J. Robb: Delusion in Death

“Eve.” Again, he took her hand, and this time when he looked in her eyes there was more sorrow than rage. “Give me an assignment, for God’s sake. Set me at something to do. I don’t know these people any more than you, even those who worked for me, but I have to do something.”

“With Peabody,” she said. “Start on the vics’ ’links. See if any transmissions went out after this started—we’ve got the time frame. See if there’s any video, any audio during the twenty-minute window.”

“Twenty? This happened in twenty bloody minutes?”

“Less than that, that’s the outside. Send Peabody back to me once EDD gets here. You can work with them. I’ve got to get on this.”

Even as she started to Morris, Jenkinson and Reineke stepped in. She swung to them, filled them in, did the same when Baxter and Trueheart arrived.

By the time she got to Morris, he was on the third victim.

“I need to get them in, Dallas. There’s defensive wounds, offensive wounds, a variety of both, and of CODs. TODs are, for the first three, within minutes.”

“It all happened fast. In under twenty. One of the vics tagged a friend who was running late, and everything was fine and normal. The friend got here about twenty minutes later, and found this.”

“They did this to each other. From what I can see at this point, they attacked and killed each other.”

“That’s my take. Some sort of poison, hallucinogenic, some fucking new rage drug. In the drinks? The bar food? In the ventilation system? There’s over eighty dead, Morris, and a handful who survived—so far—in the hospital.”

“They used what was handy—broken glass, forks, knives, furniture, their own hands.”

“There are more downstairs—bathroom area—and back in the kitchen, so it wasn’t confined to this space. But I’ve got nothing to indicate anyone got out, no signs of violence outside.”

“Consider it a blessing. I’ll have a team transport bodies as I examine them here, and we’ll rush the tox screens.”

“I’ll be in when I finish here, after I talk to any survivors.”

“We all have a long night ahead of us.”

“And the media’s going to be all over it. I’m going to request a Code Blue, but I don’t think a media block’s going to stop leaks, not on this. Let’s get some answers.”

She pushed to her feet.

Too many people, she thought. Too many dead, and too many cops working in one space. She could trust the team she’d pulled in, but still, so many hands made it too easy for one to make a mistake.

She saw Feeney, EDD captain, former partner, his wiry ginger hair an explosion over his hangdog face, huddled with Roarke. They’d find whatever could be found.

She started down the steps just as McNab—EDD ace and the love of Peabody’s life, started up. His bright blue pants, heavy with silverstudded pockets, stood in harsh contrast to the horror. He might’ve had a half a million shiny rings riding along his ear, but his pretty face was hard, and all cop.

“I’ve got something.” He held out a ’link, held sealed bags of others in his other hand. “Vic down in the ladies’ room, Trueheart did the ID. Wendy McMahon, age twenty-three.”

“She used her ’link.”

“Yeah. At seventeen-thirty-two, she tagged her sister, started off telling her about some guy she met upstairs—Chip—all giddy and happy for the first thirty seconds. Then she says how she’s getting a damn headache, and by seventeen-thirty-three, she’s bitching at the sister, calling her a whore. The sister cuts her off, but she keeps bitching. It’s crazy talk, Dallas, and when another woman comes in screaming, you can hear them going at each other, you can see bits of them fighting when this McMahon drops the ’link. I don’t see the second woman down there, so either she killed McMahon and moved on, or got away. The ’link shut off after thirty seconds of no transmission—that’s usual.”

Twelve minutes, she thought. Twelve minutes from the first sign of trouble to Vic One’s TOD.

“I want that and any others like it back at Central.”

“I’ve got a couple more. We should be able to put them together for you so you don’t have to view them on the individual ’links. It won’t take long to do it, and it’ll save time. I’ve got a lot of them to check out first.”

“Keep hunting.”

Eve stepped over the body at the base of the stairs, saw he’d been ID’d and tagged. Trueheart continued to work the area. She imagined Baxter had given him the assignment so the young officer had less misery to pack into his psyche.

Back upstairs, she moved to Roarke. “Stick with EDD.”

“We’re finding some snatches on ’links.”

“McNab reported. I’ll be at Central after I talk to survivors. The team can finish here, for now. We’re closing you down, Roarke, for the foreseeable.”

“Understood.”

“Peabody,” she called out. “With me. The rest of you ID and log every body, every ’link, every weapon, any and all of the DBs’ personal items. Baxter, see to it I have a list of all vics on my desk asap. We’ll be making notifications tonight. I want the security discs from the door. Jenkinson, widen the canvass, four-block perimeter. Morris, have all the vics’ clothing sent to the lab and request Harpo on the fibers. All food and drink needs to be transported to the lab, and marked possible biohazard.”

She paused a moment, scanned. Yes, she could trust every one of them. “Full team briefing at Central.” She checked the time, calculated. “Twenty-two-thirty. I’m requesting Code Blue, so no chatter. Consider yourselves on this case until I say different.”

She gave Roarke one last glance before she walked out—into cooling air, and the blessed roar of the city.

“The hospital,” she told Peabody. “Let’s see if any of the survivors can talk to us. You drive.”

She slid into the passenger seat, took a breath. Then drew out her communicator and contacted her commander.

She hated hospitals, always had. Even knowing the paranoia stretched back to waking in one in Dallas as a child, beaten, raped, broken, didn’t solve the problem. For her, hospitals, health centers, clinics, even mobile urgent care outfits all smelled the same. The smell was pain with underlying fear.

Eve lived with the intense dislike, and the fact that her job so often took her into medical facilities one way or the other.

She imagined an urban ER never hit the notes of pleasant, but considered it a sure bet tonight might be a little worse than usual as the doctors and medicals had been slammed with ten violently injured people at once.

She moved through the moans and misery, the glazed, exhausted eyes, the stench of fever sweat and sickness to grab a nurse. The smiley faces covering the uniform top grinned in direct opposition to the woman’s grim snarl.

“You need to stay in chairs. We’ll get to you as soon as we can.”

Eve held up her badge. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a bone-skinny man trembling for a fix slide out of his chair and jitter his way to the door.

“You had ten injured brought in about ninety minutes ago. I need to see them, talk to them.”

“Wait,” the nurse ordered, and stalked away with her shirt grinning dozens of weirdly perky grins.

Moments later Eve faced a man nearly as skinny as the departed junkie. He wore a lab coat and a look of profound fatigue.

“Doctor Tribido.” His faint musical lilt didn’t offset the fatigue.

“Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody. I need to see my vics.”

“Ten came in. One was DOA, two died of their injuries. We got three in surgery now, another in pre-op, and one in a coma.”