Payback in Death, page 32
“Feeney wants it.”
“Thought he might.”
She took a loading zone near the apartment building.
“I can’t believe they’d keep the ’links—Ben Greenleaf’s and his daughter’s.”
Eve shrugged as she mastered in. “Maybe. Maybe not. But she never figured we’d connect her with Noy and, without that, no motive. The length of rope they used came from a longer length. You could see it had been cut to size. We find that, lab matches it, there’s the attempted. We don’t need the ’links.”
They walked up the stairs, mastered in. Sealed up.
“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, Peabody, Detective Delia,” she said for the record, “entering the residence of Arnez, Elva, and Robards, Denzel, for a warranted search and seize.”
Different flowers, Eve noted. Fresh and different than the ones days before.
“See if there’s a utility closet in the kitchen area. That’s the most likely place to keep rope. I’ll start in the bedroom.”
Eve walked back.
Big bed, padded headboard in deep blue, light spread in a pale tone. And the requisite mountain of pillows.
She took the closet first.
Her clothes. All hers. Where did he keep his? Eve wondered.
Hers filled every inch of it, with a section designated for shoes and bags. Plenty of them.
A couple of tiny shinies among the big-ass bags, Eve noted. She wondered if Arnez had scored herself a Delago at her employee (former now) discount.
But her attention focused on a large box that sat on the shelf above the long rod. A fabric-covered box, with a pattern of tiny pink and red hearts.
Reaching up, she lifted it down—had some weight to it. She carted it out of the closet and set it on the bed. No lock, she noted, but then again, her closet. Her space.
She opened it, sighed.
“Too easy,” she murmured. “Almost not satisfying. Almost.”
“Got the rope!” Peabody came in with a neatly coiled length of rope in her sealed hands. “It’s the same rope, Dallas. A fresh cut on one end. It was just there in the closet.”
“So were these. In her closet. Just her closet. He must have another space for his.” Eve lifted out some photos. “Somebody hasn’t moved on.”
“That’s Arnez with Brice Noy. Holy crap, lots of pictures. Her with the Noy family, with Noy, senior prom with Brice. Mag dress!”
“Yeah, that’s important. Everything’s in sections. Brice or her and Brice in this one, family in this one, Greenleaf—you can see some were taken from the window. Fucking shots of the fire escape, the window lock.”
“It’s all right here. A section for mementos. That looks like a wrist corsage—like the one she’s wearing in the prom photo. She preserved it. An old ’link.”
“What do you bet there are old texts and tags on it—from Brice, to Brice?”
“I’d bet a Delago evening bag if I had one. Jesus, Dallas, we’ve got her cold.”
“Not quite cold, but close. That should be Feeney.”
While Peabody went to answer, Eve tried the ’link. Passcoded, but it had batt life. So charged up recently.
She turned when Feeney walked in. “How old is this model?”
“Let’s see.” He frowned over it. “Ten, maybe twelve years.”
“Just right. I need to get what’s on it. Her ’link’ll be in Evidence, so will Robards’s. There’s a small room off the living space. Office setup. Comp. I’ll let you know if we find any more e’s.”
Feeney looked down at the photos. “She was pretty tight with Noy and his family.”
“Yeah, she was.”
“They took Greenleaf out for doing his job. He died in the line, Dallas.”
“Yes, he did. And they’re going to pay for it. Peabody, find Robards’s stuff. He probably uses the closet in the office. I’ll finish in here.”
Eve fisted her hands on her hips, looked around.
“You’re not half as smart as you think you are, Elva. Let’s see what else you have tucked away.”
While Eve searched, Peabody hustled back. “Look at this!”
She held two evidence bags, each with a ’link. One matched the description of Ben’s daughter’s.
The stupidity of killers rarely surprised. This made the cut. “Jesus Christ, they kept them.”
