by J. D. Robb
This is a new one, Eve thought and cocked a brow. “Is that so?”
“After Ms. Freestone left, Pandora was edgy, angry. Jerry seemed to enjoy that, and the fact that the young woman had gotten a few shots in. She egged Pandora on. Said something to the effect that if she was Pandora, she wouldn’t tolerate being humiliated that way, and why didn’t she go straight over to Leonardo’s and show him who was in charge. There was another little dig about Pandora not being able to hold onto a man, then Justin hustled Jerry out.”
His smile widened. “They despised Pandora, you see. Jerry for obvious reasons, and Justin because I’d told him that the drug was Pandora’s doing. Justin would do anything to protect Jerry. Absolutely anything. I, on the other hand, had no emotional attachment to any of the players. It was just sex with Pandora. Just sex, Lieutenant, and business.”
Eve rapped on the door where Casto was interviewing Jerry. When he poked his head out, she shifted her gaze, studied the woman at the table. “I need to talk to her.”
“She’s running down, running out. Not going to get too much out of her today. Lawyer’s already making noises about a break.”
“I need to talk to her,” Eve repeated. “How have you been handling her this round?”
“Tough line, hard-ass.”
“Okay, I’ll downgrade.” Eve slipped into the room.
She could still feel pity, she realized. Jerry’s eyes were jittery and shadowed. Her face was drawn, and her hands shook as they ran over it. Her beauty was fragile now, and haunted.
“You want some food?” Eve asked in a quiet voice.
“No.” Jerry’s gaze bounced around the room. “I want to go home. I want Justin.”
“We’ll see if we can arrange a visit. It’ll have to be supervised.” She poured water. “Why don’t you drink a little of this, take a minute?” She covered Jerry’s hands with her own on the glass, lifted it to the trembling lips. “This is rough on you. I’m sorry. We can’t give you anything to counteract the crash. We don’t know enough yet, and whatever we gave you might be worse.”
“I’m all right. It’s nothing.”
“It sucks.” Eve slipped into a seat. “Redford got you into this. He verified that.”
“It’s nothing,” she said again. “I’m just tired. I need a little of my health drink.” She looked hopefully, pitifully at Eve. “Can’t I have a little, just to gear back up?”
“You know it’s dangerous, Jerry. You know what it’s doing to you. Counselor, Paul Redford has stated on record that he introduced Ms. Fitzgerald to the illegal, under the pretense of a business venture. It is our assumption that she was unaware of its addictive qualities. We have no intention, at this time, of charging her with use.”
As Eve had hoped, the lawyer relaxed visibly. “Well, then, Lieutenant, I’d like to arrange for my client’s release and her admission into rehab. Voluntary admission.”
“Voluntary admission can be arranged. If your client can cooperate for a few more minutes, it would help me in closing the charges on Redford.”
“If she cooperates, Lieutenant, all illegals charges will be dropped?”
“You know I can’t promise that, Counselor. I will, however, recommend leniency on the charges of possession and intent to distribute.”
“And Justin? You’ll let him go?”
Eve looked back at Jerry. Love, she thought, was an odd burden. “Was he involved in the business transaction?”
“No. He wanted me to pull out. When he found out that I was . . . dependent, he pushed me to go into rehab, to stop taking the drink. But I needed it. I was going to stop, but I needed it.”
“The night Pandora died, there was an argument.”
“There was always an argument with Pandora. She was hateful. She thought she could get Justin back. The bitch didn’t care about him. She just wanted to hurt me. To hurt him.”
“He wouldn’t have gone back to her, would he, Jerry?”
“He hated her as much as I did.” She lifted her beautifully manicured nails to her mouth, started to gnaw. “We’re glad she’s dead.”
“Jerry—”
“I don’t care,” she exploded with a wild look to her cautioning lawyer. “She deserved to die. She wanted everything, never cared how she got it. Justin was mine. I would have been headliner at Leonardo’s show if she hadn’t found out I was interested. She went out of her way to seduce him, to have me cut out so that she could take the job. It would have been my job, it should have been my job all along. Just like Justin was mine. Like the drug was mine. It makes you beautiful and strong and sexy. And every time anyone takes it, they’ll think of me. Not of her, of me.”
