Witness in Death

by J. D. Robb

“I killed him.” The blonde staggered back two steps, holding up her bloody hands, staring at them. “I killed him,” she said again and fainted.

  “Great. Terrific. Roarke?”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You.” She jabbed a finger at one of the guards. “Start moving these people into dressing rooms. Keep them there. You,” she ordered the second guard, “start rounding up the crew, the techs. I want the doors secured. Nobody comes in, nobody goes out.”

  A woman began to sob, several men began to argue in raised voices. Eve counted to five, lifted her badge in the air, and shouted, “Now, listen up! This is a police investigation. Anyone refusing to follow the directives will be interfering with that investigation and will find themselves transported to the nearest station house where they will be kept in holding. I want this stage cleared, and cleared now!”

  “Let’s move.” The brunette with the bit part as Vole’s tootsie gracefully stepped over the unconscious Christine. “A couple of you big strong men pick up our leading lady, will you? I need a goddamn drink.” She glanced around, her eyes cool, clear, and green. “Is that allowed, Lieutenant?”

  “As long as it’s not on my crime scene.”

  Satisfied, Eve pulled out her communicator. “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve.” Once more she crouched beside the body. “I need a crime scene unit dispatched immediately.”

  • • •

  “Eve.” Doctor Mira hurried across the stage. “Roarke told me…” She trailed off, looked down at the body. “Good lord.” She let out a long breath, shifted her gaze back to Eve. “What can I do?”

  “Right now, you can stand by. I don’t have a field kit. Peabody’s on the way, and I’ve sent for the crime scene team, and the ME. But until they get here, you’re both the doctor on-scene and a designated police and security official. Sorry to screw up your evening.”

  Mira shook her head, started to kneel by the body.

  “No, watch the blood. You’ll contaminate my scene and ruin your dress.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “You tell me. We all watched it. Using my acute powers of observation, I identify that knife as the murder weapon.” Eve spread her hands. “I don’t even have a damn can of Seal-It. Where the hell is Peabody?”

  Frustrated that she couldn’t begin a true examination or investigation without her tools, she spun around and spotted Roarke. “Would you hold here for me, Dr. Mira?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Eve strode stage left. “Tell me, the bit with the knife in the last scene. How does it work?” she asked Roarke.

  “Dummy knife. The blade retracts when it’s pressed against a solid surface.”

  “Not this time,” Eve murmured. “The victim, what’s his real name?”

  “Richard Draco. A very hot property. I suppose he’s cooled off considerably now.”

  “How well did you know him?”

  “Not well. I’ve met him socially a few times, but primarily I knew his work.” Roarke tucked his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels as he studied Draco’s stunned and staring eyes. “He’s a four-time Tony Award winner, garnered excellent reviews in the films he’s done. He’s a top box office draw, stage and screen, and has been so for a number of years. He has a rep,” Roarke continued, “for being difficult, arrogant, and childish. Juggles women, enjoys a certain amount of chemical enhancements that might not meet the police department’s code.”

  “The woman who killed him?”

  “Areena Mansfield. Brilliant actress. A rare untemperamental type, and dedicated to her art. Very well respected in theater circles. She lives and works primarily in London but was persuaded to relocate to New York for this role.”

  “By who?”

  “Partially by me. We’ve known each other for a number of years. And no,” he added, dipping his hands in his pockets again, “I’ve never slept with her.”

  “I didn’t ask that.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Okay, if I did, we’ll have the follow-up. Why haven’t you slept with her?”

  A faint smile lifted his mouth. “Initially because she was married. Then, when she wasn’t…” He ran a fingertip along the dent in Eve’s chin. “I was. My wife doesn’t like me to sleep with other women. She’s very strict about it.”

  “I’ll make a note of that.” She considered her options, juggled them. “You know a lot of these people, or have impressions of them anyway. I’m going to want to talk to you later.” She sighed. “On the record.”

  “Of course. Is it possible this was an accident?”

