Authors: J. D. Robb
“The van you stole,” Eve continued, “from long-term parking at Newark Transportation. In your worry and distress – attempted rape, killing the alleged attacker, you devised a plan – not to run and leave the body, or contact the authorities, but to haul him up, bash in his face, cut off his fingers, stuff him in a bag with bricks and dump him in the Hudson.”
“We didn’t want any trouble. We just borrowed that van. We were going to put it back.”
“Like you were going to put Robert Jansen’s vehicle back?” Still snarling, Peabody shoved a new photo in Ella-Loo’s face. “After you beat him to death with a tire iron and dragged him into the brush off Highway 12 in Arkansas? Or did he try to rape you, too?”
“I don’t —”
“Say you don’t know what we’re talking about.” Eve said it coldly, and had Ella-Loo’s eyes shifting to hers. “Just try it. Were they all self-defense and partying? I won’t bother with names – you didn’t know or care about names. “From Highway 12 to Silby’s Pond.”
As Eve ran through locations, Peabody grabbed each photo, pushed it in front of Ella-Loo’s face.
“You’re going away, and nothing’s going to change that. Digest that for a while. Where you go, how long? You’ve maybe got a little wiggle room there. Are there more than this? That’s one. And two, chapter and verse, Ella-Loo. You tell us everything you did, you and Darryl, and maybe we can make you a deal where you won’t get eaten alive, where you’ve got some chance of getting out again. Keep up the bullshit, you’re gone until you die.”
“I’ve got a kid!”
Now Eve rose, walked around, leaned down behind Ella-Loo. “I know. I know you dumped her on your mother, just dumped her and walked away and haven’t seen her since. Use her, Ella-Loo? Use her and I’ll find new ways to hurt you, ways that’ll make what you and Darryl did to everyone on this table look like a picnic in a springtime meadow. That’s a promise.”
Eve straightened. “One chance, and one only. You tell us about everyone on this table. Details. And you tell us if there are any more. We have live witnesses, we have physical and forensic evidence, we have your trail, we’ve got everything we need to put you away. Keep lying, and we’re done. You’re in an off-planet hole for the rest of your life. And Darryl’s in another. You’ll never see each other again. Dallas and Peabody exiting Interview. Record off.”
Outside the room where Ella-Loo wept hysterically, Eve turned to Peabody. “ ‘Twisted twat’? ‘Sick, psychopathic sluts’?”
“I liked the alliteration. It just came to me.”
Eve punched her shoulder, a sign of high marks. “Scary Peabody did good.”
“I liked it. Scared myself a little, too, but I don’t get the deal, Dallas. We don’t need to deal on this.”
“If it plays out, you’ll get it.” She went with Peabody to Observation. “Banner, you’re up. Agent Zweck, I’m going to set them up for you.”
“They both believed they could and would continue,” Mira told her. “That they were entitled to as what they did brought them together, fulfilled their needs, enhanced what they see as their love. I don’t believe she’ll turn on him. She may, as she has done, insist he only protected her. But she’s as devoted as he, on the basic level.”
“I don’t need her to turn. It’s going to be saving each other as much as themselves that locks it. Let’s finish off Darryl. These two aren’t going to take as long as I thought.”
With Banner she went back into the room, resumed recording, sat.
“Okay, Darryl, thinking time’s up. Here’s how it’s going to go. Two choices now, the same two I just gave to Ella-Loo.”
“I want to see her. You have to let me see her. We swore we’d never be parted again.”
“No, I don’t have to let you see her. But…” She paused, as if thinking. “I will if you choose wisely. Now, she’s already told me some of it because she’s looking out for herself, and for you, but this is only going to work if both of you cooperate.”
“What’d she say?”
“She loves you, Darryl, anybody can see that.”
“We’re two people, but inside one heart.”
“Right. I know that’s why you carved the heart with your initials into the people you killed for each other. Now, I can’t tell you what she said or I’d be influencing your statement. I can only say she explained some of it to me. Like how you borrowed the van you’ve been using from long-term parking in Newark.”
“That’s right. We just borrowed it. Nobody was using it.”
“And she told me about Samuel Zed. The man whose apartment you’ve been living in. You have to tell us what you did to him, Darryl. If you lie, that’s it. It’s over. The prosecuting attorney, she’s pushing this hard. It’s going to be what I told you before. Off-planet, forever, for both of you. The place they’ll put her, Darryl, if this goes to trial in New York? If our PA takes it?”