“Did Justin go with you to Leonardo’s that night?”
“Lieutenant, what is this?”
“It’s a question, Counselor. Did he, Jerry?”
“No, of course not. We—we didn’t go there. We went out for drinks. We went home.”
“You taunted her, didn’t you? You knew how to play her. You had to be sure she’d go hunt down Leonardo. Did Redford contact you, tell you when she’d left?”
“No, I don’t know. You’re confusing me. Can’t I have something? I need my drink.”
“You were using it that night. It made you strong. Strong enough to kill her. You wanted her dead. She was always in your way. And her tablets were stronger, more effective than your liquid. Did you want them, Jerry?”
“Yes, I wanted them. She was getting younger in front of my eyes. Thinner. I have to watch every fucking bite I take, but she . . . Paul said he might be able to get them from her. Justin told him to back off, to stay away from me. But Justin doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand how it makes you feel. Immortal,” she said with a horrible smile. “It makes you feel immortal. For God’s sake, just one drink.”
“You slipped out of the back that night, went to Leonardo’s. What happened then?”
“I can’t. I’m confused. I need something.”
“Did you pick up the cane and hit her? Did you keep hitting her?”
“I wanted her dead.” On a sob, Jerry laid her head on the table. “I wanted her dead. For God’s sake help me. I’ll tell you anything you want to hear if you just help me.”
“Lieutenant, anything my client says under physical and mental duress is inadmissible.”
Eve studied the weeping woman and reached for the ’link. “Get the MT’s in here,” she ordered. “And arrange for hospital transport for Ms. Fitzgerald. Under guard.”
chapter nineteen
“What do you mean you’re not charging her?” His eyes went dark with shock and temper as Casto erupted, “You got a fucking confession.”
“It wasn’t a confession,” Eve corrected. She was tired, dead tired and sick of herself. “She’d have said anything.”
“Jesus Christ, Eve. Jesus Christ.” In an attempt to walk off fury, Casto paced up and down the antiseptic tiled corridor of the health center. “You aced her.”
“The hell I did.” Wearily, Eve rubbed at a headache in her left temple. “Listen to me, Casto, the shape she was in, she’d have told me she personally drove nails into the palms of Christ if I’d promised her a fix. I charge her on the basis of that, her lawyers will tear it apart in pretrial.”
“You’re not worried about pretrial.” He passed the tight-lipped Peabody on his stride back to Eve. “You went for the jugular, just like a cop’s supposed to in a murder case. Now you’ve gone soft. You’re fucking sorry for her.”
“Don’t tell me what I am,” Eve said evenly. “And don’t tell me how to run this investigation. I’m primary, Casto, so back the hell off.”
He measured her. “You don’t want me to go over your head with this decision.”
“Threats?” She angled her body up on the balls of her feet, like a boxer ready to dance. “You go ahead and do what you have to do. My recommendation stands. She gets treatment, though Christ knows how much good that’s going to do her in the short term, then w
e reinterview. Until I’m satisfied she’s coherent and capable of judgment, she won’t be charged.”
Eve could see he was making an effort to pull himself back. And she could see it was costing him. She didn’t give a damn.
“Eve, you’ve got motive, you’ve got opportunity, you’ve got the personality capacity tests. She’s capable of the crimes in question. She was, at her own admission, under the influence and predisposed to hate Pandora’s guts. What the fuck do you want?”
“I want her to look me in the eye, clear in the eye, and tell me she did them. I want her to tell me how she did them. Until then, we wait. Because I’ll tell you something, hotshot. No way she acted alone. No fucking way she did all of them with her own pretty hands.”
“Why? Because she’s a woman?”
“No, because money isn’t her big pull. Passion is, love is, envy is. So maybe she did Pandora in a fit of jealous rage, but I don’t buy her doing the others. Not without help. Not without a push. So we wait, we reinterview, and we get her to finger Young and/or Redford. Then, we have it all.”