  “Anything’s possible. I need to examine the knife, and I can’t touch the fucker until Peabody gets here. Why don’t you go back there, do a pat and stroke on your people? And keep your ears open.”

  “Are you asking me to assist in an official police investigation?”

  “No, I am not.” And despite the circumstances, her lips wanted to quiver. “I just said keep your ears open.” She tapped a finger on his chest. “And stay out of my way. I’m on duty.”

  She turned away as she heard the hard clop of what could only be police-issue shoes.

  Peabody’s were shined to a painful gleam Eve could spot across the length of the stage. Her winter-weight uniform coat was buttoned to the throat of a sturdy body. Her cap sat precisely at the correct angle atop her dark, straight hair.

  They crossed the stage from opposite ends, met at the body. “Hi, Dr. Mira.” Peabody glanced down at the body, pursed her lips. “Looks like a hell of an opening night.”

  Eve held out a hand for her field kit. “Record on, Peabody.”

  “Yes, sir.” Because it was warm under the stage lights, Peabody shrugged out of her coat, folded it, set it aside. She clipped her recorder to the collar of her uniform jacket.

  “Record on,” she said as Eve coated her hands and evening shoes with Seal-It.

  “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, on-scene, stage set of New Globe Theater. Also in attendance, Peabody, Officer Delia, and Mira, Dr. Charlotte. Victim is Richard Draco, mixed race male, late forties to early fifties.”

  She tossed the Seal-It to Peabody. “Cause of death, stabbing, single wound. Visual exam and minimal amount of blood indicate a heart wound.”

  She crouched, and with her coated fingers picked up the knife. “Wound inflicted by what appears to be a common kitchen knife, serrated blade approximately eight inches in length.”

  “I’ll measure and bag, Lieutenant.”

  “Not yet,” Eve murmured. She examined the knife, dug out microgoggles, examined it again from hilt to tip. “Initial exam reveals no mechanism for retracting the blade on impact. This is no prop knife.”

  She shoved the goggles up so they rested on the top of her head. “No prop knife, no accident.” She passed the knife to Peabody’s sealed hand. “It’s homicide.”

  *** CHAPTER TWO ***

  “I could use you,” Eve said to Mira while the sweepers worked over the crime scene. Draco’s body was already bagged, tagged, and on its way to the morgue.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “We’ve got a couple of dozen uniforms logging names and addresses of audience members.” She didn’t want to think about the man-hours, the mountains of paperwork that would go into interviewing over two thousand witnesses. “But I want to start the interview process on the main players before I kick them clear for the night. I don’t want anybody lawyering on me until I get a better handle on the setup.”

  Right out in the open, Eve thought as she studied the stage, the set, the tiers after tiers of plush velvet seats that had held a rapt audience.

  Someone was cool and cocky. And smart.

  “People are comfortable with you,” she went on. “I want Areena Mansfield comfortable.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Appreciate it. Peabody, you’re with me.”

  Eve crossed the stage, moved into the wings. There were uniforms scattered throughout the backstage area. Civil
ians were either tucked behind closed doors or huddled in miserable little groups.

  “What do you give our chances of keeping the media locked out of this until morning?”

  Peabody glanced over at Eve. “I’d say zero, but that’s optimistic.”

  “Yeah. Officer.” Eve signaled a uniform. “I want guards posted at every entrance, every exit.”

  “Already done, sir.”

  “I want the guards inside. Nobody leaves the building, not even a cop. Nobody comes in, especially reporters. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A corridor bent off the wing, narrowed. Eve scanned the door, vaguely amused by the gold stars affixed to several of them. Name plaques were displayed as well. She stopped by the door marked for Areena Mansfield, knocked briefly, then walked in.

  She only lifted her eyebrows when she saw Roarke sitting on a royal blue daybed, holding Areena’s hand.

  The actress had yet to remove her stage makeup, and though tears had ravaged it, she was still stunning. Her eyes darted to Eve and were instantly full of fear.

  “Oh God. Oh my God. Am I going to be arrested?”

  “I need to ask you some questions, Ms. Mansfield.”

