Innocent In Death

14

SHE SWUNG THROUGH THE BULL PEN, THEN into her office for her coat. Stopped, kicked the desk lightly. She wasn’t answering those messages. She wasn’t a frigging saint. But she could do something about something else.

Pulling on her coat she walked back into the bull pen and straight to Baxter’s desk where he was slugging back cop coffee and reading a sweeper’s report.

“I saw you closed the underground case. Got a Murder Two. Trueheart handle the interview?”

“Yeah. He did good.”

She glanced over to the cube where the undeniably adorable Officer Trueheart was pecking away at paperwork. “Trueheart.”

He swiveled around immediately, blinked at her. “Sir.”

“Nice work on the Syke’s interview.”

He flushed. “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

“Taught him all he knows,” Baxter claimed with a grin.

“Hopefully, he’ll overcome that. As for earlier, I appreciate the sentiment. Let’s leave it there.”

“Got that.”

Satisfied, she left to study the dead.

Welcome back. Can I offer you some refreshments?” Morris was in pewter today, with a purple shirt and braided pewter tie. His hair was in a long tail that made Eve think of glossy thoroughbreds.

“Rather have a ruling.” Eve glanced down at Williams’s body. “Homicide.”

“I have fudge brownies. Home-baked by the lovely hands of a Southern goddess.”

Eve’s eyes narrowed on the mention of brownies. She swore she heard saliva pool in Peabody’s mouth. Then the Southern goddess mention struck. “Detective Coltraine?”

Morris laid a hand on his heart, thumped it to mime a beating heart. And Eve thought, Whatwas it with men and blondes with big tits?

Morris wiggled his dark, sharp eyebrows. “Our transplanted magnolia bakes for relaxation, it seems.”

“Huh.” Eve cocked her head. “What, you smitten, Morris?”

“Who wouldn’t be?”

“I could eat, like, a half a brownie.”

Morris smiled at Peabody. “In the personal friggie over there. Help yourself.” Then he turned to Eve. “Accident or murder? You be the judge.”

“It’s murder.”

“Well, well.” He stepped back from the body, gestured. “What do we see? A superficial wound under the chin.”

“Cracked it on the pool edging. Sweepers found some of his skin on the tile. It would’ve smarted, but I’m damned if it knocked him unconscious and caused him to drown.”

“Hmm. More superficial wounds on the back.”

“Consistent with injury sustained when he was dragged out of the pool. More skin found. That’s postmortem.”

“It is, it is, my canny student. We have a very fit individual, other than his being dead, of course. Excellent muscle tone. Your on-scene notes indicated he was a swimmer, that there was no sign of struggle. Yet you cry murder.”

“I say it, straight out.”

“And knowing you, knowing you wouldn’t send me a body unless you had strong cause, we’ve proceeded accordingly. His tox screen isn’t back yet. Shortly, as I flagged it.”

“What do you think’s in him, and how did it get there?”

“For the what, we’ll wait. For the how. Have a look.”

He handed her goggles, then gave her a finger curl. When she walked to Williams’s head, she noted Morris had shaved a circle of hair away on the crown.

“Man, would he hate that. Bald spot. And lookie, lookie.” She bent closer, and with the goggles could just make out the faint mark. “Pressure syringe,” she said. “Barely shows, and on the scalp, with a headful of hair, the naked eye isn’t going to see it.”

“Speak for yourself.”

Now she glanced over at Morris, grinned. “Yours excepted. I missed it. I looked over his body, between his fingers and his toes, even checked his tongue, the inside of his cheeks, but I missed this. Nice catch.”

“I ate a whole brownie,” Peabody confessed.

“Who could blame you?” Morris patted her arm when she joined them.

“We got our homicide, Peabody. Vic’s doing laps, maybe finishes up, or just stops when he sees someone. Grips the edging. Maybe says something…‘Hey, what’s up?’ But there’s no time for conversation. Have to get it done, get out. It’s a risk, but like with Foster, calculated. All you do is bend down, pump the syringe.”

