Vendetta in Death

by Robb, J. D.

  “Very clever,” Roarke muttered, “but expected. Here we are now, aye, here we are. Time to go to sleep, and … done.

  “System’s down,” he told Eve. “All exterior locks down.”

  “All?”

  “Well, we do like to be thorough.”

  She only shook her head, shifted the weapon she’d already drawn in her hand. “Hear that? You’re go. Move in, move in!”

  She heard Baxter’s admiring “Slick work” as she went in low with Roarke and Peabody going high beside her.

  Absolute silence. That struck her first, how silent a wealthy house could be. She signaled to Roarke to take the grand stairs, pointed Peabody in the opposite direction.

  “We need to find the basement access. Callendar, elevators.”

  “Got it going now.”

  “Movement?”

  “Just basement level, both humans still in the center area, but movement from both.”

  “She’s circling him, Dallas,” McNab added. “He’s jerking. Still upright, jerking and swaying. Fuck.”

  Bad for Brinkman, Eve thought, but Darla seemed too busy to notice blank monitors.

  “Two droids down,” Feeney said. “Two damn nice droids.”

  “One on the third level,” Roarke reported. “Medical type. It’s down. Ms. Callahan seems to be sleeping peacefully.”

  “Hold off on medical for now. Clear third level.”

  “We’re clear,” Baxter reported. “And I think we’ve got your access door.”

  “Got one here, too,” Feeney said. “Kind of a fancy pantry deal off the main kitchen.”

  “We’re heading back. Clear as we go, Peabody.”

  “It’s so quiet.” Peabody swung, weapon first, into another doorway.

  “Serious soundproofing. Clear.”

  “I’ll say. Clear”

  “Another droid, shut down, now locked down,” Roarke said. “Closet in what I’d say is Pettigrew’s suite of rooms. So we’re clear on the third. I’m coming down.”

  “Sweep the second on the way.”

  “How about Baxter and Trueheart take that,” Feeney said as she and Peabody finally reached the kitchen. “We could use another e-man on these doors. I’ve seen fricking vaults with less cover.”

  “Baxter, Trueheart, clear second level. Roarke, main level, rear. What’s with the door?” she asked Feeney.

  “Scanned it,” he told her. “She’s got it locked down, alarmed, and with a couple of fail-safes to kick it off. We gotta take it in layers. If we try a straight bypass, try to take it down, you’re going to set off secondary alarms and seal it.”

  “It’s the same deal with mine.” Both frustration and admiration tinged Callendar’s voice. “Maggest of the mag.”

  “Shit, shit. McNab, secure the van and get in here. Work with Callendar. What can we do?”

  “Give me room,” Feeney told her.

  He ran a scanner over the door, tapped his shit-brown shoe, tapped a few commands. “Not that way,” he muttered. He glanced over as Roarke walked in.

  “We got a trip lock, motion lock, both with internal alarms and panic lockdown.”

  “Is that so?” Roarke’s smile read challenge accepted. “I’ve worked with those.”

  “Yeah, me, too, but we’ve got a fail-safe running between the alarm and lockdown, and another threaded through a secondary seal.”

  Feeney narrowed his eyes. “What do you look so smug about?”

  “It’s one of my systems. I helped design it. It’s really quite good. But if one knows the ins and the outs …”

  Feeney held out his scanner.

  “Thanks, but I have my own.”

  “Can you walk my boys through it?”

  “We’ll see. A bit of room, Lieutenant,” he added as Eve breathed down his neck.

  “There’s a man being tortured on the other side of that door.”

  “I’m aware, but this is going to require some delicacy.”

  Eve stepped back. “Maybe we can lure her out,” she said to Peabody. “Maybe we turn the third-floor monitors back on and—”

  “And quiet,” Roarke snapped.

  Eve hissed at him, but signaled Peabody out of the room. “If we can get her out.”

  “We’re made if we turn on the main floor, and she could panic, kill Brinkman, like you said.”

  “I know. I know.” Eve circled and paced. “There’s got to be a way. She’s going to check the monitors at some point, likely soon, and she’ll wonder. Maybe that would send her out, but … No.”

