley shouted it. “Damn it, Sly. No cheating.”
“Just getting her attention.” He slid the stunner down to her shoulder.
It would take her down, Eve thought, but it wouldn’t kill her.
“What the hell kind of game is this?”
“Not a game, Lieutenant,” Dudley told her. “Games are for children. This is adventure. It’s competition. Drop that very attractive evening bag, or Sly will give you a very nasty jolt. Very nasty,” he repeated when she hesitated.
“Let’s all take it easy.” She let the bag drop.
“I wish we had more time.” Dudley walked down a few pews, bent down. “We’d hoped to have more time when we got to you. And we’d planned on using St. Pat’s. Wouldn’t that have been glorious?”
“It would’ve made a statement.” She felt Sly shift slightly. “This place? It’s nothing important.”
“It will be after this.” Dudley straightened, whipped the sword in the air. “We’ll have made it important.”
“What the hell is that?” Eve demanded.
“This.” Dudley struck a fencing pose, tore the air with the blade. “It’s a foil, you ignorant bitch. Italian, very old and very valuable. It’s the blade of an aristocrat.”
“You won’t get away with this. My partner knows where I am, who I was going to meet.”
“Lies won’t help. You’re so drunk you barely knew your own name when I talked you out of whatever bar you were in. And you came just like I told you to.”
“You killed them. All of them. Houston, Crampton, Delaflote, Jonas. Both of you, working together, just like I thought.”
“It wasn’t work,” Dudley corrected.
“It was pleasure.”
“We had another round planned before you, but . . .”
“I knew it!” Still playing the helpless drunk, she swayed a little in Moriarity’s hold. “The two of you conspired to kill four people.”
“In New York,” Dudley confirmed with a wide, wide grin. “But we’ve racked up more points elsewhere.”
“But why? Who were they to you?”
“Old nobodies, new luxuries.” Dudley laughed until he shook.
“Winnie, we have to get back.”
“You’re right. It’s a shame we can’t play with her awhile. It has to be at the same time, remember. At exactly the same time so the score stays tied. Your trigger, my blade. Let’s say on three.”
Moriarity leaned in, let his lips caress her ear. “Who’s the asshole now?” he said to Eve.
“That would be you.”
She knocked Moriarity’s weapon hand with an elbow strike, slammed the sharp point of her left shoe into his instep. As she pivoted, Dudley charged. The blade skipped lightly over her biceps, jerked as she finished the turn. And ran Moriarity through.
Eyes wide, Moriarity looked down at the blood seeping through the snow white of his shirt. “Winnie, you killed me.”
As he fell, Dudley let out a howl, a wild combination of grief and rage. While cops flooded the room, weapons drawn, she indulged herself with one short-armed, vicious punch to his face.
Roarke barely glanced at Dudley as he stepped over the man. “That’s two jackets ruined this week.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“Whose then, I’d like to know? And look here, you’ve bruised your knuckles.”
“Don’t—” She hissed it when he lifted her hand, and winced when he kissed her knuckles.
“You deserved that,” he said, “for knocking him out when you knew I wanted to.”
“Bus and wagon on the way.” Peabody glanced back at Moriarity. “That was a nice move. It’s too bad about the jacket.”
Eve pressed a hand to the tear, in the cloth and her arm. “It was worth it. All right, people, let’s finish this up. Peabody, book an interview room. Oh, and tell the MTs to try to keep that one breathing. It may be poetic if it turns out his pal killed him, but I’m not looking for poetry. I’m going back to Central to change, and update the commander.”
“Not until the MTs have tended that wound,” Roarke corrected.
“He barely nicked me—and he wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t had to deal with these idiot shoes.”
“Two choices. Sit and wait for a medic, or I’ll embarrass you in front of your men and kiss you.”
She sat.
Since Dudley demanded a lawyer with his first conscious breath, Eve had time to shower and change, update Whitney, debrief, and dismiss her team.
She stood in the conference room, alone, in front of the board, in front of the faces of the dead. She thought of Jamal Houston’s wife, of his partner and friend, of Adrianne Jonas’s weeping parents, the trembling control of her assistant, and of all the others she’d had to crush with news of death.
She would speak to them, all of them again, tell them the men who’d taken those lives, shattered those worlds had been stopped. Would, she was determined, pay for their actions.
She had to hope it would help the living, and continued to believe, for reasons she didn’t fully understand, it gave solace to the dead.
“Eve.”
“Doctor Mira.” Eve turned from the board. “What are you still doing here?”
“I wanted to see this through.” She stepped beside Eve, and studied those faces in turn. “So many. Such utter selfishness.”
