Celebrity in Death (In Death #34)(119)

“God. Oh God.”

“Let me do what I can here. While I have the chance.”

“Julian.” He covered his mouth with his hand. “Poor Julian. I shouldn’t have left him alone tonight. He said he would be fine, that he wanted time to rest. He’s been so—he’s been torn up about K.T. It wasn’t his fault, Detective Peabody. You have to understand, it was an accident.”

“What was?”

“Let me explain.” He drew in a breath. “Let me explain what happened. When Julian didn’t come back to the theater, I got concerned. I knew he and K.T. were at odds, and both had been drinking. I went up to the roof.”

“Why the roof?”

“It’s where K.T. went to smoke those damn herbals she’s addicted to. When I got there … It was too late.” He reached across the table. “She was floating, facedown, and Julian was in shock. He was washing blood off the pool skirt, and barely able to speak.”

“She was in the pool, facedown, when you got to the roof?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“And you didn’t attempt to pull her out?”

“It was too late. She was dead.”

“How do you know?”

“Julian said. He said she’d fallen. They’d argued and struggled, and she’d fallen. And when he’d tried to get her up, he passed out. He thought he’d blacked out, you see, and when he came back to himself, she was dead in the pool. I’m afraid that while he was in shock, under the influence, he—he dragged her into the pool. He tried to cover it up. He couldn’t clearly remember, you see.”

“What did you do then?”

“I took him downstairs. He was in no shape to talk to anyone. He all but passed out on the sofa.”

“You didn’t go for help.”

“It was my help that was needed, Detective. I wanted to protect Julian. He needed my protection. It was too late for K.T. It was an accident, Detective Peabody.”

“Let me get the details straight, so we can lay this out for Dallas. You followed Julian up to the roof, where he’d met K.T. In the pool area—under the dome, right?”

“Yes, yes.”

“The dome was closed.”

“Yes, of course. It’s October. The entire area reeked of K.T.’s herbals. It was sickening.”

“I guess you didn’t think to open the dome.”

“Connie prefers it closed in the fall and winter. She swims every morning.”

“See, that’s another discrepancy. The dome had been opened, then closed again. But the thing is, the mechanism’s faulty. It doesn’t close all the way. It wasn’t closed all the way after the body was discovered. And, there wasn’t any scent of smoke in the dome. It had been aired out.”

“Maybe I opened it. I was in shock myself, you understand.”

“Sure. So did you open the dome?”

“Now that I think about it, yes, I did. The smell was horrible. I needed fresh air.”

“When did you open it? Before you dragged K.T. Harris’s unconscious body into the lap pool, or after?”

“Oh, snap it.” Eve slapped a fist into her palm. “That’s my cue.”

Eve walked out of Observation, into Interview.

“Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, entering Interview. You should’ve choked down the smoke, Joel, and you should have lifted Harris up rather than dragging her. You shouldn’t have said Harris was already floating facedown when you got there.”

Eve set a box on the table, pinned Steinburger with a look. “One, it looks really bad you made no attempt to get her out, to revive her. Second, it throws your timing off. If you’d come out after Julian allegedly dragged her in, went to get the bar rag, came back, started washing up the blood as you stated, she wouldn’t have been floating. The body would have sunk first when the lungs filled up with water. They’re like sponges. And it takes some time for the gases to expel and all that nasty stuff before the body floats up again.

“Added,” she said and dropped a recording on the table. “You should have destroyed this rather than tucking it into your safe. You took that out of her bag after you killed her. I guess you wanted to keep it out of the media, yeah, but you wanted to watch it. Perv.”

She dropped K.T.’s ’link on the table. “And you took this, which you subsequently dumped, along with a variety of electronics from Asner’s place—which you took after you killed him. We know the boat you ‘borrowed,’ the time, the coordinates. The divers expect they’ll pull up more tomorrow. You’re keeping the water cops busy.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I see what you’re trying to do, believe me. You’re desperately throwing everything you can think of against the wall, hoping something, anything will stick.”

“Oh, it’s stuck, Joel. You also lifted Harris’s sleeping-aid prescription, using one of your handy pass keys. You kept the vehicle code you lifted off Asner’s dead body. We’ve got you, Joel. There’s no explaining all this.”

She dumped the entire bag of codes and swipe cards on the table.

“And last night you sent Julian out of the room, added the pills to the wine you’d so considerately brought him, corked it, put it away. So that tonight, he’d be a good boy and follow your orders. Have himself a couple glasses of wine in his whirlpool tub. The irony of him drowning would be good media, and add to your frame job. He killed himself out of guilt for killing her.”