J. Robb - Ceremony In Death

She turned away, headed around the corner, and stepped into the interview room just as Eve was reading Forte his rights.

"I don't understand."

"You don't understand your rights and obligations?"

"No, no, I understand them. I don't understand why I'm here." There was puzzlement and a vague sense of disappointment as he turned his gaze toward Peabody. "If you'd wanted to speak with me again, you had only to ask. I would have met you, or come in voluntarily. It wasn't necessary to send three uniformed officers to my home."

"I thought it was necessary," Eve answered shortly. "Do you want counsel or representation at this time, Mr. Forte?"

"No." He shifted in agitation, tried to ignore the fact that he was inside a police facility. Like his father. "Just tell me what you want to know. I'll try to help you."

"Tell me about Louis Trivane."

"I'm sorry." He shook his head. "I don't know anyone by that name."

"Do you usually send your handmaids out to murder strangers?''

"What?'' His face went white as he pushed himself to his feet. "What are you talking about?"

"Sit down." Eve snapped the order out. "Louis Trivane was murdered two hours ago by Mirium Hopkins."

"Mirium? That's ridiculous. That's impossible."

"It's very possible. I walked in while she was cutting out his liver."

Chas swayed, then sank onto his chair. "There's a mistake. It couldn't be."

"I think the mistake was yours." Eve rose, wandered over, then leaned over his shoulder. "You should pick your weapons more carefully. When you use defective ones, they can turn on you."

"I don't know what you mean. May I have some water? I don't understand this."

Eve jerked a thumb to Peabody, signaling her to pour a glass. "Mirium told me everything, Chas. She told me that you were lovers, that you neglected to bring her Wineburg's heart as promised, and that you'd allowed her to execute Trivane herself. Blood purifies."

"No." He lifted the glass in both hands and still slopped water over the edge as he tried to drink. "No."

"Your father liked to slice people up. Did he show you how it was done? How many other defective tools have you used? Did you dispose of them after you'd finished with them? Keep any souvenirs?"

She continued to hammer at him while he sat, just sat, shaking his head slowly from side to side.

"Was this your version of a religious war, Chas? Eliminate the enemy? Cut out the demons? Your father was a self-styled Satanist, and he'd made your life a misery. You couldn't kill him, you can't get to him now. But there are others. Are they substitutes? When you kill them, are you killing him, hacking him to pieces because of what he did to you?"

He squeezed his eyes tight, began to rock. "God. My God. Oh God."

"You can help yourself here. Tell me why, tell me how. Explain it to me, Chas. I may be able to cut you a break. Tell me about Alice. About Lobar."

"No. No." When he lifted his head, his eyes were streaming. "I'm not my father."

Eve didn't flinch, didn't look away from the desperate plea in his eyes. "Aren't you?" Then she stepped back and let him sob.

She worked him for an hour, relentlessly pushing, then backtracking, then shifting directions. She kept the death photos on the table, dealt out like grisly playing cards.

How many more, she demanded. How many more images of the dead should there be?

Through it all, he wept and denied, wept and was silent.

When she turned him over to holding, his eyes stayed on hers until he was led around the corner and away. But it was the look in Peabody's eyes that caught her and had her waiting until they were alone.

"Problem, Officer?"

Observing the interrogation had been like watching a wolf toy and tear at a wounded deer. Peabody drew a breath, braced. "Yes, sir. I didn't like your interview technique."

"Didn't you?"

"It seemed overly harsh. Cruel. Using his father, over and over again, directing him to look at the stills."

Eve's stomach was raw, her nerves scraped clean, but her voice was cool, her hands steady, as she gathered up the stills. "Maybe I should have asked him politely to please confess so we could all go home and get back to our comfy lives. Don't know why I didn't think of it. I'll make a note to try it the next time I have a murder suspect in interview."

Peabody wanted to wince, managed not to. "It just seemed to me, Lieutenant, particularly since the suspect had no representation – "

"Did I read him his rights, Officer?"

"Yes, sir, but – "

"Did he verify that he understood those rights?"

Peabody pulled back, nodded slowly. "Yes, sir."

"Can you estimate, Officer Peabody, how many interviews you've conducted on homicide cases?"

"Sir, I – "

"I can't," Eve snapped, and her eyes went from cool to hot. "I can't, because there's been too fucking many of them. You want to take a look at the stills again? You want to see this guy with his guts spilled out all over the tiles? Maybe it'll toughen you up a little, because if my interview techniques upset you, Peabody, you're in the wrong career."

Eve strode to the door, then whirled back while Peabody stood where she was at rigid attention. "And I expect my aide to back me up, not question me because she happens to have a soft spot for witches. If you can't handle that. Officer Peabody, I'll approve your request for transfer. Understood?"

"Yes, sir." Peabody let out a shaky breath as Eve's boots clicked down the corridor. "Understood," she said to herself and shut her eyes.

"A little rough on her," Feeney commented when he caught up.

"Don't you start on me."

He only held up a hand. "Isis came in voluntarily. I put her in Room B."

With a jerk of the head, Eve changed directions and pulled open the door of Room B.

Isis stopped her restless pacing and spun around. "How could you do this to him? How could you bring him here? He's terrified of places like this."

"Charles Forte is being held for questioning in the stabbing death of Louis Trivane, among others." In contrast to Isis's raised and furious voice, Eve's was cold and flat. "He has not yet been charged."

"Charged?" Her golden skin paled. "You can't believe Chas had anything to do with a murder. Trivane? We don't know any Louis Trivane."

"And you know everyone Forte knows, Isis?" Eve set the file on the table, kept her hand on it as if to remind herself what was inside. "You know everything he does and thinks and plans?"

"We are as close as it's possible for human bodies and minds and souls to be. There is no harm in him." The temper drained out of her. Now her voice trembled. "Let me take him home. Please."

Eve met the pleading eyes straight on, forced herself not to feel. "Did you know, being as close as it's possible, that he'd decided to get equally close, bodily speaking, with Mirium?"

"Mirium?" Isis blinked once, then nearly laughed. "That's ridiculous."

"She told me herself. She smiled when she told me." Remembering that, bringing that image back, dried up any sympathy. "She smiled as she straddled what was left of Louis Trivane, while his blood was smeared all over her hands and her face and the knife she held."

As her legs went weak, Isis reached out blindly to brace a hand on the back of a chair. "Mirium killed someone? That's impossible."

"I thought all things were possible in your sphere. I walked in on her little ceremony myself." Eve's fingers curled on the file, but she didn't open it. There was still pity, after all, for the woman who loved and believed. "She was very cooperative, happily told me that Forte had allowed her to kill Trivane herself. Unlike the others, where she only observed."

Using her hand to keep her balance, Isis stepped unsteadily around the chair, eased herself into it. "She's lying." There was a lance in her heart, quivering there. "Chas has nothing to do with this. How could I have missed this part of her?'' Closing her eyes, Isis rocked herself gently. "How could I not have seen? We initiated her, we took her in. We made her one of us."