Eve shook her head.
“The other inmates, the guards? They’re going to look at a beautiful woman like Ella-Loo, somebody like her, and they’re going to hurt her. They’re going to do terrible things to her. I know you don’t want that. I know you want to protect her. She told me how you protect her, always.”
“I do! And I will.”
“Then protect her now, Darryl, and I can work this with the State of New York, I can try to keep the two of you together. You’re going in, that’s something I can’t do anything about. But if you give me what I need, I’ll go to bat for both of you with the PA.”
“If I could just see her —”
“When we’re done, I’ll fix it so you see her.”
“Promise?”
“On the record, I promise when we’re done, you’ll see each other.”
“And we’ll be together after?”
“As long as I’m in charge, you’ll be together. But you have to tell us everything, on the record. If you lie, it’s done. We’re going to start with Zed, the one you dumped in the river.”
“Okay. You gotta understand. It’s all about love. Our love is bigger than anything else in the world. Ella-Loo really wanted to come to New York. It was her dream. And we needed a place to stay, a place to have our life here. She was talking up this guy, this guy here.” He tapped the picture. “In the bar, and she got him to say where he lived, how he lived by himself and all that. It was meant, you see. It was like fate. After a while, she said how she’d like to see his place, and they went. Just a couple blocks away. And she made sure the door stayed unlocked.”
“Okay,” Eve prompted. “That’s good. Then what happened?”
“When I went in after them, he had his hands all over her. It just brought on the fury. We didn’t mean to kill him so quick. It happened fast. We were going to keep him around, see how it all went, but he had his hands on her, so I hurt him more than I meant.”
“But you still kept him alive for a bit, right?”
“For a little while, yeah. He had to tell us some stuff so I could go on into his computer and send off an email to where he worked. Said he had a family emergency and had to be away for a while. Then we had to get rid of him, and we talked it over, and we took his fingers off, ’cause of the prints.”
“Was he still alive when you cut off his fingers? Remember, if you lie, I can’t keep you and Ella-Loo together.”
Darryl wet his lips. “Might be he was still alive for some of it. And when we beat up his face some, but he was dead pretty quick. Then I went out, and got some bricks from this place I saw where we were maybe going to stay. But it was too cold in there for Ella-Loo, so that’s why we needed a real place.
“If you’re going to start a life together, you need a place.”
“And you wanted Zed’s.”
“It was fate. Just like me and Ella-Loo finding each other. So we loaded him into a bag with the bricks, tied it up, and took him out to the river.”
“That’s good, Darryl. Telling the truth’s going to help. But I think you left something out. Something you and Ella-Loo did, together? After you killed Zed, before you dumped his body. Did you use his bed for it?”
He grinned now, wide. “We couldn’t wait for the bed. We’ve got such a powerful need for each other, and we were all keyed up from killing him so fast. The floor’s a featherbed when you’re in love.”
“So you… made love,” Banner said, “on the floor by the body?”
“Then we got the bag and the bricks.”
Sensing Banner’s rage, Eve squeezed his wrist under the table. “Okay, Darryl, we’re on track now. Let’s go back to the beginning. You can’t leave anything out, or I can’t protect Ella-Loo. Was Jansen, on Highway 12, the first person you killed together?”
“That guy in Arkansas? We didn’t set out to kill him. We just needed a car as the truck was finished. Ella-Loo got him to stop, but then he started to fight me, and she had to hit him with the tire iron, and he fell hard. It was pure accident that time, that’s the truth. We had to give him another whack or two, just to be sure, then we dragged him off into the brush, and we wiped down the truck real good, loaded our things into the car. Ella-Loo was all keyed up, you know. The blood and all. And we pulled off a ways down the road, and when we made love…”
His face lit up, all but glowed. “It was like riding a shooting star. We knew nobody’d ever felt what we did. It wasn’t the same when we did it again the next day, and we knew to reach up to heaven again that way, what we needed to do. It’s what we had to do to fulfill ourselves and our destiny. What it was, was our true love right.”
“So the next time, you looked for someone.”