“I think you’re wrong.”
“So noted,” she said briskly. “Now, go file your interdepartmental complaint, take a walk, or blow it out your ass, but get out of my face.”
His eyes flickered, the temper in them ripe and ready. But he stepped back. “I’m going to go cool off.”
He stormed off, with barely a glance at the silent Peabody.
“Your pal’s running a little low on charm this evening,” Eve commented.
Peabody could have said the same went for her commanding officer, but she held her tongue. “We’re all under a lot of pressure, Dallas. This bust means a lot to him.”
“You know what, Peabody? Justice means a little more to me than a pretty gold star on my record or some fucking captain’s bars. And if you want to go run after lover boy and stroke his ego, no one’s stopping you.”
Peabody’s jaw twitched, but her voice was even. “I’m not going anywhere, Lieutenant.”
“Fine, just stand here and look martyred because I—” In midtirade, Eve stopped, sucked in her breath. “I’m sorry. You’re a goddamn handy target at the moment, Peabody.”
“Is that part of my job description? Sir.”
“You always have a fine comeback. I could learn to hate you for that.” Calmer, Eve laid a hand on her aide’s shoulder. “I am sorry, and I’m sorry to put you in a tight spot. Duty and personal emotions never mix well.”
“I can handle it. He was wrong to come at you that way, Dallas. I can understand how he feels, but it doesn’t make him right.”
“Maybe not.” Eve leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. “But he was right about one thing, and it’s eating at me. I didn’t have the stomach for what I did to Fitzgerald in interview. I didn’t have the stomach while I was doing it, while I was hearing myself hammer at her, twist her up when she was suffering. But I did it, because that’s my job, and going for the jugular when the prey’s wounded is exactly what I’m supposed to do.”
Eve opened her eyes and stared hard at the door behind which Jerry Fitzgerald was mildly sedated. “And sometimes, Peabody, the job just fucking sucks.”
“Yes, sir.” For the first time, Peabody reached out and touched a hand to Eve’s arm. “That’s why you’re so good at it.”
Eve opened her mouth, surprised when a laugh popped out. “Goddamn, Peabody, I really like you.”
“I like you, too.” She waited a beat. “What’s wrong with us?”
Cheered a little, she slung an arm around Peabody’s sturdy shoulders. “Let’s go get something to eat. Fitzgerald’s not going anywhere tonight.”
On that, Eve’s instincts proved to be wrong.
The call woke her at a little before four A.M., out of a deep and thankfully dreamless sleep. Her eyes were gritty, her tongue thick from the wine she’d indulged in to be marginally sociable with Mavis and Leonardo. She managed a croak as she answered the ’link.
“Dallas. Christ, doesn’t anyone ever sleep in this town?”
“I often ask myself the same question.” The face and voice on the ’link were vaguely familiar. Eve struggled to focus, to roll through her memory discs.
“Doctor . . . hell, Ambrose?” It slid back, layer by layer. Ambrose, spindly female, mixed race, head of chemical rehab at the Midtown Rehabilitation Center for Substance Addiction. “You still there? Is Fitzgerald coming around?”
“Not exactly. Lieutenant, we have a problem here. Patient Fitzgerald is dead.”
“Dead? What do you mean dead?”
“As in deceased,” Ambrose said with a bland smile. “As a homicide lieutenant, I imagine you’re familiar with the term.”
“How, damn it? Did her nervous system give out, did she jump out a fucking window?”
“As near as we can determine, she overdosed herself. She managed to get her hands on the sample of Immortality we were using to determine the proper treatment for her. She took all of it, in combination with a few of the other goodies we have stashed here. I’m sorry, Lieutenant, she’s gone. We can’t bring her back. I’ll fill you in on the details when you and your team arrive.”
“Damn right you will,” Eve snapped and broke transmission.
Eve viewed the body first, as if to ensure herself there hadn’t been a horrible mistake. Jerry had been laid on the bed, her color-coded hospital gown draped to midthigh. Sky blue for addict, first stage treatment.
She was never going to get to stage two.
