Loyalty in Death

by J. D. Robb

  "I said shut up." Damn it, why didn't people listen? "I'm going to read you your rights, then we're going to talk. You can call for a lawyer, but I'm telling you now—as your sister's friend—not to do that, not yet. You give it to me straight, then we go in and do a formal interview. That's when you lawyer up. I'm going on record here in a minute, and when I do, you keep looking me dead in the eye. You got that? You don't evade, you don't hesitate. I'm seeing self-defense here, I'm seeing an accident, but when Clarissa ditched the body, she put both of you in jeopardy."

  "She only—"

  "Quiet, goddamn it." Frustrated, she dragged her hands through her hair. "There are ways to get around that. That's what the lawyer's going to be for. And the psych tests I'm going to order. But right now, on record, you're going to tell me everything, leaving nothing out. Don't think by smoking any details you're protecting Clarissa. You won't. It'll only make it worse."

  "I'll tell you what happened. All of it. But do you have to take her in? She's afraid of the police. She's so fragile. He hurt her. If you could just take me."

  She moved forward, sat on the edge of the coffee table to face him. Jesus, she thought. Sweet Jesus, he was little more than a boy. "Do you trust your sister, Zeke?"

  "Yes."

  "And she trusts me." Eve heard the commotion in the foyer and rose. "That'll be her now. Are you going to be able to hold it together?"

  He nodded, got to his feet as Peabody burst in. "Zeke. God, Zeke, are you all right?" She nearly leaped into his arms, then yanked back to run her hands over him, face, shoulders, chest. "Are you hurt?"

  "No. Dee." He pressed his brow to hers. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

  "It's all right, it's okay. We'll take care of everything. We'll take care of it all. We need to call a lawyer."

  "No. Not yet."

  Peabody whirled to Eve, eyes damp and terrified. "He needs representation. Jesus, Dallas, he's not going in a cage, he's not going into holding."

  "Suck it in, Peabody," Eve snapped. "That's an order." The tears were already rolling, causing Eve to feel a slick sense of panic. Oh God, oh God, don't fall apart on me. Don't do it. "That's an order, Officer. Sit down."

  She'd seen McNab out of the corner of her eye and didn't stop to think why he was there. "McNab, take Peabody's recorder. You'll be acting as temporary aide in this matter."

  "Dallas—"

  "This one isn't for you," Eve interrupted. "It can't be. McNab?"

  "Yes, sir." He came over, leaned down to Peabody. "Hold on, okay? Just hang. It'll be all right." He took the recorder still pinned to her uniform collar, fixed it on the lapel of his wrinkled pink shirt. "When you're ready, Lieutenant."

  "Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, on scene at residence of B. Donald Branson, conducting interview with Zeke Peabody in regards to the suspected death of B. Donald Branson." She sat on the coffee table again, kept her eyes directly on his, and read him his rights. Both of them ignored Peabody's muffled moan.

  "Zeke, tell me what happened."

  He drew a breath. "I better start at the beginning. Is that all right?"

  "That's fine."

  He did as Eve had told him, kept his eyes on hers, never wavered. He spoke of the first day he'd worked in the house, what he'd heard, his conversation with Clarissa afterward.

  His voice trembled now and then, but Eve simply nodded and let him continue on. She wanted the emotion in his voice, the obvious distress in his eyes. She wanted it all on record while it was fresh.

  "When I started back downstairs with her suitcase, I heard her scream. She was on the floor, crying, holding her face. He was yelling at her, drunk and yelling at her. He'd knocked her down. I had to stop him."

  Blindly, he reached out for his sister's hand, gripped it tight. "I just wanted to get her out, away from him. No, that's not true."

  He closed his eyes briefly. Leave nothing out, Eve had told him. "I wanted him to be punished. I wanted him to pay for what he was doing to her, but I knew I had to get her away where she'd be safe. He yanked her up, yanked her up by her hair. Hurting her, just to hurt her. I grabbed for her, shoved him back. And that's when…that's when he fell."

  "You stepped up to stop him." It was the first time Eve had spoken since he started. And she kept her voice quiet, even, expressionless. "To get Clarissa away when he hurt her again. You shoved him and he fell? Is that correct?"

  "Yes, he fell, fell backwards. I watched. It was like I'd frozen, couldn't move, couldn't think. His feet went out from under him and he stumbled back, went down hard. I heard—oh God—I heard his head hit the stone. And then there was blood. I checked his pulse, and there was nothing. His eyes were open, fixed and open and his aura was gone."

  "His what?"

  "His aura. His life force. I couldn't see it."

  "Okay." That was an area they could just leave alone. "What did you do then?"

  "I told Clarissa we needed to call an ambulance. I knew it was too late, but it seemed right. And the police. She was shaking and terrified. She kept blaming herself. I said, I told her she had to be strong and she seemed to snap back a little. She asked me to get her some water, just to give her a minute and get her some water. If I'd known what was in her head…"

  He broke off then, closed his mouth tightly.

