by J. D. Robb
“Taking shifts.” Eve nodded. “Two upstairs getting rack time. Two down working on Easterday. He’s still alive. Peabody, McNab, take the stairs up on my go. Baxter, Trueheart, hit and split as planned. Carmichael?”
“In position, sir.”
She gave Roarke the nod. He began to work on the locks, quickly, precisely, and the alarm that connected to them. The other teams would use battering rams—fast and noisy.
But she’d have a jump on the basement level before the suspects were alerted.
“We’re clear here,” he told her.
“We’re moving in. Hold your positions.”
When Roarke eased the door open, she went in low, swept with her weapon and flashlight.
Large kitchen, she registered. Empty and dark. And the basement door just ahead—shut.
“We’re in. Feeney.”
“No movement on second floor. Three in a group, basement level, center of the main room. You’re standing on top of them.”
She moved to the door, slowly turned the knob. When she eased the door open, she heard the screams, the sobs, the voices.
“All teams go. Move in. Move in.”
She went down, leading with her weapon while Easterday’s shrieks sliced through the air.
He hung by his arms from a hook and pulley in the ceiling. His body was covered with bruises, burns, sweat, blood.
Charity Downing, stripped down to a tank and gym shorts, held a weighted sap. Lydia Su, teeth bared, shouted, “Harder! Make him feel it.”
“Police! Hands in the air. Now. Now!”
As Eve gave the order, the crashes came from above, and the new screams from the alarm.
Unlike above stairs, the basement lights glared on full. In them Su pivoted, using Easterday’s body as a shield.
“We’re not done! We’re not done!”
Eve dodged the wild stun stream, firing back, a wide stream on low, as she leaped down the rest of the stairs.
“You’re done. You’re surrounded. It’s over.”
“No.” Weeping, Su turned the stunner on Easterday, leaving Eve no choice.
She dropped Su, even as Downing let the sap fall with a sickening thud, her own hands shooting up.
“Please don’t. Please. Don’t hurt her. Lydia. Lydia.” Downing went to her knees, gathered Su in her arms. “Stop, stop. Remember what Grace told us.”
Eyes wheeling from the stun, Lydia shuddered. “Not done.”
“We need the MTs, we need a bus! Baxter, restrain these two.”
He rushed down the rest of the stairs. “I’ve got them, boss.”
“Peabody!”
“We’ve got Blake and MacKensie. We’re secure.”
Eve turned to Easterday, who wept in harsh, racking sobs.
“Help me. Help me.”
“I bet that’s what they said,” Eve murmured, but holstered her weapon. “Roarke, help me lower him down.”
“They hurt me.”
“You’re alive,” she said, without a drop of sympathy.
He was alive, she thought as they brought him down. She’d done the job.
“Have the women taken in,” she told Baxter. “Keep them separated.”
Su, still reeling from the stun, shot Eve a look of tearful hate. “He deserves to die. All of them deserved to die.”
“You don’t get to make that call. Get them out, Baxter.”
She looked down at Easterday as he lay on the floor, moaning. “Medical assistance is on the way.”
“They killed Fred. They made me watch.”
She said nothing when Roarke took a blanket from a sofa, tossed it over the shivering man. But she thought: You like to watch.
She hunkered down, looked him in his blackened, swollen eyes. “I’ll get your full statement after you’ve had medical attention, but for now, Marshall Easterday, you’re under arrest for multiple counts of false imprisonment, for rape, for sexual assault, for conspiracy to rape.”
“You can’t—you can’t—”
“Just did.” She stepped aside when the MTs rushed down, but took one by the arm. “This man is under arrest. When you transport him, he’ll be restrained, and will remain restrained. A uniformed officer will ride in the bus with him, and remain with him at all times. Understood?”
“Got it. Better let us work on him, get him stable enough to transport. He looks in bad shape.”
“Fix him up good,” Eve told them, and as they went to work on Easterday, she read him his Revised Miranda rights.
“Our two are on their way to Holding,” Baxter told Eve when he came back down. “The other two are about to be. They didn’t give our guys any trouble. How about him?”
“He’s been read his rights. I’ll have Carmichael select an officer to stick with him.” She handed her restraints to Baxter. “Lock him to the gurney when they get him on one. I need to check in with the rest of the team.”
“I’ve got it. Some place,” he added as she turned.
“Yeah.” A replica of the room in the recording. Some updates, some additions, but the Brotherhood had probably made the same. They’d brought the men into the nightmare, and turned it on them.
The women, Eve thought, had brought their past with them.
She went upstairs, saw Peabody with MacKensie and a woman she recognized from the sketches as Grace Carter Blake.
“You don’t know what they did to us.” MacKensie’s voice trembled. “You don’t know what they made us.”
“Hush now.” Blake consoled her. With the coat she’d worn on Su’s security feed over simple white pajamas, she stood, shoulders straight, eyes exhausted.
“She needs to know. They destroyed us. They took our lives.”
“You’ll have the chance to tell me,” Eve said. “Peabody, did you read them their rights?”
