Festive in Death (In Death #39)(108)

“Did you ever wish you could turn back the clock? Just one day.” His red-rimmed eyes, swimming with tears, bored into hers. “Even just a few hours. If I’d said, Please don’t go to work today—or Hey, I’ll go with you. Something. It wouldn’t have happened. Did you ever wish you could do that, just turn the clock back?”

“All the time.”

When he left, Eve went into her office to shake off his grief. It wouldn’t help in interview.

“Knock, knock.” Cher Reo walked in. The pretty blonde with Southern roots might have looked delicate, but Eve knew she could be an Amazon in court. “I was in the building, keeping close in case. Give me coffee and we’ll talk John Jake Copley.”

“Help yourself. You got the report. No sign of break-in, just him in the house with dead body and unconscious wife. Wife’s nine-one-one call that clearly speaks his name.”

“I listened to it myself.” With her coffee, Reo walked over, sat in Eve’s desk chair. “I’m not sitting in that awful visitor’s chair. You talked to the wife this morning?”

“She’s awake, maybe a little confused yet.” Eve relayed the gist of the interview. “She won’t pull the trigger,” Eve finished. “Won’t confirm Copley struck her.”

“Could be a little problem.”

“The nine-one-one recording—”

“Oh, we’ll use the hell out of it, but if I were his lawyer I’d use it, too. I’d claim the victim was in shock, in fear, was calling for her husband, was then attacked, and this unknown assailant fled.”

“How—the cam clearly shows—”

“Out a window, into a hidey-hole until he or she could slip out undetected. It’s weak, Dallas, and I can promise we’ll tear it to shreds, but it could be a little problem. A confession eliminates that little problem. We’d deal the murder to Man One—”

“Bullshit!”

“Listen. Man One on Dubois, assault with intent on the wife. He does twenty-five—no parole. Another ten concurrent on the wife. Again, if I were his lawyer, I’d take it. Saves a trial, eliminates the possibility of life in a cage. Twenty-five years is a good long time.”

“Catiana Dubois won’t get another twenty-five.”

“Nothing we do changes that. But consider how a man like Copley will deal with a quarter of a century in prison.”

He’d cry and wail and blubber like a little girl—but it wasn’t enough. “I’ll get him on Ziegler, too.”

“If you get him on Ziegler, deal’s out.” To illustrate, Reo flicked her fingers in the air. “That’s two murders and one attempted. Murder Two on both, but the addition of the knife in the heart? The jury will be appalled, I promise you. But you have to get him, and right now, you don’t have him.”

“The day’s young.”

“You can tag me until eight. After eight, I’m off the clock and I mean it, until December twenty-sixth. Tie him up before that, we’ll put a bow on it. Otherwise, have yourself a merry little Christmas. I mean that, too.” She rose, patted the bag Eve had given her. “I love this.”

When she sauntered out, Eve kicked her desk. “Man One, my ass!” She thought of Steven Dorchester and the key he’d made, put in a pretty little box. Fuck Man One.

She strode out. “Peabody! With me. Let’s do this,” she said as Peabody scrambled up from her desk.

“His lawyer’s not here.”

“Then she better hustle.”

Eve pushed open the door of Interview B. “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, Peabody, Detective Delia, entering interview with Copley, John Jake.”

“I’m not talking to you without my lawyer.”

“Then don’t talk.” Eve tossed down her files, played the nine-one-one call, hit replay, hit it again.

On the third play he broke, just a little. “She was calling for me, calling for my help. Anybody who hears it will know that.”

“Really? I heard it, that’s not what I know. Peabody?”

“Didn’t sound like that to me. Just the opposite.”

“Of course, that’s just the two of us. We could take a poll,” Eve suggested to Peabody. “I’m betting people who hear it—like say a jury—hear what we hear. Just like they’ll hear what we heard when we talked to Natasha this morning.”

“You talked to her? What did she say?”

Eve shook her head. “He wants us to answer his questions, Peabody, but he won’t answer ours. Doesn’t strike me as what you’d call equitable.”

“I want to know what she said! Does she know I’m in here, in this place? Does she know what you’re trying to pull?”

He banged both fists on the table. Working himself up to another tantrum, Eve thought, and turned casually to Peabody.

“So, when does your shuttle leave?”

Peabody smiled. “We’re catching one at six, if we can clear things. But we’ll catch a later one if we have to. How about you and Roarke? Big dinner out? Quiet evening at home?”

“You tell me what she said!”

“Now, JJ, you want to watch that anxiety and blood pressure. My partner and I are just passing the time until your lawyer gets here.”