“There would be more. We stopped them tonight and we’re sealing that cage door. A lot of that’s because of you. If I’d clicked to them targeting me earlier, there might not be so many faces on this board.”
“You know that’s wrong, both in reality and in thinking. It could just as easily be said there would be more if you hadn’t intuited the pattern so quickly. You worked the case, and tonight you’ll close it. I’d like to observe your interview with Dudley.”
“It may be a while yet. He’s conferring
with his bevy of lawyers.”
“I can wait. I’m told you were hurt.”
“Just a scratch, seriously. It was the shoes. They screwed up my balance. Still.” She tapped her arm. “It was an antique Italian fencing foil. That’s pretty frosty.”
Peabody stepped in. “Hey, Doctor Mira. Dallas, Dudley’s head lawyer’s asking to talk to you.”
“This ought to be good. I’ll meet him outside the interview room.”
An imposing man with white wings flowing back from his mane of black hair, Bentley Sorenson nodded curtly to Eve.
“Lieutenant, I’m informing you that I intend to file formal complaints over your treatment of my client, and your use of excessive force, entrapment, and harassment. Additionally, I’ve already contacted the governor, who will be speaking with the prosecuting attorney about falsifying information for an improper search of my client’s residence, business, and vehicles. I want my client released until these matters can be fully resolved.”
“You can file all the papers you want. You can call the governor, your congressman, or the freaking president, but your client’s not walking out of here. You can stonewall me, Mr. Sorenson.” She added a careless shrug. “I’ll go home to bed and have a nice relaxing weekend. Your client will spend his in a cage.”
“Mr. Dudley is a respected and valued businessman from one of the premier families in this country. He has no prior record and has cooperated fully with you and this department. Additionally, he contacted you for help, and to offer his, and you abused him.”
“You know it’s a toss-up as to whether you’re an idiot or just doing your job. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt and going with doing your job. You’re going to decide now if you’re going to block this interview tonight—which means he’ll chill behind bars until Monday—or if we go in there and talk.”
“I can have a hearing before a judge set within the hour.”
“Go ahead. I’ll go take a nap while you set it up. It’s been a long week.”
“Are you seriously willing to risk your career over this?”
She shifted, stood hip-shot, hooked her thumbs in her front pockets. “Is that a threat, Counselor?”
“It’s a question, Lieutenant.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m not willing to risk. Your client stepping out of that room unless it’s into a cage before I’ve interviewed him. I’m not willing to risk him going poof because he has the money and means to do so. In or out. You know very well I can hold him until Monday, so let’s stop wasting each other’s time. I talk to him now, or I go home.”
“Have it your way.”
Eve used her wrist unit. “Detective Peabody, report to Interview. Frosty, huh?” she said when she noted Sorenson studying her unit. She opened the door, stepped in.
Dudley sported a bruised and swollen jaw and eyes red and puffy from weeping. He’d had enough time to come down from his high, she noted, and that could be useful. Flanking him were two other lawyer types. Young, female, attractive. One of them actually held his hand.
“Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, in interview with Dudley, Winston—the Fourth.” She dropped a thick file on her side of the table. “Also present is Mr. Dudley’s attorney of record, Sorenson, Bentley, and two other representatives. Would each of you state your name for the record?”
As they did, she simply delegated them to Blonde and Redhead. “Peabody, Detective Delia, entering Interview. So, the gang’s all here. How’s the face, Winnie?”
“You struck me. I saved your life and you struck me and dragged me in here like a criminal.”
“Saved my life? Gosh, my recollection, and my recording, which was—as is proper procedure—engaged throughout our meeting, have a different take. As do the recordings and statements of the officers in Our Lady of Shadows Church.”
“And those recordings and statements will be questioned,” Sorenson put in, “as we can document your vendetta against my client.”
“Yeah, you do that little thing, see where it gets you. So let’s start from there. You contacted me at just past twenty hundred hours.”
“She was drunk,” he said to Sorenson. “But I was desperate. She could barely speak coherently, and when she arrived, she could hardly stand up she was so inebriated.”
Eve opened the file, pulled out a hard copy, tossed it on the table. “My tox screens, taken at hour intervals from nineteen hundred hours to twenty-one hundred hours. Clear and clean.”
“Falsified, just like the rest! You were already drunk when you accosted me and Sly at Lionel’s. A dozen witnesses would corroborate that, and your abusive attitude. Your own husband was disgusted with you.”
“Roarke says hi, by the way. You might not have noticed him in the church.” She smiled as fury reddened Dudley’s face.
“You entrapped my client,” Sorenson began.