“Done. I can take them in.”
“No, I need you elsewhere. Have them transported. We’ll talk later,” she said to both women.
“We will all be invoking our right to counsel,” Blake said.
“You go right ahead.”
“You don’t understand,” MacKensie began, but Blake cut her off.
“Carlee, not now. Lawyer.” Blake stared through Eve. “We say nothing without our legal counsel. And as a lawyer, I’ll stand in as same until we’re able to contact other.”
“No, you won’t. If you’re a lawyer and not an idiot, you understand you’re under arrest for conspiracy to murder, among other charges, all connected to the other suspects. That conflict of interest precludes you acting as counsel, except for yourself. Get them gone, Peabody.”
She rubbed her eyes, pulled out her ’link.
“Don’t tell me.” Curled in bed, video unblocked, Reo kept her eyes shut. “Another warrant.”
“I’ve just busted the murder ring, and the raping brotherhood, and made five arrests.”
Reo’s eyes popped open.
“You’re going to want to tell your boss, and meet me at St. Alban’s, where I’ll be questioning Marshall Easterday.”
She clicked off, nearly turned into Roarke. “Don’t ask,” she said, anticipating him. “The answer is I’m fine. I need to finish this, and it’s going to take some time. But . . . I could use you and that damn copter later. I’m not going to finish until I see the Brotherhood house. We won’t have much trouble finding it now.”
“None at all. The hit came through while we were taking the house—as did McNab’s on the van.”
“That’s handy. So . . . can I tap you for the transpo later?”
“Of course. I’ll clear the time, whenever you’re ready.”
“Don’t hug me.” She could anticipate that, too. “You can pretend you did, and I’ll pretend you did. I’ll probably really appreciate the real thing when this is done.”
/> “I’ll clear time for that as well.” So he simply brushed his finger over the dent in her chin. “I’ll leave you to it, Lieutenant.”
“I appreciate the assist.” She broke cop dignity long enough to take his hand. “All the way around.”
When he left, she took a moment to settle, then got back to work.
—
Within the hour she stood with Peabody and Reo in Easterday’s hospital suite. To Eve’s mind he looked better than he had a right to.
“How can you do this?” He lifted the hand chained to the bed. “Those women murdered my friends, tortured them, and they tortured me. They—they forced me to watch while they . . . what they did to Freddy.”
“They’ll face those consequences. But we’re here to talk about you, and your brotherhood. We’re here to talk about what you and your brothers began forty-nine years ago.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Those women—”
“We have the recording from the first rape. Her name is Tara Daniels.” God bless Harvo. “Remember her?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“And they say you always remember your first.” Her voice seethed with disgust. “Betz recorded it, and kept the old, original disc, and souvenirs from every victim since in his bank box in the Bronx.”
Easterday hadn’t known about the bank box, Eve thought, catching the quick leap of shock into his eyes.
“We’re identifying all those victims as we speak, through DNA. You’re alive, Easterday, because we got to you in time, despite the fact you chose to run rather than face what you’d done.”
“You’re wrong. You’re just wrong. I want—”
“I have the evidence.” She leaned in, close to his battered face. “I viewed the recording, I watched you rape Tara Daniels, and watch, laugh, drink while your friends raped her. I watched Frederick Betz stick a needle in her so you could all pretend she wanted you.
“Want to see it? I can arrange to have it shown right here on your view screen.”
“No. No. I . . . you don’t understand.”
“Enlighten me.”
“We were . . . we were young, and under such tremendous pressure. We needed to let off some steam—we weren’t allowed outside the security perimeters without permission. And she—she—she’d been provocative, teasing. She was drunk and she’d already been with Edward. And she came on to me.”
“So she asked for it?”
“He said— It was a different time.”
“A different time that made it okay to tie a woman down, slap her around, gang rape her, dose her with chemicals against her will? Then what was it . . . Yeah, after you were done, after all of you took turns with her, any way you wanted, it was okay to ‘douche the douche,’ dump her back on campus?”
“We drank too much,” he began. “All the pressure we were under. She wouldn’t remember. What harm did it really do?”
“But they did remember.” This time Peabody pushed close. “Elsi Lee Adderman remembered and it twisted her up so much she killed herself.”
“Who? I don’t know who that is.”
“Just one of forty-nine,” Eve said. “You disgusting excuse for a human being. What gave you the right?”
“It was tradition! It was one harmless night a year. We never hurt them. It was just sex. A kind of bond, you see? Something shared.”
“I guess Billy stopped thinking of it that way. Like Elsi, he couldn’t live with it anymore.”
“I . . . It bound us together. It brought us luck. All of us became successful. All of us made a mark on the world, came through that terrible time and made our marks. It was just one night a year.”
“You raped forty-nine women.”
“It wasn’t rape! It was just sex, it was tradition. It was—”
“Did you drug them?”
“It was just—”
“Did you fucking drug them?”
“Yes, yes, but only because it eased the way—for them. For them,” he said quickly.
“Did you restrain them?”
