Indulgence in Death (In Death #31)(113)

“There would be more. We stopped them tonight and we’re sealing that cage door. A lot of that’s because of you. If I’d clicked to them targeting me earlier, there might not be so many faces on this board.”

“You know that’s wrong, both in reality and in thinking. It could just as easily be said there would be more if you hadn’t intuited the pattern so quickly. You worked the case, and tonight you’ll close it. I’d like to observe your interview with Dudley.”

“It may be a while yet. He’s conferring with his bevy of lawyers.”

“I can wait. I’m told you were hurt.”

“Just a scratch, seriously. It was the shoes. They screwed up my balance. Still.” She tapped her arm. “It was an antique Italian fencing foil. That’s pretty frosty.”

Peabody stepped in. “Hey, Doctor Mira. Dallas, Dudley’s head lawyer’s asking to talk to you.”

“This ought to be good. I’ll meet him outside the interview room.”

An imposing man with white wings flowing back from his mane of black hair, Bentley Sorenson nodded curtly to Eve.

“Lieutenant, I’m informing you that I intend to file formal complaints over your treatment of my client, and your use of excessive force, entrapment, and harassment. Additionally, I’ve already contacted the governor, who will be speaking with the prosecuting attorney about falsifying information for an improper search of my client’s residence, business, and vehicles. I want my client released until these matters can be fully resolved.”

“You can file all the papers you want. You can call the governor, your congressman, or the freaking president, but your client’s not walking out of here. You can stonewall me, Mr. Sorenson.” She added a careless shrug. “I’ll go home to bed and have a nice relaxing weekend. Your client will spend his in a cage.”

“Mr. Dudley is a respected and valued businessman from one of the premier families in this country. He has no prior record and has cooperated fully with you and this department. Additionally, he contacted you for help, and to offer his, and you abused him.”

“You know it’s a toss-up as to whether you’re an idiot or just doing your job. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt and going with doing your job. You’re going to decide now if you’re going to block this interview tonight—which means he’ll chill behind bars until Monday—or if we go in there and talk.”

“I can have a hearing before a judge set within the hour.”

“Go ahead. I’ll go take a nap while you set it up. It’s been a long week.”

“Are you seriously willing to risk your career over this?”

She shifted, stood hip-shot, hooked her thumbs in her front pockets. “Is that a threat, Counselor?”

“It’s a question, Lieutenant.”

“I’ll tell you what I’m not willing to risk. Your client stepping out of that room unless it’s into a cage before I’ve interviewed him. I’m not willing to risk him going poof because he has the money and means to do so. In or out. You know very well I can hold him until Monday, so let’s stop wasting each other’s time. I talk to him now, or I go home.”

“Have it your way.”

Eve used her wrist unit. “Detective Peabody, report to Interview. Frosty, huh?” she said when she noted Sorenson studying her unit. She opened the door, stepped in.

Dudley sported a bruised and swollen jaw and eyes red and puffy from weeping. He’d had enough time to come down from his high, she noted, and that could be useful. Flanking him were two other lawyer types. Young, female, attractive. One of them actually held his hand.

“Record on. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, in interview with Dudley, Winston—the Fourth.” She dropped a thick file on her side of the table. “Also present is Mr. Dudley’s attorney of record, Sorenson, Bentley, and two other representatives. Would each of you state your name for the record?”

As they did, she simply delegated them to Blonde and Redhead. “Peabody, Detective Delia, entering Interview. So, the gang’s all here. How’s the face, Winnie?”

“You struck me. I saved your life and you struck me and dragged me in here like a criminal.”

“Saved my life? Gosh, my recollection, and my recording, which was—as is proper procedure—engaged throughout our meeting, have a different take. As do the recordings and statements of the officers in Our Lady of Shadows Church.”

“And those recordings and statements will be questioned,” Sorenson put in, “as we can document your vendetta against my client.”

“Yeah, you do that little thing, see where it gets you. So let’s start from there. You contacted me at just past twenty hundred hours.”

“She was drunk,” he said to Sorenson. “But I was desperate. She could barely speak coherently, and when she arrived, she could hardly stand up she was so inebriated.”

Eve opened the file, pulled out a hard copy, tossed it on the table. “My tox screens, taken at hour intervals from nineteen hundred hours to twenty-one hundred hours. Clear and clean.”

“Falsified, just like the rest! You were already drunk when you accosted me and Sly at Lionel’s. A dozen witnesses would corroborate that, and your abusive attitude. Your own husband was disgusted with you.”