Strangers in Death

by J. D. Robb

  “The choice was there; she made it.” Eve drank. “But I’m willing to deal, too.”

  “I’ll be watching the rest. When she gets a lawyer, there will be a demand for a psychiatric evaluation.”

  “She can have her head shrunk by a platoon of doctors, after I get my confession. And yeah, I’m perfectly aware I’m using her, too. I’ve got no problem with that.”

  “You shouldn’t have, but—”

  “She’s soft,” Eve interrupted. “That’s what you’re seeing, and you’ve got some sympathy for her. Go ahead. But I see Thomas Aurelious Anders.”

  With a nod, Mira went back into Observation.

  Eve stepped back into Interview. “Lieutenant Dallas reentering Interview,” she said for the record. “Here’s the deal, Suzanne. Are you listening?”

  “Yes, I’m listening.”

  “The PA will drop the charges down from one count of Murder One, one count of Conspiracy to Murder to one count of Murder Two. That keeps you on-planet, with visitation access to your kids.”

  Tears dripped, as if Suzanne’s eyes were leaking faucets. “How long?”

  “Fifteen to twenty.”

  “Fifteen. Oh God. God. They’ll be grown.”

  “You’ll be eligible for parole in seven,” Baxter told her.

  “If you don’t cooperate, if this goes to trial, the charges bounce back. You’re looking at the probability of two life sentences, running consecutively. Off-planet.” Eve sat. “Your choice.”

  “My kids. I…I have a sister. Can my kids go to my sister?”

  “I’ll look into that. Personally.” Baxter nodded. “I’ll talk to your sister, to Child Services.”

  “They’ll be better off with her. I should’ve taken them and gone to my sister years ago.” She swiped at the tears with the tissues Baxter gave her. “Everything would be different if I’d done that. But I didn’t. I thought, Ned’s their father and they should be with their father. I thought, I’m his wife, and I’m supposed to make the home. If I did better, everything would work out. But I didn’t do better, and it just got worse and worse. And then…”

  “You met Ava Anders,” Eve prompted.

  “Yes.” Suzanne closed her eyes for a moment, took several breaths. “She was so good to us, to everyone. She made me feel like I could do better. Be better. Ned didn’t care about the program, but he didn’t mind. Got the kids out from underfoot, he said. But sometimes, just sometimes, he’d go to a practice or a game. And that was good. He’d even take us out for pizza after sometimes. It was better when he did. And the last time, after the last time he hit me, he promised he wouldn’t do it again. And he didn’t this time. He didn’t hit me for weeks, and he was around more. I thought, this is going to be all right. But then he started coming home late again, and smelling of sex.”

  “You talked to Ava about that?” Baxter asked.

  “What? No…Before, we talked before. Months ago. Just before the kids went back to school. When they were at camp and I went to the retreat, the end of August. God, Ned was so angry that I went, but it was good to be there. To have that time away. We’d talked before—Ava, I mean.”

  Taking the cup of water, she sipped, paused, sipped again. “She was so nice to me. She’d sit with me late at night and talk and talk. She understood how hard it was with Ned that way because her husband hurt her, too. She never told anyone but me. He hurt her, and he made her do things. And he did things with girls—girls who were too young to be hurt that way.

  “Everyone thinks he was so good.” Tears streamed out of Suzanne’s eyes, soaking the tissues as she mopped. “But he was a monster.”

  “That’s what she told you?”

  “She was afraid of him. I know what that’s like. We cried together. She couldn’t stand what he was doing to her, and more, to the children. She said he and Ned were alike. One day, Ned would hurt my babies. One day he could…with Maizie.”

  She closed her eyes, shuddered. “He’d never—he’d never touched Maizie like that, but he hit the kids sometimes. When they were bad, or when he’d had too much to drink. I thought, what would I do if he tried to do to Maizie what Mr. Anders did with young girls? I said, I think I said, I’d kill him if he touched her that way.”