Drawing off the goggles, she pictured it. “Had to be quick. No poison this time. He didn’t show any symptoms of any poison I know. Maybe the shock of the buzz on the scalp had him lose his grip, rap his chin. But…not a sedative. Too slow. He might have been able to make it out, or try. If he’d clawed at the edging, we’d have seen signs of that on his hands, his fingers. Numbed him, that’s what it did. Like the stuff MTs and doctors use to block pain and movements for some treatments. You’re awake, even aware on some levels, but you don’t feel anything, you can’t move anything.”

“And we are, once more, in accord.” Morris nodded. “I believe the tox results will come back with a standard surgical paralytic substance, injected through the scalp. Strong, fast-acting, and quite temporary.”

“Not temporary enough for him. He would’ve struggled. Strong guy, he’d have been able to keep his head up for a while, maybe try to float. There’s a set of stairs about five feet from where the sweepers found the skin. If he’d thought of it, tried to get there, prop his head…The killer might have had to help him out a little, hurry the process before someone wandered in. There are some long poles in there. Nets, brushes. Wouldn’t have taken much to nudge him under, keep him under until it was done.

“Then you just walk out, slide right back into the mainstream.”

“Slime bitch,” Peabody said, with relish. But Eve frowned.

“Morris, do you figure they keep paralytics in the nurse’s station at a private school?”

“They would probably have low doses of a basic number, for pain relief. But I can’t imagine they’d be authorized to have anything like this.”

“More likely the killer brought it in rather than took it from the school. So, impulse, passion is again unlikely. Prepared and calculated and controlled, while able to take risks.”

She’d run probabilities, she’d go back over every point, reevaluate time lines and wit statements. But for now, she looked back down at Williams.

“You were a sleazy son of a bitch, but you weren’t a killer after all. Whoever did Foster did you both.”

At Eve’s order, Peabody put in a request for a warrant to search Arnette Mosebly’s residence. Eve tapped her fingers on the wheel as she drove back to the school.

“Tag Reo back,” she decided. “I want a warrant for the Straffo residence.”

“You really think Allika Straffo might’ve done them?”

“I figure beautiful women know how to play, how to act the victim. I also figure Oliver Straffo’s a tough nut. Maybe he finds out his wife’s diddling with the teacher. And he finds out Foster knows and is considering blowing the horn. Protect the home front, protect the reputation and your own personal pride.”

“Stretching.”

“Is it?” She sighed. “If I’d known about that vid they aired this morning, I’d have been tempted to hunt down the operator, the reporter, the producer, whoever I needed to find, and do them some bodily harm. I’d have rather kicked ass than feel humiliated publicly, then have to walk into that bull pen and feel it all over again.”

“Sorry. Um, can I just ask why that Magdelana whore-slut wasn’t in line for bodily harm?”

“I’d have saved her for last.” Eve’s fingers tightened and released on the wheel. “Which means I’d have probably blown my wad before I got to her, and still feel the way I do now. What’s the point?”

“Don’t say that, Dallas. You can’t-”

“It’s going back in the box.” Where it should have stayed, Eve reminded herself. “I only brought it out to illustrate a possibility we have to consider. Straffo’s a lawyer, and to give him his due, he’s a damn good one. He plans, he calculates, he strategizes. And as a defense lawyer he often knows going in that he’s doing all this to set the guilty free.”

“Lack of conscience.”

“We’re cops, we like to think that of defense lawyers. But it’s the job. That’s what it is. It’s their job, and it’s the law. But you have to have some stones to work at getting a killer, a rapist, an illegals dealer a walk-or a deal, for that matter. So he fits the profile, and we take a closer look.”

Just to be certain, Peabody checked her notes. “He wasn’t signed in this morning at the school.”

“No matter how good the security, there’s a way around it.” She’d learned that from Roarke. “And the security at the school is no more than decent. Something else that needs to be checked out more carefully.”

She’d have asked Roarke to help out in that area. That was a habit she’d fallen into, another kind of rhythm, she supposed. But she’d just do it without the aid of her expert consultant, civilian, this time around.

At the school, she uncoded the locks with her master, then stood inside, hands in her pockets, studying the security scanner.

The student or visitor was obliged to use the thumb plate-all prints of authorized students, guardians, staff, and faculty were on file. Guests were required to be cleared before entry. Bags were scanned for weapons and illegals.

