The In Death Collection 06-10 (125 page)

“Where were you going?”

“Arizona. I think. I don’t know.” She lifted a hand to her forehead, skimmed her fingers over her skin.
“Anywhere, as long as I got away. I’d packed. I’d packed a bag, and Zeke went up to get it for me. I got my coat. I was getting away, I was going away with him. Then B. D. came in. He wasn’t supposed to.”

Her voice started to hitch, her shoulders to tremble. “He wasn’t supposed to come home tonight. He was drunk, and he saw I had my coat. He knocked me down.” Her hand drifted to her cheek where the bruise was raw. “Zeke was there, and he told him to stay away from me. B. D. said awful things, and he kept pushing Zeke, shoving him, shouting. I can’t remember, exactly. Just shouting and pushing, and he grabbed my hair. B. D. grabbed my hair and yanked me up. I think I was screaming. Zeke pushed him away. He pushed him because he was hurting me. And he fell. There was a terrible sound and the blood on the hearth. Blood,” she said again and huddled over her cup of water.

“Clarissa, what did Zeke do then, after your husband fell? After the blood?”

“He . . . I’m not sure.”

“Think. Pull it back into your head and think.”

“He . . .” The tears began to plop, in single drops, onto the table. “He made me sit down, then he went to B. D. He told me to call an ambulance. He told me to hurry, but I couldn’t move. I just couldn’t. I knew he was dead. I could see—the blood, his eyes. He was dead. Call the police. Zeke said we had to call the police. I was so afraid. I told him we should run. We should just run away, but he wouldn’t. We had to call the police.”

She stopped, shivering, then looked into Eve’s eyes. “B. D. knows the police,” she said in a whisper. “He said if I ever told anyone, if I ever went to them because he hurt me, they’d lock me up. They’d rape me and lock me up. He knows the police.”

“You’re with the police now,” Eve said coolly. “Have you been raped and locked up?”

Clarissa’s eyes flickered. “No, but—”

“What happened after Zeke told you he was calling the police?”

“I sent him away, into the other room. I thought if I could just . . . make it go away. I asked him to get me some water, and when he was gone, I got the droid. I programmed it to take the—the body, to drive it to the river and throw it in. Then I tried to clean up the blood. There was so much blood.”

“That was fast work. Fast and smart.”

“I had to be fast. And smart. Zeke would come back—he’d try to stop me. He did stop me.” She lowered her head. “And now we’re here.”

“Why are you here?”

“He called the police. He called them and they’ll put him in prison. It was my fault, but he’ll go to prison.”

No, Eve thought, he wouldn’t.

“How long were you married to B. Donald Branson, Clarissa?”

“Almost ten years.”

“And you claim he abused you during this period?” Eve remembered the way Clarissa had stiffened when Branson had put his arm around her at the will reading. “He hurt you physically?”

“Not the whole time.” She wiped a hand over her face. “At first. It was all right at first. But I couldn’t do anything right. I’m so stupid, and I never got anything right. He’d get so angry. He hit me—he said he hit me to knock some sense into my head. To show me who was in charge.”

“Just remember who’s in charge around here, little girl. Just you remember.”

Eve’s gut clenched as the words played back in her head, and the sticky fear from childhood that went with it. “You’re a grown woman. Why didn’t you leave?”

“And go where?” Clarissa’s eyes were ripe with despair. “Where would I go that he wouldn’t find me?”

“Friends, family.” She’d had none, Eve thought. She had no one.

Clarissa shook her head. “I didn’t have any friends, and my family’s gone. What people I knew—the ones he let me know—think B. D. is a great man. He beat me whenever he wanted, raped me whenever he chose. You don’t know what it’s like. You can’t know what it’s like to live with that, with the not knowing what he’ll do, what he’ll be like when he walks through the door.”

Eve rose, walked away to the two-way mirror and stared at her own face. She knew exactly what it was like, too much what it was like. And the remembering, the feeling, would only cloud her objectivity. “And now, now that he won’t walk through the door again?”

