J. Robb - Kindred In Death

“How are you going to prove that?” He leaned back in the chair, relaxed. Looked around the room as if bored. “Yeah, I figured I’d lay her out. She’s got a lot of valuables in that place. I was going to rob her and walk away.”

“I see. So with Deena and Karlene, your intention to rob just went a little too far. Resulting in…” Eve opened the file, tossed the two file shots on the table.

This time his facial muscles twitched into the smallest of smiles.

“You are a sick fuck.” Peabody shoved back her chair as she sprang to her feet. She leaned over the table until she was nose to nose with Darrin. “It pisses me off we’re wasting time with you, that we have to go through this routine. We’ve got witnesses, you asshole. We’ve got security recordings of you walking into Deena MacMasters’s house the night you killed her. Of you entering the building the day you killed Karlene Robins.”

“Bullshit. That’s bullshit, because I was never anywhere near those places.”

“Bullshit? I’ll show you bullshit. Wall screen on!” She caught herself, glanced toward Eve.

“Go ahead, you’ve already spoiled my surprise.”

“Display image 1-A,” Peabody ordered.

The screen filled with a clear shot of Darrin climbing the steps of the MacMasters’s home toward a smiling Deena. The time stamp pulsed in the bottom corner as the recording continued with him reaching her, offering her the flowers, easing into the doorway, into the house.

“She told her friends about you-David,” Eve added as he stared at the screen. “She told them all about her secret boyfriend from Columbia University. The shy guy she met in the park.”

“We’ve got eyewitnesses who saw the meet,” Peabody continued. “We’ve had your face for days, picking up other witnesses who saw you together.”

“She kept souvenirs-like the program from the musical you took her to at the college. Your prints are on it.” Eve tossed another paper from the file on the table. “We got a match once you were printed downstairs.”

Face blank, he nodded. “So, you got lucky.”

“You keep thinking that, too. Now, let’s discuss details.”

“LUCK?” EVE TIPPED BACK IN HER CHAIR, meeting his smirk with one of her own. “Luck that EDD killed your virus? Or that we know what you were wearing on New Year’s Eve when you lifted Darian Powders’s ID? I know where you bought the shoes you’re wearing, Darrin, and how much you paid for them. The backpack, too, and the Columbia sweatshirt you had on when you lured Deena into the first meet in Central Park.”

Now she smirked, deliberately, leaning back in a way that transmitted casual derision. “I know what kind of airboard you ride, and exactly where you rode it, with Deena, on a rainy afternoon in May.”

“That’s bullshit.”

He didn’t look afraid, not yet, Eve thought. But he looked puzzled, and just a bit defiant.

“You keep thinking that, asshole.” Peabody all but growled the words, and made Eve think she’d have to teach her new “bad” cop to tune it back.

“I knew what you looked like when I set you up at the media conference, the day after you raped and strangled Karlene Robins. Drew. I know your name, where you were born, oh, and the name you were using when your mother bought it in Chicago.”

There, Eve thought, that hit the mark. Rage boiled out of his eyes. He turned it back, quickly, she’d give him that. But she’d seen it and the trigger she needed.

“We’re just smarter than you, Darrin. You got lucky at the memorial, no question. But, gee, looks like your luck ran out. Like your mother’s did in that prossy flop in Chicago.”

“You’re going to want to be careful.”

“About what? You’re nailed. You’ve got some skills with electronics, but they’re average. You couldn’t find a way to jam the cameras or the lock, you couldn’t bypass the system without being inside. The virus?”

She rolled her shoulders, stretched lazily. “It was a good try, kept our e-team entertained for a while. But the fact is, an e-rookie has more chops than you. But then, you learned most of them from your father.”

“Well, that depends.” Peabody shrugged. “We’re not sure if Vincent or Vance Pauley is his father. His mother let both of them have the bangs.”

“Right, right.” Eve waved agreement as Darrin’s jaw clenched. “I wonder if your mother knew, since she fucked both of them. But, hey, it could’ve been someone else altogether. Since she was a whore.”

“Shut your fucking mouth.”

“Want to shut it for me, Darrin? The way you shut Deena’s, Karlene’s, when you held a pillow over their faces after you raped them? I wonder, when you were raping them, looking at their faces when you pounded and tore into them, did you see your mother? Is that how you got it up, Darrin? Thinking about Mom, and how you really wanted to fuck her?”

She didn’t blink when he lurched up. His hands balled into fists as the lead of his restraints clanged against the bolt.

“Want to take a shot at me? It’s a pisser not to be able to fight back, isn’t it? I guess you know how Deena and Karlene felt. You must be disappointed that you won’t be able to watch Judge Mimoto’s mother struggle, hear her scream. Or Elysse Wagman,” she said and looking into his eyes recited the names of his other targets.

“We found them all,” Peabody said, piling on scorn. “That’s how lucky we are.”

“Now you won’t be able to finish your sick homage to your whore of a mother.”

He got his hands under the table, tried to lift it, heave it, but Eve and Peabody simply counterweighted the other side.

“Frustrating, isn’t it?” Eve commented. “To be helpless. To be controlled.”

His muscles trembled with the effort, but he pulled back, sat again. “If you’ve got me nailed, why are we wasting time with all this?”

“That’s what they pay us for. So, if you’re in a hurry, why don’t you lay it out for the record?” Eve prompted. “You know you want to. It has to be satisfying to brag about what you did manage to pull off. I can give you a little springboard. You’ve been stalking your targets for months, researching them, planning. Hell, you’ve been thinking about it for years. All your life, basically. I have to figure you picked Deena to start as she was the easiest. Just a kid, a shy girl-the virgin-easily dazzled by attention, excited by the idea of a secret boyfriend. You used the Columbia connection. You’d gone there, so you knew the campus. And since her friend Jamie Lingstrom goes there, a little field-work and you could toss out some names she’d recognize. Lower her defenses.”

He shrugged.

“If you think we’re going to offer you a deal, like your mother got when she was caught using and whoring twenty years ago, think again.”

Darrin bared his teeth in a vicious smile. “You can tell MacMasters his precious daughter was the whore. I’ve been fucking her for weeks.”

Eve glanced at Peabody. “Did we actually think this moron had some smarts?”

“We did. He’s sure proving us wrong since we know, conclusively, the only way he could get his pathetic dick into Deena was to drug her, restrain her, and rape her.”

“All you had to do with his mother was pay her.”

“Shut the fuck up. You don’t know anything.”

“Enlighten me. Explain to me why the people involved in your mother’s bust in New York twenty-one years ago are responsible for her death in Chicago nineteen years ago? Help me make that leap, Darrin.”

“It was that fucking cop who ruined her. Set her up.”

“MacMasters set her up?”

“Planted the illegals on her, blackmailed her into having sex with him, the same as rape. Then he covers it up, says she’s whoring. My mother was the best shifter on the grift there was.”