The In Death Collection, Books 1-5

by J. D. Robb

  chapter fourteen

  Eve questioned him again, in the less comforting surroundings of Interview Room C. He’d finally taken up his right for counsel, and three pinstriped, cold-eyed lawyers ranged beside their client at the conference table.

  Eve had privatedly dubbed them Moe, Larry, and Curly.

  Moe apparently was in charge. She was a tough-voiced woman with a severe bowl-cut hairstyle that had inspired Eve to christen her. Her associates said little but looked sober and occasionally made important-looking notations on the yellow legal pads that lawyers never seemed to tire of.

  Now and again Curly, his wide forehead creased, would tap a few buttons on his log book and murmur conspiratorially in Larry’s ear.

  “Lieutenant Dallas.” Moe folded her hands, which were tipped with wicked looking inch-long scarlet nails, on the table. “My client is eager to cooperate.”

  “He wasn’t,” Eve stated, “as you’ve seen for yourself from the first interview. After recanting his original story, your client admitted to leaving the scene of a crime and failing to report said crime to the proper authorities.”

  Moe sighed. It was a windy, disappointed sound. “You can, of course, charge Mr. Angelini with those lapses. We will, in turn, claim diminished capacity, shock, and the emotional trauma of his mother’s recent murder. This would all be a waste of the court’s time, and the taxpayer’s dollar.”

  “I haven’t charged your client with those . . . lapses as yet. We’re dealing with a larger theme here.”

  Curly scribbled something, tilted his pad for Larry to read. The two of them murmured together and looked grave.

  “You have confirmed my client’s appointment at Channel 75.”

  “Yeah, he had an appointment, which he canceled at eleven thirty-five. Odd that his diminished capacity and his emotional trauma eased off enough for him to take care of business.” Before Moe could speak again, Eve turned and pinned Angelini with one hard stare. “You know Nadine Furst?”

  “I know who she is. I’ve seen her on the news.” He hesitated, leaned over to consult Moe. After a moment, he nodded. “I’d met her a few times socially, and spoke with her briefly after my mother’s death.”

  Eve already knew all of that, and circled her quarry. “I’m sure you’ve seen her reports. You’d have a vested interest, as she’s been covering the recent murders. Your mother’s murder.”

  “Lieutenant, what does my client’s interest in the news coverage of his mother’s death have to do with the murder of Ms. Kirski?”

  “I’m wondering. You have seen Nadine Furst’s reports over the last couple weeks, Mr. Angelini.”

  “Of course.” He’d recovered enough to sneer. “You’ve gotten a lot of airtime out of it, Lieutenant.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “I think it’s appalling that a public servant, paid by the city, would seek notoriety through tragedy.”

  “Sounds like it pissed you off,” Eve said with an easy shrug. “Ms. Furst has been getting plenty of notoriety out of it, too.”

  “One learns to expect someone like her to use someone else’s pain for her own advancement.”

  “You didn’t like the coverage?”

  “Lieutenant,” Moe said with her patience obviously straining. “Where’s the point in this?”

  “This isn’t a trial, yet. I don’t need a point. Were you annoyed by the coverage, Mr. Angelini? Angry?”

  “I—” He broke off at a sharp look from Moe. “I come from a prominent family,” he said more carefully. “We’re accustomed to such things.”

  “If we could get back to the business at hand,” Moe requested.

  “This is the business at hand. Louise Kirski was wearing Nadine Furst’s raincoat when she was killed. You know what I think, Mr. Angelini? I think the killer hit the wrong target. I think he was waiting for Nadine and Louise just happened to choose the wrong time to go out in the rain for cigarettes.”

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with me.” His eyes darted toward his attorneys. “It still doesn’t have anything to do with me. I saw it. That’s all.”

  “You said it was a man. What did he look like?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see him clearly, his back was to me. It happened so fast.”

  “But you saw enough to know it was a man.”

  “I assumed.” He broke off, struggling to control his breathing while Moe whispered in his ear. “It was raining,” he began. “I was several meters away, in my car.”