  “They wouldn’t let me change. They said I couldn’t. His blood.” Her hands fluttered in front of her costume, fisted. “I can’t stand it.”

  “I’m sorry. Dr. Mira, would you help Miss Mansfield out of her costume? Peabody will bag it.”

  “Of course.”

  “Roarke, outside please.” Eve stepped back to the door, opened it.

  “Don’t worry, Areena. The lieutenant will sort this out.” After giving Areena’s hand a comforting squeeze, he rose and walked by Eve.

  “I asked you to keep your ears open, not to cozy up with one of my suspects.”

  “Trying to keep a hysterical woman lucid isn’t particularly cozy.” He blew out a breath. “I could use a very large brandy.”

  “Well, go home and have one. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

  “I believe I can find what I need here.”

  “Just go home,” she said again. “There’s nothing for you to do here.”

  “As I’m not one of your suspects,” he added in a quiet voice, “and I own this theater, I believe I can come and go as I please.”

  He ran a finger down her cheek and strolled off.

  “You always do,” she muttered, then went back into the dressing room.

  It seemed to Eve that dressing room was a lowly term for a space so large, so lush. A long, cream-toned counter held a forest of pots, tubes, wands, bottles, all arranged with soldierly precision. Over it all gleamed a wide triple mirror ringed with slim white lights.

  There was the daybed, several cozy chairs, a full-sized AutoChef and friggie unit, a trim, mini-communication system. Wardrobe hung in a long closet area, open now so that Eve noted the costumes and street clothes were as precisely arranged as the makeup.

  On every table, in groupings on the floor, were flowers. The over-fragranced air made Eve think of weddings. And funerals.

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.” Areena shivered slightly as Mira helped her into a long white robe. “I don’t know how much longer I could have stood…I’d like to clean off my makeup.” Her hand reached for her throat. “I’d like to feel like myself.”

  “Go ahead.” Eve made herself comfortable in one of the chairs. “This interview will be recorded. Do you understand?”

  “I don’t understand anything.” With a sigh, Areena sat on the padded stool in front of her makeup mirror. “My mind seems numb, as if everything’s happening one step after it should be.”

  “It’s a very normal reaction,” Mira assured her. “It often helps to talk about the event that caused the shock, to go over the details of it so they can be dealt with. Set aside.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” Shifting her gaze in the mirror, she watched Eve. “You have to ask me questions, and it has to be on the record. All right. I want to get it done.”

  “Record on, Peabody. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, in interview with Mansfield, Areena, in subject’s dressing room at the New Globe Theater. Also present are Peabody, Officer Delia, and Dr. Charlotte Mira.”

  While Areena creamed off her stage makeup, Eve recited the revised Miranda. “Do you understand your rights and responsibilities, Miss Mansfield?”

  “Yes. It’s another part of the nightmare.” She closed her eyes, tried to envision a pure white field, tranquil, serene. And could see only blood. “Is he really dead? Is Richard really dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “I killed him. I stabbed him.” The shudder ran from her shoulders down. “A dozen times,” she said, opening her eyes again to meet Eve’s in the center of the triple mirror. “At least a dozen times, we rehearsed that scene. We choreographed it so carefully, for the biggest impact. What went wrong? Why didn’t the knife retract?” The first hint of anger showed in her eyes. “How could this have happened?”

  “Take me through it. The scene. You’re Christine. You’ve protected him, lied for him. You’ve ruined yourself for him. Then, after all that, he blows you off, flaunts another woman, a younger woman, in your face.”

  “I loved him. He was my obsession—my lover, my husband, my child, all in one.” She lifted her shoulders. “Above all else, Christine loved Leonard Vole. She knew what he was, what he did. But it didn’t matter. She would have died for him, so deep and obsessive was her love.”

  Calmer now, Areena tossed the used tissues into her recycle chute, turned on the stool. Her face was marble pale, her eyes red and swollen. And still, she radiated beauty.

  “In that moment, every woman in the audience understands her. If they haven’t felt that kind of love, in some part of themselves they wish they had. So when she realizes that after all she’s done, he can discard her so casually, when she fully understands what he is, she grabs the knife.”