“Well, the next time, he kind of found us. We were just borrowing this cabin, over near Silby’s Pond, and this guy, he comes in and he asks what we’re doing, and says we shouldn’t oughta be in there, ’cause we broke the lock. Just this pissant guy, talking a little crazy. So I hit him with the poker from the fireplace, then we thought maybe if we kept him around, took our time with it, we’d ride that shooting star longer. And we did. Lord knows, we rode that star.”
“Details, Darryl, and they need to match with Ella-Loo’s.”
For the next two hours, he took them through every horrific detail of the bloody route across country.
Twice she sent Banner out for the sweet soft drinks James requested – and to give him a short break from the interview.
When it was done, she looked at the two-way glass, nodded.
“That’s it, Darryl, that’s all of it?”
“I swear to God, it is. If I left anything out it’s ’cause I don’t remember or got mixed up is all. You’re going to fix it now so Ella-Loo and me can be together, so I can see nothing bad happens to her.”
“The deal’s good as long as I’m in charge.”
On cue, Zweck stepped in with two agents he’d contacted. “Darryl Roy James, you’re under arrest for the murder of twenty-nine human beings, for the abduction, forcible imprisonment and torture of same. For the abduction, forcible imprisonment and torture of Jayla Campbell and Reed Mulligan, the attempted murder of Jayla Campbell and the rape of both Campbell and Mulligan.”
“I don’t understand. I thought I was already under arrest.”
“By the NYPSD,” Eve said as she rose.
“You are now charged with federal crimes, and the FBI hereby takes jurisdiction of all matters pertaining. You’re in federal custody, and will be transported to a federal facility.”
“With Ella-Loo?”
“Not a chance in hell.”
“But you promised!” Darryl rounded on Eve. “You said!”
“As long as I was in charge.” She shrugged. “Now I’m not. We’re done.” She walked to Zweck, murmured something. He nodded.
“Hold him here,” Zweck ordered.
Eve walked out with Zweck and Banner while Darryl shouted for Ella-Loo.
“Peabody and I will wrap her up. Banner, you don’t have to hear all this again.”
“I’m in it till it’s done. I’m just going to contact my boss. I want to talk to him, then I’ll be back to watch.”
“Same play?” Zweck asked as Banner walked off.
“Same play. Do me a solid, Zweck. Vendings hate me. Get a Pepsi.”
When she started to pull out credits, he shook his head. “On me. I owe you more than a tube.”
“I’ll take it.” And she drank deep, not deep enough to wash the sickness out, but deep.
Then she went in to do it all over again, hear it all over again, with Ella-Loo.
By the time it was done, she wanted a week’s long shower, she wanted to sleep for a year.
Ella-Loo’s recounting didn’t vary by much. It might not have been as romantic as Darryl’s, might not have included rides on shooting stars, but she rolled it all out.
Some was fear – fear for herself at the idea of being in a place where someone could do to her what she had done to others. And some was her sick and terrible need for the man who’d flipped that murderous switch inside her.
In the end, with Ella-Loo fighting the restraints, cursing Eve, screaming at the federal officers who hauled her up and out, Eve kept her promise.
They pulled Darryl out of his interview room at the same time.
And they saw each other.
“Darryl, Darryl, help me. Don’t let them hurt me.”
He fought like a madman, screaming for her. “Ella-Loo! I love you, Ella-Loo! I’ll find you. They won’t keep us apart.”
“I love you, Darryl! I’ll wait for you. I’ll wait forever!”
The feds pulled them off in opposite directions, with the corridor echoing with their desperate declarations of love.
Zweck held out a hand for Eve’s. “Lieutenant, anytime you need anything from me. Anything, anytime, you’ve got it.”
“Appreciate it. I’d like to know where they end up.”
“Worlds apart, Lieutenant. That much I can promise.”
When he walked off, Eve pressed her fingers to her eyes. When she dropped her hands, she looked straight at Roarke.
“You’re still here?”
“I’ve come and gone a few times, but yes.” When he laid his hands on her shoulders, she gestured him into interview. Shut the door.
Then let herself lean, let herself be held.
“You always think, this is the worst. It can’t be worse than this. You have to think it, or you can’t do the job. You have to think it even knowing there’s going to be worse. So far, this is the worst. Hearing them tell it, how they enjoyed it, how they needed it, how they got off on it – and that was how they defined love.”