Authors: J. D. Robb
“One I’ll widen if you need it. You brought them in, you’ll close this down. Chief Tibble adds his weight to that – and his well-done.”
“Appreciated, sir.”
“APA Reo will participate at this point, but a federal prosecutor will take over. The suspects will be remanded to federal custody when we’re done.”
“Understood, Commander, thoroughly.”
He smiled a little. “Good. The media’s been quiet on this because they haven’t connected the dots, but this will explode, and soon. I believe the first leak started…” Deliberately he consulted his wrist unit. “About ten minutes ago.”
Which meant his hand had been on the tap.
“The NYPSD identified, located and apprehended the two individuals who cut a bloody swath across the country. Two individuals who took at least twenty-four lives since they began their murderous spree in August of last year. The feds can have their bite of the credit,” Whitney concluded, “but they won’t take the whole pie.”
“A good slice of that pie goes to Deputy Banner, sir.”
“Agreed, and the department will recognize his invaluable assistance. I have reason to believe the FBI will do the same.”
He turned when Mira and Reo came to the door.
“Jack, Eve.” Mira stepped in, then sideways to make room. “You’ve been busy.”
“Heck of a morning already.” Reo, her sunny hair groomed, her eyes sharp and alert, set her briefcase on Eve’s desk. “Any way I can get coffee before we start?”
Eve edged over to the AutoChef.
“There has to be a way to widen this room,” Whitney commented. “I can find it in the budget.”
“If it was bigger more people would come into it. Respectfully, sir,” Eve added as she programmed coffee.
Since she had time, she took it, filled in the details, outlined her basic strategy.
When she was alone in the office again, she took a deep breath. Four people in that space sucked up a lot of air. She put a file together, and went out.
“Banner, you’re up first. Peabody, Observation. Tag Zweck, let him know we’re starting. Where’s James?”
“He’s in Interview B.”
“He’s first.”
Banner fell into step beside Eve. “I appreciate the chance to sit in, Lieutenant.”
“You more than earned it.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate it.”
“You get that NYPSD sweatshirt yet, Deputy?”
“I sure did.”
“Wear it proud. Here we go,” she said, and opened the door to Interview B. “Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, Banner, Deputy William, entering interview with James, Darryl Roy, regarding cases H-52310, H-52314, H-52318 and connectings. Mr. James, have you been informed of your rights?”
They’d cleaned him up, put some NuSkin on a cut above his left eyebrow, and dressed him in a prison jumpsuit. The virulent orange didn’t do much for him. Nor did the purpling bruise on his jawline.
“Where’s my Ella-Loo?”
“In custody, her ass in the fire, just like yours. Have you been informed of your rights?”
“I want to see her. I want to see her and make sure y’all didn’t hurt her.”
Eve sat across from him, the table between them. Set the file down. “You have the right to remain silent,” she began.
“They told me all that already. You want to bring Ella-Loo to me right now.”
“Then you’ve been informed of your rights?”
“I said so, didn’t I?” He banged a fist on the table, restraints rattling. “I don’t say nothing about nothing until I see Ella-Loo.”
“You don’t see Ella-Loo until you say something about everything.” Eve leaned back. “Those rights you heard? That’s all you get. The fact is, Darryl, I can make it so you never set eyes on her again.”
Rage rose up into his face in a red flood. “You can’t keep her from me. We’re meant. We’re true lifetime love.”
“You think? We’ll see how ‘true,’ how ‘lifetime,’ she figures when she realizes that lifetime’s going to be in an off-planet concrete cage.”
Now she leaned forward. “You’re going down and down hard, Darryl. Get that? Never going to see the true light of day again. This isn’t going to be a couple years in the Oklahoma State Pen, with conjugals and visiting rooms, time to read and take classes. This is multiple, consecutive life sentences, the hardest of hard time.”
“You don’t scare me. You come busting into our place —”
“Yours? Samuel Zed’s.”
Darryl’s look went sly. “Sure, good old Sammy. He said how we could stay there. He had to go on a trip for a bit, and we could stay there, keep an eye on the place for him.”
“Is that so?”
“Sure is.”
“Did that trip include spending time floating in the Hudson River, without his fucking fingers?”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Where’d you meet him?”
“Some bar or other.”
“What bar?”