“He did, anyway. Disabled them, so no way to track. He’s not an e-guy really, but handy. I bet he figured he could use them for parts, or wipe them and enable. Dallas, he’s got framed pictures on a shelf in his closet. It’s kind of sad, really, he had to keep them there. Photos of his family, of him at work with coworkers, of him and Arnez.”
Peabody stepped to the bed. “Hey, that’s her prom dress.”
“Tell me if she’d keep a dress like this for ten years.”
“It’s a great dress—but for a teenager. Everything she wears and has is now. She’d never wear this anywhere.”
“She also kept the jewelry she’s wearing in the photo. Have a look. Is she going to wear these earrings, this necklace now?”
“They’re sweet and, no, she doesn’t wear the sweet. Where were they?”
“Dresser’s got a jewelry drawer. These had their own compartment. Bag it up, will you? We’ve got Robards cold enough, but I’m pretty sure he’d take the fall for her, and she’d let him. To get her? We use Brice Noy. Let’s go get her.”
She took two tablets in to Feeney. “Anything?” she asked him.
“You wanted old texts and tags, I got ’em. Plenty of them, ranging from nine to eleven years. Haven’t read them all—like I said, plenty. But I did a quick search using Greenleaf. I got a couple winners.”
He handed her the ’link.
From Brice to Arnez:
The sonofabitch Greenleaf might as well have put that stunner to my dad’s throat. He killed him, Ellie. He fucking killed him.
Arnez to Brice:
He’ll pay for it. We’ll make him pay, I swear. No matter what, no matter how long it takes. Then his family will know how it feels.
“There’s more, but you should see this one before you get her in the box. I checked the dates—this is the night the kid hanged himself.
I went to see that bastard Greenleaf. They took my spot at the Academy away. I went to beg him to fix it. Begged him. All I ever wanted was to be a cop like my dad. I need to be a cop, need to clear his name. I’ve done everything right, and he said he couldn’t do anything about it. How it wasn’t up to him. How I should finish school, reapply. How he’d put in a good word for me when I did. Fucking liar. Everything’s ruined, everything. I’ve got nothing now.
You’ve got me. Always, always. He won’t get away with it. And we’ll clear your dad’s name, Brice. We will! That bastard Greenleaf ruined everything, and we’ll ruin him. We’ll make him sorry. Make them all sorry. I love you.
I have to go. I’m tired. I’m just so goddamn tired.
I’m here for you. I’ll always be here for you.
But Brice didn’t respond.
She looked from the ’link screen to Feeney.
“Take her down,” he said.
They hauled what they’d found to the car.
“Check in with the search teams, Peabody. If either of them are done, pull them here to cover what we didn’t. We’ve got enough. Anything else is icing.”
“This festered in her all this time,” Peabody said as she texted. “Festered so she found someone she knew she could dominate and manipulate like Robards. Until she could get a place in the same building as her target. Festered while she planned this all out, made friends with them.
“The team on the dress shop’s finished. They’ll move to the apartment.”
“Didn’t they used to—when a wound festered, didn’t they cauterize it? We’re going to burn her ass, Peabody.”
“That poor kid,” Peabody murmured. “Brice Noy. He needed help. She made it worse. She didn’t mean to, but she did. The spot at the Academy? Greenleaf couldn’t have done anything about that, either way.”
“No.”
“She didn’t even address that, no real comfort or sympathy for him over losing his spot. All she could talk about was payback.”
“Because that’s all that mattered to her,” Eve said as she pulled into the garage. “It’s what mattered then, it’s what mattered now.”
On the glides at Central she texted Reo.
My office, asap.
On the way. She’s lawyered; he hasn’t.
She’s going to need a damn good one.
“We take him first, Peabody. Get him into Interview, and I’ll brief Reo. And let Mira know. And Whitney. Captain Greenleaf died in the line. He’ll want to be there.”
She went straight into her office because the anger was too huge, and needed to be tamped down and rechanneled.
She got coffee more from habit than need, drank it while pacing off the rage.