  Frustrated, impatient, Eve raked her fingers through her hair. “She’d have some way to check, she knows this stuff. She’d cop to them being shut down.”

  “Well, son of a bitch.”

  She heard Feeney, so edged back closer.

  “You got that, McNab?”

  “We’re right with you—okay, maybe a step or two back, but we’re getting it. Super frosted goodness.”

  “You don’t override now,” Roarke said. “She’s too clever for that. So you back off, and slide around the corner, slow and easy. One click up, two back, one left, two right.”

  “Roger that.” Callendar’s voice came cheerfully. “Maggier than the maggest of the mag. It’s just melting off.”

  “A bit more. She’ll raise a shield, so now it’s going under. Do you see it?”

  “Got her.”

  “It’s kind of sexy,” Peabody commented. “The sexy nerds.”

  Eve only closed her eyes. “Any movement below?”

  “Same type,” Callendar told her. “Both are in the central area.”

  “And so will you be now.” Roarke flexed his fingers. “Do you have it, McNab?”

  “Just doing the last … Whee! There she goes.”

  “On my go. Let’s keep this guy alive. Baxter, Trueheart, e-team behind. Peabody, with me.”

  Peabody stepped beside Eve, took a breath in, let it out. “Let’s take this bitch down.”

  “And go!”

  She heard the screams the instant Roarke pulled open the door for her. Shrieks high and sharp with shock and pain. And the voice bellowing through them.

  “Why aren’t we ever good enough! We give and give, but you use us, beat us, rape us, leave us. It’s time you paid. You all paid!”

  Eve rushed the steps, swung straight into the main area with its wall of monitors, its work counters, its half-built droids. Its painted concrete floors.

  Darla stood, the electric prod reared back as she prepared to slash the man whose bruised face contorted with fear. Blood oozed from his wrists where he struggled against the restraints that chained him to the ceiling.

  She stood, Eve saw with a surprise she rarely felt with killers, in a skin suit, a breastplate, a luxurious silver-edged black wig that spilled in waves over her shoulders, with a glittering silver cat’s-eye mask on her face.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Now Darla’s face contorted, but with rage. “No! You won’t stop me. I’m Lady Justice, and Linus Brinkman has been found guilty and sentenced to death!”

  “Step away from him, Darla.”

  “Justice! My name is Justice, and that’s what he and all like him must face.”

  “Drop the weapon and step away from him. That’s not a suggestion.”

  “Wilford! Defend!”

  The droid lunged forward—and so did Roarke. He tapped a command on his handheld. The droid stopped, shut down.

  “You bastard! You’ll be next to face real justice. Get out, get away, or I’ll jam this prod right down his throat. You won’t stop me.” She raised the prod high. “You won’t stop—”

  Eve stunned her. “You’re stopped,” she said as Darla jittered. The prod clattered to the floor as Roarke moved quickly to catch her before she fell on the concrete.

  “Baxter, Trueheart, get him down. Peabody, call for a bus, and contact the nurse for Eloise.”

  She moved over, crouched beside Darla as Roarke laid her on the floor.r />
  “She’s quite barking mad, isn’t she?”

  Eve pulled out her restraints. “Not my call to make,” she said as she clamped them on the unconscious Darla’s wrists. “But oh yeah. Barking.”

  “Please, please, please.” Brinkman wept, shuddered. “Please don’t let her hurt me anymore.”

  “You’re safe now. You’re safe. Okay if I hunt up a blanket for him, Lieutenant?” Trueheart asked. “He’s in shock.”

  “Yeah. Then you and Baxter can take her in, book her. I’ll be in when we’re done here.”

  Baxter angled his head as he studied Darla. “It’s like a girl superhero costume. A little classic Wonder Woman, a little Dark Angel.”

  “A touch of Rose and Thorn.”

  “Yeah.” Baxter nodded at Roarke. “Yeah, her, too.”

  “MTs on the way,” Peabody said. “The nurse is coming. That’s a good call, Dallas. Eloise is going to need her.”

  When Darla’s eyelids fluttered, Eve crouched down. “You drugged your own grandmother.”