Her beauty was back, oddly eerie, in the bone-white face. The shadows were gone from under her eyes, the strain from around the mouth. Death was the ultimate calmer, after all. There were faint burn marks on her chest where the resuscitating team had worked on her, a light bruising on the back of her hand where the IV had pinched. Under the doctor’s wary eye, Eve examined the body thoroughly, but found no signs of violence.
She’d died, Eve supposed, as happy as she would ever be.
“How?” Eve demanded shortly.
“The combination of Immortality and, as far as we can determine by what’s missing, doses of morphine and synthetic Zeus. Autopsy will confirm.”
“You keep Zeus here, in a rehab?” The idea had Eve scrubbing her hands over her face.“Jesus.”
“For research and rehabilitation,” Ambrose said tightly. “Subjects addicted need a slow, supervised withdrawal period.”
“So where the hell was the supervision, Doctor?”
“Ms. Fitzgerald was sedated. She was not expected to regain full consciousness until eight A.M. My hypothesis would be that, as we don’t fully understand the properties of Immortality as yet, what was left in her system counteracted the sedative.”
“So she got up, marched herself down to your drug hold, and helped herself.”
“Something of the kind.” Eve could all but hear Ambrose’s teeth grinding.
“What about security, the nursing staff? Did she turn herself invisible and walk right by them?”
“You can check with your own officer on duty about security, Lieutenant Dallas.”
“Be sure I will, Dr. Ambrose.”
Ambrose gnashed her teeth again, then sighed. “Listen, I don’t want to hang the mess on your uniform, Lieutenant. We had a disruption here a few hours ago. One of our violent tendencies attacked his ward nurse, got out of his restraints. We had our hands full for a few minutes, and the uniform pitched in. If she hadn’t, the ward nurse would very likely be standing at the Pearly Gates with Ms. Fitzgerald right now instead of dealing with a broken tibia and some cracked ribs.”
“You’ve had a busy night, Doctor.”
“Not one I want to repeat any time soon.” She dragged her fingers through curly, rust-colored hair. “Listen, Lieutenant, this center has an excellent reputation. We help people. Losing one, this way, makes me feel every bit as shitty as you. She should have been asleep, damn it. And that uniform wasn’t away from her post for more than fifteen minutes.”
/> “Timing again.” Eve looked back at Jerry and tried to shrug off the weight of guilt. “What about your security cameras?”
“We don’t have any. Lieutenant, can you imagine how many media leaks we’d have if we had recordings of patients, some of whom are prominent citizens? We’re bound by privacy laws here.”
“Great, no security discs. Nobody sees her take her last walk. Where’s the drug hold where she OD’d?”
“This wing, one level down.”
“How the hell did she know that?”
“That, Lieutenant, I can’t tell you. Any more than I can explain how she unkeyed the lock, not only on the door, but on the holds themselves. But she did. The night watch found her on his sweep. The door was open.”
“Unlocked or open?”
“Open,” Ambrose confirmed. “As were two holds. She was on the floor, dead as Caesar. We tried the usual resuscitations, of course, but it was more for form than from hope.”
“I’ll need to talk to everyone in this wing—patients as well as staff.”
“Lieutenant—”
“Fuck privacy laws, Doctor. I’m overriding them. I want your night watch as well.” Pity jangled Eve’s nerves as she recovered the body. “Did anyone come in, try to see her? Did anyone call to check her condition?”
“Her ward nurse will have that information.”
“Then let’s start with her ward nurse. You round up the rest of them. Is there a room I can use for interview?”
“You can use my office, such as it is.” Ambrose looked back at the body, hissed between her teeth. “Beautiful woman. Young, with fame and fortune at her fingertips. Drugs heal, Lieutenant. They extend life and the quality of it. They eradicate pain, soothe a troubled mind. I work hard to remember that when I see what else they can do. If you ask me, and you’re not, she was headed here the first time she sipped that pretty blue juice.”
“Yeah, but she got here a lot faster than she was supposed to.”
Eve strode out of the room, spotted Peabody in the corridor. “Casto?”