  Her voice cracked, and began to waver and jump as she continued. “It would be too late then, Ava said, like she was afraid it was too late for her. She said she’d help me. We could help each other. We didn’t have to live like this anymore, or risk the children.”

  Suzanne reached for the water, then simply rubbed the cup over her forehead. “She said it was just like in the seminars and groups, where we talked about being proactive, about being strong. Taking action to make a difference. She’d stop Ned and I’d stop Mr. Anders. No one would ever know.”

  “Stop?” Eve qualified.

  Her shoulders hunched, Suzanne stared at the table. “Kill. We would kill them. No one would know—how could they—because each of us would be innocent of the crime that connected to us. She’d go first, to show good faith. We’d wait a few months and we’d be careful about contacting each other between. Then she’d stop Ned.”

  She heaved a breath, looked up at Eve again. “She said stop, not kill. I knew what she meant, I did, but it seemed right when she said it. She’d stop Ned before he hurt my children, stop him from hurting me. And then, we’d wait again, two or three months, and I’d stop Mr. Anders.”

  “Did she tell you how you’d stop him?”

  Suzanne shook her head. Her eyes continued to flood, but they were empty behind the tears. Beaten, Eve thought. Broken.

  “She said she thought she knew a way, so it would look like an accident. And so when they found him they’d know the kind of man he was. She knew I was strong, deep down, and good, a good mother, a good friend. She knew I’d save her, and she’d save me and my kids. We gave each other our word. We recorded it.”

  “Recorded?”

  “She had a recorder, and we each recorded our intention, our promise. I said my name and that I promised on the lives of my children to kill the monster Thomas A. Anders. That I would kill him with my own hands, and in a way that was symbolic and just. She said the same, except Ned’s name, and she swore on the lives of all the children of the world.”

  “Dramatic.”

  Little spots of color bloomed on Suzanne’s white cheeks. “It meant something. It was important. I felt important. I never felt like that before.”

  “What did she do with the recording?”

  “She said she was going to put it in a bank box. For safety. After we stopped Ned and Mr. Anders, we’d destroy it together. We didn’t talk much after that. Not for a while. She’s very busy. And when I got home, and everything was the way it is at home, I thought, none of that was real. It was just like a session. Or maybe I wanted to think that.”

  She bowed her head, then shoved at the hair that fell over her face. “I don’t know anymore. But I put it away. I forgot about it. Almost all the time. Then things got a little better for a while with Ned. I saw Ava at the offices one day, and I told her how things were better. She smiled at me, and she said they’d get better yet.” On a choked sob, Suzanne pressed a hand to her mouth. “I swear, I didn’t think, didn’t really think about what we’d said that night. I didn’t think of any of that, and Ned started staying out again, and we started fighting again. I told myself I was going to leave him this time, that I was stronger now. Because of Ava.”

  Her breath came in two quick hitches. “I felt stronger, because of Ava, and what she’d given me. How she’d made me feel about myself. And then Detective Baxter came with Officer Trueheart, and they said Ned was dead. They said he’d gone into a hotel room with an LC, and he was dead. I never thought about Ava and what we’d said that night, way back in August. I thought it was just as they’d told me. He’d picked up the wrong kind of woman.”

  “When did she contact you after that?”

  “A few days later.” Suzanne pressed her fing
ers to her eyes. “That’s when everything fell apart. The kids were in school. I was going to do the marketing. I always do the marketing on Monday morning, so I was walking to the market, and she came up beside me. She said: ‘Keep walking, Suzanne. Keep walking and don’t say anything yet.’ We walked another three blocks, I think, then we crossed and walked another two or three. She had a car, and we got in. When I asked where we were going, she said somewhere we could talk. I told her I had to do the marketing, and she started to drive. And she started to tell me.”

  As Suzanne’s breath began to wheeze, Baxter nudged the water toward her. “What did she tell you, Suzanne?”

  “She said she’d fulfilled the part of the bargain we’d made, and asked how I felt now that I was free. I couldn’t even talk for a minute. She was different—um, I don’t know how to explain. She laughed, but it was different from before. It scared me. She scared me. I started to cry.”