  “You said you saw the victim’s face.”

  “The light, she turned her head toward the light when he—or when the killer—went toward her.”

  “And this killer, who might have been a man, and who came out of nowhere. Was he tall, short, old, young?”

  “I don’t know. It was dark.”

  “You said there was light.”

  “Just that circle of light. He’d been in the shadows. He was wearing black,” David said on a burst of inspiration. “A long black coat—and a hat, a hat that drooped down low.”

  “That’s convenient. He was wearing black. It’s so original.”

  “Lieutenant, I can’t advise my client to continue to cooperate if you persist in sarcasm.”

  “Your client’s in hip deep. My sarcasm’s the least of his worries. We’ve got the three big ones. Means, motive, opportunity.”

  “You have nothing but my client’s admission that he witnessed a crime. Further,” Moe went on, tapping those dangerous nails on the conference table, “you have absolutely nothing to link him with the other murders. What you’ve got, Lieutenant, is a maniac on the loose, and a desperate need to appease your superiors and the public with an arrest. It’s not going to be my client.”

  “We’ll have to see about that. Now—” Her communicator beeped, twice, a signal from Feeney. Her adrenaline surged, and she masked it with a bland smile. “Excuse me, I’ll only be a moment.”

  She stepped out of the room into the hallway. Behind her through the one-way glass, a huddle was in progress. “Give me good news, Feeney. I want to nail this son of a bitch.”

  “Good news?” Feeney rubbed his chin. “Well, you might like this. Yvonne Metcalf was in negotiations with our pal in there. Covert negotiations.”

  “For?”

  “The lead in some flick. It was all on the Q.T. because her contract for Tune In was coming up. I finally pinned her agent down. If she snagged the part, she was willing to ditch the sitcom. But they were going to have to up the ante, guarantee a three-feature deal, international distribution, and twenty hours’ straight promo.”

  “Sounds like she wanted a lot.”

  “She was squeezing him some. My take from what the agent said is he needed Metcalf to guarantee some of the financial backing, but they wanted a chunk on the front end. He was scrambling to come up with it and save his project.”

  “He knew her. And she had the controls.”

  “According to the agent, he came in to meet Metcalf personally, several times. They had a couple of tête-à-têtes at her apartment. He got a little hot, but Metcalf laughed it off. She was banking that he’d come around.”

  “I love when it falls into place, don’t you?” She turned, studying Angelini through the glass. “We’ve got a connection, Feeney. He knew them all.”

  “He was supposed to be on the coast when Metcalf got whacked.”

  “How much do you want to bet he’s got a private plane? You know something I’ve learned since Roarke, Feeney? Flight plans don’t mean squat if you’ve got money, and your own transpo. No, unless he comes up with ten witnesses who were kissing his ass when Metcalf went down, I’ve got him. Watch him sweat,” she muttered as she swung back into the interview room.

  She sat, crossed her arms on the table, and met Angelini’s eyes. “You knew Yvonne Metcalf.”

  “I—” Off balance, David reached up, tugged at the collar of his shirt. “Certainly, I . . . everyone did.”

  “You ha
d business with her, met her personally, you’d been to her apartment.”

  This was obviously news to Moe, who bared her teeth, tossed up a hand. “One moment, Lieutenant. I’d like to speak to my client privately.”

  “All right.” Obliging, Eve rose. Outside, she watched the show through the glass, and thought it a pity that the law prevented her from turning on the audio.

  Still, she could see Moe fire questions at David and could gauge his stuttering responses while Larry and Curly looked grim and scribbled furiously on their pads.

  Moe shook her head at one of David’s answers, stabbed him with one of her lethal red nails. Eve was smiling when Moe lifted a hand and signaled her back into the room.

  “My client is prepared to state that he was acquainted with Yvonne Metcalf, on a professional level.”

  “Uh-huh.” This time Eve leaned a hip on the table. “Yvonne Metcalf was giving you some grief, wasn’t she, Mr. Angelini?”