Cocky, he smirked at her. “Hell, honey, you’ve got so many of them, who knows?”
“Did Ella-Loo wag her tits at him,
honey
, lure him in?”
The red flood rose again. “Don’t you talk about my girl that way.”
“Did she promise to fuck him, so he’d bring her home? Which one of you smashed his teeth in? Which one of you cut off his fingers?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. If Zed got into trouble, got himself killed, it’s not on us. We were just watching the place for him.”
“Were Jayla Campbell and Reed Mulligan watching the place, too?”
He aimed his gaze just above her head. “I don’t know who that is.”
She heard truth for the first time. He didn’t even know their names. “The two people you had tied down so you could torture them. So you and Ella-Loo could cut them and burn them and beat them because torturing and killing gets you off, you miserable fuck.”
He stretched his legs out under the table, sucked air through his teeth. “You don’t know nothing. We met up with the two of them, and they said they were into that sort of thing, that lots were here in the big city. We were all just fooling around, is all. They say different, they’re liars and you can’t prove otherwise.”
Eve opened the file, dumped photos of the tortured dead on the table. “All these people, Darryl. Were all these people into it?”
“I don’t know those people.” But he looked at them avidly, with hints of excitement and pride in his eyes.
Eve started to push up, increase the pressure. But in a quiet voice, Banner said, “Melvin Little.”
“Say what?”
“Melvin Little. Right here.” Banner nudged the photo closer.
“Where you from?”
“Silby’s Pond, Arkansas, same as him. He was a friend of mine.”
“I’m right sorry about your friend, but me and my Ella-Loo ain’t never been to Silby’s Pond.”
“You want to protect Ella-Loo, don’t you, Darryl?”
“I’d do anything for her.”
With his finger he traced a heart over his chest.
“I’m not going to let anybody hurt her. I’d
die
for her.”
“I can see that.” A hint of admiration eked into Banner’s tone. “I can see the two of you are meant, just like you said. So you need to understand, we can prove what you did to my friend, and to all these others. We can prove you were in Silby’s Pond, and how you and Ella-Loo met in the Rope ’N Ride back in Oklahoma.”
“ ‘No sooner looked but they loved.’ That’s Shakespeare, friend.”
“All right. We can prove you and Ella-Loo loved your way across country, how when you got out of prison, the two of you started east in the truck you’d stolen about four years before from Barlow Hanks.”
“Hell.” The cocky smirk came back. “I gave Barlow cash money for that truck, and if he says different, he’s a liar.”
“You crossed into Arkansas,” Banner continued in that same easy, conversational tone, “and you killed Robert Jansen with a tire iron, took his car, and you drove on to Silby’s Pond, and broke into that cabin. Then Little Mel came along.”
“Don’t know those people,” Darryl said with the same stubborn stupidity. “You saying so don’t make it true.”
“We can prove all that, prove all these people died at your hands. You need to understand, Darryl, we’re just giving you a chance to help yourself now and protect Ella-Loo. You don’t tell us what you did, it’s likely you won’t see her again. It’s likely they’re going to put her someplace where somebody’s going to hurt her ’cause you’re not there to look out for her.”
Darryl leaned forward, fists clenched. “I won’t let you do that.”
Eve pushed up, out of the chair, changed the focus. “We’ll do what we want. Buy a clue, asshole. Think about it, think about Ella-Loo being in that cage where you can’t get to her, can’t touch her, can’t help her. Think about it,” she repeated, tapping the table, the photos. “And see if you remember any of these people when we come back. Dallas and Banner exited interview, record off.”
She stepped out. “Not bad,” she said to Banner, “not bad at all.”
“I wanted to reach over, take him by the throat, ram his face into the table until it was nothing but blood. I never felt that kind of violence in me before.”
“Killers can bring it out.” He’d gone a little pale, Eve noted, as he leaned back against the wall. “Why don’t you take a break?”
“I think I will. I’ll come into the observation place, but I’m going to take a break first.”
She watched him go, then went back to her office, generated another set of photos before tagging Peabody on her comm. “Heading for Parsens now.”
“I’m on the door.”
Different strategy, Eve decided, and said the same to Peabody. “We hit her hard. No good cop.”
“Hot damn.”
