Haunted in Death (9 page)

“So during the Urbans, you saw your chance. Planted your ID after an explosion. Mostly body parts. All that confusion. You walked away.“

“I couldn’t take all the killing. I couldn’t go back home. I wanted peace. I just wanted some peace. I built a good life. Got married, had a child. When my wife died, I devoted myself to Maeve. She was the sweetest thing.“

“Then you told her where she’d come from, who she’d come from.“

He shook his head. “No. She told me. I don’t know how she came to suspect, but she tracked down Rad Hopkins. She said it was business, and I wanted to believe her. But I was afraid it was more. Then one day she told me she’d been to Number Twelve, and she understood. She was going to take care of everything, but I never thought she meant… Is this ruining her life now, too? Is this ruining her life?“

“You knew she went back out the night Hopkins was killed,“ Eve said. “You knew what she’d done. She’d have told you. You covered for her. That makes you an accessory.“

“No.“ Desperation was bright in his eyes as they darted around the room. “She was home all night. This is all a terrible mistake. She’s upset and she’s confused. That’s all.“

They let him sit, stepped out into the hall. “Impressions, Peabody?“

“I don’t think he had an active part in the murder. But he knew – maybe put his head in the sand about it, but he knew. We can get him on accessory after the fact. He’ll break once she has.“

“Agreed. So let’s go break her.“

Maeve sat quietly. Her hair was smoothed again, her face was placid. “Lieutenant, Detective.“

“Record on.“ Eve read the data into the recorder, recited the revised Miranda. “Do you understand your rights and obligations, Ms. Buchanan?“

“Of course.“

“So Maeve.“ Eve sat at the table across from her. “How long did you know Hopkins?“

A smirky little smile curved her lips. “Which one?“

“The one you shot nine times in Number Twelve.“

“Oh, that Hopkins. I met him right after he bought the building. I read about it, and thought it was time we resolved some matters.“

“What matters?“

“Him killing me.“

“You don’t look dead.“

“He shot me so I couldn’t leave him, so I wouldn’t be someone else’s money train. Then he covered it up. He covered me up. I’ve waited a long time to make him pay for it.“

“So you sent him the message so he’d come to Number Twelve. Then you killed him.“

“Yes, but we’d had a number of liaisons there before. We had to uncover my remains from that life.“

“Bobbie Bray’s remains.“

“Yes. She’s in me. I am Bobbie.“ She spoke calmly, as if they were once again sitting in the classy parlor in her brownstone. “I came back for justice. No one gave me any before.“

“How did you know where the remains were?“

“Who’d know better? Do you know what he wanted to do? He wanted to bring in the media, to make another fortune off me. He had it all worked out. He’d bring the media in, let them put my poor bones on-screen, give interviews – at a hefty fee, of course. Using me again, like he always did. Not this time.“

“You believed Rad Hopkins was Hop Hopkins reincarnated?“ Peabody asked.

“Of course. It’s obvious. Only this time I played him. Told him my father would pay and pay and pay for the letters I’d written. I told him where we had to open the wall. He didn’t believe that part, but he wanted under my skirt.“

She wrinkled her nose to show her mild distaste. “I could make him do what I wanted. We worked for hours cutting that brick. Then he believed.“

“You took the hair clips and the gun.“

“Later. We left them while he worked on his plan. While, basically, he dug his own grave. I cleaned them up. I really loved those hair clips. Oh, there were ammunition clips, too. I took them. I was there.“

Her face changed, hardened, and her voice went raw, went throaty. “In me, in the building. So sad, so cold, so lost. Singing, singing every night. Why should I sing for him? Murdering bastard. I gave him a child, and he didn’t want it.“

“Did you?“ Eve asked her.