  Areena lifted a fisted hand, as if holding the hilt. “Despair? No, she is a creature of action. She is never passive. It’s an instant, an impulse, but a bone-deep one. She plunges the knife into him, even as she embraces him. Love and hate, both in their highest form, both inside her in that one instant.”

  She stared at the hand she’d flung out, and it began to tremble. “God. God!” In a frantic move, she yanked open a drawer of her dressing table.

  Eve was on her feet, her hand clamped over Areena’s wrist in a flash.

  “I—it—a cigarette,” she managed. “I know I’m not supposed to smoke in the building, but I want a cigarette.” She pushed at Eve’s hand. “I want a damn cigarette.”

  Eve glanced in the drawer, saw the pricey ten-pack of herbals. “We’re on the record. You’ll get an automatic fine.” But she stepped back.

  “My nerves.” She fumbled with the lighter until Mira stepped over, gently pried it from her fingers, and flicked it on. “Thanks. Okay.” Areena took a deep drag, blew it out slowly. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually so…fragile. The theater smashes the fragile to bits, and quickly.”

  “You’re doing very well.” Mira kept her voice low, calm. “Talking it through with Lieutenant Dallas will help.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” Areena stared back at Mira with the trust Eve had wanted to see radiating in her eyes. “It just happened.”

  “When you picked up the knife,” Eve interrupted, “did you notice anything different?”

  “Different?” Areena blinked as she focused on Eve again. “No. It was exactly where it was supposed to be, hilt toward me to make the movement fast and smooth. I swept it up, to give the audience that one shocked instant to see the blade. The lighting’s designed to catch it, to glint off the edges. Then I charged. It’s only two steps from the table to Richard. I take his right arm, between the elbow and the shoulder, with my left hand, holding him, draw back with the right, then…the impact,” she said after another long drag, “of the prop knife against his chest releases the pack of stage blood. We hold there for
an instant, just two beats, intimately, before the others onstage rush forward to pull me away.”

  “What was your relationship with Richard Draco?”

  “What?” Areena’s eyes had glazed.

  “Your relationship with Draco. Tell me about it.”

  “With Richard?” Areena pressed her lips together, her hand running up between her breasts to massage the base of her throat as if words were stuck there, like burrs. “We’ve known each other several years, worked with each other before—and well—most recently in a London production of Twice Owned.”

  “And personally?”

  There was a hesitation, less than a half beat, but Eve noticed and filed it away.

  “We were friendly enough,” Areena told her. “As I said, we’ve known each other for years. The media in London played up a romance between us during that last work. The play was a romance. We enjoyed the benefit of the interest. It sold tickets. I was married at the time, but that didn’t discourage the public from seeing us as a couple. We were amused by it.”

  “But never acted on it.”

  “I was married, and smart enough, Lieutenant, to know Richard wasn’t the kind of man to throw out a marriage for.”

  “Because?”

  “He’s a fine actor. Was,” she corrected, swallowed hard before she drew one last time on her cigarette. “He wasn’t a particularly fine human being. Oh, that sounds vicious, horrible.” Her hand lifted to her throat again, fingers restless against flesh. “I feel vicious and horrible saying it, but I—I want to be as honest as I can. I’m afraid. I’m terrified you’ll think that I meant this to happen.”

  “At the moment, I don’t think anything. I want you to tell me about Richard Draco.”

  “All right. All right.” She drew in a breath, sucked on the cigarette as if it were a straw. “Others will say it in any case. Richard was very self-interested and egocentric, as many…most of us are in this business. I didn’t hold it against him. And I jumped at the chance to work with him in this play.”

  “Are you aware of anyone else who, believing him not a particularly fine human being, might have held that against him?”

  “I imagine Richard insulted or offended everyone attached to this production at one time or another.” She pressed a fingertip to the inside corner of her eye, as if to relieve some pressure. “Certainly there were bruised feelings, complaints, mutters, and grudges. That’s theater.”