“Put on your bitch face, Peabody.” Eve opened the door, noted orange didn’t do much for Parsens, either. “Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Peabody, Detective Delia, entering Interview with Parsens, Ella-Loo.” She fed in the case numbers, talking steadily as Ella-Loo bitched.
“You can’t push me around this way! I’m all cut up. I want to go to the hospital. You molested me, you grabbed my tits. I don’t want to talk to you.” And finally. “What did you do with Darryl? I want my Darryl!”
“Have you been read your rights, Ella-Loo?”
“Fuck you and your rights. I want to go to the hospital. I want Darryl.”
“You’ve been medically cleared, and seeing Darryl’s not going to happen. Probably ever.”
Pure shock leached color from her face. “What do you mean ‘ever’? He’s the husband of my heart and I got every right to see him.”
“The only rights you have are these: You have the right to remain silent.”
She continued to read out the Revised Miranda over Ella-Loo’s shouts and demands. “Do you understand your rights and obligations?”
“I understand you’re a titless bitch.”
“I can read them off again, and keep reading them off until you say, for the record, whether or not you understand them. Or we can go, leave you alone here to think about it for a few hours.”
“I understand them just fine. I want my own clothes, and I want Darryl, and I don’t have to say nothing to some dyke cop.”
“We don’t give much of a shit about what you want,” Peabody said, made Eve proud with the grinding, vicious tone she used. “The only clothes you’re going to be wearing from now on are what you’ve got and prison blues. You look like an overbaked pumpkin in orange, but I bet the women at Riker’s are going to eat you right up.”
“I don’t know what Riker’s is, and I’m not going.”
“Just temporarily,” Eve continued. “After a short stay I’m betting on Omega. That’s off-planet. Jayla Campbell and Reed Mulligan – the two you were torturing when we met? They have a lot to say about you and Darryl.”
“They’re liars. We were partying. No law against doing what you want to do in your own home. Consenting adults.”
“They consented to being bound, cut, burned, beaten, raped?”
“They’re sick, that’s what. Darryl and me were just going along, just experimenting. But we’d had enough and were going to make them get out of our place.”
“Your place?” Peabody roared it, grabbed the file, dumped the photos, found Samuel Zed. “His place, you twisted twat. Are you so stupid you think cutting off his fingers meant we couldn’t ID him? Look what you did to him.”
When Peabody shoved up, rushed around the table, pushed the photo in Parsens’s face, Eve just sat back, let her ride.
Go, Peabody, she thought.
“Get away from me!” Ella-Loo shrieked it. “Don’t touch me. You’re not allowed to put hands on me.”
“I’m allowed to do whatever the hell I want to sick, psychopathic sluts.”
“Are not! Darryl! Get her off me! I’ll tell!”
“Tell who?” Eve wondered. “Who’s going to believe you over cops? And things happen to recordings all the time. Glitchy equipment. How about we unlock her restraints, Peabody? You can do what you did to the last one. I’ve got your back.”
Peabody bared her teeth; her eyes glittered. “Let’s go.”
When Eve started to rise, Ella-Loo tried to hunch into a ball. “You can’t, you can’t. He attacked me, that’s what happened. Darryl was just protecting me. That guy there, that guy he was trying to rape me, so Darryl protected me. It was self-defense.”
“And somehow in this self-defense, Samuel Zed lost all his fingers.”
“We… we were afraid. We were afraid we’d get in trouble, so we dropped him in the water.”
She kept herself hunched, shot hate-filled looks at Peabody.
“We needed a place to stay, so we went to where he lived. That’s all we did. He was raping me, and Darryl stopped him. Darryl’s a hero.”
“Clearly. Where were you when this alleged attempted rape occurred?” Eve asked.
“I don’t know. We just got to New York City. It was dark. We were having a drink somewhere, and I just went outside for a minute, and this guy grabbed me and started tearing my clothes, and Darryl came out and stopped him.”
“Outside some bar, at night, in single-digit temperatures, some guy grabs you and tears at your clothes.”
“That’s what happened. Self-defense.”
“Nobody noticed the attempted rape, the self-defense that resulted in a dead body. And somehow you still had time to dig out the dead man’s identification, had time to transport said dead body – in the van you stole.”
Confusion flickered over her face. “I – we – nobody wanted to help us. Nobody. We didn’t steal nothing.”