Born in Death (In Death 23)

An elaborate chrome chandelier dripped from the vaulted ceiling. Randall Sloan hung from the rope that had been tightly looped around its gleaming post.

17

“HE’S GONE.” EVE HAD TO HOOK JAKE’S ARMS behind his back, hold him against the wall. “You can’t help him.”

“Bullshit! Bullshit! That’s my father. It’s my father.”

“I’m sorry.” He was young, strong, and desperate, so it took all of Eve’s muscle to keep him from shaking her off and running inside. And compromising the crime scene. “Listen to me. Listen, goddamn it! I’m the one who has to help him now, and I can’t do it if you go in there and screw up any evidence. I need you to go downstairs.”

“I’m not leaving here. I’m not leaving him. Go to hell.” And Jake pressed his face to the wall and wept.

“Give him to me.” Roarke stepped up beside her. “Downstairs,” he said before she could ask about Rochelle. “I convinced her to stay put when we heard the shouting. Let me take him.”

“I need a field kit.”

“Yes, I know. Here now, Jake, you have to leave him to the lieutenant now. This is what she does. You come with me. Rochelle’s frightened, and she’s alone. Come downstairs and stay with her.”

“It’s my dad. My dad’s in there.”

“I’m very sorry. I’ll get him settled,” Roarke told Eve, “best I can, then go get your kit out of the car.”

“I don’t want him to contact anyone yet.”

“I’ll see to it. Come on, Jake.”

“I don’t understand. I don’t understand this.”

“Of course not.”

As Roarke pulled Jake away, Eve contacted Central for Crime Scene, then turned back to the room. “Victim is hanging from a rope attached to the master bedroom chandelier,” she began for the recorder. “Visual identification is of Sloan, Randall. There’s no apparent sign of struggle.”

She scanned the room as she spoke. “The bed is made and appears undisturbed. The privacy screens are engaged, curtains open.”

The bedside lamps were on, she noted, and a single wine glass with a bit of white left in it sat beside the one on the right. While Sloan was barefoot, there were slippers—leather from the look of them—under the body. He wore a tan sweater, bro

wn pants. A chair was overturned. Behind him in a work area the minicomp was on. She could see its active light blinking.

She brought the front entrance back into her mind. No sign of break-in.

She nodded to Roarke as he came back with her kit. “Thanks.”

“Do you want me to contact Peabody?”

“Not yet. She’s got enough on her hands. Can you keep them under control down there? I don’t want them touching anything, talking to anyone.”

“All right.” He set somber eyes on Randall. “I suppose he knew you’d follow the trail that led to him.”

“Looks like that, doesn’t it?” she said as she sealed up.

Roarke shifted his gaze to her, lifted his brows. “But?”

“Doesn’t feel like it. He knows his son is coming today. Is this how he wants Jake to find him? He leaves his security off, door unlatched. Why not run instead?”

“Guilt?”

“He’s been dirty for a long time. Suddenly, he gets a conscience?”

“Fraud and murder are far apart on the scale.”