Apprentice in Death (In Death 43)

“I want a lawyer. Now. I want a rep from child services.”

“Do you have a lawyer you wish to contact?”

“I don’t know any fucking lawyers. Get me one, and I mean now.”

“Arrangements will be made to obtain legal counsel for you, and though you are considered an adult in these matters, child services will be contacted. Do you have anything to add?”

“Fuck you. Fuck all of you. I’m going to fucking end all of you.”

“Well then.” Reo rose.

“Peabody, have the prisoner returned to her cell. Interview end.” Eve got to her feet. “It’s the plushest accommodation you’re going to have for the next century.”

“I’ll find a way.” Though her eyes burned with hate, with rage, and stayed steady on Eve’s, her hands trembled.

“You locked your own door,” Eve said, and walked out.

Eve went straight to her office. She wanted coffee. Actually, she wanted a really big, really stiff drink, but coffee would do.

Reo followed her in. “I’ve got to deal with the next steps of this, but I wanted to say, before I do, you played her perfectly in there.”

“Wasn’t hard. She wanted to brag, wanted to rub it all in my face—or authority’s face. I just gave her the platform. Lock her up tight, Reo, tight and long.”

“You can count on me.”

“I am.”

Alone, she turned to the board, to the dead.

“You’ve given them justice,” Mira said from the doorway.

“I brought her in. The rest is up to Reo and the courts.”

“You’ve given them justice,” Mira repeated. “And saved unknown others from ending up on your board. You convinced her to reveal herself—and believe me, Eve, that record will be studied by psychiatrists, by law enforcement, by legal minds for decades.”

“I barely had to bait her, she was so primed to show off how smart she is, how much better she is.”

“You never lost control, and never let her see you were in control throughout. Her narcissism, her utter disregard for any semblance of a moral code, her need to be first, and her enjoyment of the kill, it came through so clearly. Some will argue her adolescence and her father’s influence drove her to do the unspeakable.

“It won’t fly,” Mira added as Eve spun around. “She’s calculating, organized, intelligent. She’s a psychopath, and one who was given permission by a parent to embrace her desire to kill. I can promise you I’ll tear down any attempt by her lawyer to build her as a misguided teenager, coerced and manipulated by her father. Trust me on that.”

Count on Reo. Trust Mira. “I do. I do, and that’ll help me sleep tonight.”

“You should go home, get started on that.”

“Yeah, working toward that.”

But before she could get out of her office, Whitney walked in.

“Good job, Lieutenant.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You locked her up with her own words, but that doesn’t negate the work that went into getting her in the box. Today, at least, the city’s a safer place. I need you in the media center in ten.”

She literally felt everything in her sag. “Yes, sir.”

“I’d take this off you if I could. But the fact is, the people of New York deserve to hear from the primary of the investigation that identified and apprehended the two people who terrorized them for nearly a week.