  “Grand? Grand?” She started to struggle. “No, no, no, I’m not finished!”

  “Yeah, you are. You have the right to remain silent.”

  She didn’t take that right as Eve read off the Revised Miranda, but continued to rage, to weep in frustration, to curse.

  “Maybe give them a hand with her, McNab.”

  He turned from studying the e-toys, actually looked stricken.

  “Help them get her in the vehicle. You can come back and play.”

  “On it.” He pranced toward the stairs.

  Feeney studied the workstations as well, rubbed his hands together. “Let’s get this stuff logged, Callendar, and start having some fun.”

  “All over and back, Cap.”

  Eve called for sweepers while Peabody helped a blanket-wrapped Brinkman off the floor and to a sofa. “You got him, Peabody?”

  “Yeah. He’ll be all right. You’ll be all right, Mr. Brinkman.”

  “She hurt me. She hurt me. I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll go up, wait for the sweepers and the bus.”

  “I’m with you, Lieutenant.”

  Eve glanced at Roarke as she started upstairs. “You know you want to play with those e’s.”

  “I do, and I will. But for now …”

  “How did you take out that droid?”

  “Ah. I did a quick analysis of the one upstairs. Brilliant work really. A pity. In any case, I was able to program a shutdown. It would’ve been a shame for you to destroy it.”

  “Wouldn’t have hurt my feelings.”

  He skimmed a hand over her hair. “You’ve a long night ahead.”

  “But a better one than the last couple, and no trip to the morgue in the morning.”

  McNab all but flew back in, had the grace to stop, send Eve a sheepish smile. “Um, need any help here, Dallas?”

  “Go be a geek.”

  “Born one, live one, die one. You in, Roarke?”

  “Go be a geek,” she repeated, this time to Roarke when she heard the sirens. “I’ll send the MTs down for Brinkman.”

  “If you insist.”

  Alone, Eve let in the MTs, directed them. She contacted Reo, then Mira. Yeah, a long night, she thought, as she watched a cab drive through the gates. A long night for everyone.

  “Miss Eloise?” Donnalou said as she jumped from the cab.

  “Upstairs. She’s been sedated.”

  “You sedated her!”

  “No. Darla did, probably shortly after you left. She’s sedated her routinely so Eloise wouldn’t know what she was doing in the basement.”

  “What was she doing in the basement?”

  “Killing men.”

  Donnalou took a staggering step back. “That can’t be true.”

  “Tell that to the man currently being treated by MTs down there because we were in time to save him. I’m going to need to talk with Eloise.”

  “I need to check on her. I need to—” She stopped, seemed to draw herself together layer by layer. “Do you know what she was given?”

  “No, but I imagine she kept the drugs downstairs. I’ll let you know.”

  Donnalou went up, Eve went down. And found all the e-geeks huddled around workstations, gadgets, and droids.

  “Peabody?” she asked, and Callendar pointed left. Before she headed in that direction, Eve walked over to Brinkman and the MTs.

  “Mr. Brinkman.”

  “He’s a little loopy,” one of the MTs told her. “We had to give him something. We’ll take him in, probably they’ll keep him tonight, treat these burns, the lacerations. You’re gonna get more out of him once he settles down.”

  “Okay, it can wait.”

  She went toward Peabody’s direction just as Peabody started in hers. “Dallas, you need to see this.”

  “Did you find Brinkman’s clothes, the rest of his things?”

  “Yeah, she’s got a damn warehouse. I started flagging what looks like the previous victims’ clothes, ’links, wallets, and all that, then I got curious, and looked around more. The place is huge.”

  Peabody stopped, pointed. “Warehouse. Vic stuff organized over there, and her, well, wardrobe over there. It’s like a costume department.”

  Wigs, about a dozen in various styles, displayed on a counter. The counter with a lighted triple mirror, a chair, dozens of drawers, held, Eve saw, facial enhancements, eye dyes, implants, face putty, temp tats, temp skin coloring. An array of clothes from business suits to evening wear, shoes, bags, hung neatly on rods and posts. Jewelry glittered in clear drawers in a clear stand.