“He can’t hurt me anymore.” She said it simply, causing Eve to turn. “And I’ll have to live with knowing I caused a good man, a gentle man to be responsible for his death. Any chance Zeke and I had to be together, to be happy, died tonight, too.”

She laid her head on the rough table. Her weeping, Eve thought, was the sound of a heart breaking.

Eve ended the recording and stepping out, instructed the uniform to arrange to have Clarissa taken to her health center until morning.

She found McNab by the vending machine, scowling at his choices. “The droid?”

“She did a good job with him. He followed orders. I ran his program back and forward and sideways. She inputted orders—retrieve the body by the hearth, transport it to the car, drive to the river, and dispose. There’s nothing else in there. She wiped previous memory.”

“Accident or design?”

“Can’t tell. She’d have been rushed, nervous. It’s easy to wipe out old with new programming if you’re in a hurry.”

“Yeah. How many other servants in that place?”

McNab took out his notes. “Four.”

“And nobody hears anything, sees anything?”

“Two in the kitchen at the time in question. Personal
maid upstairs, groundskeeper tucked in his shed.”

“Tucked in his shed, in this weather?”

“They’re all droids. The Bransons had full droid staff. Top quality.”

“Figures.” She rubbed her tired eyes. She’d think about that later, go through those steps and stages later. First priority was to clear Zeke of any chance of formal charges.

“Okay, I’m going to hit Zeke again. Peabody in there with him?”

“Yeah, and the lawyer. No way around running him through again?”

She dropped her hands and her eyes were cool. “We do this by the book. We fucking write the book with this one. Every step documented. This’ll hit the media by morning. ‘Tool and Toy Tycoon Killed by Wife’s Lover. Suspect is the brother of a police officer assigned to Homicide. Investigation snagged. Body missing.” ’

“Okay, okay.” He held up a hand. “I can see the picture.”

“The only way to avoid that is to beat them to it. We prove self-defense, quick and clean. And we find the goddamn body. Tag the sweepers,” she said as she swung toward the interview room. “If they haven’t finished yet, light a fire under them.”

Peabody’s head came up the moment Eve walked in. Her hand continued to grip Zeke’s. On the other side of him was a lawyer she recognized as one of Roarke’s.

The woman in her was grateful, the cop furious.
One more shadow on the case,
she thought grimly.
“Husband of investigating officer arranged for representation.” Fabulous
.

“Counselor.”

“Lieutenant.”

Without a glance at Peabody, she sat, engaged the recorder, and got to work.

Thirty minutes later, when Eve walked out, Peabody was right on her heels. “Lieutenant. Sir. Dallas.”

“I don’t have time to talk to you.”

Peabody managed to skirt around Eve, face her. “Yes, you do.”

“Fine.” Braced for a battle, Eve pushed into the women’s room, marched to the sink, and ordered the water on cold. “Say it and let me get back to work.”

“Thank you.”

Off balance with the quiet words, Eve lifted her dripping face. “For what?”

“For taking care of Zeke.”

Slowly, Eve turned off the tap, shook the excess water from her hands, and moved to the dryer. It ran with a nasty buzz and a chilly blow of air. “I’ve got a job to do here, Peabody. And if you’re thanking me for the lawyer, you’re off. That’s Roarke, and I’m not happy about it.”

“Let me thank you.”

She hadn’t expected it. She’d been prepared for anger, for accusations.
“Why did you push him that way? Why did you keep trying to trip him up? How can you be so hard?”

And what she got was Peabody’s shaky gratitude and unhappy eyes. Eve rubbed her hands over her face, closed her eyes. “God.”

“I know why you were rough on him this round. I know how much stronger his story is because you were. I was afraid . . .” She had to suck in breaths, one at a time. “Once I got my head clear, I was afraid you’d give him room, go soft—the way I would. But you hammered him. So, thanks.”

“My pleasure.” Eve let her hands drop. “He’s not going down for this. You can hold onto that.”

“I know. Because I’m holding onto you.”

