Vendetta in Death (25 page)

“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.

“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.

Eloise said very little while
E
ve 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.”

“Then I’ll stand by.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

Eve pocketed the ’link.

Moments later, with Donnalou beside her, Eloise came in. She’d put on what Eve figured was a dressing gown, as it looked too quietly glamorous to be called a robe.

The soft, warm blue draped over her small frame to just above her ankles. She’d brushed her hair back, applied some subtle makeup.

“Thank you for waiting. Donnalou, would you mind getting us all coffee?”

“Of course, you sit down now.” The nurse helped her into a peacock-blue chair, walked over to a serving bar.

“I want to say I’m grateful to you—I want to call you Eve, and I hope you’ll allow it, because there’s an intimacy between us now. I re
spect your rank, your work, but I need to speak to you as a woman as well as a police officer.”

“That’s fine.”

“You were correct that I knew Darla was—is suffering from an illness. I believed living here, even tending to me—and she did tend to me so devotedly—when I fell ill helped her cope. I swear to you I had no idea how deep the suffering, how severe the illness. She hid it very well.”

When her voice broke, she paused to fight for composure, then took the coffee Donnalou offered. She sat, sipped, drew herself up again.

“I swear to you, I never saw this in her. Self-destruction, that I feared when the life she so desperately wanted crumbled, but not this. I can’t conceive of it. I love her with all my heart, and I never saw this in her. I would have gotten her help. Her father—my son—he would have gotten her help.”

“I believe you,” Eve said without hesitation. “I saw it when I met you. This is not on you in any way.”

“Oh, but how can it not be? She’s the child of my child. You saw it in her, didn’t you? How did you see it?”

“It’s a different thing. It’s training, it’s … I don’t love her,” Eve said.

Nodding, Eloise looked down at her cup. “It’s too late to get her the help that would have saved the lives she took, to spare those who loved those men the grief of loss. But she is the child of my child. I’ll engage the best attorney available, the best doctors.”

“I have the department psychiatrist coming in to evaluate her. Dr. Charlotte Mira. She’s the best there is.”

“I know her from the book, the vid, but—”

“You should engage your own. I’m telling you that Dr. Mira will evaluate your granddaughter, and that you can trust her. I’m going in to interview Darla, and Dr. Mira will observe.”

“Will I be able to see her, speak with her?”

“Yes, later. Is there somewhere you can go for a few days? This isn’t where you want to be now.”

“Yes. I have friends. Donnalou will help me pack what I need. You’ve been very kind and very patient with me. I won’t forget it.”

“I’m just doing my job.”

“Kindness isn’t a job, Eve, it’s a choice. I’m keeping you from doing what you must.” She rose, extended a hand. “Thank you. I’m going to pack what I need, contact my son. He’ll want to come to New York.”

“I’ll contact you when you’re clear to see her.”

Eve went downstairs where sweepers and uniforms and techs moved through the house. She wished she could spare Eloise the journey through the logjam of cops, but it would be one more point of pain to push through.

In the basement it was more of the same. Much more.

Peabody broke away from a conversation with a couple of white-suited sweepers. “I’m having them get scrapings from the floor for the match. We’ve got her cold but more evidence isn’t wrong.”

“More the better. Let’s go get her in the box.”

As Eve did, Peabody looked toward the e-team still swarming the toys. “I think they’d like to live here.”

“Hold on.” Eve crossed over. “The droid there? That’s the one she’d have used to drive her to get the targets, and to help her transport them to the dump site. I need his memory banks.”

“We’ll get to ’em,” Feeney assured her. He actually had roses in his cheeks. “We got plenty on here, too. Docs, schedules, photos, backup plans if she missed one the first time out, alternate routes, the works.”

“Kept, like, a diary, too,” McNab put in.

“Yeah, her type would. She’s a planner, a grudge holder, a freaking organized soul.”

“She also has the skeleton of a business plan in the works,” Roarke said. “A solid one even in the early stages. If, well, on the mad side of things.” His gaze stayed on her face. “Are you heading in then?”

“Yeah, I’m going to get her in Interview, so I’ll want copies of whatever you get off the comps and out of the droids.”

“Give us a moment,” he said to no one in particular, then steered Eve away until he found a relatively quiet corner. “Must it be tonight? She won’t be going anywhere, after all.”

“Yeah, I need Mira to observe. I have Reo coming in. And I need to hit her while she’s whacked about not getting her kill. She’ll be more open.”

“Then eat something first.”

“Oh, for fuck sake.”

He simply snagged her by the chin. “You’re near to pale enough to see through. You’ll take a moment with your steady partner there in your office and have a shagging pizza while you work out your interview strategy and look over some of what we send you.”

When he put it that way. “I didn’t know they made shagging pizza.”

“Still have some smart left in your very tired ass. What happened upstairs to make you so sad?”

“I was witness to grace and strength, and for some reason it scraped me raw. I’ll eat some shagging pizza.”

“Good. And it’ll do you no good to snap at me, because I need this as much as you do.” He pulled her in, just held her, felt her stiffen, then give.

“Well, if you need it.”

“I do.” He brushed a kiss to the top of her head. “I’ll be with my EDD mates till you’re done.”

“It’s going to be—”

“A long night,” he finished. “Won’t be the first of them for us.”

Or the last, she thought as she started out. “Peabody, with me.”

She had pizza—but rather than in her office with Peabody, in a conference room with Peabody, Mira, and Reo.

“Eloise Callahan’s going to get her a serious lawyer,” Eve began. “I’m going to take the window before she can get that going to get what I can out of her.”