Reo, in her bold red suit, walked in.
“Sit,” Eve told her.
“I want your coffee.”
“Sit,” Eve repeated. “I’ll get the coffee.” She nodded at the boxes on her desk. “I’m going to unseal those so you can have a look, and I’m going to run it for you.”
Reo sat, drank her coffee, listened, looked.
“In possession of the rope.”
“It’s on its way to the lab, but it’s going to match.”
“And the two ’links. From his closet, you said.”
“That’s right.”
“He’s done. I can make a deal with him—life on-planet—if he rolls on her.”
“He won’t. What he’s going to do is claim it’s all him.”
“And expect us to buy that with all you have?”
“He won’t flip on her. I can and will trip him up on details, but he won’t flip. No point in a deal, Reo, for either of them.”
“I wasn’t intending to offer her one,” Reo said. “Nail her down, Dallas. Nail her down, and we’ll put them both away. The PA’s office has a very dim view of cop killers.”
“He’s in Interview B,” Peabody said when she came to the door. “He’s been crying. It shows.”
“Good. Two minutes.”
Chapter Twenty-three
After she’d gathered what she needed, Eve met Peabody outside Interview B.
“You take him,” Eve said, and handed Peabody the evidence box and files.
“What? Me? Oh, you want me to soften him up, play good, caring cop so you can come in hard.”
“No. I want you to take him, hard, soft, however you need to take him.”
Eve opened the door. From the table, Robards looked up with red-rimmed eyes.
“Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, and Peabody, Detective Delia, entering Interview with Robards, Denzel, on the matter of case files H-6759, FA-12829, CM-4921, and related charges.”
Eve took a seat.
“Have you been read your rights, Mr. Robards?” Peabody asked.
“I don’t know what’s going on. I—”
“Please answer the question.” She snapped it out, whip sharp.
“Yeah, they did that, but—”
“Do you understand your rights and obligations in these matters?”
“I understand that, but I don’t understand anything else. I need to talk to Elva. Nobody will let me talk to her.”
“We might be able to arrange that later.” Peabody chose the brisk, all-business cop. “Right now, you need to talk to us.”
Peabody opened a file. “How long have you known Elva Arnez?”
“Nineteen months. And two weeks,” he added.
“And how, in that amount of time, did she convince you to kill Captain Greenleaf and his son, Benjamin Greenleaf?”
“She—how—” He pressed his lips together. Hugged his elbows. “That’s crazy! That’s just batshit. She’d never, never do that. Elva’s a beautiful soul, a—a tender heart.”
Peabody folded her hands over the file. “Are you claiming you convinced her to murder these people?”
“We didn’t kill anybody! I don’t know how—why,” he corrected, “you’d say something like that. We were friends with Martin and Ben.”
“Makes it worse, doesn’t it, Lieutenant? Even worse that these two shit stains would use friendship, a family that opened their homes to them, in order to kill.”
“It does. What do you figure, Detective? Two consecutive life terms, off-planet? They could actually end up with three.”
“I figure the three. Either way, neither of them will ever get out of a cage. An off-planet cage.”
“We didn’t do anything! It’s whacked, totally whacked you think we did.”
Obviously shaken, he leaned forward as if desperate to explain.
“Jesus, Elva wasn’t even there when Martin died. You know that. And you’re trying to say murder when it was suicide. Because he was a cop, like you. And Beth won’t get the insurance money if you say he killed himself. We’re sorry it happened, but—”
He broke off, jolted when Peabody shoved to her feet. “Bullshit!” She tossed crime scene printouts on the table. He winced, looked away.
“What? You’re shy about looking at your handiwork? Can’t look at the dead body of a man you called friend? You think we don’t know what we’re doing? You really think we’re so stupid we’d buy your half-assed setup?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” A line of sweat dribbled down his left temple, and his gaze jumped everywhere except for the photos of the dead.