“Don’t do that.” Eve bit off the words and turned away. “Don’t.”

“I’ve got to get this out. My family’s the most important thing I’ve got. Just because I don’t live close doesn’t mean we aren’t close. After them comes the
job.” She sniffled, rubbed a hand impatiently under her nose. “You’re the job.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are, Dallas. You’re everything that’s right about the job. And you’re the best thing that’s happened to me since I picked up my badge. I’m holding onto you because I know I can.”

Eve’s heart quivered. The backs of her eyes burned. “I don’t have time to stand here and get sloppy with you.” She strode to the door, stopping briefly to tap a finger on Peabody’s chest. “Officer Peabody, you’re out of uniform.”

As the door swung closed behind Eve, Peabody glanced down and saw the third button on her uniform jacket was hanging by a thread. McNab, she realized, hadn’t quite torn it off.

“Oh hell.” She swore again, viciously, and ripped the button free.

There was a manic dance troupe doing a foot-stomping jig inside Eve’s head. She gave a passing thought to rooting out a pain blocker. Then she walked into her office and saw Roarke.

He sat in her ratty chair in his elegant suit. His equally elegant overcoat hung on her ugly coat rack. His eyes were clear, his voice smooth and alert, as he conducted whatever kind of business a man like him conducted at eleven o’clock at night.

On principle, she rapped a fist against the supple Italian shoes currently making themselves at home on the top of her desk. She didn’t budge them, but she made her point.

“I’ll have to get back to you on the details.” His gaze skimmed over Eve. His sharp eyes saw everything. The fatigue, the headache, the simmering emotions held ruthlessly in check. “I have a meeting.”

He disconnected, lazily swung his feet to the floor. “Sit down, Lieutenant.”

“This is my office. I give the orders here.”

“Um-hmm.” He rose to go to her AutoChef, and knowing she’d complain, programmed it for broth rather than coffee.

“There was no point in your waiting.”

“Of course not.”

“You might as well go home. I’m not sure when I’ll get there. I’ll just bunk here.”

In a pig’s eye,
Roarke thought, but simply turned and handed her the broth.

“I want coffee.”

“You’re such a big girl now. You must know you can’t have everything you want.” He moved past her to the door, shut it just as she bristled at him.

“What I don’t need, in here, is a smart mouth.”

He winged up a brow. “Are you having yours removed? I’m so fond of it.”

“I can have two gorillas in uniform in here in thirty seconds. It would make their night to toss you out on your excellent ass.”

He sat in her spare chair, stretched out his legs as far as the cramped room would allow, and studied her face. “Sit down, Eve, and drink your broth.”

Because she caught herself, barely caught herself, before flinging the cup across the room, she did sit. “I just pounded on Zeke. For thirty minutes I beat him up the wall and down again. ‘You wanted to fuck another man’s wife. So you killed him to get him out of the way. He was a rich man, wasn’t he? She’ll be rich now. That oughta set you up just fine, Zeke. You get the woman, you get the money, and Branson gets a tasteful memorial service.’ And that was before I got nasty.”

Roarke said nothing, simply waited her out. Eve picked up the broth. Her throat was raw, and it was better than nothing. “And when I finished hammering him, Peabody follows me into the john and thanks me for it. For Christ’s sake.”

He rose because she’d dropped her throbbing head into her hands. But when his hands came down to rest
on her shoulders, she tried to shrug them off. “Don’t. I can’t take any more understanding tonight.”

“That’s a pity.” He lowered his lips to the top of her head. “You’ve been training Peabody for months now. Do you think she doesn’t know how your mind works?”

“Right now
I
don’t know how the hell it works. She—Clarissa—she said he’d beaten her, raped her. Whenever he wanted. For years. Over and over for years.”

Roarke’s fingers tightened on her shoulders before he controlled them, gentled them. “I’m sorry, Eve.”

“I’ve heard it before, from witnesses, suspects, victims. I can handle it. I can deal with it. But every time, every goddamn time, it’s like a fist in the gut. Right under the guard and into the gut. Every time.”