Abandoned in Death (In Death, #54)(104)

“Okay. Why don’t you…” Eve broke off when Mira came in. Rather than one of her fashionable suits, she wore slim black pants, a flowy white top with a black linen jacket over it. “Mary Kate, this is Dr. Mira.”

“I get two doctors?”

“I’m very glad to meet you, Mary Kate.” Mira extended a hand. “I work for the NYPSD.”

“Shrink. Head shrink,” Eve supplied.

“Oh. Okay.”

“Dr. Mira’s profile helped us identify and apprehend Dawber.”

Mira bounced off Eve’s statement as she sat. “You’ve been through an ordeal.”

“I get a little shaky, but mostly I’m just really pissed off.”

“Sounds healthy.”

“I’d like Mary Kate to start at the beginning, take us through it. As many details as you can,” Eve reminded her.

“All right. I planned this romantic getaway with this jerk dog of an asshole I got stupid over.”

She had a good head for details, Eve concluded as Mary Kate told her story, finished the soup along the way.

How he’d looked, how he’d sounded, what he wore. The rumbling sound that signaled departure or return. Garage door, Eve thought.

They took a break when Peabody escorted her family in. Eve stepped away from the tears, the embraces, gave them the space they needed.

“He hasn’t asked for a lawyer yet,” Peabody told her. “But he’s finally stopped yelling for his mommy and crying. He’s just sitting quietly in his cell now.”

“Good. I’m close to letting Covino go, then we’ll bring him up.”

“The search turned up a case of pressure syringes locked in the van—loaded ones. Zip ties, a stunner—police issue—a gurney, a ramp. And he put together his own lab on the third floor of the house—probably to make what’s in the syringes, and whatever drugs he put in their food. McNab says he kept really good records in there.”

“He would. He wouldn’t be able to help himself. Contact Dickhead.”

“Crap.”

“Yeah. He’s going to go off about this—Dawber worked under him. Shut him down, tell him to get his ass into the lab, and identify what’s in the syringes, what we send him from the home lab. If he gives you any grief, tell him the commander and the chief are already informed and involved—and you’re happy to inform them of his lack of cooperation.”

“That actually might be sort of fun.”

“Take what you can where you find it. Book an interview room first, and have Dawber brought up. He can sit in the box while we finish up.”

Eve walked back across the room.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’d like to get the rest of Mary Kate’s statement so we can let her go.”

Mary Kate’s mother leaped up, threw her arms around Eve, and basically squeezed the breath out of her.

“You saved my girl, my precious girl. You’re an angel. A goddess!”

“I’m a cop, Ms. Covino. If I could just—”

Ms. Covino pulled back, eyes very like her daughter’s, red-rimmed but fierce. “I want you to hurt this man who took my girl.”

“I understand, but we’re the police. I’m not allowed to physically harm a suspect.”

Now Ms. Covino gave Eve a poke. “I saw the vid. Twice!”

“Mom. Let Lieutenant Dallas finish.”

“Finish him,” the woman whispered in Eve’s ear, then went back to stand behind her daughter like a palace guard.

“All right, Mary Kate, you said tonight when he came into this new space where he’d put you, he was in a bad mood, but you were able to placate him.”

“That’s right. I’d decided I had to do whatever I could to string him along until somebody found me, or I found a way out. He went into that little brat mode—with the accent like I told you before? And he got mad at me. So I pulled this one out.”

She reached up for her mother’s hand. “Used that ‘watch it, kid’ mom tone, then ignored him. It worked on him just like it worked on us, and he got sulky, then cooperative.”

“How did you get him to take the keys, the ’link, the rest out and leave it where you could reach it?”

“I said we’d play a game. He was still in creepy kid mode, so he jumped on it. A memory game—I’ve got a good one.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

“I’d close my eyes and he’d take everything out of his pockets and put it on that little table he’d bolted down. I got to look for, like, three seconds, then if I couldn’t name everything, he got a cookie.”

“A cookie?”

“It worked. I wanted to see what he had, what I could use if I could get to it. So I lost on purpose, and he went tearing over to get the cookie. That’s when the buzzer—the doorbell—went off.”

She ran through the rest up until she’d managed to unlock the shackles, grab the Taser and the police had come in.

“Then I cried all over Detective Jenkinson, you came down, and they took me out. Detective Reineke found me some tissues.”

Eve sat back. “You’re in marketing, right?”

“Yeah.”

“If you ever want to change careers and try the cops, I’ll get you into the Academy and into this division.”