Loyalty in Death

"Don't take me off the case."

"You were never on. Don't push this," she said in a fierce whisper when Peabody protested. "I'll take care of your brother. If I let you on, it's going to look shaky. It's going to be tricky enough for me to hang as primary."

She was struggling against the tears and losing fast. "You were good to him. You let him get it out on record clean, without the lawyer. You were right about that."

Eve jammed her hands in her pockets. "For Christ's sake, Peabody, a blind man could see the guy would trip over his own feet before he'd step on an ant. Nobody's going to argue with self-defense here." If they found the body. The goddamn body. "He'll be okay."

"I should've looked after him." Now she did begin to weep, in great gulping sobs. Helpless, Eve looked at Roarke, spread her hands.

Understanding, he turned Peabody into his arms. "It's all right, darling." He stroked her hair, rocked, watched his wife suffer more than a little. "You let Eve look after him now. Let her take care of him."

"I need to talk to the woman." Eve's stomach rolled every time a fresh sob shuddered out. "McNab will secure the scene and wait for the uniforms. Can you… handle this?"

He nodded and continued to murmur to Peabody as Eve slipped into the room where Clarissa slept.

"I'm sorry." Peabody's voice was muffled against Roarke's chest.

"Don't be. You're entitled to a good cry."

But she shook her head, eased back, and scrubbed at her wet face. "She wouldn't break down."

"Peabody." Gently, Roarke cupped her cheek. "She breaks."

– =O=-***-=O=-

Eve yanked all the chains she could reach, gathered strings and pulled each one. She argued, justified, debated, and came close to threatening. In the end, she was primary in the matter of the death of B. Donald Branson.

She booked two interview rooms, positioning Zeke and Clarissa in separate areas, put the fear of God into the crime scene team and sweepers, harangued the body retrieval unit that was already dragging the East River, put McNab to work on the Branson droid, and arrived at Central with a viciously brilliant headache.

But she had everything she'd wanted.

Her last step before taking statements was to contact Mira at home and arrange for both Zeke and Clarissa to be tested the following day.

She took Clarissa first. She imagined when the woman's initial shock passed, she'd want a lawyer, and the lawyer would shut her up. Self-preservation was bound to overshadow any concern Clarissa might have for Zeke.

But when she walked into the interview room, Clarissa was sitting pale and quiet, her hands clutched around a cup of water. Eve gestured the uniform outside, closed the door.

"Is Zeke all right?"

"Yeah, he's okay. Feeling any better?"

Clarissa turned the cup in her hands, but didn't lift it. "It's all like a dream. So unreal. B. D.'s dead. He is dead, isn't he?"

Eve walked to the table, pulled back a chair. "Tough to say at this point. We don't have a body."

Clarissa shuddered, squeezed her eyes tight. "It's my fault. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I wasn't thinking."

"Now's the time to start." She left any sympathy out of her voice. Sympathy would only push the woman into tears again. She engaged the recorder, recited the necessary information, and leaned forward. "What happened tonight, Clarissa?"

"I called Zeke. He came. We were going to leave together. Go away."

"You and Zeke were having an affair?"

"No." She raised her eyes then, dark and bright and beautiful. "No, we'd never… we kissed once. We fell in love. I know it sounds ridiculous, we barely knew each other. It just happened. He was kind to me, gentle. I wanted to feel safe. I only wanted to feel safe. I called, and he came."

"Where were you going?"

"Arizona. I think. I don't know." She lifted a hand to her forehead, skimmed her fingers over her skin. "Anywhere, as long as I got away. I'd packed. I'd packed a bag, and Zeke went up to get it for me. I got my coat. I was getting away, I was going away with him. Then B. D. came in. He wasn't supposed to."

Her voice started to hitch, her shoulders to tremble. "He wasn't supposed to come home tonight. He was drunk, and he saw I had my coat. He knocked me down." Her hand drifted to her cheek where the bruise was raw. "Zeke was there, and he told him to stay away from me. B. D. said awful things, and he kept pushing Zeke, shoving him, shouting. I can't remember, exactly. Just shouting and pushing, and he grabbed my hair. B. D. grabbed my hair and yanked me up. I think I was screaming. Zeke pushed him away. He pushed him because he was hurting me. And he fell. There was a terrible sound and the blood on the hearth. Blood," she said again and huddled over her cup of water.

"Clarissa, what did Zeke do then, after your husband fell? After the blood?"

"He… I'm not sure."

"Think. Pull it back into your head and think."

"He…" The tears began to plop, in single drops, onto the table. "He made me sit down, then he went to B. D. He told me to call an ambulance. He told me to hurry, but I couldn't move. I just couldn't. I knew he was dead. I could see – the blood, his eyes. He was dead. Call the police. Zeke said we had to call the police. I was so afraid. I told him we should run. We should just run away, but he wouldn't. We had to call the police."

She stopped, shivering, then looked into Eve's eyes. "B. D. knows the police," she said in a whisper. "He said if I ever told anyone, if I ever went to them because he hurt me, they'd lock me up. They'd rape me and lock me up. He knows the police."

"You're with the police now," Eve said coolly. "Have you been raped and locked up?"

Clarissa's eyes flickered. "No, but – "

"What happened after Zeke told you he was calling the police?"

"I sent him away, into the other room. I thought if I could just… make it go away. I asked him to get me some water, and when he was gone, I got the droid. I programmed it to take the – the body, to drive it to the river and throw it in. Then I tried to clean up the blood. There was so much blood."

"That was fast work. Fast and smart."

"I had to be fast. And smart. Zeke would come back – he'd try to stop me. He did stop me." She lowered her head. "And now we're here."

"Why are you here?"

"He called the police. He called them and they'll put him in prison. It was my fault, but he'll go to prison."

No, Eve thought, he wouldn't.

"How long were you married to B. Donald Branson, Clarissa?"

"Almost ten years."

"And you claim he abused you during this period?" Eve remembered the way Clarissa had stiffened when Branson had put his arm around her at the will reading. "He hurt you physically?"

"Not the whole time." She wiped a hand over her face. "At first. It was all right at first. But I couldn't do anything right. I'm so stupid, and I never got anything right. He'd get so angry. He hit me – he said he hit me to knock some sense into my head. To show me who was in charge."

"Just remember who's in charge around here, little girl. Just you remember."

Eve's gut clenched as the words played back in her head, and the sticky fear from childhood that went with it. "You're a grown woman. Why didn't you leave?"

"And go where?" Clarissa's eyes were ripe with despair. "Where would I go that he wouldn't find me?"

"Friends, family." She'd had none, Eve thought. She had no one.

Clarissa shook her head. "I didn't have any friends, and my family's gone. What people I knew – the ones he let me know – think B. D. is a great man. He beat me whenever he wanted, raped me whenever he chose. You don't know what it's like. You can't know what it's like to live with that, with the not knowing what he'll do, what he'll be like when he walks through the door."