  “We were in negotiations.” His hands linked together again, twisted. “It’s standard for the talent side of a project to demand the moon. We were . . . coming to terms.”

  “You met her in her apartment. Argued?”

  “We—I—we had meetings at several locations. Her home was one of them. We discussed terms and options.”

  “Where were you, Mr. Angelini, on the night Yvonne Metcalf was murdered?”

  “I’d have to check my diary,” he said with surprising control. “But I believe I was in New Los Angeles, the Planet Hollywood complex. I stay there whenever I’m in town.”

  “And where might you have been between oh, seven and midnight, West Coast time?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “You’re going to want to say, Mr. Angelini.”

  “Most likely in my room. I had a great deal of business to see to. The script needed reworking.”

  “The script you were tailoring for Ms. Metcalf.”

  “Yes, actually.”

  “And you were working alone?”

  “I prefer to be alone when I write. I wrote the script, you see.” He flushed a little, the color rising from the collar of his shirt. “I put a great deal of time and effort into preparing it.”

  “You keep a plane?”

  “A plane. Naturally, the way I travel, I—”

  “Was your plane in New Los Angeles?”

  “Yes, I—” His eyes went wide and blank as he realized the implication. “You can’t seriously believe this!”

  “David, sit down,” Moe said firmly when he lurched to his feet. “You have nothing more to say at this time.”

  “She thinks I killed them. That’s insane. My own mother, for God’s sake. What reason? What possible reason could there be for that?”

  “Oh, I’ve got a few ideas on that. We’ll see if the shrink agrees with me.”

  “My client is under no obligation to submit to psychiatric testing.”

  “I think you’re going to advise him to do just that.”

  “This interview,” Moe said in snippy tones, “is terminated.”

  “Fine.” Eve straightened, enjoyed the moment when her eyes met David’s. “David Angelini, you’re under arrest. You are charged with leaving the scene of a crime, obstruction of justice, and attempted bribery of a police officer.”

  He lunged at her, going ironically, Eve thought, for the throat. She waited until his hands had closed over it, his eyes bulging with fury, before she knocked him down.

  Ignoring the snapping orders of his attorney, Eve leaned over him. “We won’t bother with adding assaulting an officer and resisting arrest. I don’t think we’re going to need it. Book him,” she snapped at the uniforms who had charged the door.

  “Nice work, Dallas,” Feeney congratulated as they watched David being led away.

  “Let’s hope the PA’s office thinks so, enough to block bail. We have to hold him and sweat him. I want him on murder one, Feeney. I want him bad.”

  “We’re close to it, kid.”

  “We need the physical evidence. We need the damn weapon, blood, the souvenirs. Mira’s psychiatric will help, but I can’t bump up the charges without some physical.” Impatient, she consulted her watch. “Shouldn’t take too long to get a search warrant, even with the lawyers trying to block.”

  “How long you been up?” he wondered. “I can count the circles under your eyes.”

  “Long enough that another couple of hours won’t matter. How about I buy you a drink while we wait for the warrant?”

  He put a paternal hand on her shoulder. “I think we’re both going to need one. The commander got wind of it. He wants us, Dallas. Now.”

  She dug a finger along the center of her brow. “Let’s get it together then. And make it two drinks after we’re done.”

  Whitney didn’t waste time. The moment Eve and Feeney stepped into his office, he scalded them both with one long look. “You brought David in to Interview.”

  “I did, yes, sir.” Eve took an extra step forward to take the heat. “We have video of him on the gate security at Channel 75 at the time of Louise Kirski’s murder.” She didn’t pause, but streamed through her report, her voice brisk, her eyes level.

  “David says he saw the murder.”

  “He claims he saw someone, possibly male, in a long black coat and a hat, attack Kirski, then run toward Third.”

  “And he panicked,” Whitney added, still in control. His hands were quiet on his desk. “Left the scene without reporting the incident.” Whitney may have been cursing inwardly, his stomach might have been in greasy knots of tension, but his eyes were cool, hard, and steady. “It’s not an atypical reaction from a witness to a violent crime.”

