Delusion in Death (In Death #35)(9)

“Pretty waitresses don’t turn into giant bees. But it seemed real, so terrifyingly real. There was screaming, and buzzing, and everything went mad. I think, I’m not sure, but I think I grabbed my chair and beat at her with it. I’ve never struck anyone in my life, but I think I struck her with the chair, and tried to run but the bees were stinging me. It felt as if they were stabbing me, and one of them ripped the stinger down my face. I fell. They were all over me, but I must’ve passed out. When I woke up, there were people lying everywhere, there was blood everywhere. And something—someone—was lying on top of me. I finally pushed him off. He was dead. I could see he was dead. People were dead. Then the police came and found us.

“I don’t know what happened to Katrina. She’s so young. She wants to be an actress.”

When Eve stepped out of the room she stood a moment weighing options. “I want you to see if you can talk to any of the other survivors,” she told Peabody. “If so, I want detailed reports. I want a solid time line. I’m going to the morgue, see what Morris can tell us.”

“I didn’t see any bees, giant or otherwise at the crime scene. Or any demons. What would cause people to hallucinate that way, and so intensely for so short a time?”

“We sure as hell better find out. Detailed reports,” she repeated, “of everything we have so far, everything you get. He hadn’t been served yet,” she murmured.

“Who? Brewster?”

“The waitress brought over his latte, he said, and the bees came. So his hallucination came before he’d had anything to drink, anything to eat. It wasn’t ingested. I’ll hook up with you back at Central.”

She contacted Feeney as she walked out of the hospital. “Anything?”

“We’ve got people going in, coming out, normal as you’d expect on the door cam. Female suit, mid-thirties, exits at seventeen-twenty-two. Two women entering ten seconds later. We got a man and a woman—pegged them as mid-late twenties, come out arguing, looks like a hot one. She storms off. He calls after her, starts to go back in the bar. Changes his mind and heads in the same direction she took. That’s logged at seventeen-twenty-nine. Seventeen-thirty-two a couple of suits walked out, split off, one north, one south.”

“We’ll run face recognition on all of them.”

“We’ll do that. On the ’links we’re processing, we get a lot of people going off, some starting out easy then screaming or swearing. We’ve got some audio, and it ain’t pretty. It doesn’t tell us much.”

“I’m heading to the morgue, maybe Morris has something. Bring everything you find to the briefing. We’ll sort through it.”

“It’s hit the media, Dallas. Too many people, cops, medicals, bystanders, to keep the lid tight. Nobody has real details. Right now it’s coming over as a possible gang hit or bar fight gone seriously south.”

“We stick to ‘no comment’ until we know the direction, and we keep leaks plugged tight in EDD and Homicide.”

“You got that. Your man’s got us a list of employees, and who was on. He’s working their electronics himself.” Feeney paused, glanced over his shoulder as if checking if any ears were close by. “Nobody’s saying the one thing everybody’s thinking.”

Terrorism. She nodded. “Then let’s not say it yet. I’ll check back.”

Facts first, she told herself as she drove. Evidence, time lines, names, motives. Just work the case, one step at a time.

CiCi Way and friends, party of four, having cocktails and bar food. Women visit the bathroom, go back. And CiCi’s work pal turns into a demon and stabs her boyfriend in the face with a fork.

Brewster, party of one. Comes in, takes his usual table, consumes nothing, and his waitress turns into a giant bee.

An entire bar of office drones and suits turns into a battlefield of makeshift weapons for—given current data—approximately twelve minutes. Result: over eighty dead.

Both survivors interviewed reported a sudden headache, and both came to with blurry memories, but no signs of continued hallucination.

For now, she decided. No telling if whatever had caused it to happen would reoccur.

She walked into the morgue. The long white tunnel, usually quiet, thrummed and echoed with activity. She saw lab coats and protective gear, harried faces, hurrying feet. She could smell the death, still fresh, still bloody as she made her way to Morris’s autopsy room.

He had three on tables, and she assumed more stacked somewhere. He wore a clear work cape over his sweater and pants, and had something soft and sorrowful playing on his speakers. Blood coated his sealed hands.

“Busy night,” he commented. “We love our work, you and I, in our strange and twisted way. But this? This tests resolve, even dedication.”

Delicately, he laid a brain on a scale, programmed for analysis.

“So many dead,” he continued, “and by whose design? What would cause someone to want so many people, strangers, surely many of them strangers, to slaughter each other?”

“Is that what happened? You can confirm it?”

“Our number two—” He gestured. “She has flesh under her nails, in her teeth—not her own flesh. Number one, not all the blood on him is his own, and three? He has deep gashes in his palm, his fingers—right hand. Sliced there from a glass shard held this way.”