“You felt like she’d become his work of art,” Catherine said. “Like your places had changed and you were only the admirer.”
More silence. Baker rubbing, rubbing, rubbing away at his forehead.
“It was the third-line medication,” he said. “The night it happened…knowing I would have to wait until after they were together to see her…I’d taken too much of it, had a few drinks, and I made a terrible decision.”
“To kill her while you were having sex,” Catherine said. “Bring a succinylcholine injection to her house, tie her to the bed, pull out your needle to incapacitate her. And then use your own body weight to stop her from breathing.”
Eisling looked at him. “Layton, please—”
“You thought of it just that night,” Catherine persisted.
“Is what he’s saying, yes,” Eisling said. “This was not a premeditated act.”
“Then what about the gym bag?”
This from Brass now. To break the rhythm of the interview, knock Eisling off stride before she could get too comfortable with whatever under-the-influence defense she was cooking up.
She did not look too pleased. “What are you talking about?” she said.
“Mark Baker’s gym bag,” Brass said. “Your client left it on the lawn to incriminate Baker. Make it seem like he’d dropped it running out to his car that night. But Baker told us he’d lost it weeks before. That he was sure he’d left it at Rose’s place and looked for it there but couldn’t find it.”
“Because your client pilfered it from Rose’s house,” Catherine said, looking not at the lawyer but at Samuels to finish nipping her argument in the bud.
Samuels sat there staring back at her. Staring and massaging his head, rubbing so hard and constantly now Catherine could see the skin reddening under his hands. “‘Still in my heart’s a sorrow, I’d thought that time would fade, guess it’s the kind of love you give, the kind of love we’ve made,’” he said.
Catherine tried not to look surprised.
“Nina Tyford,” she said. “‘Angel Heart’…I know the song.”
Samuels looked at her for a long, long time with his moist, overbright eyes. Then, finally, he sighed.
“Most of us do,” he said.
The break room. Half past two in the morning. Getting further and further from the witching hour and closer and closer to the hour of the wolf.
Walking over to the cafeteria-style table, Warrick Brown handed one cup of coffee to Catherine and set another down in front of Sara. Then he went back to the machine, filled his own cup, and lowered himself back into a chair at the table where the three had been comparing notes.
They all sipped quietly for a few moments.
“Nevada Rose,” he said at last.
“The Nevada Rose,” Sara said, nodding. “A once-in-a-lifetime scientific find and it looks like it’ll be going to collateral heirs—some cousin or aunt living who knows where. And what happens to it is anybody’s guess.” She sighed. “Gloria Belcher was afraid that her sons would betray her…”
“And Layton Samuels that his lover would…” Warrick said.
“And meanwhile, those treacheries were only in the killers’ minds,” Catherine said. “Suspicion, jealousy, greed…the damn tragic thing is that it blinded all of them to loyalty…”
She let the rest of the sentence dangle in the air, seeing no need to go on.
When dealing with senseless murder, they could all very easily finish it for themselves.
About the Author
A native New Yorker, JEROME PREISLER has written more than twenty-five books of fiction and nonfiction, including all eight novels in the #1 New York Times bestselling Tom Clancy’s Power Plays series.
Preisler is the co-author of All Hands Down: The True Story of the Soviet Attack on the U.S.S. Scorpion, a major work of narrative history recently published in hardcover by Simon & Schuster.
With his wife, Suzanne, he is the pseudonymous co-author of three comedic mysteries from Signet/Obsidian: Scene of the Grime, Dirty Deeds, and the forthcoming Notoriously Neat.
In 2005, Preisler began writing his column of baseball commentary, Deep in the Red, for the New York Yankees Sports and Entertainment Network’s (YES) official website, YESNetwork.com.
He invites his readers to contact him at: www.JeromePreisler.com.
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