J. Robb - Possession in Death

He started to lift her, but she resisted. “No. Wait.” She sucked in a breath, shuddered it out. “You don't see her?”

He pressed a hand to her forehead. “I see you, sitting on the floor of the morgue looking like a ghost.”

“At one,” she murmured.

“I guess he can't see me because I'm dead and everything,” Janna said. “Why do you?”

“I don't know. I need Morris,” she told Roarke. “And God, I need something to drink.”

“Don't leave me,” Janna begged, dropping her head again so Eve could see the ugly wound that killed her. “Please don't leave me here alone.”

“I'm just going to sit here. Bring Morris, will you? I just . . . need to sit here.” Deal, she ordered herself. Deal with what's in front of you, then figure out the rest. “Could really use something cold to drink.”

Roarke rose, cursing under his breath as he ordered a tube of Pepsi.

“He's gorgeous.” Janna smiled a little even as she knuckled at tears. “Mega frosted. Is he your boyfriend?”

“We're married,” Eve murmured.

“Seriously icy for you,” Janna said as Roarke glanced down.

“So we are,” he said. “And I'll be taking my wife to a doctor in short order. I'll get you Morris first, but then you're done here.”

“He's got a really sexy voice, too.” Janna sighed as Eve took the tube Roarke had opened, drank.

“Thanks. I'm going to sit right here,” she said as much to Janna as Roarke, “while you get Morris.”

And while she sat wondering if she had a brain tumor or had dropped into some strange, vivid dream, she put on the cop and interviewed the dead.

Minutes later, Morris hurried down the tunnel with Roarke.

“Dallas.” He knelt, laid a hand on her brow as Roarke had. “You're feverish.”

“Just tell me if you've gotten a body in — female, mixed race, midtwenties, ID'd as Janna Dorchester. Beating death in Riverside Park.”

“Yes. She's only just come in. How did you — ”

“Who caught the case?”

“Ah . . . Stuben's primary.”

“I need to contact him. Can you get me his contact data?”

“Of course. But you don't look well.”

“I'm feeling better, actually.” Odd, she thought, how the cop approach steadied her, even when her interviewee was dead. “I think I'll feel better yet once I talk to Stuben. I'd appreciate it, Morris.”

“Give me a minute.”

“Eve.” Roarke took her hand as Morris strode away. “What's going on here?”

“I'm not sure, and I need you to give me a really open mind. I mean wide-open. Yours is already more open than mine about, you know, weird stuff.”

“What sort of weird stuff is my mind going to be wide-open about?”

“Okay.” She looked into his eyes, so blue, so beautiful. Eyes she trusted with everything she had. “There's a dead woman sitting right beside me. Her name's Janna Dorchester, and some asshole named Rennie Foster bashed her head in with a rock in Riverside Park. She's worried her friend Sara might be next on his list. So I'm going to pass the information to the primary. I can read Russian.”

“I'm sorry?”

“I can read Russian. I think I can speak it, too, and I'm pretty sure I can make Hungarian goulash. And maybe borscht, possibly pierogies. The old woman, the one who fell into my lap and happened to be a Gypsy speaker for the dead, did something to me. Or I have a brain tumor.”

Staring into her eyes, Roarke cupped Eve's face in his hands. “Kak vashi dela?”

“U menya vsyo po pnezhnemu. Hey, you speak Russian?”

He sat back on his heels, rocked right down to the bone. “A handful of phrases, and certainly not as fluently as you, apparently. And despite your answer, I doubt you're fine.”

They looked up as Morris came back. “I have what you need.”

“Great.” Eve took out her 'link, and staying where she was, contacted Detective Stuben. “Lieutenant Dallas,” she said, “Homicide, out of Central. I've got some information on your vic, on Janna Dorchester.” She looked at Janna as she spoke. “You're going to want to find Rennie Foster and get some protection to a Sara Jasper. Let me lay it out for you.”

When she had, she answered his question on how she came by the information by claiming a confidential informant.

“Unless Stuben's an idiot — and he didn't strike me that way — that should do it.” Eve got to her feet. “It's all I can do.”

“I'm still dead, but I'm not as scared. It's not so cold anymore.”

“I don't think you have to stay here.”

“Maybe for a little while. It helped to talk to you. I still wish I wasn't dead, but . . . ” She trailed off, shrugged.

“Good luck.” Eve turned to Morris. “I don't know how to explain it. I need to see Gizi Szabo.”

“Dallas, did you just have a conversation with the dead?”

“It sure felt that way. And I'd really appreciate it if you wouldn't spread it around. I need to work, I need to keep going, or I'm pretty sure I'm going to go crazy. So . . . ” She started forward, glanced back, and saw Janna lift a hand in good-bye. “I need to confirm TOD on Szabo.”

“I've run it three times, using various components. It's still thirteen hundred.”

“It's not possible.” She shoved through the doors of the autopsy suite. “I was there. Lopez was there, hours later. She fell off the curb, we administered first aid. She — ”

“Eve,” Roarke interrupted, “you just spoke with a woman killed more than two hours ago, and you're questioning the possible?”

“I know the difference between dead and alive.” She stepped up to the body. “Why can't I see her? Why can't I talk to her? I look at her, and I feel . . . rage and frustration. And . . . obligation.”

“I spoke with Chale,” Morris told her. At the sink he ran cold water over a cloth, wrung it out. Then he came to her and smoothed it over her face himself to cool it.

“He said the same, but he also said that she took your hand, spoke to you, and there was a light — a blast of light and energy. And for a moment after it, you seemed to be blank. Just blank. He said something seemed to pass between you.”

She took the cloth, mildly embarrassed he'd tended to her — that she'd let him. “You don't believe that kind of thing.”

“The science says this woman died at one this afternoon — irrefutably — but there's more in the world than science.”

Maybe, she thought — hard to argue about it right at the moment. But it had been routine and order that had gotten her through the experience with Janna. So she'd stay there as long as she could.

“Let's stick with science for the moment. What can you tell me about the weapon?”

“All right. A thin, double-edged blade. Seven and a quarter inches in length.” He turned to a screen to bring up the image he'd reconstructed from the wounds, then turned back to the body. “You see here where the killer thrust it fully into her, the bruising from the bolster.”

She leaned in, studying the gouges, the slices. “A dagger.”

“Yes. He hit bone. The tip will be chipped.” Morris showed her a tiny piece of steel, sealed in a tray. “I recovered this.”

“Okay, that's good. He stabbed her in the back first — back of the shoulder.” She remembered the shocking, tearing pain. “Because he's a coward, and because he feared her. She didn't see his face — he wore a mask or makeup. A kind of costume, because he's theatrical. A devil,” she murmured, “because it's a role he plays, or wants to. Because it's powerful, because it instills fear, because he wanted that image to be the last she saw.”

“Why?” Morris asked.

“He has something she wanted, and she wouldn't have stopped until she got it back. Exposed him. Punished him. Deprived him.”