  “He denied he was on scene,” Eve said calmly. “Tried to cover, offered a bribe. He had the opportunity, Commander. And he’s linked to all three victims. He knew Metcalf, was working with her on a project, had been to her apartment.”

  Whitney’s only reaction was to curl his fingers, then uncurl them. “Motive, Lieutenant?”

  “Money first,” she said. “He’s having financial difficulties that will be eased after his mother’s will is probated. The victims, or in the third case, the intended victim, were all strong women in the public eye. Were all, in some manner, causing him distress. Unless his lawyers try to block it, Doctor Mira will test him, determine his emotional and mental state, the probability factor of his aptitude toward violence.”

  She thought of the press of his hands around her throat and figured the probability was going to be nice and high.

  “He wasn’t in New York for the first two murders.”

  “Sir.” She felt a bolt of pity, but suppressed it. “He has a private plane. He can shuttle anywhere he likes. It’s pathetically simple to doctor flight plans. I can’t book him for the murders yet, but I want him held until we gather more evidence.”

  “You’re holding him on leaving the scene and the bribery charge?”

  “It’s a good arrest, Commander. I’m requesting search warrants. When we find any physical evidence—”

  “If,” Whitney interrupted. He rose now, no longer able to sit behind his desk. “That’s a very big difference, Dallas. Without physical evidence, your murder case can’t hold.”

  “Which is why he has yet to be charged for murder.” She laid a hard copy on his desk. She and Feeney had taken the time to swing past her office and use her computer for the probability ratio. “He knew the first two victims and Nadine Furst, had contact with them, was on the scene of the last murder. We suspect that Towers was covering for someone when she zapped the last call on her ’link. She would have covered for her son. And their relationship was strained due to his gambling problem and her refusal to bail him out. With known data, the probability factor of guilt is eighty-three point one percent.”

  “You haven’t taken into account that he’s incapable of that kind of violence.” Whitney laid his hands on the edge of his desk and leaned forward. “You didn’t factor that in to the mix,
did you, Lieutenant? I know David Angelini, Dallas. I know him as well as I know my own children. He isn’t a killer. He’s a fool, perhaps. He’s weak, perhaps. But he isn’t a cold-blooded killer.”

  “Sometimes the weak and the foolish strike out. Commander, I’m sorry. I can’t kick him loose.”

  “Do you have any idea what it would do to a man like him to be penned? To know he’s suspected of killing his own mother?” There was no choice left for him, in Whitney’s mind, but a plea. “I can’t deny that he was spoiled. His father wanted the best for him and for Mirina, and saw that they got it. From childhood he was accustomed to asking for something and having it fall into his lap. Yes, his life has been easy, privileged, even indulgent. He’s made mistakes, errors in judgment, and they’ve been fixed for him. But there’s no malice in him, Dallas. No violence. I know him.”

  Whitney’s voice didn’t rise, but it reverberated with emotion. “You’ll never convince me that David took a knife and ripped it across his mother’s throat. I’m asking you to consider that, and to delay the paperwork on the yellow sheet and recommend his release on his own recognizance.”

  Feeney started to speak, but Eve shook her head. He may have outranked her, but she was primary. She was in charge. “Three women are dead, Commander. We have a suspect in custody. I can’t do what you’re asking. You put me on as primary because you knew I wouldn’t.”

  He turned and stared hard out of the window. “Compassion’s not your strong suit, is it, Dallas?”

  She winced, but said nothing.

  “That’s a wrong swing, Jack,” Feeney said, with heat. “And if you’re going to take one at her, then you’ll have to take one at me, ’cause I’m with Dallas on this. We’ve got enough to book him on the small shit, to take him off the street, and that’s what we’re doing.”

  “You’ll ruin him.” Whitney turned back. “But that’s not your problem. You get your warrants, and you do your search. But as your commanding officer, I’m ordering you to keep the case open. You keep looking. Have your reports on my desk by fourteen hundred.” He flicked a last glance at Dallas. “You’re dismissed.”