Loyalty in Death (In Death #9)(103)

Eve considered, tapped her fingers on her thigh. “Are you going to keep talking to me that way? All tight-assed and formal, using long, polite sentences?”

“If I don’t get what I want, yes, sir.”

“I admire a good threat,” Eve decided. “You’re with me, Peabody.”

The wind whipped like a nest of angry snakes and had the ugly water of the river churning. Eve stood on the scarred and littered dock, cold to the bone, as one of the search team uncovered the body.

“We probably wouldn’t have come on it for days if you hadn’t told us to start looking for a mechanical. Even with that, we got lucky. You wouldn’t f**king believe what people dump in this river.”

He crouched down with her. “Looks a hell of a lot better than a floater would by this time. No bloat, no decay. Fish gave him a try, but they don’t get off on synthetics.”

“Yeah.” She could see the nicks and dents where fish had taken nibbling samples. One had apparently given the left eye a hell of a go before giving up. But the diver was right; he looked a hell of a lot better than a floater.

He looked like B. Donald Branson — handsome and fit, if considerably bedraggled. She used a fingertip on the chin to turn the head, then studied the massive damage to the back of the skull.

“When I saw it down there, I thought the sensors were whacked. Never seen a droid this good before. Wouldn’t have known for sure it wasn’t a fresh dead guy if it wasn’t for the hand.”

Somewhere along the line, the wrist had been injured enough to split the skin casing. The structure, riddled with sensors and chips, showed clearly.

“Of course, when we got him out and gave him a good look-see in the light — “

“Yeah, doesn’t quite fit the bill. You get pictures?”

“Oh, you bet.”

“We’ll just get some to back up the record. Then I’ll need it bagged and sealed and shipped to the lab. Get all angles, Peabody.”

Eve rose, moved to the side, and called Feeney. “I’m sending this droid into the lab. I need someone from EDD to go in and work with Dickhead’s team. I want to run his programming back. Can we interface with our system? Get a playback of the night Zeke was there?”

“Might.”

“And can we dig in enough to get a time frame for the programming and the programmer?”

“It’s not impossible. Much damage?”

She glanced back as Peabody got the crater in the skull on record. “Considerable.”

“We’ll do what we can. Does this put Zeke out of it?”

“No law against killing a droid. He could get it on destruction of property, but I don’t think the Bransons will pursue that angle.”

Feeney smiled. “Good work. Want me to tell him?”

“No.” She looked back at Peabody. “Let him hear it from his sister.” She pocketed her communicator and signaled to Peabody. “We’re done here. Let’s move.”

“Dallas.” She walked over, laid a hand on Eve’s arm. “I was afraid when we came down here. Afraid you’d been wrong. I knew, in my head, that even if it was Branson, it would go down as an accident, just the way Zeke said. He wouldn’t have gone to jail, but he’d have paid for it. All his life.”

“Now you can tell him he doesn’t have to.”

“He should hear it from you. You weren’t wrong,” she said before Eve could speak. “And it’ll matter more.”

Zeke’s hands dangled between his knees. Slumped over, he stared at them as if they belonged to a stranger. “I don’t understand this.” He spoke slowly, again as if the voice were someone else’s and just happened to come out of his mouth. “You say it was a droid that just looked like Mr. Branson.”

“You didn’t kill anyone, Zeke.” Eve leaned toward him. “Get that in your head first.”

“But he fell. He hit his head. There was blood.”

“It fell, as it was directed to fall. There was blood because blood had been injected under its skin shield. Branson’s blood. It was put there to make you think you’d killed him.”

“But why? I’m sorry, Dallas, but that’s just crazy.”

“Part of a game. He’s dead — his body conveniently disposed of by his terrified and abused wife who’s now run away. They can be anyone they want to be, anywhere they want to be, and with a big pile of money to hide in. They thought they’d have a lot more by the time we figured this out. If we ever did.”

“He hit her.” Zeke’s head snapped up. “I heard it — I saw it.”

“A show, an act. A few bruises were a small price to pay for winning the whole match. They’d already arranged for his brother’s death. They had to be able to access all the fluid cash from the company. Once B. D.‘s gone — branded, they’d hoped, as a wife beater, marital ra**st, they pick up their new lives. He’s cleaned out the cash flow from all accounts. We’d probably have looked at that as just one more vicious act on his part. But they left holes.”

He shook his head, and fighting impatience, she tried to explain quickly. “Why does a man like that let his wife go off to a spa out west, spend time on her own? He doesn’t even trust her out of the front door from what she told me in interview. But he lets her bring you into the house. He’s insanely jealous, but it’s fine and dandy to have a young, good-looking guy in the same house with his wife all day. And she can barely decide to get out of bed in the morning, but she gets in gear, orders a droid to ditch her dead husband’s body, and gets it done in the time it takes you to get her a glass of water. All while she’s in shock.”