Vengeance in Death (In Death #6)(104)

“Before the age of reason,” Peabody commented.

“Right. And she’d have given him the reason. She gave him the mission, the motive. She turned him into a killer. Her only son. Maybe the tendencies were there, heredity and genetics, but she exploited them, used them. Dominated him. That’s what Mira said. A dominating female authority figure. Toss in religion and lean it toward vengeance, add in a good brain for electronics, and the training, you can make yourself a monster.”

Eve rang the bell, then laid a hand on the butt of her weapon. Audrey opened the door, offered a hesitant smile. “Lieutenant. I thought we’d agreed on tomorrow morning. Have I mixed up times again?”

“No, change of plan.” She stepped in, careful to block the door as she scanned the living area. “We have some questions for you, Widow Calhoun.”

Audrey’s eyes flickered, then went dead cold, but her voice remained smooth. “I beg your pardon?”

“This round’s mine. We made you, and your only begotten son.”

“What have you done to Liam?” Audrey curled her hands into claws and leaped forward, aiming for the eyes. Eve dipped under the swipe, pivoted, and wrapped an arm tight around Audrey’s neck. She was half Eve’s size and no match for a choke hold.

“Her Irish is up, Peabody? Did you hear it? Connecticut, my butt.” With her free hand, Eve reached into her back pocket for her restraints. “It’s a musical accent, isn’t it?”

“My personal favorite.” She took Audrey’s arm once Eve had clapped on the cuffs.

“We’re going to have a nice long chat, Mary Pat, about murder, about mutilation, about motherhood. The three M’s, you know?”

“If you’ve harmed a hair on my boy’s head, I’ll pull out your heart and eat it.”

“If I’ve harmed him.” Eve lifted her brows, and beneath them her eyes were iced. “You doomed him the first time you tucked him in with a bedtime story of revenge.”

Disgusted, she turned away, pulled out her communicator. “Commander, there’s been a break in the case. I require a search and seizure warrant for the premises and personal effects of Audrey Morrell.” She paused. “Also known as Mary Patricia Calhoun.”

They found Liam’s hole behind a false wall in a converted pantry. Along with the equipment was a small table covered with a cloth of white Irish lace. Candles sat on it, surrounding a beautifully sculpted marble statue of the Mother of God. Above her, her Son hung from the golden cross.

Is that how she’d wanted Liam to see themselves? Eve wondered. As saints and sufferers? As divine mother and sanctified child? And Audrey herself as the untouched, the wise, the chosen.

“I bet she’d bring him a nice cup of tea and a sandwich with the crusts cut off while he was baiting traps in here. Then pray with him before she sent him off to kill.”

Feeney barely heard Eve’s comment as he ran reverent hands over the equipment. “Have you ever seen the like of this, Ian McNab? This oscillator? What a beauty. And the cross-transmitter with multitask options. Nothing like this on the market.”

“There will be, by next spring,” McNab told him. “I saw this unit down at Roarke’s R and D division. More than half of these components are his, and nearly half of them aren’t on the market yet.”

Eve grabbed his arm. “Who’d you talk to down at Roarke’s? Who’d you work with. Every name, McNab.”

“Only three techs. Roarke kept it low-key, didn’t want the whole department to know there was a cop sniffing around. Suwan-Lee, Billings Nibb, and A. A. Dillard.”

“Suwan, female?”

“Yeah, tidy little Oriental dish. She was — “

“Nibb?”

“E-lifer. Knows everything. The teams joke that he was around when Bell called Watson.”

“Dillard?”

“Smart. I told you about him. Got great hands.”

“Fair, green eyes, about twenty, five-ten, a hundred sixty?”

“Yeah, how did you — “

“Christ, Roarke’s been paying the son of a bitch. Feeney can you get this equipment up and running, fully analyzed?”

“You bet.”

“Let’s go, Peabody.”

“Are we going to interview Mary Calhoun?”

“Soon enough. Right now we’re going to give A. A. Dillard his f**king pink slip.”

A. A. had missed his shift. It was the first such incident, she was told by Nibb, the department manager. A. A. was a model employee, prompt, efficient, cooperative, and creative.

“I need to see all his files, personnel, works completed, works in progress, status reports, the whole shot.”

Nibb — who wasn’t quite old enough to have known A. G. Bell, but who had celebrated his centennial the past summer, crossed his arms. Behind a thick white moustache, his mouth went hard.

“A great deal of those records include confidential material. Research and development in the electronics field is highly competitive. Cutthroat. One leak and — “

“This is a murder investigation, Nibb. And I’m hardly going to sell data to my husband’s competitors.”

“Nonetheless, Lieutenant, I can’t give you files on works in progress without the boss’s personal consent.”