“Yes, but—just to add to the excitement—for them, too.”
“Did these women say stop? Say no?”
“Only at the start of the . . . It was a kind of ritual. And we selected them carefully. To be selected was a kind of honor.”
She could see the panic in his eyes at his own words. “Rape is an honor?”
“It was sex.”
“Keep telling yourself that. You drugged them, restrained them, you forced yourself on them when they begged you to stop. You might just find yourself in the same situation in prison, for the rest of your life. And we’ll see if you think of it as just sex.”
“You can’t put me in prison. Do you know who I am?”
“I know exactly who you are.”
“You work for me!” Incensed, he tried to shove up, and the restraints rattled. “For men like me.”
“I work for the City of New York, and I put people like you in cages. I fucking love my job, and tonight, right this minute, more than ever.”
“Those women are criminals. They’re murderers. They’re insane. They beat me. They burned me.”
“Oh, we’ll let the medicals fix you all up before you go in the cage. You and the last of your brothers—that’s Ethan MacNamee, who’s even now being extradited to New York—are going to have a long time to think about your traditions. You got enough, Reo?”
“More than. Mr. Easterday, you’ve confessed, on the record and after being duly Mirandized, to the charges of multiple rapes.”
“No! It was not rape. I was only explaining.” Tears spilled down his cheeks. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I’ve been hurt! I have nothing more to say.”
“That’s your right,” Reo said easily. “On the other hand, Mr. MacNamee’s had a lot to say. And if he continues, once he’s doing that talking to Lieutenant Dallas, he’ll get the deal I was about to offer you.”
“What deal?” Eve demanded, on cue, as if outraged.
“This is my job, Lieutenant. And part of my job is to save the city the time and expense of a long, ugly trial. But since Mr. Easterday has invoked his right to remain silent . . .”
“I want to know the terms.”
Reo looked back at him, nodded. “All right. If you’ll excuse us, Lieutenant, Detective.”
“This is bullshit.” But Eve stormed out, then slowed when she got out the door.
“What’s the deal?” Peabody asked. “I knew you and Reo had your heads together.”
“Life, no parole, but on-planet. He’d likely get that anyway. But she’ll scare him into signing off. He’s done. MacNamee is done—he spilled plenty to Scotland, and we’ll get the rest out of him.”
She shoved a hand through her hair because she was far from done. “Let’s go talk to the women.”
22
At Blake’s request, Eve took her first, sat across from her and in the box.
Blake wore prison orange now.
“You have now suspended your wish for counsel or representation?”
“For the moment, yes. As you pointed out, I can represent myself. And though I would advise my client to remain silent, my client has a deep emotional need to make a statement. And in making it, hopes to help the three women you’ll soon interview here.
“They’re victims, Lieutenant.”
“I’m listening.”
“I was a student at Yale University. I worked very hard to be accepted into Yale, very hard to shine there. My ambition was law, corporate law. I wanted a high-powered job, planned to make full partner before I turned forty. I wanted a big, glamorous apartment, and glamorous friends. I accomplished all of that, and I was content. I told myself I was content, that the nightmares that recurre
d were stress-induced. They had no basis in reality.
“The nightmares where I was tied to a bed in a room with colored lights. Spinning lights, loud music. Male laughter. Where I wept and raged. Where I relived that shock, that pain, that humiliation. Faceless men, forcing themselves into me. Forcing me to drink something that, after each had had me once, turned me into an animal, so I begged them to take me again. And again when they could untie me, then hang me up by the wrists in the center of those spinning lights, and take me two at a time.”
She paused, sipped the water Peabody had set on the table. Though her hand stayed steady, her breath shuddered out before she spoke again.
“In my ambitions I had imagined men—suitable men, entertaining men. Out of them I would select a mate and build a fine life. But in reality, after those nightmares began, whenever I tried to be with a man, a panic filled me. A terrible sickness. I thought perhaps I had some condition, and began to see a therapist.”
She paused a moment, steadied herself. “I thought I might prefer women, but no matter how gentle the lover I chose, that panic would grip me. For a while, I accepted I could be with no one, could not be intimate, I’d just focus on my work, on my career. But the nightmares wouldn’t relent. My work began to suffer, and the nightmares raged inside me, like the men in them raged.
“And I began to remember more, see more. Their faces. Part of me refused to believe it had actually happened. How could such a terrible thing have happened to me? How could I live and work, day after day, after that terrible thing? But it had happened. I began to understand it had. I couldn’t work, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. I thought of suicide, just to end it. And I took the medications my therapist prescribed, but it didn’t relent. One day I attended a support group, one for rape victims. I met CeCe Anson, the kindest woman I’ve ever known, and through her Lydia Su.”
“Su had the same nightmares, the same memories.”
“Yes. We became friends, and I thought, with her . . . but even with her I couldn’t bear to be touched. And it came out, what I remembered or dreamed. It came out she dreamed the same. We sat in the dark, holding each other as those memories fell out of us, twined together. It seemed impossible at first. But then . . .”