  Another full-length triple mirror, a board holding photos showing Darla in various outfits—no, Eve thought, costumes. Another board matched those costumes, those personas with victims—those she’d killed, more already targeted.

  “Why don’t you go up, get the sweepers in here? I need to find where she kept the drugs.”

  “Then you better come through here. I sort of don’t want to go in again, but …”

  Peabody led the way into another area. A comp—more house monitors. A glass friggie holding bottles of medication, clear drawers of syringes.

  A ceremonial blade, as Morris had hypothesized, lay waiting on a counter—its hilt carried the same inscription as the breastplate.

  LJ

  And, above, the reason for Peabody’s reluctance.

  A shelf held jars of liquid preserving the genitals she’d removed from her victims—all carefully labeled.

  “Barking mad,” Eve mumbled.

  A long night, she thought yet again as she finally made her way to the third floor. Donnalou sat beside Eloise’s bedside.

  “It’s going to take some time to finish processing the basement, and any areas Darla might have used. It would be better if Eloise stayed elsewhere for the next few days at least.”

  “I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Can you wake her up?”

  “It would be better if she woke naturally. The sedative your partner brought up is mild, but—”

  “She’s going to need an explanation. I have to leave shortly, and she deserves an explanation. And I think she’s going to need you to stay with her.”

  “I will stay with her, as long as she needs me. I’ll wake her. Please be gentle. This is going to break her heart.”

  Donnalou took a little vial out of her nurse’s bag, waved it under Eloise’s nose.

  Her eyes fluttered; she gave a little sigh. When she started to roll over, Donnalou took her hand. “Miss Eloise? Miss Eloise, it’s time to wake up now. It’s Donnalou.”

  “Oh, did I fall asleep again? Donnalou, I’m getting so old and lazy.” She sighed again, opened her eyes. And saw Eve.

  “Lieutenant Dallas?” Eloise pushed herself up to sitting while Donnalou fussed, arranging pillows at her back. “My goodness, did I have a relapse?”

  “No.” Eve pulled a chair to the side of the bed to make it easier for Eloise to see her face.


  “Oh God, oh God, something happened to Darla.”

  “She’s not hurt. She’s in custody.”

  “I— What?”

  “Eloise, I’m going to say something I think you already know or suspect. Darla is and has been ill, mentally and emotionally. There were probably signs. You took her into your home because you love her, and maybe you thought that would help, would be enough, but there were probably signs.”

  Eloise, pale as the sheets around her, reached for Eve’s hand. “What did she do? Please, tell me, what did she do?”

  Eve told her.

  21

  Eloise said very little while Eve laid out the facts and evidence she had. Tears welled up more than once, and Eve realized it took an iron will to pull those tears back rather than let them fall.

  “I need …” Because her voice came out raw, Eloise took a moment. “Would you excuse me just a moment? I’d like Donnalou to help me get up, get presentable. If you’d wait for a few minutes in the parlor there?”

  Work to do, Eve thought, so much yet to do. But respect for that iron will had her rising. “I’ll wait.”

  “I won’t keep you long.”

  Eve walked into the elegant little sitting area, closed the door behind her. Photos, so many photos. Family, Eve deduced, and others of Eloise through the years, at events, with other luminaries, at marches, on red carpets.

  A full life, from what Eve could see, lived to the fullest.

  She pulled out her ’link as it signaled, saw Nadine on the readout, nearly ignored it.

  Not entirely fair, Eve decided, and answered.

  “In the middle of things here, Nadine.”

  “Me, too. I thought I should let you know I have two women I’ve already convinced to go on the record about Cooke. It’s going to blow wide open in a matter of days, and I’m lighting the fuse.”

  “Justice,” Eve said, “hopefully the right kind.” Now she considered. “Something else is about to blow, so save space, time, whatever you save. It’ll be big.”

  Nadine’s cat’s eyes glowed. “You caught Lady Justice.”

  “I’ve got her. I’m not going to give you the details this minute because there are others who are going to take a hit on this who don’t deserve it. So I’m going to give you the details as soon as I’m clear because you’d cushion that hit. You’ll use your weight on the right side of it.”