  What else is new, Eve thought, you weak, whiny, worthless excuse for a human being.

  “I started to say I hadn’t meant any of it. Not really. But it was too late—that’s what she said. It was too late for any second thoughts, any regrets. It was done. Now it was my turn. She kept driving, not even looking at me. She told me how she’d killed Ned.”

  Eve waited while Suzanne drank, and mopped more useless tears. “I need the details.”

  “Oh, God.” Blubbering, Suzanne covered her face. “Oh, God. I can’t.”

  Brutally cold in face, voice, manner, Eve shoved Suzanne’s hands down. “You will. Here’s one thing Ava’s right about. It’s too late. Give me the details.”

  Staring at Eve, trembling, Suzanne began. “She—she watched him for a few nights. Followed him into bars, watched him drink, watched him pick up women. Studied him is what she said, learned his habits and routines—his territory. She said his territory. And—and she rented rooms in a couple of the places he used for sex, and mapped them out. Preparation, she said. Preparation was key. She said she made herself look like a whore because that’s what he liked. That’s what most men liked. Please, can I have some more water?”

  Baxter rose to fill the cup.

  “She stalked him,” Eve prompted.

  “I guess. I guess. She said she went up to him while he was drinking, told him he looked like he knew how to party. She sat with him awhile—not too long, she said because she didn’t want anyone to pay attention to her. She put her hand between his legs, rubbed. She said he came along with her like an idiot dog. That’s what she called him.”

  The water in the cup Baxter gave her sloshed, dripped over the rim as Suzanne lifted it to drink. “They went to one of the places she’d mapped out. And when they were upstairs, he grabbed at her breasts, and she let him, let him touch her. But she told him she needed the bathroom first. And in the bathroom she put on a suit like doctors wear, and she sealed her hands, too, then got the knife. She called out for Ned to turn around. Turn around and close your eyes, she said to him. She had a big surprise for him.

  “I’m sorry, I—I spilled water on the table.”

  “Finish it,” Eve ordered.

  “God.” As if to hold herself in place, Suzanne crossed her arms tight over her own torso. “She said he did what she told him, like a good boy, and she came out, came out and she used the knife. She said he made the funniest noises, and grabbed at his throat like he had an itch there. How his eyes got so big, how he tried to talk. How he fell, and the way the blood just gushed out. How he just lay there and she…God. She cut it off, cut his penis off. A sym—a symbol. She put everything back in the bag she had, and when she knew he was good and dead, she went out by the fire escape. She walked for blocks and blocks. She said she felt like she could’ve flown, but she walked to where she’d left her car.”

  “What did she do with the bag, Suzanne?” Eve asked. “Did she tell you?”

  “The bag?”

  “With the knife in it.”

  “I feel sick.”

  “What did she do with the bag?”

  Suzanne cringed. “In a recycler.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. While she was walking to her car.”

  “Where was her car?”

  “I don’t know. Blocks away. Uptown, I think she said. Blocks away from where she killed Ned because the cops weren’t going to look for a street whore so far away. She drove home, and she took a long bath with a glass of cognac, and she slept like a baby.”

  Her face gray now, Suzanne looked back at Eve. “I haven’t slept. I don’t think I’ve had an hour’s real sleep since that day. She’d stopped the car. A rest stop off the Turnpike. We were in New Jersey now. I don’t remember how we got there. I wasn’t crying anymore. I got sick. It made her mad, but I couldn’t help it. She let me open the door, and I threw up in the parking lot.

  “I’m so tired now.”

  “Dallas,” Baxter began, “maybe we should—”

  Eve only shook her head to cut him off. “What did Ava do after you were sick?”

  “After, she drove away from there, around the back where the big trucks are, and she told me what had to happen next. What I had to do. I said I couldn’t, but she said if I didn’t, she’d do to me what she’d done to Ned, and then she’d do it to my kids. My kids. No one would believe me if I told them. Who did I think I was? I was nobody, and she was an important and respected woman. They’d lock me up if I tried to tell them, unless she killed me first. She knew where my kids went to school, where they played, where they slept. I’d better remember that.”