“Bullshit. Your client contacted me, which is verified by both our ’link logs. I met him, as he requested. My backup was not only within procedure, but recommended by departmental policy. You confessed, Winnie, during our meeting—when your pal had a stunner to my throat—that the two of you had engaged in a competition that involved killing selected targets.”
She drew photos out of her file, lined them up.
“You misinterpreted my words. I was doing whatever I could to stall Sly.” Tears, and she thought them sincere, sprang to his eyes even as he lied his murdering ass off. “I betrayed and killed my dearest friend for you.”
She sent him a look, the same kind she’d seen him send Roarke in Lionel’s. Civilized contempt. “You sure roll on your dearest friend quick and easy.”
“I’m doing my duty. And God knows it can’t harm him. He’s dead. I killed him to save you.”
“Oh, don’t worry, you didn’t kill him. He’s actually doing pretty well.”
“You’re a liar. I saw him.”
“You didn’t see much of anything being souped up on Hype cut with a little prime Zeus. Your client’s tox screen.” Eve tossed it out of the file.
“I was frightened. Maybe I was weak, but I was frightened, so I took something. You can charge me with using, but—”
“Be quiet, Winnie.”
“I’m not a murderer!” He rounded on Sorenson. “It was Sly. And Sly’s dead!”
“Not dead yet, and I’ll be talking to him in the morning,” Eve commented. “I’m betting he rolls on you just as quick and easy. The officer with him tells me he’s pretty steamed you stabbed him.”
“Saving you.”
“Why did you bring an antique Italian fencing foil to church, Winnie?”
“I didn’t. Sly did.”
“Actually, no, he didn’t. Your droid did. The same droid that the two of you used to pose as Simpson’s house droid the night Sly murdered, and you conspired to murder, Luc Delaflote. We have the droid, Winnie, and are running his drives. You guys really should have destroyed that unit.”
She nodded to Peabody, who went out.
“Detective Peabody exiting Interview. There are a lot of things you probably should’ve gotten rid of. Oh, look here, more pictures.”
“I have no idea who those people are.” But his hands began to twitch.
“Sure you do. You killed them.”
“Lieutenant, if you’re going to add more ridiculous charges to those already levied against my client, I’ll—”
“It’s a pattern, Counselor, and I can connect each and every one of these people to your client. This one, the first one we’ve dug up. You’re in Africa, it’s hot, kind of wild. And hell, you’re paying her, aren’t you? She should do what the hell you want when you want it. And you’ve got that buzz on,” she added, rising and circling the table. “Women are supposed to lie down when you say lie down, supposed to spread them when you say spread them. It was her own fault, really, and thank God you had Sly there to help you out.”
She reached over, leaning over him, pulled the death photo of Melly Bristow out of the file.
Blonde gagged.
“Yeah, harsh, but, hey, she was dead already. Such a rush, getting away with murder. And they’re all just people for hire anyway—like Sofia Ricci in Naples, like Linette Jones in Vegas.”
She tapped each ID shot while Sorenson dismissed her accusations, and Dudley continued to twitch.
“But wouldn’t it be more of a rush to kill people who’ve got some cachet?” she continued. “Why waste your time on nobodies? Add some spice to the contest. What was the winner going to get anyway?”
“You’re making things up.”
“A high-class version of the classic game of Clue. Oh, wait.” She pressed the recorder she’d already cued up, and Dudley’s voice came out.
Games are for children. This is adventure. It’s competition.
“How many points did you get for the LC in the amusement park with the bayonet?” she wondered. “Your great-uncle’s bayonet. Or for the facilitator on the jogging trail with the bullwhip. The bullwhip custom-made for you in Australia. Detective Peabody returning to Interview. And, look, she’s brought party favors.”
“I was nowhere near either of those places. You know very well I was entertaining on the night Adrianne was killed.”
“We’ve been talking to people on your guest list. Even better, to staff hired for that little soiree. The hired help, Winnie? They tend to see things because people like you don’t really see them.” She smiled. “We’ve already found a couple of guests who state they looked for you to say good night before they left, and gee, couldn’t find you.”
“I have a large home, an extensive estate.”
“Yeah, and needed a lot of extra help, the kind who don’t have any reason to lie about or for you. We’ve got a few who noticed you and Adrianne Jonas heading for the garage, a couple others who noticed you coming back, a bit after three A.M. Alone.”
“You bribed them.” Sweat coated his face like dew. “It goes back to this vendetta. It goes back to jealousy.”
“Oh, of what?”
“You may have finessed marriage out of Roarke, may have money, but you’ll never be anyone. Either of you. You’ll never be what I am.”