Vendetta in Death (In Death #49)(108)

“Thank you for waiting. Donnalou, would you mind getting us all coffee?”

“Of course, you sit down now.” The nurse helped her into a peacock-blue chair, walked over to a serving bar.

“I want to say I’m grateful to you—I want to call you Eve, and I hope you’ll allow it, because there’s an intimacy between us now. I respect your rank, your work, but I need to speak to you as a woman as well as a police officer.”

“That’s fine.”

“You were correct that I knew Darla was—is suffering from an illness. I believed living here, even tending to me—and she did tend to me so devotedly—when I fell ill helped her cope. I swear to you I had no idea how deep the suffering, how severe the illness. She hid it very well.”

When her voice broke, she paused to fight for composure, then took the coffee Donnalou offered. She sat, sipped, drew herself up again.

“I swear to you, I never saw this in her. Self-destruction, that I feared when the life she so desperately wanted crumbled, but not this. I can’t conceive of it. I love her with all my heart, and I never saw this in her. I would have gotten her help. Her father—my son—he would have gotten her help.”

“I believe you,” Eve said without hesitation. “I saw it when I met you. This is not on you in any way.”

“Oh, but how can it not be? She’s the child of my child. You saw it in her, didn’t you? How did you see it?”

“It’s a different thing. It’s training, it’s … I don’t love her,” Eve said.

Nodding, Eloise looked down at her cup. “It’s too late to get her the help that would have saved the lives she took, to spare those who loved those men the grief of loss. But she is the child of my child. I’ll engage the best attorney available, the best doctors.”

“I have the department psychiatrist coming in to evaluate her. Dr. Charlotte Mira. She’s the best there is.”

“I know her from the book, the vid, but—”

“You should engage your own. I’m telling you that Dr. Mira will evaluate your granddaughter, and that you can trust her. I’m going in to interview Darla, and Dr. Mira will observe.”

“Will I be able to see her, speak with her?”

“Yes, later. Is there somewhere you can go for a few days? This isn’t where you want to be now.”

“Yes. I have friends. Donnalou will help me pack what I need. You’ve been very kind and very patient with me. I won’t forget it.”

“I’m just doing my job.”

“Kindness isn’t a job, Eve, it’s a choice. I’m keeping you from doing what you must.” She rose, extended a hand. “Thank you. I’m going to pack what I need, contact my son. He’ll want to come to New York.”

“I’ll contact you when you’re clear to see her.”

Eve went downstairs where sweepers and uniforms and techs moved through the house. She wished she could spare Eloise the journey through the logjam of cops, but it would be one more point of pain to push through.

In the basement it was more of the same. Much more.

Peabody broke away from a conversation with a couple of white-suited sweepers. “I’m having them get scrapings from the floor for the match. We’ve got her cold but more evidence isn’t wrong.”

“More the better. Let’s go get her in the box.”

As Eve did, Peabody looked toward the e-team still swarming the toys. “I think they’d like to live here.”

“Hold on.” Eve crossed over. “The droid there? That’s the one she’d have used to drive her to get the targets, and to help her transport them to the dump site. I need his memory banks.”

“We’ll get to ’em,” Feeney assured her. He actually had roses in his cheeks. “We got plenty on here, too. Docs, schedules, photos, backup plans if she missed one the first time out, alternate routes, the works.”

“Kept, like, a diary, too,” McNab put in.

“Yeah, her type would. She’s a planner, a grudge holder, a freaking organized soul.”

“She also has the skeleton of a business plan in the works,” Roarke said. “A solid one even in the early stages. If, well, on the mad side of things.” His gaze stayed on her face. “Are you heading in then?”

“Yeah, I’m going to get her in Interview, so I’ll want copies of whatever you get off the comps and out of the droids.”

“Give us a moment,” he said to no one in particular, then steered Eve away until he found a relatively quiet corner. “Must it be tonight? She won’t be going anywhere, after all.”

“Yeah, I need Mira to observe. I have Reo coming in. And I need to hit her while she’s whacked about not getting her kill. She’ll be more open.”

“Then eat something first.”

“Oh, for fuck sake.”

He simply snagged her by the chin. “You’re near to pale enough to see through. You’ll take a moment with your steady partner there in your office and have a shagging pizza while you work out your interview strategy and look over some of what we send you.”

When he put it that way. “I didn’t know they made shagging pizza.”

“Still have some smart left in your very tired ass. What happened upstairs to make you so sad?”