In a facility like this, Eve imagined the scans probably worked ninety percent of the time. In the state schools of her education, theyhadn’t worked ninety percent of the time.

So money, as money could, brought a certain edge of safety.

At the same time, she imagined the system could be caused to jam or hiccup by a five-year-old with reasonable e-skills.

“Let’s have EDD go over this security. Dig down in it to see if it blipped at any time.”

Her bootsteps echoed as she walked the halls. Empty schools were like haunted houses, she thought. If you listened you could hear the sound of voices, the rush of bodies. Generations of kids, she imagined, trooping along in whatever footwear met the current fashion criteria.

She stopped at the nurse’s station, unlocked the door. Inside was a short counter, a stool behind it, a comp unit. There were four chairs and two cots covered with crisp white linens.

Under the counter were standard first-aid supplies. Packs of Nu Skin, cold packs, heat packs, temperature gauges, a home version of the suture wand the MTs carried. Gauze, swabs.

In a drawer, neatly stowed, were diagnostic aids for checking pulses, pupils, ears, throats. As innocuous as they were, she had to block a shudder.

Medicine in any form wigged her.

All drugs-kid-and adult-dose blockers, nausea remedies, fever reducers, cold tabs-were under lock in a cabinet that required a master like hers or a thumbprint and code.

Nothing inside fit her requirements. Though she did study the individually wrapped pressure syringes.

As far as she could see, Nurse Brennan ran a tight ship. Tight, safe, and secured.

Since the comp was passcoded, Eve tagged it for EDD.

“Kind of creepy in here, isn’t it?” Peabody said from behind her.

“Schools are always creepy. Anything fun in Mosebly’s office?”

“Nothing jumped, but I tagged the electronics, and boxed up her disc files. She had the blockers-case we saw her use earlier-and a couple of soothers in stock. Tagged her admin’s stuff, too. Just in case.”

“Good. Let’s go back through the lockers in the fitness area. And just for jollies, we’ll go through the kids’ lockers.”

“All of them? It’ll take hours.”

“Then we’d better get started.”

She could have called a team in, probably should have. They found a mountain of discs, a good chunk of them graphic novels rather than textbooks. Enough candy and salty treats to stock the shelves of a 24/7, memo cubes, comp games, moldy apples.

Flashlights, hairbrushes, lip dye, art supplies, an ancient sandwich of indeterminate origin. Doodles, sketches, empty wrappers, a number of mittens and gloves, neck scarves and caps.

Photographs, music vids, smelly socks, fashionable sunshades, broken sunshades, loose credits, and a forest of chewed-on pencils.

They also found a bag of poppers and three joints of zoner.

“Jesus.” Peabody shook her head. “Oldest kid in this place is barely thirteen.”

Eve noted down the locker numbers, confiscated the illegals. “Top dealer when I was in fifth, or maybe it was sixth grade was an eight-year-old named Zipper. You wanted it, he’d score it.”

“I never even saw a popper until I was sixteen.” Then Peabody waited while Eve answered her ’link.

“Dallas.”

“Reo. Warrant’s in on Mosebly. Took a little time as she tried to block. Still working on Straffo. He’s having a lot more luck bogging the works. You’re not going to get that one through tonight.”

“We’ll start with Mosebly. Thanks.” She clicked off. “Match the locker numbers with the students on those illegals, Peabody. Don’t file anything yet. We’ll talk to them first.”

“Parental notification?”

Eve shook her head. “We’ll talk to them first. Better, I’ll pass them to Detective Sherry in Illegals.”

“Ooooh, Scary Sherry.”

“Yeah, she’ll have them crying for their mommies and taking the pledge.” Eve checked her wrist unit, calculated the time. “Let’s call in a team to help with Mosebly’s.”

“Coming up to end of shift.” Peabody rubbed her hands together in gleeful anticipation. “Whose evening plans would you care to screw with?”

“Baxter and Trueheart just closed one. Tap them. And go ahead and tap McNab on the e-work there, if he’s clear.”

It infuriated Mosebly to have a small platoon of cops in her space. A very nice uptown space, Eve noted. Private-school brass did just fine, particularly when they were divorced with no kids of their own to pay to educate.

She had a female lawyer at her side who squinted at every word in the warrant, then made noises about police insensitivity and harassment.