“Really? Then I’ll walk your lying ass through it. Your Elva unlocked the bedroom window in your friend’s apartment. And when she gave you the all clear—we’ve got your ’links, asshole—you went down the fire escape, went through the window. You walked through the apartment where you’d been welcomed, put a stunner on high against your friend’s throat, and murdered him in cold blood.”
“That’s crazy.” And while sweat continued to roll, he began to shudder as if he sat in a brisk winter wind. “You’ll never prove that because it’s crazy. Martin killed himself. It’s sad, but it’s—”
“You put his fingers on the weapon, dropped it, just like Elva told you. But you’re idiots who know squat about basic science and forensics. Look how clear these two prints are on the weapon.”
Peabody jabbed her finger on the crime scene shot.
“No prints to show he’d handled the weapon, no prints to show he’d checked or set the weapon on high. What, you think we’d buy he’d wiped the stunner clean before he used it?”
“He—he must have. He—”
“Bullshit. Just two prints, so clear and pristine on the weapon? Couldn’t be clear and pristine, physically impossible, with a self-termination.”
“I don’t understand what—”
“Damn right you don’t, even though you stood there and watched him convulse, you don’t understand. That’s why you fucked it up.
“How did it feel?” she demanded. “How did it feel to jam that stunner against his throat, jam it hard, hold it there while his body convulsed? While you watched him die. How did it feel?”
Tears streamed to plop like rain on the table. “No. I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did. You jammed that stunner so hard, held it there so the probes lacerated the skin. Did it seem quick to you, those few seconds it took?”
Squeezing his eyes shut, Robards shook his head.
“And when his body stopped convulsing, you pressed his fingers to the weapon for those two clear, perfect prints, just like Elva told you. You wrote what she’d told you to write. Then you went back upstairs, signaled her it was done, just like she told you. You didn’t know Detective Webster was coming, didn’t know we’d discover his body so quickly. You barely missed each other.”
She circled the table, stood behind him. “Even that wouldn’t have mattered because you’re stupid.”
“And cruel,” Eve murmured.
“Oh yeah, can’t forget the cruel. You left him there for the woman who’d loved him for decades and decades to find. The woman who’d cooked for you, invited you to family dinners, holidays. You wanted to hurt her.”
Tears ran down his face, mixed with the sweat. “I never wanted to hurt Beth!”
“But you had to, didn’t you? You had to hurt Beth to give Elva what she wanted. I mean, hell, what choice did you have? But even that wasn’t enough. You stood at the captain’s memorial, pretending to feel grief—you don’t have feelings. And in his daughter’s home, you used a child—a child—to try to kill his son.”
“No. No. You don’t know that. You’re just making things up. That’s what cops do.”
Peabody tossed a photo of the rope taken from the kitchen closet. “We found this in your apartment.”
“I—it’s just some rope.”
“It’s cut from the rope used when you tried to hang Ben Greenleaf.”
“It’s not.”
“It is. Our lab verified.” Not yet, Peabody thought, but they would. “Oh, and how about these? You had these in your closet.”
She set the two ’links on the table.
“I…”
“Where did you get them?”
“I just found them. I found them.”
“Really, you found this one in Dory Greenleaf’s little purse, on the bar in the family room of her aunt’s house? And this one? You just happened to find that in her father’s pocket before you put a noose around his neck?”
“No, no, I … found them on the street.”
“When?”
“Yesterday, I think.”
“You think?” she snapped out. “You think?”
“Yesterday!” Terror in his eyes, he shouted it. “I found them yesterday.”
“When yesterday? Where exactly on the street?”
“I…”
“Quick! Two disabled ’links that just happen to belong to the man you tried to murder and his daughter. Where, when, how?”
“I don’t know! I want to talk to Elva!”
“You’re not going to talk to Elva. Maybe, just maybe, when she’s in the women’s lockup off-planet and you’re in the men’s, they’ll let you write love letters to each other.”