  There was a dreamy quality in Suzanne’s voice now, as if the reliving of it had put her into a trance.

  “And I was better off, she said. Couldn’t I see how much better off I was now? What she’d done for me? She said I had to wait. A couple of months would be best. She would get me a remote, and the passcode. She would explain exactly what I had to do and how I had to do it. She gave me a ’link. I wasn’t to use it for anything. She would contact me on it when it was time. And she’d be watching me. And my kids. She told me what I was going to do, how easy it would be. If I messed it up, she had the recording, and she’d send it to the police. Or maybe I’d just have a tragic accident one day, me and the kids. She told me I should be grateful. She’d given me a fresh start. Now I had to pay for it. I had to stick to my part of the deal.”

  “Take us through it.”

  “It had to be late at night. After midnight, but before one. I’d use the remote to shut down the security, then I’d use the passcode and go inside. I—I had to seal up first. Straight up the stairs, to the bedroom. The door would be closed, and he’d be sleeping facing the door. He’d have taken a sleeping pill because she’d replaced his nightly vitamins with them. I had to…I had to take off his pajamas, use the rope—the rope she told me to buy—on his wrists and his ankles. I was supposed to give him a dose of male sex enhancer, and…God, put the rings on him, and some of the lotion. Set out the toys. He’d wake up some, and that was good. I’d see what it was like. It would make it better for all of us. Then I was to put the rope around his neck, tighten it. Watch, watch until I knew he was dead.”

  She drank again, three small sips. “I was supposed to take it off after, the rope, but leave it there. Then go down, through the house, through the kitchen, and take the security tapes. That would make it look like I’d been there before, that it was all an accident—like it was his own fault. I was supposed to walk out, turn everything back on—the security, then walk all the way to the subway on Fifth.”

  “What about the ’link, the discs?”

  “She was to contact me on it at two. It was supposed to be done by two, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t…Then she called, and she was so angry. So I did it. I did what she said, except I couldn’t stand the idea of him knowing, and I used the medication I’d gotten from the doctor to help me sleep, and I couldn’t watch him die, so I ran out.”

  “Where’s the ’link, the discs, the remote?”


  “I was supposed to put them in a recycler on Fifth. But I forgot. I can’t even remember getting on the subway, but I must have because I was home. I didn’t remember about them until the next day, after my kids came home from school. They stayed at a friend’s the night before, because I couldn’t leave them alone. And I guess I always knew I’d do what she told me. I was afraid to put them in a recycler near the house. I was afraid to keep them in the house. I didn’t know what to do. I shoved the bag in the closet because I couldn’t think.”

  “Do you still have them?”

  “I was going to take them to the park today, where the kids practice. I was going to put them in the recycler there. But you came.”

  Eve signaled Baxter, who rose and strode out of the room. “Detective Baxter has left Interview. Has she contacted you again, Suzanne?”

  “No, not since that night—that morning. It’s like a dream. I was walking, walking—after—and she called on the ’link. She said: ‘Well?’ And I said I’d done it. And she said, ‘Good girl.’ That’s all. ‘Good girl,’ like I’d finished my chores. I killed him. I know he was a monster, but I think she’s one, too.”

  “You think?”

  “What’s going to happen now? Can you tell me what’s going to happen now?”

  “We’re going to go back over the details. What kind of vehicle did she drive?”

  “A black one.”

  “Do better.”

  “It was black and shiny. Expensive. I don’t know about cars. I’ve never had a car.”

  “When you were walking with her, the day you were going to the market, did you see anyone you know?”

  “I don’t know many people. Ned didn’t like—”

  “Stop it,” Eve said sharply, and Suzanne jerked straight. “You know your neighbors, at least by sight, the people who run the market, your children’s friends, their parents.”

  “I guess I do. I don’t remember. I was so surprised to see her, and Ned had just…”

  “No one spoke to you?”

  “Just Ava. It was really cold, and I was looking down—the way you do.”