It was interesting that under the conservative suits Mosebly-from the contents of her drawers-preferred sexy to slutty lingerie. Interesting that among the literature disc and collection of paper novels, she had a supply of popular romances.

And it was too damn bad they found no illegals, no poisons, no paralytics.

They trooped out with boxes of discs, electronics, and paper files. Eve handed the receipt to the lawyer, then heard, with some surprise, Mosebly burst into what sounded like genuine tears just before Eve closed the door behind her.

“Everything in my vehicle,” Eve ordered. “I’ll take it back to Central, log it in. Baxter, you and Trueheart are off the clock.”

“Let’s chow, my young apprentice.” Baxter slung an arm around Trueheart’s shoulders. “I know a place not far away where the food is questionable, but the waitresses are delicious.”

“Well…I could give you a hand with the carting and logging, Lieutenant.”

Eve shook her head. “Go eat and ogle, Trueheart. I’ve got this. I’ll dump you and McNab at Central, Peabody.”

“Excellent.” She didn’t say it would make more sense for them to snag a radio car and haul the boxes downtown since her lieutenant lived only a few blocks away.

Eve tuned them out on the drive. Obviously her partner and the e-geek were off the clock, too. Their conversation was primarily about a vid they both wanted to see, and if they should go for pizza or Chinese.

“We’ll give you a hand with this, Dallas.” Peabody climbed out in Central’s garage. “We’re thinking of going for pot stickers, moo goo, and Chinese beer after. Our treat.”

God, was all Eve could think. She must look pathetic. “I got it, go on. I want to put a couple hours in while I’m here. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“It’ll take you three trips, at least.” McNab pulled out his communicator. “I’ll tag a couple of uniforms for the hauling.”

Eve started to object, then shrugged. It would take her three trips, and that was a waste of time and energy.

“Sure you don’t want to grab a bite?” Peabody asked. “You didn’t even snag a brownie today.”

“I’ll grab something here.”

Peabody’s hesitation told Eve she wanted to push, but she backed off. “If you change your mind, the place we’re going’s only a couple blocks down. Beijing South.”

She wasn’t going to change her mind, but Eve found, after the evidence was logged, she wasn’t going to put in a couple hours either. She was done, finished, out of steam.

But neither could she face going home.

So she went where she supposed she’d known she’d end up. She went to Mavis.

It had been her apartment building once, and one Roarke owned. Just one more of the links between them, she supposed. Not long after she’d moved in with Roarke, Mavis and Leonardo had set up house in Eve’s old apartment. They’d worked a deal with Roarke months before, and had expanded their unit by renting the one next to it, and taking out walls, building more.

With Mavis a hot-ticket music star, and Leonardo a major fashion designer, they could have lived in any exclusive building, bought any trendy house. But this was where they wanted to be, with Peabody and McNab as their neighbors.

She’d never been attached to the apartment, Eve thought as she headed up to it. She’d never been attached to any place she’d lived. Just a place to dress and sleep between shifts.

She’d tried not to become attached to the warm and magnificent glamour of Roarke’s home, but she’d lost the battle. She loved it, every room, probably even those she hadn’t been in yet. She loved the sweep of the lawn, the trees, the way he used the space.

Now, here she was, back at the start, dragging her heels about going back to the house she loved. And the man.

Leonardo answered. She saw it in his eyes, those big, liquid eyes of his, the sympathy. Then he simply enfolded her. The gesture had tears rushing to her throat that had to be brutally swallowed down.

“I’m so glad to see you.” Those enormous hands rubbed, gently as bird wings, up and down Eve’s back. “Mavis is just changing Belle. Come in.” He laid his wide hands on her cheeks and kissed her. “How about some wine?”

She started to refuse. Wine, empty stomach, stress. Then she shrugged. Fuck it. “That’d be good.”

He took her coat, and bless him, didn’t ask how she was or where Roarke might be. “Why don’t you go back and see Mavis and Belle? I’ll bring you the wine.”

“Back? Back to…”

“The nursery.” He beamed a smile. His face was big, like the rest of him, the color of burnished copper. His at-home wear was a pair of brilliantly blue pants with legs as wide as Utah and a silky sweater in snow-blind white.