“I was messed up. He got me hooked – the drugs, the life, the buzz, you know? Prime shit, always the prime shit for Hop. But I was going to get straight, give it up, go back for my kid. I was gonna – had my stuff packed up. I wrote and told my old lady, and I was walking on Hop. But he didn’t want that. Big ticket, that’s what I was. He never wanted the kid. Only me, only what I could bring in. Singing and singing.“

“You sent Rad a message, to get him to Number Twelve.“

“Sure. Public ‘link, easy and quick. I told him to come, and when to come. He liked when I used Bobbie’s voice – spliced from old recordings – in the messages I sent him. He thought it was sexy. Asshole. He stood there, grinning at me. I brought it, he said.“

“What was it?“

“His watch. The watch he had on the night he shot me. The one I bought him when my album hit number one. He had it on his wrist and was grinning at me. I shot him, and I kept shooting him until the clip was empty. Then I pushed the murdering bastard over, and I put the gun right against his head, right against it, and I shot him again. Like he did to me.“

She sat back a little, smiled a little. “Now he can wander around in that damn place night after night after night. Let’s see how he likes it.“

Epilogue

When Eve stepped out, rubbed her hands over her face, Mira slipped out of observation.

“Don’t tell me,“ Eve began. “Crazy as a shithouse rat. ”

“That might not be my precise diagnosis, but I believe we’ll find with testing that Maeve Buchanan is legally insane and in desperate need of treatment.”

“As long as she gets it in a cage. Not a bit of remorse. Not a bit of fear. No hedging.”

“She believes everything she did was justified, even necessary. My impression, at least from observing this initial interview, is she’s telling you the truth exactly as she knows it. There’s the history of mental illness on both sides of her family. This may very well be genetic. Then discovering who her great-grandmother was helped push her over some edge she may very well have been teetering on. ”

“How did she discover it?” Eve added. “There’s a question. Father must have let something slip.”

“Possibly. Haven’t you ever simply
known
something?

Or felt it? Of course, you have. And from what I’m told happened tonight, you had an encounter. ”

Frowning, Eve ran her fingers over her sore cheek. “I’m not going to stand here and say I was clocked by a ghost. I’m sure as hell not putting that in my report. ”

“Regardless, you may at the end of this discover the only reasonable way Maeve learned of her heritage was from Bobbie Bray herself. That she also learned of the location of the remains from the same source. ”

“That tips out of the reasonable.”

“But not the plausible. And that learning these things snapped something inside her. Her way of coping was to make herself Bobbie. To believe she’s the reincarnation of a woman who was killed before her full potential was realized. And who, if she’d lived – if she’d come back to claim her child – would have changed everything. ”

“Putting a lot of faith in a junkie,” Eve commented. “And using, if you ask me, a woman who was used, exploited and murdered, to make your life a little more important.”

Now she rubbed her eyes. “I’m going to get some coffee, then hit the father again. Thanks for coming down.”

“It’s been fascinating. I’d like to do the testing on her personally. If you’ve no objection.”

“When I’m done, she’s all yours.”

Because her own AutoChef had the only real coffee in all of cop central, Eve detoured there first.

There he was, sitting at her desk, fiddling with his ppc.

“You should go home,” Eve told Roarke. “I’m going to have an all-nighter on this.”

“I will, but I wanted to see you first.” He rose, touched his hand to her cheek. “Put something on that, will you?“ Until she did, he put his lips there. “Do you have a confession?“

“She’s singing – ha-ha. Chapter and verse. Mira says she’s nuts, but that won’t keep her out of lockup.“

“Sad, really, that an obsession with one woman could cause so much grief, and for so long.”

“Some of it ends tonight.”

This time he laid his lips on hers. “Come back to me when you can.“

“You can count on that one.”

Alone, she sat. And alone she wrote up a report, and the paperwork that charged Radcliff C. Hopkins I with murder in the first degree in the unlawful death of Bobbie Bray. She filed it, then after a moment’s thought, put in another form.

She requested the release of Bobbie Bray’s remains to herself – if they weren’t claimed by next of kin – so that she could arrange for their burial. Quietly.

“Somebody should do it,” she stated aloud.

She got her coffee, rolled her aching shoulders. Then headed back to work.

In Number Twelve, there was silence in the dark. No one sang, or wept or laughed. No one walked there.

For the first time in eighty-five years, Number Twelve sat empty.

The End