  "Zeke, you have to finish. Finish it out. You won't help Clarissa by covering up now."

  "She did it for me. She was afraid for me. It was the shock, you see?" Those young, soft gray eyes pleaded with Eve for understanding. "She just panicked, that's all, and thought if there wasn't a body, if she cleaned up the blood, it would be all right. He'd hurt her," Zeke murmured, "and she was afraid."

  "Explain what happened. You went to get water."

  He sighed, nodded, and finished.

  Eve sat back, considered. Calculated. "Okay, thank you. You're going to have to go downtown, make a full statement."

  "I know."

  "McNab, call Dispatch, report a homicide at this address." She shot Peabody a look as her aide sprang off the couch. "Believed self-defense. We need a team in here. And we need a team out, dragging the river. Zeke, I'm calling in a couple of uniforms to take you downtown. You're not under arrest, but you will be detained until this scene can be secured and swept and we get your statement."

  "Can I see Clarissa before I go?"

  "It's not a good idea. McNab." She indicated by a jerk of her head for him to stay in the room with Zeke. "Peabody, with me."

  She strode out into the hall, saying nothing when Roarke slipped out of a door and shut it gently. "She's asleep."

  "Not for long. Peabody, pull it together and listen to me. You ride with your brother. I'm going to order he be detained in an interview room, not a cage. And you're going to talk to him and explain that he's going to agree to truth testing and a psych and personality exam. Mira will do it. We'll put a rush on it and get it done tomorrow. We'll lawyer him up and get him out tonight. He may have to wear a bracelet until after testing results, but his end of the story is clean, and it's going to hold."

  "Don't take me off the case."

  "You were never on. Don't push this," she said in a fierce whisper when Peabody protested. "I'll take care of your brother. If I let you on, it's going to look shaky. It's going to be tricky enough for me to hang as primary."

  She was struggling against the tears and losing fast. "You were good to him. You let him get it out on record clean, without the lawyer. You were right about that."

  Eve jammed her hands in her pockets. "For Christ's sake, Peabody, a blind man could see the guy would trip over his own feet before he'd step on an ant. Nobody's going to argue with self-defense here." If they found the body. The goddamn body. "He'll be okay."

  "I should've looked after him." Now she did begin to weep, in great gulping sobs. Helpless, Eve looked at Roarke, spread her hands.

  Understanding, he turned Peabody into his arms. "It's all right, darling." He stroked her hair, rocked, watched his wife suffer more tha
n a little. "You let Eve look after him now. Let her take care of him."

  "I need to talk to the woman." Eve's stomach rolled every time a fresh sob shuddered out. "McNab will secure the scene and wait for the uniforms. Can you…handle this?"

  He nodded and continued to murmur to Peabody as Eve slipped into the room where Clarissa slept.

  "I'm sorry." Peabody's voice was muffled against Roarke's chest.

  "Don't be. You're entitled to a good cry."

  But she shook her head, eased back, and scrubbed at her wet face. "She wouldn't break down."

  "Peabody." Gently, Roarke cupped her cheek. "She breaks."

  • • •

  Eve yanked all the chains she could reach, gathered strings and pulled each one. She argued, justified, debated, and came close to threatening. In the end, she was primary in the matter of the death of B. Donald Branson.

  She booked two interview rooms, positioning Zeke and Clarissa in separate areas, put the fear of God into the crime scene team and sweepers, harangued the body retrieval unit that was already dragging the East River, put McNab to work on the Branson droid, and arrived at Central with a viciously brilliant headache.

  But she had everything she'd wanted.

  Her last step before taking statements was to contact Mira at home and arrange for both Zeke and Clarissa to be tested the following day.

  She took Clarissa first. She imagined when the woman's initial shock passed, she'd want a lawyer, and the lawyer would shut her up. Self-preservation was bound to overshadow any concern Clarissa might have for Zeke.

  But when she walked into the interview room, Clarissa was sitting pale and quiet, her hands clutched around a cup of water. Eve gestured the uniform outside, closed the door.

  "Is Zeke all right?"

  "Yeah, he's okay. Feeling any better?"

  Clarissa turned the cup in her hands, but didn't lift it. "It's all like a dream. So unreal. B. D.'s dead. He is dead, isn't he?"

  Eve walked to the table, pulled back a chair. "Tough to say at this point. We don't have a body."

  Clarissa shuddered, squeezed her eyes tight. "It's my fault. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I wasn't thinking."

  "Now's the time to start." She left any sympathy out of her voice. Sympathy would only push the woman into tears again. She engaged the recorder, recited the necessary information, and leaned forward. "What happened tonight, Clarissa?"

  "I called Zeke. He came. We were going to leave together. Go away."

  "You and Zeke were having an affair?"

  "No." She raised her eyes then, dark and bright and beautiful. "No, we'd never…we kissed once. We fell in love. I know it sounds ridiculous, we barely knew each other. It just happened. He was kind to me, gentle. I wanted to feel safe. I only wanted to feel safe. I called, and he came."

  "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."