When she hesitated, he gave her a little nudge. “Go on. To the right through the archway, then left. Mavis will be thrilled.”

The apartment looked nothing like it had under her style. There was so much color it was dizzying, and yet it was cheerful. So much clutter it was impossible to see it all, and yet it was happy.

She passed under an archway that struck her as probably Moroccan in style, then turned into the nursery.

She thought of Rayleen Straffo’s pink and white and frothy bedroom. There was pink here, too, and some white. And there was blue and yellow and green and purple in flashes and streaks, rivers and pools. There was everything.

It was Mavis’s rainbow.

The crib was swirled with color, as was the rocker system chair Eve had given Mavis for her baby shower. There were dolls and stuffed animals and pretty lights. On the walls fairies danced under more rainbows or around fanciful trees bursting with glossy fruit or flowers.

And Eve saw stars sparkling on the ceiling.

Under them Mavis stood, bent over a kind of high, padded table, singing in the squeaky voice millions loved, to a wriggling baby.

“No more poopie for Bella Eve. You have the prettiest poopie in the history of poopies, but my beautiful Belle’s butt is all clean, all shiny. My beautiful, beautiful Belle. Mommy loves her beautiful Bellarina.”

She lifted the baby now, who wore some sort of dress in pale pink that fell in soft folds and flounces. There were bows in the shape of flowers in the baby’s soft crop of dark hair.

Mavis nestled and swayed, then did a little dancing turn.

And saw Eve.

Her face, soft with mother love, went bright and happy, and told Eve everyone had been exactly right. She should have come here before.

“Poopie?” Eve commented. “You say poopie now?”

“Dallas!” Mavis rushed over in green slippers that were made to look like grinning frogs. With the baby cradled in one arm, she hugged Eve hard with the other. She smelled of powder and lotion. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Just got here.” Eve made the effort, and found it wasn’t as hard as she imagined. She took a good look at the baby. “She’s bigger,” she observed. “Looks more…”

Mavis lifted a glossy black brow. “You were going to say human.”

“Okay, yeah, because she does. She also looks like some of you, some of Leonardo. How do you feel?”

“Tired, happy, weepy, thrilled. Want to hold her?”

“No.”

“For one minute,” Mavis insisted. “You can time it.”

“I could break her.”

“You won’t break her. Sit down first, if you’re nervous about it.”

Trapped, Eve avoided the rainbow chair and took the traditional rocker in neon pink. She braced herself when Mavis leaned over and laid the baby in her arms.

No poopie, at least, Eve reminded herself, and stared down as Belle stared up. “I don’t like the way she’s looking at me. Like she’s planning something.”

“She’s figuring you out, that’s all.” Mavis turned and beamed as Leonardo came in with drinks.

Where he was big-redwood big-Mavis was a pixie. A little ball of energy with an explosion of hair currently the color of ripe apricots. She wore a lounge suit with more frogs hopping over her legs and a crowned one in the middle of her chest.

“You can rock her,” Mavis suggested.

“I’m not moving. Something may happen.” And at that moment, Belle poked out her bottom lip, then scrunched up her pretty face. Then let out a pitiful wail.

“Okay, time’s up,” Eve decided, absolutely. “Come and get her, Mavis.”

“She’s just hungry. I was going to feed her before, but she needed changing first.”

To Eve’s relief, Mavis took the baby and sat in the rainbow chair. Then to Eve’s astonishment, Mavis tugged at the frog prince. Her breast popped out, and Belle’s mouth latched on like a hungry leech.

“Wow.”

“There you are, my baby. There you go. Mommy’s milk train is in the station.”

“You both really got the hang of that.”

“We’re a mag team. Leonardo, would you mind if we had a little all-girl time?”

“Absolutely not.” But he bent first to kiss his wife, then his daughter. “My beauties. My angels. I’ll be right out in my studio if you need me.”

He set something frothy in the holder of the system chair, then gave Eve her wine.

In the ensuing silence all Eve could hear was an active sucking sound.

“So…” Mavis nursed and rocked, nursed and rocked. “Why haven’t I heard any media dirt about a blonde fuckhead found floating in the East River?”

Eve lifted her wine, set it down. And did what she’d needed to do all day. She cried like a baby.

