Mary Robb: Down the Rabbit Hole

Eve pushed to her feet. “Make me a list. Friends, exes, family, coworkers. Anyone you can think of, and their connection to both Marcus and Darlene. I’m going to have you taken home.”

“Home? But—”

“There’s nothing you can do here.” Harsh as it was, it was true. “You called me for a reason, now trust me to take care of your friends.”

“I do.” Clinging to Charles’s hand, Louise rose. “I trust you’ll find out who’s responsible for what happened here. You need to trust me. What you see here is a cover.”

She rode down with them, arranged for a black-and-white to drive them home.

Then she ducked under the barricade. As she approached the body, Peabody pushed her way through the crowd of gawkers.

“Sorry, Dallas. Twenty-minute delay on the subway.” Peabody pulled her pink and green hat—with bounding pom-pom—farther over her dark flip of hair as she studied what was left of Darlene Fitzwilliams. “Wow. Long drop.”

“Fifty-second floor.”

“Really long.”

“I gave her a cursory look when I came on scene, so I’ll finish her. I’ve already done the one upstairs—her brother. Multiple stab wounds, heart area. Big pair of scissors. Talk to the doorman again, see if he wavers in his statement. He says he talked to the sister here, let her go up to see her brother. Some ten minutes later, she came down, the hard way. Security—along with Charles and Louise—”

Peabody’s head swiveled back. “Charles and Louise?”

“They were coming to visit the brother—old family friends of Louise’s. He was dead when they went in.”

“Oh man.” Peabody’s dark eyes reflected sympathy. “Are they still here?”

“I just sent them home. This one has a fiancé I need to contact who’s apparently waiting for her. She’s going to be really late for dinner.”

“I’ll say.” Peabody tipped her head back, looked up. “Murder/suicide.”

“It sure as hell looks like it. Louise gauges that as impossible. Talk to the doorman, any other wits you can find. We treat it as undetermined until otherwise.”

Opening her field kit, she knelt beside the shattered body, and put aside what it sure as hell looked like.

Eve officially identified the body, determined time of death—within two minutes of the first victim. Cause of death was brutally apparent, but the ME would determine if there were other injuries, injuries incurred before flesh and bone met concrete.

No sign of struggle, no break-in, she thought. If the doorman stuck to his story, he’d opened the door for Marcus approximately two hours before his death.

No one except the sister had come calling.

The apartment security showed only the sister at the door, only she going inside.

Sitting back on her heels, Eve played it through.

Sister, depressed, unable to cope with parents’ sudden death, friction with brother. Arguments, including one that day. Suffers a breakdown, goes to brother’s apartment, stabs him, crosses over to the terrace doors—leaving a bloody handprint—walks out, climbs up, jumps off.

She could see it, just that clearly. And she could hear Louise’s voice telling her it wasn’t possible.

“Okay, Louise.”

Who else had motive? A lot of money and power at stake. The murder weapon. Determine if the scissors belonged to the sister, the brother, or who else. Tox report. Maybe, despite Louise’s belief, the sister leaned on illegals to get her through.

Who else had access to the penthouse?

“Bag her,” she ordered the waiting morgue attendants, and started to rise when she saw something in a pool of blood.

“Hold it.” She pulled out tweezers and lifted bits of shattered plastic, and what she recognized as a mini lens, in pieces.

Just why would Darlene Fitzwilliams have worn a recorder? Eve wondered as she sealed the bloody pieces into evidence.

Sealed bag in hand, she pushed to her feet. “Tag her for Morris—flag tox as priority. Same with the one inside.”

Peabody jogged back to her. “The doorman’s solid on it. He did say she looked a little off—distracted. And I talked to this couple who got in the elevator on fifty-two as she got out. They live on that floor, know both the DBs. They said she looked right through them even when they spoke to her. Like she was in a trance.”

“She was wearing a mini recorder.” Eve held up the evidence bag.

“It didn’t handle the fall any better than she did. Why would she have been wearing one?”

“Good question. When did the wits see her?”

“They passed just a few minutes before she came down—without the elevator. They ended up walking about a block when the woman remembered she’d forgotten the little gift she’d gotten for the friends they were meeting. So they backtracked. They hit the lobby about the same time she hit the pavement.”

“I’ve flagged her tox, given that a push. Have the Electronic Detection Division go over all the electronics, including security. Let’s take another pass upstairs, and I want another look at his feed, her at the door.”

As they started toward the lobby, Eve turned in the direction of shouting, saw a man struggling against the two uniforms who held him back.

After passing the evidence bag to Peabody, Eve crossed over to the barricade. “What’s the problem?”

“Lieutenant, this guy—”

“Darlene! Let me through, goddamn it, I need to see Darlene. The media flash said— Darli!”

“Who are you?”

He stopped fighting long enough to catch his wind, but his eyes remained wild. “I’m Henry Boyle. I’m Darlene Fitzwilliams’s fiancé. Let me through.”

“Mr. Boyle, I’m Lieutenant Dallas. You need to calm down and come with me.”

“I want to see Darlene.”

Eve nodded to the uniforms, who let Henry through the barricade.

“I want to know what’s going on. I need to—” He stopped dead, every ounce of color leaching from his face as he saw the body bag being lifted into the back of the dead wagon. “Who is that? What’s happening?”

Eve took a firm grip on his arm, pulled him toward the lobby doors and inside. She took him to the far side, ordered him to sit.

“Go up, get started,” she told Peabody. “I’ll take him. When the sweepers get here, make sure they take that recorder, get it to the lab.”

“Are you sure you want him? He’s going to break.”

“Yeah. I got it.” She dragged over another chair, sat facing Henry Boyle.

He already knew. He was clinging to the slippery thread of denial, Eve thought, but he already knew. She cut the thread, fast.

“Mr. Boyle, I’m sorry to tell you that Darlene and Marcus Fitzwilliams are dead.”

“That’s not possible. I’m meeting Darlene for dinner. She’s running late, and the media flash said . . .”

He looked toward the doors, the lights, the barricades, the body bag.

“Oh God.” He started to lurch up. “Darlene.”

“Sit.” Eve pulled him down again.

“The media flash said murder/suicide. That’s insane. That’s absolutely insane.”

Goddamn leaks, Eve thought. “We haven’t determined murder or suicide. Where were you between eight and eight thirty?”

“What? I don’t know. What time is it?” He looked at his wrist unit, and started to shake. “In the restaurant. In KiKi’s—it’s on Third. She was late, she didn’t answer her ’link. Marcus didn’t answer his. Darlene . . .”

“When did you last speak to her?”

“This morning, before I left for work. We live together. We’re getting married. We haven’t set the date, but . . .”

Tears rolled. Eve thought his eyes were still too shocked to realize they wept, so the tears just spilled down his cheeks.