“You and several other cops caught her in the act of torturing her fourth victim.” Reo bit into a slice, went
mmm
. “We’re going to match the hair from the wig, the scrapings from the floor. We have her journal, her documentation. I don’t care if she gets the ghost of Clarence Darrow, she’s cooked.”

“Not disputing. Confession’s always best, and this one will give us chapter and verse. She’s never going in a concrete cage off-planet.”

“Legal insanity isn’t your call.”

“I know it when I see it.”

“She’s right, Reo.” Peabody nibbled her own slice to make it last.

“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t go into a high-security prison, but it’s going to be the mentally defective wing. Still.” Eve looked at Mira. “If we’re wrong, you’ll know it.”

“She planned each murder precisely,” Reo argued. “With alternatives, escape routes, ways to avoid detection. She knew right from wrong.”

“I’ll observe, and I’ll have a one-to-one evaluation session with her. Eve, what is this pizza? I’ve never had better.”

“Shagging, apparently.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s one of Roarke’s deals. He’s started stocking my office AC because he’s constantly afraid I’ll starve to death.”

“Aw,” Reo and Peabody said in stereo.

“Love sometimes comes with mozzarella,” Mira said with a smile.

“I guess it does. I have to tag somebody, then we’re going in. Peabody, we square on approach?”

“Yeah.”

“Have her brought up. I’ll meet you there.”

Now Eve went to her office, contacted Nadine.

“Late this afternoon,” Eve began, “officers attached to Homicide and EDD entered the home of Eloise Callahan—”

“The what!”

“On a duly authorized warrant,” Eve continued. “At that time they apprehended Darla Pettigrew. Ms. Pettigrew is charged with the abduction, torture, and murder of Nigel McEnroy, Thaddeus Pettigrew, and Arlo Kagen, and the abduction and torture of Linus Brinkman. Ms. Callahan, grandmother of Ms. Pettigrew, had been sedated by her granddaughter and is not a suspect or a person of interest in the investigation.

“Those are the highlights, you could say.”

“Jumping Jesus, Dallas.”

“I want Eloise Callahan protected, Nadine. I want you to give her a damn good cushion. She’s a victim in this, too.”

“You’re sure she wasn’t—”

“One hundred percent. Pettigrew slipped her something before she went out on the hunt and had a goddamn medical droid—of her making—guarding her. She did her dirty work in the basement behind doors locked so tight it took Roarke—who designed the damn system—several precious minutes to get through.”

“Okay, got it. Give me—”

“I’m putting her in the box now. That’s all I can give you. You do your job, I’ll do mine.”

“And good luck to us both.”

Eve put the ’link back in her pocket, rolled her shoulders to loosen them, and went out to meet Peabody.

“She’s in there,” Peabody told her outside the door of Interview B. “Hasn’t asked for legal representation, hasn’t asked to make any
contact. The uniforms who brought her up said she’s anxious to talk to us.”

“Then let’s not keep her waiting.”

Eve stepped in.

“Finally.” Darla rattled her restraints as she lifted her hands. She looked calm, composed as she sat at the table in her orange jumpsuit.

“Record on,” Eve began. “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Peabody, Detective Delia, entering Interview with Pettigrew, Darla, on the matters of case files H-33491, H-33495, H-33498, and H-33500.” Eve set down a file as she and Peabody took their seats. “Ms. Pettigrew—”

“Oh now, it’s Darla.”

“Fine. Darla, you’ve been read your rights. Do you understand those rights and obligations?”

“Of course I do. I understand we have to go through these formalities, deal with these fussy little rules, but I’m here to talk with you, both of you.”

“Great.”

Oh yeah, Eve thought, studying Darla’s animated face. About to get chapter and verse.

“You’re charged with the abduction, administration of barbiturates without consent, enforced imprisonment, torture, and murder of Niles McEnroy, Thaddeus Pettigrew, Arlo Kagen. You’re additionally changed with the abduction, administration of barbiturates without consent, enforced imprisonment, and assault on Linus Brinkman.”

Darla rolled her eyes with the same attitude as a teenager caught breaking curfew. “That’s all nonsense.”

“How can it be nonsense?” Peabody asked, all quiet reason. “We apprehended you in the act of assaulting Linus Brinkman, we found articles belonging to McEnroy, Pettigrew, and Kagen in your workshop. Denying the charges isn’t going to fly, Darla.”

“The charges are nonsense,” she insisted.

“You’re actually denying you tortured and killed three men,” Eve put in, “and were in the process of taking another man’s life?”

“Absolutely not. I’m not denying the acts and actions, for goodness’ sake. It’s the charges that are foolish. I executed justice, justice no one else had been able to execute. The city should throw me a damn parade, and every woman who’s ever been harassed, raped, beaten, cheated on would cheer.”

She leaned forward. “You of all people should understand. You’re constrained by those formalities, those rules, but you’re women, women who must see nearly every day the pain, the humiliation, the degradation men cause women. I did what you’re unable to do—what I realize you must be afraid to do. I stopped them from causing more harm, from benefitting from the pain they’d inflicted. None of them deserved to live.”

“And you figure that’s your call?” Eve demanded. “To determine who lives, who dies?”

“Someone has to decide.” Darla slammed a fist on the table. “Someone has to act! Do you understand what the women in my group have suffered while those men paid no price? No price! I did what needed to be done. I made them pay. Every one of them chose to turn to me, accept me, ruled by their dicks, every one.”

Her eyes went bright. Bright, bright. “Do you really believe the men you give yourselves to are
faithful
? Are you so blind to see them as loyal? They’re built to cheat, steal, take, strike. It’s their nature.”

“Did you plan to kill all men?” Peabody wondered. “Any age restriction on that?”