“Sorry. Sorry.” When she had herself under some control, she scrubbed her face. “That was bottled up, I guess.” She saw Mavis had tears of sympathy on her cheeks, and had shifted Belle to the other breast. “I shouldn’t be here like this. It probably screws up the milk or something.”

“My milk’s completely uptown. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know. He’s…she’s…Fuck, Mavis. Fuck.”

“You’re not going to tell me Roarke’s doing her, because NPW-no possible way. He wouldn’t. All guys have the small jerk gene, it makes them guys. But only some have the big jerk gene. He doesn’t.”

“No, he’s not doing her. But he used to.”

“I used to pick pockets. You used to arrest me.”

“It’s different.”

“Yeah.”

Eve told her some of it. The red dress, the look she’d caught in Roarke’s eyes, the meeting in her office, and so on.

“Uber bitch came there to flip you.”

“Yeah, she did.” Knowing it, Eve thought, didn’t make it better. “Mission accomplished.”

“Give me, like, a rundown on her. What kind are we dealing with?”

“She’s kick-your-dick-up gorgeous, smart, sexy, sophisticated. Multilingual, rich, slick, and polished.” Eve pushed out of the chair to pace. “She’s a custom fit for him.”

“Bullpoopie.”

“You know what I mean, Mavis. The image. She’s everything I’m not.” Eve threw up her hands. “She’s the anti-me.”

“That’s good. That’s completely mag.”

“Good? Mag? How?”

“Because if you two had solid common, it could be said-I wouldn’t, but itcould be said-that Roarke hooked on you because you reminded him of her. That you were the type he went for. But, see, you’re not. He went foryou, not for a type. I bet that burns her surgically shaped ass.”

“It…oh.” Eve dragged a hand through her hair. “I don’t get this female business. Or it takes me awhile. It would burn her ass that I’m the anti-her? That he didn’t keep looking for her, so to speak.”

“We have a winner.” Mavis slid the baby up over her shoulder and began to rub and pat Belle’s back. “Bet the bitch goes frothy at the mouth every time she thinks about it. Right, Belle-issimo?”

In answer, Belle burped firmly. “There’s my girl. That’s why she set up that vid.”

“Set up the vid?”

Mavis’s frog-green eyes popped. “Jesus, Dallas, you must be knotted up like last week’s hairdo if you missed that. I may have been out of the game a few years, but I know a con when it smacks my adorable, post-pregnancy ass. Did youlook at it?”

“I got-I guess I got knotted up.”

“Hold on. I’m going to put Belle down. Get your wine. We’re going to view the evidence.”

She didn’t want to watch it again, but there was too much curiosity in her to refuse. In the living area, Mavis turned on the screen, hit the replay for previous programming, and cued up the piece from that morning.

“Now, watch like a cop instead of the injured wife.” Even as she said it, Mavis slid a comforting arm around Eve’s waist. “He’s looking down at her, yeah, because she’s talking to him, angling up at him. Making sure he’s looking at her while the camera rolls. Now catch it? The way she shifts so they’re both turned just enough for the camera to zoom onto both their faces. Then she even cheats hers out.”

“She what?”

“Cheats her face-turns it a little more, so the camera can catch that soulful expression she’s plastered on for it. Slick, but obvious if you pay attention. She’s playing you. Both of you.”

Mavis drew back. “Go kick her ass.”

“There’s a problem with that. If I kick her ass, it gives her weight.”

“Shit.” Mavis puffed out a breath. “It does.”

“Another problem is, he feels something for her. That already gives her weight. She knows it.”

“You’re on the other side of the scale, Dallas. Head to head, she doesn’t have a ice-fizzy’s chance in hell.”

“Maybe not. But she’s drawn all the blood so far. I’m bleeding, Mavis, and he doesn’t see it.”

“Go make him.” Even as Eve shook her head, Mavis walked over to get Eve’s coat. “Time to stop letting her run the game, Dallas. And FYI?” She shoved the coat into Eve’s hands. “Roarke called here about a half an hour before you showed up.”

“He did?”

“Real casual like. Asked about the baby, like that. I may not have seen it if I hadn’t been looking, because he’s just that good. But you’re not the only one bleeding tonight.”