Vendetta in Death (In Death #49)(106)

“Please, please, please.” Brinkman wept, shuddered. “Please don’t let her hurt me anymore.”

“You’re safe now. You’re safe. Okay if I hunt up a blanket for him, Lieutenant?” Trueheart asked. “He’s in shock.”

“Yeah. Then you and Baxter can take her in, book her. I’ll be in when we’re done here.”

Baxter angled his head as he studied Darla. “It’s like a girl superhero costume. A little classic Wonder Woman, a little Dark Angel.”

“A touch of Rose and Thorn.”

“Yeah.” Baxter nodded at Roarke. “Yeah, her, too.”

“MTs on the way,” Peabody said. “The nurse is coming. That’s a good call, Dallas. Eloise is going to need her.”

When Darla’s eyelids fluttered, Eve crouched down. “You drugged your own grandmother.”

“Grand? Grand?” She started to struggle. “No, no, no, I’m not finished!”

“Yeah, you are. You have the right to remain silent.”

She didn’t take that right as Eve read off the Revised Miranda, but continued to rage, to weep in frustration, to curse.

“Maybe give them a hand with her, McNab.”

He turned from studying the e-toys, actually looked stricken.

“Help them get her in the vehicle. You can come back and play.”

“On it.” He pranced toward the stairs.

Feeney studied the workstations as well, rubbed his hands together. “Let’s get this stuff logged, Callendar, and start having some fun.”

“All over and back, Cap.”

Eve called for sweepers while Peabody helped a blanket-wrapped Brinkman off the floor and to a sofa. “You got him, Peabody?”

“Yeah. He’ll be all right. You’ll be all right, Mr. Brinkman.”

“She hurt me. She hurt me. I don’t understand.”

“I’ll go up, wait for the sweepers and the bus.”

“I’m with you, Lieutenant.”

Eve glanced at Roarke as she started upstairs. “You know you want to play with those e’s.”

“I do, and I will. But for now …”

“How did you take out that droid?”

“Ah. I did a quick analysis of the one upstairs. Brilliant work really. A pity. In any case, I was able to program a shutdown. It would’ve been a shame for you to destroy it.”

“Wouldn’t have hurt my feelings.”

He skimmed a hand over her hair. “You’ve a long night ahead.”

“But a better one than the last couple, and no trip to the morgue in the morning.”

McNab all but flew back in, had the grace to stop, send Eve a sheepish smile. “Um, need any help here, Dallas?”

“Go be a geek.”

“Born one, live one, die one. You in, Roarke?”

“Go be a geek,” she repeated, this time to Roarke when she heard the sirens. “I’ll send the MTs down for Brinkman.”

“If you insist.”

Alone, Eve let in the MTs, directed them. She contacted Reo, then Mira. Yeah, a long night, she thought, as she watched a cab drive through the gates. A long night for everyone.

“Miss Eloise?” Donnalou said as she jumped from the cab.

“Upstairs. She’s been sedated.”

“You sedated her!”

“No. Darla did, probably shortly after you left. She’s sedated her routinely so Eloise wouldn’t know what she was doing in the basement.”

“What was she doing in the basement?”

“Killing men.”

Donnalou took a staggering step back. “That can’t be true.”

“Tell that to the man currently being treated by MTs down there because we were in time to save him. I’m going to need to talk with Eloise.”

“I need to check on her. I need to—” She stopped, seemed to draw herself together layer by layer. “Do you know what she was given?”

“No, but I imagine she kept the drugs downstairs. I’ll let you know.”

Donnalou went up, Eve went down. And found all the e-geeks huddled around workstations, gadgets, and droids.

“Peabody?” she asked, and Callendar pointed left. Before she headed in that direction, Eve walked over to Brinkman and the MTs.

“Mr. Brinkman.”

“He’s a little loopy,” one of the MTs told her. “We had to give him something. We’ll take him in, probably they’ll keep him tonight, treat these burns, the lacerations. You’re gonna get more out of him once he settles down.”

“Okay, it can wait.”

She went toward Peabody’s direction just as Peabody started in hers. “Dallas, you need to see this.”

“Did you find Brinkman’s clothes, the rest of his things?”

“Yeah, she’s got a damn warehouse. I started flagging what looks like the previous victims’ clothes, ’links, wallets, and all that, then I got curious, and looked around more. The place is huge.”

Peabody stopped, pointed. “Warehouse. Vic stuff organized over there, and her, well, wardrobe over there. It’s like a costume department.”

Wigs, about a dozen in various styles, displayed on a counter. The counter with a lighted triple mirror, a chair, dozens of drawers, held, Eve saw, facial enhancements, eye dyes, implants, face putty, temp tats, temp skin coloring. An array of clothes from business suits to evening wear, shoes, bags, hung neatly on rods and posts. Jewelry glittered in clear drawers in a clear stand.